PBEM Four Players with Self Alliance

[predesad]

Okay, here we go, but, let me emphasize patience. We are still a long way off from getting the game started. We have to talk about settings and fairness and how best to make it easy for me to abuse the rest of u

Players: Predesad, Dogboy, Zurichuk, Apricorn

Our first point: MAP

With 8 civs (4 players, 2 civs per) a standard size map is my vote, i also prefer the standard settings continents, 70% water, temperate, 4billion, normal



Once we get the basics of the map figured out, how do we get our civs put on the map?

Are we just going to select civs, roll the dice and hope your two civs ain't halfway across the world?

Are we going to find someone to make a map & put allied civs close together?

And if they are close together, do we really want them to be next door neighbors?

Any ideas on these few starting issues?

 

[DogBoy]

Ok, here is my $.02
We can pick one of the pre-existing maps. The ones that come to my mind are Islands, Close Quarters, Early Combat, Plenty, and Quad-Damage. All of these maps are pretty much fair in the sense that we are equal distance apart from each other. You can find a neutral party to set up our starting locations, or that can be completely random. If we don't want to use a pre-existing map, then you can also have somebody set up a map for us with starting positions either close to one another, or make sure we are far apart so we will have to make an effort to link up with each other. Of course the resources may not be "fair" if we use a randomly generated map, but that's fine with me. Either way is fine with me. As for picking the civs, we could each pick our civs or go random.

So the bottom line is either a pre-made map or a randomly generated map. My vote is either way.

Whatever we do, a third party should set the game up for us with the starting positions either close by, or make sure everybody is far apart. My vote is either way.

Once we all decide on which way to go, then we can pick our civs.

Whoever sets up the game for us needs to make sure that everybody's two civs are in order. It would suck to send the game around in circles to play both civs. It would (obviously) go twice as fast if we each played our two civs before sending it to the next person.

As for the order of the turns, it should make sense timewise. I usually play 8:00-11:00 EST with is GMT-5.

 

[predesad]

i agree with most of what you said, having a third party set up starting locations would be the 'fair' way, but i dont always like to go w/ fair. civ isnt about fair, one thing about resources, might need to be redistributed after the mapmaker places starting locations. nobody needs to post their civ choices right now, because if we could keep our civ choices private fromthe mapmaker it might help him be unbiased, this might not be possible. will discuss more options for the map maker if / when the other guys give their thoughts, that is we decide to go w/ a mapmaker.

turn order was another issue i was going to discuss later, but since you brought it up, we have two options:

1) slower but more balanced: A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D

2) faster but less balanced: A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D

should vote on this, dogboy has chosen #2, i am undecided

 

[DogBoy]

Good point about the "fair" issue. I kinda like a randomly generated map. That way we will have to use our abilities and civ knowledge to fight/trade for resources if we don't have them. That's part of the game...much better than a cookie cutter layout.

I like the AABBCCDD much better. It will be unbalanced when "person A" goes to war as they will be able to mass both of their civs on "person B" before "person B" can retailate. But I think that will add some challenge to the game. Plus, it will make the game go faster. As for choosing our civs, I think it would be give if we PM the map maker our civ choices. That way no one will know what anyone else is until the game starts. Since I'm sure some of us will want the same civs, we should come up with a wish list such as with our top 8 civ choices. That way the map maker can give us our #3 and 4 choice is our #1 and 2 choice is already picked. I'm confident the map maker will be fair and distribute the civ choices.

 

[predesad]

dont totally like idea about civ choices because (trying not to give away my strategy) i will choose two civs i feel will work well together. if one of my civs is already selected i would need to know which one before making a replacement choice, or i might wanna ditch both and make 2 new choices. if we pm map maker & we have same choices we need the mapmaker to pm us back so we can make brand new choices.

any ideas for resolving if two people make same choice?

do neither get the selected civ?

w/ 4 people making 2 choices each blindly, good chance of double picking, dont want a civ 2 b left out just because 2 people (or more) took it

might b hard 2 accomplish, but would b nice 2 go into game blind not knowing what the pairs are beforehand, certainly willing 2 give it a try.

one note about civs: cant go random because a locked alliance must be made between two civs in the scenario properties before setting up the game

 

[DogBoy]

Then here is what I propose. The map maker can pick our two civs for us. You can ask Meliflous to make the map. I know he makes maps for ladder games. He is really good at picking out good match-ups. I suggest he make the civs for us. I do like going into the game blind. It makes it more fun. The best part about civ for me is still the first turn of the game. Just looking at what civ I got and settling my first city is the greatest.

Going to bed now...very late.

 

[predesad]

yeah, my first turns take awhile, looking at all my opponents, what their traits / starting techs are vs mine and getting a mini strategy for first part of game.

i dont know about having him pick for us, i kinda already have some sort of strategy in mind, not actual civs picked out, but ... well, i dont wanna give it away, of course this is not my game, it's our game and i'll go w/ whatever the consensus decides

 

[Apricorn]

I think we should definitely play turn order AABBCCDD.

As for all the other options, Im easy.

 

[DogBoy]

Well, it looks like we are all agreed then...except where is Zurichuk? Are you lurking out there? Let's get this game rolling!

 

[zurichuk]

i'm here, didn't realise that i was signed up but can always make room for another PBEM, email is in profile btw, i don't mind random civs and i'll go with the flow on the other decisions, go for it!!!

 

[predesad]

did u want to play, zurichuk, u had expressed interest in the other thread, Conquest Alliance PBEM where i had 3 options:

i'd be interested in 1

i took that to mean u wanted in the game, if you dont no hard feelings.

Assuming zurichuk does want to play, seems he & apricorn are pretty flexible, so lets get our settings in order so we can proceed, guess u & i will make most of the decisions, dogboy, but u two chime in anytime. Also, i sent a pm to Meliflous asking if he'd make a map, still waiting on a response. I'll let him decide about making our allies close or far apart, see advantages w/ both, although at different stages of the game.

we can go w/ random civs (not really random but Meliflous or other map maker choosing for us) or we can try the pming our choices to him thing, which i would prefer. if we go w/ pming our choices, my final thoughts on this is each player pm's 3-4 pairs of civs, the map maker chooses one set from the 3-4 pairs, so you cant be certain who you're going to be, yet there is some level of choice. but then this might make for extra work on the map maker, thoughts?

I was thinking of a relatively normal world (temperate, 4 billion, normal) but not a stickler for this.

think map maker should decide about continents, pangea, or archipelgio, whichever is easier to set up w/ our requests, what's your opinion? Although if he goes w/ pangea we might want to request no civs w/ seafaring as their trait / UU, proviing we go random

world size: we have 8 civs even though 4 players, should we go w/ standard size map, 70% h2o

victory conditions: all allowed? except wonder (not that the game would actually get that far) i hate anything which depends on the score of this game in determining the winner.

AP on / off? i like on for speed

allow cultural conversions?

turn order: AABBCCDD

any other thoughts / decisions?

everyone post timezones please.

 

[Apricorn]

The times I can play the turn are 1900-2300 GMT weekdays and 0900-2300 GMT weekends.

I dont mind what civs to play, anything other than Celts or Carthaginians is fine by me (Im playing those in my other PBEMs)

AP - hmmm, Ive never played with it on, would certainly be interesting to try it and speed up the early game a bit. So I vote ON.
Standard size map sounds good.
Id say all allowed for victory conditions including wonder.
Yes to allow cultural conversions

Did I give you my email predesad?

 

[DogBoy]

Ok, sounds like we got a game! As for my prefereces:

Let Meliflous set up the map for us. He is good at that and knows what will make good matchups. If we want random civs, he will know what civs to pick for us. He has done this for me in several other PBEM games. Assuming Meliflous can't make the map for us, then we need to get somebody else.

Turn order needs to be AABBCCDD

Standard size map. I don't care if it's panagea or continents or whatever, just so long as it's "fair". i.e. Two of us should not have both our civs on one continent and the other two have their civs split apart by continents.

AP ON. I have only played with AP once, but it looks like the consesus here is on, so I will go with that.

All victory conditions should be on.

Cultural conversions should be on.

0100-0400 GMT weekdays.
1200-0400 GMT weekends.

So it looks like I should go after APRICORN unless somebody else plays between our two times.

 

[zurichuk]

well despite the confusion i'm looking forward to it, i'm in uk zone but i am a night-owl anyway

 

[DogBoy]

Looks like we are almost ready! The turn order can be Zurichuk/Apricorn in either order as they both play same time zone, then me, not really sure where predesad plays as he never posted a time. Have you got a map maker yet predesad?

 

[predesad]

No map maker yet, according to message tracking Meliflous has not yet recieved my message & also has not logeed into ciffanatics since 6am Jan 12. I'll give it one mopre day, then we need to try to find another map maker. Any of you guys who know someone who might be interested, or can find one feel free to go ahead.

Apricorn, i believe i have ur email from arrogant's 8player game, as well as dogboy's, zurichuk's is in his profile, as is mine, so that's not an issue.

My time zone is GMT -6, play usually somewhere between 0:00 & 06:00, more freedom about 0400-0600. a good turn order i guess would be something like Apricorn, Zurichuk, Dogboy, then me

 

[predesad]

you know, i just thought of a way to get this game started immediately w/out a map maker, it would rely on random method of choosing civs & starting locations, but IMHO that's what civ is really about, taking what you are given good or bad and working w/ it. A good strategist can still win the game from almost any starting position. Any idiot can win the game if they start coastal + river + good terrain + resources. we could still go w/ an alternate game later & have 2 games going if wanted provided we locate a map maker, but i anticipate finding someone to do this will take some time, and then the actual designing the whole scenario at least a couple days to get it right and balanced the way we want.

i'll assign each civ a number from 1 to 31 (example: greeks = 1, americans = 2, ottomans = 25 ...) i'll pm these slections to both apricorn & zurichuk. Dogboy will then assign civs by picking two numbers for each player (example: predesad 15 & 6, zurichuk 7 & 12, apricorn 9 & 28, dogboy 30 & 28) civ selection is completely random because dogboy does not know which numbers coorespond to which civ. Since zurichuk & apricorn also know my number selections, it will be certain that i cannot manipulate the choices in any way but must go with the random selections. Immediatley after the selections are made by dogboy i would then post the results of the random selection, although everyone but dogboy would already know the results. i would then start the game w/ the selections we have chosen.

2 final choices to be made that i can think of, difficulty level & barbarian level. (difficulty level would only decide # of content citizens & attack bonus vs barbarians)

might as well go w/ regent since no AI, i prefer raging barbs. any other thoughts?

im going to go ahead and assign the numbers, pm to zurichuk & apricorn in case this is acceptable. then as soon as dogboy posts the numbers, if its a go, we can start the game. does anyone like this idea? does anyone hate this idea?

i know this isnt ideal, but it would let us get started, & like i said we can go w/ a second game later if we want. as another condition to this start, i'd be willing to let each player have a veto if the map is just unbearable, but after u veto & i start another game that player does not have a choice of rejecting another game. as far as im concerned, i'll accept whatever im given

 

[DogBoy]

Sounds great! Wish I had thought of it. I will go with whatever start I'm given (barring the utterly worthless start of all times). Gotta have some barbs in there for the expansionist civ, but I don't care for raging. Regent sounds fine with me since there are no AI civs. I honestly can't remember the last time I played Regent, but that's fine. I'm ready to pick the numbers.

 

[predesad]

i pmed the assigned values to apricorn & zurichuk. guess you could go ahead & then i could get the game set up and ready if this is okay w/ the other guys. instead of raging barbs, how about the next level up, isnt that restless?

 

[DogBoy]

Ok, I just PM'd everybody their numbers.