ISDG ~ After Game Analysis and Discusion

This thread's title says it all. If you would like to discuss the game in detail, please post below. Pleas use English if possible. It was a wild and wooly game, with a lot to complain about. So let it fly, people.

Looks that it works...

You mean something like this? Each group is a table. Each column is a stack of three tables. At least that's how I did it. Plus I put a space between each row. And two spaces between each table.





I dunno.

I. Larkin said:

Can we make "after - game" analysis here, like writing brief story of most important events of the game. Then it will be easier to discuss "missing opportunities", hidden tricks, treacherous plans, est.
In German "ISDG Kafe" all in German and things not very well organized.
Here we distributed between "surrender" and "diplomacy" threads.

For lurkers our discussion not clear at all.

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Yes, at the moment there is a lot going on in the German ISDG forum, which unfortunately our English-speaking participants from over here can't understand. This is a pity, because most things over there are indeed highly interesting.
I guess the reason is: the Küche was the team with the highest "member activity" right through the end of the game. A very "healthy" team with a lot of active contributors. Now these Küche members are quite active again in the "post-mortem", a few Anarchos have reappeared, and of course Eagles & Knights also had a few German-speaking members, so the discussion over there is thriving.
I would love to translate some of that stuff for the fanatics forum, but first of all: I have a real life, so no way I could find the time for that, and second: the interest over here doesn't seem to be too intense?!

Interesting point discussed right now: which settling pattern is better, the "tight, many size-7 cities" implemented by the Küche (and also by the Anarchos, if they would have had time to develop peacefully), or the "slightly wider, not so many size-12 cities" implemented by the Eagles (and also by the Knights, if we would have had time to develop peacefully)?

Both options have pros and cons, and for me it is still not clear. Unfortunately it is not really possible to directly compare the Küche- and the Eagle-output, because the Eagles had such a super-über-start... (5fpt instead of 4ftp. With a granary that means 2-turn growth instead of 3-turn growth, so 33% faster growth in the early phase. What had the map creator been thinking here )

Lanzelot said:

the interest over here doesn't seem to be too intense?

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That surprises me, too.

Lanzelot said:

Both options have pros and cons, and for me it is still not clear. Unfortunately it is not really possible to directly compare the Küche- and the Eagle-output, because the Eagles had such a super-über-start... (5fpt instead of 4ftp. With a granary that means 2-turn growth instead of 3-turn growth, so 33% faster growth in the early phase. What had the map creator been thinking here )

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The Eagles had to move one turn before founding Aerie.

Lanzelot said:

Interesting point discussed right now: which settling pattern is better, the "tight, many size-7 cities" implemented by the Küche (and also by the Anarchos, if they would have had time to develop peacefully), or the "slightly wider, not so many size-12 cities" implemented by the Eagles (and also by the Knights, if we would have had time to develop peacefully)?

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I would like to add that "tight, many size-7 cities" is a strong simplification. Here is a picture of what i had in mind.



http://www.civforum.de/showthread.p...acestrategie&p=4953646&viewfull=1#post4953646

In earlier stages of the game we had 5 additional cities for temporary use which might lead to the impression of a tight pattern.

justanick said:

The Eagles had to move one turn before founding Aerie.

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One turn means nothing...

This pattern makes sense to me for a research game with a small number of units. FP in R14D9?
On the other hand: if you have to move the palace, then why not even further north? E.g. R7D5 and FP in R37D17? (of course, everything would need to be readjusted a bit then.)

Lanzelot said:

One turn means nothing...

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Ok, mathematically this is probably not correct. Let's say "one turn means less than epsilon"...

Eagles definitely started in a better location than the Kitchen, but the other continent had two decent starting loctions. It was a shame that the Kitchen got trapped with that one ring core. But stuck on that little wart of a land mass at the bottom DID allow them/force them to establish their core quickly and proceed "getting on" with building their empire to the North.

I think the Eagles laid out there city planning pretty well. First we secured a lux and a strong second city on the coast. Then we established a strong Worker/Settler factory. As long as you have a Worker/Workers to build road, I think the size 12 cities are the way to go. Roads allow the Settlers to get to their destination quickly, plus give you the extra commerce for science research. We had a strong player base in the begining, so there was a lot of discussion.

Lanzelot said:

This pattern makes sense to me for a research game with a small number of units. FP in R14D9?
On the other hand: if you have to move the palace, then why not even further north? E.g. R7D5 and FP in R37D17? (of course, everything would need to be readjusted a bit then.)

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The Forbidden Palace was in R3D0(Weinheim) already. A Palace more in the north would have some negativ effects on the cities in the north and as cummunist distances does no longer matter. Communism is the way to max out research and production in C3C 1.22.

We would never have accepted Communism as part of the joint research program, so you would have had to research it on your own afterwards. Could you really have afforded to lose 4 turns plus another anarchy?! In this case I think we would have won. Republic plus science farms in the corrupt areas would have been sufficient for 4-turn research.

Of couse we could not have accepted to lose turns with the used research rules. At Sid the problem would have never arised in that way. Due to low research costs the space race was little of an option. The one who plays poor for the sake of his nations would have won the race.
Chosing emperor was the most important mistake when starting the DG.

justanick said:

The one who plays poor for the sake of his nations would have won the race.
Chosing emperor was the most important mistake when starting the DG.

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you repeated that a couple of times now, but i do not understand it. i must assume that this again is some of your "the game is not good enough for the greatness of my ideas" notions
if the goal is set clear, and i have been trying to say that for quite a while now, then only a strategy that leads towards this goal is a good strategy. strategies that "would be good if the goal/the circumstances/the game software/... would be different" may be intestesting, but are no good strategies.

thus, if being first to the SS by skipping Communism, this would in my eyes *not* be "playing poor for the sake of one´s nation", but just how to do it. i really did not understand that part of your argumentation over at the civforum...

Emperor was a given, so what you did with it could be right or wrong, but i absolutely do not agree to say in hindsight that this setting was the most important mistake, or even a mistake at all.

t_x

My point is exactly that the difficult setting was the most important mistake. Research is much too cheap, the 4-turn limitation becomes relevant much too early. If it weren't for that communism etc. would pay off long before the Spacerace is finished. But the chosen circumstances make it pretty dull. Hampering the progress of the nation will give victory in way that i feel is wrong. Somehow you think 4-turns limitations is a feature, i think it is a bug.

"feature" in a sense as a pure matter of fact, yes. i remember civ1 where this was not installed. sometimes i researched a few techs in one single turn. of course this was mathematically correct, but yes, i think the 4-turn (or any) limit makes sense for a certain idea of the game.

if you are saying that *your* idea of the game is a different one, everything is fine. but words like "mistake" and how you describe the effect for the teams in the ISDG go much too far in my eyes. your very different ideas about how the game should be can not at all imo be transferred into the strategies of the players who simply play the game "as it is".

t_x

The 4 turn limitations is not bad per se. But in combination with low research costs and the unability to research more techs than 1 at once is undesirable.

In every mod I make, I reduce the minimum research time to 3. I makes the games so much nicer.

The world in turn 150:


F8:


F11:

justanick said:

The 4 turn limitations is not bad per se. But in combination with low research costs and the unability to research more techs than 1 at once is undesirable.

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it is not that i do not see where you are coming from. but i hardly see this point so decisive for the gameplay. of course it would have been smarter if they had not hardcoded it, so you could change it.

BUT: if guys like you and me decide to play Sid level, really, why worry about tech speed (of the HI) or long revolution phases? if i want the AI to have only 40% of my costs for everything, then i really do not mind that i need to stay in anarchy for e.g. 5 turns and them only for 1.

therefore, and in this sense, yes, i see those as "features", while in a contrary the "no-attack bug" for armies in open field is a real and very bad bug, the unability of the AI to undertake D-Day-Operations or use artillery is really really bad and at least the latter on bug-level. the unability of the AS to understand and not accept "fake peace"-deals is a bad bug also.

so, it is not that i love the features which you don`t, but merely i want to give them the weight they have, and for 4-turn-minimum research... i would not give that a sweat if the AS finally learnt to shell me down

t_x

First of all i need to tell you that the 4 turns are not hardcoded. You can change it in the editor easily. The feature is not bad, my comparison was a little bit spiced up. The problem is that each team in the ISDG reached a level of excellency that made chosing Emperor a bad joke. 4 turns should remain the exception, not relevant for approximatly 50% of all cases. Only Sid or above had been a proper choice under the given circumstances. You can still reach 4 turns then, but by then you might have finished all "relevant" techs and future techs are not far away.

justanick said:

First of all i need to tell you that the 4 turns are not hardcoded.

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your remark on this sounded so general, that i assumed it had to be. and i have not ever opened the editor in my life...
t_x