News: COTM 118 Spain. Pre-game Discussion

[Memento]

Very interesting, but with so many AIs every round needs a lot of time. i think i need a new laptop.

 

[greatbeyond]

I saw the same war weariness in all my tests. I had to make liberal use of the happiness slider in addition to the happiness provided by luxuries. To compensate, I added extra luxuries to the starting island. No changes were made to any setting having to do with war weariness. The good news is that you can turn the research slider to zero, unless you want to study future tech. I also gave the human player 40 gold versus the usual starting 10 to assist you in staying happy.

War weariness is worst for Democracy with Republic being second worst. I am not sure which government is best for it. Perhaps a change from Republic would be warranted.

I assume that the war weariness is boosted by being at war with 13 AIs right from the start. Somewhere I read how war weariness is calculated.

Edit:
I just found a reference from 2003 in the Bug reports where this was discussed. Apparently this is a bug with the locked alliances option (in PTW), and Firaxis never fixed it for Conquests. The good news is every civ including the AI suffers the same war weariness. As I am sure there are players who have already started the game. I am not sure that going into the editor and attempting to fix this would be acceptable. You have my apologies for not catching this before release.

 

[Più Freddo]

I see 6 luxes from the screenshot. [...] What do you guys think?

I think I see eight luxuries.

 

[templar_x]

me too, but i drank quite a bit last night, so i would not have mentioned it.
t_x

 

[Lord AJ]

I think I see eight luxuries.

Oops. Missed the silks and incense.

Edit : I realise that I saw the screenshot on the release page when I said this.

 

[Lanzelot]

You have my apologies for not catching this before release.

No need to apologize. If everybody is suffering from it in the same way, it's just an extra challenge making the game more interesting. (I just wanted to make sure it was not something special I did in my game that triggered the WW, while no one else is suffering from it... )

Actually it adds an extra dimension to the game: some may revolt into another government, some will avoid the revolution and stick with the higher lux spending. Which approach will be better? And if we revolt, which government will be the best choice? Lot's of interesting decisions to wage against each other...

Looking forward to a very interesting competition!

 

[serttech2003]

Having never won on Deity, this should be a short game. Maybe I'll defend the island and hope for everyone to surrender to me.

 

[Lord AJ]

@greatbeyond, Could you please tell How much time did it take you to finish (win) this game and with which victory?

 

[greatbeyond]

I only focused on the Space victory. I did play a little bit at trying to take the fight to the AI but had some bad results due to the speed I was playing at. I am sure some of the better players, playing carefully and methodically may be able to eek out a conquest victory. I assume a conquest will take a long time.

As for space, playing very fast without optimizing too much It took about 3 hours of straight play to get to space. I assume that if you want a good date and guaranteed results your game should take longer.

Enjoy, see you in the spoilers!

 

[Lanzelot]

greatbeyond, I think, this information should not be given, now that some players have already started the game! Players who did not yet start the game, will now have an unfair advantage with respect to making a decision about which victory condition to shoot for. Everybody should make this decision on his own, only based on the information the game/map itself gives him. Having someone else "play-testing" the game for him and then giving advice on which strategy to choose, is against the GOTM rules.

 

[Cotta]

When you start the save you have open maps and no AI founded before - you can decide to wait for the AI and take a look where they are starting.
So, it's perhaps an info which shouldn't be given before but in my point of view it's no big advantage. Moreover you started with all techs. So it's obvious to try spacerace.

 

[tjs282]

Just a heads-up to people here -- I've seen several comments in the last couple of days regarding the Space-race movie not playing under Win10.

I don't know if any of you are already playing under Win10 yet (Lanzelot is 'safe' with his XP-installation! ), but this might be something the GotM-staff need to be aware of. Maybe the rules for this game should be relaxed a little, to allow Win10-players to post a final save pre-launch, rather than post-launch?

(On topic: this game looked interesting, but Deity's still too scary for me... )

 

[Lord AJ]

greatbeyond, I think, this information should not be given, now that some players have already started the game! Players who did not yet start the game, will now have an unfair advantage with respect to making a decision about which victory condition to shoot for. Everybody should make this decision on his own, only based on the information the game/map itself gives him. Having someone else "play-testing" the game for him and then giving advice on which strategy to choose, is against the GOTM rules.

How could knowing the time a particular victory took when someone else played the game affect any player's score or strategy? All it does is indicate to a person running short of time which route will be quicker (in real world time) to take. Also it doesn't necessarily mean that the person will take that route or that he'll even win.

 

[Più Freddo]

How could knowing the time a particular victory took when someone else played the game affect any player's score or strategy?

Isn't that obvious? Among other things, it says something about how strong the opposition is, which helps plan the size of the military. It helps you decide which end date to plan for.

 

[Lord AJ]

Isn't that obvious?

Not really.

Among other things, it says something about how strong the opposition is, which helps plan the size of the military. It helps you decide which end date to plan for.

It would help give hints of AI military if the game was played with the INTENTION OF WINNING. But as greatbeyond said he played "quickly without optimising" and if you do that a space victory can be managed without much effort to managing cities well which I'm sure could make a game that ended as late as 1500AD finish in 3 hours of actual time. You can just progress through building all spaceship parts slowly in one city and not put much effort to getting exact Shields et cetera. As for attempting conquest, the only other victory type possible, nothing much has been said about it as he didn't attempt conquest. All he says about conquest is that it will take a long time which is blatantly obvious from the map size and 13 Deity AI opponents to deal with.

 

[greatbeyond]

I apologize for the appearance of giving away any advantage to players who hadn't yet started the game. That certainly wasn't and isn't my intention.

How long it takes any one to finish should certainly not be influenced by how long it took me after numerous rounds of testing just to make sure it was possible. If you want to win and score well, you must play carefully in any gotm.

I also assume that everyone will face roughly the same amount of opposition as this is an "always war" game.

I made the decision to leave conquest as a victory possibility based solely on the desire of some players not to be restricted to one victory condition. Perhaps it was wrong to say that I assumed a conquest victory would take a long time, by implication, longer than space. Of course I have consistently been surprised by how creative and just plain good some of the gotm competitors can be. I guess we'll see at the end.

 

[bbrady413]

I know I'm late to the pregame discussion party! But wow, what an interesting game! Something fresh and new! I'm still deciding how to play this game. Space victory sounds like the path of least resistance, but Conquesting 13 AI Deity opponents is downright appetizing! A Conquest victory here feels like it would be climbing a tall mountain, not because you had to, but because it is there. A great sense of pride must be gained from stepping up to this challenge!

I'm looking forward to playing this game, regardless of which victory condition I choose to go for!

 

[AlanH]

You may have to wait until after Christmas for the results of this game, as I am going away until December 26. I'll have my laptop with me, but I may not have time or facilities to publish the results until I get back home.