Civ 4 QSC Type of Event

[leif erikson]

I have broken this idea out of the Brainstorming thread to try to help us develop it a bit further. (btw, QSC stands for Quick Start Challenge)

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, please click here to go to the Civ 3 GOTM Server for the explanation of the event. The purpose of the Civ 3 QSC was to help improve a player's opening moves and early empire development.

The staff discussions thus far have looked at this event as a way to help players create a better start towards a goal of some victory condition. You may see it differently and we would appreciate your comments about your expectations for such an event.

Some questions you may wish to consider about a QSC type of event:

The time frame for such an event. - In Civ 3, the QSC consisted of the first 80 turns. What should a Civ 4 event encompass and why?

What feedback would be useful to you? - what do you think would help you to better learn how to develop your game.

What other things might we consider in planning such an event?

 

[azzaman333]

1000BC sounds to me like a good point for a Civ 4 QSC.

I also think it would be best if it the first spoiler was limited to the QSC period.

 

[AgedOne]

I used to take part in the old Civ3 QSC (a long while ago - and really had my eyes opened as to the ruthless efficiency of some participants compared to me).

I would say that, to keep with the theme, or 'feel' of the QSC, we need to finish before the game is too far advanced. You do not need, imo, to hear about the story of your first war, or anything very much after the players' stories begin to get complicated and diverge too much. (I wouldn't cut it off so soon that an early rush was missed out - that could be an essential part of somebody's start strategy)

On the other hand, we do need enough time to see if initial plans are beginning to work. You can include the first wonder or two (if that's what someone is heading for). You should allow enough time for a successful slingshot to play out.

I would suggest somewhere in the region of 120 turns.

You will also need a carefully thought out system of rating the starts against each other. It can't be down to somebody's opinion, but then something as simple as the score would be too blunt a tool to measure everyone with. If I remember, the Civ3 one took a number of different measures - number of cities, units, amount of gold, techs learned, civs met.

 

[Niklas]

I would like to suggest turn 115 for the cutoff on normal speed. Turn 115 is 1 AD, which is aesthetically pleasing, and IMO falls within the timeframe where the games truly start to diverge. I also think this would go well with tying the first spoiler to the QSC, like azzaman suggested, so we can discuss and compare games up to this point with some hard fact statistics to provide.

As for ranking and rating, I'm less interested in an actual ranking of the games so much as a way to compare games. It would be perfect if there could be a table of statistics where the viewer could opt to rank the games according to different criteria (score, population, tech, etc...). That would mean we wouldn't really need to worry about creating some artificial ranking system like the one for the Civ3 QSC.

 

[chopster]

Reading the openings of the great players improved my Civ 3 game out of sight.

I'd suggest a "date" rather than a specific number of turns, as this date could be the same for all selected game speeds.

1000BC would be my choice so as to be able to include as much detail as possible in the write ups.

 

[leif erikson]

Reading the openings of the great players improved my Civ 3 game out of sight.

I agree, I lived to download the write-ups and replay the game. Helped me too!

I'd suggest a "date" rather than a specific number of turns, as this date could be the same for all selected game speeds.

1000BC would be my choice so as to be able to include as much detail as possible in the write ups.

In a normal speed Civ4 game, this equates to 75 turns. In Civ3, it was 80 turns.

I created a spreadsheet of the events for teams in SGOTM08 and many had completed a CS sling by 75 turns. No one had Alphabet yet, but nearly so, there were no tech trades.
By turn 75, most teams had built their third city. Nearly all teams also had a Great Scientist by then as well.