Well, the game's over now (after 9 hours
); here are some observations:
- We played on a Standard size Pangaea with a Low sea level. The map had
way too much space for some civs, yet it crammed others in a small corner. Clearly the spawn algorithm is wonky, and/or designed for single player. The best way to solve this issue would be to use a pre-made map: that way we can know exactly how large it is and where everyone spawns (ideally, where it's *possible* to spawn, not the actual places, before exploring them). Supposedly the 'Fruitymod' has some good mp maps available; I will check them out in the coming week and post my thoughts about them.
- The game was fun and fluid until we got to the Medieval age and started amassing too many units, cities, policy cards, trade routes, etc -- making each turn take longer and longer as 'stuff' accumulates. I'm not sure how to solve this tbh, other than using a smaller map. But the issue then becomes that it will be a serious setback to lose even one city, meaning that wars will involve potentially much more drama. This ties in with my next point:
- The 'polite' rule-set that we have in place makes going to war feel like a douchebag move and severely discourages warfare. I guess it's a logical outcome, but I would wish for some more wars in these games. I did start one with Brazil (after centuries of putinesque trash-talk
), but we were too tired after 9 hours of micromanagement at that point and it was looking like it might be a stalemate, so we barely got to unsheathe our sabers (so to speak).
- Warfare with the Dynamic Turns setting was a total disaster. I'm still not sure exactly how it works, but it's clear that it slows the game something fierce; we will use Simultaneous Turns in all future games.
- After two long games, I concede that krasny is right and Teamspeak (or some soft like Discord perhaps) is the better option for communication, as it frees up the hands from typing messages and so greatly speeds up the game. I will swallow my intense dislike of voice communication, and agree to use some form of voice comm in the next game.
- An issue that I hadn't anticipated is that turn-time processing is affected by the host's computer performance; as my comp is sub-par at best, someone else should host the games. Thankfully we had Chrizzly Bear with his beastly machine to carry us through this particular game.
- Although it requires everyone to install it (as a 'DLC', not a mod), we should look into using the so-called 'Fruitymod'. It's aimed as the replacement of the famed 'NQmod' as a multiplayer staple in Civ VI; right now it has relatively few features, but those few would already be very useful. It disables tech and civic popups, and nerfs chops outside a Civ's own borders. It also includes some maps (or map scripts perhaps) that should work well in multiplayer.
Those are my observations for now. Overall it was a fun game, but there are lots of improvements that can be made. Hopefully Firaxis will roll out the first patch soon, to address some of the bugs (I was 'forced' to exploiting the overflow bug simply because I wanted to build some damn horses!
) and oversights of the interface in particular.
), and just use all the other mods in the package. Anyway, thanks for the link, I might even use this package in sp, if I can find the right file to disable the Settler cost increase.
