Future GOTM Map Suggestions

Has anyone played Civ2 with giving extra free turns to the AI? For example, you can order the settlers to sleep at the beginning of the game and wait till agreed game turn to let the AI develop, and only activate those settlers at that turn.

I tried playing that variant many times. On a small map it seems to make little difference if you sleep until AD1, but leads to some interesting 'stand up from your knees' game if you wait till some AD1000. I mean, on deity level, maybe other dates would be applicable to other levels. It's fun when you are the weakest nation and make peace at any cost. Also, there is a lot more thinking involved, since resources are really scarce.

I played such game on a large map lately. Slept till AD1000, and the AIs developed pretty well. Made alliance with the Indians, which were the closest and begged for technologies for a long time. I developed my 8 cities, built factories etc, then about 40 howitzers.. Stole a lot of techs with spies. They kept attacking my Mech Infantries on hill cities+SAM with Stealth Bombers and battleships.

Finally, I began a full-scale attack on Indians in about AD2000, but they nuked any city I managed to capture destroying the stacked howitzers nearby. AIs colonized the whole map and triggered global warming every 10 turns, so in the end the whole land was swamp and desert and draining the swamps was useless. My production was broken and cites started to starve. I retreated for some time and finally completed a good railroad through the swamps to ensure all new produced howitzers attack right away. Cities were not more then 8 in size with most tiles hills with mining and fortress with a Mech Inf defending the working Engineers from enemy Stealth Bombers/Fighters.

The attack lasted for 150 turns and by AD 2150 Indians were wiped out (captured their capital 3 times to split their nation in two). At that moment the victory was inevitable (it's just a matter or producing howitzers everywhere and wiping the Mech Infantries on swamps), so I stopped playing. A great game, I should say. Especially when I broke good relations with Indians and my parasite existance turned into an under-siege preparation for a massive attack.


I wonder if there is a special name for such type of game (like OCC for One-City-Challenge), could be called 'Sleep-Till-AD1000-Challenge'.'

Well, another example is playing for Neutrals in WWII scenario. The goal is to capture the whole world there. Turned out not too hard though, cuz there was a lot of spare land near Teheran.

So, this delayed-start (glacier start or obligatory sleep-till-AD1000) type of game could be good for the next GOTM, I think.

 

I believe the wait-until-1AD games were known as "Wait for Jesus" games. Not sure what you'd call waiting til 1000AD. Wait until 1020, and I guess you could call it a "Millenium" game since that would be all that's left before the game ends.

 

I guess this type of game wasn't very much popular. At least, I didn't find much on the forums with keywords Wait for Jesus.

Well, waiting means just sleeping. And in case some other civs come close and attempt to talk, send away their envoys (needs saving first, cuz if they get angry and attack, just reload and make peace or something, giving away techs is allowed during such contacts, but getting anything is not).

 

I read all this discussion at once and found it really interesting, maybe simetimes a bit desperate. How to improve AIs ability? To make a real challenge, but at the same time not long and boring game.

My idea is scenarios. Nu huts - it is only luck, not skill.

Once I have played classical WWII scenario as a French. It was really good chllenge - in the end I conquered Germany and I suppose London - than was the end of scenario. I suppose we could go the way like Gotm60 - but not only fighting, but Space ship victory too.

 

I thought the idea of GOTM58 was very good - long thin flat map with alternating sea and land, making it hard to cover the distances.

I was thinking of something like a large square-ish map but maybe starting in the middle so you would have to progress outwards, with concentric circles of mountains (more than 1 row thick to stop canal cities) and then some habitable land before another zone begins. The AI could be concentrated in the outer regions to allow more growth. Starting terrain could also be fairly ordinary to slow the progress of meeting them.

And the ban on MPE would make things harder still!

 

Well, I just tried to play on an extremely hard map.

Flat world, big map. The northern half of the map is plain big ocean with a small isle of tundra, it has just 4 glacier oil resources. No north pole, of course: the world is flat. No ocean resources - I ensured there are none by setting a seed number and carefully putting the island

The whole southern half of the map is grassland with river on each tile (I mean it, every tile is river). The distance from the tundra isle to the southern part is about 30-40 tiles

Ok, now, as you guess, the player starts on the tile just to build a city on 4 glacier oils. All AIs neatly start on the coast (so that they do fill it up with cities before the player lands there). The AI has plenty of room for growth - can build dozens of 40 size cities if it likes.

Started playing such a map. Deity of course. Max barbs of course. 7 civs of course. Built 2 cities on the island (with tundras those 4 glaciers can't be used by a single city anyways), completed a lighthouse, even sent out a trireme with a settler and phalanx. Don't remember now if I set bloodlust , but the damn Egyptians didn't let me in peace for more than 2 turns and just decided "To rid the world" of me. I managed to build a city on the coast (stupid AI didn't even guess to fill the land fast enough), even planted another one, but then Dragoons (!) came by and my expedition was over: they wiped the second city and bribed the first one easily. Maybe I had to discover Masonry in time, by I got too much busy with seafaring and the like to have harbors on the tundra island. Oh yeah, that was the mistake.

I am now stuck on the tundra. At that moment I had 3 small cities on tundra, each with harbor, marketplace, and temple. And one dwarf city on glacier oil. Tundra had roads and irrigation

I even discovered Republic to go for celebrations. But NO. They landed Cannons and Dragoons, took the capital with the Lighthouse and wiped all the phalanxes with Ironclads! WOW. I thought I was defeated, but no! Several civs attacked my tiny island and luckily they were all at war with each other. So, an Indian ironclad killed an Egyptian dragoon in Kiev to leave it undefended. I took the last phalax from Minsk (my third and last city on the tiny island, they haven't attacked it yet) and captured Kiev by the road. There was a 20-techs long list to choose from, and I chose for Conscription.

Ok, that was the turning point. Although I didn't have a palace, had stupid republic (because of awful corruption there wasn't enough luxury points), Minsk and Kiev quickly built Riflemen to defend from Ironclads and Fregates, and a few turns later they were veterans, because they attacked often enough. Switched back to monarchy, and the happiness problem was solved. Another dozen of turns later I produced a diplomat in Minsk, sold all buildings I had to bribe Moscow. Took stupid magnetism just to be able to deliver my diplomats to the Big Land (I wanted Explosions to transfrom the damn tundras but they just didn't have it ). Slowly but steadily I built a palace in Moscow again, ensured defense with 3 riflemen in each city and even rebuilt harbors (cities have starved to size 2 by that time).

At the moment I am making galleons and send diplomats in hope they steal something of use, but so far they stole only useless Astronomy and Egyptian Submarine sunk my galleon with 2 diplomats. Maybe I should now let them have one of my cities and bribe it back to choose a good tech, but they seem to have stopped attacking.

Well, not a great game for GOTM (I mean scores and stuff), but it does give you non-standard situations.

 

Oh yeah, I agree.. Huts are bad for competition because someone can open an advanced tribe or monarchy in the beginning of the game while others get barbs.

I played WWII for French too. I think I had to reload a few times. On deity they sometimes took out with their bombers my fortified tanks on hill cities with SAMs. I didn't manage to do much before the scenarion ended (maybe captured half of German cities or so), but with robotics the whole game was just a matter of killing all those partisans around.

I also tried is for Spanish many times and for the Turks, but never managed to do any serious offensive before the scenario ended. You just can't attack with armors if they have walls in all cities. However, after getting robotics and builting factory+power plant in a few cities it didn't matter what cities they had and where, and how many units they had. Just make a railroad with engineers and wipe everything out with howitzers. Not as fun as trying to survive under raids of bombers.

A good scenario is the time of great discoveries scenario, where you can play for English, Portugese or Spanish. They start with one or two cities and first capture the native americans (those have warriors only). The whole map belongs to Neutral civilization (the orange one) which makes all the discoveries. Maybe this scenario could be good for a GOTM, too.

I am new to GOTM, so I downloaded all the saves of previous GOTMs to see what folks have played so far. Looks like most of the games were oriented on getting most score in fastest time, although the maps themselves were usual and the opponents were nearly unnoticable. The GOTM with long thin map was great, and the one with swamps everywhere, too. I also liked GOTM60.

I guess making some extremely tough scenarious with really well-developed and aggressive AIs and very weak human player (at least in the beginning) could give it all a new twist.

I wonder why folks don't play much on deity. In fact, I haven't played on anything else that deity since the third or forth time I played civ2, which was some time in 1998. So playing the last GOTMs I wondered why are there so few riots in the cities and why the second citizen isn't red.

 

A hut talk was going in a thread (here), so I'll post it in this thread since it is basically talk about GOTM suggestions. Regarding the hut & its luck (for better or worse), I'd given an opinion of preferring no huts, generally, then began to think about another way to remove the luck factor & even add a new strategy twist....

Allowing liesurely reloads to get a hut outcome to match you personal strategy, in effect, becomes a new strategy while eliminating the "luck" factor (good or bad, that is). I'm guessing that such an alternative would greatly accelerate the game because of quick and fearless popping, and probably many would opt for advances early on. The AI would be hapless (as usual). The idea should of course be tested (e.g., how much land/huts to make easily available to human, etc., and see what does well). Because of the great advantage reloads gives, the game should be at a high level I would think. Even Diety... newer players would likely be able to survive pretty well I would think, even if they don't normally play at Emperor or Deity. Anyway, just an idea.

 

Its definitely not something that should be repeated, since it will probably "unbalance" the game (ultimate effect would be to allow sooner conquest or SS landing).

I think it would be interesting to play a hutless expand/PD against an identical map which is hutted, and players allowed to reload huts... to get a general idea if PD/trade can overcome general playstyles which has optimum "luck" with huts. I think good PD+no huts could 'win' against normal play+good huts, but who knows.

 

Of course, huts add a luck factor to the game, but I think they are fun. After about 3000BC the luck becomes much less significant. SlowThinker has suggested a compromise (for PBEMs, but it could work here, too); to remove just the huts within X squares of the starting position (X=10?).

 

To be lucky with huts in the beginning of the game can really change everything and I think that they should be removed, at least from the beginning of the game. Let me explain my reasoning with an example.

WARNING this post contains ROUGH approximations!!

Scenario 1

Let's say you start with one settler. You build your first city and produce a warrior that goes of scouting. After a few turns he reaches a grassland hut, pops it and BANG it's a tribe. The warrior continues to scout for the next hut and lets say 10 turns later he is lucky and finds another tribe. By this time the capitol might have produced a settler that has founded a forth city. You now have 4 cities that will in a few turns double to 8 cities. You could say that the number of cities grows exponentially in the beginning of the game.

Number of cities = 2^(TurnsPlayed/DoubleTime)

where DoubleTime is the time it takes before every city has built a settler that has founded a new city. This formula is a rough estimation, because you don't build settlers in every city, don't have unlimited land to expand in and so on. However this formula describes my usual strategy in the early years pretty good. Now let's look at someone that wasn't as lucky with his huts.

Scenario 2

This time let's say the first hut generated a tech and the second one an archer. When the capitol has finished it's settler and the second city has been founded you have a total of 2 cities.


Let's make a comparison. In scenario one you've reached a point that will take DoubleTime turns to reach from the same point in scenario 2. DoubleTime ~15-20 turns. So you're already 15 turns behind just because you were unlucky. But it gets even worse because what happens when your cities grow from size 1 to 2, yeah that's right you get to work 3 tiles in the city radius instead of 2. So approximately your production and trade increase by 50%. But in the first scenario a 50% increase is twice as big as in the second one because we have twice as many cities. That is, in the first scenario we acquire techs faster, leading to a more effective civilization, and those 15 turns therefore get more important the longer you play.

Don't hesitate to ask if there is something that does not make sense. The post was written in a rush so it may not be 100% accurate

/Chofritz

 

Chofritz: I think I understand your examples, and IMO the Scenario One player has a big advantage (I did not completely understand your conclusion, and am not sure which you prefer). I just don't think Scenario One happens so often that we have to worry about it. And it gives newbies a better chance to compete against the vets.

 

Did I really write that mess!?

What I meant to write was "That is, in the FIRST scenario...", I'll edit my first post.

In the above example the first scenario has a brutal advantage over the other one. Even getting only one tribe will give you a few turns head start that will make any comparison with someone not as lucky a bit misleading. But of course in the long, over many full games, civilization 2 will become like poker, anyone can win a hand but to win in the long run is something completely different.

Just out of curiosity, has there been any research done on how hut outcomes are distributed? I remember a few tricks with huts that I read about a few years ago. For example the chance of, iirc, getting a unit that has two moves per turn form a hut is increased in 3850 BC for some reason, and the chance of finding a nomad is increased on a continent without cities. I'm not sure about these two, it's been a while since I read it.

 

There is a thread somewhere, Here or at Apolyton, about the frequency of hut outcomes. IIRC, it is at Apolyton, but I don't have a link to the thread anymore. It was about 5 or 6 years ago. If anyone has a link, it would be nice to post it here. That thread had some excellent info on what one can expect from huts.

 

http://sethos.gmxhome.de/English/BookOfWisdom/hutoutcomes.html
This link seems to have a summary of the info you are looking for from the :

The CIVILINIC BOOKS Homepage (main page is ) http://sethos.gmxhome.de/