Death of a game?
- Thread starter grant2004
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RE: difficulty level: We played this game at Prince, and it was (too) easy. But IMO we were very lucky in this game. (I've been thinking about a post mortem for this game for months). We had silver and double gold in the first two cities, and iron in the BFC of the capital. We didn't have any big barbarian problems because we were at the bottom of the continent, without big tundra areas. We managed to pull of the CS slingshot, which put us way ahead. The other continent was backwards because Monty and Toku aren't the best techers in the world.
@ continuous play:
This sounds like an interesting idea, there are certainly a few bugs that need to be worked out, like instruction posting but I think it can work. Also I think this would expand the number of people willing to be DPs I tried being a DP once this game, but never ran for the office again because the session took so long (and this was way back when we had 4-5 cities!). Doing only 2 turns makes the DP commitment more manageable.
@ Expansion packs:
While it would be possible to play a BTS game given a large amount of information posted on the forums I don't think anyone is going to commit to regularly posting that information. If we did something like the 2 turns per day plan then the amount of information that would have to be posted would be ridiculus, can you imagine posting screenshots for every city every day?
As a vanilla player who has read a BTS SG I know that I don't understand what is going on when BTS players talk to each other about the game. In order for vanilla players to participate in decision making BTS players would need to give detailed analysis of what the effects of BTS elements are. I'm not sure that people would stick with this high standard of information because it requires extra work.
That said if a BTS game is decided on, I don't think we'll have a complete loss of vanilla players (nor will we loose all BTS players if we select vanilla). I know that if BTS is selected I'll have to fall back from decision making roles, but I have been wanting to sit on the bench for a little while there are still other good roles in this game.
@ difficulty level:
I agree the harder the better, we either need to make sure that we don't dominate this game too quickly. I will always prefer a desperate losing struggle to a surefire victory. (Ideally the game would be somewhere between those extremes)
Increasing the difficulty is a good way to do this, but I'd also like us to look into RPG elements that could cause us to make non-ideal moves in game.
This sounds like an interesting idea, there are certainly a few bugs that need to be worked out, like instruction posting but I think it can work. Also I think this would expand the number of people willing to be DPs I tried being a DP once this game, but never ran for the office again because the session took so long (and this was way back when we had 4-5 cities!). Doing only 2 turns makes the DP commitment more manageable.
@ Expansion packs:
While it would be possible to play a BTS game given a large amount of information posted on the forums I don't think anyone is going to commit to regularly posting that information. If we did something like the 2 turns per day plan then the amount of information that would have to be posted would be ridiculus, can you imagine posting screenshots for every city every day?
As a vanilla player who has read a BTS SG I know that I don't understand what is going on when BTS players talk to each other about the game. In order for vanilla players to participate in decision making BTS players would need to give detailed analysis of what the effects of BTS elements are. I'm not sure that people would stick with this high standard of information because it requires extra work.
That said if a BTS game is decided on, I don't think we'll have a complete loss of vanilla players (nor will we loose all BTS players if we select vanilla). I know that if BTS is selected I'll have to fall back from decision making roles, but I have been wanting to sit on the bench for a little while there are still other good roles in this game.
@ difficulty level:
I agree the harder the better, we either need to make sure that we don't dominate this game too quickly. I will always prefer a desperate losing struggle to a surefire victory. (Ideally the game would be somewhere between those extremes)
Increasing the difficulty is a good way to do this, but I'd also like us to look into RPG elements that could cause us to make non-ideal moves in game.
donsig
Low level intermediary
I'm not sure about ![[civ4]](/images/smilies/civ4.gif "Civ4 [civ4]")
but we found in ![[civ3]](/images/smilies/civ3.gif "Civ3 Icon [civ3]")
that while higher difficulties held the attention of those more interested in playing the Civ game, those of us who want to emphasize the role playing and democracy parts lose out. For example, in at higher difficulty levels it really doesn't make sense to research which means no need for a science officer.
I still think running tandem DGs is the answer. Whiel playing the same save won't work for m any reasons, we can still have one DG focused on playing the Civ game and another focused on roleplaying and government structure. There's really no reason a person couldn't participate in both (assuming they stayed true to the focus of each game). I also think we could do this within one forum (with a few sub-forums of course). We could also try the idea of playing the same save but then a person would have to choose which one to play and we'd two user groups similar to those int he MTDGs.
As for the idea of playing variable turns (to answer again DaveShack's question), this is also bad because it opens up the question we started to address in this game, namely when is it ok to have delays? We never found a satisfactory answer. Playing a set number of turns means we avoid that issue entirely. That said, a schedule such as that suggested by vra379971 is workable and makes sense.
Well, I don't think we'd have to post screenies every day. The beauty of playing as a group is that one person doesn't have to do everything. The original idea of having mayors in cities was to encourage someone to adopt a city and provide the kind of information in the forums we'd need about that city. The idea also gels with role playing especially if we could ever get another original idea to fly - each citizen living in a city and participating in local politics. Imagine if the citizens who chose to live in a city controlled what it built and the tiles it worked? That would be fun. Imagine then trying to formulate a national policy with all these independant cities doing their own thing. That's a democracy game. Now I can see the Civvers flinching. They cringe and say, how can you win a Civ game like that! Well, that's the additional challenge, isn't it? We certainly wouldn't have a perfect Civ game but then again we wouldn't get so far ahead everyone would get bored either. And if we got our butts kicked by the AI we'd roleplay the end of Civililation and fire up a new game.
but we found in that while higher difficulties held the attention of those more interested in playing the Civ game, those of us who want to emphasize the role playing and democracy parts lose out. For example, in at higher difficulty levels it really doesn't make sense to research which means no need for a science officer.I still think running tandem DGs is the answer. Whiel playing the same save won't work for m any reasons, we can still have one DG focused on playing the Civ game and another focused on roleplaying and government structure. There's really no reason a person couldn't participate in both (assuming they stayed true to the focus of each game). I also think we could do this within one forum (with a few sub-forums of course). We could also try the idea of playing the same save but then a person would have to choose which one to play and we'd two user groups similar to those int he MTDGs.
As for the idea of playing variable turns (to answer again DaveShack's question), this is also bad because it opens up the question we started to address in this game, namely when is it ok to have delays? We never found a satisfactory answer. Playing a set number of turns means we avoid that issue entirely. That said, a schedule such as that suggested by vra379971 is workable and makes sense.
Well, I don't think we'd have to post screenies every day. The beauty of playing as a group is that one person doesn't have to do everything. The original idea of having mayors in cities was to encourage someone to adopt a city and provide the kind of information in the forums we'd need about that city. The idea also gels with role playing especially if we could ever get another original idea to fly - each citizen living in a city and participating in local politics. Imagine if the citizens who chose to live in a city controlled what it built and the tiles it worked? That would be fun. Imagine then trying to formulate a national policy with all these independant cities doing their own thing. That's a democracy game. Now I can see the Civvers flinching. They cringe and say, how can you win a Civ game like that! Well, that's the additional challenge, isn't it? We certainly wouldn't have a perfect Civ game but then again we wouldn't get so far ahead everyone would get bored either. And if we got our butts kicked by the AI we'd roleplay the end of Civililation and fire up a new game.
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
Nice to know my name will stay in the demogame history books for a long time!
Not for the reasons i hoped for though...
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
How about putting up a BTS mini-info centre within the demogame forum itself, so new elements of the game are explained in detail, so people who don't have BTS, can have more understanding of the game without going though entire threads to pick out the info they want.
I'm not sure about
I still think running tandem DGs is the answer. Whiel playing the same save won't work for m any reasons, we can still have one DG focused on playing the Civ game and another focused on roleplaying and government structure. There's really no reason a person couldn't participate in both (assuming they stayed true to the focus of each game). I also think we could do this within one forum (with a few sub-forums of course). We could also try the idea of playing the same save but then a person would have to choose which one to play and we'd two user groups similar to those int he MTDGs.
As for the idea of playing variable turns (to answer again DaveShack's question), this is also bad because it opens up the question we started to address in this game, namely when is it ok to have delays? We never found a satisfactory answer. Playing a set number of turns means we avoid that issue entirely. That said, a schedule such as that suggested by vra379971 is workable and makes sense.
Well, I don't think we'd have to post screenies every day. The beauty of playing as a group is that one person doesn't have to do everything. The original idea of having mayors in cities was to encourage someone to adopt a city and provide the kind of information in the forums we'd need about that city. The idea also gels with role playing especially if we could ever get another original idea to fly - each citizen living in a city and participating in local politics. Imagine if the citizens who chose to live in a city controlled what it built and the tiles it worked? That would be fun. Imagine then trying to formulate a national policy with all these independant cities doing their own thing. That's a democracy game. Now I can see the Civvers flinching. They cringe and say, how can you win a Civ game like that! Well, that's the additional challenge, isn't it? We certainly wouldn't have a perfect Civ game but then again we wouldn't get so far ahead everyone would get bored either. And if we got our butts kicked by the AI we'd roleplay the end of Civililation and fire up a new game.
Well, that's why I support Monarch. CIV 4 handles 'difficulty' in a far more balanced way, that doesn't require a scientifc approach to winning. This makes both possible at this level.
I'm not a fan of splitting games. Games are already on life support, and such things generally end at eventual reconciliation, so it's not worth it. It really is always better to have a happy medium, which I'd like to stress is completely possible.
As for posting screenies everyday, that wouldn't be needed. Every now and then is fine, and tiles don't change that much, or very often.
As for the mayors/citizens making plans that conflict with other mayors and national advisors, no I agree, we'd not have a perfect game. We'd have civlization as we know it. And, isn't that the point anyway of a Demogame, to simulate Civilization? i mean, I really don't think the Civvers would really cringe - we have SG crazyness and most games end in victory.
And as for info, why re-invent the tire
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222075
There's another thing --
It'll be harder - much harder - to poll things like trades, diplomacy, and maybe techs. What's true on say, day #94 might be completely different on day #95.
1 or 2 turns per day would only work if we had enough people (maybe a dozen) here every single day.
Here's another problem --
How would we determine when to play the save? Let's suppose it's every day at 7pm. That means, at 7:30pm (assuming that's when the save is done), every must be at the forum ready to do all discussion, polling, and whatnot within less than 24 hours. People aren't robots - they aren't going to be on this forum refreshing the screen every 5 seconds looking for a new post or poll.
Suppose there was a poll to trade a tech. That poll might be obsolete the next turn, so the poll has to be finished within 24 hours, not to mention the discussion. BTW, for a game to work like this, you would need to use the chatroom! Posting is just too slow. Oh, and some people have limited time on the Internet (say, maybe a few hours). They can't post from work or school, but that doesn't mean they can't join the Demogame (I know some will hint that). So, you're really cramming 24 hours of discussion and polling into maybe 3 hours that are very chopped up.
Let's say a turn is played at 2pm EDT.
- An east-coaster puts up a discussion at 4pm EDT, when they get home from work, on a trade with the Aztecs.
- Dutchfire, who's in the Netherlands makes a post at 5:30pm EDT (10:30pm his time?).
- donsig responds at 9pm EDT. Dutchfire is asleep and can't reply. He asks about an alternate possibility.
- 4am EDT - due to time constraints on 1-turn-a-day play, a poll is made. Dutchfire realizes that there's another possibility, but can't add to the poll since it has already been made. Maybe he made the decision at 10am EDT. Even if it weren't a poll yet, a poll made at 10am EDT wouldn't allow for everyone to answer the poll before the next turn at 4pm.
Case in point, 1 (or two)-turn-per-day saves would make the game more chaotic. There's too much bueracracy already.
Chieftess, I couldn't agree more with all your points.
Thus my proposition with my change in format, that would also serve to reduce the bureaucracy.
Each Ministry and City has it's elected mayor for a certain number of turns, and they have authority over thier portfolios. The DP could overrule them, but there would need to be a good reason for it or they can't expect to be re-elected. And the same of course could be said of the decisons Ministers make, as well as mayors.
Therefore, Citizens will get to participate in all discussions without the need for polls on every issue. Even in a Democratic setting there is Representation. In most Democratic settings actually. Which would also favour the RP crowd a bit.
In that case, lets call Dutch the Sci. Minister. He realizes there is a trade oppertunity and opens it up to discussion (That said, there's usually a turn or two or more window for such things) people reply, and he makes a decision which he'll have to defend at the next election if need be.
Would it always have been the BEST option? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But then if we always made the best decisons on every part of Civ we'd all be able to crush the AI on Diety.
And, 12 people isn't much. We are discussing ways to reformat and grow the concept. if it can be reformatted, we can get 12. Triple that visit the SG forum alone, and there are HORDES of people on the forum every second.
Thus my proposition with my change in format, that would also serve to reduce the bureaucracy.
Each Ministry and City has it's elected mayor for a certain number of turns, and they have authority over thier portfolios. The DP could overrule them, but there would need to be a good reason for it or they can't expect to be re-elected. And the same of course could be said of the decisons Ministers make, as well as mayors.
Therefore, Citizens will get to participate in all discussions without the need for polls on every issue. Even in a Democratic setting there is Representation. In most Democratic settings actually. Which would also favour the RP crowd a bit.
In that case, lets call Dutch the Sci. Minister. He realizes there is a trade oppertunity and opens it up to discussion (That said, there's usually a turn or two or more window for such things) people reply, and he makes a decision which he'll have to defend at the next election if need be.
Would it always have been the BEST option? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But then if we always made the best decisons on every part of Civ we'd all be able to crush the AI on Diety.
And, 12 people isn't much. We are discussing ways to reformat and grow the concept. if it can be reformatted, we can get 12. Triple that visit the SG forum alone, and there are HORDES of people on the forum every second.
donsig
Low level intermediary
Ahh, the original trade minister is back, eh, CT? Well, I'm not an expert at but isn't there a much better trade screen than in ? Wouldn't that tell us what techs others are willing to trade? Couldn't we formulate our trading desires in a general way? Again by playing a regular schedule we'd be forced to do this. Remember when we used ot vote on our stance towards other civs? Well, we could do the same thing and with a regular schedule in force it would actually mean something. Rather than giving specific oders we'd have to give parameters. Like [/i]no trades with Bismark![/i] or don't trade away iron working or try to buy astronomy. It could be fun.
We don't even have to play every day. I think our thinking about this got as far as realizing that we'd need to have the save played at different times of the day to allow for people in different parts of the world to be DPs. It would be tricky but not impossible to schedule.
And Chieftess, this could definately be played without using a chatroom.
but isn't there a much better trade screen than in ? Wouldn't that tell us what techs others are willing to trade? Couldn't we formulate our trading desires in a general way? Again by playing a regular schedule we'd be forced to do this. Remember when we used ot vote on our stance towards other civs? Well, we could do the same thing and with a regular schedule in force it would actually mean something. Rather than giving specific oders we'd have to give parameters. Like [/i]no trades with Bismark![/i] or don't trade away iron working or try to buy astronomy. It could be fun.We don't even have to play every day. I think our thinking about this got as far as realizing that we'd need to have the save played at different times of the day to allow for people in different parts of the world to be DPs. It would be tricky but not impossible to schedule.
And Chieftess, this could definately be played without using a chatroom.
I strongly agree with two games: the civ and the role (do you think both are
compatible? easy,play both).
I want a game that our enemies are barbs and other civs, not independent
governors/mayors.
With an interesting forum, by sure.
Best regards,
compatible? easy,play both).
I want a game that our enemies are barbs and other civs, not independent
governors/mayors.
With an interesting forum, by sure.
Best regards,
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
I guess the most important question is, do we want to start all over again?
Depends on whether you mind it's an Innovian. 
Anyway...back to topic.
How does this proposal sound, which is an amalgam of what we've discussed so far...
1) Turns played often (Starting at mabye 3, then scaling down to 1 as things progress).
2) Each Advisor and Mayor will be elected for a term (mabye of at least 7 days) and during that term, they will have final say over what happens in their realms - barring the DP overruling them due to an in-game situation. The DP will also be elected for a similar term.
3) (New Propositon!) A Secetaty of State will be also elected and serve as liason for that term to help keep the citizens and threads updated.
4) Unless stated, each ciy will have a mayor. If no-one wants to become mayor of a new city, temporary control (permanent if needed) will be given to the mayor of the nearest city. If two cities are equally near, the city with the highest cultural rating will have first chance to add the city to their holdings.
5) We use BTS and perhaps Monarch level to keep members interested. In additon, a BTS info Center is linked to here.
Thoughts? If this is acceptable, I'd be nice to mvoe on from here.
How does this proposal sound, which is an amalgam of what we've discussed so far...
1) Turns played often (Starting at mabye 3, then scaling down to 1 as things progress).
2) Each Advisor and Mayor will be elected for a term (mabye of at least 7 days) and during that term, they will have final say over what happens in their realms - barring the DP overruling them due to an in-game situation. The DP will also be elected for a similar term.
3) (New Propositon!) A Secetaty of State will be also elected and serve as liason for that term to help keep the citizens and threads updated.
4) Unless stated, each ciy will have a mayor. If no-one wants to become mayor of a new city, temporary control (permanent if needed) will be given to the mayor of the nearest city. If two cities are equally near, the city with the highest cultural rating will have first chance to add the city to their holdings.
5) We use BTS and perhaps Monarch level to keep members interested. In additon, a BTS info Center is linked to here.
Thoughts? If this is acceptable, I'd be nice to mvoe on from here.
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
How often, in days do you proposed (one turnchat a day)?
I think a term should be at least 14 days, and for the judges i would say that a month would be better
Could you explain this in more detail?
In this game we started with a mayor for each city, however as our empire grew, we were forced to have governors of several cities, but if there was enough people willing to play, then it would be ideal to have a mayor for each city.
I agree with you on playing monarch BTS, that would need agreement from the rest of us. However I would be happy to help maintain a BTS info centre for the demogame.
Or possibly help me finish the one that I was supposed to finish (but forgot about), some time ago?
I've still got that link around here somewhere....One turnchat a day would be best.
The term times you mention I would second as well.
The Sec. of State would dip into the save after it's played and get screenies of cities if mayors needed it, etc. A caretaker role basically.
As for people willing to play, with enough advertising, that should not be a problem.
EDIT: I need a question answered. In the last game, did Mayors have FINAL authority? Or just the job of sending stuff in?
The term times you mention I would second as well.
The Sec. of State would dip into the save after it's played and get screenies of cities if mayors needed it, etc. A caretaker role basically.
As for people willing to play, with enough advertising, that should not be a problem.
EDIT: I need a question answered. In the last game, did Mayors have FINAL authority? Or just the job of sending stuff in?
City Mayors (who were called governors for most of the game) had final authority over all builds, tile allocations and worker actions in their cities (unless there was a finished poll overruling them. Polls always overruled everything).
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