Are you interested in another game?

Are you interested in another game?


  • Total voters
    43
Personally, I just find the early game so much more interesting than the mid-late game, so I get bored (generally around the time of Liberalism going)

Also, I really like the 1 team controls 2 civs idea.
 
I like that idea, the Double Civ Setup.

However, from reading through some of the threads regarding the last MTDG, this would definitely generate an interesing start, but would it be enough to keep people interested and participating?

(Disclaimer: I was part of Team Kaz until late January 09, when I bailed out. Not my finest moment, but that is my history.)

Here's my rambling background for my question, and then it might make more sense.


Some Post Game Analysis
In the MTDG the prized role is that of the Turn Player because you get to implement the desires and wishes of your team. It can also involve a lot of work. It appears that one or maybe even two teams fell apart when the 'normal' Turn Player(s) left or were unavailable. That suggests several things. First, that the team structure was faulty, in that the team only had one head and could not survive without that head. Or that no one wanted to be Turn Player, which implies a lack of committment of the team to the game. It might be the case that no one was groomed/mentored on how to be a Turn Player.

There are also other roles in the MTDG, the most visible being Ambassdor/Spokesman for the team to other teams and the MTDG world at large. Sometimes this is handled by one person and other times by one person for each team. But it does give someone a chance to do something besides just post their opinions on things.

At least early in the game, no one is needed to handle city development and city production since this is generally discussed quite thoroughly. Late game could be a different story.

All of which leads me to this less than earth-shattering conculsion: if there are more people on the team than roles to fill, those that have nothing to do will go away, especially if the roles are being performed competently, unless they can make a role for themselves (Team Historian, for instance). And then, if something happens to the team leadership, no one is in place to step in and carry on. Which is what seems to have happened in this game.

I'm not trying to slam any team in any way. Some game related events caused bad feelings and people decided to drop out of the game due to that fact. I did the same thing.

So, while I do like your Double Civ Setup I wonder how it would play out after nine months of gaming.
Some interesting points. I'd say I tend to agree with Azzaman, that the early game is more interesting (for me at least), and so my interest tends to drop a bit later on. It's just natural really.

But with regards to your suggestion that more smaller teams might be better, I'm a bit reserved there. I think that a large number of the players that join (especially the newer members) are really just interested in casual lurking, rather than full involvement in all the micromanagement. The fact is simply that not everyone is interested in the big commitment that comes with being a turn player (or a diplomat) for a team. So I'm worried that if we spread ourselves too thin, so to speak, some of the teams might break apart from lack of activity. Heck, look at the last game - MS could really have done with another active member and turn player, but they were too short of interested people. And that was in a game with only 5 teams... with 8 or 10 teams, the risk of one or more of those teams becoming inactive would be far too great, IMHO.

I also don't think that having large teams deters people from taking part. Indeed, the opposite may even be the case. In a team where there's lots of activity and discussion, it's easy for a new person to join in and pipe up with their ideas. On the other hand, a team with few active members will have considerably less discussion, and new members will likely be put off by seeing a dead forum - there are very few people with the right personality to be able to come into a silent forum and take charge. For instance, in team Saturn in the early game quite a large number of newer members were participating because we had a lot of discussion going between the existing members. Whereas I'd venture a bet that a large part of the reason for MS's continued inactivity in the later game was because even though newer members were joining, they were seeing a practically dead forum and wondering "why bother?".

So I feel that increasing the number of teams in the game really won't help the problem. But it's an interesting discussion anyway, so thanks for bringing it up. :)

I would like to add to Lord Parkin's Double Civ Setup in that we have more teams (8 or 10). Each team would have fewer players but we might be able to keep more of them active in the game longer.
See my above reasons for preferring fewer teams.

I like the idea of two teams being known to each other at the start of the game, but is there a way to limit how long they must know each other? That is, Team A and B are paired up at the start of the game but soon realize they cannot stand each other. How long would they be forced to be paired?
Hmm... maybe you're not understanding how the team thing works in Civ4. Have you ever played a team game? (See my signature for an example if you haven't.) Basically it's like a permanent alliance between two civs for the whole game. You can't ever break it - you are unable to declare war on the other civ, have permanent open borders, shared line of sight, shared wonder benefits, etc. Moreover you have shared research, as with all of the other teamed civs in the game, so there is no reason why you'd want to cut ties with your teammate. Doing so would be suicide, since all the other teams would be working together, and would surpass you in tech, etc.

Plus, there's no reason to separate the teams. Since they can see everything their teammate is doing, and need to work together anyway, many teams would probably share their passwords in case their teammate isn't able to play. And it makes it so much more complicated if the teammates are in separated forums, because so much stuff will need to be cross-posted to maximize efficiency. So basically, if you split the teams that way, the then the civs that don't have good communication or organization with their teammates will be heavily sabotaged relative to those who cross-post everything between their forums. In other words, it makes a heck of a lot more sense just to have the two civs controlled by one team, in one forum.

Of course, citizens of the individual teams can role play and assign duties between their two different civs as much as they like - and I'd encourage that as much as possible! :) But at the core, because they are eternally linked and need to work together to survive, it doesn't make sense to split the forums of teammates and have the individual civs run separately.

I don't like the initial idea of one team controlling two civs. It seems like more work for the team and one of the civs will be ignored.
I strongly disagree. It isn't much more work to start off with 2 cities than with 1, and indeed it gives the teams more room for discussion at the start. And it's far riskier to split the teams, because sometimes one civ will be more active and reliable at playing the turns than the other, and thus both teammates will be sabotaged. Whereas if both civs are controlled from a single central point, the turn player at the time will always be able to play both turns in succession. It leaves much less room for error and disorganization to have two in-game teams controlled from a single forum team.

Having two civs being paired from the start of the game (but not known to the teams involved until after the game is started) gives everyone a 'buddy' to work with, at least for a while.
There'd be no way of enforcing that though... and besides, that's not how a team game works. Effectively what you're proposing is a game with 8 or 10 individual civs, a few of which are told "you can work together if you want". There's no incentive to follow through, and indeed the civs who betray their teammate might end up better off. In a game with actual TEAMS, there's every incentive to work together, and no incentive to work against each other - indeed it's impossible to war with one another, and if you start trying to hurt your teammate in other ways (e.g. by researching the wrong thing), you're only dooming both of you. ;)

So while I appreciate the input and thoughts, I still think my original idea of having each forum team controlling 2 civs would work better. Whether there are 4 or 5 forum teams (i.e. 8 or 10 civs) could still be up for discussion, but splitting the individual civs in a fundamentally teamed game just doesn't seem to make any sense. :)
 
A basic problem in multiplayer is that when a team quits it creates a major inbalance in the game. The more teams we have the greater the chances that some will become inactive and the game will be ruined. So IMO no more than 6 teams should take part.
 
Would you please give me some link where i can find some info on those demogames?
I don't know exactly how they works.

I can be interested, but i need more infos on this. Usually if i get involved i'm a serious participant.
 
Would you please give me some link where i can find some info on those demogames? I don't know exactly how they works.
The basic idea is that you and a bunch of people (team-mates) are like the government for a Civ. You are competing against a few other teams that are doing the same thing. It is essentially a regular game of Civ 4, except that instead of one player deciding the actions each turn (where to move warriors, workers, where to build cities, what to tech etc.), you have a whole team of folks who are deciding, discussing, voting on each turns actions. It's super fun!:goodjob: There is lots of discussing :gripe: (arguing:mad:) and lots of learning going on. It's hard to say exactly how your experience will go, because it depends a lot on who is on your team.

Here are The Rules that were used in the last game. I would recomend browsing the Turn Discussion Thread and the (very organized) Turn tracker thread for Team SANCTA.

A basic problem in multiplayer is that when a team quits it creates a major inbalance in the game. The more teams we have the greater the chances that some will become inactive and the game will be ruined.
:agree: I think we might even be OK with LESS teams for that reason (maybe 4) but probably we should have no more than 6.
 
I would like the double civ setup. I'm kind of bored with the regular old plain BTS, try something different. And it would also make some new strategies for people seeing what they do with their civs (like build up a civ and give it all away to another or something like that). It would also make the games go faster since double the tech rate and such.

@Lord Parkin: I'll be happy to do some RoM with you and whoever else would like to.
 
The basic idea is that you and a bunch of people (team-mates) are like the government for a Civ. You are competing against a few other teams that are doing the same thing. It is essentially a regular game of Civ 4, except that instead of one player deciding the actions each turn (where to move warriors, workers, where to build cities, what to tech etc.), you have a whole team of folks who are deciding, discussing, voting on each turns actions. It's super fun!:goodjob: There is lots of discussing :gripe: (arguing:mad:) and lots of learning going on. It's hard to say exactly how your experience will go, because it depends a lot on who is on your team.

Here are The Rules that were used in the last game. I would recomend browsing the Turn Discussion Thread and the (very organized) Turn tracker thread for Team SANCTA.
Yep, Sommerswerd's got it right. It does depend a bit on who's on your team as to how you'll organize things amongst yourselves, but regardless, you're guaranteed to have a lot of fun. I highly recommend trying it out. :)

:agree: I think we might even be OK with LESS teams for that reason (maybe 4) but probably we should have no more than 6.
My personal preference is also for 4 teams (i.e. 8 civs total, 2 in each team)... both for the reason of forum activity, and for the reason of game balance (5 teams inevitably leads to some sort of 3 vs 2, whereas 4 teams is more inclined to a 2 vs 2 deadlock, which has a chance of being very closely fought and very interesting).
 
I would like the double civ setup. I'm kind of bored with the regular old plain BTS, try something different. And it would also make some new strategies for people seeing what they do with their civs (like build up a civ and give it all away to another or something like that). It would also make the games go faster since double the tech rate and such.
Glad you're interested! Though actually tech costs are increased by 50% per team member (last time I checked anyway), so in effect research speed is only multiplied by 1.33 rather than 2. This is actually a good thing, since games where the tech rate goes too fast can be problematic (for instance, you never have time to build all the buildings you want, and your units are obsolete by the time they get to the front). We can adjust the research rate further through the difficulty level to optimize the tech rate (I'd probably suggest running with Monarch or Emperor so as we're not going too fast).

@Lord Parkin: I'll be happy to do some RoM with you and whoever else would like to.
Sure, sounds good. I'll first take a bit of time to get vaguely familiar with it in single player, but then we could look at arranging something. :)
 
I would say 4 or 6 teams, but not 5.

Sure, sounds good. I'll first take a bit of time to get vaguely familiar with it in single player, but then we could look at arranging something.

Well, I'm not that familiar, but its pretty fun. You'll probably win.

Glad you're interested! Though actually tech costs are increased by 50% per team member (last time I checked anyway), so in effect research speed is only multiplied by 1.33 rather than 2. This is actually a good thing, since games where the tech rate goes too fast can be problematic (for instance, you never have time to build all the buildings you want, and your units are obsolete by the time they get to the front). We can adjust the research rate further through the difficulty level to optimize the tech rate (I'd probably suggest running with Monarch or Emperor so as we're not going too fast).

Okay that sounds fair. I just thought that with a faster game there might be a lesser chance of breaking up.
 
Hmm... maybe you're not understanding how the team thing works in Civ4. Have you ever played a team game? (See my signature for an example if you haven't.)
You're right, I haven't played a team game and my suggestions reflected that. I'm aware of team play, but little more than that.

On more, smaller teams, I'm not convinced that they would be a better idea. But that thought just kept nagging at me, and I did not recall reading anything on the subject, so I posted. The feedback has been great on that.

I'd say I tend to agree with Azzaman, that the early game is more interesting (for me at least), and so my interest tends to drop a bit later on. It's just natural really.
Why do you find the early game more interesting? And how do you define the early game? Number of turns or number of cities or a specific tech?

I understand that people drop out. And that some are content to just to lurk. If it is possible to identify why some of them leave and those reasons are known, then the teams can do things to keep people involved.
 
Why do you find the early game more interesting? And how do you define the early game? Number of turns or number of cities or a specific tech?

I understand that people drop out. And that some are content to just to lurk. If it is possible to identify why some of them leave and those reasons are known, then the teams can do things to keep people involved.
Probably a large part of why the early game is more interesting to me is because all teams are *actually* on a fairly even footing at that point of the game. There are no tech alliances, no invasions where one civ might gain a disproportionate amount of land... everyone's on equal ground at the start, and it comes down to how well you can plan out your start as to how fast you can advance. ;)

Of course, that's not to say I don't like the later game too. I greatly enjoy diplomacy with other teams, even though I'm aware it can lead to pretty unbalancing results at times. Plus it's fun if you manage to remain competitive with the other teams in the game. I guess the situation which I find least interesting in the later game is when it's completely hopeless and you have no chance of remaining competitive - as with Saturn in the last game. Although that wasn't the reason I became less active - I still like to play games through to the end, it's just that in that case I went away to Europe for 4 months and had to drop out of pretty much all my games while I was away (I simply had no time for them).
 
Please tell me if i got it:

- It' like a succession game, since you're playing with a team.
As some of you probably knows, it's long time i play SGotM in Fifth Element.

- The main difference btween this game and the SGotM is that you play against human players, i.e. other teams. Probably against the AI, too.

- It's a pitboss game, so you play 1 turn and upload the save on the server, next player (of another team, of course) will pik that save, play, upload and so on.

- supposed there are 4 competing teams, the interval between each turn is 4 days. Thus it's a long game in RL time.

More questions: the save is with BUFFY? i suggest to do so, since every cheat can be detected.
Of course the "Lock assets" is on, right?

I think i can be in the fold if you want me.
Just let me know what to do.
 
Please tell me if i got it:

- It' like a succession game, since you're playing with a team.
As some of you probably knows, it's long time i play SGotM in Fifth Element.

- The main difference btween this game and the SGotM is that you play against human players, i.e. other teams. Probably against the AI, too.

- It's a pitboss game, so you play 1 turn and upload the save on the server, next player (of another team, of course) will pik that save, play, upload and so on.

- supposed there are 4 competing teams, the interval between each turn is 4 days. Thus it's a long game in RL time.

More questions: the save is with BUFFY? i suggest to do so, since every cheat can be detected.
Of course the "Lock assets" is on, right?

I think i can be in the fold if you want me.
Just let me know what to do.

You play against humans only, no ai's are in the game.

pitboss means the game is always online, no saves to take pass on etc, you can log in the game anytime from withing the game by going to multiplayer/direct ip.

there are 2 forms, simultanious turns and turn based, if turn based then the interval between turns is long (up to 5-6 days), if simultanious then it will be much shorter.

Finnaly, there is no way to cheat in multiplayer, lock assets is for single player only and is irrelevant against humans...and Buffy does not work in multiplayer.
 
You play against humans only, no ai's are in the game.

pitboss means the game is always online, no saves to take pass on etc, you can log in the game anytime from withing the game by going to multiplayer/direct ip.

there are 2 forms, simultanious turns and turn based, if turn based then the interval between turns is long (up to 5-6 days), if simultanious then it will be much shorter.

Finnaly, there is no way to cheat in multiplayer, lock assets is for single player only and is irrelevant against humans...and Buffy does not work in multiplayer.
Ok i got it almost right.
So it's like a normal online game. but played in team.
Question: i've tried a few online games, and i noticed there are tricks like waiting until the very end of the time given for your turn, play and the other player(s) can't see the actual outcomes (i'm thinking to battles) until is too late for him.

If there's no way to cheat why i've just read 4 pages of accusations to Memphus to have cheated?

Well, anyway, live and see. Curious to see how this works.
 
Finnaly, there is no way to cheat

That's wrong. If the random seed isn't new with new lading the save. You can save and load the save as hotseat and try.
In simul önly the first player (there is intern a sequence), in sequence every player. There is no weapon (only new random seed) against this.
 
That's wrong. If the random seed isn't new with new lading the save. You can save and load the save as hotseat and try.
In simul önly the first player (there is intern a sequence), in sequence every player. There is no weapon (only new random seed) against this.

So what is stopping us from clicking new random seed on reload?
 
Nothing preventing new random seed, that's a setting we'll use as long as the players agree to it. :)

Buffy can be used in multiplayer mode. There is a .ini setting that enables it.
 
You might want to make a rule so that if a team quits, that civ is essentially neutral territory. Everyone gets open borders with them, the civs science, espionage and culture slider is set to 0, cities are set to wealth, all current trades are dropped, all workers disbanded, all military is moved back to garrison cities.

That way, it's less of a vacuum in the game.
 
You might want to make a rule so that if a team quits, that civ is essentially neutral territory. Everyone gets open borders with them, the civs science, espionage and culture slider is set to 0, cities are set to wealth, all current trades are dropped, all workers disbanded, all military is moved back to garrison cities.

That way, it's less of a vacuum in the game.
That sounds interesting... Is that better than switching the quitting team to AI?:confused:
 
Question: i've tried a few online games, and i noticed there are tricks like waiting until the very end of the time given for your turn, play and the other player(s) can't see the actual outcomes (i'm thinking to battles) until is too late for him.
Turns in these demogames are played over a much longer period (typically several days per turn) compared to online games (where it can be a matter of minutes or seconds between turns). So the game simply doesn't play out in the same way.

In sequential turn games (like the one that just finished), you can ONLY move units when it is your turn. This means that it is impossible to play right at the end of the turn and then again before your opponent can see what has happened.

In simultaneous turn games, it is technically possible to move right at the end of the turn and then again at the very start of the turn. However, this is an exploit known as "double moving", and will almost certainly result in a reload and a reprimand for the offending team. So there is no danger of being caught out by (e.g.) Horse Archers moving 4 tiles in a few minutes rather than 2 as they should do. :)

You might want to make a rule so that if a team quits, that civ is essentially neutral territory. Everyone gets open borders with them, the civs science, espionage and culture slider is set to 0, cities are set to wealth, all current trades are dropped, all workers disbanded, all military is moved back to garrison cities.

That way, it's less of a vacuum in the game.
Problem is, that doesn't really fix anything either. Firstly, there has to be someone logging in to do all this stuff in the first place (an admin I guess - can they be bothered?). Secondly, it still leaves the game absurdly unbalanced. Do you know how easy it is to capture cities when no-one is counterattacking against your stack? Whoever has an army nearest to the "neutral" civ essentially gets a whole lot of free cities and land (not to mention free XP and possibly Great Generals).

There isn't really any easy solution to what to do if one team quits out of the game. Converting to AI is about the best you can do. Besides, it isn't really worth coming up with a plan for this event anyway. Typically, if one team quits the game, it'll be pretty close to game over anyway since it's likely to start a domino effect. IMHO we're better off trying to make the game as fun and balanced as possible, so that teams will be much less likely to quit in the first place. Having 4 or 6 teams rather than 5 would be a good start towards that sort of balance, IMHO.
 
Top Bottom