Buce03 Planning thread.

[Bucephalus]

Okay, guys, I've moved our discussion to here as agreed.

It seems that we're close to agreement on how to play this to achieve our aim, which is to play a SS game that remains competitive in the Modern Age.

The arty thing seems to be the main sticking point - has anyone moved their position on this over the last couple of days?

Are there any further thoughts on any other of the issues that we've discussed?

I'm still experiencing connection problems, apparently major roadworks have disrupted the cable network in my area, so it's possible that my contributions may be a little sporadic for a few days yet - internet cafes are not really a convenient option - but I think I've made my thoughts fairly clear and you know me well enough to second-guess my opinions on most things.

One further way to refine the game parameters would be to give thought to world size/number of opponents - the AI performs better with larger empires.

 

[Phaedo]

I'd still like to avoid offensive arty, but if Tusker and TT feel strongly about it, I can live with it. If we do use offensive arty, I would at least like a hard limit on how many we can have. I don't really have any strong thoughts there. More than one siege stack would seem excessive though.

Was I correct that air units would not be affected by this rule?

 

[Elephantium]

After thinking about it further, I don't have a problem with banning offensive arty. Defensive arty will still allow us to set up kill zones for the wars, I saw how powerful those are in some game I played a while back.

Of course, careful diplomacy may obviate the need to use arty. We'll really only need them if we're badly behind in war production -- an unlikely scenario once we have RP.

For game settings, how does Standard, 60% Continents, all Sci civs sound? I don't have any preferences on temperature, precipitation, or world age.

As for difficulty level, I'd be willing to give this a shot on Deity.

 

[ThinkTank]

Ok, then let's go for it and do not use offensive arty.

I think what we have then is:

- no armies.
- no farms.
- no offensive arty (but all air units are on).
- SS victory.

I think this will be challenging enough on DG.

 

[Phaedo]

- no armies.
- no farms.
- no offensive arty (but all air units are on).
- SS victory.

Did we decide how the 'no farms' rule was going to work? A hard city cap or no specialists until after a city is pop 5.

 

[Phaedo]

We should also decide on a tribe to play. As we won't have cats, I think it is fair to play one with a relatively strong late ancient UU. Any thoughts? Maybe the Celts, Rome, Iroquois or even the Vikings?

 

[Elephantium]

Hmm...so long as we're all agreed on not using farms, a simple "Don't use farms" ought to be rule enough. It'll be very clear if we start using farms.

OTOH, a hard-and-fast rule will help prevent arguments about borderline cases -- and in that case, I'd lean towards "no specialists below a pop threshold" rule. Actually, in that case, why not make it "No more than one specialist in towns"? It would eliminate the size 4 plains farms and size 5 grassland farms and still allow things like "new town founded in 1000 AD works irrigated grassland to grow quickly and uses civil engineers to get productivity buildings up quickly."

On tribe ... how about random?

 

[ThinkTank]

No specialists until after a city is pop 5 - that just means that we still can have farms, of size 12, with 5/6 workers, 6/7 specialists.

How about this: no scientists or tax collectors in any town/city that is more than 50% corrupt?

 

[DWetzel]

lurker's comment: You may find yourself in situations where >1 specialist is required to keep a city from rioting, especially if luxuries are scarce -- so will probably want to keep that in mind.

Also, are you going to allow one-turn MMing of some out of the way places if that helps you finish a tech a turn sooner?

I might suggest your rule be "no more than one taxman/scientist per town, except where required to prevent riots."

 

[Elephantium]

lurker's comment: You may find yourself in situations where >1 specialist is required to keep a city from rioting, especially if luxuries are scarce -- so will probably want to keep that in mind.

Also, are you going to allow one-turn MMing of some out of the way places if that helps you finish a tech a turn sooner?

I might suggest your rule be "no more than one taxman/scientist per town, except where required to prevent riots."

Very appropriate to be getting advice on how to draft our regulations from someone who "co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the colour of the book that regulation's in."

For my part, I'll repeat my suggestion that the rule should simply be "No farms". The spirit of the rule is clear, and a simple team agreement to follow it is all the enforcement we'll need -- all without writing ourselves into corners re: riot prevention or research optimization.

 

[Bucephalus]

It looks like I've got my connection back, so I'll post my thoughts when I've got my daughter to bed.

 

[ThinkTank]

lurker's comment:
I might suggest your rule be "no more than one taxman/scientist per town, except where required to prevent riots."

We can use clowns for riot prevention can't we? So I'm not sure what your proposal is about.

I think the no farming rule should indeed pertain to scientists and taxmen; all other specialists should be allowed I think. Allowing one scientist per town would still allow say 100 size 2 cities with 1 scientist; that is 300 beakers per turn, which would make a difference -and would also surely count as farming.

 

[Phaedo]

Hmmm... It is a bit tricky. I guess I'm cool with just following the spirit of the rule. I do have a legalistic side and would like a hard rule, but that might be too problematic. We'll spend all our time arguing the rule rather than playing.

Any thoughts on tribe from the team?

 

[DWetzel]

Very appropriate to be getting advice on how to draft our regulations from someone who "co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the colour of the book that regulation's in."

For my part, I'll repeat my suggestion that the rule should simply be "No farms". The spirit of the rule is clear, and a simple team agreement to follow it is all the enforcement we'll need -- all without writing ourselves into corners re: riot prevention or research optimization.

lurker's comment: That's pretty much the simplest way, and y'all pretty much trust each other on this anyway.

 

[Aabraxan]

lurker's comment: Ah, rules! You could also write a simple rule like "only clowns and civil engineers allowed as specialists." There's not much point to a clown town . . . . . and a farm of civil engineers won't do you much good, either.

 

[Phaedo]

Sorry for getting us off on this tangent. It seems to be more complex than I imagined. Still, I have found it interesting just how integrated the farm strategy is to the game.

We'll see what happens, but I'll be interested to see if cops will end up being useful in our outer ring of cities.

 

[Elephantium]

They will. Court, PD, and a few cops go a long way to fight corruption.

Before we start the game, I'd like to have a guideline of how many cities we'll want to build. Not as a hard-and-fast rule, mind you, just a rough idea. It seems like a good breakpoint would be where cities will still be over 70% corrupt even with court, PD, and 2-3 cops. I'm not sure how that fits in with OCN, though.

 

[Bucephalus]

Blimey, I never thought a 'no farms' rule would stir up so much debate! My own feelings are that Tusker has it right - we all know what a farm is, so let's just not build them. Banning or limiting specialists in viable cities doesn't work for me, and is not in the spirit of what I intended by introducing the rule, which, along with the others, is to remove the crutches that are usually relied upon. Capping the number of cities we build excludes the legitimate building of towns for strategic purposes or resource capture, as does setting a cap on corruption. To satisfy Phaedo's legal mind we could try to define a farm (how about, 'a town which has as it's sole purpose the provision of gold/beakers through the use of specialists'?) but I don't think it's necessary, really. Since we know we cannot use farms, it should be self-limiting - if a town has no purpose, why build it?

Other crutches include:

Armies;
Offensive arty, particularly when used in conjunction with the former, though I wouldn't be completely opposed to a 'stack limit', as without the cover of an Army they would be vulnerable to attack, and would therefore need to be part of a well thought-out military campaign (and the AI does use them offensively, albeit seldom and badly);
Trading strategies that rely on disconnection of trade routes;
Resource connect/disconnect for mass upgrades;
Suicide boats;
Attaching renegotiated peace treaties to alliances;
Deliberately initiating a pre-build of a Wonder with the intention of switching it;

The AI can do none of these things, and I think by using them we are swinging the balance in our favour way beyond the advantage they get from the difficulty level. IMO, these are faults in the game's design, and would probably be patched out if our modders had access to the game code.

I would like us to be able to say that we've won the game through superior strategy, not by bending the rules.

Given all these restrictions, I find myself in agreement with TT regarding difficulty level and would suggest we play it at DG.

I'm not all that fussed over world size, though a large world would generate more trading opportunities and a greater likelihood of there being some competition in the Modern Age. Also, continents (without suicide boats) would actually make for an interesting choice in research by making 'Navigation' a prize worth having.

For a tribe, I'd suggest either Iroquois or France if we go with a non-scientific, Greece if not.

If we can reach agreement on the settings first, I can roll some starts while we dot the i's and cross the t's on the ruleset.

 

[Elephantium]

I'd prefer France to Iroquois.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Deleted post.