Planning cIV BTS MTDG III

What's to stop you from switching me AND my ally to your religion for instance.
Now that's a good question. But go back to my last response and re-read. Your defense against religion swaps is to diversify your religions. If you have religious diversity, religion swaps have very little effect.
 
Let's assume you are right and its not broken, or at least not as broken as we think. Is it really worth arguing about? Its something we've had a very bad experience with that we would like to avoid repeating. We are reluctantly okay with the rest of the espionage system being enabled despite the fact we consider it an un-balanced, un-fun mechanic that is never used in our games. That, to me, is us going 99% of the way to meeting you...please, give us this last 1% :).

Darrell
Now you're talking:) This is by far the most persuasive case I have heard for banning CSM by far, because its so frank and honest. "Look there's nothing wrong with it really, we just don't like it because it pwned us last time it was used, so give us a break and take it out."
Wait what? That's not what he said! What the heck..?

Now I disagree that you are going "99% of the way." CSM is still a powerful mission and banning it is a substantial nerf on Espy, certainly more than 1% of the value of espy. Also every site so far is fine with espionage fully enabled except RB so really we would all just be accomodating you guys.
Again...Turning it around making RB look bad and/or trying to make RB feel bad. What the heck..?

But that is besides the point. The question I guess is really, what are you offering for the accomodation? All Wonders enabled? Accepting the Spanish Mod? All Corporations? This a genuine offer of comprimise, please don't take offense and slap the outstretched hand away. Lets negotiate and reach some sort of comprimise.:lol::mischief:Accepted;)
Uh huh. After the guilt-trip, you're trying to get your way...Right.
 
At Apolyton there are some accomplished map makers..

Furthermore I'd like to add that at Apolyton we like the depth of the Corporation aspect of the game.
It adds spice to the game.

And last but not least we will be adding our story making / diplo abilities as much as possible into the game.. :)
So a story thread is appreciated.

You, me and DNK are our best map makers, but I think we all intend to play. Probably would be frowned upon if we made the map and then played in the game. ;)

But if no one cared, I'd love to whip something up. :b:
 
OK finally I think I would like to respond to LP, because he has always made the most clear and articulate case that CSM is OP.

First, put aside religion swaps, because as I have already said, these only hurt you if you foolishly only spread one religion in your cities instead of spreading as many as possible. It is not possible that the enemy could switch you religion unless you already have the religion in one of your cities, and if you have the religion in one then you can spread it to all, essentially negating (or at least substantialy nerfing) the religion swap. So lets focus only on civic switches.

Now it is unlikely that a Powerful Nation would CSM another Powerful nation. Why? Because first, as a powerful nation, you are running good civics. You must switch to a crappy civic in order to switch your opponent to something crappy. That means lost hammers/gold etc to anarchy. And as long as you want to keep them in the Crappy civic, you must stay in it too. So you are harmed just as much as they are, because you have to stay in Despotism too. But it is worse for you, because in addition, you had to lose a turn to Anarchy to get in the crap civic in the first place while they did not. CSM switches their civic with NO ANARCHY. As long as they do not foolishly try to switch back to the old Civic, until you switch first, you end up losing more than they do. So one Superpower is not going to CSM another Superpower for a net loss. It just does not make sense. Plus a big powerful Civ will have the GNP to match you in espionage, and run Counterespionage on you, so it will be almost impossible to keep them pinned in crap civics while still teching, etc, its just unsustainably expensive.

CSM is generally going to be used by a Strong Civ against a small, weak one. Now in this scenario, HOW the bigger civ beats the small is irrelevant. Big beats small, period. They beat him because they have more... More money, more culture, more population, more tech, more espy. Whatever they have more of, they use it to destroy the weaker civ. It doesent matter if they destroy him with CSM or with Tanks, he was small and weak and he was going down and no one could stop it. So CSM by strong against weak is a non-issue. That brings me to the most interesting part... LP's argument:

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
Now 2metra had the correct response to this:
Well, who will protect this small and weak nation from the wrath of the powerful nation who is very angry at them? Not to mention that small and weak nation will have small and weak economy and will have hard times keeping espionage to out-espionage the big and powerful nation.
In other words, the solution for the Big Civ is simple, just invade and crush the small one if they have the audacity to CSM you. He also correctly points out that a small civ cant keep generating the hundreds of EP needed to run CSM, especially against a Big Civ who can run jacked up espy percentages on them and has the EP to sustain Counterespionage missions. LP has an interesting response, on how the little civ gets away with it:
Whichever larger nation they align themselves with. If the smaller nation is acting alone then sure, they won't last long - but usually that will not be the case.
Which means that in order for little civ to pull this off he must be the ally of another Superpower (this has been described by some here as "collusion":mischief:)

Which brings us to the point. If little-civ1 has to "collude" With Big-Civ1 in order to use CSM on Big-Civ2 effectively, then surely its no great stretch of the imagination that Big-Civ2 would also "collude" with his own ally, little-civ2 to instantly use the CSM to switch him right back into the civics he was already in.

What this means, is that CSM will not be the non-stop neverending tactic some people claim, but instead it will be used as intended, in key strategic situations, like to stop someone from getting a tech or finishing a Wonder or to spread religion or a Corporation, or something like that.
 
The RB guys have decided it will be easiest to have one voice in this thread, so for now I've been tasked with giving our official position.

Thanks 2metraninja for taking the lead in moving this along. Lots of interesting thoughts on settings have already been discussed, but like a few other teams have posted, we feel the best way to proceed is to figure out who the game admin is and what teams are firmly committed to playing. Once we know that, the admin can take us through the settings discussion. Does that sound right 2metraninja?

As far as I can tell the teams which have expressed varying levels of interest are:

- Civfanatics
- Apolyton
- Realms Beyond
- Civ Players League
- We Play Civ
- French civ community
- Spanish civ community

It also seems that the Germans at Civforum.de are interested in playing, and are working on putting a team together. So that's potentially 8 teams. We just need to get a firm "yea" or "nay" from all the sites - particularly the less vocal ones. It would probably help if each site posted an early version of their team roster, just to show that there are a certain number of people committed to playing. (Obviously if there are only a couple of people interested at a particular site, then committing to play may not be the best idea.)

The only site I think that was mentioned but I don't recall hearing anything about is the Polish civ community. Did I miss a post, or can we assume they're not interested?
 
@LP: from Spanish comm, we are quite a lot of guy over there. That post in our spanglish we are Astro,Mith,Wolf ,Manolo and myself. but waiting in our forum theres must be 5 o 6 more ready for action
 
If change civics is allowed, you have practically no choice but to pick a spiritual leader, and whoever gets Cristo Redentor is guaranteed a significantly better economy than any rival. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but playing a game that lasts years where there are two clear optimal strategies to feasibly counter the civic changing missions doesn't sound like a very interesting game. It'd be even worse than playing on a tiny islands archipelago without banning the great lighthouse. It's not a challenge of who is best at civ, but who can abuse specific overpowered game mechanics best.
 
You, me and DNK are our best map makers, but I think we all intend to play. Probably would be frowned upon if we made the map and then played in the game. ;)

But if no one cared, I'd love to whip something up. :b:
I get the feeling, however, that people are going to want a less real-world style map, and something a bit "plainer" that's super balanced. I know I suck at making super-totally-balanced maps (and I don't enjoy the process), so I'm not up for it, nor for the abuse that will get hurled my way the second someone feels something isn't 99% balanced.
 
Quite often, mostly early in the war when both parties are ok with another play-window. ie. both euro and usa players prefer to play in the evening, so then the euro goes first and the american afterwards.

Since we have teams that should be able to field multiple players, and since it sounds like this mod can be set up to have at least a 24 hour window per war-turn player, I'm not so sure this will be an issue for a DG.

and c) the extra information is removed we'd be willing to tolerate the rest :).

I'm guessing that c) refers to the Aptmod and not the espionage system?

After hearing all the things APT Mod can publicly report, I'm also wary of info leakage. But as long as it would be tuned to not reveal things you couldn't get from the game, I'm happy to play with the APT Mod. (Disclaimer: I don't speak for my team here, just me.)

Then we need to get a map made and a maker chosen. I get the feeling I'm not going to be accepted for that, so who is, and what type of maps do we want?

Well, do you want to play? I'm not familiar with your map making but would have no objection personally. (No slight intended, I'm not plugged into map making in general. :) I'm only familiar with OzzyKP as he's lent his skills to a few games I have/am playing in.) But it seems to me one of the big stumbling blocks in finding a map maker is that they're going to have to be willing to sit this game out, which I'm not sure many will be given all the sites involved. :)

And no, in this instance I don't think it would be kosher to have someone both mapmake and play. We're arguing over individual settings, after all; no matter how honorable the person in question, I think someone's probably going to mind if one team has a member with intimate knowledge of the map. ;)

I also suspect that some at RB will support using unrestricted leaders with a "snake pick" - this is where the team order is randomized, then the order of choice goes:

Team A - 1st pick leader OR civ
Team B - 2nd pick leader OR civ
Team C - 3rd pick leader OR civ
[...]
Team C - 3rd to last pick leader OR civ
Team B - 2nd to last pick leader OR civ
Team A - last pick leader OR civ

This would be reliant on having both unrestricted leaders and no duplicate civs, right?
 
We haven't really talked about the speed. Hope it's epic.

About civ choice: if we want a super balanced game (like some groups want it) we should allow every team to choose his favorite, we can't make it random. That means if everyone wants to play fin/ind then let everyone play one (so edit in as many fin/ind leader as needed.)

The best solution still that each team decides on his leader/civ secretly and sending this info to an unbiased person who will set up the game with all those civs/leaders. I think civ is not that important, but the leader's traits should be able to be chosen so if there is not enough from that type of leader then more should be modded in.
 
Been so busy these few last days shooting people. Finally back at home, will read all that was said and PMed to me and will proceed.

In brief, yes, I will take the care of organizing things about the game. Will reach to the CFC admins shortly, will start official team sign-up and roster thread, will reach to the team captains (yes, we will need you to elect such), will start official CFC recruiting thread, and will make settings and rules discussion threads.
 
@mzprox and all

I assumed the speed was normal. If we can get the turns down to 24 hours or less, epic might work, but if it's 36-48 hours epic is likely just too long for an ancient start.

And I assume we're on an ancient start w/o advanced start.
 
OK finally I think I would like to respond to LP, because he has always made the most clear and articulate case that CSM is OP.

First, put aside religion swaps, because as I have already said, these only hurt you if you foolishly only spread one religion in your cities instead of spreading as many as possible.
Unless you're going for culture, it's usually optimal to only spread one religion thoroughly. Thus the underlying assumption you make here is not really valid in most cases. Plus, you have to consider what is simpler: spending hundreds (if not thousands) of hammers on missionaries and religious buildings to protect against a single vastly underpriced spy mission... or just removing the ability to abuse that mission. It seems like an easy decision to me. :)

Now it is unlikely that a Powerful Nation would CSM another Powerful nation. Why? Because first, as a powerful nation, you are running good civics. You must switch to a crappy civic in order to switch your opponent to something crappy. That means lost hammers/gold etc to anarchy. And as long as you want to keep them in the Crappy civic, you must stay in it too.
Not necessarily true. Consider if you built the Pyramids and were kept out of Representation by folks abusing the civic mission to keep switching you to Hereditary Rule. That's not a bad civic per se, but if you're trapped in it frequently enough by the civic switch mission, then that effectively nullifies the benefit of all the hammers you spent building that wonder. Similar situations could arise with people being switched into or out of Slavery and Caste System at inopportune times - neither of which are bad civics per se, but losing either at the wrong time is often catastrophic.

@LP: from Spanish comm, we are quite a lot of guy over there. That post in our spanglish we are Astro,Mith,Wolf ,Manolo and myself. but waiting in our forum theres must be 5 o 6 more ready for action
That's good to hear. Looking forward to playing with you guys. :)

This would be reliant on having both unrestricted leaders and no duplicate civs, right?
Indeed - the "snake pick" works with unrestricted leaders, along with the condition of no duplicate civs (or leaders).

Speed is to be decided, but most probably normal :)
It might be worth considering whether it's really necessary to vote on extra settings such as this. For one thing, each additional item to discuss prolongs the setup process... and for another, it's been pretty well established that Normal game speed works in this kind of MTDG/ISDG setting.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of Epic and Marathon, both in single player and in LAN's with friends... and I enjoy Quick for duels. But this kind of long-haul multi-team environment is completely different. Going from Normal to Epic speed in this setting quite literally means adding an extra year to the expected game length. We're already looking at a likely ~18-24 months of playing at Normal speed, which I'm sure is more than enough to satisfy most people's appetite for a decently long game. Let's not overcommit ourselves by choosing a game speed where we'd have to play beyond Civ6 for a chance of finishing. :)
 
No, no - consideration could have been Quick, to speed up the game, but I am not sure myself too do I want such big game with Quick speed.

Normal is named Normal for reason I guess :)
 
It might be worth considering whether it's really necessary to vote on extra settings such as this. For one thing, each additional item to discuss prolongs the setup process... and for another, it's been pretty well established that Normal game speed works in this kind of MTDG/ISDG setting.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of Epic and Marathon, both in single player and in LAN's with friends... and I enjoy Quick for duels. But this kind of long-haul multi-team environment is completely different. Going from Normal to Epic speed in this setting quite literally means adding an extra year to the expected game length. We're already looking at a likely ~18-24 months of playing at Normal speed, which I'm sure is more than enough to satisfy most people's appetite for a decently long game. Let's not overcommit ourselves by choosing a game speed where we'd have to play beyond Civ6 for a chance of finishing. :)

I'm fine with normal, though Epic is my preference (I imagine that goes for most folks at Apolyton too). I think you're over estimating the time. We finished an 18 player epic speed diplogame in 14 months.
 
@ LP- Agree that Normal Speed is best, dare I say Fast speed? I love Marathon and Epic but I just don't think it will hold interest in a team game. But in truth I agree that speed shouldnt even be on the table to make the process smoother. As for your points on CSM I'd simply say to the first point that 'Optimal' is relative. When you kiddie-pool-rule:p the game to death to make it like Chess, what is 'optimal' is different from what is 'optimal' with all tactics enabled. With respect, your first point sounds alot like "I don't wanna be bothered with defending from CSM because it delays my 'optimal' path/tech-rush to Infantry or whatever, so ban it", which is perfectly reasonable, but also highly subjective/personal, right? To the second point, I'd say "That's the whole point of CSM... to relatively cheaply cause catastrophic upheaval in strategic situations to unprepared opponents".

Any thoughts on Admins over at RB or Poly, Poly-Spanish or WPC? I would like to know in advance if there is an admin they just cant accept (by PM please to avoid any offense) before I start reaching out (begging:please:) for an admin to commit to watch over the game. I would be asking CFC Mods first obviously (unless 2metra already took care of it).
 
I'm fine with normal, though Epic is my preference (I imagine that goes for most folks at Apolyton too). I think you're over estimating the time. We finished an 18 player epic speed diplogame in 14 months.
I presume you mean pitboss games where most civs are controlled by one player? They tend to last for about 8-10 months on Normal speed, from my experience, so 14 months for Epic speed sounds about reasonable. Demogames with teams of players rather than individuals are vastly different though - not sure if you've played in them before, but you basically have to at minimum double the expected time frame for the game. It boils down to the team element... all those discussions between team members about what to do each turn take a lot of time.

When you're just playing your own civ as an individual (or with just one or two mates), you don't need to discuss things much (or at all) and things can move reasonably quickly. When you have entire teams that control single civs - some with as many as 50 players that will be chiming in - it takes time for discussions to reach conclusions and for turns to be played. That's where all those extra months come in. ;)
 
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