SGOTM 16 - Pre-game Discussion

[Manco Capac]

Gumibear is too fast for my mind.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think I misunderstood the wording here earlier and I apologise if I have confused this. Us Gumibears are a bit slow as i found out to my shock.

'You fulfil the requirements for TWO victory conditions'.

So my understanding now is you can achieve the 2nd VC after the winning ceremony for E.g a space victory . Click wait one more turn. Quick culture bomb for a 3rd legendary city and submit the save. Hence I have acheived the requirement for two VC.

I have deleted my previous comments as I don't think they were helping.

 

[Duckweed]

The objective of "Holy shrine" seems too much dependent on AIs' behavior, if in one game that AIs produce 3 holy shrines and in other game that there's none, it will make a lot of difference on the game result. Maybe (7?) holy cities is a more fair objective.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I guess we need to have great prophets ready in case we capture holy cities without shrines.

 

[Htadus]

This SG seem to be a typical game for me. I start with conquest or culture type goal, ended up changing toward space and win with an accidental domination while being the head of UN.

And I have no time to play this. How sad.

 

[ZPV]

The objective of "Holy shrine" seems too much dependent on AIs' behavior, if in one game that AIs produce 3 holy shrines and in other game that there's none, it will make a lot of difference on the game result. Maybe (7?) holy cities is a more fair objective.

I do not think the shrines are much of an issue - you can find ways to generate extra Great Prophets if you need to - just look at SGOTM8 where teams ended up with seven shrines - and the AI not playing ball is pretty much what the game is about.

 

[Duckweed]

I do not think the shrines are much of an issue - you can find ways to generate extra Great Prophets if you need to - just look at SGOTM8 where teams ended up with seven shrines - and the AI not playing ball is pretty much what the game is about.

It's not the issue of human player's capability of producing enough priests, it's about the fairness of different games. AIs' shrines = yours, which saves yours own GPs indirectly.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I may be wrong, but I believe that nearly all holy cities are eventually turned into shrines by the AI players. If your conquest goes so fast they don't have time to build the shrines, you'll have to build them yourself...

I haven't test this, however, so my belief may be in error.

 

[Htadus]

It's not the issue of human player's capability of producing enough priests, it's about the fairness of different games. AIs' shrines = yours, which saves yours own GPs indirectly.

This is a good point. But it also forces a team to make a choice as to rush an AI with a holy city before the shrine is built or to wait until the shrine is built. the problem is there is no gurentee the shrine will be built.

I may be wrong, but I believe that nearly all holy cities are eventually turned into shrines by the AI players. If your conquest goes so fast they don't have time to build the shrines, you'll have to build them yourself...
.

Sadly this is not always the case and take forever sometimes before AI get a GP. If the AI also built the SH/Oracle or anther similar wonder the whole process speeds. But there is no gurentee.

 

[pigswill]

Hundreds (probably thousands) of outcomes/decisions have an element of RNG/luck.

 

[soundjata]

Did anyone notice?

Spoiler :

kcd_swede saved us from boredom

Praises to him

 

[shakabrade]

Did anyone notice?

Spoiler :

kcd_swede saved us from boredom

Praises to him

Yes, indeed. I noticed Gyathaar wasn't active on this forum much so I figured someone else will take the task.

But I thought it would be Dynamic Spirit with another "SGOTM teams vs. the AIs".

Praise kcd for imagination and interesting ruleset.



(Also praise Vivec.)

 

[kcd_swede]

The objective of "Holy shrine" seems too much dependent on AIs' behavior, if in one game that AIs produce 3 holy shrines and in other game that there's none, it will make a lot of difference on the game result. Maybe (7?) holy cities is a more fair objective.

I agree it could pose very different obstacles for different teams depending on which AI do what, but am pretty confident that the biggest difference will be how each team chooses to play it. Incidentally, that's also the case for very many of the objectives given.

Please recall that you will likely not be finishing until Future Tech 1, so there is ample time to assess which objective(s) will be the limiting factor in your victory date, and adjust your strategy to compensate. I cannot (and would not if I could) eliminate all randomness from the game that could potentially seperate two equally well-played games in the end.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

The points brought up about unfair randomness really just mean unecessary randomness. All we can ask is that all unecessary randomness is removed from the scenario. On this point, I believe that all unecessary randomness has already been removed, though no player can be sure about objective #1, a priori.

The scenario seems perfectly fine as currently defined.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Mylene]

My only concern is, that this scenario will lead to similar tactics on teams.
Need no prophet for realizing great peoples > all here, cos most hard or time consuming conditions can be emergency "fixed" with them.
Culture, Shrines if AIs dun build them, Corporations, Academy(ies) cos we go aaall the way towards future tech..i'd have welcomed something like "you own xx towns" instead of shrines or corporations.

 

[BSPollux]

When will the teamthreads be opened? I'd like talk with my teammates as a group and not in 7 1on1 discussions. Is there any reason not to open them early?

Is it allowed to read the old teamthreads? From past games?

 

[AlanH]

When will the teamthreads be opened? I'd like talk with my teammates as a group and not in 7 1on1 discussions. Is there any reason not to open them early?

Until everyone is signed up, there is no guarantee that you will be in the teams you have asked for or been invited to. I typically avoid moving players, but it could happen.

Is it allowed to read the old teamthreads? From past games?

Yes. Team threads are only barred during the games they relate to.

Please review the rules and procedures linked from the first post in the sign-up thread.

 

[Duckweed]

I agree it could pose very different obstacles for different teams depending on which AI do what, but am pretty confident that the biggest difference will be how each team chooses to play it. Incidentally, that's also the case for very many of the objectives given.

Please recall that you will likely not be finishing until Future Tech 1, so there is ample time to assess which objective(s) will be the limiting factor in your victory date, and adjust your strategy to compensate. I cannot (and would not if I could) eliminate all randomness from the game that could potentially seperate two equally well-played games in the end.

I fully understanding the randomness of the game, personally I like them and always enable huts and events in my own games.

However, the holy shrine objective does introduce unnecessary randomness into the game, 3 extra GPriests are not negligible, which are probably more than the huts and events effect. If you really want to see those shrines, you could require human players to build them with their own GPriests.

 

[Manco Capac]

However, the holy shrine objective does introduce unnecessary randomness into the game, 3 extra GPriests are not negligible, which are probably more than the huts and events effect. If you really want to see those shrines, you could require human players to build them with their own GPriests.

Or certain leaders that really favor GPriests.
Egyptian leaders for instance. A shame they cannot get 100% chance on a religion, unless the map maker attributes one religion to them at the start of the game.

What would interesting too (but a really big investment) is too give the city to the AI (who just got an GProphet) and see in the code if they favor 100% shrines over everything. The wardec and get the shrine for free. I'm pretty sure a list of priority is made somewhere and stupid goodies are often favored over important stuffs.
Just like GE rushed wonders, there must be a list.

I think a mean exists to lower the randomness factor of GProphet.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I fully understanding the randomness of the game, personally I like them and always enable huts and events in my own games.

However, the holy shrine objective does introduce unnecessary randomness into the game, 3 extra GPriests are not negligible, which are probably more than the huts and events effect. If you really want to see those shrines, you could require human players to build them with their own GPriests.

Your unnecessary randomnees complaint also applies to the objective that requires ownership of at least three corporate headquarters which require three specific Great People (excluding Great Prophets, Great Spies, and Great Generals) to found Corporate Headquarters, which happens much later in the game than the founding of Holy Cities/Holy Shrines; possibly causing teams with early win plans to drastically change strategy. However, the effect is possibly mitigated by the fact that there is a Great Person of every type, except Great Prophet, given to the first Civ to discover seven specific techologies, usually before the technology needed to found the corporation, with notable exception of Fusion's free Great Engineer. Note that this is a false mitigation though, because capturing a Corporate Headquarters avoids using the associated Great Person, regardless of whether the Great Person cost GPPs or not.

I really don't see much chance of there not being at least three Holy Shrines or three Coporations in the game to capture by the time a team completes Future Tech 1. Thus, the scenario as currently defined doesn't seem to require either Great Prophets to construct Holy Shrines or Great People to found Corporations to meet the respective ojectives. The chance of being so required seems to be exceedingly small (perhaps < 1 in 1000) by the time of Future Tech 1!

Thus, in my opinion, both objectives mentioned above are already adequately defined. (I'm sure the scenario designer has already considered these arguments and more when defining the objectives to ensure fairness between the teams within the limits of the game.)

Sun Tzu Wu