Realms Beyond Emperor: The DSG's

[Sullla]

Two takers so far for the Big Brother idea; I am looking for at least four to start, preferably five eventually for this game since the idea is for it to be laidback. No interest from any of the original RBD19 players? I know that all of them have a lot going on at the moment, but I would have expected this to be the sort of thing right up their alley. Once we get more interest, I'll set up the game.

 

[Sirp]

Sullla, I think you'd be more likely to get interested people if you started a thread for the game. People who are interested in joining a game are much more likely to read a 'new game' thread than the end of a 12-page thread. After all, we just need one more person.

-Sirp.

 

[Charis]

Tis tempting...

I plan to start OW this week, and am hitting 'heavy turns' in all other games, so the timing just isn't right.

And after playing a "kiss Cathy" game, I don't think I could be big brother to anyone but Joanie

Charis

 

[T-hawk]

I'd been expecting more interest from others, but if nobody else wants in I'll take a slot in the Big Brother game. (Is it some kind of rule that I have to join everything that Sulla captains? )

 

[Speaker]

With Sirp, T-Hawk, and myself, in addition to you, that makes 4. We could probably pick up a 5th player pretty easily if you make the thread, Sulla.

 

[Reagan]

I like the concept and got some laughs out of reading the reports from the previous shot at the game. Unfortunately, with our clothing-deprived Vikings game and the upcoming OW game, I'm at my self-imposed limit of two SGs at a time. I'll enjoy reading your progress, though. Good luck, guys!

 

[Sullla]

I apologize for not starting up the game sooner, but Saturday is my one day to sleep in. Moving to create it now...

 

[Reagan]

I’m a huge fan of The Simpsons and have sometimes managed to sprinkle some references into various SG turn reports. Now that some of the RB games have either come to an end or are winding down, I thought I’d throw a Simpsons-related game concept out for discussion.

Background: I’m assuming most people have a rudimentary knowledge of the characters on what is soon to become TV’s longest-running sitcom, so I’ll skip the basics. If you’d like to learn more about the show, here is a link to a great site that has show capsule reports for every episode: Simpsons Episodes Capsules

Ned Flanders is the next-door neighbor to the Simpsons. His primary personality traits are that: Christianity pervades his every act, thought, etc.; he is generous to a fault; he is very closed-minded about certain scientific ideas, especially Darwinism; and he is a pushover 99% of the time, but he will explode (to varying degrees) in a fit of rage on rare occasions.

With that in mind, I tried to think of a rules variant whereby Ned gets to lead his own civilization (The Neddies). Of course, that civilization would have to conform to Ned’s idiosyncrasies. To wit:

- The Neddies must be Religious (well, duh!).
- Ned is a store owner (The Leftorium – a store selling exclusively items designed for left-handed people), so the Commercial (India or Spain) trait would be appropriate. He also built an amusement park (which turned out to be a “bemusement park”) from scratch, so Industrious (Egypt) would be good, too.
- The Neddies may not be Scientific, Militaristic, or Expansionist.
- Any religious civilization advance (Mysticism, Polytheism, Monotheism, Theology, [and Music Theory?]) must be acquired/researched at the earliest practicable opportunity.
- The Neddies may not construct the Theory of Evolution, SETI Program, or Manhattan Project Wonders.
- The Neddies must agree to all tribute demands from other civs.
- Ned is always willing to share his home with undesirables, so the Neddies may never order another civ to remove its military units from the Neddies’ lands.
- I can recall only two times in which Ned “blew up,” so that’s the limit on how many times The Neddies may voluntarily declare war and fight outside of their cultural boundaries. The two episodes I’m thinking of are (1) when a hurricane destroys Ned’s house and he goes crazy when the townspeople rebuild the house in a slipshod manner and (2) he gets really frustrated with Homer (for various reasons) and is sent over the edge by Homer’s “whistling nose” breathing during church. We'll need to discuss how far the Neddies may push their wars, because Ned's eruptions generally are short-lived and he feels guilty about them afterwards.
- Anytime war is declared on The Neddies by another civ: (1) The Neddies may kill any enemies within the homeland but (2) peace must be offered/accepted at the earliest possible practicable time. This concept will definitely need to be fleshed-out through discussions before the game begins, because Ned would be torn between his passive/pushover nature to give away whatever someone wanted and his unhappiness with someone attacking his religion.
- The Neddies may not enter into MPP or alliance agreements with any non-Religious civs.
- A city must construct a temple before it may build any other cultural building.
- All victory conditions will be available, but the Neddies may only win by diplo, spaceship (to spread religion to other places in the universe) [is this contradictory with the SETI prohibition?], or culture.
- The Neddies may not demand tribute from or renegotiate peace with their fellow civs.
- The Neddies may not plant spies or steal technology.
- The Neddies would never whip their people to rush projects.
- The Neddies may not employ slave labor. This may be too restrictive, especially if the Neddies are non-Industrious.
- Finally, to the extent not modified/addressed above, the Neddies would follow the “honorable” Realms Beyond rule set.

What’s everyone think? This is a working draft, so all comments and suggestions are welcomed.

 

[Speaker]

Sounds like a great idea in a possible series based on each of the Simpson's characters. I'll play. You are going to create the Neddies, perhaps with city names coming from important locations to Ned, right? I would vote for Industrious and Religious. I haven't used Egypt forever, but they used to be my favorite Civ.

 

[T-hawk]

With the last crop winding down - Naked Vikings has at most one more turn for each person - here's another suggestion. I had proposed it as an RBCiv epic, but Sirian and I hit some snags on the scoring that we couldn't resolve.

Culture Conquerors - get a 20k cultural win in a city that was captured from an opponent. Civ: Zulu (have they ever been played in any SG?) Difficulty: Emperor, or Emperor-plus at 70% cost factor. Starts as a warmonger game, then goes to a builder.

Anyone interested in this one?

 

[LKendter]

Originally posted by T-hawk
Civ: Zulu (have they ever been played in any SG?) Difficulty: Emperor, or Emperor-plus at 70% cost factor. Starts as a warmonger game, then goes to a builder.

Anyone interested in this one?

I am not interested, but to answer your question.


LK9 - Zulu, SMALL map, no wonder building.
I think LOTR1 - this first always war was also the Zulu.

 

[Sirp]

yes the first Always War was with the Zulu; I think Arathorn is a big fan of the Zulu.

I think that Sullla also once sponsored a game entitled 'The Zulu Navy', but it didn't end up seeing too much naval action.

-Sirp.

 

[Charis]

I like that one T-Hawk - I had been looking forward to that as an epic. The urgency of the early war, along with the rest from endless war, plus a high difficulty Zulu culture win, is a great combo! Besides I've been watching "Shaka Zulu" and wanted to play this civ. If we ended up seeing the British as our neighbor it would be particularly appropriate


Charis

 

[Charis]

Reagan, interesting variant game there with "The Neddies." Other than using the phrase "Doh" I'm no fan of the Simpsons, but I thought I would make some comments on the game itself...

Religious, not sci/mil/exp sounds right, as do the wonder restrictions.
Regarding Ned's guilt after the war, you might consider that at peace time, you see what the other civ is willing to pay for peace, then you must offer the equivalent of that (or if Ned is a serious guy, fourfold)

Agree to all tributes? How anti-Defiant (Probably smarter too!)

Regarding the MPP / alliance with non-Relig civs... I doubt he would be any more likely to ally with a religion unlike his own than a secular one. It might have to be from his cultural group.

Space victory sounds wrong for Ned. If he's not into the ToE he'll certainly not be looking for life elsewhere (SETI) or looking to settle other planets. That leaves diplo and culture.

I don't think lack of slave labor would be enough of a problem to overcome the true reluctance Ned would have in employing them. Would he not add accept any such laborers into his cities or to make a colony or such?

Overall it seems pretty interesting, with some similiarities to recent games (Arabs, Spanish) but very different 'overall'.

Your initial post was Ned-positive as opposed to religion bashing - good job on that. It would be good to maintain Ned's positive view during the game

Now the question arises, will this be 'novel' enough and be fun?
Assuming you're playing at least Emperor, a 100K culture win would end up in two ways - you'll need to wipe out a civ (very un-Ned-like??) or having to sprawl all over the place to get double the culture of other AI's. That would be quite a challenge given how well the AI has done in other 100K games. If you go for a 20K win in your capital "Leftorium", victory should be straightforward. A diplo win likewise would be straightforward. So it boils down to - should be a fun game for diehard Simpsons fans with an emphasis on the 'theme', or it should be a rough city-sprawling game seeing if it's possible to *peacefully* win 100K victory on Emperor.

Charis

 

[Sirp]

I think it'd be nice to see exactly how feasible it is to go all-out research on Deity these days. As such, I've got a succession game proposal for it:

"The Enlightened XXX" where XXX is a scientific civilization, perhaps the Russians.

All the other civilizations in the game would be non-scientific.

Our civilization refuses to believe that any other civilization could possibly be smarter or more advanced than ours. As such, we will never do trades for technology unless it involves us also giving them one of our technologies.

The implication of this is that once you're behind, researching is the only way to catch up; you can't buy yourself back up, and that could be brutal if you fall far behind.

We'd have to research to get most of our technologies, and then make money out of trading them around. It'd be a good way to see how feasible it is to compete with the AI technologically these days.

What do people think?

-Sirp.

 

[Gothmog]

Russia is the perfect pick IMO. The expansionist trait might allow you to get a few extra hut techs, which will help enormously. Probably want at least a standard size map (more likely large) and a high land ratio too, continents or pangea. If you can get a few hut techs and start trading right away you will have a chance in Ancient times. Otherwise it will be a long haul to the Industrial Era.

 

[T-hawk]

Once that game hits the Industrial Era, you'll be on the Mother of All Nationalism Slingshots.

Standard map / 40% land would probably be big enough; that's actually more land than large / 30%.

I've long thought that Russia is the most underrated civ in the game, with the combination of the fastest-developing and slowest-developing civ traits complementing each other very well. And I do like the Cossack; that defense point does make a difference when they're getting attacked by knights and longbows.

BTW, with an expansionist civ, it's fine to play only 20 turns to start then 10 per player, since there's plenty to do during that time.

I'd also suggest running a 40-turn research on Iron Working from turn one, since Russia starts with the critical techs of Pottery and Bronze Working. And with no other scientific civs starting with Bronze, there's a fair chance we'd get it first.

I'm definitely interested. Heck, you've got me wanting to run off and try this myself already.

 

[Sirp]

Yeah I think a pangea/standard/40% land would be fine.

I think you're right about going for iron working on 40 turns T-Hawk.

I think that Russia being underrated is a throwback to the days when Scientific really wasn't much good at all, since players would never build Libraries or Universities on the harder levels. Cossacks are a pretty good unit; the only bad thing about them is how late they come. If you beeline to MT though, Cossacks are the equal best defensive unit for a long time. A fortified Cossack has a very good chance of taking out an attacking cavalry.

Unfortunately I think I've made the mistake of suggesting this game a little too early

I have RBD19, GM1, and now a TDG. There's no way I'd be able to play more than two games at a time. Also, Gothmog is planning on starting GM2 after GM1, based on another idea I suggested, and I'd kinda like to be involved in that.

So uhh...you're welcome to sponsor this game yourself T-Hawk, if you're that enthusiastic. I would like to be involved, but if it means committing to more than three SGs, then I won't be able to. If you hold it until GM1 and RBD19 are over (and hmm...I think it's possible RBD19 will only come round to me once, depending on how quick X-man builds the spaceship) - or just wait for me to sponsor it myself - then I'll probably be able to play.

-Sirp.

 

[Speaker]

I would definitely be interested, since it seems that Reagan will not be sponsering the Simpsons game afterall.

 

[Reagan]

Sorry for not saying anything further about the "Neddies" game, but I assumed from the lack of responses (thanks anyway, Speaker) that there was insufficient interest in the variant to pursue it. I agree with most, if not all, of Charis' comments, so if enough people express an interest, I'm still more than happy to sponsor the game with those rules changes in effect.