Great general stacking.

[Karmah]

I think the question revolves around two things.

1. Can you stop a 3 gg rush if you only one ,only two ? a 2gg rush with only one ?
2. Do some civs can guaranty having their third or second GG at least ten turns before most of the other civs trying to rush gg too? (Like victoria I'm strongly expecting gorgo to be such a civ , haven't tried it nor paper-simulated it though)

If both answers are yes , then they are no arguments that it should be banned. Even someone as hum strong minded as tmit has to agree.
else we can still discuss because the debate is about the notion of having diversity in a competitive setup and you'll never get a consensus.

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

There are only 3 great generals per era. Classical-medieval are 30 gg points while medieval-renaissance are 75. Except for the atomic-modern which has 4 and information which has 2.

Japan and to some extent Russia, Greece, Kongo, and Brazil have the best chance at getting first dibs on the great general. Unless someone else gets a lucky goody hut or a science first meet, these civs tend to theoretically have the best chance. Japan has their half off district. Russia has a tier 3 tundra hills bias, Greece has a Tier 3 hills bias, Kongo has a tier 2 Jungle and Forest bias, and Brazil has a tier 2 jungle bias. These civs tend to start with the best, giving them a faster encampment district and generally better land to pump out those projects faster.

The real question that we should be asking, is there a consistent strategy to successfully counter other than fighting for the GG's as well?

Because if not, then it purely comes down to how has the better land or got lucky with goody huts/city state first meets. And the great general stacking, would allow this to further snowball those that were bleed by the civ gods with a nice start.

 

[Victoria]

@CPL_Yoshi
Gorgo gets culture for kills, and a lot of culture... this pushes them to Military tradition very fast where there is +2 GG Points and Gorgo has a wildcard slot. I'm surprised she's not used more because I get GG early with her

 

[BladeSe7en]

I just find Inget one very early as Gorgo gets to the +2 general card very quickly and has a wildcard slot but I bow to superior experience

Well on paper the +2 GG card from military tradition is good, but a static +2 points won't ever earn you multiple generals in a competitive multiplayer scene. That slot would be better utilized using urban planning, agoge, conscription, or colonization. Rushing projects is always better than just the policy card.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd like to hear your opinion, and discuss this more. Please let me know what you think @TheMeInTeam.

I don't think I have much to add at this point. You listed the things I did not consider wrt stacking, namely the implications past classical era and especially the luck factor wrt early GG vs cost scaling (once you mentioned it and I considered what you'd have to invest here, it's not a nice position at all on pure RNG). It turned out to be a stronger argument than necessary. I take back the NR 20 comments, and appreciate the explanation. You've more than adequately shown what I was missing, including sound reasoning for why not to permit it in the competitive scene for now.

The real question that we should be asking, is there a consistent strategy to successfully counter other than fighting for the GG's as well?

I'd prefer to re-phrase this question. In principle if you invest less in GG than other guy and they don't kill anybody then you can come out ahead, and that's initially what I had in mind.

The way you describe it seems to me that whether it's reasonable to ban or not would depend on settings (FFA with limited pool being particularly bad since people get RNG hosed). Some of this problem comes down to investment returns or even map layout (IE doctored/defensive map would change it since you'd need a heavy science game to break chokes).

In normal settings getting pressed into major point sink early to get medieval GG would be a major setback to an already set back nation.

 

[BladeSe7en]

If everyone were to tech mining --> BW --> IW and spam projects/warriors, nobody would be getting a 2 classical GG lead though. I had projects in mind when picturing the opening myself; there's no other realistic way to get that kind of GG point output early on.



No, in both cases we have a mechanic where 1) everyone is expected to build these in order to be competitive and 2) not building them while your opponents do build them can lead to losing, all else held equal.

To illustrate, picture a game with no GG, or everyone having 1 GG, but one player out of 4 can't build commercial hubs or even just materially delays them. I don't see him winning on average, do you?

Similarly, if you watch the demographics and realize that someone didn't include a builder for ages and will necessarily be behind on infrastructure, wouldn't you push that person up your list as an easy land grab target? How is this different from noting encampment investment?

If we assume everyone actually attempts to defend themselves (IE invests in encampment(s)), which we should assume, what separates this tactic mathematically? It's like saying the "build a settler meta" is too strong unless there's a good reason to separate it.

The wonders example was just a throw-in to show that the arguments presented to that point didn't actually separate GG stacking from building wonders, not that players should actually be doing multiple wonders/era with any consistency.

Bud you just made our point. Forcing everyone to go mining, bronze, iron just to stay competitive militarily by grabbing a general is the whole reason it's banned.
What's your fascination with commercial hubs?? If I go full military with generals but you build commercials then I'll simply take your commercials and now I'll have both a large military and the commercials....
Again wonders are not comparable to gg stacking..

 

[Victoria]

Well on paper the +2 GG card from military tradition is good, but a static +2 points won't ever earn you multiple generals in a competitive multiplayer scene. That slot would be better utilized using urban planning, agoge, conscription, or colonization. Rushing projects is always better than just the policy card.

Well I can get to +2 GG card with Gorgo before I get to bronze working. Sure the second can be hard but at least she will get 1

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Bud you just made our point. Forcing everyone to go mining, bronze, iron just to stay competitive militarily by grabbing a general is the whole reason it's banned.
What's your fascination with commercial hubs?? If I go full military with generals but you build commercials then I'll simply take your commercials and now I'll have both a large military and the commercials....
Again wonders are not comparable to gg stacking..

I had to pick something for the sake of argument, whereby if you held everything else equal but barred it then someone would be at a significant disadvantage. I could have chosen industrial districts or builders instead, similar point (IE most players consistently go for these anyway).

What had not been done to that point was a consistent argument as to why GG stacking in particular is more centralizing than other options. However, CPL_Yoshi was able to list factors that do separate it (RNG dependence --> timing/cost scaling implication in a FFA game, which are factors that do not influence my examples or most in-game examples). In essence he did exactly what I said was necessary to demonstrate self-consistent reasoning for banning it that separates it from my examples.

 

[Tabarnak]

500 gold into knights on turn 50 is far more dangerous than gg stacking. Do we have to ban knights as well?

One important thing that wasnt mentionned yet is the ability to get x by turn y. 2 ggs on turn 60 is nothing compared to turn 35. But on turn 35 i doubt that you had the time to build a huge army if you aim for ggs(sword rush maybe, but its damn slow compared to a swarm of horses).

Yes ggs are strong, but not as strong as they appear if opponents know what to do for a counter.

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

@Victoria, one thing to note, we do play without barbarians. Ever since the recent patch, they cause lag in between turns, making in almost unbearable and definitely not suitable to play a full multiplayer game in one setting. It may be hard er for us to get the required culture by the time encampmentments and projects roll out.

@Tabarnak I agree that upgrading units are quite strong, and I'd definitely like to see a nerf. Increase the upgrade cost of units comes to mind. The best way to build your army is by using your gold and production effectively. You build 10 maybe 20 heavy chariots in preparation to upgrade.

We often see the better players build combat units, settlers, and a few workers for the first 50 turns or so. They place their commercials or campuses early on, but won't really build much else.

The upgrade strategy is something that is available to everyone. You can easily get the gold from envoys in commercial city states and a few commercials. Or trade routes to city states and players.

When we look at GG's. The option is not readily available to all and can be quite rng based off of spawns, good huts, and those first meets that I previous mentioned

Edit: @Tabarnak, what counter would you suggest that would work? Would it require more work the amount of effort to get a 2 great generals? Because if so, is that really an effective counter?

 

[Victoria]

we do play without barbarians

aaah that is Gorgo nerfed then. Explains a lot. I'm getting GG so early playing SP because of the barb hordes. And up until Gorgo I only played 1 encampment but now I have seen the light it is scary... I've had 3 great admirals before and I imagine you ban them also.

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

@Victoria We do ban great admiral stacking as well.

@Tabarnak, @TheMeInTeam I'm happy to further discuss certain aspects of this game in a multiplayer setting. There are many abusable or strategic (depends on how you view it) things that a player can do with the correct knowledge of game mechanics. Whether that is intended or not by the development team, it still does need to be addressed in our multiplayer community.

If you would like to discuss, question, or disagree with some of the current rules that we have in place over in our community, I'd be happy to do so. The admin/moderator team over at CPL do make mistakes, but we do try our best to balance out this game. We may not have everything right or have thought about every situation. So, if you would like to discuss this in full, hop into our discord!

https://www.discord.gg/uBEpu3u

 

[PYITE]

This game is a single player square peg that you are trying to fit through a round multiplayer hole. You have to shave off the corners of imbalance in order to make it fit.
While multiplayer can be challenging and fun, it is never fair or balanced on random maps. If there is one optimal path to victory then everyone follows the same route and in a game with equally skilled players, the winner is determined mostly by starting position.

 

[Victoria]

Ahh @PYITE but it's more challenging than playing the AI and you can look in the mirror and honestly say you are 324th in the world rankings for playing on that server.
Everyone has a different boat to float and it's nice to see a thriving game there.

 

[PYITE]

Ahh @PYITE but it's more challenging than playing the AI and you can look in the mirror and honestly say you are 324th in the world rankings for playing on that server.
Everyone has a different boat to float and it's nice to see a thriving game there.

I agree, happy to see people enjoying the game however they want to play. Just saying that getting rid of GG stacking and other rules that they have at CPL are very helpful in creating a more enjoyable multiplayer experience vs playing vanilla multiplayer.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The option is not readily available to all and can be quite rng based off of spawns, good huts, and those first meets that I previous mentioned

While first meets and huts do reward scouting, I'm not sure huts/villages/etc are conducive to MP because the reward variance --> early game utility can be pretty disparate. Scouting has its own rewards in mapping terrain before opponents settle/can deny scouting and finding city states for the bonus, so I don't think MP needs huts in order to have incentive to scout...nor do civs/other systems depend on them in particular.

Similar to only some players getting barb camp with horses very close to capital + not others the RNG on huts doesn't add a lot of good to the MP experience for the potential cost of making RNG rewards give someone a significant advantage.

 

[Victoria]

GG stacking is just crazy, I played a couple of times with it... it just well... quite strong and unneeded

 

[CPL_Yoshi]

@TheMeInTeam I think that at the end of the day, this comes down to the debate between skill and luck in games. An increase in luck/RNG will usually lessen the importance of skill. It would give everyone a higher chance to win, while diminishing the skill gap between players.

In any competitive game setting, these games will do anything they can do diminish the amount of RNG based events as possible.

I'm not so sure what can be changed to for a multiplayer setting. For a true competitive setting we would have to play without Barbs, without city states, and on a prebuilt map or mirrored maps like the one in the team liquid tourney.

There are so many factors that are indeed RNG based in this game, but at the same time they're integral to civ itself. Without a randomly generated map, or random good huts, it randomly placed city states, this game wouldn't be the same. And by cutting out certain factors in a game, the game loses its sense of identity.

But all being said, our main goal is to create a fun experience for our players. We still try to maintain a competitiveness within our community by having certain rules to balance the game as best we can, but still try to keep the game's uniqueness and originality intact. It's quite a slippery slope. At what point do we go too far? It's all a very difficult task and while we do try our best, we will slip up eventually. But if we do, we hope that our playerbase will speak up, and our willingness to admit fault should steer us in the right direction.

@PYITE, that's what we are trying to do. The public lobbies are a mess and riddled with so many problems. If you randomly disconnect, there is no way to get back in unless you had friends them before or while in game. We try to maintain a no quit policy so games can actually go past the classical era.

 

[Tabarnak]

Edit: [USER=189821]@Tabarnak, what counter would you suggest that would work? Would it require more work the amount of effort to get a 2 great generals? Because if so, is that really an effective counter?[/USER]

The only one counter is to mass building units and invade the guy who's trying to accumulate 2 ggs. If your neighbor is doing it you can try to build at least one too. in fact it usually depends of map. 2 horse tiles is probably the best way to counter. With proper managament you can have 4-6 horses in less than 35 turns which are enough to annoy any neighbors. If you have to build encampments you need to reach 1 gg at least otherwise you might be in big trouble.

That said, the outcome of seeing 2 ggs and swordmen in ur territory in a record time is pretty low. Most games go other ways because neighbors are too far away, too busy to fill up with cities.

Like i said, the 2 ggs path is powerful but i don't see the need to disable it. A veteran player will know what to do in each situations. The worst thing that can happen in game is seeing a player engulfing his neighbor and jump from 4 to 8 cities before the turn 50 and see a cc vote some turns later. Noobs will always exist and i understand why u ban some things for the sake of ''balance''.

Details behind all mechanics should be written under a guide. There is too much details to write them down in a single post. Using 50% cards combined with chopping for overflow is one good way to accelerate production, for example(i like using the 30% builders/50% ranged units combo before philo). For some reason i almost never see this approach even when i'm watching top streamers...

You might wanna ban huts and cs as well to reach further balance(but less fun?).

 

[empresskiova]

Coming in late, GG stacking is likely insane. Similar to stacking other bonuses, anyway. It may be wise to simply to reduce the +5 STR to +2 STR. This reduces the ridiculousness of GG's without making them worthless. Well, this idea would probably need to be modded in anyway...

If that feels like too much, could even make the aura a range of 3 or just make it +3 STR.