Cookbook?

[Nick723]

Hello fellow Civ Fanatics!

I came across a wonderful thread from a couple of years ago:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cookbook-1-sally-immortal.638637/

Idea seems simple but great, we all play the same map for a certain set of turns, then discuss and evaluate which save is best and compare approach. Great opportunity to learn from each other and to play as a team!

Would there be any enthusiasm for reviving this concept? Interested to hear thoughts / suggestions.

I also know some of you veterans were around last time - so great if you have ideas on best format / map to make things run smoothly. I was thinking we should probably go for immortal (tough but not too tough) so plenty of people can participate.

@Fippy - any appetite to play hostess again?

 

[5tephen]

Had a bit of a break recently but would be interested if this went ahead. I observed from afar last time.

 

[Pangaea]

Good idea. Might be fun. Missed the last one, and if I remember correctly from reading the thread (way back), that is what prompted @Fish Man to change his name

I'm sad to see the forum suddenly quite inactive right now, but maybe something like this could up the activity?

 

[Gumbolt]

Needs people to take part. Generally this series was done at lower levels to help people improve their game. Demand would be issue for this game.

Is the aim to make it a deity training exercise? Or to help people struggling on immortal?

 

[Nick723]

Good idea. Might be fun. Missed the last one, and if I remember correctly from reading the thread (way back), that is what prompted @Fish Man to change his name

I'm sad to see the forum suddenly quite inactive right now, but maybe something like this could up the activity?

Needs people to take part. Generally this series was done at lower levels to help people improve their game. Demand would be issue for this game.

Is the aim to make it a deity training exercise? Or to help people struggling on immortal?

Yeah I totally agree - absolutely needs participation to work. Like @Pangaea said it’s a shame to see forum activity down so I thought this might kick start things. If we don’t have critical mass however, we can try again in a few months / when more people are active.

In terms of purpose - I think it can be different things to different people. For the first time immortal player it might be a good intro to the difficulty level, but even super experienced players can learn from and enjoy contrasting different approaches, even if they’d beat the map easily.

 

[Qactus]

I only played one of these so far and highly enjoyed it. In that case it was a very tough deity start and that's what I think worked really well with the format: Most of the players that participated (me included) wouldn't usually play such a map, but playing a small turnset and then comparing with others, identifying the own small mistakes or bad decisions you can't afford on that level... was intriguing. You reflect on your own play and try to learn a lesson for the future, but in the next round you can freely choose one of the better efforts to continue.
On such a tough deity map, it becomes more of a team effort, a collective uphill battle where the group needs someone to succeed to find a path forward.
That said, I would also play immortal. The difference will be, that results on immortal will probably better reflect player skill, while deity will add more randomness due to luck (or lack thereof) with barbarians, early war declarations, AI settling decisions, etc.

 

[Fippy]

I wouldn't mind hosting another, but need to know which difficulty peoples prefer.
Please mention for example Immortal (hard), Deity (easy to medium), Deity (hard) and so on.

Instead of voting (sounds so formal ) i suggest we create a pool of games after each round, from which you can continue.
Games get into that pool by players nominating them for "i would like to play on from this save".

Oh and i also need info on which mod(s) we prefer, i.e. just BUG or Buffy.

 

[Tonny]

I'd love to see new cookbooks again. However most tend to end up with conquest or domination. Some could be played with a specific victory in mind to exchange ideas on those games. i.e. AP or cultural or even espionage.
I prefer playing those games with Buffy, since most of us are likely to use that mod anyways for BOTM, gauntlets and challenge games. New players can learn to use this mod for future HoF games too.
Voting indeed sounds formal, but can be used to nominate the "best" games from which we can choose to play with.
Any level is fine by me.

 

[Nick723]

I wouldn't mind hosting another, but need to know which difficulty peoples prefer.
Please mention for example Immortal (hard), Deity (easy to medium), Deity (hard) and so on.

Instead of voting (sounds so formal ) i suggest we create a pool of games after each round, from which you can continue.
Games get into that pool by players nominating them for "i would like to play on from this save".

Oh and i also need info on which mod(s) we prefer, i.e. just BUG or Buffy.

Great - thanks Fippy!

I don’t have a strong preference on difficulty level but would probably prefer Immortal (hard) or Deity (easy) if push came to shove (that’s my current level). Mods wise I’ve never used BUFFY (only BUG) but don’t mind downloading it if needed.

However if most folks don’t use BUFFY (not sure if that’s true or not) I think we should stick to BUG to maximise audience.

 

[SaintSaens_Op61]

I think this would be a great idea. I usually play at or below Monarch, but this would be an excellent way to learn the higher levels without getting frustrated. I have BUG, but I would be willing to use BUFFY.

I'm sad to see the forum suddenly quite inactive right now, but maybe something like this could up the activity?

One reason for that might be that many students will be having finals in the next few weeks or so.

 

[Pangaea]

I wouldn't mind hosting another, but need to know which difficulty peoples prefer.
Please mention for example Immortal (hard), Deity (easy to medium), Deity (hard) and so on.

Oh and i also need info on which mod(s) we prefer, i.e. just BUG or Buffy.

To make it more welcoming for newer members or people outside the elite Deity-crew, I think Immortal would be best. Should reduce the random factor too from barbs and possibly AIs settling in our face. Deity tends to necessitate Archery (unless the map is super crowded), which may reduce diversity. Think the main thing is that the map is "open". Meaning there are different sensible paths both for early techs and early cities.

Been re-reading the previous thread (first 5-ish pages), and I think it would be a good idea for the first stint to have more turns. Maybe 50? One big discussion point between games was 2 cities vs 3 cities. With some more turns there will be more "breathing room" for getting 3 cities, maybe even 4. Perhaps it will be easier to see different strategical choices in the games. One of the things that surprised me in the previous thread was that so few people went for early Pottery given the nice FP land, and how little "reward" those games got in terms of votes. A little slower expansion, true (cottages instead of chops), but the benefit can be strong in the longer term (particularly for FIN civs with 3 cottages right off the bat)

Similarly to the difficulty question, I suspect BUG (+BULL) will be easier for people than Buffy. It's sometimes tricky to set up right (@lymond has helped about 8712 people in the last year I reckon! ). Doesn't matter for me personally as I've got a great setup for both now, with a script to switch the DLLs around (working on Linux too!). A possible upside to Buffy is that people may get more interested in HoF and BOTM games, once they already have Buffy up and running.

Was going to suggest having Lock modified assets ON, but I suppose that means you can't check anything yourself either, which may not be ideal for a map-maker/host.

Fantastic that you want to host the game, @Fippy. A downside to that is that you can't play yourself and teach us knobs the ins and outs of superior micro. I'm sure many of us could learn a lot from you However, even with only half the activity from the last game, this should be a really interesting experience for all of us. I'm sure there must be small things or considerations we all do that either help us or slow us down. This can make us more aware of such things.

 

[lymond]

I'd suggest using BUFFY as well. (Gratuitous HOF plug aside ) But really, it is a simple install with all the good fixin's set up and may encourage some folks to play GOTMs and HOF.

My is very good at demonstrating examples in game or with screenies. Her shadowing for demo purposes is certainly possible.

 

[Snowbird]

I'd suggest using BUFFY as well.

Needs people to take part.

Can't imagine BUFFY helping with participation.

Good luck with the game, no plans to participate from my side.

 

[Fippy]

Well i agree with Lymo, installing Buffy can encourage playing in GOTM etc.
It's also better for features, like workers stopping chops.
+ in general i would prefer if we move to Buffy as default for such games.

Tonny, we can have all victory types imo if somebody nominates a space game i.e. they want to continue.
Or i can carry those over by default if needed, won't be strict there.

Turnsets, how about 60t for the first and then we continue in steps of 40 as they get longer?

Let's try gathering interest for 2 games starting.
Buffy used (shout if you would not play cos of that).
Game A as regular Immortal (good leader with an average start).
Game B as edited Immortal (if i cannot find one) for a very poor and challenging start, maybe including settings like random personalities.

Can play in both or only one, and they start at the same time.
A more for those who are fine with improving (or trying) Imm.
B for those who like a tuffer challenge, while avoiding deity and still being accessible without dying to barbs early.

We prolly also need some basic rules for re-loading.
Would be nice if you give an opinion on that as well
I know it can be very annoying if simple mistakes like misclicking workers cannot be corrected.

 

[Qactus]

Sounds great! Only thing is I'm not sure if offering two games at the same time would spread participation too much, maybe it'd be better to have everyone focused on one map.
Buffy is great and I tend towards not reloading.
Regarding the start I think the difficulty is less important, but rather the variety of the opening, i.e. the map should not offer very obvious tech order and settling decisions.

 

[Nick723]

Maps and turnset suggestions sound good! I would be up for both games.

Re reloading, no strong opinions from my side (this is not HOF) but think at least we should stick to the principle of one play through. Reloads should only be for genuine misclicks / mistakes (e.g. move worker wrongly, forget to whip) and not because of new info (eg exploration reveals another city site was actually better) or bad luck (lose fight at good odds).

Regarding mods, whilst I have no issues with BUFFY (assuming I can get the install to work, I’m on a steam version of civ iv for what that’s worth) I do wonder if it’s best idea. One compromise perhaps if we are playing two games is game A could be without BUFFY and game B could be with.

 

[Gumbolt]

No reloading? Not sure about dual games. It assumes lots playing. Hmmm.

 

[drewisfat]

I'd do this at least on deity. I never figured out BUG's install since it seemed to have different folder requirements. Can play Buffy though, but still getting ineligible for HoF error grrr

 

[soundjata]

^^^^^
Same problem here I feel you man doubleyooteeF

 

[Pangaea]

I greatly prefer the rules from the previous cookbooks (those I found at least) with one try, no reloading. If people make mistakes or want to try something different, one can always re-play later.

Two games sounds fine to me.

Not sure what causes all the Buffy problems that keeps cropping up. Maybe it's steam (as usual) causing issues, or maybe it's Windows itself. Who knows. I do suspect it will be easier for most people with a vanilla or BUG game as opposed to Buffy. I'm good with either option, so Fippy can decide.

To my understanding, there is no practical difference between Buffy or BUG+BULL these days. It looks exactly the same to me, with the same options and help etc. It's different for those who oversee BOTM and suchlike, as they have various tools to check that people don't cheat. But for games like this that doesn't really matter.

I tend to play 'offline' games in Buffy these days, so I don't have to flip the DLLs around (despite how incredibly easy and fast it is), so no matter for me. Both options are fine.

60 turns in the first round sounds great. Will allow a bit more development and maybe more variance between the games.

Very unlikely I can participate during xmas/new year's as I won't have access to a computer then, at least not one with Civ 4 on it. But should be fine for another month or so.