I would love to play in another game. Here are a couple of random thoughts on things I've seen mentioned in the thread. I'm probably forgetting some things, but hopefully this is a start.
Map Maker - I'm happy with anyone doing it who volunteers. I do think it'd probably be wise to have at least one other person to check over the map before we start playing though, just to make sure there are no glaring mistakes.
Advanced Starts - Personally I find the early game opening to be one of the most interesting parts of the game, so I would hate to have that element of fun removed by having Advanced Starts.
Extra Visibility at Start - I think this is a great idea. Seeing a small area around your starting position lets you decide whether you want to relocate your capital or not without wasting valuable turns. We could even try something like the Fall from Heaven 2 mod does - there they have a special promotion for the starting Settler which gives it +2 movement and +3 visibility. Works quite well.
New Random Seed - Absolutely, it removes any possibilities for accusations of cheating, which always cause bitterness and are never fun (regardless of whether true or not). Really, I'm not sure why we didn't have this set for this game in the first place...?
Simultaneous Turns - Highly in favour of this as it reduces the delay so much. Also makes it infinitely easier and quicker to play if we're doing "sessions" in the early game. Of course there can come the problem later with "double moves", so here's what I suggest to eliminate that: during war turns, the teams involved must play their turns in the order of their player numbers. For example, in the previous game, Kaz was player #1 and Saturn was player #2. If it was simultaneous turns and Kaz declared war on Saturn, they would go first and Saturn second. If SANCTA (as player #3) wished to also join the war against Saturn, they would have to play after Saturn. Make sense? I'll still play if it's sequential turns, but I just think it makes a world of difference if simultaneous turns is on - it could make the difference of subtracting a day or more from the individual turn times in the early-mid game.
Always Peace - I've actually played this variant quite a bit in multiplayer, and I don't mind it too much... indeed cultural warfare can add a whole new dimension to the game. However, I'm aware that it's not everyone's cup of tea... some people just like a good old fashioned military battle.
So maybe it wouldn't work for a demogame, although I'd certainly be interested to try it out in some other format (perhaps an intra-team game for the team I'm on
).
Always War - I'd rather not. It prevents all kinds of trade (tech, resource, gold, etc) and pretty much only leaves military agreements available to players. While I certainly think trade needs to be limited somewhat (techs in particular - demogames are notorious for tech alliances making them incredibly unbalanced), stopping all trade altogether seems to be going a bit too far. No foreign trade route gold from Open Borders, even! I think diplomacy can be a major fun factor in demogames, so we shouldn't limit its potential too much by going the Always War route.
No Tech Trading - I'm 50/50 on this one. I think it'd be interesting to play a demogame without tech trading, but I'm also aware that discussing whether to go through with technology trades (or even whether to backstab on them!) is a major fun element in diplomacy. It's also worth noting that No Tech Trading doesn't really mean balanced teching... instead it can mean a slight advantage for one team (land and/or resources) can easily exponentiate into a huge tech lead down the track. Indeed, in one of the first No Tech Trading games I played, I happened to get lucky with taking my next door neighbour by surprise, and from then on the game was a cakewalk - because I had more land than anyone else, and was always one step ahead in military tech, so no-one could stop me after that. (DaveShack will remember that game.
)
Even Players - Perhaps a solution to the tech trading / alliance issue could be to have either 4 or 6 teams in the next game, with tech trading on? That would encourage a 2 vs 2 tech alliance (or 3 vs 3, or 2 vs 2 vs 2) situation, which would at least have a chance of being balanced. With 5 players, there's really no choice but for it to end up being 2 vs 3 (unless it's 1 vs 4 or 2 vs 2 vs 1), which means that someone's always going to get the short end of the stick regardless. Wouldn't it be nice if alliances actually had some semblance of a chance of being balanced from the outset? (And yes, I think it was inevitable that with our 5 player game it would end up with a 3 vs 2 or 4 vs 1 alliance, so someone was always going to get screwed from the start.) Personally I'm in favour of 6 teams, assuming there are enough players to support them.
Espionage - Keep it on. Besides, I hate the culture effect of having it turned off - it messes up the game.
Random Events - Yeah, keep them off. Though they're fun if they're nice and they happen to you, they can be a bit unbalancing. And it makes it too messy with the rule about ignoring bad events, because sometimes people accidentally accept and then the team wants a reload, etc... better just to keep it simple, IMHO.
Smaller Map - Assuming we go with my suggestion of having either 4 or 6 players, I suggest we have either a Small map (4) or Standard map (6). There was definitely a bit too much open space for my liking on this map, but I wouldn't want everyone to be too close either. With one less team, we could justify moving to Small size without it being too cramped. With one more team on a Standard map, it might make it just about right.
Later Era Start - Not interested at all. The ancient game is one of the most interesting parts to me.
Team Captains - I think this could be a good idea, although I think it should be done in a "volunteer" way before resorting to a "brute force" way. As in, we shouldn't force two friends to have to be on separate teams if they don't want to, just because we want a better "spread". In my view, if a couple of veteran friends want to stick together to play in the next game, that's fine. But it shouldn't happen that 10-15 experienced buddies all stick together across 2-3 teams while the remaining 2-3 teams in the game get screwed over with few or no veteran players. That's just not fair on the other teams, and besides, it ruins the game for everyone if some teams end up semi-dead due to lack of interest from the players. I say: let anyone who wants to volunteer to "captain" a team do so, and if they want to bring along a couple of buddies from past games, let them. But let's not have a captain picking out 10 veterans and leaving the rest of the teams poor.
For the record, I'm totally happy to "captain" a team. Indeed I did pretty much the same thing in this game - I saw that a lot of the demogame veterans were gathering in a couple of teams and that Saturn (or Team 2 at the time) seemed to be lacking in them, so I joined for that reason. This time around though, I won't have a trip to Europe in the middle of things that will make me too busy to be involved.
That's about all I have to add for the moment. Feel free to comment on or criticise any of my points. I hope we can get this new game started soon - I'm excited to have the chance to be involved again!
