Random events and huts.

I agree that hunting is a crappy starting tech. But a scout can make things worse!

Yea, a scout can help you by scouting faster, but it's marred anytime there's lots of rough terrain-- and normally your initial units have to stick to those to survive early attacks. Early game tends to have tons of forests and jungle; and in these cases a scout doesn't help too much. They really should ignore terrain. When it comes to moving through large patches of jungle, a warrior is no worse than a scout.
A scout cannot steal workers, and while a starting warrior at least can stand a chance when human barbarians appear, scouts can't. A warrior can be used to garrison for happiness. A scout doesn't.

In most cases, I'd gladly trade in my "free" scout for a warrior.

Oh, NOW I understand. I thought you were saying that Scouts were too powerful, heh. Yeah I would agree with you. If they started with Woodsman II and Guerilla II, then they'd be a bit more viable, both for being able to zoom through tough terrain and because all those bonuses actually make them somewhat viable in defending against early barbs.
 
Especially if you play no huts. And it usually doesn't take long for a warrior to get double woodsman.
 
I used to play with huts and events on like every game, just because it was default settings so i never thought about removing them. It was back when i was at Noble level and below.

Then I tried my first Monarch game and for the fun i wanted to try a Marathon, Julius Caesar, Huge map 17 opponents pangea map (if I remember correctly it was VirusMonster, who posted a guide about it). Just wanted to try that for fun for my first Monarch game.
I ended with a score around 450.000 due to overluck on huts and events: i popped IW from a hut, praetorians really early; then i won promotions (cover i guess) for my Praets; also got the event of making 7 praets (something like that, sorry about it but its been a while i forgot which event i exactly got and the effect..), which gave me even more Praets for free... The early game as just so easier because of huts and events, it wasn't even funny at all.

Since this game i mostly play with huts and events off; in my opinion it's just not representative of your skill/gameplay/whatever, it can screw you too much or at the opposite make you too powerful. And you can't do anything about that.
So yeah i like events and huts and i play with them on for fun games; if i want to set up a strategy, try something new, have a challenging game..., then i turn them off.
 
Playing civilization with random events is like playing tennis with strong, shifting wind blowing.
And you must realize that under those conditions matches are postponed. Why is that so? Because you don't get to show your skills.

You cannot adapt to randomness in a strategy game. You can only hope that event won't stray you from your path too much. Unless you're a jedi knight and can anticipate near future in which way you can consider it a skill.
 
I agree that hunting is a crappy starting tech. But a scout can make things worse!

Hard to disapprove against Hunting crappiness, but the problem is how the normal mapscript generator along the common normalizer makes deer a rare spawning except in the most northern locations. And deer is often a weak source of food being commonly on plain tiles or even hilly plots. Ivory and furs aren't food resources and this diminishes the interest on such low cost basic tech.
If deer was more common like Arboria mapscript, then people would whine less getting right away Hunting despite being lower cost than Agriculture.

Another interesting path with Hunting is the right away beeline to Archers in the highest levels of difficulty (IMM+) where getting archers are more of a better bet to early survival than random access of copper or horses.
In cases where no strategic resource is found, at least, we wouldn't bother teching Hunting in addition to Archery for minimal defense where even fogbusting sometimes doesn't protect us just enough.

OTOH, without Hunting, we could make warriors for military police while still making Axes for boundary defense.

Compared to other crappier starting techs (Myst. or Fishing in certain cases), Hunting is a direct path to AH or another discount of 20% towards it.

Sure, scouts are terrible because of their frail stats against stronger barbs, not even counting the fact their base strength makes promos less efficient than on a warrior (combats line). With huts on, they just deviate us from an optimal path of exploration or push us to land on a non-defensive tile to get attack and kill next turn...warrior or not.

And still...I detest Hunting. :p:lol:

If they started with Woodsman II and Guerilla II, then they'd be a bit more viable, both for being able to zoom through tough terrain and because all those bonuses actually make them somewhat viable in defending against early barbs.

This would bring super medics too easy. ;)
 
I think huts and events have no place in competitive play, like GOTM or Multi-player. Some events are very unbalancing in multiplayer and popping metal casting from a hut can be game-breaking. Or "all your melee get cover" - that's brutal.

it would be cool if there was a "flavor" type of events (stuff like prairie dogs) that could be turned on for MP, cause that's kind of fun.

I'm fine with people disliking events and huts - I like 'em, myself - I think they add something to the game.

Most of the anger comes towards one specific event, as far as I can tell, which is the Vedic Aryans (4 archers show up on your doorstep and attack your city)

On levels where the AI starts with archer (Monarch and above, right? or is it prince?), this can occur as soon as someone founds hinduism.

There is no defense against this unless you have something better than warriors. Well, 4 warriors can probably defend your cap. Since basically no one goes archery, this has become the "you lose" event, since, generally, you won't have the ability to build chariots or axes or spears by the time this event can happen (if it happens very early)

That is a serious problem with the event, btw. Even if you do go archery fast, it's quite possible for polytheism to come before you have it or can build an archer (one archer can defeat 4 barb archers - 2 are pretty much guaranteed to)

The problem is that the beginning of the game is just too safe for the human player. Even insane warmongers don't attack for awhile and wandering barbs don't show up in the numbers necessary to force the human to build a really strong defense early, so the farmers gambit is a valid choice.

Once upon a time I joined in one of these threads about the random elements. I think they add to the game, much the same as the original poster. Another poster, who is a highly skilled player who holds the opposite view, evetually wished the Vedic archers on me.

I was surprised to see the Vedic archer event my very next game! :eek:
I guess I deserve this, and I guess it's my duty to do as I say and "Improvise, adapt and overcome" . What do I know?
*I've had this event a few times before and survived once, or maybe twice, but I have no idea why.
* I've got a scout and a warrior exploring too far away to be of use.
* no horses
* no metal
* a couple of cities with one unpromoted defender each, and a worker or two.

Not enough to defend against them. Not enough time to build a defense. Run!:run:

I wonder.:think:

I sent my workers out to greet the Aryans. Since they could run faster than the barbs could, I had him lead them to my nearby neighbors. By remaining in sight, but beyond the reach of the barbs, the barbs persued. :backstab: Bye- Bye encroaching neighbor civ!
My neighbor had been replaced by lightly defended barb cities ! :cheers:

I got off to a great early start.
 
I used to use random events, but then I took a Vedic Aryan to my capitol.


...

I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry.
 
A lot of the objection I see is from the good players who's posts I usually respect quite a bit. The usually just say that the extra randomness is an abomination without really explaining why.

In games where 2 comparably good players are against each other or playing the same map (XOTM for example) and there is an actual competition going on, these things can easily decide the outcome of the game by themselves even if both players make the same choices otherwise. Spots in HoF have already been decided by huts too; but why when you allow people to use an auto program to reroll maps 100's of times to remove the "start quality" luck factor would you turn around and allow such a simple setting to influence it?

Outside of *competitive* settings, huts and events are a matter of preference. I always advocated them off in series like noble's club, monarch student, and immortal university because the point of those series is comparing how each person played the start, and having one guy pull HBR and another pull barbarians in the same game is anything BUT comparable.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong about enjoying extra randomness, but it has no place in competitive play.

This would bring super medics too easy.

Recon units can't take woodsman III.
 
In games where 2 comparably good players are against each other or playing the same map (XOTM for example) and there is an actual competition going on, these things can easily decide the outcome of the game by themselves even if both players make the same choices otherwise.

Usually when 2 of reasonably equal skill are playing against each other, the starting land determines who wins so I see no reason why a chance for a little extra randomness doesn't offer the opportunity to even out the luck.

Just because people aren't playing a ladder type game doesn't mean they aren't playing competitively.
 
Usually when 2 of reasonably equal skill are playing against each other, the starting land determines who wins so I see no reason why a chance for a little extra randomness doesn't offer the opportunity to even out the luck.

XOTM everyone uses the same start, so that point isn't valid.

Competitive MP maps are often under settings like mirror or are hand-made maps with balance in mind, so the point isn't very valid there either.

HoF allows everyone to basically pick their own surrounding land through regen, so again adding yet another luck element to force even MORE regen isn't good; it's a (small but there) barrier to entry to that competition where time > skill. Not a good model.

Just because people aren't playing a ladder type game doesn't mean they aren't playing competitively.

Deliberately adding luck elements to a strategy is specifically declaring you aren't playing competitively. If you want player choices to mean something in a competition, settings that reduce the impact of player choices are nonsense.
 
I never play with events. I just feel like they break the game. The negative ones can really screw you and cause you to lose ("Damn Aryans!") but the positive ones can break the game too.

I remember one game where I that event that gives cover on all my melee units. I don't remember which Civ was but I got cover on my UU. I proceeded to wipe out all the Civs on my continent, which is something that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. From then on the game was too easy.

That's my problem with events, they can either make the game too easy or too hard. Either way the game becomes less fun.
 
variety is fun. Following the same formula each time is boring.

Deliberately adding luck elements to a strategy is specifically declaring you aren't playing competitively.

It's all a matter of degree. Any game that has an rgn has luck. Just because I play with a little more doesn't mean it's not competitive. Are you saying that if you play random leaders, it's not competitive? It's that type of snobby thinking that turns off a lot of players.
 
There's a difference between competing to win and competing to compare. When comparing games, like what happens over at S&T, extra randomness is detrimental.

I think you're not using the same definition of compete. If you're competing with yourself via harder difficulties, events are fine. If you're competing with other players in the same game scenario (like the same start, which often happens here) to compare strategies and results, extra randomness clouds the desired results.

Since comparing player strategies on the same map with the same opponents at the same level is desirable, the inherent game rules are accepted as randomness. We can't change the combat RNG rules, so we deal with it, and people often mention if they get a bad roll. I've seen many Deity comparisons where one person gets DoW'd early and another doesn't, and the players accept that as part of the game. However, any chance to take some of the noise out of a comparative setting is encouraged. If someone wins because they popped HBR and another popped barbs, the comparison is still meaningless, but we could have tangibly changed that fact by eliminating the hut.
 
Yes I think that's the difference. If comparing then yes, I'll agree. Most of the MP games I play have nothing to do with comparing.
 
Yes I think that's the difference. If comparing then yes, I'll agree. Most of the MP games I play have nothing to do with comparing.

A great point. But MP is not what the majority of the comparing here applies to, nor is it what the majority of the players you feel are slighting you are discussing. Most of the event/hut bashing comes from players who are high-level SP players who are seeking to compare concrete strategies with other SP players.
 
Yeah, sometimes I forget that. But if it wasn't for MP, I would have stopped playing this game a long time ago. Playing just the dumb AI's all the time get's really boring after awhile. At least a lot of effort was put into some mods and the custom game options help to make it a little different. Quite the tribute to the community. I'm always impressed with the amount of discussions here for a game that is so old.
 
Hunting is poor even with huts on, but Scouts sort of balance out Aggressive civs (if you'll notice all but 2 of the Aggressive civs start with a Scout instead of a Combat I Warrior.)

To my mind there are two compelling reasons to play with huts on:

1. The desire to be a "purist" and simply click Play Now! This is my mentality most of the time, but I recognize most people aren't this way.

2. The desire to play a less-competitive, "more fun" sandbox style game. This has mostly been covered above.

I don't think it makes sense to try to pick a "best" between having huts on or off, but I think we can say that huts on is less competitive. More randomness means that the outcome was less determined by the player. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; people simply have differing preferences on the matter.
 
Civ is indeed a strategy game but also has some luck into. For example who can cats-stack-attack first the other human in multy, who has better resources and better terrain... random events would just be fine with the game, just because Civ is not like chess, where there there's no luck at all. There's some luck involved even in Civ. However it's up to the host, some like it, some don't.

PS: Rah, like you say the SP is boring, i say it's fantastic and better than the MP. I've read some of this thread, and you cannot pretend others to think the same way you do, you may expose your PoW, but then there's nothing else to discuss about.
 
Actually I don't want people to always think the same way I do. If they did, how would I learn. I've been playing IV since it came out at least a couple of times a week. After a point you get a bit jaded and think you know everything about the game. But over the last few weeks I've read a lot of posts hear and "GASP" actually picked up a few nuggets of information that I hadn't thought of previously. So yeah, every now an then I may come off as a jerk, but if it gets people to argue with me, it's worth it. IT's hard to continue to learn all the time. You have to remain somewhat open minded. My only issue is that I don't think everyone here is.

So yes, I agree with you. Let's continue the discussion.
This place has one heck of a lot of people that know what they're doing.
 
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