SGOTM 20 Pregame Discussion Thread - Spreading the Faiths

[Deckhand]

Please use this thread to discuss or raise questions about the game rules before it starts.

Please don't speculate about your team strategies here. Wait until you have a private team thread - and you know which teams you are allocated to.

 

[Deckhand]

I will update this post with any rule clarifications.

Take control of the Religions! - Only you (or your vassals) may own a Holy City.
Bring them together! - Each of your cities has at least two religions. There are at least seventy temples in your cities. Each Great Prophet settled in your cities counts as four temples.
Promote Equality! - You must adopt and stay in Free Religion upon learning Liberalism.
End the Madness! - You will be told how to do that after you capture (or found) Holy Cities for three religions or when you have met every other civilization.
Prove that you are a worthy ruler! - You win the game in any way but conquest.

=========================

Let AlanH or Deckhand know by PM when you have captured three Holy Cities or when you have met every other civilization, and they will let your team know how to End the Madness.
=========================

To be eligible for a medal, the team needs to meet all objectives.
Teams that don't meet all objectives will be ranked by date.
Wooden Spoons will go to team with lowest score.

If you don't meet all objectives, you are ranked below teams that do and it doesn't matter how many you did meet for ranking purposes. Objectives are irrelevant for determining Wooden Spoons, however you must submit a completed game (either you or AI has achieved victory).
===========================

You are not required to learn Liberalism.

The adopt part of the rule to "adopt and stay in Free Religion upon learning Liberalism" does not apply to the Shwedagon Paya; however if you do adopt Free Religion thru the Shwedagon Paya, then you must stay in it.
================================

Apologies.
The game is on a large map with 10 Civs (9 AIs). This is likely to cause performance issues for some players.
The staff will be understanding about crashes. Please ensure your autosave turn internal is set to 1. Also set BUFFY to autosave upon exit. And please make manual saves in the middle of your turn if taking a long time or if something of significance (e.g. city captured, city not captured, trade/beg from AI) has occurred. If your game does crash, notify AlanH by PM, reload the latest save and replay your moves.
And I suggest short turn sessions to rotate thru all turn members in the beginning so all can participate before the possible exclusion of anyone whose machine can't keep up.

================================
There are currently no restrictions on CtE
nor on worker stealing or phony wars.

This is possible to change during playtesting.
===============================

Excellent Questions from Dhoomstriker by PM.
We actually thought of these, but wanted to be asked to avoid long initial rules.

Hi Deckhand,

If a City is a Holy City for 2 different Religions, then what is your definition of a Holy City... is this case going to count as 1 or 2 Holy Cities being captured? Two.


I take it that there are no limits on City Liberating Diplo bonuses in this game, right? Correct


The part about "Only you (or your vassals) may own a Holy City" refers to a condition that must be satisfied at the end of the game, right? Right


In the past, "capturing a City" has included razing it. While it may not be prudent to raze a Holy City given the Temple condition, would we get credit for capturing a Holy City if we raze the City upon capture? Yes.

 

[Deckhand]

Note, the usual GOTM restrictions apply: no replaying, no liberating cities to a civ you are at war with (except in peace deal), no subsidizing resource trades with AI, no goto mapping or flying camera, only 1 tech from Oracle/Liberalism.

This thread is not the place to discuss or debate these. Interesting yet forbidden debates could include whether the above are exploits, whether they are detectable and whether they should be allowed.

If you think one of these restricted techniques should be allowed, please send your reasons to me (deckhand) by PM.

If you don't know what is meant by the restrictions above, then please do ask; and any poster is free to explain.

 

[BSPollux]

Welcome to the game everyone!

I'm realy glad I got the chance to present a scenario to you and I hope you'll have even more fun playing it then I had designing it. I want to read all your threads, that will be quite a lot I guess. If anyone at any time feels like giving me feedback via PM I'd appreciate that a lot.

I can't wait for the game to start to see how you steamroll the AIs and ruin all my plans!

 

[kcd_swede]

Are you guys really sure you want to have a Large map???

I'm thinking about all the crash reports we've had to deal with in previous SGOTM's and... well, Large is not going to make matters better.

Maybe we should caution turnplayers to be sure their system can handle it.

But then again, it shouldn't become a problem if we all win by turn 70.

Can you even build 70 temples in 70 turns?

 

[Gumbolt]

Large map size? Is this wise?? If teams choose domination win this could require a lot of game play by teams given we have 9 opponents. Is 3 months and a week long enough given the larger map? I do hope a large map does not put some players off.

@ KCD - I am not sure if the high level of crashes is down to Buffy or the size of the game file near the end of the game. I think Windows mode may reduce the game crashing. 99% of my crashes come from Buffy games. I don't seem to get crashes in my usual game play.

From the game description can we assume that all the religions have been allocated to the AI already? I would also assume all AI cities have already been settled if this is the case?

Just to clarify that the liberalism rule only applies to teams that choose to tech liberalism? Or is it mandatory to tech liberalism and switch to free religion?

 

[BSPollux]

Large map size? Is this wise?? If teams choose domination win this could require a lot of game play by teams given we have 9 opponents. Is 3 months and a week long enough given the larger map? I do hope a large map does not put some players off.

@ KCD - I am not sure if the high level of crashes is down to Buffy or the size of the game file near the end of the game. I think Windows mode may reduce the game crashing. 99% of my crashes come from Buffy games. I don't seem to get crashes in my usual game play.

From the game description can we assume that all the religions have been allocated to the AI already? I would also assume all AI cities have already been settled if this is the case?

Just to clarify that the liberalism rule only applies to teams that choose to tech liberalism? Or is it mandatory to tech liberalism and switch to free religion?

No comment on the question about allocated religions.

About teching liberalism: You are not forced to tech it. You may decide to avoid it. But if Free Religion is available to you, you have to use it.

Oh and about the map size: I think most random generated 'large' maps would have more land then this one.

 

[BLubmuz]

So this game is co-designed by Deckhand and BSPollux?
About the large map... i think it's too late to change, but i don't think it's a good decision. My PC can handle anything, but i know many would have problems.

I think the rules are quite simple:
1) Take control of the Religions! - Only you (or your vassals) may own a Holy City.
2) Bring them together! - Each of your cities has at least two religions.
3) There are at least seventy temples in your cities.
4) Promote Equality! - You must adopt and stay in Free Religion upon learning Liberalism.
5) End the madness! - You will be told how to do that after you capture three Holy Cities or when you have met every other civilization.
6) Prove that you are a worthy ruler! - You win the game in any way but conquest.

1, 2 , 3 clear
4 clear, like in SG 18 IIRC or was it 17? boh
5 clear too, just capture 3 Holy cities before to have met all the opponents makes me smell something fishy
6 clear, any VC is qualifies you but conquest.

As usual i presume that all those restrictions are needed to qualify for a spoon. Or even for a medal.

About that flying camera thing, after years i read comments about it, i still don't know how it works. Can anyone explain please?

Are the holy cities pre built or they will arrive as usual by honest research efforts?

 

[lymond]

I'll be blunt - Large Map Size was a bad idea. You can argue one way or another about the merits of a Larger map or that "some people like them". However, the simple truth is that some folks don't have the resources to handle them. So by making this choice you made the game restrictive. SGOTMs should not be restrictive. And BUFFY is crap for performance and crashes until it gets updated, if ever....bad enough on normal settings.

 

[BSPollux]

About the holy cities: We gave you every bit of info we wanted you to have before the game

However, the simple truth is that some folks don't have the resources to handle them. So by making this choice you made the game restrictive. SGOTMs should not be restrictive.

I am honestly surprised to hear about anyone having performance issues with a 'large' map of Civ4. It never appeared to me that anyone who likes to play video games would update his PC less then once every decade.

Did anyone do a poll on that, recently? How many people are effected by that?
I mean, the requirement gap between playing a large map civ4 game and a standart map game of civ4 seems rather small, when viewed from todays perspective. But if thats a real problem for many people then that would be important to know.

Edit:
I just checked 2Ks page and it lists the following numbers for minimum and recommended specs:
Minimum: 1.2GHz, 256MB
Recommended 1.7GHz, 512MB

How many people are right between those, so that they feel the diffrence of map sizes?
I dont want to make fun of it, dont get me wrong. I am realy surprised to hear its such a problem and I'd like to see how bad it realy is.

 

[lymond]

Those specs are irrelevant and your assumptions are misplaced. Civ IV was unfortunately not designed to be helped much by newer technology. The only thing that helped a bit was 64-bit overcoming MAFs, but otherwise Civ IV performs poorly and is a notorious memory hog on any machine. Larger maps just make it worse and BUFFY's poor optimization makes that worse. Yeah, a newer machine helps some, but CPU hasn't mattered much in a while. Civ IV simply has never been able to take advantage of RAM.

With that said, there are many people out there with older machines and 32-bit. Even a small few still makes the game restrictive and it should never be.

I would have conferred with staff and mapmakers before making that choice.

 

[Fippy]

Well i do not want to take this discussion too far, but it's an old game so some peoples play it when they cannot play newer games and afford new PCs (running a guild, i know there are always some who do not have that money etc. or are forced to use laptops on travel).

Am also a bit worried about the huge Reli spreads needed, corps have been "immune" to fail spreading but here rng could become a big factor.

 

[BSPollux]

@lymond: You made your point clear. We'll have to see how it turns out.

 

[Gumbolt]

Can someone test buffy on large maps? It might settle a few nerves. Someone must of tested this before? I assume the game has to be run in Buffy to get all your result stuff?

 

[Jastrow]

It has little to do with new or old machines... The memory usage coding in Civ IV is complete garbage, and it is strongly dependent on specific maching specs/memory/graphic cards/etc...

My system is significantly above the "reccomended specs", but you can add me to the list of people who's computer does not handle large maps well at al. I might be able to play some turns early on, but there is no way my system will support any Rifle war or similar.

 

[kossin]

Note, the usual GOTM restrictions apply: no replaying, no liberating cities to a civ you are at war with (except in peace deal), no subsidizing resource trades with AI, no goto mapping or flying camera, only 1 tech from Oracle/Liberalism.

No restrictions on CtE?

But if Free Religion is available to you, you have to use it.

How about Shwedagon Paya?

~~~

If the intent of Large map is to nerf Domination VC, consider that:
-you already require teams to get a very large [70] temple count
-religion spreads have failure % (it's unlikely some team will stick to 10 cities with 7 religions, that's masochist and too random)

This will already bring most teams towards Domination with 25+ cities, then what's the point of the Large map?

Unless a large part of the map is made inaccessible so that available land tiles is similar to normal size maps, you're playing with fire

~~~

Basically, scenario as it currently stands, is forcing everyone in a near-Domination situation which means plenty of lag to be had and loooong turns.

 

[Deckhand]

No restrictions on CtE?

Not at this time. It is possible that would could change our minds in playtesting.

How about Shwedagon Paya?

Good question. I didn't think of that.
I say no. The strategic trade off is having to switch when you learn Liberalism.
So, I am inclined to break the theme a bit and not apply the requirement to Shwedagon Paya.
Edit: I modified this answer slightly, the new rule is:

• The adopt part of the rule to "adopt and stay in Free Religion upon learning Liberalism" does not apply to the Shwedagon Paya; however if you do adopt Free Religion thru the Shwedagon Paya, then you must stay in it.

~~~

If the intent of Large map is to nerf Domination VC, consider that:
-you already require teams to get a very large [70] temple count
-religion spreads have failure % (it's unlikely some team will stick to 10 cities with 7 religions, that's masochist and too random)

This will already bring most teams towards Domination with 25+ cities, then what's the point of the Large map?

Unless a large part of the map is made inaccessible so that available land tiles is similar to normal size maps, you're playing with fire

~~~

Basically, scenario as it currently stands, is forcing everyone in a near-Domination situation which means plenty of lag to be had and loooong turns.

(per above) BSPollux was unaware of the large map (and later game) crash issues with BUFFY. And I didn't make the connection.

Spoiler :

One of my teammates had issues in SGOTM19 and usually a player or two has problems in xOTM.

Are the problems related to civ size and/or unit count?

 

[Deckhand]

So this game is co-designed by Deckhand and BSPollux?

BSPollux made the map and scenario. We worked together on the game requirements and announcement. It is my responsibility as the GOTM staff person. I will be playtesting.

5 clear too, just capture 3 Holy cities before [or] to have met all the opponents makes me smell something fishy

There might be a typo or translation issue with your statement.
You don't have to capture 3 HC before meeting all opponents. You learn the requirement when you have done either.

The intent is to encourage you to explore. And not to reveal some map aspects until you have discovered them on your own.

As usual i presume that all those restrictions are needed to qualify for a spoon. Or even for a medal.

I need to look up previous ruling or let Alan answer.

 

[AlanH]

The spoons are awarded to the losing team, which is the lowest scoring finisher.

Historically, you only had to win or be defeated to be deemed to have finished. I think we'll stick with that simple specification for the gallant loser, even though the map designers are finding new ways to define winners.

So, if you are dead set on being awarded the wooden spoons, just get conquered fast

 

[Pollina]

SGOTM 16: Hemispheres (84x50), ~1150 land tiles
SGOTM 17: Rainforest (52x32), ~1400 land tiles
SGOTM 18: Great Plains (44x32), ~1200 land tiles
SGOTM 19: Lakes (52x32), ~1400 land tiles

A randomly generated large size Pangaea has 84x50 tiles (same as for standard size Continents/Fractal/Hemispheres/Big&Small and small size Terra maps) and 650-1500 land tiles (depending on sea level and world wrap).
I don’t see why this game would crash much more than previous ones, unless this custom Pangaea turns out to be significantly larger than a randomly generated one.