Do you mean 255 cities? As in a challenge to see who can reach 255 cities fastest?
Is Civ2 Strategy Dead ?
- Thread starter Peaster
- Start date
IdiotsOpposite
Boom, headshot.
You got it. Just think of it as an expansion test.
Unusual challenge. And one I have never tried. Typically expansion is a means to other goals not a goal onto itself; but I guess it can be.
I think it is entirely possible that Civ 2 strategy is dead. The game was written and tested in a couple of years, and then a large group of people spent lots of time trying to "break" the game over a period of several years.
There is also the fact that the game has a rather large amount of variation, especially in the early game. Starting terrain, for example, impacts strategy, and in the case of two very good strategies may actually determine which one is better or worse. A debate a little while ago about monarchy vs. early republic comes to mind. The matter could only be solved mathematically by analyzing lots of different starting positions and determining the best monarchy strategy and early republic strategy for each, comparing the results of each, and determining what is either always or usually better. It would certainly be much more work than I would be willing to do.
Basically, I think there may be too many variations between games to make further strategy development possible, though I am by no means certain of it.
Personally, I usually play with the general goal of making my civilization as "great" as possible, and either I will get bored with the game or it will evolve into either a spaceship game or a late conquest.
In my opinion, the best way to do further studies of civ 2 would be through succession games (with the proviso that everyone follow the same general strategy, rather than do what they like during their turns). I usually play succession games with much more care than I do regular games, for a couple of reasons. The limited number of turns I get to play makes me take more care each turn and do more planning; 1 turn of 10 is much more significant than 1 turn in a large stretch of game. Also, I'm playing directly for other people, so that makes me put more effort into it.
Using succession games to do this research would limit the time commitment of players and reduce the impact of individual skill in the results. I would also be much more willing to participate in research in that form.
Regarding happiness, I did some work on it here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322213
There is also the fact that the game has a rather large amount of variation, especially in the early game. Starting terrain, for example, impacts strategy, and in the case of two very good strategies may actually determine which one is better or worse. A debate a little while ago about monarchy vs. early republic comes to mind. The matter could only be solved mathematically by analyzing lots of different starting positions and determining the best monarchy strategy and early republic strategy for each, comparing the results of each, and determining what is either always or usually better. It would certainly be much more work than I would be willing to do.
Basically, I think there may be too many variations between games to make further strategy development possible, though I am by no means certain of it.
Personally, I usually play with the general goal of making my civilization as "great" as possible, and either I will get bored with the game or it will evolve into either a spaceship game or a late conquest.
In my opinion, the best way to do further studies of civ 2 would be through succession games (with the proviso that everyone follow the same general strategy, rather than do what they like during their turns). I usually play succession games with much more care than I do regular games, for a couple of reasons. The limited number of turns I get to play makes me take more care each turn and do more planning; 1 turn of 10 is much more significant than 1 turn in a large stretch of game. Also, I'm playing directly for other people, so that makes me put more effort into it.
Using succession games to do this research would limit the time commitment of players and reduce the impact of individual skill in the results. I would also be much more willing to participate in research in that form.
Regarding happiness, I did some work on it here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322213
Yes, those days are gone and few people want to work that hard. Now players can win at OCC almost by a formula, so it's fair to say the game was broken. On the other hand, EC/EL have not been reduced to formulas, and there are many questions left about best play. So, IMO strategy is dead only if people have given up on it.
Sounds interesting ... do you have a link to that debate ? I don't dispute your summary of this particular issue, but in general, I have found that most basic strategy questions do have good practical answers [if not perfect answers].
For example, a basic question in EC is whether to build up a big powerful civ ASAP, or to attack ASAP from a minimal base. As you say, the answer depends on the starting position [big and powerful is best on large maps and/or if restarts are on]. It is not 100% clear-cut where to draw the line, but I have found this partial answer to be very helpful, and it seems good enough.
I disagree, but also admit to some uncertainty. I've studied EC pretty thoroughly and feel I have seen all the main ideas, and I that know when they do or don't work, at least on normal maps. So, I know it is possible to develop Civ2 strategy far beyond anything a newbie could imagine, at least in EC. And there are answers to most questions a newbie could ask.
I have not studied other kinds of games, such as EL or Trade, so deeply, but would expect the same pattern - that with enough work, we can find answers. Until recently, I assumed that EL and Trade were pretty well-understood, but am finding little agreement between the ELG, and comparison games since then, and the EL players here at CFC, and my own conclusions. I can't believe EL+Trade are intrinsically that chaotic. We are trying to sort some of this out in GOTM 110.
Well, it sounds like you play for fun rather than for a definite goal. That's OK, of course, but it doesn't sound like you are really challenging yourself to find the best ways to play [which is what makes the game fun for me].
Succession games haven't worked so great for me and I am reluctant to try again. They tend to drag on for months when some player gets too busy to play, or whatever, and I just don't handle that very well. From what I've seen by lurking, they do sometimes provoke good discussions. But our GOTMs do too, along with the "trial-by-fire" of competition which quickly separates the good ideas from the bad. In this thread, I was looking for something even better ... maybe discussion + very focused comparison games ... something like the games that evolved into the ELG and ECG. Hopefully, that's happening now in GOTM 110.
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Great - I will look into that! Thanks also for the comments above.
Here's the link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=269542&page=2
(You have to go partway through the thread to find it).
My comments about possible mathematical solutions were not discussed; rather, that is an opinion I came to about the problem at a later date. The problem is that comparison of governments in the early game is difficult because your goal for a government will affect your planning, making direct comparisons between governments unfair (an early republic will have fewer, but better placed cities than a monarchy; a monarchy will, I would expect, look better than a republic if play was planned for monarchy, and vice versa). However, terrain also plays a part in choosing where and how many cities will be placed.
Thanks - good thread. But I didn't notice your comments about mathematical solutions [are they in that thread, or did you mean comments in this thread?]. As a professional mathematician, I rely on basic math quite a bit in playing Civ2. So, if you have some ideas on that, I'd be interested. As you say, some Civ2 decisions resist math, and the choice of govts is one of them. Each govt comes bundled with numerous consequences, and many are hard to evaluate indep of the situation and the player's goals.
But ... I still believe it is possible to find valid rules of thumb, and possible to make fair comparisons. First, I don't think there can be much serious discussion of strategy without identifying a main goal of the game, and IMO we can narrow that down to EC and EL ["strategy" is meaningless if you only play for fun, or for high score, etc]. I think it is clear that Monarchy is the best early govt for EC, so we can safely assume here the goal is EL.
As you say, there are still many players and many strategies. But IMO there is no need to consider inferior strategies, or even untested ones. For EL, the main strategies boil down to 1) promote an SSC, or 2) promote fast growth+trade. Personally, I believe in 2), at least until the results of GOTM 110 come in [and I think the relatively few EL comparison games in 2005-2010 back this up]. So, to form a first rule-of-thumb about early Monarchy vs Republic, I'm willing to assume that the goal is fast growth, leading to big trade. And I'll pick Monarchy, because it makes more sense to me [see other thread] and because it succeeds in GOTMs. Simple rule of thumb ! Done ! From reading your posts, I think you probably agree with this one.
Now, someone may object that there may be certain maps, certain situations, etc where early Republic works better. Well, if evidence comes in for that, then we may need to revise the rule, and say, for example, that Monarchy is better in most single-player games, but not in OCC or MP games [just making this up]. In the other thread, a couple of apparently intelligent players recommended Republic, and gave some reasons they like it, but they didn't prove their case thru mathematics or thru public comparison games. I enjoyed reading them, but I don't take their advice very seriously. The forums are full of posts on "this is how I play Civ2", most of which have nothing to do with best strategy. At the risk of further offending some lurkers, I'll say that most of the essays in the CFC War Academy are just junk, as far as correct strategy goes, and you can see its legacy of error in many posts here. A few imperfect rules-of-thumb by strong players to balance that would be a big improvement.
Are there any nominations for "Best EL game of 2005-2010" ?
We are playing a comparison game now, GOTM 110, to compare EL strategies. Approx 5 strong players are in so far, but to make any firm conclusions, it'd be nice to have more EL examples to look at. Maybe from old GOTMs, maybe even from another website, though I'd prefer to have similar rules and to be able to inspect some of the saves.
We are playing a comparison game now, GOTM 110, to compare EL strategies. Approx 5 strong players are in so far, but to make any firm conclusions, it'd be nice to have more EL examples to look at. Maybe from old GOTMs, maybe even from another website, though I'd prefer to have similar rules and to be able to inspect some of the saves.
There was no discussion of mathematical solutions in the thread. When I later thought about the discussion, I formed an opinion that no mathematical analysis could be conclusive without an analysis of terrain. Here's why: in my estimation, the best play of monarchy will require a different number of cities than a republic, and some different production (due to the riot factor, and the fact that monarchy can use martial law). This means that (unless you can demonstrate that, generally, monarchy and republic should use the same or similar city placement strategy) directly comparing production levels by switching between governments and finding the "best" production output will not yield a conclusive result -- barring the possibility that one government is better even when used on a civilization planned for the other government. The problem is that city placement is influenced by the terrain, which varies from game to game, so comparing the "best" monarchy to the "best" republic is problematic, because the "best" strategy depends on the terrain.
Regarding the use of math when playing civ 2, in the end everything relies on math, because the game is mathematical in nature. I approach the game from the perspective of an economist, and view the game as a task of trying to make the best of constrained resources -- the problem is that it is hard to recommend courses of action without knowing specifically what those resources are. In some cases using math "ahead of time" can yield good results; usually these cases are where the specifics are relatively unimportant, or the math allows for comparisons in the same kind of unit.
I'm already getting confused; maybe we make different assumptions. I generally want to keep increasing my number of cities until the end of the game. More is better. Growth rate is one of the main ways I'd try to decide between these two strategies. BTW - I assume we are talking about ICS in Monarchy vs ICS in Republic [Wildpony's idea from the other thread] ?
I haven't tried Wildpony's idea and don't know exactly how I'd place cities in a very early Republic, but I don't see any reason why the placements should be different. On most maps (eg in most GOTMs) there is plenty of grass, and that's good enough for me (so, the terrain is not a big factor for me).
Also, to me "production" means settlers, and I don't think that would vary much by govt. At Diety, we have to make a few warriors for martial law, and that should be factored in.
I'm not sure I understand this, and can't really see the problems you see.
Yes, I pretty much agree with this.
Again, I don't really understand this problem - about unknown resources. For me, one typical difficulty is that values (of roads, celebrations, WoWs, etc) may require predicting the future of the game [my strategy, random AI decisions, etc]. I've played enough EC to do that pretty well, but I often feel lost in other settings.
I've found it fairly easy to compare gold, beakers, shields and food, for example. And most of the costs and benefits I need to evaluate can be boiled down to one of these. So, I can convert most values to units of gold. Exceptions:
* The transportation value of a road [or boat/etc] depends a lot on how much future traffic you expect on it, and how urgent that traffic will be, etc. This affects the evaluation of a Settler's turn [in gold], and of a typical Settler [in gold].
Likewise, the value of a crusader depends a lot on whether you are at war, or expect to be at war soon, and on location, and on the possibility of using it to get tribute. In general, value depends on how the thing will be used, often hard to predict.
* You've probably observed the current debate on the value of ongoing trade routes. I can estimate their value in terms of the taxes and beakers they bring in. But then someone says "I will need them to celebrate later" and the value of this is murky.
* The value of a change of govt. This involves lots of factors, and it is often hard to identify the main ones. I think this may be easier to decide by playtesting.
But in general, I thiink basic math is pretty useful in Civ2. Some players seem reluctant to use imperfect estimates, like 1 shield = 2 gold [or 2.5 gold, or whatever], but those players usually can't find better ways to make tough decisions.
