I haven't read your entire post yet, but you can place/remove city dot maps using either Alt-X or Ctrl-X. This opens the dot mapping utility, which can be quite useful.
Thanks! I'm off to watch fireworks in a few minutes. I have a few quick comments:
Is it possible for another city to build a fishing boat for Sugar Daddy's fish? If so, that city can grow and whip until the sugar is ready. 9 turns seems like a long time to be building an unimproved tile...
What did the relations look like with our Buddhist friends by being in Confucianism for so long?
I like the detailed PPP, but without a test save to follow along, it's hard to tell what's going on. Can you give a high-level rundown of what each city is building this turnset and what improvements you're laying down for each city? I know it's in the PPP, but it feels like looking through a microscope while trying to figure out what the bigger picture is by putting together fragmented pieces. Thanks.
I know it's in the PPP, but it feels like looking through a microscope while trying to figure out what the bigger picture is by putting together fragmented pieces. Thanks.
That part I really did not try to pay attention to. I have no idea how what we have in the test saved game can be an accurate picture on that front. Most of the time I can't even remember which one of the AIs is "supposed" to be Toku and which one is "supposed" to be Saladin. With Isabella "being" Saladin and then an Isabella being in our real game, it's very hard to keep track. I am so confused on that front that I've basically just been ignoring the AIs, to the point that I World-built myself Calendar...
I could load up the latest real saved game from the end of my first partial turnset and check the situation, if that's what you meant: please clarify. It shouldn't be too hard to extrapolate an extra -1 negative Diplo modifier for each AI besides Zara for the second partial PPP.
Can you give a high-level rundown of what each city is building this turnset and what improvements you're laying down for each city?
A Question for the SGOTM Veterans
Only today did I realise that when I played my last turnset in "interactive mode," it might not have been the wisest decision to quit the Civ 4 application. I closed the game every time that I logged into the thread to add a bunch of screenshots, as I wasn't sure if I'd be allowed to play on or if that would be it for my play session.
However, upon further reflection, regular XOTM games usually ask you to play for a minimum of a 1 hour time period, and I think that I played 3 game sessions, of which not all were certainly an hour each.
Will that be an issue? Should I just try to keep the game open next time for several hours until I've gotten the "go ahead" to keep playing? Or are SGOTMs "special" in the fact that you are expected to consult frequently with your teammates so this "minimum 1-hour play sessions" guideline gets waived?
This shouldn't be a problem. They usually give a good bit of latitude on issue like this. If you are ever in question about something like this, just send a PM to Alan to let him know that you did it that way so that if a question arises then he already knows what happened.
Some answer:
the Alt+X (strategy layer) is already solved.
multiple and short sessions are tolerated in the SGs, exactly for the reason we used them.
Also the 1 hour rule is not compulsory, even in HoF games, it's just a way to avoid strange things or to disqualify a game with evident re-play detected.
I won't comment on your PPP, i can't get a picture. Let me say i'm confident in your skills.
I just noticed it stops on turn 175, but you can play until turn 177. Is that due to a stop planned to show us the island E of Aksum (provided it is an island)?
I think you can add those 2 turns to your PPP, to play straight once we decide the city location (provided is still free).
BTW, our exploring WB is exploring (what else an explorer can do?) the South Coast of Sal's continent, but the galley with our settler (hopefully escorted by an archer, in perfect AI style) can explore the North, to see if there's some better and less close to a city spot.
Okay, that's a disappointment. We really need some way to bridge this gap. I can try and re-write things from a higher level perspective, but:
1. I really would like to find a way to get feedback. I don't have all of the answers. Missing out on the Police State bonus is one such example. Apparently, people on the team new about it but felt they couldn't comment effectively
AND
2. When it comes to someone else's turnset, I want to have close to this level of detail to be able to comment on things, because I WILL look for all of the little details like "ohhh, why aren't your running Police State whip you are whipping all of those Work Boats?" With a very high-level plan, it's next to impossible to help someone build these efficiencies into their plans
So, we need to find a way to bridge this gap, otherwise you're not able to help me and I will find myself with my hands tied behind by back when trying to help you.
I can try Mitchum's idea of focusing more on describing WHAT we are trying to accomplish, and combine it with your (BLubz') approach of listing Worker actions in serial instead of in parallel (i.e. listing what you'd do in order for each Worker, instead of listing what each and every Worker is doing on each turn).
The Serial Approach Misses the Timing of Actions and thus leads to easily-made Mistakes
HOWEVER, as we have seen, this approach of JUST listing items in serial leads to several flaws:
1. We don't necessarily see the parallel impacts of decisions, such as "oh, it looks like we won't get that PCow Pastured until 5 turns after we need it... maybe we should have used the 2nd Worker to help out, who is just building a Cottage that won't be worked for another 50 turns." So, not only must the UP player really be "on the ball" at looking for ways to combine efforts (multiple Workers on the same task, waiting to whip buildings in Organized Religion instead of when running Pacifism, etc), the other players will find it hard to be able to help build these efficiencies into the plan.
2. It is VERY EASY to forget to do something, such as to work the improved Deer on the turn that it is improved, because your plan does not list the turn on which it is improved. Instead, we'd accidentally play at the level of an inexperienced player who doesn't know any better and would often end up waiting until the next turn when the Worker "wakes up" to switch to working the Deer, losing a full turn of production on every improvement that can be worked immediately.
3. If a unit needs to be awoken, then it will be very easy to forget to do so. If you read my 2nd partial PPP but your eyes kind of glazed over, maybe you at least noticed the "***" 3 asterisks, which were my wake-up call to remember to unload the Worker from the Galley before the Galley went west. I kept forgetting to do so, essentially losing 2 turns of western movement with that Galley because I would have to double-back. So, the cost can be very high if there is a precise action that has specific timing, while that timing might not be listed in the PPP if we just list actions in order, such as:
Worker 4 completes the Road on the Marble, then gets on the Galley, then gets off of the Galley, and then Plantations the Sugar.
Well, nowhere in that list of actions do I have a reminder to get off of the Galley, so it might not be for 4 or 5 turns of moving the Galley, when I need to load the Settler and Warrior onto it, might I realise that the Worker is still in the boat. What a mess that situation would make!
The Parallel Approach is hard to follow, because it is not easy to see which units and builds are working in tandem and which just happen to be occuring on the same turn but are not related to each other
That said, my approach of listing out every unit's action on a turn-by-turn basis seems to be too detailed to follow:
1. It's too tough to provide comments on it, because, even though I tried to give some big-picture ideas, there are no "middle picture" ideas or "short term goals for each unit/City"--you might see WHERE a Warrior is going if you spend the time to work it out, but you might not know WHY it is going that way until maybe after 8 turns of movement and then you see the Warrior get on a Galley.
2. Although Worker actions are listed in parallel, it's not easy to pick them out from the rest of the other units' actions.
3. Some important details are missing, such as on which turn a City grows, so someone can't even look at the PPP and say "oh, it seems that Crabs grew to Size 3 but we only have 1 improved square (the Fish)... is there any way for you to get a Worker or two there earlier so that it can be working 2 or 3 improved squares at City Size 3?"
The Timing of Decision-making
Finally, there's the decision-making process to discuss.
I have been trying to give detailed PPPs because they capture as many of the decisions made as possible. It's easy to come up with a brilliant idea for when to whip in a City, because you spent the time in your test saved game LOOKING THROUGH EACH CITY on EACH TURN. But after doing the same thing 5 times in a row because you thought to go back and reload your test saved game to try a different set of Civics or to move a Warrior in a different direction, it is easy to get bored with making the same decisions again.
As soon as you get bored with making the same decisions, you will either forget to make them or you will just stop caring and won't WANT to look at each City screen on each turn and will miss doing things that would have only taken a couple of seconds worth of analysis had you bothered to go and look.
My solution has been to record down every decision that I made, to the point that it ALMOST becomes a script that "any 8 year old could run." The PROBLEM with that line of thinking is that IT IS NOT SUCH A SCRIPT; there still has to be a lot of other thinking that goes on. However, people may have been PLAYING it like a script, which means that we miss doing other important parts of our turnsets, such as checking for Trades on a turn-by-turn basis or watching what the AIs' units are up to--basically, we can convince ourselves that our plan is so complete that we will forget to watch for the items that we cannot possibly plan for in a test game.
Important Aspects of a Solution
So what can we do about it?
How about we take the BEST IDEAS from each approach and put them into a new type of PPP?
1. I like BLub'z approach of listing all of the Worker actions together. Rarely, except when a Worker gets on and off of a Galley, will the actions of non-Workers matter in regards to Worker actions.
HOWEVER, one Worker's actions can have a DIRECT IMPACT on another Worker's actions.
Take the following real example from near the end of my second partial PPP:
Spoiler:
Worker 6 is going to irrigate a Flood Plains square for Risaia, so that the City can grow faster.
Worker 1 is to the south, irrigating a Grassland square to be shared by both Crabs and Grt Person Farm.
The borders of Risaia will have just recently expanded, so that now the Flood Plains S + S and SE + S of Risaia are able to be Farmed. The plan was to Farm the Flood Plains square 1S of Risaia.
However, if we instead Farm a Flood Plains square 2S of Risaia, then we can chain the irrigation to the non-River Flood Plains square 3S of Risaia, which is actually a square that Crabs can work.
So, by changing which Flood Plains square Worker 6 is going to improve, we give Worker 1 a BETTER square to Farm as his next action: his next action was gonig to be to Farm a SECOND Grassland square, but this way, we will be able to have Worker 1 Farm a non-River Flood Plains square, offering Crabs 1 more Food per turn. The impact will be reasonably big (think how slowly Riverdale grows with just an irrigated Grassland square).
The PROBLEM is that the Flood Plains' Farm gets delayed, because the Flood Plains' Farm 1S of Risaia already has some Worker actions invested into it.
The solution to that problem is to have BOTH Workers improve the S + S of Risasia Flood Plains square. That way, we'll still get a Flood Plains square irrigated for Risaia in a timely fashion, and we'll also be able to get Worker 1 improving a non-River Flood Plains square instead of a Grassland square as its following task.
2. I think that it is necessary to DATE our actions. The timing of when to whip a building is often very crucial; if you miss whipping by 1 turn, you can often change a "well-planned whipping action of 2 population for maximum overflow into a National Wonder" into a "relatively useless whipping action of 1 population for 2 Hammers in overflow into a National Wonder and giving you a relatively useless building in exchange."
The timing of when a Worker will complete an action will affect when a City will need to work a particular square, so we need dates on which squares each City will switch to working.
Even the Worker actions themselves should be dated, so that someone reviewing the PPP can feel USEFUL by offering some comments about "hey, why don't we double-up or triple-up on getting the Marble Quarried, so that we can possibly whip a Settler's overflow into The Hagia Sophia, instead of delaying the building of the Settler and The Hagia Sophia just because the Marble Quarry won't be complete for another 7 turns?"
Well, I managed to insert that exact scenario into my first partial PPP by having 3 Workers triple-up Quarrying the Marble. But what other ideas have I NOT thought about that someone could suggest? Without the timing of Worker actions being listed, they will have no easy way to comment.
3. Decisions made in the test game need to be captured in the PPP. Not just Worker actions, not just when to work a particular square with your citizen in Delhi, not just when to whip and which building to build next. We do need all of those things, but in addition, we need to put in things like "on Turn 198, cancel the Stone deal to Toku, as we're going to build Chichen Itza." Okay, maybe that example sucks, but how about "on T245, because we need the Stone to build Oxford Univeristy."
That example is a FAIR example. The UP player may have FORGOTTEN that we traded away Stone. They simply see Stone on the map and assume that we will get its bonus.
I always check when building a Wonder if I have it's bonus, by hovering over the item in the build queue and watching for the text to be coloured in GREEN instead of in RED. But, I do so from the experience of having missed out on the bonus in some games and learning that a simple check can help me to not get "burned" by making an avoidable mistake such as remembering to cancel my Stone trade deal.
I cannot EXPECT that every player will play this same way. So, we should have an entry in the PPP to cancel the Stone Trade with Toku. We might also want another entry in the PPP to try and trade for his Gold Resource for something else (for now, we used Stone to get it; maybe later, we could use a Sugar or an Incense or whatever). But, if we don't have that second item in the PPP to try and trade for the Gold, it will be easy for the UP player to say "oh, look, I did the only important thing in the PPP, which was to get our Stone back. I am done trading for now." Then, 5 turns later, they might wonder why there are so many Red Faces in our Cities, and when trying to trade with Toku for the Gold again, they may find that Toku has traded it with Isabella or Justinian, for example, and we are thus unable to get the Gold in trade.
4. Some actions need to happen on a turn-by-turn basis and cannot be planned for. So, we should have a section that outlines the UP player's responsibilities for things to "check" on each turn.
If the responsibilities are thus listed (and they can probably be mostly written once and then copy-and-pasted from one player's PPP to the next player's PPP), then we will each be commmitting to performing these actions as the UP player. The other players can then feel confident that they do not need to keep saying "please be sure to check for Resource Trades on every turn," if that responsibility is listed in the PPP.
We all have the ABILITY to look at several screens on each turn. Any player can do so. But, it may not be your HABIT. Even if it IS your habit, others on the team may not KNOW that it is your habit.
If we clarify the expectations of what actions the UP player needs to perform on a turn-by-turn basis, then they can always review that list any time that they are playing and they think "Am I done? Can I press "ENTER" to end the turn or did I forget to do something?"
5. Sometimes, it is helpful to have an explanation for doing something a certain way. For example, you might temporarily stop working the GRiv Irr square in Riverdale. While I don't suggest that we do so for long, it could be that we just temporarily needed 1 or 2 more Commerce per turn to get a crucial tech 1 turn sooner.
Since the "general rule" is to have Riverdale always working that GRiv Irr square, it helps when the UP player provides a short explanation for why they are deviating from this rule.
I like to explain a lot of my decisions, as doing so provides an opportunity for me to teach and for you to learn. But, I need input from people on what format they would like best. Should I use spoiler tags? Yes, it helps to keep the important text visible for those who don't want to read the spoiler tags, but I admit that it can be very annoying to have to open 18 different spoiler tags, only to find a one- or two-sentence explanation in each one.
Now, it is true that each explanation can make you a better player just by reading about my experience instead of having to learn about it the hard way through hours and hours of play, but if you won't take the 1.5 seconds required to move your mouse and click on the Spoiler button, then it was a waste of my time to share that tidbit of knowledge and for me to take the 3 seconds it took me to highlight the text and press the "Spoil" button in order to put spoiler tags around said text.
Maybe a compromise approach can be used, such as instead of using spoiler tags, to use code tags around text.
Here are a couple of examples, so that I can see what they look like. Honestly, it is nice to differentiate some of the text with little "teaching explanations," but I admit that having to open 18 spoiler tags is extremely painful and may be too annoying for everyone to do, when they really should be benefiting from said info. Here are those examples:
Code:
Code tags... I will now type a lot of text on this line just to see how wrapping works or fails
HTML:
HTML tags... I will now type a lot of text on this line just to see how wrapping works or fails
PHP:
PHP tags... I will now type a lot of text on this line just to see how wrapping works or fails
EDIT: Yikes, all of those examples put these horridly small boxes around the text without proper text-wrapping in them. I don't have a good replacement for Spoiler tags afterall. I am not a big fan of Italics text, as it is not easy in most fonts to see the difference between normal text and Italicised text. I could use a small font size, but then it's hard on a person's eyes. I could use a different colour for comments, but then your eyes might just read the comments, because the "coloured text" would appear to be "different" from the rest of the text and your eyes would jump to it. Maybe I don't need to differentiate explanations at all, because a decision that needs explaining really should have both the decision and the reason read together with each other as a whole entity? Feedback on this topic would be appreciated...
The Solution to the PPP Issue?
I think that we need to find a way that combines the best approaches.
Worker Actions Section
The Worker actions can be listed in their own section, but they should have dates associated with each of their actions. The team seems to prefer writing turn numbers to actual in-game dates, so when I say "dates," I actually mean turn numbers, such as "T168" and "T172."
UP Player's Responsibilities that get repeated on a turn-by-turn basis (like checking for Tech Trades)
We will need a section for things that the UP player is expected to do on each turn. I suppose that if I write it, it can be copy-and-pasted into future PPPs, so it will be easy for players to maintain this list of responsibilities.
Civics + Religion + Builds, etc Section
Civic switches, Religion switches, Build orders, Citizen allocation (which squares each City is working), and Whipping actions are all heavily-related to each other, so they should get their own section. Again, turn-based dates are very important for this section.
Non-worker Movement Actions
Other actions, such as Galley movements and Archer movements can be grouped into another section. However, here, a lot of the dates can be generalized.
I will TRUST that you guys will make your best efforts not to end the turn of a unit 1W of a Forest, 1E of a Forest, 1S of a Forest, or 1N of a Forest, if that square is a Forest-eligible square and it doesn't already have a Forest or a Jungle on it.
Obviously, exceptions are made if your units are within AI territory, or if you absolutely need to save a turn's worth of movement just to get somewhere on time, but otherwise, within our own territory, I will be expecting that you'll be following this approach. I think that I can even write this point into the UP player's list of responsibilities.
THEREFORE, I do not feel that I will need to see exactly on which turn your Warrior walked on a Forest instead of walking on the square beside the Forest. As a direct result, we can skip dates for this section, EXCEPT when a unit needs to be awoken.
For example, if a unit has been Fortified and you need to move it, you should put a date SOMEWHERE in the PPP. Perhaps in the unit section is NOT the best place to put it, because you will not be checking this section for dates.
So, perhaps we will put the action to "WAKE Warrior 1" in the section that lists date-specific items that don't fit elsewhere.
Date-specific Items that Don't Fit Elsewhere
Here, we can list that on T198, we should cancel the Stone deal with Toku, but then renegotiate for the Gold with a different Resource, if he will accept anything else in trade.
Spoiler:
Here, we can be as specific as we want, such as "if he will take a Resource plus as much as 3 Gold per Turn, we will trade for his Gold, but if he wants 2 Resources, we will say no." Or else we can just leave this extreme level of detail out and leave such micro up to the UP player--perhaps trading away 2 currently-useless Health Resources will be the best trading deal. Basically, it will be the UP player writing the amount of detail, so if they plan to trade 1 Health Resource for Gold and then get to that point in the game where Toku wants more for a Gold Resource (the AIs value a Gold Resource slightly higher than several other Resources by 1 to 3 Gold per Turn due to its usefulness in building the Shwegadon Paya), then they can stop play and consult with the team.
The fact that the trades deals of cancelling the Stone Resource and renegotiating for the Gold Resource are listed in the PPP are sufficient; any additional detail can be left to the UP player plus anyone who comments on the issue. For example, I might have made the above comment about a Gold Resource and then the UP player could add this point to their PPP, as well as a couple of details of what deviation in the trade to accept (2 Health Resources? 3 or less extra Gold per Turn?) so that they will not have to stop play when they find out that Toku won't take Wheat for Gold but wants more for it.
As I said above, we can also put things like "WAKE Worker 1" in this section.
We can also say generalized points such as: "Zara is expected to learn Construction on T172, so watch extra closely from T170 onwards to see if he learned it."
Basically, every item in this section should have a date associated with it. It is also a section that will need to be re-read by the UP player on each turn. However, the Unit Movement section will only need to be re-read if you find yourself needing to move a unit and forgot where it was going.
This way, we will not forget to WAKE up our units, because we'll look in the "Date-specific Items" on each turn and will thus remember to WAKE our units at the right time, but then we won't have to read through pages of "Warrior 1 moves 1SW onto the GFor (1SW of the GCopper)" just to see the important "WAKE Warrior 1" item.
So, what do you think? Does this idea have merit?
It will be a lot of work. More work than before.
But, it should lead to a format where players can actually PARTICIPATE in building the PPPs. Isn't that the POINT of writing a PPP? So that we can either:
a) Add comments
OR
b) Feel very confident in what is written
Right now, it sounds like players are just willing to say "well, it is obvious that you played some test games, Dhoom, but I can't sort through that level of detail, so I can't help you." That part sucks. Where's the team collaboration? It's not there.
It will take me a long time to write the first PPP using this proposed format, but hopefully, the effort will be worthwhile and will inspire more comments OR confidence in our PPPs (and having both would be preferred).
multiple and short sessions are tolerated in the SGs, exactly for the reason we used them.
Also the 1 hour rule is not compulsory, even in HoF games, it's just a way to avoid strange things or to disqualify a game with evident re-play detected.
Okay, that's a relief. It's not that I will intentionally go out of my way to run short sessions, but if we're playing interactive mode, I don't want to leave the game running unless the decision is something that HAS to be solved, such as accepting or refusing a Demand.
Since I wrote about the situation in the thread, I think that we are already being "open" about the issue and if an admin challenges us, we can just direct them to the relevant messages in our thread (the message where I bring up the issue as well as the multiple messages that I wrote in succession, at least one after each mini-play-session).
The Length of my Current Turnset
I just noticed it stops on turn 175, but you can play until turn 177.
Let's clear up this issue now, because I was under a different impression. I asked to play for 30 turns, to see if we can get use to the Hagia Sophia and can get us through some of the tricky Worker actions.
Also, it seems that a lot of AIs were met at this stage of the game, so it is helpful to have someone good at setting up initial trade deals and setting up our trading policies in terms of how to deal with each of the various AIs.
Irgy and UT were on board with me taking this extra time. You expressed your doubt, so I directly responded to your doubts with what I thought were good reasons. You did not reply to my comments, so it appeared from the discussion that you accepted my reasons.
The reason for listing a partial PPP up until when I did was twofold:
1. To get something out on the table within a reasonable time frame, so that you guys could start to review it
AND
2. Because based on what we find to the east, things in the future may or may not change, so writing a PPP that encompasses a lot of the later decisions will just mean that I may have to rewrite the rest of the PPP anyway
I am right now counting on being able to play 30 turns, as there are still a number of details to set up for the second half of the turnset.
In particular, we will hopefully start seeing techs like Construction, Metal Casting, Feudalism, maybe even Aesthetics, etc coming up for trade, and we need to make informed decisions on how to trade for these or not trade for them, while keeping our tech-denial strategy in mind.
We also have a lot of Civic-swapping micromanagement to take care of, while we get our Cities that were recently Size 1 set up so that they each have a couple of useful improvements to work.
We are also at the stage where we are setting up initial Resource Trade deals.
And these points are in addition to the fact that our empire is still working unimproved squares, so the precise order of Worker actions is very important.
Do you really want to put this level of responsibility onto other players' shoulders, or would you rather that we leverage my expertise in these areas to hopefully get us through this attention-to-detail-requiring aspect of the game to a point where Worker actions become easier (Hagia Sophia) and we will magically find that many of our Cities will have received the correct improvements "just in time" to be productive?
Partial PPPs vs 15-turn PPPs
Honestly, I would prefer it if we wrote and played short partial PPPs. It is relatively easy to think about and plan for ONE set of Civics changes and the related build items, which can happen if you only play for about 7 turns at a time. Then, after you've played, you'll have more real-game experience to apply to writing the next partial PPP.
We have ALL consistently started losing focus around the 7th turn or so of our PPPs, which is why I chose the 7 turn value. It's a "rough" number that doesn't have to be followed exactly, but planning 15 turns in advance is very hard and it also doesn't give us much ability to react and respond to changes that the real game will enforce upon our plans.
I think you can add those 2 turns to your PPP, to play straight once we decide the city location (provided is still free).
You just brought up the perfect example: what if, when our Settler Party finally arrives, we find out that the land to the east was already claimed? If it was claimed by an AI, we might or might not be able to settle near to their City. If it was claimed by Barbs, then we will have brought the wrong units with us (1 Archer and a Settler cannot capture an Emperor-level Barb City).
Planning out 15 more turns is pointless. At that point, we'd need to decide: should I keep heading east, if possible, to try and find another City location? Should I unload the Archer and Settler, whip some Military units, and then transfer those Military units to near the Barb City? Should I give up on settling to the east and turn around to the west and see if we can't fit another City somewhere in near Saladin?
Basically, whatever we decide can have a big impact on the rest of the PPP. If I need to whip units, I'll probably want to switch into Police State and Slavery. I'll also need to forego building whatever buildings I was planning on building, in favour of building units. THE ENTIRE STRATEGY COULD CHANGE just because of an event in the real game. So, the remainder of the PPP would have to be scrapped and rewritten.
A lot can change in 7 turns, but 15 turns is an eternity at this stage of the game. That said, 10 turns is also too long for a single PPP for a team that consistently displays a lack of focus after playing for about 7 turns (myself included), which is why I think that two partial PPPs of approximately 7 turns each is the way for us to go forward.
Dhoom, at this stage it's a real job to write a detailed PPP as you do.
I don't blame you for that, just we can't pretend the same level by all the team members.
I think that we must divide the PPP in 2 main sections:
1) High level
2) Low level
in the High level section we'll list
- research
- diplomacy
- espionage
- city settling
- wonders planned
- civics/religion switches
in the Low level section we'll list
- worker actions, in sequence for any worker (present and training) not necessary list any turn, since if you build a pasture you know that worker is busy for 6 turns
- cities builds (with turns left/whipping planned)
- military unit movements (just the target) intended as military any kind of explorer or soldier
we can have a 3rd section for the war management if and when we'll get involved in a war.
It goes without saying that all the sections are co-related and it's up to the UP Player see those relations.
EDIT: Last note: we're already in late on the scheduled 4/days TS. Be aware that we should be forced to reduce the time for any TS, giving to the UP player less time to play and to receive inputs by the other members. I would avoid to arrive at this stage, but we're seriously risking to not arrive in time.
I must add that i appreciate this way to approach the team play and that i've learnt a lot. But time is a constraint
- worker actions, in sequence for any worker (present and training) not necessary list any turn, since if you build a pasture you know that worker is busy for 6 turns
Maybe, maybe not. We have several partially-completed Worker actions.
Once the Hagia Sophia comes in, the timing of Worker actions will change and the values that we "remembered" will no longer apply.
Plus, with turn dates, it is a lot easier for someone reading the PPP to make comments such as:
"I noticed that you are planning to work the Wheat, the PCow, the Oasis, and then a junky square in Wheaties on T182. I also see that Worker X is chopping a nearby Forest and will be done by T180. Could we instead of chopping go and build a Plains Hills Mine for Wheaties?"
My approach doesn't list the info in a method that is easy for players to look for these possible efficiencies, even though all of the informtion is presented to those who want to look for it.
Your approach doesn't list dates for the Worker actions, which makes it pretty much impossible for someone to figure out if a Worker could do something differently without putting in the same level of effort that would be required to read my PPP, as they would have to perform some mental math just to figure out when a Worker might be "free" to help out elsewhere.
If we combine the two approaches, we should have a PPP that people can understand and comment on. I think that gaining understanding and gaining team feedback are the primary goals of writing a PPP. Do you agree?
It goes without saying that all the sections are co-related and it's up to the UP Player see those relations.
Okay, but it is the two issues of how we ORGANIZE the information and WHAT LEVEL OF DETAIL that we provide for different aspects of our PPPs that are making them far less useful than they could be.
In fact, it becomes hard for even the UP player to keep track of these co-relations, let alone other players reading the PPP. That's the other aspect of improving our PPPs that I am trying to address.
EDIT: Last note: we're already in late on the scheduled 4/days TS. Be aware that we should be forced to reduce the time for any TS, giving to the UP player less time to play and to receive inputs by the other members. I would avoid to arrive at this stage, but we're seriously risking to not arrive in time.
There is a greater risk than running out of time for a turnset, and that is players not understanding where the game is going.
You've encountered the situation yourself.
I believe that it will be very worthwhile to spend some time working out a good way of communicating our team's status through an improved PPP-writing process.
If we all understand what's being done and what needs to be done, team participation will increase and by that very nature, we'll get faster feedback on the PPPs and will need less iterations of writing PPPs.
If we have to re-write a PPP 5 times, it means that there is something wrong with our process.
If we can work on improving that process, we will actually save ourselves a lot more time overall, without needing to "cut corners" just to save time. When you cut corners, you end up with sub-par performance. In Civ 4, sub-par performance equates to a LATER END DATE, which exacerbates the problem by requiring us to play EVEN MORE turnsets, putting even MORE pressure on us and thus creating even more hasty decisions that lead to easily-avoidable mistakes that have us playing for even longer overall. It's a vicious cycle.
Do you really want to have to re-write your PPP 5 times? No, probably not. But the answer is NOT to put in an artificial rule such as "I will only re-write it twice." That's silly. If it needs rework, it should get that work put into it, otherwise we'd just be making easily-avoidable mistakes. But if we can have a better-definited PPP-writing process that solves some of our communication and understanding issues, as well as allowing for more feedback on the plan, then our turnsets will go a lot faster than the 9 or so days that it took to get through your last turnset.
"Rushing" our turnsets just for the sake of rushing them will not solve the problem and will just extend our end date. Addressing the real issue--that of how we come up with our PPPs--is probably the best chance that we have of reducing the turn-around time for playing our turnsets.
AI-AI Relationships for Trading
Does anyone know how the AI-AI relationships work for Trading?
I ask because it could be different with how it works with a player, but it might not be.
Let me outline the difference:
With an AI, there is only one Relationship level: how much they like you.
Between two AIs, however, there are two Relationship levels: how much A likes B and how much B likes A.
So, if an AI is "Friendly" with you, they will allow you to trade for all of there techs (minus some exceptions, such as Space-Victory techs).
If two AIs are "Friendly" with each other, they will also freely exchange monopoly techs with each other.
But what about if only one AI likes the other at a Friendly level while the other is only Pleased with the first AI?
Can they trade monopoly techs?
My GUESS is the following:
A = Friendly towards B
B = Pleased towards A
A will trade away any Monopoly tech to B
B will only trade away techs to A that are known to enough players in the world
But, it could be that unless they are both Friendly with each other, Monopoly tech trades are not allowed.
I ask because we have this very situation, where
A = Saladin, who is Friendly towards Toku = B
B = Toku, who is Pleased towards Saladin = A
My GUESS, therefore, is that it is dangerous to give techs to Saladin if we don't also give them to Toku, since Saladin will gladly hand over what should have been a Monopoly tech to Toku.
Do we know if this situation is true?
By the way, Saladin is less pleased with Justinian for a Shared Religion bonus, so over time, Saladin will also become Friendly with Justinian: Saladin has +7 with Toku for Shared Religion and only +4 with Justinian for Shared Religion. With Saladin being Pleased with Justinian, it is not hard to believe that an extra +3 could easily push Saladin into being Friendly with Justinian.
- worker actions, in sequence for any worker (present and training) not necessary list any turn, since if you build a pasture you know that worker is busy for 6 turns
Maybe, maybe not. We have several partially-completed Worker actions.
Once the Hagia Sophia comes in, the timing of Worker actions will change and the values that we "remembered" will no longer apply.
Plus, with turn dates, it is a lot easier for someone reading the PPP to make comments such as:
"I noticed that you are planning to work the Wheat, the PCow, the Oasis, and then a junky square in Wheaties on T182. I also see that Worker X is chopping a nearby Forest and will be done by T180. Could we instead of chopping go and build a Plains Hills Mine for Wheaties?"
I might be willing to conceed to your idea of not writing the exact turn values for Worker actions IF we agree to my suggested model of making Partial PPPs run for only about 7 turns.
That way, there are only so many things that a Worker can do in a short period of time, so knowing exactly when a Worker will start its next action is not really all that important, as there will only be one or two actions for each Worker to perform in this short time period.
Anyway, whatever process we come up with will have to incorporate compromises and consessions if we want to have a procedure that will work for everyone. I admit that putting in the exact Turn values for Worker actions can be annoying, so I would be willing to let this requirement go if you accept the idea of writing short partial PPPs. PPPs longer than about 8 turns should have this level of detail included (the timing of when each Worker action starts). Fair?
Dhoomstriker, I think it's safe to say that no one on the team will have as detailed a PPP as you. We need to allow for some level of personal style in this area. As long as the PPP provides "enough" detail for the rest of the team to provide comments, we should be fine. Also, if someone on the team asks for a specific detail to be added to a PPP that he feels is important, the UP player should be willing to add this detail to ensure that it is part of the PPP and will be followed during the turnset.
Since you'll be playing 30 turns and getting us "over the hump" in our game, less detailed PPPs should be fine gong forward. PLus, if we post mini-PPPs of 7 or 8 turns, the chances of getting way off track should be less as you've said. What we have to be careful about is not letting each of these mini-PPPs take as long to write and agree as a full PPP. If this happens, we will affectively double the amount of time it takes to finish the game. I think this mini-PPP process has to be fairly quick and painless.
How can we speed up this PPP process? I think if we have an agreed, well-defined, high-level strategy for the game, our tech path and our AI relations and we have a mid-level strategies that supports the overall strategy, the PPPs can be written and approved more quickly. We should also have a strategy for every city: what should it's general build order be, what improvements does it need and in what order, will the city hire any specialists, etc.
As we've said, the discussion of our strategy can happen in parallel with the discussion about the current PPP. We've been doing that to a degree, but someone would have to go back and re-read 100 pages of posts to find them all. As far as I know, they haven't been captured and collected anywere. In addition, the last high-level strategy that was written way back in post 245 still has a lot of info about cultural victories in it which makes it difficult to follow. I think we need to spend some time updating this so that the entire team has a focus and so that we can all keep our end goal in mind.
OK, so we've been assigning 100% of our espionage points to Zara so far. Now that we've met many more AI, does it make sense to start assigning points to another AI instead? Are the other AI assigning a lot of points to us or are they assigning 0 as we had expected?
I don't have the answers, but I just wanted to bring this part of the game up to ensure that it isn't being neglected.
OK, so we've been assigning 100% of our espionage points to Zara so far. Now that we've met many more AI, does it make sense to start assigning points to another AI instead?
I would say "no, until we have built at least 4 Courthouses."
Right now, we are gaining the benefit of knowing what Zara is researching. If we give up some or all of our Espionage Points' investment on Zara, then we will lose this ability without being able to gain this ability against another AI, at least not with just our Palace for Espionage Point accumulation.
Only once we have several sources of Espionage Points (read: 4+ Courthouses) should we consider investing those points on another AI.
As I have said previously, a Dhoomstriker Tactic revolves around the fact that AIs are less willing to spend their Espionage Points on the player if the player spends zero Espionage Points on said AI.
Case in point, Toku met us between Turns 161 and Turn 162. It is now Turn 167 and he has only spent 6 Espionage Points on us (1 Point per turn, counting the turn that he met us).
If we start spending Espionage Points on him, surely he'll increase his spending rate.
If you don't believe me, consider the fact that Zara has 3 AIs that he knows whom he likes less than us, yet he continues to spend points on us (I can't tell exactly how many per turn without playing a turn, but he has spent almost as many Espionage Points on us as we spent on him), which he is programmed to do so that we don't get too big of an advantage over him.
Should we later decide that we want to spend Espionage Points on Tokugawa, we would be best doing so "in a big block" of Espionage Points spent all at once--say, coming from multiple Courthouse sources--rather than a trickle of points over time that would just encourage Toku to spend more Espionage Points on us.
It's not how many Espionage Points you spend on an AI but how few that they spend on you that makes the biggest difference in the game.
FINALLY, if there is anyone from whom we'd steal a tech in the short term, it would be Zara. We won't have enough time at 4 Espionage Points per turn to steal a tech from anyone else. So, we might as well keep focusing all of our efforts on one AI to give us the best possible chance of getting a high-priced tech out of our Espionage Points.
I don't have the answers, but I just wanted to bring this part of the game up to ensure that it isn't being neglected.
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EDIT: Yikes, all of those examples put these horridly small boxes around the text without proper text-wrapping in them. I don't have a good replacement for Spoiler tags afterall. I am not a big fan of Italics text, as it is not easy in most fonts to see the difference between normal text and Italicised text. I could use a small font size, but then it's hard on a person's eyes. I could use a different colour for comments, but then your eyes might just read the comments, because the "coloured text" would appear to be "different" from the rest of the text and your eyes would jump to it. Maybe I don't need to differentiate explanations at all, because a decision that needs explaining really should have both the decision and the reason read together with each other as a whole entity? Feedback on this topic would be appreciated...
