LotR discussions

[Justus II]

Originally posted by Kylearan
Oooh, reports could be ambigious, yes...

"Charis flips away!" (Is he playing MoO now?)

"Arathorn has built a settler." (As can be seen in his avatar...)

"T-Hawk riots!" (Has someone mis-managed his carefully set-up worker farm?)

Thanks, Kylearan, after the day I've had, I really needed a good laugh!

 

[Arathorn]

It's begun.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86752

And, yes, Arathorn did build a settler. And probably will build several more! I think it's pretty fun. Gothmog and Skyfish were founded, too....

Arathorn

 

[Skyfish]

Damned ! Too late...

 

[Arathorn]

OK, LotR13 is over. Another win in the LotR series -- that puts the overall record at something like 10-3-1. What do people want to see for LotR14? Not just a sign-up, but a discussion, too.

IDEAS:
1. True Fascists. Play with Fascism enabled from the beginning and the default government. I would probably enforce a no-city-razing rule, too, just to see how that plays out. Probably DG or deity.

2. RAW -- regeant always war. Pack 31 opposing civs into a small map and see how it goes facing a whole lot of foes at once. Probably as the Aztecs.

3. AWE with no armies. Fairly self-explanatory. Or maybe just no pillaging with armies.

4. AWDG on pangea. Since the last LotR AWE ended in a loss, why not move it up a notch?

5. Totally random Sid -- random civ, random barbs, random everything (except world map size, which would be standard, so the game doesn't last forever).

6. Sid OCC -- just win, baby. Probably diplomatic, if we could pull it off. Small map as Byzantines?

Interest? Suggestions? Considerations? Better ideas?

Arathorn

 

[LKendter]

4. AWDG on pangea. Since the last LotR AWE ended in a loss, why not move it up a notch?

The LOTR series proves that it loves painful games.

 

[Aggie]

I am interested in all of them, except 1. I love a challenge

 

[LKendter]

1. True Fascists. Play with Fascism enabled from the beginning and the default government.

Don't make my almost mistake - give all civs Fascism goverment tech as a starting tech! I almost screwed my Commie game up because of that.

 

[Arizona_Steve]

3 or 4 for me. 2 sounds like there will be a whole load of OCC civs for us to beat up on - almost like elimination. Although I've never even attempted Sid (and am probably not good enough anyway), I'd have a go at 5, just for the learning experience.

The LOTR series proves that it loves painful games

Not surprising. After all, Arathorn is playing an Always War Sid game (see the Stories and Tales forum)...

EDIT: Will this next game be on patch 1.22?

 

[Arathorn]

Ooohhh...good question in the patch issue. I'm playing SAW on 1.15, because that's what I still had at the time. But going to 1.22 is probably a good idea. I might well run a dual install for a while.....

I'll tentatively say 1.22, with 1.15 as a fallback if that's what the majority prefers.

I've been in painful game mode for a while...the "monkey cult" games were a ton of fun, but I've just not had inspiration in that area lately. I also want to keep the winning percentage around 75%, so painful games are the order of the day -- especially with the crowd who usually seems interested.

Anybody want to discuss some of the games instead of just saying they're interested ? How much extra challenge would having no armies be for AW? How about if an army could just never pillage nor share a square with any other unit? What's the best way to limit armies, especially in AW?

Is Fascism a good govt? Would it work better/worse than Communism from the get-go? How about compared to the True Democracy games? Does anyone care?



Arathorn

 

[Aggie]

Oh, I'm also not so interested in 2.

I understand that you already play with non-lethal bombers. So that would make it more balancing already. I also like the idea of not pillaging with armies. As we know you can easily create a cav army and pillage a civ to the stone age in 10 turns. Not a lot of fun. However I understand that the trick is to reach cavs in a AWDG

I just finished my last game at patch 1.15. So I like to play 1.22, however both are ok.

Regarding OCC Sid: Byzantines sounds like the best civ for it. Maybe on a standard map, archipelago, 80% water? Or is that to easy? j/k

 

[Kylearan]

1. True Fascists: This eliminates one big drawback of the government, the loss in population when you switch. Hm...sounds not very difficult, so should be Deity, no? Would be an interesting game since most people use communism nowaways, and I for one haven't *really* tried fascism. No-razing rule would be a nice addition.
Would be interested to play.

2. RAW: Sounds very easy. Delay contact with far-away civs - take over some nearby city-states early - soon have more cities than rest of civs - win. Or am I missing something?
EDIT 2: Ah, I just realized what I may be missing. Facing 10 civs with 1 city each vs 2 civs with 5 cities each means lower (say: no) corruption and more workers for the opponents, probably increasing the unit count we had to face. This will be offset by AI-AI wars, the lack of RoP agreements between them and the fact that the enemy units won't be coordinated so well (as they are normally? ).
Would be interested to play for novelty value, but if too many like to play this more than I do, I'd had no hard feelings not playing. EDIT 2: Would be interested.

3. AWE no armies: I like the prospect of trying AW without the overpowered armies, so this would be interesting. Lots of leader-rushed infrastructure (meaning more military) in the middle part of the game should somewhat compensate for the lack of armies. I'd like to try this more than to allow armies and somehow limit them.
Would like to play, although I find AWE on normal maps very difficult...

4. AWDG pangea: Er...why not, I'm used to losing. A lot would depend on map layout and on when the first leaders (armies) appear. Not the kind of game I'd be interested in the most, but count me in.

5. Random Sid: Since Sid has been beaten, all random Sid would be interesting. But then Sid hasn't been beaten (or tried) by *me*, so be aware of that when you say I'd be allowed to join.

6. Sid OCC: While it's about time someone should try this, I don't think OCCs lend themselves so well to SGs IMHO, so good luck on this one - I'd be lurking only.

-Kylearan

EDIT: Regarding which patch to use, I have a slight preference for 1.15 but would also play under 1.22 if someone could direct me to a posr explaining how to make a dual-install.

 

[T-hawk]

Hmm. #2, the Regent Always War with tons of civs, doesn't seem all that popular, but I'd love to join in on that one. The other AWs don't seem all that interesting to me. AW without armies would pretty much be a rehash of pre-C3C AW. AW is close to being a solved equation by now, IMO. If we don't get crushed by the starting units, we know how to win it.

I'm actually getting tired of playing on Sid difficulty. As you're discovering in the SAW game, keeping up with the AI production advantage is challenging and usually just barely possible, which is great. But the tech costs just kill the fun for me. The regular game means you have to steal everything from the early Middle Ages onwards, which involves too many dice for my taste. And in every Conquests scenario that I've tried on Sid, the player ends up ignoring the last age of the tech tree.

I so wish the game decoupled the AI cost advantage for production and tech. What we need for a really great AW game is a massive AI production advantage, but tech costs kept in normal line. Anyone think of a way to do that? The Regent game might be a step in that direction.

Regarding #1, Fascism really isn't all that interesting a government, IMO. It's Monarchy with pop-rushing, fast workers, and marginally more unit support. A True Feudalists game might be the more interesting, if that hasn't been done yet...

 

[Speaker]

I second T-Hawk's thoughts about Sid. I find it exhillerating facing huge stacks of AI units, but the tech issue makes the game less interesting. I am interested in the Regent AW with tons of Civs, provided we are allowed to use armies.

 

[Gogf]

I so wish the game decoupled the AI cost advantage for production and tech. What we need for a really great AW game is a massive AI production advantage, but tech costs kept in normal line. Anyone think of a way to do that? The Regent game might be a step in that direction..

[desemilurk]I/you could easily mod Sid level to give the AI a massive production advantage, but little to no tech bonus if you wished[/desemilurk]

 

[T-hawk]

How exactly do you do that, Gogf? There's only one setting for AI Cost Factor, and that applies to both food/shield production and tech cost.

 

[Gogf]

It does? Well, there is always the option of making two units the AI Spearman, and Spearman. The cost of the units is changed via whatever variable you want. Just tell me what production advantage you want the AI to have, and I'll get it in. I'll try and see if I can get it to work on buildings, but I'm not sure I can do that. Once I get the variable, and the civ you want, I should have a working mod by Saturday.

 

[microbe]

How exactly do you do that, Gogf? There's only one setting for AI Cost Factor, and that applies to both food/shield production and tech cost.

Check Beyond Sid. Bamspeedy did exactly that.

For the "True Fascists", we had a game that we could only go despotism -> Facism. That was on emperor, but the actual difficulty level should be at least DG. For you, how about doing it again at DG or deity?

 

[T-hawk]

Gogf: That'd work for units, yes, although it'd be a lot of work and prone to error. Also, it wouldn't affect the cost for food growth or improvement/wonder production. Different versions of units can be made available on a per-civ basis, but the editor doesn't have a facility to do that with buildings.

microbe: That's not what Bamspeedy did. The cost factor of 1 applied to techs as well - his civ paid 10x the base cost for all techs. He worked around that by building the Great Library for early techs, and stealing the rest of the way.

I did have an idea, though - maybe we can take advantage of the flavor cost bug that manifests in the Conquests scenarios? Name one of the flavors "AI", then give that flavor to all the AI civs and to all the techs. Then the techs should be cheaper for the player who doesn't have that flavor. Anyone want to do some experimentation?

 

[microbe]

Hmm, I might have misunderstood his comment of "even though they have such a huge discount on growth and production, they must spend the same amount of beakers for techs, regardless of difficulty level."

 

[Coffee]

I so wish the game decoupled the AI cost advantage for production and tech. What we need for a really great AW game is a massive AI production advantage, but tech costs kept in normal line. Anyone think of a way to do that? The Regent game might be a step in that direction..

How to keep the game on the edge, I don't know either. Perhaps a RAW style game elavated to DG. Say 12 civs on a panagea, no pillaging with the armies and a tech cap which excludes cav's. The general idea would be to use a combination of units and tactics effectively. If treb... had a range of 2 then knights and trebs could secure a choke point with interlocking lines of fire. Workers to built forts on hills opposite river crossings. The play would be against the games production and swarm characteristics. An off topic example perhaps but thats the general idea.