Planning SGOTM 09

[LowtherCastle]

Two equal teams, one gets hit repeatedly by slave revolts (-1 pop even if you have the cash), the other gets the free golden age quest. I know who my money is on.

Slavery is optional and the event doesn't activate until you've had plenty of time to accumulate 10g. Furthermore, if you're running Slavery, why aren't you poprushing below pop4 more frequently? (We're talking early game here, since that was your point of emphasis.)

Quests require a ton of resources, typically diverted from your strategy.

My question was not looking for umpteen hypothetical scenarios that can be avoided by smart play. I'm looking for specific events, like maybe tornados, that we, as a group, could agree to exclude.

It's not over the course of a single game that events balance out, because late game events have propertionaly less impact than early game events. It's over the course of many many games that the balancing out occurs (comes out as a net positive), but since succession games typically take 2-4 months each, you're not going to see that averaging out occur in a reasonable timeframe.

You're mixing two different types of time, game turns and human time. Human time (2-4 months) has nothing to do with averaging out. By time, I mean games that require a greater number of turns.

Events aren't going to prevent a good team from beating a bad team, but they certainly can impact which good team wins. For a typical HoF/Gauntlet challenge, events are fine because if a string of uncontrollable bad luck happens, you can just try again, but for something like this or a GoTM there's only one shot.

Deciding to bee-line alpha and then finding out there is only one other player within reach is also an ireversible decision. So I'm arguing that the best teams are the ones that develop a flexible strategy that accounts for as many possibilities as possible and takes calculated risks to maximize their chances of getting the gold.

When crossing plains, do you move your scout 1 tile per turn or 2? How do you move your scout through a jungle? Do you bypass it when possible? How doyou plan your initial scout movements, when there is no animal? Do you go somewhere les safe foryour scout? Losing a scout to an animal can make a huge difference in the game. Maybe we should eliminate animals, barbs, everyone start with Satellites, in short, remove all random factors? I'm not being sarcastic. I'm pointing out how many random factors there already are that have a significant impact on the game, especially at the highest levels.


Btw, eliminating nearby huts became imperative after CFR popped mining in SG2, then got an early religion and had such an outrageous advantage over other teams that there was no longer any competition after about T30.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I would certainly argue that all goody huts should be banned if events are banned.

I agree with this statement.

Then it's imperative to eliminate popping gold, silver, gems, copper and iron on hills. In the capital's FC, that's far more of an early game-changer than any single event and iirc, it can happen earlier than most events too.

 

[Indiansmoke]

May I propose...aggressive ai...always war...no huts, no random events, no barbs

 

[BLubmuz]

Then it's imperative to eliminate popping gold, silver, gems, copper and iron on hills. In the capital's FC, that's far more of an early game-changer than any single event and iirc, it can happen earlier than most events too.

I don't think it's possible, it's hard-coded in CIV. And nobody will settle a capital without hills, minable hills, not with pigs or sheeps.

But i think that random events and GH must be removed.
GH completely, not only for the player: what if an aggressive nearby AI pops BW from a hut?

This can be a huge difference.

May I propose...aggressive ai...always war...no huts, no random events, no barbs

We already have an AW SG, the 5th IIRC.
But i think it requires "no tech trading" to be in reach of the less competitive teams.

Why not culture? Maybe with some variant?
We never have a cultural SG.

 

[HAJ]

I'd like to see you do a game with religious victory. Islamic would be fun, because it is the last religion in the game.
Or perhaps add scientology as a new religion if you want an even later religion.

If you need tweaks to make it a bit tougher, you could consider low domination limit, use all the leaders that prefer religions, make the AP obsolete early etc. etc.

 

[leif erikson]

Hi Haj,

First post! Welcome to CivFanatics.

Hope you will find time to sign up for the next SGOTM.

 

[Gnejs]

I think eliminating nearby huts are a good compromise. The distant huts make for an interesting strategy choice: do you pop them as soon as you find them to make sure you get the benefit and not someone else, or do you save them until later and improve your chances of popping something useful? Do you also devise your research strategies to avoid popping useless techs?

I don't think the randomness of huts is much different than the randomness of GP popping.

 

[Erkon]

The game will not be as fun to play if all huts are removed and all events are removed. And I doubt the ranking would change noticeably.

Any team that has suffered from a bad pure random event (i.e. not slave revolt) could perhaps state that once SGOTM8 is over. Then we can ask the HoF mod writers to remove those.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Slavery is optional and the event doesn't activate until you've had plenty of time to accumulate 10g. Furthermore, if you're running Slavery, why aren't you poprushing below pop4 more frequently? (We're talking early game here, since that was your point of emphasis.)

Quests require a ton of resources, typically diverted from your strategy.

My question was not looking for umpteen hypothetical scenarios that can be avoided by smart play. I'm looking for specific events, like maybe tornados, that we, as a group, could agree to exclude.

Tornados is the obvious example of an unavoidable event that can be gamechanging.
At the same time, so is the statue of zuess/colloseums Golden Age quest. It's one of the easiest quests to complete, and essentially turns the statue of zeuss into a Taj Mahal that can be captured or built, and still provides a secondary benefit.


Slavery, as you say, is an avoidable negative event and I agree does fall into a slightly different category, more akin to a bad combat roll. However the severity of the penalty, even under mitigated circumstances, makes it noteworthy.

You're mixing two different types of time, game turns and human time. Human time (2-4 months) has nothing to do with averaging out. By time, I mean games that require a greater number of turns.

Sorry, there's some misunderstanding going on here. Even in a marathon game, random events are unlikely to even out. The event frequency is too low relative to the number of turns available (but significant enough in impact to effect the result by several turns).
A person who sees random events evening out is someone who is playing many many games. This discussion relates only to SGOTM's, of which relatively few will ever be played (as a result of human time component). As such we can not use the "evening out" of random events as a reason to allow them in the context of SGOTM's.

Deciding to bee-line alpha and then finding out there is only one other player within reach is also an ireversible decision. So I'm arguing that the best teams are the ones that develop a flexible strategy that accounts for as many possibilities as possible and takes calculated risks to maximize their chances of getting the gold.

When crossing plains, do you move your scout 1 tile per turn or 2? How do you move your scout through a jungle? Do you bypass it when possible? How doyou plan your initial scout movements, when there is no animal? Do you go somewhere les safe foryour scout? Losing a scout to an animal can make a huge difference in the game. Maybe we should eliminate animals, barbs, everyone start with Satellites, in short, remove all random factors? I'm not being sarcastic. I'm pointing out how many random factors there already are that have a significant impact on the game, especially at the highest levels.

I don't disagree with the content of this, the random component of Civ is very much a part of the full game experience. There needs to be an element of risk vs reward for all decisions, otherwise every game would play the same.
However we're being asked to draw a line. A line based on making conditions as similar as possible across parallel games, such that the team making the best decisions will be most likely the team rewarded with the first place.

Some draw the line at huts as being a step too far.

Btw, eliminating nearby huts became imperative after CFR popped mining in SG2, then got an early religion and had such an outrageous advantage over other teams that there was no longer any competition after about T30.

I'm not suggesting anything qualitatively different to banning huts, and I'm a huge fan of random events in my own games. I just think that they are one element of gamechanging randomness in the game that is easily avoidable, and should be avoided in game where the objective is to compare finish dates.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Quests

* Sports League: I could see excluding this quest if playing a leader who gets half-priced colloseums.
* Guns Butter: I could see excluding this quest for longer games. For early conquest or domination, it would be irrelevant.

In both cases, you're talking about building stuff (colloseums, muskets) that one normally doesn't build (at least I don't see it happening).

 

[Lexad]

So, what is then the point of excluding these quests? If you find the reward insufficient, just do not build these, as you would've normally done.

 

[LowtherCastle]

So, what is then the point of excluding these quests? If you find the reward insufficient, just do not build these, as you would've normally done.

Golden Ages. I think it's pretty clear that a GA can be a powerful effect, especially later on when cities are well developed.

 

[Lexad]

Well, you also have to have rather useless Zeus for GA iirc. So building bunch of useless buildings (unless you're Greek, Aztec, Babylon or smth else with UB colloseum) and useless WW is a price to be considered thoroughly.

I had Marathon event giving GAge. There are loads of strong events - if you don't like game-affecting events, just switch all of them off.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I had Marathon event giving GAge. There are loads of strong events - if you don't like game-affecting events, just switch all of them off.

Whatever. That's the same argument PaulisKhan is making. I think that's an A = B argument. Because of a few serious events, people want to throw out all of them. Most events are not that serious. Most events are not game changers liked CFR popping Mining in SG2. Do you disagree? (You were on it.)

 

[Lexad]

It was a while ago, hard to remember - Japan it was, right? Mining is a cheap tech that does not reveal any hidden resources, can't see it as some game-breaker. Anyway, the advantage was rather solid to be ascribe to single hut tech, be it even Astro.

I have no problem with events, it is part of the game. Those who want to minimize uncertainty should play Settler level without events, huts, and preferrably AI. Dynamic likes this setup, for example - pure optimisation game.

 

[Dynamic]

Disabling Huts and Events is the best decision. Now level of playing SGOTM is very high, it's not just playing for fun. So, if we can decrease random we should do it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

It was a while ago, hard to remember - Japan it was, right? Mining is a cheap tech that does not reveal any hidden resources, can't see it as some game-breaker. Anyway, the advantage was rather solid to be ascribe to single hut tech, be it even Astro.

Yes, Japan. With capital over there and 2nd settler over here.

Simple: Everyone had gems in their FC. You guys popped Mining, THUS were free to build a wkr and go for the religion, thus popping your borders fast to get the gems in time for the worker. Everyone else had to choose between a religion or mining + building an obelisk and waiting all that time for border expansion (capital was on the faraway island). Basically, you guys had the Adventurer save while everyone else had the Challenger (with Contender in between).

That's not to take away from your victory, by any means. It has to be one of the best all-time played games, from start to finish, ever.

 

[Dynamic]

It was a while ago, hard to remember - Japan it was, right? Mining is a cheap tech that does not reveal any hidden resources, can't see it as some game-breaker.

SGOTM2 had non-standart start with 2 remote cities and after founding second city the science was very slow for ages. But there are several Gems near the second city so Mining was very useful as early religion for expand culture borders. Of course, Mining was fine, but I got it by mistake: I thought animals should appear after turn 10 and was scouting by Settler (not open).

 

[LowtherCastle]

Disabling Huts and Events is the best decision. Now level of playing SGOTM is very high, it's not just playing for fun. So, if we can decrease random we should do it.

Reasonable argument, imo.

 

[vra379971]

Sorry, its really not. BTS came with these things, they are part of the game, and have a minor overall effect. Again, trust me, an event will not break your game - but poor play always will.