DG6 Discussion: Version, Mods, Variants, and All That Fun Stuff

[Ginger_Ale]

Discussion thread for what kind of version DG6 will be in, and how we will play/what the rules will be.

Some previous suggestions:

• Double your Pleasure Mod
• 5 City Challenge
• Rhye's of Civilization (Expansion Pack?)
• Plain C3C
• Vanilla w/ Additions

Of course, our first matter of business would be determining Vanilla Civ vs (PTW) vs C3C. According to this informal poll. When making a post, try to say what version your suggestion includes. ie:

(For C3C), we could do one of the Conquests.

I will try to keep a 'tally' of the ideas.

Ideas:

• GOTM Mod (Vanilla)
• Regular Epic Game (C3C)
• 5 Built City or 5 City Challenge (Vanilla)
• Rhye's of Civilization Expansion (C3C)
• 2-team multiplayer duel (C3C)

 

[MOTH]

Vanilla with the GOTM mods. These add the PTW civs and tend rebalance things a bit.

We should also do a loose 5BC game. My loose 5CC would be that we can only build 5 cities, but if any flip to us or we capture some then we can keep them. This would also mean that we could not disband one of the 5 initial cites to rebuild it in a better location.

 

[Nobody]

5 city would be to boring

 

[Black_Hole]

5 city would be to boring

no it wouldnt, it would focus us on micromanagement of those 5 cities... and it has been done, even on very high difficulties

 

[donsig]

Vanilla with the GOTM mods. These add the PTW civs and tend rebalance things a bit.

That's not a bad idea at all! I play my GOTMs in PTW and for awhile they were imitating some Conquests features as well. I'm not sure if the vanilla civ GOTM mods did that but this idea is certainly worth exploring. It gets us away from (the boring) vanilla Civ but at the same time doesn't require anyone to own PTW or Conquests.

You get a Moth!

 

[Provolution]

I would go for Conquests straight up, requiring another game file may confuse some people. Vanilla is long obsolete and people want a change (see poll).
However, we could try a new model involving citizens more, not polling tile management in
cities or something, which would limit recruitment a lot, but to ban certain exploits and so on. What if we emphasized the political roles of the separate cities, and laid in a subgame where citizens could run a city or a military unit, with a simple economic model taking care of inter-city competition and land improvemement. I found the roleplaying attempts for promoting certain cities intruiging, resembling the political dilemmas in the strategy game Pax Romana. Citizens need to compete internally, economically and at the same time think of the entire nation. This strategic dilemma needs a model to deal with citizen interests within the nation.
If done properly, this could stimulate participation and add an interesting game component

 

[Chieftess]

I would go for Conquests straight up, requiring another game file may confuse some people. Vanilla is long obsolete and people want a change (see poll).
However, we could try a new model involving citizens more, not polling tile management in
cities or something, which would limit recruitment a lot, but to ban certain exploits and so on. What if we emphasized the political roles of the separate cities, and laid in a subgame where citizens could run a city or a military unit, with a simple economic model taking care of inter-city competition and land improvemement. I found the roleplaying attempts for promoting certain cities intruiging, resembling the political dilemmas in the strategy game Pax Romana. Citizens need to compete internally, economically and at the same time think of the entire nation. This strategic dilemma needs a model to deal with citizen interests within the nation.
If done properly, this could stimulate participation and add an interesting game component

Just don't scare the newbies with huge, obscure, and rare words. This is only a game after all.

 

[Black_Hole]

Just don't scare the newbies with huge, obscure, and rare words. This is only a game after all.

its not only the newbies

 

[Provolution]

Just don't scare the newbies with huge, obscure, and rare words. This is only a game after all.

which word was huge, obscure and rare word here. I cerrtainly did not include "lenient"
I see worse excesses all over here with 5CC, Vanilla and so on. I think the DG Veterans should look into their DG vocabulary and clean out some internalized words as well as prior DG references. For new recruitment, we need to talk in the present and future.

 

[DaveShack]

which word was huge, obscure and rare word here. I cerrtainly did not include "lenient"

I think this might have been a reference to anarcho-syndicalist.

People who know Civ and CivFanatics will know what 5CC, AW, and DyP mean, however we should not forget there are some people who make their very first post in the DG forums so may not know these terms. How about a glossary or FAQ in the main forum?

As for references to prior demogames, we use them as examples of how particular policies are good or bad. This is standard debate technique. How can we fully discuss the options without having some reference point? Now, should the references be more complete, or more pertinent to the current discussion? Yes indeed, complete newcomers will have no idea what "DG3T3" means, and even veterans like myself have no idea what the references in DG1 are about. Maybe we need a FAQ on "incidents", each written by someone who is neutral on that incident or at least presenting all sides of the issue.

Some of the things we are discussing have tremendous ramifications. Take for example the 5CC, which means five city challenge, so at the end of each turn we can have no more than five cities. This has many ramifications on the game, for example instead of having 5 governors managing 4-10 cities each, there are at most 5 mayors each managing one city. It limits the number of units we can produce, and makes production of a wonder even more of a big deal because doing so would take away our biggest producing city for a couple of weeks. It also pretty much requires us to go to war with every rival civ to keep them from growing so big that we can never keep up.

Take the alternative 5BC meaning five built cities. This allows us to keep cities we capture, but at the end of each turn we can have a maximum of 5 cities that we built. Ok, that's a little easier, but to stay competitive with the AI we still have to go to war with everyone and/or capture lots of cities.

AW (always war) means we cannot make peace, ever, with the civ we're at war with (in the 1AW meaning first contact always war variation), or with any civ (in the true AW variation). This would be great for the military but tough on everyone else, as there is no trading at all in the full AW version, requiring us to research everything ourselves and capture any resources / lux we need.

 

[Black_Hole]

I think a 5 city challenge on Regent would be possible. Although it matters the size of map. On a medium map it would be just right. On small and tiny maps a large majority of all income, production, and food comes fromt he first five cities. Also we wouldnt have to worry about lots of governors, as we would have no more than 5 mayors and we would also have these mayors much earlier in the game, which is good for participation.

Regular game:
Participation goes down towards end, we require more governors near end equals low control of provinces at end of game

5 City Challenge:
We get 5 cities pretty early, meaning we can take advantage of the large amount of people at the beginning instead of just having 1 governor all of the anceint age(are more active time as a DG)

Mayors would become more and this would also increase discussion about what to build in each city, as everything we build will probably be discussed.

Also DaveShack we dont have to nessecarily go to war with everyone, diplomatic and culture wins wouldnt be too hard and wouldnt require lots of wars, infact every victory condition except domination would be possible.

This would be a great variant

 

[ravensfire]

Kicking and dancing for a 5CC variant!

I'm playing around with ruleset for a 5CC. The idea is to push the focus on the city mayors. The "executive council" advises and requests things from the mayors, but that's it. Mayors have complete and utter control of the cities - their discussions and polls run the city, no one else's.

This DG had some extemely strong, sometimes coersive leaders that dominated some Governors. I'd like to see the opposite - a weak national structure and a stronger local structure. Fewer positions, hopefully to spur more debates during election time.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Provolution]

About revising responsibility structure

These are just ideas on how to rethink the game, Civ is so complex so multiple of options are open.

I think the only way to strengthen governors and mayors beyond simply limiting cities to 5, is to make these positions more meaningful. We need to make a Council of Governors (Senate), a Council of Mayors (House of Lords) and a council of citizens (Parliament/Congress). I also do believe we should split the military into several generals, like Rome divided its military into various formations.

The military is bound to remain weak unless we do the same thing to the military as we did with domestic. We need competing/cooperating military formations/armies and allow for the citizens to have complete competing long term plans for various scenarios. We should radically rethink the roles of the Domestic and the military, split their powers, and integrate FA/Trade and Science/Culture. WE could also group positions by buildings, so only the military could authorize a barracks and city walls, culture/science could authorize temple/colloseum builds. Workers should be limited to a 50 Worker challenge, so our infrastructure does not grow too fast and that the worker discussion get more meaning (saving DP, limiting growth and make worker discussions more important). A similar Cap can be applied to the military, having various caps for ancient, medieval, industrial and modern.

However, a 5CC would severely reduce the game into a micromanagement feast, where city tile managers would have everything to say and the rest listen. tile management is a critical part of CIV, but in a DG setting would reduce interest.
No adopted cities, maybe no adopted units and so on. If we could somehow link ownership of for example gems in a province and wine in another to trade deals, and for example the gem governor wants the trade deal above the wine governor, we could link the value of that particular trade deal to allowed gold rushes for that governor.

The same applies to workers, we could have a maximum of 10 workers per province, which would force the governors to think through where to improve. In general, we need to expand governors running build queues to also decide on workers in their province. A governor could later on trade a worker to another province for gold, trade privileges and so on. This would also create a dynamic in inter-governor relationships, as they need to cooperate/compete in the same time. They would need to address workers, land improvements including fortresses, irrigation and mining as well as land clearance, buildqueues, now authorized by the military or science/culture. Additionally, these would get direct benefits from the trade deals, so leading a resource rich province would create many potential rushes.

Governor
Control up to 10 workers for the province
Build queues in cooperation with ministers and mayors
Decide on Province infrastructure and tile improvements
get 40-70 % of the Gold from trade deals coming from resources traded from province used for rushes.
Governors may authorize wonder builds in their province

Finance Minister
Market Place, Bank
tax slider, control national treasury, (takes tax of 30-60 % of trade deals)

Culture/Science Minister
Temple, Library, Colloseum, University
propose areas where wonders could influence borders, but not wonders themselves
propose research of new sciences
request scientists and entertainers in cities from governors and mayors

Military Minister
Barracks, City Walls
request police units

FA/Trade
Harbor, Airport

Domestic Minister
Settlers, Granary

Justice Minister
Courthouses (Also request Police units)
Police stations, Espionage actions
Watch corruption levels
handle Forbidden Palace, Mobilization, regime change

For the President, I would propose to hand over the responsibility of wonders, as heads of states often made those decisions, and take away the workers.

 

[Black_Hole]

About revising responsibility structure

These are just ideas on how to rethink the game, Civ is so complex so multiple of options are open.

I think the only way to strengthen governors and mayors beyond simply limiting cities to 5, is to make these positions more meaningful. We need to make a Council of Governors (Senate), a Council of Mayors (House of Lords) and a council of citizens (Parliament/Congress). I also do believe we should split the military into several generals, like Rome divided its military into various formations.

The military is bound to remain weak unless we do the same thing to the military as we did with domestic. We need competing/cooperating military formations/armies and allow for the citizens to have complete competing long term plans for various scenarios. We should radically rethink the roles of the Domestic and the military, split their powers, and integrate FA/Trade and Science/Culture. WE could also group positions by buildings, so only the military could authorize a barracks and city walls, culture/science could authorize temple/colloseum builds. Workers should be limited to a 50 Worker challenge, so our infrastructure does not grow too fast and that the worker discussion get more meaning (saving DP, limiting growth and make worker discussions more important). A similar Cap can be applied to the military, having various caps for ancient, medieval, industrial and modern.

However, a 5CC would severely reduce the game into a micromanagement feast, where city tile managers would have everything to say and the rest listen. tile management is a critical part of CIV, but in a DG setting would reduce interest.
No adopted cities, maybe no adopted units and so on. If we could somehow link ownership of for example gems in a province and wine in another to trade deals, and for example the gem governor wants the trade deal above the wine governor, we could link the value of that particular trade deal to allowed gold rushes for that governor.

The same applies to workers, we could have a maximum of 10 workers per province, which would force the governors to think through where to improve. In general, we need to expand governors running build queues to also decide on workers in their province. A governor could later on trade a worker to another province for gold, trade privileges and so on. This would also create a dynamic in inter-governor relationships, as they need to cooperate/compete in the same time. They would need to address workers, land improvements including fortresses, irrigation and mining as well as land clearance, buildqueues, now authorized by the military or science/culture. Additionally, these would get direct benefits from the trade deals, so leading a resource rich province would create many potential rushes.

Governor
Control up to 10 workers for the province
Build queues in cooperation with ministers and mayors
Decide on Province infrastructure and tile improvements
get 40-70 % of the Gold from trade deals coming from resources traded from province used for rushes.
Governors may authorize wonder builds in their province

Finance Minister
Market Place, Bank
tax slider, control national treasury, (takes tax of 30-60 % of trade deals)

Culture/Science Minister
Temple, Library, Colloseum, University
propose areas where wonders could influence borders, but not wonders themselves
propose research of new sciences
request scientists and entertainers in cities from governors and mayors

Military Minister
Barracks, City Walls
request police units

FA/Trade
Harbor, Airport

Domestic Minister
Settlers, Granary

Justice Minister
Courthouses (Also request Police units)
Police stations, Espionage actions
Watch corruption levels
handle Forbidden Palace, Mobilization, regime change

For the President, I would propose to hand over the responsibility of wonders, as heads of states often made those decisions, and take away the workers.

the 'tile managers' you are refferring to are probably mayors, and mayors wont have all of the power... there is still the entire executive, with trade, foreigh, the president, science, and they all have their regular jobs...

 

[Provolution]

The main part here was to give the governor a team of workers, limited in number to each. Try to see the big picture, with stronger governors cooperating and competing.
Imagine if we bundled resource trade deals to ownership of provinces.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Kicking and dancing for a 5CC variant!

I'm playing around with ruleset for a 5CC. The idea is to push the focus on the city mayors. The "executive council" advises and requests things from the mayors, but that's it. Mayors have complete and utter control of the cities - their discussions and polls run the city, no one else's.

This DG had some extemely strong, sometimes coersive leaders that dominated some Governors. I'd like to see the opposite - a weak national structure and a stronger local structure. Fewer positions, hopefully to spur more debates during election time.

-- Ravensfire

Exactly. The less positions, the more contested elections, the more fun. You notice in the Ancient Age there are few spots, so elections are competitive and meaningful, rather than a Term 6 corrupted province. Keeping it with 5 'provinces' or cities, election participation will stay high.

@DaveShack: There are the archives, but I'm sure someone will be willing to give you more info.

 

[Civanator]

Another option we can do is maybe have a certain amount of units under selected people's control. Like say 2 or 3 units, and then they are responsible for the actions of that unit. This would greatly involve more people. It's just an idea and would need to be refined though. In a sense, it would add a roleplay to the demogame. Because the 'commanders' of these units can request to Finance/domestic for unit upgrades (if any) or request to the Military Leader for an additional unit for an expedition into enemy territory or a strike on enemy resources/units. This also calls for commanders of other unit groups to work together to effectively fight a war. Just an idea

 

[donsig]

Exactly. The less positions, the more contested elections, the more fun. You notice in the Ancient Age there are few spots, so elections are competitive and meaningful, rather than a Term 6 corrupted province. Keeping it with 5 'provinces' or cities, election participation will stay high.

@DaveShack: There are the archives, but I'm sure someone will be willing to give you more info.

The ancient era is also the most important, game play-wise. Very good play early on leads to boring endgames. It may be this and not less positions that make our early elections more competitive. Just as it's not much fun to govern a corrupt province, I can't imagine it's much fun being president towards the end of a demogame. (I did run the last chat of DG1 and that was fun, but only because we knew we would win during the chat. Oh, and there was that fracas with the Babylonians, too. )

The archives or difficult to work with (at least for me). I went looking for an old thread from DG1 about why people lost interest inthe game and can't find it. I'd be happy to relate what I know about certain incidents but doubt I fit into the nuetral observer category.

As for terms, hmmm..., I consider myself a proper civfanatic but I don't know what DyP is.

As for which version we play and polls, well, we've had other polls before where people wanted to use PTW but they were always over-ruled by those above. Personally, I don't own Conquests and doubt I'd buy it just for the demogame. Of course if we structured the demogame so one didn't have to look at the save to participate then it wouldn't matter, would it?

 

[WeaponX]

I think this might have been a reference to anarcho-syndicalist.

We ain't about to let Provo live that one down!

 

[Ginger_Ale]

The ancient era is also the most important, game play-wise. Very good play early on leads to boring endgames. It may be this and not less positions that make our early elections more competitive. Just as it's not much fun to govern a corrupt province, I can't imagine it's much fun being president towards the end of a demogame. (I did run the last chat of DG1 and that was fun, but only because we knew we would win during the chat. Oh, and there was that fracas with the Babylonians, too. )

The archives or difficult to work with (at least for me). I went looking for an old thread from DG1 about why people lost interest inthe game and can't find it. I'd be happy to relate what I know about certain incidents but doubt I fit into the nuetral observer category.

As for terms, hmmm..., I consider myself a proper civfanatic but I don't know what DyP is.

As for which version we play and polls, well, we've had other polls before where people wanted to use PTW but they were always over-ruled by those above. Personally, I don't own Conquests and doubt I'd buy it just for the demogame. Of course if we structured the demogame so one didn't have to look at the save to participate then it wouldn't matter, would it?

DyP = Double your Pleasure, a common mod with LOTS of new additions. This site explains it all.

I'll see if I can find the thread..

I see your point, and agree with it. Not many people are willing to pay just so they can download a save to make comments. But yes, if we find out a way that works for either screenshots on demand (interesting idea ) or some other way to get info, it wouldn't be as bad. That's the reason I want to use vanilla. I don't want to exclude anyone, but if we can work it out, then I'm fine.