Good day to all!
As a long time player of this game, I have observed how games often unfold in the same fashion: expand, expand, attack, attack and maybe sometime down the road you win if you have not lost interest yet already. As someone who often does not see the intense lategame for that reason, many games are thus pretty similar. The maps and the AIs are different, but the expectation of how a game plays out does not change much. I have seen many ways other games are played, including speedrunning and as a bingo. So why not apply a completely different ruleset to Civ 4 as well? Many people have done speedruns before, but it is not very likely someone has tried to bingo-ify this game before. Allow me to explain the setup:
In a standard bingo, you have a 5x5 board filled with various goals of various difficulties. As the game moves on, you find yourself slowly nearing a specific goal. This is where a bingo game deviates from a standard game: you adjust your regular strategy according to the goals that are in front of you time and tech-wise and sometimes even unoptimal plays suddenly look decent now in this new light. The existence of goals adds a new level of strategy and you have to consider new things in your decision-making. Why? Because Civilization has traditionally been a rather slow game, especially with the added level of depth. That is why, instead of completing a full game, I decided to cap the total time alotted to 1.5 hours or 90 minutes, for this first iteration. Perhaps different iterations will be made in the future but as total time changes, so will the difficulty of the goals as the current goal difficulty is attuned to a 1.5 hour game. To make the idea of goals a little bit more clear, here is a visual representation:
Made with Bingosync.
This is an example of a bingocard that is partially filled in: the player has reached five goals in who knows how many minutes and is sitting comfortably in the classical era, among other goals. There is still plenty to do with some goals being fairly straightforward such as building 3 libraries, while other goals are more limited or even conceptual. All kinds of elements from the game are involved including building, combat and diplomacy. SRL-style bingo coding was used to generate such a card that represents everything. Without knowing the map, your current empire or your rival AIs, where would you go from here? What techs, strategy or builds would you prioritise? That is the charm of every bingo match: and because Civilization is inherently randomly generated, it adds even more strategy!
Because this project is still in its early phases, any feedback as well as goal suggestions are welcome. If you are interested, check the second post on how to play using this ruleset (not available yet until I have time to put it on there).
As a final announcement I will also give you this: this game is about to make its debut (?) on the stage of Bingothon 2023, an online charity event specifically catered towards bingos! If you feel like either a) seeing gamemode in action (with commentary) or b) supporting charity (or c) both), you are free to do so by visiting Bingothon at twitch. tv/bingothon this weekend June 10th 7:30pm CEST/6:30pm BST/1:30 EDT. Thank you!
As a long time player of this game, I have observed how games often unfold in the same fashion: expand, expand, attack, attack and maybe sometime down the road you win if you have not lost interest yet already. As someone who often does not see the intense lategame for that reason, many games are thus pretty similar. The maps and the AIs are different, but the expectation of how a game plays out does not change much. I have seen many ways other games are played, including speedrunning and as a bingo. So why not apply a completely different ruleset to Civ 4 as well? Many people have done speedruns before, but it is not very likely someone has tried to bingo-ify this game before. Allow me to explain the setup:
In a standard bingo, you have a 5x5 board filled with various goals of various difficulties. As the game moves on, you find yourself slowly nearing a specific goal. This is where a bingo game deviates from a standard game: you adjust your regular strategy according to the goals that are in front of you time and tech-wise and sometimes even unoptimal plays suddenly look decent now in this new light. The existence of goals adds a new level of strategy and you have to consider new things in your decision-making. Why? Because Civilization has traditionally been a rather slow game, especially with the added level of depth. That is why, instead of completing a full game, I decided to cap the total time alotted to 1.5 hours or 90 minutes, for this first iteration. Perhaps different iterations will be made in the future but as total time changes, so will the difficulty of the goals as the current goal difficulty is attuned to a 1.5 hour game. To make the idea of goals a little bit more clear, here is a visual representation:
Made with Bingosync.
This is an example of a bingocard that is partially filled in: the player has reached five goals in who knows how many minutes and is sitting comfortably in the classical era, among other goals. There is still plenty to do with some goals being fairly straightforward such as building 3 libraries, while other goals are more limited or even conceptual. All kinds of elements from the game are involved including building, combat and diplomacy. SRL-style bingo coding was used to generate such a card that represents everything. Without knowing the map, your current empire or your rival AIs, where would you go from here? What techs, strategy or builds would you prioritise? That is the charm of every bingo match: and because Civilization is inherently randomly generated, it adds even more strategy!
Because this project is still in its early phases, any feedback as well as goal suggestions are welcome. If you are interested, check the second post on how to play using this ruleset (not available yet until I have time to put it on there).
As a final announcement I will also give you this: this game is about to make its debut (?) on the stage of Bingothon 2023, an online charity event specifically catered towards bingos! If you feel like either a) seeing gamemode in action (with commentary) or b) supporting charity (or c) both), you are free to do so by visiting Bingothon at twitch. tv/bingothon this weekend June 10th 7:30pm CEST/6:30pm BST/1:30 EDT. Thank you!
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