[BTS] Requesting another Deity BOTM
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Offering that as a Challenger option is fine, but facing one of those again at Contender? 
Pangaea
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I suspect a pure Deity game will take a little while now, they don't run them that often I think, but will the Challenger saves at Deity level suffice in the meantime?
How does the scoring work with those saves btw? Does the Deity Challenger get ranked with Deity score calculation, so higher than at e.g. Monarch Contender? Could mean it's possible to get gold easier, if people are able to handle the much more difficult game of course. I wouldn't!
Always get a bit stressed out when playing at Deity.
How does the scoring work with those saves btw? Does the Deity Challenger get ranked with Deity score calculation, so higher than at e.g. Monarch Contender? Could mean it's possible to get gold easier, if people are able to handle the much more difficult game of course. I wouldn't!
Always get a bit stressed out when playing at Deity.
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@Pangaea :
I read somewhere that only Deity Games count for the Ephtalon and the Ephtalon is my goal.
That's not true at all.
Anyway, staff has been running more Deity games, but most all BOTMs have a Deity challenger save.
To clarify, most BOTMs have an Adventure, Contender and Challenger save. The Adventurer save has reduced difficulty or some other changes to lower the difficulty for newer players, and is not eligible for awards. The Contender save is the normal save based on the difficulty assigned to that particular BOTM - most folks play this save and it is eligible for awards. Challenger save is usually on Deity or has other changes to increase the challenge - it is eligible for awards.
Saves eligible for awards are eligible for Eptathlete.
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. Then I can become Etathlete even faster 
Yes, @lymond is correct, all games count towards the eptathlon. The only restriction is that playing the adventurer save doesn't count.
As for another deity game - we will have one, but probably not a contender-deity game for another month or two now that we've just done one. There may be deity-challenger saves though.
As for another deity game - we will have one, but probably not a contender-deity game for another month or two now that we've just done one. There may be deity-challenger saves though.
How does the scoring work with those saves btw? Does the Deity Challenger get ranked with Deity score calculation, so higher than at e.g. Monarch Contender? Could mean it's possible to get gold easier, if people are able to handle the much more difficult game of course. I wouldn't!
Yes that's correct. The challenger save scoring is automatically adjusted to the difficulty level it's played on, so if - say - challenger is a deity level game, then it will attract the deity scoring bonuses. Although I would expect the benefit of that to invariably be vastly outweighed by the difficulty of playing deity!
Regarding the diety challenger saves.
I have noticed that they most often are just the normal saves but with difficulty changed.
I where present way back when some people (me included) requested them.
Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but for me personally, these challenger saves should be as true to a normal unaltered deity game as possible to be relevant.
The example with the new Boudica game, when the challenger save has emperor starting units, I will most likely just go with the normal emperor save. (And likely have fun!)
If the challenger save was deity proper, I would be a tad bit happier and would play that one.
Just chipping in, as there might be others too with the same lines of reasoning!
I have noticed that they most often are just the normal saves but with difficulty changed.
I where present way back when some people (me included) requested them.
Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but for me personally, these challenger saves should be as true to a normal unaltered deity game as possible to be relevant.
The example with the new Boudica game, when the challenger save has emperor starting units, I will most likely just go with the normal emperor save. (And likely have fun!)
If the challenger save was deity proper, I would be a tad bit happier and would play that one.
Just chipping in, as there might be others too with the same lines of reasoning!
I agree in principle, and I would prefer to have them as 'actual' deity games. The issue is that changing the difficulty is easy - basically, flipping a switch as you load the WB. On the other hand, changing to deity starting units requires (a) manually checking to see what the deity starting units for each AI are, (b) manually individually adding each of those units, then (c) checking you've done it correctly - and that can easily add up to an hour or so's work. Hence why we don't often do it
My 'to-do' list includes writing some code to automate that process so we can easily do proper deity saves, but obviously I haven't done it yet. But I appreciate you posting - if I'm aware that that is something that you and others would really like, then it could mean that moves a bit further up my priority list...@DynamicSpirit I know that there is some script that we use in nobles club, that automatically generates worldbuilder saves with correct units for all difficulty levels, I have used it myself too, but it was a long time ago and I didn't get into the nuts and bolts of it.
Trying to locate it now... here seems to be pieces of the instructions:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...lpen-third-cycle.474730/page-22#post-12756469
Trying to locate it now... here seems to be pieces of the instructions:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...lpen-third-cycle.474730/page-22#post-12756469
Also, I suspsect that when one creates savefiles for BOTM, it also requires the extra effort from the mapmaker to manually load the games and add archery to barbarians as that was apparantly impossible to automate for some mysterious reason.
It's something that nobles-club players all have to do by themselves when starting from a worldbuilder file.
It's something that nobles-club players all have to do by themselves when starting from a worldbuilder file.
Oooh, thanks @krikav. I'll look into that file and see if we can use it in the future.
Yes you're correct about barb archery. The barbs are supposed to start with other techs too on higher difficulties, although archery seems to be the only tech that makes a substantial difference to gameplay. It's basically impossible to write barb techs into the WB file because for some reason the game ignores them, so you have to add them manually just before saving as a game file: That's fiddly and easy to forget - especially because creating a game often involves multiple rounds of editing the WB and testing, and the game will 'forget' any barb techs on every iteration of that process. For that reason, in practice, it's a bit hit-and-miss whether we add barb techs in BOTMs - hence why you'll often see barbs appearing as warriors initially.
Yes you're correct about barb archery. The barbs are supposed to start with other techs too on higher difficulties, although archery seems to be the only tech that makes a substantial difference to gameplay. It's basically impossible to write barb techs into the WB file because for some reason the game ignores them, so you have to add them manually just before saving as a game file: That's fiddly and easy to forget - especially because creating a game often involves multiple rounds of editing the WB and testing, and the game will 'forget' any barb techs on every iteration of that process. For that reason, in practice, it's a bit hit-and-miss whether we add barb techs in BOTMs - hence why you'll often see barbs appearing as warriors initially.
Right.... so, now that we've well and truly hijacked this thread ;-)
That utility is a bash script. It doesn't directly add the deity units; rather, it removes all units from all AIs, based on - apparently, if the game sees no AI units when loading a WB, it'll add the appropriate units for the selected difficulty level. The utility also adds the appropriate techs to each AI (presumably, the game won't add those automatically). I have to admit I didn't know the game would do that, and I'm still not sure precisely under what circumstances it will do so.
I suspect we won't be able to reliably use the script directly, in part because it still causes extra steps when making a file, and I'm not sure if that would fit in easily with our current processes, and in part because it won't run on Windows unless you separately install a linux-emulator, and all us mapmakers are on Windows, but it may give some ideas for some other way to achieve true-deity (or indeed, true-any-level) games.
Pangaea
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Am not entirely sure how easy it is to use that for BOTM, but it's worth a shot. The script is more intended for Nobles Club games, because those are started as a Scenario. By making these edits, removing units and some of the other tricks, the game itself generated the correct units depending on difficulty level. Could perhaps be done for Deity for BOTM purposes as well, but would require a few steps, I suspect. Like first making those files, starting as a scenario, open in WB to add barb techs, and then save. Then whatever you guys do to make it compliant with Buffy. Sounds a little complicated, if all of that is required (I honestly don't know, just second guessing here based on making a few such maps).
Thought there was a Windows version of the script too, but perhaps I misremember.
Thought there was a Windows version of the script too, but perhaps I misremember.
Thanks for the interest. The main issue with doing the BOTMs is that there are already too many essential manual steps that have not so far been possible to automate, so any new manual step is in practice likely to get swiftly forgotten given they are invariably built under some time pressure. So I would say the only workable solution is to incorporate automatic generation of different-level WB files within one of our existing tools. That's certainly possible in principle - and that nobles-club utility could provide inspiration for that - obviously just requires some coding time.
btw if anyone does want to help, one thing that could make it more likely that we could do it on a timescale of the next few months (not guaranteed, but more likely) is if we had an accurate list of what techs and units the AI are supposed to start with at each difficulty level (ideally from Warlord upwards). If anyone fancies figuring that out, that could be quite useful as a first step (maybe there is one already online),
btw if anyone does want to help, one thing that could make it more likely that we could do it on a timescale of the next few months (not guaranteed, but more likely) is if we had an accurate list of what techs and units the AI are supposed to start with at each difficulty level (ideally from Warlord upwards). If anyone fancies figuring that out, that could be quite useful as a first step (maybe there is one already online),
Pangaea
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This is very helpful for that.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/difficulty-levels-spreadsheet.158130/#post-10629596
Noble Zarkon
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Speak for yourself - I'm typing this on Windows but within sight I have a Mac, a Chromebook and a Linux box
Noble Zarkon
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I think the main issue with scripting BOTMs would be how do you ensure none of the special tweaks we do get overwritten?? E.g. the super archer for Zeus I added when I saw how bad the initial waves of barbs were. There's a danger the script would just have deleted him which would have made the game much harder!!
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