SGOTM6 Celts. Maintenance Thread

This might be a bit spoilerish. But I will explain a little. The pattern of variants is intended to alternate between warmongering and building games, to give all kinds of players the kind of games they feel comfortable in. It was my expectation that for 100k that most teams would conquer to the domination limit and cruise to 100K, essentially a warmonger game. To prevent this I decided to make the early game very difficult from an expansion point of view. I experimented with straight deity for 1.29f but found that the early middle ages were too difficult, and I tried Emperor for C3C and found the game essentially trivial because of the Agricultural trait. My compromise was therefore to give DG start units to C3C and a higher early tech rate. Upgrade costs were reduced, not to make gaining the UU cheaper but to make the game playable in industrial ages. When you get there you will see why, and you may discover it earlier. Other considerations were made to reducing game breaking luck events.
There are a number of other things that I did, but mainly map related that will affect the game later on, so I have one hand tied behind my back in many respects.

The reason I did not post an accurate change list was for several reasons. Firstly I didn't want people to decide on the software version they would play based o perceived difficulty level. Secondly, I wanted the early AI expansion and tech rate to be a frightening surprise, and not expected as a result of the changes. Other reasons too which are proably best summarised as me being too lazy. Had the game been bug free, then I am sure it would have been the right thing to do. But because of my mistake with naval movement, every change then was perceived as a bug. I guess many people would have just observed a stony silence and waited for the end of the game to explain it all. But that is not my style. I want these games to be inclusive and built on what the players want, and I therefore want all the game parameters widely discussed, along with my errors and bugs so that I can get to a place where everyone is comfortable. That includes me BTW, I actually find it difficult to read the early posts in a new game due to dread of someone finding a game breaking bug. To fix that, my intention is to work towards a single fixed mod that people can live with and that is fair in extreme variant SG competition, so that I can concentrate purely on map making and administration.

@m-b,

Apologise for a query to which I think I know the answer but Team Bede needs a clarification:

Re Rule 1: Only allowed governments are despotism and Communism.

I read that to allow the acquisition of the knowledge for trade bait but that we may not revolt into any other government.

Am I correct in my reading?

Thanks.

Please don't take this to be me rushing you, but just out of curiosity....

Is there an ETA for the culture graph mentioned in the first post? Only culture is of interest during this game.

6. Progress graphs on Download page not relevent for all variants. Addition of graphs for Culture, surplus food, shield production,net income,city count,total unit count (perhaps)) to be added.

Click to expand...

I'm still looking for my round tuit I swear I had here last week.

I'm hoping to get to it this weekend, but please don't send the mob round here to break my legs if I don't make it.

IMHO, this might be not so great idea to have the cultural graph for the submitted saves right now. You know that there are different strategies to be used for 100K and looking at the graph may be a sort of a spoiler for the other teams. It can be slightly more fair if it is shown after the game has progressed a little bit further. But by no means I'm against it. This would be a great addition to the already almost perfect system.

I agree with akots, in fact I'm not sure why there's even scores posted until the game is over.

@Bede, if you want to get technical, the rules do say governments, not government techs. And to get really technical, anarchy was not allowed as a government, but is needed to change to communism, so I guess that is implied.

I think the scores add a little excitement but don't tell the whole story. Still a good indicator. We will know for sure when it is over.

We can't win. There was a mighty uproar when we suppressed the scores during SGOTM 3. Make up your minds, folks, and we'll fit in with whatever you prefer

AlanH said:

We can't win. There was a mighty uproar when we suppressed the scores during SGOTM 3. Make up your minds, folks, and we'll fit in with whatever you prefer

Click to expand...

Oh, come on, just make an executive decision and let us know.

AlanH said:

We can't win. There was a mighty uproar when we suppressed the scores during SGOTM 3. Make up your minds, folks, and we'll fit in with whatever you prefer

Click to expand...

I think, now that we all are on the same variant, we could put up all statistics.
You may conclude what is the strategy of the others, but that doesn't help you to determine what's the best in the end.

The achievable finish date in this variant will be determined long before the end.
Then it's just a question of exact play and micromanaging a large number of cities . I'm sure everybody will anyways give the best effort in this phase and don't see that one can do anything, even when knowing a target date.

Bede said:

@m-b,

Apologise for a query to which I think I know the answer but Team Bede needs a clarification:

Re Rule 1: Only allowed governments are despotism and Communism.

I read that to allow the acquisition of the knowledge for trade bait but that we may not revolt into any other government.

Am I correct in my reading?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yes that;s correct Bede. The only allowed governments are despotism and communism. You can learn any techs you like.

dmanakho said:

Oh, come on, just make an executive decision and let us know.

Click to expand...

We did! We're going to do it! Now we get complaints!

AlanH said:

We did! We're going to do it! Now we get complaints!

Click to expand...

I just want to say thank you to M-B & Alan. You guys are doing this in your free time and I for one appreciate it. If there is a graph or no graph, you guys have done a great job. I'm happy with whatever you guys decide. People will complain no matter what you do. Best thing to do is ignore the complaints and just do your best and what you think would make it more fun.

AlanH said:

We did! We're going to do it! Now we get complaints!

Click to expand...

Everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately, most of the time everyone has a different opinion. Since that is true, only mine should count.

Seriously though. The amount of work put in is completely appreciated. I personally like the score graph, but anyone making strategic decisions based on the graph is missing the point.

The game is an attempt by a team to do the best job they can. You can make inferences about other teams from their scores, but since this is a race to the finish rather than a milk run, this is only of limited use.

Once more with feeling. THANK YOU MB, THANK YOU ALANH, THANK YOU TO ANYONE ELSE WHO HAS WORKED TO MAKE SGOTM SO MUCH FUN, BUT WHO HASN'T GOTTEN CREDIT FOR IT.

Well, like it or not, you've got it.

I've now added a culture graph option in a pop-up menu above the graph, and split the team summary into Conquests and Classic groups. The culture option is available for all games currently, though it gives no information for previous games. You can enable or disable the graph displays for all teams in a group so that you can compare them any way you want.

As ever, please let me know if you spot any problems, or if there are extra facilities you would like.

AlanH said:

Well, like it or not, you've got it.

I've now added a culture graph option in a pop-up menu above the graph, and split the team summary into Conquests and Classic groups.

Click to expand...

Great. Thank you.

In my last turn set I tried to Irrigate the plains tile located between the two adjacent/isolated hill tiles north of the starting location and rivers. The tile SE was irrigated but I was not allowed to irrigate. Is there a "fold" in the map data running North/South from the start location? Someone also mentioned that the plains tile NE of the start is not on the river even though the corner touches.

Pied Piper. Yes there does seem to be a problem with the map in that area. I'm not sure why. Unfortunately there is not much I can do about it now.

I have begun work on a reference thread for the SGOTM event. It is very much work in progress and does not apply to SGOTM6.

At the bottom of the thread I have posted the scenario files I intend to use for SGOTM 7 along with a change history from SGOTM6 to 7. I will amend this with a full change history soon.

The scenario files do not include a map, and have not been play tested yet.
The vanilla version is being play tested by a member of staff at the moment. The other two versions are not at the moment - since it is hardly worthwhile until we know if the map is suitable.

If anyone would like to download and play with these scenario files, then please feel free. Any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated.

The files are located >>HERE<<

Vanilla teams (Ivan, tao, Xteam) may have had trouble uploading files for the last 24 hours due to a bug I introduced when automating QSC scoring. It's now fixed. My apologies for any inconvenience this caused.

The Results and Congratulations thread for SGOTM5 game has now been posted >>HERE<<

The Results/downloads page for this game has already been updated.

I will be away from the forum until March 7th and Alanh will be monitoring the maintenance thread. He cannot access the team threads and it is therefore important that any issues arising in my absence are raised in this thread.