Anarchy Game discussion thread

Argh said:
Also, if a player has given a standing order which down the line, means we need to ask him something before the game can proceed; then we need to set a time limit in which he has to speak, before the NEXT anarchist to post on that subject DOES get to countermand his order so the game can progress.

I can't think of such a situation off the top of my head, but I guarantee it will happen.

I give you one:
research animal husbandry -> wheel or IW. How's that?

BUT: I prefer the decision of the moment, so no "ask me later" orders.
 
I must get some work done...

Flotorius, you say "an AG games is extra hard, because only the DP is seeing everything" Ok, but also mention that screenshots are posted sometimes, and that a particular shot can be requested (note: requested, not ordered).
 
Flotorius said:
I give you one:
research animal husbandry -> wheel or IW. How's that?

BUT: I prefer the decision of the moment, so no "ask me later" orders.

Yes, no ask me later orders. But somethling like the situation above could arise from some other kind of legal order, so we'll need to think about how long to give someone before they are overruled.
 
Argh said:
How do current players rate the amount of anarchy in the current game? I'd say it's been a successful *first* attempt myself...

At intervals, there could have been more players. :rolleyes:

We had the "Communism joke" which was somewhat annoying but I had sticked with it if it had not come out as a joke. Long live the anarchy. ;)

PPL ordering to nuke someone when we just had club-swinging dudes was a "little bit" premature. (Not the person but the order, to make it clear.)

Sadly, I got addicted :crazyeye: to the "One more anarchic order" (TM).

Once a unit/city is named, it shouldn't be renamed. It gets really confusing. :crazyeye:

The prince level was maybe too tough for a first attempt. I think the AG players can beat prince though. Let's smack barbs first and be their :king: .

That's for now. More thoughts after we've won (or lost).
 
I'm sure there'll be more players eventually. Most of the people who have looked in at some point over the 22-odd pages have come back once or twice, which is nice.

We *are* in the Stories forum, which is a less travelled path for most fanatics...

Edit: Amusingly, most of the time it has either been LOADS of people shouting at once, or periods with just you making orders. During those times, we've almost managed a coherent plan! Lol
 
Argh said:
I must get some work done...

Flotorius, you say "an AG games is extra hard, because only the DP is seeing everything" Ok, but also mention that screenshots are posted sometimes, and that a particular shot can be requested (note: requested, not ordered).

Yes, there are screenshots which are really important for city placement, worker orders etc. but still a hugh responsibility lies with host, e.g. you saw smoke as a sign of unhappiness (well I had analysed the city screen and expected it) which need to be communicated to the crowd.

I hope that you'll get a shot at playing in the crowd soonish and you'll see my point of playing blind and remembering stuff. When the host asks for an order you cannot ask for a screenshot or read the 20pages before because someone will beat you to that order. :scan:
 
Argh said:
We *are* in the Stories forum, which is a less travelled path for most fanatics...

After another two or three AGs we might ask for a subforum to be established.

Argh said:
or periods with just you making orders. During those times, we've almost managed a coherent plan! Lol

That's basically a tyranny then. :lol:
 
Okay, I just wanted to let you guys know that I've read the entire first Anarchy game (okay, except for maybe the last page if anyone just posted), and this thread, and I really like this idea. I think that somewhere down the line, I would like to become the AGP (Anarchy Game Puppet), but first I need to clarify a couple of the rules:

1) Automating. Should we just totally discard this or what?

2) Any order which cannot be carried out in the present. I would prefer to get rid of these all together. If you can't switch civics because you just had a revolution, then you don't "plan" to switch them later. It removes a bunch of the mess. This would also make it a bunch easier for people to just jump in without reading 23 pages of people giving orders for the future. I thought the anarchy game was better when Argh was asking questions and getting responses.

3) "Game destroying" isn't clear enough. Should we just say "no disbanding" given my previous idea?

I would also make sure to post screenshots every turn and at every major event to get people more into it.

If I ran this, it would be much easier if I ran CivIV in a window. How do you do this?
 
Oh, and one more thing. What time zone is everyone in? I'm in the Mountain Time Zone (GMT -7). What time of day do you think would get the largest audience?
 
SamE, I'm GMT all the way. But I play at random, bizarre times, when the wife isn't looking :)

As for your suggestions and points:

Becoming the puppet: Anytime you like! It IS fun, but we need to find a way for it to be less confusing (heh, if I just WROTE STUFF DOWN, maybe....)

1) I don't have an opinion. No, wait, I do...Later, when we have 30 workers, we MIGHT want to autmoate a few....

2) Definitely needs discussion, but is a good poit with merits. The question answer thing became almost impossible once I was restricted by a backlog of orders, THATS for sure :)

I did ORIGINALLY see this as more of a FIghting Fantasy, Choose Your Own Adventure, Multiple Choice kind of story/epic, erm..thingy...

3) Disbanding does have its benefits in certain situations. We could just think of a list of outright banned moves like "disband settler", which i STILL think is hilarious :)

4) Posting screenshots is good, and necessary. But, I'm aware of my civfanatics upload limit, so I am trying to be sparing.

5) Window mode: probably in the config file. I'll have a look and let you know...
 
SamE said:
Oh, and one more thing. What time zone is everyone in? I'm in the Mountain Time Zone (GMT -7). What time of day do you think would get the largest audience?

Hi SamE,

guess where I live! Europe. So any time is a good time. Just make sure to make a little announcement in your first post when the next session will held. MOst audience you would get on weekends when the entire world is looking at your game!

PS: In the next posts I'll discuss your questions.

PPS: Try to play in Argh's game a little bit, like they say "Know your foe."
 
By the way, with regard to not placing orders that can't be acted out right away...

Shillen, very early on placed this, simple order

"Build a warrior and send him off to capture slaves from other civs."

Now, that warrior became Shillen's Slaver, and gave some real character to our game (I think). Your proposal would have made "send him off to capture.." not possible. I wouldn't be able to give him a long term "mission".

Or is this slightly missing your point?
 
First of all, if you're the host of any kind of game you can make variant rules that add to or even substitute the standard rules. I wouldn't recommend substituting or changing the general rule set bc ppl might get confused.

SamE said:
1) Automating. Should we just totally discard this or what?

You gotta see that there are several kind of orders you can get in an AG:
Unit related
Building related or
Civic/Government/Foreign policies related.
People in general want to see some action and that comes with units. Automating in the sense of having the AI doing the worker stuff for you - if you don't like managing workers let the crowd do it. If you think that you'll get too many orders, you might accept orders for workers only till 0AD and then handle them yourself.


SamE said:
2) Any order which cannot be carried out in the present. I would prefer to get rid of these all together. If you can't switch civics because you just had a revolution, then you don't "plan" to switch them later. It removes a bunch of the mess. This would also make it a bunch easier for people to just jump in without reading 23 pages of people giving orders for the future. I thought the anarchy game was better when Argh was asking questions and getting responses.
Actually I like the Q->fastest A, too but then you control the game quite a lot and might miss things or lose fun.
A good report every now then of the pending orders is absolutely necessary and is more important then screenshots.
My proposal might be to have only one future step orders like in the following example:
The research queue is Ahusbandry then BW. Once Ahusbandry is researched you shout out a request for ONE tech to research which then queues behind BW.

SamE said:
3) "Game destroying" isn't clear enough. Should we just say "no disbanding" given my previous idea?
Game destroying might be any orders that ridicule the idea of nevertheless winning the AG,e.g. gifting all your cities to an AI, disbanding a settler, ordering all units to move to an arctic tile and barbs at the front door.


If you're not sure, ask some more questions. I'll be there to order something be assured - let's have cheese then. :lol:
 
recommendation: do not allow orders that span an unspecified duration "i.e. switch to police state and don't ever switch back." also, do not allow any orders that span or require more than 100 turns to instigate.
 
I would have posted more but my first (and only) command was a dotmap with instruction where to make the 2nd city. Unfortunately due to a lot of random sillyness this seemingly took forever and I gave up.

I suggest highly that AG's take a fairly standard approach of:
1. Show the initial map/starting location
(Group will specify where to settle, first build, first tech, instructions for starting military unit)
2. The player will then play until one (or more) of the following occur:
Another civ met
Unit/building/wonder completed
Tech discovered
Player determines that a situation requires input

In the early game especially the game should likely be played from tech discovery to tech discovery and all of the required input for playing those turns should be given at the start of each tech.

I liked this game theory a lot and it was fun to put up my first dotmap, but if you get bogged down in small details about specific warrior scouting movements instead of general ideas a game will never be finished in this style. I think it will be interesting enough to see how the game progresses without taking 10 pages of posts before the second city is founded.
 
Mahatmajon said:
I would have posted more but my first (and only) command was a dotmap with instruction where to make the 2nd city. Unfortunately due to a lot of random sillyness this seemingly took forever and I gave up.

I suggest highly that AG's take a fairly standard approach of:
1. Show the initial map/starting location
(Group will specify where to settle, first build, first tech, instructions for starting military unit)
2. The player will then play until one (or more) of the following occur:
Another civ met
Unit/building/wonder completed
Tech discovered
Player determines that a situation requires input

I'm sorry that you decided to give up. Your city is in barbarian hands now, don't you want to get it back. And the problem of the second city taking so long was to my mind the settler being built in size 1 London. :eek:

Your 2nd point is somewhat similar to the Q and A scheme. But as game develops, more orders have to be dealt with. The ratio of involvement of the crowd, as I stated before, can be adjusted by variant rules. If you want to host a game like you describe it, take the really general rules, add some variants and I'll happily show up and teach your warriors how to slay a bear.

Till then, I'm open for further suggestions. :scan:
 
I'm sorry the silliness drove you away Mahatmajon. I was appreciative of your dotmap input, and for a moment saw the whole game panning out with that sort of level of two-way feedback.

I did make a point of sticking to your order, and making sure we got a city there eventually (by repeatedly telling people their settler-related orders were null and void).

Got there in the end, but too late for you!

Maybe the result of this discussion will bring about a kind of anarchy game that will appeal to players across a broad mindset.

Regardless, thanks for looking in :)
 
Flotorius is onto something with his variant rules idea.

I might run a Total Anarchy game, and just stick to the core rules.

Or, I might run a Partial Anarchy game, where silliness is outlawed.

The format for asking for orders (what to ask for) is one of the most important things for us to settle: Q&A, or general? This could come down to a host's local variant rules.

My next one (if I do, do one) is going to be....oh hell, haven't decided yet. Although I quite like my idea of playing a game to midle ages and THEN, coming here and opening it up for anarchy...
 
Is it worth an anarchy game starting a new thread every 10 pages? Or at the very least every age?
 
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