Death of a game?

Well I think it's about time that we either consider changing the style of this game, or ending it all together. In the last round of elections we failed to receive interested citizens for too many offices, and the votes for contested offices simply didn't happen. Nobody has stepped forward to take the position of chieftain and finish the elections.

In my personal games I've always had trouble continuing games when this point was reached, our nation is by far the most powerful in the game, it's no question that we will win, it's only a question of how, and that doesn't make for a very interesting game. It seems only reasonable that interest would wain at this point.

In order to finish this game I see a few possible options:

We can change the style of the game to a simple succession using all remaining citizens.

We can have all citizens play the save to completion and compare who wins the quickest, or with the highest score, or by whatever competitive measure seems apropriate.

If those options are unacceptable, and there is still a group of people wanting to finish this game then we'll need to restructure the government to reduce the number of offices. If there is support for finishing the game I would throw my name in for interim chieftain, however I don't want to do this if most players are not interested in completing the game, as I can only assume from the lack of activity over the past few days.

What do you guys think?

I'm thinking we let it die and don't even start a new one

Nothing changes from game to game it's the same old stuff all the time. We have a faction that must play the best Civ game which detracts from the role playing of the game and usually puts us in a boring end game. The chat lives on despite the fact that a forum based democracy game with no chats would be much more fun over all. And there are always fights over whether this poll or that was valid because we never can agree on how decisions are to be made, etc.

I save we give it up for awhile and try something new.

I've been buried in 8 days of hell at work. Did a new month start?

donsig said:

The chat lives on despite the fact that a forum based democracy game with no chats would be much more fun over all.

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Sorry to burst your bubble, but there need to be people there to have a chat. We haven't had an actual chat, with someone attending and active discussion, in months.

I'd like to play it out, perhaps as a succesion game. (After all, what more is a DG than a glorified succesion game? )

I think we should try a roleplaying kind of demogame, since glorified succession games are getting boring. We need more politics to spice up a demogame, even political parties organized along the line of civic preferences. If we run it the traditional style, we will get nothing but traditional outcomes.

IMHO, Donsig pointed the question:

There two groups of players with opposite goals:

One wants to play a Civ game the best they can; other wants to play a

role playing game and not the Civ game as it is.

As the goals are opposite each other, they cannot be put together in a

satisfying fashion.

May be to split the two groups?

Best regards,

I vote for a civ-game not rpg.

I agree that a rpg based demogame will be much better for our next go round, it should provide the necessary excitement to keep people going even when the in game events die down. My only experience with DGs has been this one, a non-rpg based game, I'd definitely like to see how well an rpg style game would work.

While that's all well and good for the next DG, I still want to know what we're going to do with this one. So far nobody has said they want to continue with this as a DG. Personally I agree with Dutchfire, I think we should try to finish this as a succession game.

I agree, play this out as a succession game.

My computer has been on the fritz so i missed the elections.

" Play a Civ game, to try play well and win" versus " RPG game".

They are different games, not better or worse versions of the same game.

Sadly, the doors of rpg games are closed to me, because I do not speak

enough English to get the the fine tunes I guess needed.

(Some turns ago, I posted a thread about role of some cities; I waited and

hoped a lot of discussion about: GP Farm/Commerce city, specialist/hybrid

and so, followed or not by polls about; but I was wrong).

From now, about the future of this game, if you want to play it as a sucession

game, I'll be in, that is if my computer still opens the saves.

Best regards,

fed1943 said:

IMHO, Donsig pointed the question:

There two groups of players with opposite goals:

One wants to play a Civ game the best they can; other wants to play a

role playing game and not the Civ game as it is.

As the goals are opposite each other, they cannot be put together in a

satisfying fashion.

May be to split the two groups?

Best regards,

Click to expand...

I don't think I agree. I think both sides can get a sort of equilibrium. The fact of the matter is you're not going to have a good (or at least long) RPG game if you don't play somewhat well.

Civ III DG1..... (aka "Back in my day") I felt we had a good balance of both. We preformed very well in the game. But we had a good RPG with rescue missions to save the diplomatic party sent to a civ that was nearly destroyed, and we made Forest preserves which were chosen despite game mechanics.

This type of thing though requires individuals with great creativity and a desire to create sort of ingame scenarios and see what happens. I unfortunately don't have the creativity to come up with such ideas, but I always enjoyed joining in on such threads.

Two big reason DG1 didn't get old (in my opinion) were that...
A.) We didn't really set out to kill everyone on the continent, thus reducing flavor (which we did this game)
B.) We played on Pangea with all civilizations, so there was alot of variety in the map, our borders, and adversaries and friends.

By turning into a Continent Nation the RPG aspect decreases as foreign interaction decreases.

At the same time, the RPG become too much of the focus, and the Demogame turns into an economic simulator with the actual civ game as a backdrop.

One thing that has always plagued the demogame has been legality and general politics, in short.... in fighting. This is a big reason why I went from regular participant -> lurker this DG. Long drawn out legal fights over trivial matters, and a long standing air of hostility between individuals, which helped drain the fun out of it for me, and others as well. The laws are there for a purpose as a guidline, and they are a neccisary part of the game, but they get turned from a base structure for the game into a weapon to use against your political opponents. I don't think there is anyway to prevent this other then try to foster a atmosphere of cooperation and respectful debates, rather then hostile arguments with name calling and legal attacks.

General Falcon, you can't play a community game without some mechanism for making decisions. We've never had a good mechanism that prevents someone (particularly mods) from bending or even breaking the rules with impunity. That's what causes the long standing animosity and legal fights.

I also think we could strike a balance between role playing and Civ but to do so we really have to NOT play a perfect Civ game. When we whip up on the AI too badly both the role-players and the civvers both lose interest. (@ DaveShack: you don't have chat's cause people lost interest. There hasn't been any forum activity either. You know as well as I do that if there was still interest in the game there would still be chats.)

Getting badly beaten by the AI isn't so bad. It could be fun for role playing (for a bit) and we could just end it quick and go on.

There is much that could be tried to make the DG fun. We could try a representative type game where elected officials have the final say (even over polls). This would greatly reduce legal arguments. We could play at a steady pace no matter what. We could have local governments and local elections. Most importantly we could do away with chats.

We could even try matching our DG government to the civics. If there's hereditary rule then we have a king. If there's representation then we elect officers, etc.

But if we're just gonna try the same old thing then I say, why bother?

donsig said:

General Falcon, you can't play a community game without some mechanism for making decisions. We've never had a good mechanism that prevents someone (particularly mods) from bending or even breaking the rules with impunity. That's what causes the long standing animosity and legal fights.

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Agreed.

donsig said:

There is much that could be tried to make the DG fun. We could try a representative type game where elected officials have the final say (even over polls). This would greatly reduce legal arguments. We could play at a steady pace no matter what. We could have local governments and local elections. Most importantly we could do away with chats.

We could even try matching our DG government to the civics. If there's hereditary rule then we have a king. If there's representation then we elect officers, etc.

But if we're just gonna try the same old thing then I say, why bother?

Click to expand...

I understand your point... but I must say I'm always wary to stray too far from the basis of the Demogame, for a large group of people to discuss and make decisions collectively. Changing things up can be good, if it becomes too much of a Oligarchy, I believe people will stop participating since they lose say in what goes on.

That's not to say any deviation from "the some old thing" is bad, it's good to change things up. I just feel we need to make sure any mechanism we use to change it up does not alienate people who don't hold office.

May i make a suggestion.

If we could put all the problems of this demogame (and previous ones as well) in bullet point form and tackle each one seperatly then we might make better progress in making the next demogame better all round.

eg
- not enough leadership, we got blogged down in deicisons that didn't matter as much as the time they were given to be sorted out.

Joe, we wouldn't all come up with the same list and I'm afraid that if we tried your suggestion we'd only run into the very same problems we'd be trying to address!

Part of the problem is that we have too few people who put the overall welfare of the game (both civ and meta) over their own preferences. For a game of this type to be really successful, most people must place the highest priority on the group. We have to be willing to let our pet peeve slide, so the game itself can continue.

If the choice is between a game which is 95% fun, or even 50% fun, vs no game at all, it seems pretty darn obvious that we're better off taking what we can get than having nothing.

Joe Harker said:

May i make a suggestion.

If we could put all the problems of this demogame (and previous ones as well) in bullet point form and tackle each one seperatly then we might make better progress in making the next demogame better all round.

eg
- not enough leadership, we got blogged down in deicisons that didn't matter as much as the time they were given to be sorted out.

Click to expand...

donsig said:

Joe, we wouldn't all come up with the same list and I'm afraid that if we tried your suggestion we'd only run into the very same problems we'd be trying to address!

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It should be expected that if donsig doesn't like the idea, then I probably will.

We don't have to agree on all the problems. We're better off having a list of everything that anyone thinks is a problem. I have to admit, I have no idea what others think are problems, and it's impossible to solve problems you don't even know exist. Even when someone's ideas about a problem are clear, it's not always obvious why that person thinks it's a problem. It's even more confusing when someone has made conflicting comments about an issue and appears to be on both sides.

I'll volunteer to start with some things I see as problems.

• Rules which are so detailed they are likely to be broken
• Punitive rules
• Rules which mandate specific time frames for action or inaction
• Rules which require specific people to do certain actions
• Rules which don't provide adequate backup in case of absences
• Treatment of innocent mistakes as major rule violations
• Inflexible instructions
• Denial of advice to the person playing the game
• Rudeness, that doesn't otherwise break forum rules
• Playing vanilla when most activity is on expansions
• Players who care more about their favorite issue than they do about the health of the overall game
• People who complain about issues but then won't support the fix
• More focus on whether a rule is technically broken or not, than focus on whether the end result was damaging or not

dutchfire said:

I'd like to play it out, perhaps as a succesion game. (After all, what more is a DG than a glorified succesion game? )

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Did you just steal one of my quotes from Civ3 DG1?




EDIT: The 24 hour-ad just erased my post after accidently hitting preview changes.. anyway...

Back in the days of Civ3 DG1, we had regular turnchats (every 3 days, 6-8pm EDT), and people would come. Then, we had 20-30 people per turnchat! I'm pretty sure the novelty has since worn off, but people enjoyed talking about the game, and even roleplaying/cheering the DP (designated player) on.


(Now I forgot what else I posted...)

DaveShack said:

Part of the problem is that we have too few people who put the overall welfare of the game (both civ and meta) over their own preferences. For a game of this type to be really successful, most people must place the highest priority on the group. We have to be willing to let our pet peeve slide, so the game itself can continue.

Click to expand...

That would work if we ALL did it but you must realize DaveShack that you are one of the people who who won't let things slide. Need I change my avatar back to a longbowman to remind you?

Chieftess said:

Back in the days of Civ3 DG1, we had regular turnchats (every 3 days, 6-8pm EDT), and people would come. Then, we had 20-30 people per turnchat! I'm pretty sure the novelty has since worn off, but people enjoyed talking about the game, and even roleplaying/cheering the DP (designated player) on.

Click to expand...

I don't remember regular 3 day turn chats in DG1. I think you're mistaken about this CT. The chats were made convenient for US players and some of us saw that as bad since that timing is inconvenient for Europeans and those in Asia/Australila. Yes, the chats were popular but IIRC they were also the cause of one or two controversies. We've lost many DG players because of the chats while even the chat goers eventually get bored and leave. If we are to play another game we seriously need to consider doig away with online game play sessions. People can still gather in the chat room and discuss the game but there should be no interference or pressure (or advice) to the designated player.

DaveShack said:

We don't have to agree on all the problems. We're better off having a list of everything that anyone thinks is a problem. I have to admit, I have no idea what others think are problems, and it's impossible to solve problems you don't even know exist.

Click to expand...

I know we don't have to agree on the problems. But we do have to agree on the solutions. I see no difference between agreeing on solutions and agreeing how to play a game of civ. By trying to solve the problems we will run into the same problems we have on the list and we will solve them the way we always do. If we start another game we'll have a period where some of us talk about how we should play it while others remain silent and still others say let's just start the game and work all this out later. We've done that, what, 6 or 7 times now?

Here's the thing that some people playing this game simply do not understand: we will not all agree on what we should do or what we want to do. It's just not gonna happen. I think some people are in denial about this. They think that if we had the right rules or the right structure then there would be no problems. We've tried everything form detailed rules to vague rules and we should know by now that we can't make a foolproof system. All we can do is make a fair system. Others think it's a few bad apples who ruin things. In making group decisions it is natural that personalities emerge. Some people are soft, others hard. Some quiet, some loud. Some detail oriented some, some big picture oriented. It is natural and good that this all comes out.

There is nothing wrong with debates and arguements. In reality these cannot be avoided in group decision making. The challenge is merely to make these both civil and constructive. We have the forum rules to ensure the former and we must rely on our constitution and laws to ensure the latter. In order to be constructive we must be inclusive and fair. Above all we must not let those who enforce the forum rules participate in the DG because moderator powers weilded in the DG through off the balance of power in the DG. Moderators should participate in the DG only if they are willing to forego their Civfanatics rule enforcement powers within the DG forums. Any problems they see they can report to mods outside the DG just like any of us non-mods could do. We do not need DG mods reading every post and squelching debate.

Here is my list of problems, juxtaposed to DaveShack's list:

• Rules which are so detailed they are likely to be broken / Rules so vague they are meaningless
• Punitive rules / Lack of rules to correct wrongdoing
• Rules which mandate specific time frames for action or inaction / Not enough time to allowed to make decisions, not even knowing how much time there is to decide, possibly missing out on contributing to a decison because a person is not on-line for two days
• Rules which require specific people to do certain actions / Rules which allow people to do anything they want regarless of the rest of the group
• Rules which don't provide adequate backup in case of absences / A boring Civ game or unfair democracy game that drives people away and causes absences
• Treatment of innocent mistakes as major rule violations / Treatment of major rule violations as innocent mistakes, lack of rules to correct wrongdoing whether it be the result of innocent mistakes or major rule violation
• Inflexible instructions / Trying to play too many turns at one time
• Denial of advice to the person playing the game / Use of the chat to disenfranchise those who will not or cannot attent it.
• Rudeness, that doesn't otherwise break forum rules / Wimpiness
• Playing vanilla when most activity is on expansions / Excluding those without newer versions from participating
• Players who care more about their favorite issue than they do about the health of the overall game / People who ignore other people's favorite issue and drive them from the game
• People who complain about issues but then won't support the fix / People who complain about complainers without addressing what the complainer is complaining about
• More focus on whether a rule is technically broken or not, than focus on whether the end result was damaging or not / More focus on playing a perfect Civ game than a good democracy game