A couple of questions of my own:
- What are the rules for the placement of Watermills? I would have assumed that they should be buildable on all tiles adjacent to a river, but this does not seem to be so... some tiles adjacent to rivers seem to deny the ability to build Watermills there (the option doesn't appear in the Worker menu), but I haven't managed to discover any logic behind it yet.
- Can barbarians spawn and move in the same turn? This is important because, for example, when a road outside my borders is left in the fog for one turn (perhaps while the sentry unit temporarily moves somewhere else), I need to know whether the barb that might be spawned in that turn could also
travel down the road in the same turn. Any ideas?
That's not right, Frankcor is. The only medic bonus' that stack are the medic2's +10% and the medic3 (warlord unit only)'s +15%, for a total of +25% from the unit with medic 1, 2 and 3. But no number of medic 1s and 2s will bring you above +10%, and stacking medic3s won't get you above +25%.
Indeed, that is correct. Perhaps in tomart's test, he mistakenly achieved that conclusion because (for instance) the units were in different geographical situations. (Being inside enemy borders, in neutral territory, inside your borders, inside your cities, and inside your cities with hospitals all yield different base healing rates.)
Are you an experienced multiplayer civ gamer?
Let me tackle this one first... I'm probably a
moderately experienced multiplayer civ gamer. I certainly don't claim to be anywhere comparable to the best, but on the other hand I have achieved several victories out of my finished games to date, so I don't think I'm too inexperienced either.
In terms of game numbers though, I have probably racked up quite a few. I would estimate that I have been involved in about 30-40 different multiplayer games in the past, most of them PBEM's. About 20 of those are still in progress today.
I definitely don't limit myself to only multiplayer though - I've also played many single player games, and in fact have a single player Huge Terra Marathon game with Ramesses II in progress at the moment (attempting to win by diplomatic victory, but under the condition that I can only
vote myself to the 60% of the world's votes necessary for victory - ie, I need to pop spam my cities
).
I have never played a game of civilization multiplayer, so I'm a newbie at that front. For instance, I have never heard about the "fishing boat of death strategy" and never knew that the multiplayer game started with 6 year turns (3994 BC?).
I have played a few shooter games (bad at those as I never play them singleplayer) and real time strategy games (quite ok at those) on LAN parties and over the internet and that was quite fun. But I've always considered civilization to not be as suitable for multiplayer because of its turnbased nature. I have a tendency to play the game very relaxed, thinking about various options, sometimes even watching TV at the same time or posting a message at this forum. I wouldn't like to play the game with a turn timer and a human opponent would thus become very frustrated at my slow gameplay. I'm possibly not the most 'fun' multiplayer opponent.
I also enjoy playing the game in a relaxed and somewhat 'slow' manner. I don't like the turn timer, and if given the choice I always play without it. I don't believe that you'd be all that much slower than me, and I certainly don't think it'd be frustrating, at least for me. I'm a very patient player.
Maybe play by email is an option as you aren't waiting on the other player for your turn. But I don't exactly know how play by email functions. I guess that the game is send to the other player through email after each turn. But would that mean that you don't see your opponents moves in your line of sight (because they happened while you weren't watching)? Play by email would at least avoid the frustration about waiting for the other player, but it would be a very slow game.
I don't quite understand what you mean by 'not seeing the opponent's moves'. You don't see the AI's moves in the normal game either - you just see where they were the turn before, and where they are 'now'. If this is what you mean, then this is exactly like PBEM - there is no loss of 'sight'. When you play one turn, you might see the opponent's units on certain tiles, and when you recieve the next turn you will see where they have moved to (or if they have moved out of sight you will no longer see them, just the same as in Single Player).
Play by email (PBEM) would indeed be the most sensible option, I think - that would give us both plenty of time to make our moves without being rushed. You'd just need to be able to play fairly regularly (once every day or two on average is fairly usual for PBEM's, still allowing for periods of stopping during some of the players' real life holidays and breaks, etc). Games that regularly last close to a week or more between turns rarely seem to last, in my experience.
Playing with multiple human players (and maybe some AI players) would be fun. Then the strategy would involve human pacts against the strongest player, so I would welcome other players. Even if they know about mean plans like the fishing boat of death strategy.
In my experience the PBEM method is best suited for 2-4
human players (AI above this 'limit' is still fine though). If the number of human players gets much larger than 5, then games tend to move exceptionally slowly (one turn per week or less), and fall apart before they really get started. No PBEM that I have played in that has begun with 6 or more players has survived over 20 turns.
For games with 6 or more players, Pitboss becomes the ideal method for playing Civ4. In Pitboss, there is no 'limit' to the amount of players which can be involved in a game, because the game is set up such that all players can 'log in' to play their turns over the internet in any order. (For an elaboration of this: turn 25 could be played by player 1, then player 2, then player 3, then player 4. Turn 26 could be played by player 3, then player 1, then player 4, then player 2... or any other order.) Each turn is set to last a specific amount of time (24 hours is usual), and after that period expires the new turn begins and everyone can once again 'log in' to play their turns.
Of course, this method of playing leads to some (very) small sacrifices in terms of wartime efficiency. It is up to the players to arrange between themselves to conduct themselves honestly and not (for one example) take 'double moves' (where one player moves twice before the other player can counter them). However, in my experience this is rarely a problem, since the community which I play with is full of respectable and honest players who will do their best to play as fairly as possible.
The greatest thing about Pitboss is that it allows games with as many human players as one wishes - up to the inbuilt limit of 18, and even beyond (with mods). This allows for some fascinating and extremely interesting diplomacy and diplomatic situations. Alliances are formed and (less regularly) broken, technology trading partnerships are arranged, cities change hands regularly, and the potential for discussion is practically endless. Indeed, most of these large-scale Pitboss games which I am currently in have individual forums dedicated to them, in which the players can (and do) conduct vast amounts of diplomacy and general banter. It's truly an awesome experience, and I highly recommend it to you.
From what I've heard, multiplayer games are very aggressive games focussed on (early) military action.
They can be; it depends on the type of multiplayer game. I have played in many different types of them, and they all provide a unique experience.
It's true that smaller maps with few civs will typically lead to extreme aggressiveness and an early conquest victory. Duel matches (quite obviously) fit into this category; you can check out my signature for a link to one such 'dueling room' that I am involved in. These kind of games require quick thinking, an early military buildup, and a (little) bit of luck with resource placement. They are naturally prone to early wars and (usually) an early victory.
Matches hosted over Gamespy (the "Internet Play" option inside the multiplayer menu) tend to fit into this category too. I have played a few games over Gamespy, and without exception they have all ended in early wars. Most players also seem to insist on having the fastest possible turn timer, which usually means 15-20 seconds per turn. There is literally no time to think - it's just point and click, click, click. It is almost a different game altogether - Civ as a Real Time Strategy game. Even when moving as fast as I possibly can, I tend to have far more units than anybody else, and end up running out of time to move them all. I do not really enjoy these games very much for this reason - even despite the fact that I am still exceptionally good at them (I have not lost a single match over Gamespy yet, even though I can only move about half the units I want to).
One of the other main problems that one finds when playing over Gamespy with players whom one does not actually know (from the forums or such) is that (unfortunately) there tends to be a lot of rather poor sportsmen out there - players who will quit as soon as it looks like they are losing. This seems to be something inevitable that one must accept when playing these types of games, though.
In my games, I usually play on very big maps where early military action is not very effective. So I guess, I'll have to learn a lot if we ever play a multiplayer game.
Well, it depends what kind of 'multiplayer' you mean, as I've pointed out above... multiplayer can vary anything from 'aggressive, early conquests' to long-haul games over huge maps which are in fact very similar to your single player games (but more fun in my opinion, due to the human diplomacy).
Here's what I'd suggest for our game, if you're still interested in it. I do think that PBEM would be the best method of play, so let's go with that. I'm also happy to go with your huge map and high difficulty settings. But instead of being rivals, what do you think about being
teammates (playing a game with several teams with 2 AI civs on each)? I think this would provide the best opportunity for learning experiences for us both - since we'd be on the same team and could share our strategies much more freely. We'd also be able to look into each other's territory and cities, and see what we each chose to build and when.
This might in fact be more beneficial for me, because I haven't played at the extremely high difficulty levels on very large maps. (I
can beat the AI on Deity, but so far only in the smaller map environment, where it's easier for me to storm over them before they can pull too far ahead in technology. The AI don't understand that they should focus entirely on their military in those games as the human player does, and thus as long as one annihilates them before they reach troublesome units like Longbowmen, the road to victory is relatively easy to follow.)
What do you say? (Sorry for the essay-long post, incidentally.
You can just respond to the last part, if you'd like.)
) so that
