I'm not sure if you read my post a little further up the page, but I personally suggest that we do the exact opposite of this. If we want to find out whether Scythia is actually going to be OP for our purposes, we need to try them out. The first game isn't going to go perfectly no matter what. The nature of these things is that they're refined over time as people get to know one another and get to know the mechanics they're working with. Let's get Scythia in the mix as quickly as possible to determine whether it's actually a problem.
Thing is, though, that Scythia's entire
modus operandi is to perform a crippling early rush -- something which we aim to discourage in this form of game (or most games, at least). There's no point to playing as Scythia if you don't intend to rush someone and either pillage their empire or take their cities. Granted, we could let you do this within the framework of not conquering too many cities, as per the agreed-upon rules; but it may be
trivially easy to conquer cities as Scythia, due to their ridiculous bonuses. Perhaps we could test Scythia in single player to determine how op they really are? One thing is for sure, though: if they are included in the first game, I will
not be their next-door neighbor!
I just realized that we haven't talked at all about pillaging.
It could be a very viable strategy in Civ VI to simply ruin your opponent's improvements, never actually taking any cities. I'm not sure how to deal with this, tbh. To make a new rule for it (how many tiles you could pillage) would be too hard to keep track of to be of good use. I guess we'll have to rely on good conduct until something better is thought out (you may raid some, but not too much). Any ideas, anyone?
We should probably be a little more specific with that. Shall we forbid war in the Ancient Era? Or perhaps, forbid war until -everybody- is out of the Ancient Era? Or go farther still?
This is also a rule that should only be temporary, in my opinion, or only used in certain games and not in others (the same of which goes for, say, resource distribution and the like - no reason to have the exact same rules for every game we play). Otherwise some unique military units that activate very early in the game are rendered nearly useless (who would ever play Gilgamesh?).
Iirc, you're a late arrival to the thread and so perhaps missed some of our earlier discussion about this. It was agreed that the best way to limit early conquest is to tie the number of 'conquerable' cities to the tier of government that you've adopted. Such that, while you're in Chiefdom (default government), you may conquer X cities. Then when you adopt any of the 3 Tier II governments (available with Political Philosophy), you may conquer X + Y cities. And yet more with Tier III, until with a Tier IV government (Fascism, Communism or Democracy) you may conquer any number of cities. This way, the end-game will be a series of epic world-wars that will be waged after everyone has gotten to play their part in that particular world's history. To be defeated at that stage won't sting half as much as being ran over by chariots and being forced out of the game in the first 30 minutes. (Admittedly, some players might feel differently. There might even be always-peace games, if some people prefer them; this is only the rule-set for the first game, and even then it's still subject to changes.)
I'm not sure if there's a way to tell what government another player has adopted, so that you'd know to be more wary. In sp, there are announcements when the AI does this (iirc), but if they're disabled for mp, then we'll just have to announce when we switch our government (between tiers, that is).
The ideal value of 'X', and the increments to it, will vary due to various factors that are still unknowable (average expansion speed; optimal number / distance of cities; etc). Ideally, from a role-playing pov, there would also be differences in the amount of conquerable cities based on the particular Civ (think Gandhi vs. Tomyris), and by the actual form of government, not just tier (a Fascist government would be much keener on world domination than a Democratic one, duh). But this is only the first game, so I think it's best to keep things simple and just go with government tier.
Later on, as the games evolve and the rules get refined, we might introduce formal treaties which cannot be broken, or will have severe consequences for doing so. So, you might agree e.g. to pay someone 1,000 gold for a 40-turn treaty that outright prevents them from declaring war on you for those turns (on pain of being booted from the game). There are endless possibilities once we get the ball rolling.
I'd like to reserve Arabia.
Duly noted.
EDIT: Welcome, ELRACj!
As you are into TSL, I think you'll be excited to learn that I aim to make a world map specifically for mp in Civ VI.
Also, if you think you'll have the time to participate in our first game (perhaps a week from release), feel free to pick your Civ (Mac problems notwithstanding).
I much prefer text chats to voice ones -- but if others want to use it, they can ofc. Most likely there will be an in-game text chat included; if it works really poorly for some reason, though, then ofc some alternative should be sought.
We'll be having none of that here (or at least only a moderate amount, after a significant while 
).
), the more I think they will be banned from most multiplayer games outright (unless heavily nerfed, that is), whether our variant games or just regular ones.
