ChrTh
Happy Yule!
So, gentlemen, what were your thoughts about how the game turned out? Also, any lurkers that followed along, what did you think?
CTIV-4: Blind Leading the Blind
- Thread starter ChrTh
- Start date
So, gentlemen, what were your thoughts about how the game turned out? Also, any lurkers that followed along, what did you think?
First of, congratulations to everyone! It was a fun game, and probably the first SG to ever finish in just 6 pages of posts.
The dynamic was interesting. I didn't find it too difficult to see where the last player was headed at each turn, but there were a lot of strange things going on that I would've normally called out or questioned. The real problem, I think, is that normally when making a move in an SG that some would consider unorthodox, you usually get a chance to try and justify or defend your decision. In this game, it just looked like
Still, we cleaned house! The warly war against England was a key factor, although it nearly crippled our economy. Still, I think (now) in the long run, a litle economy crippling in the early game pays for itself later on.
I'm glad we didn't have to sail to the other continent to finish of the domination. I was worried about that at the end. It's kind of funny that, left with no direction on the type of victory condition, we defaulted to pretty much constant warfare. My guess is that this would always happen!
The dynamic was interesting. I didn't find it too difficult to see where the last player was headed at each turn, but there were a lot of strange things going on that I would've normally called out or questioned. The real problem, I think, is that normally when making a move in an SG that some would consider unorthodox, you usually get a chance to try and justify or defend your decision. In this game, it just looked like
Still, we cleaned house! The warly war against England was a key factor, although it nearly crippled our economy. Still, I think (now) in the long run, a litle economy crippling in the early game pays for itself later on.
I'm glad we didn't have to sail to the other continent to finish of the domination. I was worried about that at the end. It's kind of funny that, left with no direction on the type of victory condition, we defaulted to pretty much constant warfare. My guess is that this would always happen!
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
Hey Gang,
Sorry about the delay in posting my thoughts.
The Purpose of this SG -- Original
All succession games essentially try to create a hive mind: victory is achieved by all participants working together toward a goal. However, the hive mind in a typical SG I would consider "lower order": between the variant rules, the leader's directions, the
and the 
, each player's actions are essentially limited. A hive mind is created, but each player is not actualized by the process--what I would consider "higher order", i.e. players working together but with independent thought arriving at a goal for the betterment of the group (in this case, victory). I wanted to see if we could create a higher order hive mind in an SG.
Unfortunately, this game was not a great test case for that. I'll explain below.
The Purpose of this SG -- Expanded
I'm not going to lie and say I thought of this right away, but it became obvious to me over the course of the game that there's another purpose to this SG: giving game leaders suggestions as to which areas of the game might require more communication. Certain aspects of C-IV seemed neglected due to the lack of direct communication, and by playing it through I was able to see where in my own games I need to place an emphasis.
Did it work?
In terms of the higher order hive mind? No. Or, more appropriately, there's not enough evidence that it was successful. Two reasons for this:
1) We lost 40% of our roster. That was a tough blow for the experiment, but not a damning blow.
2) Our starting position. I really, really wish we had started on the other continent. As it turned out, we were packed tight (which would require fighting in order to expand) and there was enough landmass to acquire a domination win. The domination ended up being a given--without specific instructions against it, the tendency is going to be to head towards the quickest, easiest way of victory. In this case, domination seemed laughably easy. Yes, we were fortunate to defeat England quickly, but I think everyone would've recognized the need to go to war early to make the situation livable.
In retrospect, if I were to do a game like this again (I won't before C-V), I would probably try to make sure it was smaller landmasses--maybe even archipelago--to make sure one style of victory wasn't obvious.
Where it did work, or, that is to say, where did we have issues?
I did learn a lot on the communications side. This is already long, so I'm going to sum up:
1) Non-obvious things require mucho explanation. Early in the game I started a road from Sparta to Athens because Sparta relied on British territory in order to connect resources. My screenshot was designed to show this reliance, and since war was imminent, my goal was for the road to be completed before war started. It wasn't, and while it didn't hurt us, it could have. It was probably obvious that our connection was via Britain, but the road being built wasn't obvious likely. I also really wanted a city on that coast blocked off by mountain chain, but I never got a chance to express that.
2) Civics. Probably because this is a new feature with C-IV. We went from Paganism to Free Religion. Directly. Despite being mostly Buddhist. Obviously some changes were made throughout the game, but either through lack of communication or lack of courage (didn't want to revolt if not sure we should) Civics seemed to be the most neglected. I'd be curious to know what the result would've been if we were Spiritual.
3) Religion. See Civics.
4) Diplomacy. Scowler already mentioned this, but this was also impeded by the fact that we were fighting most people. I've found in my other games, though, that Diplomacy requires a lot of discussion (with all the positive/negative factors).
Well, I think that's all that needs to be said at this time. I'd be curious to hear any thoughts from any lurkers.
Sorry about the delay in posting my thoughts.
The Purpose of this SG -- Original
All succession games essentially try to create a hive mind: victory is achieved by all participants working together toward a goal. However, the hive mind in a typical SG I would consider "lower order": between the variant rules, the leader's directions, the
and the , each player's actions are essentially limited. A hive mind is created, but each player is not actualized by the process--what I would consider "higher order", i.e. players working together but with independent thought arriving at a goal for the betterment of the group (in this case, victory). I wanted to see if we could create a higher order hive mind in an SG.Unfortunately, this game was not a great test case for that. I'll explain below.
The Purpose of this SG -- Expanded
I'm not going to lie and say I thought of this right away, but it became obvious to me over the course of the game that there's another purpose to this SG: giving game leaders suggestions as to which areas of the game might require more communication. Certain aspects of C-IV seemed neglected due to the lack of direct communication, and by playing it through I was able to see where in my own games I need to place an emphasis.
Did it work?
In terms of the higher order hive mind? No. Or, more appropriately, there's not enough evidence that it was successful. Two reasons for this:
1) We lost 40% of our roster. That was a tough blow for the experiment, but not a damning blow.
2) Our starting position. I really, really wish we had started on the other continent. As it turned out, we were packed tight (which would require fighting in order to expand) and there was enough landmass to acquire a domination win. The domination ended up being a given--without specific instructions against it, the tendency is going to be to head towards the quickest, easiest way of victory. In this case, domination seemed laughably easy. Yes, we were fortunate to defeat England quickly, but I think everyone would've recognized the need to go to war early to make the situation livable.
In retrospect, if I were to do a game like this again (I won't before C-V), I would probably try to make sure it was smaller landmasses--maybe even archipelago--to make sure one style of victory wasn't obvious.
Where it did work, or, that is to say, where did we have issues?
I did learn a lot on the communications side. This is already long, so I'm going to sum up:
1) Non-obvious things require mucho explanation. Early in the game I started a road from Sparta to Athens because Sparta relied on British territory in order to connect resources. My screenshot was designed to show this reliance, and since war was imminent, my goal was for the road to be completed before war started. It wasn't, and while it didn't hurt us, it could have. It was probably obvious that our connection was via Britain, but the road being built wasn't obvious likely. I also really wanted a city on that coast blocked off by mountain chain, but I never got a chance to express that.
2) Civics. Probably because this is a new feature with C-IV. We went from Paganism to Free Religion. Directly. Despite being mostly Buddhist. Obviously some changes were made throughout the game, but either through lack of communication or lack of courage (didn't want to revolt if not sure we should) Civics seemed to be the most neglected. I'd be curious to know what the result would've been if we were Spiritual.
3) Religion. See Civics.
4) Diplomacy. Scowler already mentioned this, but this was also impeded by the fact that we were fighting most people. I've found in my other games, though, that Diplomacy requires a lot of discussion (with all the positive/negative factors).
Well, I think that's all that needs to be said at this time. I'd be curious to hear any thoughts from any lurkers.
Your Civ choice of Alexander was interesting....He sort of lends himself to conquest.
The map certainly affected your possible victory options, or more accurately made one victory choice the obvious one (especially with Alex as your civ).
In the future I think that Archi maps or a continents where everybody gets a continent to themselves might make the course to victory a bit less obvious.
In addition in the future I probaly would not pick an agg. civ. I think the most adaptable (in regards to victory conditions) trait is exp. with phil. creative and org. in the next spot for adaptablity. In JC did not have praets he would provide an excellent civ choice (one that does not clearly point to a strategy). It was a very good, but the map and civ dictated the path to victory.
One question- Why, Chrtr, would you not do this type of SG again?
-Atlas
The map certainly affected your possible victory options, or more accurately made one victory choice the obvious one (especially with Alex as your civ).
In the future I think that Archi maps or a continents where everybody gets a continent to themselves might make the course to victory a bit less obvious.
In addition in the future I probaly would not pick an agg. civ. I think the most adaptable (in regards to victory conditions) trait is exp. with phil. creative and org. in the next spot for adaptablity. In JC did not have praets he would provide an excellent civ choice (one that does not clearly point to a strategy). It was a very good, but the map and civ dictated the path to victory.
One question- Why, Chrtr, would you not do this type of SG again?
-Atlas
ChrTh
Happy Yule!
Atlas* said:
To be honest, I picked Alex at random because I didn't see many (if any) SGs with him as the leader. I didn't want to pick Spain, for example, because there was already evidence of what one could do with Izzy. Alex was a blank slate at the point the game was started, imo.
I wouldn't do it again because it really isn't much fun for the lurkers. Yeah, they could try to follow along, but why make them do all that work?
bobrath
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2005
- Messages
- 1,238
lurker's comment: dredging up this older topic, but as an attempted lurker:
I found it hard to "follow" the story. Sure I could load up up each save and guess but there was no way for me to discuss or learn from it. Snapshots of the game give a really disjointed image. Imagine a flipbook movie with even more pages taken out - the stick figure goes from picking up a box to suddenly opening it without ever having set it on the table.
I was hoping that the players in the SG might do writeups. Back when I used to play gunboat diplomacy pbem, we'd all commit to doing post game wrap-ups. Basically "I did this cause I saw this" and that sort of thing. Part of my enjoyment of lurking SGs is that I can learn because of the discussion.
Perhaps the next time this variant is run either have the players commit to do ing some sort of post game review/recounting or utilize the
functionality to post their thoughts each turn. Then the other players are honor bound to not open the spoiler section which would preserve the integrity of the variant, but allow lurkers some discussion AND allow the other players at the end of the game to go back and figure out was was really supposed to happen...
Anyway, thanks for reading.
I found it hard to "follow" the story. Sure I could load up up each save and guess but there was no way for me to discuss or learn from it. Snapshots of the game give a really disjointed image. Imagine a flipbook movie with even more pages taken out - the stick figure goes from picking up a box to suddenly opening it without ever having set it on the table.
I was hoping that the players in the SG might do writeups. Back when I used to play gunboat diplomacy pbem, we'd all commit to doing post game wrap-ups. Basically "I did this cause I saw this" and that sort of thing. Part of my enjoyment of lurking SGs is that I can learn because of the discussion.
Perhaps the next time this variant is run either have the players commit to do ing some sort of post game review/recounting or utilize the
Spoiler :
Anyway, thanks for reading.
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