Game Settings Discussion

[Sullla]

Hello, and greetings to Team 4! I've been asked to create the map for the Demogame, and before I get started I need to hear a consensus from each of the teams on some of the game settings. I would like you guys to discuss the following options, and come up with a team answer to the following six settings:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

Be aware that difficulty level affects three main issues with no AIs in the game: research costs, inflation/maintenance, and barbarian strength. It might sound cool to be playing on Deity, but... the game balance frankly is not as good at the highest setting, and the game just generally runs better at the more moderate settings. And while I don't want to prejudice the voting, I would strongly recommend turning off Vassal States, which add little to the gameplay while opening up a number of gamey exploits. Of course, this is YOUR team, and you can tell me to screw off if you like.

I'm asking each team to come to a decision on these six settings by Wednesday, November 19th of next week. You can decide in any fashion your team chooses - how to go about doing so is up to you! Once all five teams have voted, I'll tally them up and see which options won. Each team as a whole has one vote, and 3/5 majority wins. For non-binary options like difficulty setting, I'll pick whatever setting is closest to the group vote (e.g. if there are three "Medium" and two "High" votes, I will choose Emperor as the difficulty level). Assume that any setting not listed here will be turned off for the game. Thus you won't see "No City Razing" or "Always War/Peace" or anything like that.

Good luck and happy voting!

[Niklas]

Originally Posted by Sullla

And while I don't want to prejudice the voting, I would strongly recommend turning off Vassal States, which add little to the gameplay while opening up a number of gamey exploits. Of course, this is YOUR team, and you can tell me to screw off if you like.

Nah, you're my new hero for saying that.

Each team as a whole has one vote, and 3/5 majority wins. For non-binary options like difficulty setting, I'll pick whatever setting is closest to the group vote (e.g. if there are three "Medium" and two "High" votes, I will choose Emperor as the difficulty level).

Not to spoil the party or anything, but I can see a (allegedly minor) problem with this approach. My own choice would be to play with barbarians off and random events on assuming barbarians are off. So how does your system handle conditional votes?

... though I guess it's a really small issue since I'm pretty sure we'll end up with both random events and barbies no matter what I or even our whole team says.

[Diamondeye]

My sentiments on this:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

First two and fourth: I agree with Oyzar in the observation that our team looks to be of the better half. Eventualities like events and huts could ruin the advantage of this.

Vassal States is plain idiocy in MP only, and allows exploity things.

Tech Trading is nice, as long as it isn't off I'm glad, dunno which of the two others I prefer.

Low difficulty in order to weaken Organized and to speed up the general game.

[oyzar]

My sentiments on this:

- Huts: Off
- Events: On
- Vassal States: Off
- Barbarians: None
- Tech Trading: No Tech Trading
- Difficulty Level: Deity

Is what i feel like off the bat, will explain them later, doubt we'll go with no tech trading though. Really all the settings depends on the others so we should for example decide on huts and barbs and tech trading(this goes for all teams) before we chose difficulty level... By chosing all at once we can end up with some really weird settings that noone wants.

[Niklas]

My own thoughts:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

I think events can add an interesting dimension to the roleplaying part of the game. Quests in particular would add some spice. But I don't want to see the unbalancing barbaric uprisings, so this is conditional on having Barbarians off.

I should say I'm not primarily interested in winning this game as easily as possible - I'm interested in playing an interesting game. As such, I'm not likely to vote on things just because I think they will benefit our team. I think the more viable choices there are, the better the game will be. As such, I don't want to weaken Organized, even if we won't end up playing some. Emperor seems like a good level to play at. On noble, we'd see some infantry by 1000 AD - that's too fast for me.

[Empiremaker]

- Huts: Off
- Events: On
- Vassal States: Off
- Barbarians: None
- Tech Trading: Normal
- Difficulty Level: Medium (Monarch/Emperor)

If events and barbs are on, is it possible to mod the XML to turn off the barb invasion events?

[Sullla]

Originally Posted by oyzar

Is what i feel like off the bat, will explain them later, doubt we'll go with no tech trading though. Really all the settings depends on the others so we should for example decide on huts and barbs and tech trading(this goes for all teams) before we chose difficulty level... By chosing all at once we can end up with some really weird settings that noone wants.

That's an excellent point. What you can do is let me know that your team is choosing a setting on the condition that ___ other setting is also chosen. I can then come back to your team if the voting goes against you and get a second, revised vote. Does that sounds fair?

[oyzar]

Would be better to explain this to all the teams, not all people have insight into this imeadiatly and pick things like difficulty level based purely on feeling for example. If you explain this to everyone we can probably agree on what mostly independant factors to vote on first then decide on the rest after those come in... Still plenty of time until the game starts right? If barbs are on i want a way lower difficulty level than i would want without for example.

Before voting on barbs i ask you to at least read the thread about diplomacy.

[Diamondeye]

Originally Posted by Diamondeye

My sentiments on this:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

After hearing some of my teammates suggestions and reasoning, I have amended my opinions on this:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

[Earthling]

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

I agree with pretty much everyone that the barbarian uprising is broken and we don't want it to happen. However, I think normal barbarians make for a much more interesting game; expansion is checked, plus there's always the rush to conquer/colonize barb cities on various islands. If we had to choose between the two, I would prefer barbs over events. Many events simply do something minor like blow up an improvement; there is also a ton of wasted events that give diplomatic bonuses (which humans don't care about). I actually think there are some other dangerous events in there that might not be balanced; for instance the Marathon (free golden age). Finally, I prefer Normal tech trading to No Brokering because human teams should be smart or devious enough to craft their own deals. In single player this prevents stuff like stupid AI vassals getting/selling every tech; but we're not gonna have that problem and thus I see no reason to limit the diplomatic gameplay.

Edit: Well, it looks like you guys have come to pretty much a consensus for our team, so if you all prefer events and no barbs I could go with that too.

[Calis]

Reading all the explanations on the different points, this would be my result:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

To be honest, I am not aware of the differenc between tech trading and brokering . Could somebody give a brief explanation, please?

This might change my vote there...

[oyzar]

Originally Posted by Calis

Reading all the explanations on the different points, this would be my result:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

To be honest, I am not aware of the differenc between tech trading and brokering . Could somebody give a brief explanation, please?

This might change my vote there...

Why do you want barbs? Would you care to explain that? did you read the thread on diplomacy? The difference between tech brokering and trading is that with no tech brokering on you can only trade techs you have researched yourself.(if we could just talk this over on msn things would be so much easier ).

[Calis]

Of course I care to explan. The combination of events and barbs seems too dangerous for obvious reasons, as I read here. And there are several events that could be unbalancing to the game. And I like to have some excitement with barbs, besides gaining some exp for our military units. I htink we won't lack one of the critical resources (copper/iron) at the beginning so we won't be overrun by barb axemen.

And thanks for the explanation on tech brokering. This just is a back up for the choice I already made.

[Renata]

All right, my vote:

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

[PurpleTurtle]

Here is my two cents.

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

I tend to think barbarians add a bit more risk than the entertainment and xp is worth, one can always get very unlucky and run into a bunch at once. It may be hard to lose something valuable when one is covering themselves properly, but not having to cover properly would help us leverage imperialistic if we do indeed play as Victoria.

[Sync]

Here's my vote.

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

Huts I have no strong feelings on, so I'll go with the masses.

Events I feel make the game more interesting. Though some can be annoying, that does not make them game-breaking. I may however, rethink this standpoint if Barbs end up being turned on.

I'm choosing Vassal States On because I don't think it would be as ruthlessly exploited as some people seem to fear. In fact, even with the option on I wouldn't think it be too widely used at all. I for one, know that I would never consider vassalising myself to a foreign Empire, even if the alternative was complete destruction.

Barbs off to allow for unescorted Settlers in the early game.

No Tech Brokering, because even though Tech Trading is interesting, free Tech Trading has the potential to be abused if 2 teams end up signing an unofficial alliance. I think No Tech Brokering will provide the perfect balance - it always seems to for me in SP at least.

Difficulty level solely because that is the difficulty I am used to playing on. Any higher would be too much of a jump for me, any lower may favour the other teams is they are used to playing on lower difficulties. It seems Medium is the preferred level amongst most here anyway.

[Hoplosternum]

I am not too concerned except for a strong preference for no tech trading. Explainations after my list (sorry for the length!):

- Huts: On/Off
- Events: On/Off
- Vassal States: On/Off
- Barbarians: None, Normal, or Raging
- Tech Trading: Normal, No Tech Trading, No Tech Brokering
- Difficulty Level: Low (Noble/Prince), Medium (Monarch/Emperor), High (Immortal/Deity)

HUTS I think there is a lot of start up luck in CIv so I don't mind a little more with huts on. It also encourages scouting and scout production. These quickly expand your knowledge of the world leading to more team discussion and quicker meeting of other teams (everone will do the same to pop huts). It encourages early decision making about how many and when to produce scouts instead of the usual worker/settler combinations that some people already will have mapped out It also gives a boost to powers that start with scouts (hunting I think) which otherwise is not necessarily everyones first choice starting tech. But there is a big down side. It is very random.

EVENTS Events I like. I am even not too fussed about the bad barb rising with barbs on. A bad start position or getting boxed in early can doom you anyway without any mistakes on your part so having a rare - and it is rare, it only appears so often in mp because so many games feature so many nations in each game - event which really hurts or even kills someone off is not too bad.

VASSALS Vassal States are pointless here and I believe can be abused somewhat.

BARBS Barbs I like. Even though I love rexing I think they keep rexing a bit more honest. They also encourage everyone to build more early military and so should discourage early rushes or at least make everyone more prepared for them. But they can be extremely unbalancing. Much more so than huts. If you are by an area of second rate land such as tundra, jungle or desert you can get a lot of barb axemen coming your way for a long time. If the barbs have hills / forests then it is extremely tough to kill them before they start trashing your improvements (cities should be able to be made safe). So on balance I would say no to these.

TECH Tech Trading in mp is pretty awful for two reasons. One is that it makes the game go far too fast. Tech trading is NOT a zero sum game. All in the tech alliance benefit. So everyone does it. So the pace of teching is much faster. Usually about three times as fast (larger tech alliances than three can happen but there is a lot of duplication of paths etc.). This leads to relatively undeveloped core cities being able to build banks, Knights etc long before they have the population and production to build them in a reasonable time.

The second problem is it can lead to tech lock outs that give the team locked out no chance at all. It is all but impossible to keep up with a tech alliance as a single nation. So if you are forced out for whatever reason there is no way back. It may take your neighbours dozens or even more turns before they turn on you but essentially you are building up your nation for their benefit. Your team is out once it is locked out of the tech alliance.

The power of tech alliances is so great that they also lock diplomacy down. Once you are in one you can't risk falling out of it unless you know another will take you in. So there are no wars between tech allies. And you get locked in to an early near permenant alliance.

All round tech trading is just bad in mp. I loved the idea of it at first thinking it would boost diplomacy and be fun. It's not. If you want to play Civ 4 in teams thats great. Just play with that option from the beginning.

Tech brokering shares most of the problems of tech trading. But it can slightly reduce the speed of teching and sometimes leaves some backfill options enabling you to perhaps get back in to the tech trading if you fall behind. However it encourages tech alliances even more as you can't get just any tech off anyone if you have something to trade.

DIFFICULTY The difficulty level has little effect in mp. I think it mainly affects barbs, maintenace and tech speed. So although I am not a Immortal/Diety player in sp I think it is a decent one for mp.

[oyzar]

Given that sulla makes the map, any random difference from starting locations won't be too big. He can't modify huts though, making them rather unbalanced. however the point that civs that start with hunting are underpowered without huts is valid.

Barbs are way less unbalancing than huts, with proper fogbusting you can basically negate the barbs no matter the layout of the land... That said i really don't like the potential randomness they introduce(beats always kills my warriors and later on my cities get taken by warriors...

I totaly agree with you on tech trading, if not no tt i would at least think it would be very good idea if we had no tech brokering, 2 from the team for no TT and 2 for no TB now... Why do you other guys want free trade? Have you tried it much in mp before?

[Earthling]

Apologizing in advance for the longwindedness...
Well, about tech trading there's actually I lot of things I've thought about. Simply put, as Hoplosternum suggested the idea of teams settling down into permanent tech alliances does not sound fun. However, I think no brokering would be even more likely to cause this, because you are literally unable to betray your ally! Say one team decided for whatever reason to betray an ally, and secretly worked out a new alliance with another team. With no brokering, they would be unable to trade many techs to this new ally, which defeats the entire point.

The other huge concern is that there are 5 total teams in this game, a really unstable number. I guess I thought if it was a larger number, say 7+ like with just single people playing a MP game, then there would be ample opportunity for various alliances. 5 is particularly bad because it seems like it would lead to 2v2v1, or 3v2.

So, my thoughts were that no brokering is actually a very bad option due to encouraging tech alliances. I don't think no brokering would work at all the same as in single player (honestly, who ever finds it to limit the human player- it's always just to prevent the AI from being really stupid). I think that all the teams will be intelligent enough to handle normal tech trading; no tech trading being my next option. The other thing about no tech trading, though, is it doesn't prevent informal alliances. Just like two teams could share tech, they could also agree not to build up military against each other, and then both take an advantage versus the remaining teams by peaceful expansion. I forget where I read this point (it might have been in the main MTDG2 forum) but someone had a really good insight: If you're playing a game with real life friends, there is a huge likelihood of two people simply forming an alliance that no one else can do anything about. But here, every team is playing competitively and the equilibrium would tend more towards a FFA. Simply put, I highly doubt two teams are going ally from the start, and never betray each other; everyone will use diplomacy to the full and this includes tech trading.

Spoiler:

This is off-topic so you don't have to read it:
One thing I'm actually seriously interested in (I'm reading up and learning how to mod on here) is creating a diplomacy system that, essentially, gives LESS choice to the civilization leader (player). There's a lot to work out, but it kinda begins with this: In the old civ games, governments like democracy would actually prevent a player from being an all-out warmonger. I always thought Civ IV was missing out on a huge potential, as it otherwise has completely revamped civics, happiness, diplomatic modifiers, etc... So, my eventual goal is a design where no actions are de facto eliminated from player choice; there are just incentives against them.

The simplest example of this is I would like to hold human players to a similar relations standard as the AI. All over these forums you see people saying things like "why doesn't the AI try harder to win the game" "if you're winning culture or something, why doesn't the AI just attack you." I always thought this is taking the idea in the wrong direction (already I know many people would disagree with limiting the player's choices). Instead, I've asked: "Just because you're a human, why should you be able to attack a culture heavy AI otherwise at friendly?" So, what I hope to mod is this concept, based around the response of the people in your empire. Anyone CAN attack a civ at pleased or friendly, but if you do so, you get say, -2 to -5 happiness in all your cities. Other diplomatic relations would work up the same way. Trade with a civ (AI or human) and the people in your empire get to like it. Then, if you as the leader randomly try to betray someone, the people in your empire would respond with something like " Our Leader is a bloodthirsty maniac" Looking at the game, I've often thought it's broken how an AI you share religion with will treat you as best buddy and never attack; when you attack then, you get "-1 We will not fight our brothers and sisters" In BtS they just touched on the surface of this when you try to refuse the UN or AP, but it's so superficial and doesn't really work right (especially the AP, when it's not even your state religion). In short, people always complaining about how diplo or culture victory seems so cheap "why do the other civs just let you win" would see something entirely fresh in this new variant. Of course, I'm also hoping to mod an entirely new civic category which would include a Propaganda civic (obviously late-game) to handle happiness issues in your empire.

Sorry if this went on a little long, I was just putting out some ideas on civ gameplay. The only way this relates, is adopting this system would have drastic effects on human v. human gameplay. Currently, a MP game falls into what I described-you as the leader are free to do whatever you want with your civilization. None of the human teams are really playing the game as leader of a civilization, they're playing as people trying to win a game!

[Diamondeye]

I can see Hoplosternum and Oyzars point on tt, but I believe Earthling has a point as well. I'd settle on no tech trading however. Having our game ruined because two other teams starts close to each other and decide to team up would just be sour.