[C3C] Multiplayer Accelerated Full Game

[Fergei]

Reasons for this ruleset

With the competitive multiplayer scene the focus is understandably on units, combat and quick games of around 60 to 100 turns. Most victory conditions are not achievable / enabled. To reiterate, this makes perfect sense and no criticism is implied.

Many of the non-combat elements of the game are not particularly viable options. With a game limited to under 70 turns, there can be questionable value in spending a large proportion of that time making a building (rather than a unit). Plus, the focus on units can lead to longer turn timers (given that turn timers are based on a ‘per unit’ and ‘per city’ basis). AI is also understandably not incorporated (as they cannot handle 1 or 2 city elimination settings) and the main known bugs with multiplayer (i.e. defensive bombard and lack of war weariness) are mitigated to varying extents, if at all and are considered features of multiplayer play.

The Quick Civ mod that comes with the game is not considered to offer particularly viable strategic options beyond pumping out loads of units and crushing your rivals.


Types of games that this ruleset generates

The intention is to create settings where the AI can be incorporated (if there are insufficient players) and where games will, on average, typically have the following traits:

- successful warfare is still the optimum option – eliminate a rival, free up their land and settle it = challenging for a domination victory

- however, players may take into account their starting position and play style potentially elect to aim for a domination or culture victory

- a victory condition may be achieved significantly before the last turn if rival Civs do not take sufficient steps to prevent it

- players cannot simply rely on military superiority alone. They must keep track of their rivals and take steps to ensure a rival does not achieve a different victory condition.

- players must dedicate some resources to teching. They cannot rely purely on tech trading therefore just churning out early game units may not be viable

- smaller empires & militaries, so quicker turn timers (on average)

- increased potential for aggressive city placement to grab every square inch of land for a domination victory (including aggressive city placement to try and culture flip a rival city)

- Looser city placement (i.e. not Infinite City Sprawl) is buffed due to the domination victory conditions and the requirement for territory.

- Culture is buffed due to the domination victory conditions and the requirement for territory.

- Cultural and commercial buildings become more viable options compared to units

- AI not racing out to a lead, but presenting a stronger challenge after the ancient era

- AI and lower level players have a credible potential to achieve both a domination and one city culture victory

v0.06 attached

 

[Fergei]

Post to be updated as mod is tested and tweaked (this is v0.05). All changes relating to techs are incoporated in the name of the tech, so there is no need to memorise these.

Finalised settings

N/A (awaiting further testing)


Changes in the process of being tested (v0.05)

Intial indications are these work as intended, but more testing required:

- Turns reduced by a quarter to 135 (to try and make a game of under 3hrs achievable)

- Tech rate set at 40 (on all map sizes) – quarter rate of the default setting for a tiny map

- Minimum tech time – 1 turn

- Max tech time – 13 turns

- No tech trading in the first two columns of the ancient era (to streamline multiplayer and make FFA fairer)

- cost of techs in the first two columns of the ancient era doubled (to expand the early game a little and reduce frequency of spawning barbarian hordes everywhere with an early medieval era)

- Victory conditions – domination victory rate set at double the player’s starting share of population(e.g. 8x Civs = 12.5% population each on turn 1, so domination conditions = 25% of land and population)

- Culture victories scores quartered 5000 (1x city) and 25000 (empire)

- City Elimination activated and set at 3 (considered if the AI loses 3x cities they deserve to be knocked out, but can change to mass regicide if there are issues (AI does well with mass regicide but it distorts military police matters))

- All culture and commerce buildings plus Courthouse (including palace & forbidden palace) = quarter shield cost (rounded up)

- All wonders and small wonders = quarter shield cost (rounded up)

- MPP brought forward to writing (so it is available as a diplomatic option very early to counteract/deter early aggression by superior players)

- Optimal City Number reduced by a third for all map sizes (see below on map settings) - to ensure Commercial trait isn't nerfed by smaller empires.

- irrigation brought forward to Construction (helps get around issues with uneven starting positions, particularly for the AI – fairly standard change in competitive multiplayer)

- added 1 to the carry capacity of all boats that can be used to carry units

- fixed years again

- added Mathematics and Horseback Riding as pre-requisites to Republic to nerf it in response to war weariness being absent in multiplayer (which is effectively a buff to the already strongest government type)

- made Feudalism available at Currency (to make it a remotely viable government type and to open up a government type if prioritising the top line of the tech tree early in the game)

- made an expensive Ancient Cavalry (75 shields) available at Monotheism. Can upgrade to Cavalry (to help the AI if they have not got iron)

- made an expensive Crusader (80 shields) available at Navigation. Can upgrade to Guerilla (to help the AI if they have not got horses)

- gave the AI 1x additional worker at every difficulty level (to help them get started and compensate a little for their poor performance on more congested maps)

- brought the following buildings forward so they are more relevant in the game, reward teching and boost Culture and Seafaring; Research Lab (Scientific Method), Commercial Dock (Magnetism), Offshore Platform (Refining)

- halved the price of granary, aqueduct & hospital (to nerf Agriculture) as well as factories and manufacturing plants (to reward tech leaders)

- set up custom map sizes for small 70% water (84x84) and stndard 80% water (104x104) to make maps slightly more compact (to reduce frequency of barbarian hordes and make empires slightly smaller for a quicker game)

- brought safe sea travel forward to Engineering (to better accommodate Continent and Archipelago maps in a game that is a quarter of the turns, plus to make remote island starts more viable in terms of military and domination victory conditions)

- again modified difficulty – keeping starting units but decreasing the cost factor of the AI by two on each difficulty level so it techs, builds and grows faster (this is because the AI is nerfed significantly by smaller maps and the cheapness of Wonders - so doesn't expand so quickly and struggles if barbarian hordes spawn near them)

- brought Espionage forward to the end of the Ancient era and made spying cheaper (so the AI will dabble in it and it is a niche option for the human in certain situations)


Suggested map settings

For these settings to work as intended it is strongly recommended to have closely packed Civs. Roughly 35% more Civs per map size than default settings (for geeks I aim for the number land tiles divided by the number of Civs to equal between 240 & 280 tiles. For example, Standard map with 80% water is 2000 land tiles / 8x Civs = 250 tiles. The higher the figure, the worse the land quality should be (i.e. more mountains, desert & tundra that players may not bother to settle on).


Other changes being considered but not yet implemented

Governments

N/A

Units

N/A

Other

Remove any and all tech trading? (to speed up the game as diplomacy can be particularly time consuming) - this is apparently the standard in official 'epic' games.


Discarded changes (and reasons)

- Despotism- potentially reduce unit support to small settlements (abandoned as by bringing forward Feudalism to Currency we have an ancient era slaving, high unit support government that supports Infinite City Sprawl and early aggression. So you’d want to leave Despotism anyway).
- Remove Military Alliance – so the AI cannot be abused by humans (abandoned as less of a concern as there is no war weariness)
- Remove archer defensive bombard – an insanely powerful unit, leading to very powerful doomstacks of archers that can easily defeat the AI on even Demigod difficulty (abandoned as the defensive bombard of archers is arguably the main thing that can protect weaker players from early aggression from better players)
- Early explorer – so that it is a remotely relevant unit (abandoned as this would nerf teching (printing press and map sharing))

 

[Fergei]

v0.02

- fixed error with years elapsed per turn
- irrigation brought forward to Construction (helps get around issues with uneven starting positions, particularly for the AI – fairly standard change in competitive multiplayer)

 

[Fergei]

v0.03
- reverted to default difficulties (modified difficulty not achievable as desired as cannot amend overall game aggression level). Will probably play at 1x difficulty above the usual to compensate for AI early game focus on buildings and wonders rather than almost exlusively on settlers.
- doubled tech time for first two columns of ancient era (to slow down very early game, prevent frequency of barbarian hordes being unleashed very early in the game and encourage AI to build units rather than buildings and wonders in the initial turns)

 

[Fergei]

v0.04
- added 1 to the carry capacity of all boats that can be used to carry units
- fixed years again
- added Mathematics and Horseback Riding as pre-requisites to Republic to nerf it in response to war weariness being absent in multiplayer (which is effectively a buff to the already strongest government type)
- made Feudalism available at Currency (to make it a remotely viable government type and to open up a government type if prioritising the top line of the tech tree early in the game)
- made an expensive Ancient Cavalry (75 shields) available at Monotheism. Can upgrade to Cavalry (to help the AI if they have not got iron)
- made an expensive Crusader (80 shields) available at Navigation. Can upgrade to Guerilla (to help the AI if they have not got horses)
- gave the AI 1x additional worker at every difficulty level (to help them get started and compensate a little for their poor performance on more congested maps)

 

[Fergei]

v0.05

- brought the following buildings forward so they are more relevant in the game, reward teching and boost Culture and Seafaring; Research Lab (Scientific Method), Commercial Dock (Magnetism), Offshore Platform (Refining)
- halved the price of granary, aqueduct & hospital (to nerf Agriculture) as well as factories and manufacturing plants (to reward tech leaders)
- set up custom map sizes for small 70% water (84x84) and stndard 80% water (104x104) to make maps slightly more compact (to reduce frequency of barbarian hordes and make empires slightly smaller for a quicker game)
- brought safe sea travel forward to Engineering (to better accommodate Continent and Archipelago maps in a game that is a quarter of the turns, plus to make remote island starts more viable in terms of military and domination victory conditions)
- again modified difficulty – keeping starting units but decreasing the cost factor of the AI by two on each difficulty level so it techs, builds and grows faster (this is because the AI is nerfed significantly by smaller maps and the cheapness of Wonders - so doesn't expand so quickly and struggles if barbarian hordes spawn near them)

(Hoping this is the last change to be implemented and that testing will result in this being finalised as v1.0)

 

[Fergei]

v0.06
- fixed a couple of teething problems with incorporating Ancient Cavalry and Crusaders
- brought Espionage forward to the end of the Ancient era and made spying cheaper (so the AI will dabble in it and it is a niche option for the human in certain situations)