Next War PBEM

I recently came to enjoy the Next War mod that shipped with BtS, and I figured it would make for a great PBEM. Seeing as two users already agreed to join it, we only need one more player, as this is a preplaced scenario with four civs.

The basic premise of this scenario is that you are leading one of the four power-blocs that rule the world from 2060 onward. It has several futuristic techs, buildings and units added, and really you just need to boot it up and you get a popup explaining the backstory, no need for me to tell you about every last detail actually.

Game speed is Epic and since I can´t easily deactivate the Time victory I´ll just set the amount of maximum turns to an arbitrarily high number.
Still, if you´d rather not have one of the preset options, I think there would probably be a way to ungrey them in a .ini file or somesuch.

Everything is unmarked except for Aggressive AI (which is irrelevant anyway with four players) and No Vassal States.
Non-available victory types are Culture and Space.

The turn order is as follows:

The Great Southern Empire - The Lady - Nighthawk419
Pan-Asiatic People´s Cooperative - The Glorious Leader - Eclipse4449
Europa - His Excellency - Imp. Knoedel
America Inc. - Mr. Big - Luthor_Saxburg

Should our game end because of too many nukes, the person who has the highest Score is declared winner by default UNLESS he is the one who fired the last nuke. In that case the second-highest ranking player wins.

Another thing you should note is that as this is a pre-set scenario, everyone can know already from turn 1 on where every Wonder is, be it National or Great. This is why I have put together this spreadsheet, color-coded for your convenience:



If you want to have the original file, just tell me and I´ll email it to you.

Count me in, I'll look at the Leader choices Tonight

I am in as well as the #2 preset player and will take a look at the scenario/leaders tonight and make my selection.

I'm in!

I'll have to wait for the previous 2 to make my choice, I guess...

Luthor as far as I'm concerned you can make your choice now. I think its first come first serve unless Knoedel has a different idea in mind.

Yup, I´d say Luthor_Saxburg can choose first, then Nighthawk and Eclipse and then I´ll take whoever is left.

Is this the scenario that includes the limit on the number of nukes you can fire? If so, you should either delete that limit in the python code or agree not to use nukes at all. I played in a pbem game where the world cracked in two (from too many nukes) and it was a wholly unpleasant end to the game.

I'm in !!! - but probably too late!

Why do I always miss these - damn time-zone differences.

I would have liked to join but I saw Eclipse had grabbed the final slot.

ruff_hi said:

Is this the scenario that includes the limit on the number of nukes you can fire? If so, you should either delete that limit in the python code or agree not to use nukes at all. I played in a pbem game where the world cracked in two (from too many nukes) and it was a wholly unpleasant end to the game.

Click to expand...

Huh, I think we might want to vote on that issue. Good call.

kiwitt said:

I'm in !!! - but probably too late!

Why do I always miss these - damn time-zone differences.

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Well we can keep you in mind as a replacement if you wish.

Hercules90 said:

I would have liked to join but I saw Eclipse had grabbed the final slot.

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Technically Eclipse was one of the two guys already in, together with Nighthawk, so really Luthor filled the only vacant slot.

kiwitt said:

I'm in !!! - but probably too late!

Why do I always miss these - damn time-zone differences.

Click to expand...

Hercules said:

I would have liked to join but I saw Eclipse had grabbed the final slot.

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You guys can surely start a "Next War II" PBEM with the same scenario if you'd like, I'm sure you can find 2 other players pretty easily. I hate when excited players miss out on new PBEMs since they dont start all that often. Its not all that hard to admin a PBEM game, especially when its only 4 players.

I'd have started running another PBEM myself by now too if I wasn't struggling to keep up with all the ones I'm already in due to real life (argh). I'm only selectively joining new ones now that are totally different from the rest and needless to say this one is different!

ruff_hi said:

Is this the scenario that includes the limit on the number of nukes you can fire? If so, you should either delete that limit in the python code or agree not to use nukes at all. I played in a pbem game where the world cracked in two (from too many nukes) and it was a wholly unpleasant end to the game.

Click to expand...

This was Civ IV BTS? I've never had "too many nukes crack the world in two" in any game... what does that mean? The game ends with no winner??? That would be pretty terrible, although I can't imagine a futuristic war game with no nukes, thats no fun either! We will def need to address this...

Well Ok, but look at the wording of the first two posts to see how I thought all slots were filled.

Nighthawk419 said:

This was Civ IV BTS? I've never had "too many nukes crack the world in two" in any game... what does that mean? The game ends with no winner??? That would be pretty terrible, although I can't imagine a futuristic war game with no nukes, thats no fun either! We will def need to address this...

Click to expand...

That´s one of the features of the mod, read its description.

I see I like the Pan- Asiatic People's Cooperative

ruff_hi said:

Is this the scenario that includes the limit on the number of nukes you can fire? If so, you should either delete that limit in the python code or agree not to use nukes at all. I played in a pbem game where the world cracked in two (from too many nukes) and it was a wholly unpleasant end to the game.

Click to expand...

What? Wow! Well I think they should be allowed and used with discretion due to this effect, as in any game I'm not a fan of limiting what the creators intended

I will select the great Southern Empire... to be renamed at a later date of course

As for the nuking problem... how about since we don't know what the limit is, if at any point the game ends because of too many nukes, whoever has the most land% at the point the game ends is declared the winner?

This way it can almost be a strategy... "I'm ahead in land by 3% but losing ground fast... LET ME NUKE EVERYTHING and blow the earth up before anyone else can win!" Definitely a homocidal thought, but in a game like this... why not!?

As Nighthawk has beaten me to the punch mad I'll take... hmmm... Mr. Big. Being spread across 3 continents might be interesting...

I played this scenario a (long) while back and didn't know about this nuking limit... it could have been funnier if we played without knowing!

I think that the current Nuke rule makes sense and I would prefer to keep it in. We know about it so we should fit it in our strategies (even if it's like Nuking everybody for the game to be over fast, like Nighthawk says).

As for speed I would prefer a longer play, such as Epic or Marathon.

Question: I think that in the basic file there a number of maximum turns... are we going to keep it or erradicate it?


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I say no limit on number of turns if possible. But then again 500 turns is a LONG time to play, with this nuking problem we might not get to 100 turns anyway

And let's do Epic speed. Marathon is just ungodly long to get anything done. I like Epic as the proper balance personally.

How about the following rule:

Should our game end because of too many nukes, the person who has the highest Score is declared winner by default UNLESS he is the one who fired the last nuke. In that case the second-highest ranking player wins.

Personally I don´t care whether we take score, land or population as the metric for victory, but I figure since Score is calculated by four different factors it should give the best idea of who is leading.

I am now going to put that list of Wonders together, if everybody is okay with everything I´ll set up the game tomorrow morning.

Luthor_Saxburg do you have an account for PBEM-Tracker? I know that Eclipse and Nighthawk have one, as do I, and I would rather use it.

\Edit: Okay I just ran into a weird issue. I started a test game to see how exactly this is going to work, since this is the first PBEM I actually host. I selected Europa for me, which in the pre-set turn order is third, so the game should have prompted me to mail the first turn to Nighthawk, right? Instead, it just let me play his turn, and when I pressed enter Eclipse´s turn too, and so on. I checked twice to make sure I correctly selected PBEM and not Hot Seat, but that was not the issue. Any suggestions?

\\Edit: Alright I gave myself a whole bunch of Nukes via Worldbuilder to see what exactly happens if you overuse them. Turns out Barbarians win a Domination victory. Anyway the limit doesn´t seem that low, and after having used a dozen or so I got a warning from my scientists via Python popup predicting an untimely premise for our planet if I keep on nuking. After another dozen mushroom clouds their prediction turned true and I lost.
Using them as a weapon of last resort we shouldn´t run into a problem, just be sure not to get too trigger-happy with them.

PBEM TRacker is good