Armed Zealots

[Grendeldef]

With both this game and Rome, we talked about doing something with the early UU but got sucked into the expansion phase. Which I understand, since that aspect of the game I find very compelling.

Sorry for back-to-back posts but this deserves attention on its own. Self-set rules, early UU & Deity is a trio that one can rarely make to work to any degree of success and if we're going that route again depending on how 'early' is defined I'd suggest that making use of UU x gives a relaxed rule y. Something like with Theo maintenance gpt of Dromons & Cataphracts can be added to max gpt allowed per era. Or something along those lines. I think HA is the only early UU I always build and plan a game around. Immortals most often but even Siege Towers are a bit meh. Maybe I should play as Egypt more often.
Oh, how I wish the default UI had functions like this - life would've been so much easier in past decade.

 

[beetle]

Oxforded Globalization after the RAs were done…

Thanks! Your quick win is a little more comprehendible to me now.
Violent CV would be charming.

Arborea map as Pedro with AI civs that get a buff from woods or hills? Aborea map as America versus Pedro and AI civs that get a buff from woods or hills?

 

[raider980]

We won!? I would have bet a lot against that result. As usual I have no idea how, I guess we had a lot of money from Tithe. It seems I abandon my own games way to early when I get what seems hopelessly behind.

Regarding different playstyles, I do often wonder why someone does something or other. In my case its usually because I'm wondering how anyone ever thought to do x or y or z; my game is clearly more simple than you alls.

For example, I still don't see why give open borders to a civ of the opposite ideology as a general rule. I don't understand how and actually disagree that its going to hurt Gustav more than us; the AI can deal with unhappiness much better than the player. Also, why were we buying William's aluminum? Was that an attempt to prevent him from building a spaceship part? I never would have thought of doing that, its pretty tricky. Did he really sell us his last Aluminum when he needed it to win the game? If so, I would add that to our rules of something we can't do because its almost as bad as the DoW bribe trick and takes more advantage of the stupidity of the AI than selling OB or Iron/Horses for 2gpt.

I'm ready for another one. AI and Map don't matter. But I did like the TSL Earth and Mediterranean games. If it is going to be violent CV, we'll need to go over what that entails because I thought that's what our plan was for this game, hence taking Sacred Sites.

 

[vadalaz]

Out of curiosity I replayed from turn 289 when William finished Hubble, gave him 16 Aluminium and moved our units out of the way. This changed nothing and we still won on turn 295, all William did was upgrade to helicopters. The AI is just that bad.

I even kept playing a little bit longer:

turn 300: Will builds a Spaceship Factory in Amsterdam
turn 301: a GE appeared in Amsterdam
turn 302: he moves it out and places it next to Groningen
turn 303: moves it to a tile adjacent to Amsterdam
turn 304: GE is back to Amsterdam
turn 305: GE moves out again, I lose my sanity and quit

 

[vadalaz]

My thoughts on rules:

GPT: the current rule doesn't really work if we have enough DoFs and excess resources to sell for lump sums. So all this does is heavily discourage aggressive play and warmongering. How about only allowing lump sums to set up RAs (since those help the AIs as well) and increasing the gpt cap to 20*era?

Bulbing: one bulb every era sounds good to me, could extend this to GMus as well.

Bribes: I'd keep them banned, but since our rules seem to be getting tied to game eras, maybe we could try allowing one bribe every era?

 

[beetle]

For example, I still don't see why give open borders to a civ of the opposite ideology as a general rule.

1. As a general rule, you want to be unfogging the map, and OB helps with that.
2. One-way OB is an exploit because of how cheap it is relative to how powerful it is. As a general rule, avoiding exploits makes most games more fun.
3. WRT ideological pressure, the game is balanced such that mutual OB is modest advantage to the player over the AI. Mutual OB, IMHO, is how the developers anticipated for the end-game to be played. So again, as a general rule, it is more fun to play games as intended, as opposed to looking for loopholes.

 

[raider980]

I still don't understand how mutual OB is an advantage to the player when the AI has more tourism than the player. That means any % buff to the tourism is going to increase the AI's raw tourism more than the players'. If we're going for a CV sure, but if not then there'd need to be a very good reason to give the AI an advantage like that. I guess if there are CS that still have NW quests and you haven't unfogged the AI area yet. But late in the game we've unfogged most everything I'd never give the AI that benefit. Turns out it didn't matter in this game because we won so quickly. I guess one could calculate the estimated number of turns remaining and see if the ideological pressure would increase by then; but I can't be bothered with all that lol.

 

[beetle]

Thank you @vadalaz for that bit of experimentation!

I still don't understand how mutual OB is an advantage to the player when the AI has more tourism than the player.

Because it is totally irrelevant that the AI has more tourism than the player. What matters is having some ideological pressure to the AI. This game, as a pretty typical example, Pocatello flipped to Order (but I couldn’t quickly find the turn). That happened sooner because we gave OB. And it might not have happened at all if we were not helping.

 

[Grendeldef]

Did we ever build Oxford? .

I think Oxford might be one of those issues which we (as an informal group) approach fundamentally differently or at least implement it differently in our games. I usually play games where I have more cities than inbreds have fingers and I'm not the one having flowers in his head spreading message of peace hence I have a hard time of building late game Nationals. To compensate this dilemma I start especially Ox early, possibly even early Industrial so I can have it a turn or two away from completing for the rest of the game. I may be overly tricky to get a ~10 turn period of not razing cities but one should be able pause that activity for a turn or two at some point. I 'always' build it in a city that can idle for a while - usually not a frontline city, surely not a city building navy, not a unit building cities, surely not the capital and so on.
With Harun I started it without a clear target but it's (most often) better wasted than left unbuild while here we had a clear target in mind. I think when I started it in this game it was a 11 turn project and 4 when I ended my stint so there were no immediate hurry but I like to have few turns to spare for cases where excrements hit the turbine.

My thoughts on rules:

GPT: the current rule doesn't really work if we have enough DoFs and excess resources to sell for lump sums. So all this does is heavily discourage aggressive play and warmongering. How about only allowing lump sums to set up RAs (since those help the AIs as well) and increasing the gpt cap to 20*era?

Or tie the gpt to the size of the army, +1 gpt per unit we have or to cities we have, +3/5 gpt per city or +2 gpt for first expo, 4 for 2nd, 6 for 3rd & so on. This would clearly create an incentive for expanding and make the satellite resources somewhat useful. I'm a horn of plenty when it comes to self-set rules so stop me before this gets too complicated.

Bulbing: one bulb every era sounds good to me, could extend this to GMus as well.

I can live with this but I'd still keep some limitations with GS so the change isn't as drastic if we by some miracle will be tech leads. I'd still limit bulbing to a catch up mechanism so we shouldn't bulb a tech unknown to everyone else. Compare bulbing to stealing - we can't steal something the other party doesn't have. There's also a fair chance that this has absolutely no effect in our game.

Bribes: I'd keep them banned, but since our rules seem to be getting tied to game eras, maybe we could try allowing one bribe every era?

I'd like to get bribes in the game in some form and once per era seems a considerable improvement to current situation. I'd also be fine if that would make it mandatory for us to denounce the victim, any civ, DoW someone or something like that.

In general I'd like the sanctions & limitations to limit the end game rather than pre-100 turns. Partly due that I like limitations like we can'r build Indies (or very limitedly), can't build WWs with GP slots etc. I prefer being handicapped throughout the game rather than getting castrated on T0 but everything will be fine when pension kicks in and life as a eunuch would be reality due to biology anyway.

 

[vadalaz]

I'd still limit bulbing to a catch up mechanism so we should bulb a tech unknown to everyone else. Compare bulbing to stealing - we can't steal something the other party doesn't have.

Yeah that sounds good.

Or tie the gpt to the size of the army, +1 gpt per unit we have or to cities we have, +3/5 gpt per city or +2 gpt for first expo, 4 for 2nd, 6 for 3rd & so on.

Having it scale with era seems to achieve similar results while being easier to keep track of. I checked the T150 save:

- 37 units that require maintenance
- 7 cities
- Medieval era, approaching Renaissance (we got there on turn 158)

Your suggestion gives a cap of 58 to 79 depending on the per-city calculation. 20*Era means 60 in Medieval and 80 in Renaissance. I think we should opt for simplicity whenever possible and stick with the era method for now.

I'd like to get bribes in the game in some form and once per era seems a considerable improvement to current situation. I'd also be fine if that would make it mandatory for us to denounce the victim, any civ, DoW someone or something like that.

I think just paying the full price and not breaking the deal is enough, but maybe we can have a minimum amount that we have to pay? Could scale it with era too so that we can't start a nuclear apocalypse for 3 gpt

***
Civ / Map:

If we go for a CV, Pedro as suggested by @beetle sounds good to me. Rainforest/Arborea are extremely annoying maps in my opinion, so I'd prefer something else like Continents/Shuffle/Fractal/Pangaea. We could pick civs of the Americas as opponents and some colonists to fill the remaining slots.

I'd also like to revisit the Mediterranean map at some point, or some other map of the Extended Europe pack. CV with our ruleset is likely very difficult on those maps though!

Raider mentioned he didn't like Abundant resources. What did everyone else think? Personally I thought the map had fairly good resource spread, and lack of immediately obvious expo spots created a pretty interesting puzzle for city placement (for which I think we all had different solutions ).

 

[Grendeldef]

Having it scale with era seems to achieve similar results while being easier to keep track of. I checked the T150 save:

Your suggestion gives a cap of 58 to 79 depending on the per-city calculation. 20*Era means 60 in Medieval and 80 in Renaissance. I think we should opt for simplicity whenever possible and stick with the era method for now.
I think just paying the full price and not breaking the deal is enough, but maybe we can have a minimum amount that we have to pay? Could scale it with era too so that we can't start a nuclear apocalypse for 3 gpt

I can't say that developed the idea any further than starting blocks nor did I crunch the numbers but I meant that gpt bonuses would be added to per era cap hence making expansion & and general warfare a bit if not welcomed at least tolerable. Though the more complex the system is less tempting it becomes which means that for example the gpt bonus from cities/unit could be rounded to closest 10 for example. I'm used this s&%¤ in my own games but I've accepted that this really isn't for all peeps.

Max bribe is good and but I'd also exclude bribe & DoW. I hate trade & DoWs in all its glorious forms.

***

Civ / Map:

If we go for a CV, Pedro as suggested by @beetle sounds good to me. Rainforest/Arborea are extremely annoying maps in my opinion, so I'd prefer something else like Continents/Shuffle/Fractal/Pangaea. We could pick civs of the Americas as opponents and some colonists to fill the remaining slots.

I'd also like to revisit the Mediterranean map at some point, or some other map of the Extended Europe pack. CV with our ruleset is likely very difficult on those maps though!

Raider mentioned he didn't like Abundant resources. What did everyone else think? Personally I thought the map had fairly good resource spread, and lack of immediately obvious expo spots created a pretty interesting puzzle for city placement (for which I think we all had different solutions ).

I've for long declared my opposition to maps which can't be circumnavigated but it's not a binary yes/no question to me. I still prefer maps like TI & Continents, Pangaea is fine these days as Pangaea maps seem to be easiest to roll.
Didn't much give a thought about the civs but I mentally blocked the 'normal' cult civs and ended up with Sweden at first. Interesting schizo with DoF & war bonuses both suitable for this kind of game and I assume rarely played. The other option I came up with is China - awesome for war but PM might be very handy early stages with money issues. In the end I'm fine with almost anything though if Venice is the playable civ I'll pass. I just can't stand it.

 

[beetle]

For the gpt abuse, the only game mechanisms I would like for us to avoid are:

1. selling resources one-at-a-time for 2 gpt, instead of say 5 resources for 7 gpt
2. DOWing just to get hight gpt peace deals 5 turns later (although I must say, that was amazing to see in action for our Ethiopia game)

With regard to war bribes, I did find it rather annoying not to be able bribe a warmonger AI across the map to DOW his neighbors.

I would like for us to keep avoiding bribe-then-DOW trick. Maybe a self-imposed rule that we can’t DOW a civ unless at least 10 turns of a trade deal (where we bribed them into war) have passed?

 

[Grendeldef]

Yup, I think 2gpt for a resource is an exploit/bug the developers didn't bother to fix. 2 for 3gpt or less per unit seems legit & and I'd be fine with grace period after Trade/bribe would be extended to 30 turns unless joining a coop war proposed by someone else.

 

[raider980]

Whew, these rules are getting complicated. I'd say lets keep them as simple as possible while still providing variety. So straight gpt per era sounds good. As far as bulbing GS, one per era sounds good; but I don't know about limiting it to techs that an AI hasn't discovered. I can tell the obvious, like if an AI has Pikes I know they've discovered CS, but I don't know how to tell if a tech hasn't been discovered by anyone.

As far as Civs Brazil is ok with me, I don't play them much so that'll be different. But I agree with vadalaz, Arboreal/Rainforest maps are extremely annoying. I would like to play China sometime; I was thinking it would be interesting to play an East Asia or Oceania map sometime with TSL, maybe even with modded civs to make it more interesting, there are quite a number of east asian civ mods, I've used Vietnam with the Trung sisters and it was fun. And I too would like to revisit the Mediterranean or other Europe map pack at some point. And maybe an Americas map would be cool. So many possibilities.

Because it is totally irrelevant that the AI has more tourism than the player. What matters is having some ideological pressure to the AI. This game, as a pretty typical example, Pocatello flipped to Order (but I couldn’t quickly find the turn). That happened sooner because we gave OB. And it might not have happened at all if we were not helping.

That's not how ideological pressure works though. It works on levels. Whether one civ has 11% or 29% influence makes no difference; but once it hits 30% then the receiver of that pressure gets hit with a bunch of unhappiness all at once. And if an AI has more tourism, then they are going to get to the next level faster than the player and every % bonus they get is going to give them an even bigger advantage over the player. So the player is going to be on the receiving end of that unhappiness before the AI. That's why we want to give OB to AI with the same Ideology; so they're influence on us can get to higher levels which offsets any pressure we have from an AI with a differing ideology.

In my experience, its rare that an AI switches ideology. And in this game it happened because most of the Civs went order, including the cultural/tourism powerhouses. I haven't looked at the game but I'd bet we had very little to do with Pocatello switching, we probably were Exotic over him from our early tourism from sacred sites. (So early in the game when we were the ones with more tourism it would be good to have OB with the AI)

In this game it was largely irrelevant because we went Order and so did most of the AI. But if we have Freedom or Autocracy and most of the other Civs have Order (which is usually the case) then we're going to get hit with lots of ideological pressure and we would need to manage that to try and avoid giving those Order civs any bonuses against us.

 

[Grendeldef]

As far as bulbing GS, one per era sounds good; but I don't know about limiting it to techs that an AI hasn't discovered. I can tell the obvious, like if an AI has Pikes I know they've discovered CS, but I don't know how to tell if a tech hasn't been discovered by anyone.

Luckily I was suggesting the opposite then (well, at least that was still the intention - I need to proof-read my writings, again) I prefer if we could only bulb techs that at least one other civ already has.
You can check this by looking at the # of beakers each tech requires. All vertical lines are equal by default apart from Compass which is cheaper than Education etc. Each civ you know and has a tech will lower the price so any discrepancies will reveal that at least one civ has a lower price tech. Obviously there can be cases where all same row tech are priced the same yet all known to someone but even then the beaker requirement would be lower than on T0.
Especially after all civs have been met while keeping track on how many techs civs have any given time with some slightly advanced deduction it's easy to follow their tech path fairly accurately.
.

---

Yeah, I was once again missing a crucial 'not' in one line so effectively arguing with myself. I've edited that part and to totally confuse everyone let's put it here once more

*** I support motion that limits GS bulbing to techs which are already known by at least one civ ***

One thing we can surely agree upon is that I need more coffee. Clearly the heatwave (by local terms) & tablet isn't doing positive wonders on my typing.

 

[vadalaz]

In an attempt to sum things up:

Rule changes

- Cap on net total GPT from AIs raised to 20 gpt * era. Lump sum trading allowed only to set up RAs.
- One GS bulb allowed per era as a catch-up mechanism (i.e. to research a tech already known by at least one AI).
- One bribe allowed per era. No DoWing to break the bribe deal.

Suggested maps and civs

Brazil, Sweden, China
Continents, Pangaea, Terra Incognita, custom maps with TSL

Please let me know if I missed something. I'll try to roll a decent map for each one of these civs and put the maps up for a vote.

 

[Grendeldef]

Looks much better when presented properly rather than a blob of incoherent ramblings so points for compiling.

I've been rolling Continents Sweden maps while passing this PC and got a decent one by the first looks & a bit later found out that

Spoiler civ :

Kameha

was on the map which raised a question should we discard a map due to one or more unfortunate adversaries being present? Obviously we could select the opponents but that does go somewhat deep into the territory of cooking maps although the details might be known only to the mapmaker.

Good luck trying to roll decent maps on several civ/type combos - you'll need it. Hopefully you feel as lucky as the latter punk in Dirty Harry did back in time.

 

[vadalaz]

I think any opponents are fine as long as there's space to expand. We had Shaka and Genghis in the last two games though, so maybe it'd be nice to start next to someone with lower expansion and aggression biases for a change.

Good luck trying to roll decent maps on several civ/type combos - you'll need it.

My second Sweden Continents roll had Lake Victoria, Uluru and Sri Pada all <10 tiles from the capital and I thought I hit the jackpot. Then it turned out to be a tiny continent with 3 luxuries and no AIs.

 

[Grendeldef]

My second Sweden Continents roll had Lake Victoria, Uluru and Sri Pada all <10 tiles from the capital and I thought I hit the jackpot. Then it turned out to be a tiny continent with 3 luxuries and no AIs.

Interesting, almost half of the Continent maps I've rolled with Sweden have been 3(+) mini continents having only 1-3 civs always requiring Astronomy to meet the rest of the bunch. I begun to wonder whether I was using a proper map script after all but now we can blame the heatwave.

The aforementioned Sweden map was best of my tries so far but apparently I destroyed it after meeting Kameha so it's not an option even if so wanted.

 

[beetle]

• Cap on net total GPT from AIs raised to 20 gpt * era. Lump sum trading allowed only to set up RAs.
• One GS bulb allowed per era as a catch-up mechanism (i.e. to research a tech already known by at least one AI).
• One bribe allowed per era. No DoWing to break the bribe deal.

That is actually pretty tidy, thank you.

Then we also have:

• No one-way OB
• No DOWing CS just for workers
• No use of “white peace bug”