Discussion of a Staged SGOTM

[Frederiksberg]

To me, a key factor in the scenario-specific victory conditions from past SGs has been that they often focused our attention on particular features of CIV. In SG5, we learned a lot about barb mechanics, which has been useful ever since. In SG8, for example, I experienced the power of the Kremlin for the first time. In SG10, Murky Waters leveraged the Kremlin for a very fast victory. One concern I have with my equalizer idea above is that it might lead to changing in some way the game of CIV, as opposed to focsuing attention on inherent aspects of the CIV.

Another benefit of SGs, for me and others I've talked to, is all the sharing of info and learning that takes place. I think it's bringing the gameplay level of everyone up. So another concern I would have about my idea is that equalizing might lead to less motivation to learn.

I agree with this and it would certainly be possible to formulate stage goals that promote out-of-the-box thinking. Btw. we also used Kremlin in XTeam .

Formulating a good set of stage goals will clearly require some play testing and thought, but I'm sure it can be done and I have offered to help with this if the Staged SGOTM were to be tested in SGOTM 16.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Uhm... I personally liked this SGOTM 14 game the way it was set up.

Want to make it clear, that my suggestion should not be seen as a criticism of the last SGOTM or the SGOTM concept which I always loved. I just like to try new things .

 

[LowtherCastle]

After 4 weeks all teams have completed at least the first stage and the results are published

Your Scout Master stage is to me a perfect example of stages potentially interfering with gameplay (as in, CIV strategizing). Straw Men's initial scout/warrior gets eaten alive one trun before locating the most distant ruins, which they don't know of course. Now they have to go through contortions to locate that last city ruin, when they should be focusing on CIV. You could counter that the same is true with having to find the Wizard of Oz, but to me it's not the same, because you don't necessarily lose points to other teams if you find the Wizard much later than others. You can still play the normal aspects of CIV unhindered.

In fact, to extend this, look at the OSS result from SG14. Duckweed and Kossin went on and on in their thread about how they were 10-15 turns ahead. In truth, they weren't. OSS actually pulled ahead and killed OZ first. So the early "stage victory" was actually an illusion, and gaining points for it would have been penalizing the better choice of strategy (domination over conquest).

Note that I'm not mentioning that to play the Devil's Advocate, but rather to emphasize how carefully designed this would have to be.

The stage goals should be formulated so that no single strategy fits all goals. I.e. some goals may require very fast REX and other goals may require fast tech or a lot of culture. You could also mix it up with some "Quest" like goals that doesn't make sense in an optimal game.

This again strikes me as sure to go against one type of VC or another. In SG14, the Wizard of Oz requirement already ruled out Cultural victories for all intents and purposes, since fastest cultural involves the absolute minimum of military units and military techs. I admire Fifth Element's choice to go for cultural, but that decision sacrificed all hope for any metal medal.

On the other hand, if the goal of the mapmaker is to finally resolve the riddle of how to make cultural competitive with other VCs, this might be a solution.

 

[ingentingg]

You can make cultural competitive by adding a bunch of great artists in the starting position, or on a 1-tile island only accessible by galleons.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Don't pay too much attention to the stage goals mentioned in the example. I didn't put much thought into that. It's the stage system that I think we should discuss.

Since the rules would be known to all in advance the optimal strategy would be the one that maximizes the number of points given the stage goals. You can then discuss if there is too much randomness but I don't see how you can claim that the "best strategy" is penalized. Best in which regard?

The stage goals could easily be defined so that optimizing for winning all the early stages turns out to be a mistake because it will set your game back and you will start loosing stages later on. It's the careful weighing of trade offs that make CIV a good game in my opinion.

 

[kossin]

You can make cultural competitive by adding a bunch of great artists in the starting position, or on a 1-tile island only accessible by galleons.

... and kill maintenance in the process.

~~~~

I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of the stages idea. I play SGOTM because I like Civ4 as it is. Adding a few side quests is fun but moving too far away from a "normal" game isn't interesting to me.

Now I'll go hide in my corner and you gentlefolks can resume your brainstorming

 

[leif erikson]

The stage goals could easily be defined so that optimizing for winning all the early stages turns out to be a mistake because it will set your game back and you will start loosing stages later on. It's the careful weighing of trade offs that make CIV a good game in my opinion.

Yes, there are plenty of examples of this in the old Civ III QSC (Quick Start Challenge). Optimizing your QSC score did not always leave you in a place to optimize your ongoing game.

 

[BLubmuz]

This again strikes me as sure to go against one type of VC or another. In SG14, the Wizard of Oz requirement already ruled out Cultural victories for all intents and purposes, since fastest cultural involves the absolute minimum of military units and military techs. I admire Fifth Element's choice to go for cultural, but that decision sacrificed all hope for any metal medal.

Actually our cultural victory (not my best liked VC, BTW) was a product of a mistake of mine. I miscalculated the time needed for a military victory, not thinking to galleons in the late (late for this competition) game, but trying to figure the time needed to "walk" to the AI cities and back to another target. I added this to the need to go pretty deep with research, figuring galleons were needed right after seen the starting save (F8, flat map). This made me discard very advanced units or other options. And i was right.
Unfortunately, noone else in FE objected and we went for culture, hoping for a medal.
Actually, it was a great date, just compare it to the HoF record with the same settings, but obviously there was no match with all those warmongers.

Neilmeister made a good effort trying to balance militay with research, but not enough to my taste.
A warrior hidden in the mountains could have done the trick (paratroopers).

You can make cultural competitive by adding a bunch of great artists in the starting position, or on a 1-tile island only accessible by galleons.

The 1-tile island etc. was already in this game, but it wasn't enough!

 

[vranasm]

I always liked games with not so demanding rules as best. There is plenty of examples in SG subforum, I especially like some variants I run with Cam_H.

To make it short...for example:
you should find religion
every AI has to run your religion
you have to build wonder X
etc etc

What I really liked best about this sgotm is that diplomatic was so competitive in the end and kudos for Kakumeika to show us (I hope I didn't misspelled it) ;-).

would like to see game where every victory condition would be same competitive, but I am realist and know that extensive warfare will almost always be better.

not sure if adding "permanent alliance" as an option would make some things more interesting (for example easying space race), I have very limited experience with this.

 

[yatta77]

Want to make it clear, that my suggestion should not be seen as a criticism of the last SGOTM or the SGOTM concept which I always loved. I just like to try new things .

My sentence wasn't meant to accuse you of blasphemy!
It was just an "intro" to the following idea I exposed.

I'm fine with your stages idea. New things are surely interesting. I just personally would like them the most if well balanced, not modifying too much the "usual" game concepts and strategies, and allowing the most possible victory conditions.
Well, just my silly two cents in this interesting discussion.

Adding a few side quests is fun but moving too far away from a "normal" game isn't interesting to me.

I tend to agree.
Why do I need 3 posts to badly explain what others can perfectly explain in just one simple sentence?

- yatta

 

[LowtherCastle]

Don't pay too much attention to the stage goals mentioned in the example. I didn't put much thought into that. It's the stage system that I think we should discuss.

Since the rules would be known to all in advance the optimal strategy would be the one that maximizes the number of points given the stage goals. You can then discuss if there is too much randomness but I don't see how you can claim that the "best strategy" is penalized. Best in which regard?

The stage goals could easily be defined so that optimizing for winning all the early stages turns out to be a mistake because it will set your game back and you will start loosing stages later on. It's the careful weighing of trade offs that make CIV a good game in my opinion.

I agree that the main focus in this discussion is the stage system. I also think that discussing it involves hashing out examples of stages as a way to explore possible problems in advance.

Since the rules would be known to all in advance the optimal strategy would be the one that maximizes the number of points given the stage goals. You can then discuss if there is too much randomness but I don't see how you can claim that the "best strategy" is penalized. Best in which regard?

Best in the sense that the Stage System might change domination from the best to the second best strategy. In other words, conquest becomes the only viable strategy to both win the SG fastest and win the most stages (conquest being just an example here, not a generalization).

The stage goals could easily be defined so that optimizing for winning all the early stages turns out to be a mistake because it will set your game back and you will start loosing stages later on. It's the careful weighing of trade offs that make CIV a good game in my opinion.

You see, here you say "easily be defined: but don't give an example, so I have no idea what you're really talking about. I need an example to understand and to test to see if it really works.

Btw, the above begs the question: What constitutes victory in your system? I assume you're suggesting that the final victory for the gold medal winner might be 1 turn later than the silver medal winner, but they won the gold because they accumulated more stage points, right? If so, then it's even conceivable that the gold medal might never even win a stage, but just accumulate enough points through consecutive second place finishes? (Kind of like Caroline Wozniacki?) Personally, I have serious problems with someone finishing second getting the gold medal.

 

[Gumbolt]

You are pointing out a Gordian Knot, which can be solved in much the same way as the original . You simply add the rule that you can't achieve a stage goal unless you have already achieved the previous goals in a previous or the same save. I.e. you can upload a save where multiple stage goals are all achieved at once. In the example this would be the case if you have an income >200 when you found the 5th city. If you already had an income >200 with four cities you have not achieved the stage goal because the 2nd stage has not been achieved yet. With careful planning of the goals it should be possible to avoid this situation in most cases.

Of course I had not assumed that all stages would be revealed to the player. Was this the idea? A list would almost be telling each player how to play the game. Now that would be a bad thing.

Kossin was right. A few side quests is good. Reminds me of my old warcraft 3 days using my hero to pick up items and kill creatures in their camps. If stages are merely there to tell us how to complete the game then just tell us at the start conditions needed to win.

What are we trying to acheive by stages??

1. So teams can split the game into 5-7 parts and we can compare saves?
2. To help players move to a certain strategy or acheive a certain goal?

What might be more interesting is giving a list of 7 tasks to achieve then telling each team you must comple x of these. Now that gives players more choice on strategy and forces some different game play.

A thought on the tech side. Techs like feudalism will and can be traded easily. We could turn tech trading off?? Spice things up.

In terms of defining stages.

This could be done by a date or turn number. E.g. 1500bc? t50?
By time of completing a task.
Or by simply completing a list of tasks.

Personally I like the idea of giving a list and get teams to complete a certain amount of them. With some task compulsary.

Lots to think about!

 

[lymond]

Without giving it a great deal of thought (or having read every post here), one thing that pops out to me about stages is creating an overall sense of balance to the game and possibly putting all teams on a more level playing field.

In order to do this I think each stage needs some sort of goal to achieve, not unlike some of the suggestions already mentioned. However, the overall victory condition(s) and scenarios are kept hidden until either the second to last stage or some interim stage.

I think this approach will require teams to create a more balanced and flexible empire so that they can adjust to the different direction each stage brings and ultimately drive things home when the "end game" is revealed. In contrast to building 5 or 6 quick cities and whipping out massive armies=WIN.

This stage deal could be an interesting concept that adds a lot of spice to the SGOTM. Of course, the SGOTM staff will need to be up to the task and the creativity to make this all work and balance out. Given the past SGOTMs, I'm sure they are more than capable.

Again, that's my quick 2 cents on the matter - spicy SGOTM that possibly levels things out between the pros and amateurs. On the other hand, this could all just be bollocks.

edit: gb - looks like we like things spicy

 

[CreeDakota]

While others have allready stated it, I would like to point out that with the current SGOTM winner being based on earliest victory allready creates a large skew in playstyle and strategy. This is not a conversation about altering basic civ strategy and play. This is a conversation about altering SGOTM play which is allready a system that rewards a highly focused and narrow playstyle/optimization.

 

[adrianj]

What might be more interesting is giving a list of 7 tasks to achieve then telling each team you must comple x of these. Now that gives players more choice on strategy and forces some different game play.
...
Personally I like the idea of giving a list and get teams to complete a certain amount of them. With some task compulsary.

I quite like this concept.
Provide a fairly large list of conditions to meet, but not all of them are compulsory. Strategies could well be determined as much by what teams choose NOT to do as how they do it.
However, this does make the games from different teams pursuing very different strategies even LESS comparable, if that was the original aim.

Back on topic- I think the Stages idea is a nice side game to the real game. Could we keep the main aim the same as usual: Achieve X condition(s) the fastest, but add the stages aspect with points just for fun?

Is it strictly necessary to reach the goals in order? Given that we're awarding points based on the ranking of when teams reach the goals, it might be a tactical decision for a team to forget about Stage X (0 Points) but choose to target Stage Y (10 Points). Provided we are given the list of stages prior to the game this sort of play might be an entire mini-game all its own, eg, perhaps a faster route to Stage Y might then lead on to a faster Stage Z, etc. It also means a team isn't hugely penalised if some unfortunate event happens, eg, their starting unit is eaten by a bear.

Examples of stages:

1. Kill 4 barbarian units.
2. Get a Level 4 unit.
3. Settle 4 cities.
4. Build a wonder (any wonder)
5. Settle a Great Person (any type)
6. Kill 4 AI units.
7. Capture an AI city.
8. Learn Alphabet.
9. Learn Currency.
10. Learn xyz.
11. Accumulate 1000 culture on a single city.
12. Have a legendary city.
13. Reach total empire population of 50.
14. Reach population 250.
15. Vote in an AP election.
16. Vote in an UN election.
17. Achieve >200 GNP.
18. Bank 10000 gold in treasury.
19. Steal a technology.
20. etc, etc.

The list is intentionally very long, and some stages are kind of mutually exclusive. The aim is to inspire teams to think carefully about which ones to pursue and which ones to ignore/delay.

Edited to add: It starts to read like a list of "Achievements" a la Civ5... Some people like this sort of thing.

 

[Htadus]

Regardless of any new concept the next SG embrace, it will always come down to the same old finale. The teams that has shown that they understand the game mechanics and are willing to put the extra time to test and take risks based on experiance will place in the top half. That is all there is.

 

[Gumbolt]

I quite like this concept.
Provide a fairly large list of conditions to meet, but not all of them are compulsory. Strategies could well be determined as much by what teams choose NOT to do as how they do it.
However, this does make the games from different teams pursuing very different strategies even LESS comparable, if that was the original aim.

I had a side thought. if you truly want to make different strategies like culture more competitive then you could offer certain objectives to certain winning conditions to move people away from galleons and med. units. It would be like making the American use Navy Seals to start their war. Or culture requiring you build a certain wonder.

The games won't be comparable unless everyone goes for the same win conditions but it will force teams to seriously consider each winning condition. Now you could find a way to add stages to each winning condition.

To answer another point about lots of resources at the start which I commented on elsewhere. I can see how this allows more options on team strategies but have a heart for these poor Ai that get crushed each game by the teams. By attaching conditions to certain winning strategies this could still make many strategies possible.

Now by using stages you could hold back the exact winning conditions till a certain point in the game. Let the teams build an empire flexible for any win condition. Then maybe at 1ad tell them what they need to do to win the game.

Lots of thoughts here I hope some are useful!

 

[leif erikson]

To answer another point about lots of resources at the start which I commented on elsewhere. I can see how this allows more options on team strategies but have a heart for these poor Ai that get crushed each game by the teams. By attaching conditions to certain winning strategies this could still make many strategies possible.

Who cares about the AI?
They only delay the time to victory, for some.

The competition is amongst the teams and isn't the AI supposed to get crushed? It is better for team morale.

 

[Gumbolt]

A few more objective ideas.

1. You must kill at least 3 different UU units during the game. So this could be a war chariot/immortal down to a Navy Seal. You could even make it conditional you could not attack an AI till they had their UU built. The game log would show what units died. You could even specify which units at a later point in the game.
2. I like the condition where you can't attack a certain Ai all game or till a point in the game.
3. You must build at least one of every unit.
4. You could give an order of which Ai must be destroyed 1st/2nd/3rd etc.
E.g Stage 3. Destroy the Americans.

There is lots that could be abused here in terms of stages and how a game could be made. The above could certainly be used to make domination/conquest harder.

@ leif erikson - I don't mind crushing the AI. I just like to know at least one stood a chance of defending itself.

 

[Mylene]

Well, everyone who was once fascinated like me by the idea of marines razing backland AI cities, knows they do a very poor job in defending against sea attacks

The reasons are simple, the AI creates one SoD (depending on the diff. level and mentality this is dangerous or not), and other units are divided to guard their cities.
The Sod is then moved to the city that is closest to where they feel is a danger zone.
Sooo, if you attack via land you usually have to pass this stack. Unless it is a backstab ~~
It could sit in the first city you have to take, or pass.

Naval attacks allow to reach most of their cities easily, cultural borders don't protect vs. sneaking units virtually next to all cities. This makes for very easy and fast wars, not to mention the use of forts to pass land with ships.
In short, the AIs are basically robbed out of every chance to have a succesful defensive battle.
All attack are a backstab into their main land.

It doesn't mean there can be no water, but it would be a lot more challenging to have their main cities inland