Test pitboss

A point for people who have not played a pitboss game before, you need to have BTS patched to 3.19 to play. Also are we going to have a 40 turn protected peace to begin with to stop people from walking into unprotected cities at the beginning?
 
Well that will depend on the game speed...speaking of which, what game speed will we use?
 
A point for people who have not played a pitboss game before, you need to have BTS patched to 3.19 to play. Also are we going to have a 40 turn protected peace to begin with to stop people from walking into unprotected cities at the beginning?

No need. Either you prepare for the possibility of getting killed very early, or take a risk and don't.
 
Well that will depend on the game speed...speaking of which, what game speed will we use?
I presume Normal, since it's fairly standard for these games. I wouldn't be against Epic, although it takes a bit longer. Marathon is out because it's way too long for a MP game. Quick is also out because it's way too fast (especially for a huge map... your army will be obsolete before it reaches the front).
 
Normal speed was the plan.

If you want a peace treaty you'd better ask for one as soon as you meet someone. :) Worker first builds are a little less common in MP than you'd see against AI's.
 
...and it starts tomorrow, correct?

Normal speed...oh boy...that'll take some getting used to...I think I might play marathon too much. ;)
 
A point for people who have not played a pitboss game before, you need to have BTS patched to 3.19 to play. Also are we going to have a 40 turn protected peace to begin with to stop people from walking into unprotected cities at the beginning?

I very much hope not.


Normal speed was the plan.

If you want a peace treaty you'd better ask for one as soon as you meet someone. :) Worker first builds are a little less common in MP than you'd see against AI's.

Are we going to be modding the map slightly so we can start off with a couple of settlers, couple of warriors and a worker? Just so we can actually have something to do for the first 50 turns. I would like this greatly!
 
Are we going to be modding the map slightly so we can start off with a couple of settlers, couple of warriors and a worker? Just so we can actually have something to do for the first 50 turns. I would like this greatly!
Personally, I'd much prefer not to. The decisions whether to build a Worker first, and when to build your first Settler, are two of the most important decisions in the early game. Just giving those things to everyone kind of kills a lot of the early-game strategy, and doesn't really teach you how to play a "proper" Civ4 game in multiplayer (you have to remember that a few people in this game probably have not played MP before). Not to mention, starting with a Worker majorly unbalances the game for the civs starting with Worker techs (namely Agriculture and Mining, but also The Wheel and Hunting). Civs starting with one or two of those techs are immediately at a considerable advantage. Meanwhile those who start with Fishing or Mysticism (or both) get more hard done by, since they have to research the Worker techs before their Workers can do anything.

I'd much rather play the default game as it was intended to be played, without modding the map or the starting bonuses in any way.
 
I thought about using SmartMap and setting resources to the "many" setting, just to give a flavor of what it would be like if we wanted the mapmakers to sweeten things a bit. Otherwise I'd prefer normal settings for the same reasons Lord Parkin gave.
 
Can I get some idea of what time of day the turn cutoff time is likely to be? Or does it float around depending on when the previous turn finishes? How do we know when the new turn's ready in that case? Do we just have to log in and check, or is it going to be on civstats.com or something? How long is the timer going to be anyway? I think I'd struggle with less than 24 myself, don't let that stop you playing a quicker one without me if you'd rather.

Sorry for all the noob questions.

For what it's worth, I'm in favour of settings as close to the demogame as possible if this is going to be a practise run.
 
The turn timer floats based on when the last player ends turn. There is a utility called CivStats which monitors pitboss games and notifies players by email when a new turn begins. You can also check the turn status on the web instead of having to login to the game, and CivStats shows when players login and finish turn, along with score changes.

I tend to leave the turn timer at 24 hours, which comes out to a bit more due to timer delays from people logging in. However having it run long can cause problems for people with a certain time of day they prefer to play, if/when the timer runs its full length. With a full 18 players, there is a good chance that at least one could miss on any given day. If missed turns become too prevalent, I've seen games extend to a 36 (common) or even 48 (rare). The host typically reserves the right to break ties on determining the setting, but we normally go with consensus.
 
I thought about using SmartMap and setting resources to the "many" setting, just to give a flavor of what it would be like if we wanted the mapmakers to sweeten things a bit. Otherwise I'd prefer normal settings for the same reasons Lord Parkin gave.
I haven't used SmartMap before, but if it's reasonable at producing decent maps then that's fine. Basically my only real prerequisite is that the map feels "natural" - that's why I like things like Fractal and Big and Small, but I don't much care for artificial map types like Wheel, Hub, Donut, etc. Also, I guess the resource generator for the SmartMap needs to be reasonably fair in its distribution. I don't know how the "many" setting works, but I'm just fearing having someone start with a whole block of Gold resources, or something like that, which would obviously be a bit unbalancing. ;) But if the map script has a reasonable resource generator then I don't mind.
 
So as I understand it this is the current player/civ list:

1. DaveShack - Augustus Caesar
2. Chimera1804 - random
3. BCLG100 - Ragnar
4. Lord Parkin - Huayna Capac
5. azzaman333 - Cyrus
6. Allan79 - Gengkis Khan
7. classical_hero - Suryavarman II
8. grant2004 - Wang Kon
9. hell_hound - Napoleon
10. nabaxo - Darius
11. v8_mark - Zara
12. Celiazul - Elizabeth
13. Donovan Zoi - Shaka
14. Robi D - Byzantium
15. Irgy - random
16. champinoman - random

Dave, you might want to keep this updated in the first post, just for clarity. Maybe post the game settings there too, once they're decided.

Are you still planning on starting this on Thursday (i.e. today)? :)
 
Personally, I'd much prefer not to. The decisions whether to build a Worker first, and when to build your first Settler, are two of the most important decisions in the early game. Just giving those things to everyone kind of kills a lot of the early-game strategy, and doesn't really teach you how to play a "proper" Civ4 game in multiplayer (you have to remember that a few people in this game probably have not played MP before). Not to mention, starting with a Worker majorly unbalances the game for the civs starting with Worker techs (namely Agriculture and Mining, but also The Wheel and Hunting). Civs starting with one or two of those techs are immediately at a considerable advantage. Meanwhile those who start with Fishing or Mysticism (or both) get more hard done by, since they have to research the Worker techs before their Workers can do anything.

I'd much rather play the default game as it was intended to be played, without modding the map or the starting bonuses in any way.

I appreciate that but then perhaps remove the worker from the equation and just have 2 warriors, 2 settlers. Otherwise i don't mind having the workers as it means that we are essentially just logging in and hitting enter for awhile, the decision on what to build is still as pertinent if not more so with two cities.
 
I appreciate that but then perhaps remove the worker from the equation and just have 2 warriors, 2 settlers. Otherwise i don't mind having the workers as it means that we are essentially just logging in and hitting enter for awhile, the decision on what to build is still as pertinent if not more so with two cities.
What about the Scout for the people who have Hunting?

Realistically, you're still going to have pretty short turns with 2 cities just like with 1 city. I just don't see why we can't have a good ole regular game. ;)
 
I've been mentally preparing all day for approximately 5 clicks in turn 1 :p

Turn 1 at least is pretty exciting, you get to see what sort of start you've been lumped with, decide whether or not to settle in place, decide whether to go warrior first or take the punt on worker first, see which leader/civ you've been given (for us random players anyway), plan out your tech path and start thinking about you broad global strategy. Although all that is still only about 5 clicks like you say.

It's turn 2, in which you probably make 1 click and get to see a couple of previously fogged squares, that's dull.

I'm just hoping "Thursday" comes before it's Saturday here in Sydney :) Not that it matters, it will start when it starts.
 
Game launched, 72 hours on the timer till everyone is in, to handle problems.
I didn't use the "many resources" because it doesn't fit on the pitboss launch screen. :(
Didn't modify the game because I don't want to know the map...

daveshack.dyndns.org:2056

This is on the new computer so expecting possible firewall problems. Let me know what you see. :)

I got a couple of food resources visible -- not earth shaking but it looks like there will be plenty of things made of wood...

 

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Timing out on "connecting to host". Presume you have your firewall blocking it or something.
 
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