How do you Defeat a Rampaging Multiplayer Opponent? Cheese it!

[rah]

You say it's random enough, more randomness is intolerable. I say it's random anyway, who cares about two more random features - even if they might be seen als unbalanced or unfair. You say it ruins proper strategy. I say it adds a few more challenges to overcome. You say it does not belong into a game of strategy.

It all comes down to why you're playing. If you're playing to compare how long your Schlong is, then yeah, you may want to avoid a few features. If you're playing a SKILL game for enjoyment with a group of guys, then a little more randomness shakes things up. The lesser players will usually stop playing if they never have a chance to win, and guess what, even if they get lucky and win, they still usually figure out who the better players really are.

But I still believe that there is already enough randomness in the game that a little extra really doesn't change thing that much. (over a long period of playing)

If I win 10 games in a row, my group of friends may not want to play as often. If I win 8 out of 10, everyone has more fun but they will still consider me the better player. I'm not a big fan of playing with strangers all the time because I remember all the old days where cheating was rampant.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No, there is no law, but in a serious game of strategy and totally equal odds - like chess*) for example - it's highly unlikely and improbale that anyone with significantly less skill will ever be able to beat a better player.

Real outcomes do not match your assertion.

I say it adds a few more challenges to overcome.

Because this argument is made so frequently, is always wrong, and I've shot it down dozens of times over my time on the forum, I need an acronym for it...

CAFE - Canned Argument Failure Excursion. Stop slapping me with CAFEs. Now that that's out of the way, show me how a game deciding chance element in a match between two otherwise fairly evenly matched opponents is a "challenge that can be overcome". Show me how to get rid of < turn 40 or 50 horse archers when you have no copper. Go ahead. CAFE.

I say it belongs into a game that tries to recreate human history in a nutshell.

Still wrong. Civ advertises that you can rewrite history. Recreating is simply one option. It ALSO advertises itself as a "strategy" game. Elements that objectively detract from the importance of strategy in a strategy game are iffy from the start. At least arguing in favor of TAP actually hit on how it has strategic relevance in the game, and even made a fair few solid points...much better than this utter nonsense about how strategy games need a luck .

The more non-strategy dependent random factors you tack onto a game, the less strategy is decisive in a game that purportedly relies on strategy. RNG outcomes can be reasonably planned and there are strategic options to mitigate their impact. That is not true for huts or events; you can HOPE they are favorable to you and not to your opponent, but there's only minimal things that can be done to influence them.

Strictly speaking, MP games should also try to mitigate the effect of spawns as it's the other extremely large luck factor in the game. There are map scripts that do that pretty well...and in some scenarios people use pre-made maps instead. A rotation of 4-8 "balanced" maps per possible script that were fixed would have been a great inclusion in the game for the MP scene, but firaxis has repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn't care about MP anyway (just look at their civ V conduct, where it physically doesn't work like it should even now...and I'm not talking balance, but rather the ability to play it with more than a few people).

 

[gps]

Still wrong. Civ advertises that you can rewrite history. Recreating is simply one option. It ALSO advertises itself as a "strategy" game.

And it has both and it also has the option to switch on or off whatever you want to have in the game. I don't really see what you want to try to force on us - that your way of playing this game is better and more correct than mine? That you know better than the game designers how this game is intended and should be played??? What an ego, man!!!

CAFE - Canned Argument Failure Excursion.

Stuff like that neither makes your point stronger nor mine weaker. It only leads to me quitting the argument because it turns kind of pointless. You won, I hope it saves your day!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

CAFE I'm just having fun with. But "you just need skill to overcome something that skill can't possibly overcome if it's an otherwise even match" really IS used over, and over, and over, and over, and OVER again. It's tiresome. It also carries some undertones of "if you were good, this type of thing wouldn't bother you", due to claiming skill required to overcome it. So many times I've seen those words out of the mouths/hands of players who have never won at the difficulty (or in some cases one below) of the player they're telling it to. Against players who could actually win vs such disadvantages against a typical player and still know the claim is, overall, horse crap. So many times I've seen that completely nonsensical claim proven wrong.

And yet, month after month, year after year, people still put that crap up here. No way. CAFE.

And it has both and it also has the option to switch on or off whatever you want to have in the game. I don't really see what you want to try to force on us - that your way of playing this game is better and more correct than mine?

I'm saying that in competitive MP these elements should be turned off. This *is* a MP thread. If you want to play some games giving weaker players a chance by leaving chance elements on it's not like I'm condemning you, but that type of thing really shouldn't be in standard MP gameplay. It's like allowing double team in pokemon or giving a favored player a 1/12 chance of being unable to move for 1:00 at the start of a starcraft match.

What an ego, man!!!

I rank this as roughly as useful to the discussion as the "CAFE" comment. At least be creative .

Incidentally, the case I built following "CAFE" is still stronger than yours. Rather than answering my points, your side is now falling back to developer intent...I guess we don't want to get into the nitty gritty of how skill can *actually* overcome these ridiculous situations, do we ? Probably because nobody who's taken that side of the argument has actually been able to do it!

How about advertised genre? How about dynamic gameplay? Civ IV is supposed to be a strategy game. It claims that on the BOX (we can only guess at developer intent, but we can objectively read the purported genre). Not only that, but a lot of the rather deep strategic choices that are in the game can be overpowered by these joke mechanics...can you make a serious case that such is, on average, better for the game? That there's a chance playing better is meaningless?

That you know better than the game designers how this game is intended and should be played???

Well, I can't speak for what they "intended". Me and probably 1/4 of the rest of this forum know a LOT more about actually playing the game than them, and a careful look at the tradeoffs of some options vs others makes that crystal clear. I certainly know a hell of a lot more than them when it comes to "maybe the controls the game advertises as working should actually work". Karadoc is basically solo-patching those garbage joke controls, which firaxis has known about since vanilla and hasn't lifted a single finger to improve, ever. SURELY, professional staff could have given a few spare moments to FIX GAME CONTROLS.

But who knows. Maybe they *intended* for their manual to be wrong. Maybe they intended for hotkeys to not work and to force units to move against the player's will. I wasn't on that team, which is probably a good thing.

 

[traius]

I always thought that AP in MP should just reassign teams. That way, if everyone "cheeses" the winning player (ie they vote for someone else to take away this guy's victory), he can try to take on the entire world. If the entire world can beat him, then they win together (no TT though!), if he beats the entire world, then he shows them just how useless the pope's pointy hat really is.
This might also make voting for someone else a worthwhile strategic play, instead of just throwing the game. You could try to align yourself with the winning team, etc.