Planning cIV BTS MTDG III

Civ4 is not chess. It will never be 100% fair.
A part of the fun is that it's a little bit random. Good players must be able to deal with that.

@BuG devs: is it possible to intervene in the double-turn mechanism? Can it i.e. be reset, can the turn timer be delayed during the turn, can we switch login-positions? If we can master the mechanism, then it sounds like a very good choice. I dislike it a bit if we are the slaves of the system.
 
Hi all!

I am going to be the cap of CivPlayers team. Prepare yourselves!

Yes OT4E has my complete confidence and is gathering a team of players in our forums now, and they will soon start entering the discussions here on settings/mods etc. This should be a fun event for all teams and the more the better.

CS
 
2metra made an excellent point over there, that if you are one of those who say "We must play this way or I ain't playing" or "My way is best and any other way is unthinkable" then we probably don't want you in the game to begin with. In my experience, it is always these rigid, fanatical ones who insist on this and that, and then a few days, weeks, months into the game, declare that the game bores them, or that some OTHER issue is hopelessly unbalanced and quit...

Then again it could also be an issue about "Einstein vs. Village Idiots" where A says option X doesn't work at all, but B and C don't see the problem in it, which can sometime lead to very oddball things (see Apolyton Demogame, on their setting debates)
 
Not at all. This is more like the Einstein's wife agree to be fuсked by the "village idiot" and then explaining him indignant how she is not used to that kind of ride. If this wife is so freaking afraid that someone could ride her apart oddball, she may well stay at home and keep her highly intelligent husband's hand. ;)
 
Civ4 is not chess. It will never be 100% fair.
A part of the fun is that it's a little bit random. Good players must be able to deal with that.

@BuG devs: is it possible to intervene in the double-turn mechanism? Can it i.e. be reset, can the turn timer be delayed during the turn, can we switch login-positions? If we can master the mechanism, then it sounds like a very good choice. I dislike it a bit if we are the slaves of the system.

First.. we are not de BUG mod developers, our "spanish mod" is the APTMod. ;)

Let's me answer with an other question. Which rules do you use to control de double turn efects in your pitbosses?
We had been playing with this simple control and we are very happy with it. The civ that wants to attack can chose if wants to play first or after the civ attacked. The rest of th war the order between them wil be the same. Each player will had the some time to play.
Manolo is the mod developer, and I think the time can be changed, Im not sure if that takes effect in the same turn or its just for the next one. Changing the order it's not posible.
In the worst escenario, the turn order control could be removed at all... but we actually think its better this way than the original way.
But to be sure.. we must understand with rules do you apply in this cases... ¿?
 
Metra, I defended you at first because I felt people were perhaps unneccessarily harsh towards you. You state you wanted to take it to the game table- fine, let's do it.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't intentionally doing so, but please stop trolling RB. From one guy to another, i'm asking you as sweetly as I can. Sure, you may get some enjoyment out of 'stirring the pot'. Just imagine how much enjoyment you'll get after the game if you beat us!

If you think we're elitist or arrogant or whatever, that's fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I hate Sunderland FC, but it wouldn't be appropriate for me to go to their stadium and tell them that (well, i'd certainly expect a reaction!). Bringing up incorrect history of a former game belittling that sites success despite multiple handicaps (something the folks involved, myself not included, are rightly proud of) is not pleasant.

You dislike us fine, just let it go and hate us in-game :goodjob:

Summer- RB aren't precious. Your posts have been perfectly reasonable and well thought out. If you've changed your mind or want to discuss a point, please feel free to do so there. There aren't that many posts because we're mad- that's just RB.

In RB Pitboss 2, the thread of just one team had 2419 posts and 387742 views. The lurker thread (non-players discussion) had 3151 posts and 243672 views. This thread by Metra will have a lot of posts because team RB had, at last count, 42 players. That's a lot of folk posting their thoughts :)

EDIT: I'd also like to state thank you to you personally Metra for helping organise the game, as well as inviting us. I'm really excited by the prospect this game holds and can't wait to begin!
 
So there needs to be double move rules, even if we would use the mod. For resource pillaging I suggest that if there are sufficient number of workers parked to the resource to improve it in 1T it is not allowed to pillage it with spy or Flight Bombardement.
There are problems with this too. One team is expected to constantly sacrifice up to 10 worker turns per turn (for an Oil well, depending on the location) just to avoid one resource being pillaged. And if there are 2 or more different, equally critical resources which the enemy can hit, then the enemy always gets a chance to hit at least one resource unless you park workers on every single one. Whereas when it comes to their turn, they get to distribute Workers based on what was actually hit, and don't waste any worker turns.

What if workers build road after the opponent is done with the turn and the next turn you use those roads and extend them to hit his stack?
Then we specify that Workers are only to hook up pillaged resources in this phase.

Simply no loging after you are done and before your opponent is done and doing nothing is the best solution to the problems which come with the nature of turn- based game.
Well, I'd have to disagree. :)

We have even the possibility to establish treaties out of the game, like "non aggression pacts".
This seems a bit weird to me (a public announcement of a private agreement?), but I guess the settings can be adjusted as needed. It looks interesting anyway.

In addition, the mod sends warning messages in case of war, diplo proposals in game, or when "your ennemy has played, it's your turn!"
My main concern is whether any of the information is available before you "should" see it. For instance, are graphs visible on this site before you have enough espionage? I'm also a bit uneasy about just how much information about battles is available instantly, and who it's shown to.

I guess the main thing for me is that I'd be more comfortable if I had some personal experience testing this mod in a smaller-scale environment, rather than suddenly jumping into it in such a massive-scale game. It makes me nervous that potentially unforseen exploits or leaks may be inadvertently introduced. I'm sure the mod has been played thoroughly amongst the Spanish community, I'd just be more comfortable knowing from my own experience how something works.

I found this argument to be compelling, but as I thought more about it, it was only good, because I accepted the premise... ie, that if the mission is allowed, it will be so powerful that all teams will have no choice but to run espionage heavy enough to keep influencing everyone's civics and religion. But when I really think about it, this does not seem correct:confused:

Pinning M&M down into despotism in BTS MTDG II was EXPENSIVE. We basically had to devote our entire economy to it. We could not tech at all while doing this, let alone steal a tech. If EVERYONE in the game was doing this, NO ONE would be teching anything. This seems so far fetched I can't even imagine it.

Plus there was another major false premise I accepted in this argument... The idea that my opponent will keep foolishly trying to switch back into the civics or religion I switched him out of. I know if I faced this tactic, I would just stay in the civic he switched me to, and deal with it. Now he is denied that tactic and his whole strategy falls. I'm sure there is more to it, but I will research the RB threads and do the research so that when the time for debate on the settings comes, I will be talking good sense with good reasoning and information, not just spouting out my beliefs based on my jealous love of the Espionage system.
The main problem comes when you have some very large and powerful nations, and some relatively small and weak ones. The tiny civs have no real chance to win anyway, so lose little to nothing by switching to crappy civics themselves. They then have an incredibly disproportionate influence over the game by choosing which large nation's economy to throw into complete disarray using a vastly underpriced mission. (Consider that it costs only barely more EP's than it does to revolt 1 city for 1 turn to destroy an entire nation's economy for up to 5 turns - if not permanently. The problem is that the mission cost is far too cheap to begin with, and furthermore does not scale properly with empire size.)
 
Metra, I defended you at first because I felt people were perhaps unneccessarily harsh towards you. You state you wanted to take it to the game table- fine, let's do it.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't intentionally doing so, but please stop trolling RB. From one guy to another, i'm asking you as sweetly as I can. Sure, you may get some enjoyment out of 'stirring the pot'. Just imagine how much enjoyment you'll get after the game if you beat us!

If you think we're elitist or arrogant or whatever, that's fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I hate Sunderland FC, but it wouldn't be appropriate for me to go to their stadium and tell them that (well, i'd certainly expect a reaction!). Bringing up incorrect history of a former game belittling that sites success despite multiple handicaps (something the folks involved, myself not included, are rightly proud of) is not pleasant.

You dislike us fine, just let it go and hate us in-game :goodjob:

Summer- RB aren't precious. Your posts have been perfectly reasonable and well thought out. If you've changed your mind or want to discuss a point, please feel free to do so there. There aren't that many posts because we're mad- that's just RB.

In RB Pitboss 2, the thread of just one team had 2419 posts and 387742 views. The lurker thread (non-players discussion) had 3151 posts and 243672 views. This thread by Metra will have a lot of posts because team RB had, at last count, 42 players. That's a lot of folk posting their thoughts :)

EDIT: I'd also like to state thank you to you personally Metra for helping organise the game, as well as inviting us. I'm really excited by the prospect this game holds and can't wait to begin!



LOL, where you saw hate in me towards someone as a general? Maybe you are mistaking me for someone who came to this discussion to only call those who try to organize the game "village idiots".

Yes, you were amongst the reasonable guys, thanks for that. Not that I cant manage a crowd myself.

The sad thing in this discussion over there is that the most vocal guys are usually those who have 1 PBEM experience and only heat in the forum, but will never stick with your team more than a month(I am not trying to make prediction and I hope time proves me wrong). This ex - Amazon guy Brien for example I never saw posting or even visiting our team section. I came at the team in the BCs when we were fighting our first war with axes and stayed till the SS landed.

I dont see where I trolled anyone in the last 2 days. I was explaining how turntrackers work to someone who admited at the end he have no a single pitboss played, but he put me quick in the group of those people who Krill and Brian dislike for reason. What is the reason will stay secret for me.

The double-move part is what Tony had told me. I wasnt there and I asked. I got polite answer and I never ever mentioned or questioned it again. What, I did a blasphemy again questioning the moral of the RB guys? OK, here we are not in the RB and no one will get offended, so tell me - did RB betrayed a NAP and broke their word in attacking one of the teams? Simply yes or no (again with your hand at the heart).

While speaking of post counts, what you try to prove? Our Amazon section had 7000 posts, dont know about views. What to say if we add the other's teams threads? 25 000 + posts. All this to deserve someone coming and his first post giving us the title "village idiots". :( Well done, RB folks, you should be proud of your fellow members, Kyan.

I got my opinion on almost all the guys who took part in my polite invitation to you at RB. As usual - some great guys and some brats, the usual mixture. As the more valuable guys are already in your closed discussion thread and I dont really have any more interest in discussion, I will just stop reading and writing at this infamous thread. (Some RB guys congratulated me for it btw on PMs, wont name them of course to avoid being lynched by the foamy-mouthed RB-values blind defenders ) :)

Go in peace. And thanks for all the fish.
 
What I will say here (I did not dare say over at RB as it is not my "home" so I try to just be respectful and mostly keep silent) is that all these arguments about the settings and the Mods are really besides the point. Everyone is playing by the same settings, no matter what they are, so everyone is playing on an equal playing field.

Plus in a game with diplomacy, the game will be won and lost on the diplomatic front, no matter how good your micro or tactics are. A very good question was posed at RB, which to paraphrase was "Would you have fun playing a game (with influence civic/religion espy mission allowed) where we were throwing each other into anarchy every 5 turns?"

I had to think about that, because TBH, I never thought about it that way... In other words, who cares what tactics the game allows or does not allow, what counters to the tactic are available or not available, if some tactic is so powerful that it is the ONLY way to win if used properly, then the game suffers and becomes not fun, but just a chore of using this same overpowered tactic over and over.

I found this argument to be compelling, but as I thought more about it, it was only good, because I accepted the premise... ie, that if the mission is allowed, it will be so powerful that all teams will have no choice but to run espionage heavy enough to keep influencing everyone's civics and religion. But when I really think about it, this does not seem correct:confused:

Pinning M&M down into despotism in BTS MTDG II was EXPENSIVE. We basically had to devote our entire economy to it. We could not tech at all while doing this, let alone steal a tech. If EVERYONE in the game was doing this, NO ONE would be teching anything. This seems so far fetched I can't even imagine it.

Plus there was another major false premise I accepted in this argument... The idea that my opponent will keep foolishly trying to switch back into the civics or religion I switched him out of. I know if I faced this tactic, I would just stay in the civic he switched me to, and deal with it. Now he is denied that tactic and his whole strategy falls. I'm sure there is more to it, but I will research the RB threads and do the research so that when the time for debate on the settings comes, I will be talking good sense with good reasoning and information, not just spouting out my beliefs based on my jealous love of the Espionage system.

You are theorizing, but RB is strongly against it because we've run full publicly reported games (go check out the play by Ruff_Hi in PBEM1 in the RB archives) where the espionage economy was run full-tilt, and it was so un-fun for those who were victim to it that we've banned it ever since. Ruff was quite good at leveraging the espionage system, so he abused it so badly that we no longer play with it. In fairness, it's not the WHOLE system that needs to go, but the civic/religion forced swapping missions are just extremely un-fun and fairly broken. If you're continually getting bounced into another civic, just "dealing with it" is not really viable when you get to a point in the game where others are running powerful late-game civics and you're stuck in stone age civics because your espionage-economy neighbor stuck you in it. My point is simply that you're talking theoretically, but over at RB we've watched it play out in practice, and it went badly. I mean, it was effective, but it made for a frustrating game for those on the receiving end of it.

The main point is that setting don't matter as much as players. With dedicated no-quitter players we will have a fun game. Without, the game is doomed no matter the settings. That being said, I also am hopeful we get to use the Spanish Mod, for novelty's sake if nothing else;)

You are not completely wrong, but some settings matter a great deal. For instance, tech trading is an EXTREMELY different game from NTT. The two settings result in games that barely resemble each other. Also, I didn't follow the last MTDG here, but I can't help but notice DaveMcW's comment in the post-game thread:

I think this game proves that experience is better than democracy when it comes to choosing game settings.

This is extremely accurate.
 
I dont see where I trolled anyone in the last 2 days.

I'm going to regret getting into this, but you yourself did say:

2metraninja said:
You are right sensing I do a bit of trolling but more in the sense of taunting and getting you all guys in the game more enthusiastic.

Anyway, Kyan's basic point is let's just drop it and move on, which I think we can all agree with :).

Darrell
 
On an unrelated note, why is this called multi-team demo game? I thought all demo games had more then one team? Getting a whole team to play against the AI seems rather boring. Mutli-site demo game would make much more sense.

The first Demo game I joined at 'Poly was just that, us against the AI. It allowed for different levels of government and monthly elections and all sorts of factions vying for control: capitalists v eco warriors for example.

In short, it wasn't boring at all.
 
Seems to me like modding out those two spy missions is the best bet, rather than killing espionage altogether. What is it, like 2 lines in XML that need to go?
 
You are theorizing, but RB is strongly against it because we've run full publicly reported games (go check out the play by Ruff_Hi in PBEM1 in the RB archives) where the espionage economy was run full-tilt, and it was so un-fun for those who were victim to it that we've banned it ever since. Ruff was quite good at leveraging the espionage system, so he abused it so badly that we no longer play with it. In fairness, it's not the WHOLE system that needs to go, but the civic/religion forced swapping missions are just extremely un-fun and fairly broken. If you're continually getting bounced into another civic, just "dealing with it" is not really viable when you get to a point in the game where others are running powerful late-game civics and you're stuck in stone age civics because your espionage-economy neighbor stuck you in it. My point is simply that you're talking theoretically, but over at RB we've watched it play out in practice, and it went badly. I mean, it was effective, but it made for a frustrating game for those on the receiving end of it.

That reminds me of this one game I played. I focused all my attention on building libraries, marketplaces, harbors, etc, while my neighbor spent all his time building up an army. He was quite good at leveraging the military system and abused it. Let me tell you, it was quite un-fun for those of us who fell victim to it. I mean, it was effective, but it made for a frustrating game for those on the receiving end of it.

I'm not just theorizing, I've actually seen this play out in practice. We should ban military units so the game is more balanced.
 
That reminds me of this one game I played. I focused all my attention on building libraries, marketplaces, harbors, etc, while my neighbor spent all his time building up an army. He was quite good at leveraging the military system and abused it. Let me tell you, it was quite un-fun for those of us who fell victim to it. I mean, it was effective, but it made for a frustrating game for those on the receiving end of it.

I'm not just theorizing, I've actually seen this play out in practice. We should ban military units so the game is more balanced.
Your point might have some validity if military units cost 5 hammers apiece while all other items remained the same. Even more so if military units cost more for larger nations, and less for smaller ones.

It's the completely disproportionate cost of the civic (and religion) mission more than anything else that is broken. Fixing it is not a simple matter of multiplying it by X amount either, because it needs to scale with empire and economy size. If that can't be done, it's simpler to just take it out. It cannot exist in its present state in a game with players that know how to abuse it.
 
The cost of that mission is significantly less then other missions? That I didn't know. Well then we should go with DNK's idea and just remove that one mission. That'd fix it.
It's not less, but it's barely more. When you consider that it costs about the same to send 1 city into revolt for 1 turn as to collapse the economy of an entire nation for up to 5 turns - or even permanently, unless they accept 1-3 turns of anarchy (equivalent to revolts in EVERY city) to try to switch back - you know something's wrong. :)

Not to mention the spy missions don't even follow the "must wait 5 turns between switches" rule that everyone usually has to follow.

"Sire, an unknown official has ordered us to switch our government right away!"
"But we only just switched governments! Our laws prohibit switching again for another five years."
"Don't worry about that... he seemed like a shady character, so clearly his will must override our laws."
 
Well, make it a LOT more, like 1000x more. Quick edit in gameinfo\CIV4EspionageMissionInfo.xml
Nixes the feature effectively. Quick and easy. Two lines in XML.

If you guys believe it to be that broken, well I'll go along for sure.
 
Maybe we should decide what kind of game we want to play. A game mostly for fun and friendly competition or is it a contest which site's players are the best? If it's a former many thing doesn't really matter.. sure there are strong tactics with corporations, spies etc. but there are many things, among those we can't really set in therules which will influence the outcome.
we can't balance everything out..
the map: do we really want to play on boring mirrored map just to see who can micro better?
the civs: are we playing with the same civ/leader??

and even if we do, even if we set always war. if there are more than two teams we can't balance out how would they interact. an early war between two teams will make them weaker compared to the rest of the world- but it's normal.

that said, I have no problem banning/editing out those spy missions, making corporations more expensve etc. But no need to turn the game to chess.
 
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