Planning cIV BTS MTDG III

[Sommerswerd]

EDIT: The Game has been renamed ISDG 2012 and has started

IP: 178.17.156.11 (Using default port 2056)
Civstats: http://www.civstats.com/viewgame.php?gameid=2416

You need the APT Mod running to login to the game. You can find it here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6355677/WebMod1_0.rar

As the current BTS MTDG has reached the Modern era, I was thinking we might want to start doing some preliminary planning for the next one.

There was a lot of downtime after the first one during the planning stages. Maybe this time we can cut down on that by starting early. I guess the first thing we need to do is see how much interest there is in such a thing

I was musing that we could go with just two teams with a few deity AIs and a smaller map...

Anyway, I will just wait to hear from you all

[Caledorn]

6 teams may have been too much - but 2 teams is too little I think. I really liked the idea behind Team Merlot, even if it was my first MTDG. Granted, in the end game most of the teams seems to be running as if they were a monarchy as there is very little activity left now. With 2 teams the option of running one of the teams as a monarchy becomes very limited. Perhaps 4 teams would be more ideal, but still with a few deity AIs?

No tech trading should definitely be enabled though, as that is what completely ruined this game. I also think using a Pangaea map would be far better than the current map.

This is just my two cents though, based on what happened in this one and only MTDG that I have participated in so far.

[DaveMcW]

Mavericks - Lost team captain early
Amazon - Still has team captain
Sirius - Lost team captain early
CDZ - Lost team captain mid-game
Merlot - Team captain stayed to bitter end
Quatronia - Lost team captain early

So for 5 out of 6 teams, there is a strong relationship between when the team captain quit and their current score.

[nabaxo]

I like the idea of only two teams, because then, no one will have a sore butt because of diplomacy.

[BLubmuz]

Interesting...
I think 2 human teams won't make the game much interesting, unless separated by ocean.

I really liked the settings of this one, but maybe 4 teams are the way to go.
Deity AIs? no, i think not higher than immortal, but monarch is better.

Or 4 teams of 2 Civs each, no AI. 2 factions each in 2 large continents, separated by ocean.

For sure no tech brokering, but probably no tech trading is the way to go.

If the thing starts i think i will try to form a team of my own and i'll ask to admin and to make the map to some guys down in the GotM side of this community.

[Sommerswerd]

Originally Posted by BLubmuz

4 teams of 2 Civs each

That's the same as 2 teams, just with double the administrative baloney. Plus when all the people on one civ quit you then have the players on one of the teams' civs controlling the empty civ anyway and people will complain that its not fair and that the other civ should be AI

So we should just start out with 2 teams, it always comes down to 2 unbreakable alliances anyway. At least this way the alliances will be evenly matched because it will be a 1 civ alliance versus another 1 civ alliance.

That way quitters won't ruin the game, because you only need 2 turnplayers instead of 6 or 4, and tech trades won't ruin the game, and alliances won't ruin the game, and best of all...

We can play sequential turns, so turn order violations or allegations thereof won't ruin the game. Each team can just get a clean 24 hours to play their turn, and everyone can login whenever they want. Turns will go faster with two teams too, instead of 6 or 4.

[BLubmuz]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

That's the same as 2 teams, just with double the administrative baloney. Plus when all the people on one civ quit you then have the players on one of the teams' civs controlling the empty civ anyway and people will complain that its not fair and that the other civ should be AI

Misunderstanding here: I mean 8 Civs total, 2 for every human team. Thus i'm proposing 4 human teams, each controlling 2 civs. Now off to read the rest of your post.

Not clear to me what sequential turns mean in terms of game.

[AlphaShard]

I would also agree on the no tech trading.

[nabaxo]

Originally Posted by BLubmuz

Not clear to me what sequential turns mean in terms of game.

It means no double-moving. It would not be possible unless someone hacks the game.

[Sommerswerd]

Originally Posted by AlphaShard

I would also agree on the no tech trading.

I can agree with no tech trading. I don't think its necessarily better, just different. No tech trading certainly gets rid of tech alliances, but not military ones. So you still end up with the civs in the smaller alliance feeling like they got shafted and quitting.

That's why I'm big on going with 2 teams. That way there's no alliances ganging up on anyone, tech alliances or otherwise.

Originally Posted by BLubmuz

Misunderstanding here: I mean 8 Civs total, 2 for every human team. Thus i'm proposing 4 human teams, each controlling 2 civs. Now off to read the rest of your post.

Not clear to me what sequential turns mean in terms of game.

Ah I see my mistake. This idea was considered for this game but voted down. I was dead set against it before, but now I think it has some merit if done right.

What I am thinking, is we could still go with 2 teams, but give each team 3-6 civs. That way if your players differ in how they want to run the team, different factions can take different civs and run their faction/however they want. Once everyone kisses and makes up, you can go back to one turnplayer controlling all civs. Just an idea.

And BTW, 'sequential' turns means that instead of everyone being able to log in and move at the same time, everyone has a set period of time when only they can move, and no one else can. That way Doublemoves are impossible, because the game won't even let you move unless its your turn. Like in singleplayer or PBEM, the barbarians and other civs can't move when you are moving, and you can move while the computer is moving.

The problem with sequential turns is that they take longer because each civ gets the whole time period to move (usually 24hrs). So if we play with only 2 civs we can do the turns in 48 hrs or less, same as now. But with 4-6-8 teams, sequential turns would be sad-times...unless... we give extra short timers for each civ like 4-6-8 hrs apiece, depending on how many.

[whb]

Couldn't help but have a few suggestions for the next game -

- No tech trading. While military alliances take a lot of patience and co-ordination (it took a long time to finally grind Indiansmoke and Slaze out), tech alliances are cheesily easy (it took no time at all for us to be tech'ed out of competitiveness because the alliance would get 4 techs to our 1)
- Rule against majority alliances while the number of teams is greater than 3. "This is Civ, not Survivor."
- Start with contact with all civs, however remote they are on the map. (No contact just seems a bit antisocial for a community game)
- Make everyone's starting location visible to all at move 1. (The game lasts more than a year; visible fairness seems like a good idea)
- Ideally make quite a bit of the map visible to all before the game starts. (Some time into the game, some of the more experienced players were irked to find that all the teams were on islands and thus the map made it impossible for a team to take military action against an alliance until far too far into the game. I think it's better those sorts of things are resolved before the game starts, rather than having "this map sucks for multiplayer" sprung as a surprise.)

I'm personally not so keen on the two civs per team idea. If we'd had it in this game, then Merlot would have ended up trying to wrangle four nations through their death throes!

[Sommerswerd]

Originally Posted by whb

No tech trading. While military alliances take a lot of patience and co-ordination (it took a long time to finally grind Indiansmoke and Slaze out), tech alliances are cheesily easy (it took no time at all for us to be tech'ed out of competitiveness because the alliance would get 4 techs to our 1)

As I said, tech trading off isn't better, just different, but if it will help reduce sour grapes and lost interest, I'm all for it. But the reality is that just going with two teams from the beginning will elimminate all the ulcers and sore feelings over alliances, tech or otherwise.

Originally Posted by whb

Rule against majority alliances while the number of teams is greater than 3. "This is Civ, not Survivor."

This is going to be cumbersome to enforce if not impossible. What if the players communicate all their alliance-related talk off of the forum? What you have then is a game ending, accusation-hurling situation where the losing team will feel that there is a majority alliance against them but they can't prove it. so they quit...There goes the game. Better to just go with 2 teams from the start rather than have multiple teams and have admins tying to police their alliances. What a rule like this does is basically outlaws diplo. So if there isn't going to be any diplo anyway, why do we need multiple teams?

And how would "majority alliance" be defined? Would it be admins call? Won't that just cause sour grapes quitting if the call doesn't go your way? Are you saying that if one team is 300-800-1000 points ahead of the other 3 teams, it will be illegal for them to gang up on the leader? Seems like a bad rule to me.

Originally Posted by whb

Start with contact with all civs, however remote they are on the map. (No contact just seems a bit antisocial for a community game)

Actually, I like this idea, and I would say start the game with the two teams within sight of each other, surrounded by AIs. If the map is small and the teams start close, we could elimminate the downtime where teams are searching for each other.

Originally Posted by whb

Make everyone's starting location visible to all at move 1. (The game lasts more than a year; visible fairness seems like a good idea)... I think it's better those sorts of things are resolved before the game starts, rather than having "this map sucks for multiplayer" sprung as a surprise.)

Like I said, with 2 teams starting close on a smaller pangea map this is unecessary, but I agree that no invasion before Astronomy was a heavy burden for the smaller alliance. Yet another reason to just dispense with alliances and start with 2 teams.

Maybe one team can be a Monarchy, Merlot-style team and the other can be Democratic who knows?

Originally Posted by whb

I'm personally not so keen on the two civs per team idea. If we'd had it in this game, then Merlot would have ended up trying to wrangle four nations through their death throes!

Good point. Also if we did that, we would have to go with simultaneous turns again. If the last two games have proven anything, I think its simultaneous turns is unworkable for a game like this, and random seed on reload must be turned on.

[AlphaShard]

Originally Posted by whb

Couldn't help but have a few suggestions for the next game -

- No tech trading. While military alliances take a lot of patience and co-ordination (it took a long time to finally grind Indiansmoke and Slaze out), tech alliances are cheesily easy (it took no time at all for us to be tech'ed out of competitiveness because the alliance would get 4 techs to our 1)

Surprisingly though you seemed to keep up just fine. Tech trading was a joke that I am glad to vote against.

- Rule against majority alliances while the number of teams is greater than 3. "This is Civ, not Survivor."

I wish my team had seen it this way, they didn't.

- Start with contact with all civs, however remote they are on the map. (No contact just seems a bit antisocial for a community game)
- Make everyone's starting location visible to all at move 1. (The game lasts more than a year; visible fairness seems like a good idea)
- Ideally make quite a bit of the map visible to all before the game starts. (Some time into the game, some of the more experienced players were irked to find that all the teams were on islands and thus the map made it impossible for a team to take military action against an alliance until far too far into the game. I think it's better those sorts of things are resolved before the game starts, rather than having "this map sucks for multiplayer" sprung as a surprise.)

I actually did enjoy the mystery of discovering where every one was and the actual map. If we do a pangea this time I don't see the point in revealing everything. Also didn't we have a vote for what kind of map we wanted?

I'm personally not so keen on the two civs per team idea. If we'd had it in this game, then Merlot would have ended up trying to wrangle four nations through their death throes!

Yeah one civ per team.

I'm also for Sequential turns gives the teams even more time plan and post plans, etc. I found it very hard to plan anything when it took days for players to post.

[whb]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

As I said, tech trading off isn't better, just different, but if it will help reduce sour grapes and lost interest, I'm all for it. But the reality is that just going with two teams from the beginning will elimminate all the ulcers and sore feelings over alliances, tech or otherwise.

In your humble opinion, of course! It's just so endearing how you characterise others as "sour grapes and ulcers".

This is going to be cumbersome to enforce if not impossible. What if the players communicate all their alliance-related talk off of the forum?

It would take quite a lot of effort to cheat like that in a demogame -- you'd need to have an awful lot of confidence that nobody on your team would blow the whistle on you. I just don't think players here are that scurrilous.

What a rule like this does is basically outlaws diplo. So if there isn't going to be any diplo anyway, why do we need multiple teams?

Not in the slightest. There are plenty of diplomatic possibilities in Civ other than just "four teams must ally against the other two"!

I would say start the game with the two teams within sight of each other, surrounded by AIs.

Sounds hideously dull.

If the last two games have proven anything, I think its simultaneous turns is unworkable for a game like this, and random seed on reload must be turned on.

What are the problems that have been caused by simultaneous turns? That part appeared to work perfectly well from what I could see.

[whb]

Originally Posted by AlphaShard

Surprisingly though you seemed to keep up just fine. Tech trading was a joke that I am glad to vote against.

Wow. Compliments to Indiansmoke and Slaze if they gave that impression! Though at one stage I wondered whether one of the teams was quietly gaming the alliance? "No point having a high research rate if we're only going to have to give the techs away"? It'll be interesting if we ever get to see what happened in the rest of the world we couldn't see.

[AlphaShard]

Yeah imagine my surprise when we arrived at Maverick Island to see that they had the same units we did. Looked like we didn't have a tech lead at all.

[Sommerswerd]

Originally Posted by whb

It would take quite a lot of effort to cheat like that in a demogame -- you'd need to have an awful lot of confidence that nobody on your team would blow the whistle on you. I just don't think players here are that scurrilous.

I disagree. All it would take is one PM or IM "Hey good old buddy (teammate from last game, or ally from a different pitboss, or friend on CFC) I see we are both turnplayers for our teams. I won't attack you, and you don't attack me, and let's cooperate to kill the others OK?" Especially if the teams are Merlot style with no voting on turn actions. That anti-alliance policy is just impossible to enfore, period. Its just way way too easy to cooperate/ally with another team. All that rule will do is create a fight mid-game where people are accusing each other of forming stealth alliances.

Originally Posted by whb

Not in the slightest. There are plenty of diplomatic possibilities in Civ other than just "four teams must ally against the other two"!

Sure, like 3 on 1, 2 on 1, 5 on 1, 3 on 2, etc. What you are suggesting, is that teams refrain from pursuing the most advantageous path to victory. Mismatches are the way to win. Not looking to create mismatches is dumb. A rule that forces players to play dumb is also dumb. Just go with two teams from the beginning and we dont have to worry about tech trading rules or anti-alliance rules or balance rules, or turnplayer substitute rules. What is the objection to just playing with two teams?

Originally Posted by whb

What are the problems that have been caused by simultaneous turns?

When Sirius started losing the war, the turnplayer got caught moving twice in the same turn. If we just play sequential turns, such a thing would be impossible, and we wouldnt need any turn-order or doublemove rules, and therefore there would be no more turn-order arguments, or quitting because of turn-order arguments.

Originally Posted by whb

In your humble opinion, of course! It's just so endearing how you characterise others as "sour grapes and ulcers".

Sir, my opinion is never humble and I couldnt care less about being endearing And BTW, It's so endearing how sarcastic you are... No really I honestly mean that. Anyway I wasn't calling other players sour-grapes or ulcers, that would be mean

All tongue-in-cheeky remarks aside, maybe you genuinely didn't know this, so permit me to explain. You can't call a person "Sour-grapes." Sour-grapes is just an expression for a certain kind of sentiment or feeling. It refers to when a person either intentionally or unintentionally confuses their unhappines with a result and their unhapiness with the rules or processes that led to the result.

It happens all the time. Your kid's football team loses and you are sad about that, but instead of thinking "aww me so sad my team lost, maybe they play better next time" you think "grrr thr referee made a bad call" or "arrgh that penalty rule is so dumb it must be changed!"

That's sour grapes (ie. you buy the grapes and eat them, but then ask for your money back because they were sour instead of sweet). You go into a situation knowing what the rules are, and agreeing to them, but then AFTER you get a result you dont like, you complain about the rules. Its human nature. People misdirect their hurt feelings over a result at the game rather than their own choices. That is what I was refering to. I just dont want us to make a whole lot of sour-grapes-related changes to the rules. Let us try to get to the bottom of what went wrong and change only that and leave the other things alone. That is my point.

As for the "ulcers", I wasnt calling anyone an ulcer. I was simply talking about people's hurt feelings. When you are mad or sad or hurt or upset you get stressed, and stress can cause ulcers. So what I am saying is I want to avoid having people quit over hurt feelings.

[whb]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

I disagree. All it would take is one PM or IM "Hey good old buddy (teammate from last game, or ally from a different pitboss, or friend on CFC) I see we are both turnplayers for our teams. I won't attack you, and you don't attack me, and let's cooperate to kill the others OK?"

Not true! On a demo team, you'd not only need to be the turnplayer but also remain so while getting away with ignoring all the votes (otherwise you'd need a plurality of the rest of the team in on the plan); on a Merlot-team, you'd need to get away with not discussing your plans on the forum or likewise you'd be kicked out at the next 15-turn vote. And not only that, but you'd need all your co-conspirators on the other teams to achieve the same, and to believe that you have achieved it. It's simply not practical; the conspirators would fall foul of their own teams far too quickly. I think it's a pity if one of the current game's team leaders hasn't noticed these are "multi-team demogames"...

No, if someone was really looking to cheat in an MTDG (which thankfully most of us are not) there are far simpler ways that cannot be enforced - such as a duplicate accounts joining other teams and engaging in real-world espionage. Thankfully, most members of this forum are more community-spirited than that and do not simply join a game in order to break it. MTDGs rely, as they always have to, on the social-mindedness of the participants.

Sure, like 3 on 1, 2 on 1, 5 on 1, 3 on 2, etc. What you are suggesting, is that teams refrain from pursuing the most advantageous path to victory. Mismatches are the way to win. Not looking to create mismatches is dumb. A rule that forces players to play dumb is also dumb.

How sad it would be if you really did only have the imagination to countenance a single method of playing a game. That's not really the case is it? You don't really believe the tiny-minded view you're stating here, do you? We outlaw most game-breaking strategies, such as gifting all your cities to a team you're going to join, or many other things that are listed in the game rules before the start. That is entirely appropriate. In a year-long endeavour it is far more important that the game be interesting for the participants than that the fastest route to an early-determined but painfully-slow-to-produce victory is enabled.

Indeed the quickest way to win your two-team game, with no human-imposed rules, would be to get one of your team into the other team with a duplicate account so they can get the team password, log in to the game, and delete their settlers. Wouldn't make much of a game though.

Just go with two teams from the beginning and we dont have to worry about tech trading rules or anti-alliance rules or balance rules, or turnplayer substitute rules. What is the objection to just playing with two teams?

Because it's boring. In a two player game there would genuinely be no diplomacy.

When Sirius started losing the war, the turnplayer got caught moving twice in the same turn.

I don't have visibility of that, so I can't comment on whether it was malintentioned, accidental, or whatever, but from the sounds of it the key phrase in your report is "got caught" -- ie, having an agreed rule against double moves policed the issue just fine.

Sir, my opinion is never humble and I couldnt care less about being endearing

You don't say.

All tongue-in-cheeky remarks aside, maybe you genuinely didn't know this, so permit me to explain. You can't call a person "Sour-grapes." Sour-grapes is just an expression for a certain kind of sentiment or feeling. It refers to when a person either intentionally or unintentionally confuses their unhappines with a result and their unhapiness with the rules or processes that led to the result.

And (just in case you genuinely hadn't noticed) it is your assertion that others were doing that that is somewhat antisocial.

Let us try to get to the bottom of what went wrong and change only that and leave the other things alone. That is my point.

Ah, great to hear that you wholeheartedly agree we shouldn't make unnecessary changes, such as limiting it to two teams only and sequential turns, but instead just focus on getting to the bottom of what went wrong in this game and changing only that, such as:

Originally Posted by whb

- No tech trading. While military alliances take a lot of patience and co-ordination (it took a long time to finally grind Indiansmoke and Slaze out), tech alliances are cheesily easy (it took no time at all for us to be tech'ed out of competitiveness because the alliance would get 4 techs to our 1)
- Rule against majority alliances while the number of teams is greater than 3. "This is Civ, not Survivor."
- Start with contact with all civs, however remote they are on the map. (No contact just seems a bit antisocial for a community game)
- Make everyone's starting location visible to all at move 1. (The game lasts more than a year; visible fairness seems like a good idea)
- Ideally make quite a bit of the map visible to all before the game starts. (Some time into the game, some of the more experienced players were irked to find that all the teams were on islands and thus the map made it impossible for a team to take military action against an alliance until far too far into the game. I think it's better those sorts of things are resolved before the game starts, rather than having "this map sucks for multiplayer" sprung as a surprise.)

It's great to hear you support this kind of debugging of the problems with the game, rather than childishly decrying any view other than your own about what didn't work this game as "sour grapes and ulcers".

[Sommerswerd]

First off, if you have this much enthusiasm for commenting and debating, I encourage you to refugee to one of the still active teams. I know Q for example could use someone that likes to talk almost as much as me on their team

I think Most of what you said in that first paragraph can be chalked up to the fact that you've never been a turnplayer, which is why you are so mistaken about how things work. And I can't convince you otherwise, so we can just disagree on whether enforcing a no-majority-alliances rule (whatever that means) is possible.

But this one statement I don't understand, so maybe you can explain:

Originally Posted by whb

I think it's a pity if one of the current game's team leaders hasn't noticed these are "multi-team demogames"...

Also, putting aside the issue of enforcement, can you please explain how the no-majority alliance rule would work in game terms? I get that in your no-alliance regime, it would have been illegal to form a 4 on 2 team alliance that excluded your team (Merlot) and the one other team. I get that part.

But what about after that? For example, when Sirius, the team in 1st place, attacked Q, the team in last place, AMAZON joined Q against Sirius and CDZ stopped trading with Sirius, but did not DoW or attack them. Would that also be illegal in your regime?

What about now? AMAZON is in first place. Would it be illegal for CDZ, Sirius and Q to ally against AMAZON? What about just CDZ and Q against AMAZON and Sirius stays neutral? Is that illegal because its a mismatch? In other words, what kind of alliances would be acceptable to you? Are all mismatches illegal?

Another way to look at it... Do points or relative strengths of the teams come into play? If they do, who will decide when a mismatch is balanced or not? What if you disagree with the decision? Is there any recourse?

If points dont matter, just the number of teams, then it is illegal for a bunch of small teams to band together to bring down a big one, right? So do they have all to just sit back and let the agonizingly slow process of the big one killing them off one by one play out? Or do they have to sit back and watch the big one win a space race because mismatches are illegal?

It seems to me, and feel free to correct me that what you want, is a game where the teams MUST divide into EVEN alliances, in terms of number of civs per alliance. So if there are four teams it MUST be 2 on 2. If that is correct, then to me a forced 2 on 2 is almost the same as just playing with 2 teams, but inferior because now you need turnplayers, and twice as many active posters, commenters etc.

Under that rule, using an odd number of teams is impossible, and using more than 4 raises the following problem:-- If we are playing with 6 teams we can do 3 on 3 or 2 on 2 on 2 under your regime right? Three scenarios I have a question about:

-- 1st scenario (2 on 2 on 2) - So if Alliance A attacks alliance B. Then alliance C, seeing that alliance B is distracted fighting A decides to take advantage and attack B as well, would this be an illegal majority alliance?

-- 2nd scenario (3 on 3) - Team 1 on alliance A feels unappreciated by the alliance and in the middle of a war, backstabs Team 2 and 3 by joining alliance B. So now it is Team 1, 4, 5 and 6 versus Team 2 and 3. would this be illegal in your regime?

-- 3rd scenario (3 on 3) - Team 2 and 3 on alliance A feel that Team 1 is not pulling their weight. They also know that team 4 wants to defect. So they dump team 1 and for a new Alliance A of Teams 2,3 and 4. Meanwhile Teams 5 and 6 hate Team 1, feeling they are untrustworty, and dead weight, and refuse to let them join alliance B. Is this sitiuation illegal in your regime? How would you resolve it?

Here is why I am asking this and why I keep going back to the "sour-grapes" thing. I think, (and I suspect that King Indiansmoke would agree with me on this) that the problem is not the alliances. The problem is that the map was designed in such a way that if you did not do one particular thing, right at the beginning, then you were doomed, and there was no way to recover. So the problem then was not with the rules of the game allowing alliances, it was just Merlot (and Mavs) made a very minor error in play early in the game that had drastic irreversible consequences.

To me the solution is a different map design, not outlawing alliances, oulawing alliances seems to be sour grapes (ie, blaming the rules for a bad result that was caused by bad play judgment not bad rules). Also, the way the map was designed encouraged a 4 on 2 alliance for so many reasons... but that is a whole other discussion.

Originally Posted by whb

No, if someone was really looking to cheat in an MTDG (which thankfully most of us are not) there are far simpler ways that cannot be enforced - such as a duplicate accounts joining other teams and engaging in real-world espionage. Thankfully, most members of this forum are more community-spirited than that and do not simply join a game in order to break it. MTDGs rely, as they always have to, on the social-mindedness of the participants.

Sure of course, but it only takes one rule infraction to collapse the game. This has benn proven time and time again. So yes while I agree that MOST members of the forum are perfect angels, that's irrelevant, because it only take one to ruin the game for everyone else. What I am looking for is a set up that minimizes the opportunity for wrongdoing, and more importantly the suspicion of wrongdoing, which is really what ends up causing hard-feelings and quitting. You keep on making the point about how honorable and good and trustworthy almost everyone is... OK, I get that, but remember it only takes one.

Originally Posted by whb

How sad it would be if you really did only have the imagination to countenance a single method of playing a game. That's not really the case is it? You don't really believe the tiny-minded view you're stating here, do you?

I must be tiny minded, because I have no idea what this statement means

Originally Posted by whb

Indeed the quickest way to win your two-team game, with no human-imposed rules, would be to get one of your team into the other team with a duplicate account so they can get the team password, log in to the game, and delete their settlers. Wouldn't make much of a game though.

I don't get the relevance of this What point are you trying to make?

Originally Posted by whb

Because it's boring. In a two player game there would genuinely be no diplomacy.

OK but really, what "Diplomacy" is there in a game where you and I are on 2 different teams, but we are in a forced permanent alliance, in forced permanent war against the other alliance, and tech trading is disabled? To me that is the same as us just being on the same team. The "diplomacy" in that situation is all within the team, so it is not really diplomacy, it is just in-team chat, so you might as well be on the same team.

Here's the thing. You can have a MM and tactics contest or you can have a Diplo contest, but you cant really have both. In a game where diplo is the focus, you will suffer dearly if you get outmanuvered in diplo. In a game with little or no diplo, you will succeed through superior micromanagement and battle tactics. This game is a diplo contest, Merlot got outmanuvered in diplo, that's really all there is to it. All the rule changes in the world are not going to change that in a diplo-focused game, you have to prioritize diplo over everything else.

Originally Posted by whb

having an agreed rule against double moves policed the issue just fine.

Wrong, because the turnplayer who was "policed" quit and almost ended the game because of it. That is not "working" that is disfunctional. Sequential turns would remove the policing aspect and thus the hard feelings of being "policed"

Originally Posted by whb

You don't say.

Yes indeed, I do, quite often, and loud, and long 'winded-ly'

Originally Posted by whb

And (just in case you genuinely hadn't noticed) it is your assertion that others were doing that that is somewhat antisocial.

TBH (in case YOU hadn't noticed) I am intentionally being a little more provocative in my tone towards you, because I just get the sense that you enjoy it

Originally Posted by whb

Ah, great to hear that you wholeheartedly agree we shouldn't make unnecessary changes, such as limiting it to two teams only and sequential turns, It's great to hear you support this kind of debugging of the problems with the game... rather than childishly decrying any view other than your own about what didn't work this game as "sour grapes and ulcers".

Again, an ulcer, is a reference the stress people feel as a result of game related disagreements. I am not describing peoples views as ulcers. However I am describing some people's views (yours in particular) as sour grapes, so at least you got one right

And obviously you are mis-reading me (or maybe that's just more sarcasm?;P) because I want sequential turns and 2 teams, so I wouldn't wholeheartedly agree not to have those things An example of unecessary changes would be limiting alliances.

[BLubmuz]

Gentlemen, this is a thread where we try to set up a new MTDG.

The discussion between Sommerswerd and whb risks to distract the occasional reader from the main goal, which is, BTW

set up a new MTDG.

First we need an announcement somewhere to capture the interest of more members of CFC.

Second, while i see many merits on Sommerswerd's proposals, i think that a MTDG limited to 2 human teams (let's keep aside for now the map type, if those teams are controlling more than one Civ, how many AIs - if any - and their level) can't be much interesting. You know that only one will win and a war can only be delayed depending on their distance or reachability (before or after Astronomy).

But maybe, with the appropriate conditions and the appropriate map type, the game can be interesting with only 2 human teams.

Thus i say, let's start the thing after a debate have defined the conditions and the map type. Probably sequential turns with the timer set to 20 hours to actually have 24 hours per Team can be the way to go. Probably have the teams in 2 different landmasses can help to have an interesting game for any kind of player (builders, warmongers and so on).

If the thing does not work well we can finish the game in some way and start another one with a different set up.