Sgotm18

[BLubmuz]

Hard to find the right words for this, but without having followed the game, people could and should have guessed this from the name only imo. Hades is where the dead go, only one man went there freely and came back (losing his beloved one again) , he's known by the name of Orpheus, there's a saga in Greek Mythology about him.

I thought the opposite: when i saw Hades i thought it (later thry) was the door to the not-yet-met 2 AIs. It was only half true. My teammates shared this opinion and so we spent a lot of effort in capturing them, delaying the war with Sury.

Then, unfortunately (by my point of view) KCD didn't made "England" reachable only with paratroopers. That would have been perfect for a great military+research game, far harder than a space race. I already complained with him about this.
That sea canal made that the usual "kill 'em all" game.

But if you like to participate to next one, FE will be more than happy to count on you.

 

[pepe26]

you actually teched to paratroopers?

 

[Jastrow]

I agree with BLubmuz... I think the flaw in this scenario is all the teleporting which was involved, which is just way to "gamey" for my tastes. I dont like scenarios which demand that you take advantage of game mechanics quirks just to be half-way competitive.

I suspect/hope this was an accident, and not a design decision.

 

[Gumbolt]

I don't think the teleporting was a flaw. It required teams to think for sure. Once you noticed the 2 mountain you had to be asking why put the mountain there?? On this map once you got AI maps most things answered themselves.

An early GM could of easily explored Toku/ Sury and china.

 

[Jastrow]

I guess I am just a purist, but teleporting is just too gamey for my tastes... I just dont think it is how civ was "meant to be played" (and yes, I know that is completly meaningless, but it is a valid opinion nontheless.)

 

[WastinTime]

Teleporting can be prevented by making a separate land mass. So it appears that teleporting was intentionally featured in this SG. With all the teleporting we did in SG15, I would think the mapmaker was aware of this mechanic, but it could have been accidental.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I've been assigned the map-maker role for SGOTM 18 which I am aiming to have sign-ups open in mid-July.

If you got any ideas that you think would be fun, you can certainly post them here, and I will ignore them or steal them as I see fit.

What I'd like to know, though is whether you guys think you'd be ready for a Deity level game. Think of a map that is about as challenging as SGOTM17... are you up for it? Is there anything I should definitely avoid if I make you a Deity level game?

Getting back to your original request, since this thread seems to have gone awol, I'm going to say that I doubt a pure diety-level game will work. Frankly, I don't think enough teams would win. I would have a different opinion if most teams finished within 10-20 turns of the top team, but that hasn't happened yet. There's a reason for that and that reason is precisely why many if not most teams won't win at standard diety.

Heck, even in the HOF the diety games people win are usually products of Mapfinder, if I'm not mistaken.

If you're planning to nerf the diety down, then it's no longer diety anyway, in which case you don't even need to ask teams if they think they're ready for diety.

I personally have a different reason for not wanting diety. It forces you to play a very constrained strategy to win. What I really like about SG games is the breadth of strategy possibilities and variations between teams.

 

[WastinTime]

I seriously doubt that any teams will have that much trouble winning on Deity. You don't need a 'mapfinder' start. Besides, these hand-crafted maps always seem to provide us with horse and/or metal, plenty of forests, etc. And more like 'balanced resources' (which isn't even a legal HoF option.)

It's not that big of a leap over immortal. The AI can't hardly manage a win at any level. Their options usually boil down to sneaking in a surprise religious victory, or culture, possibly a space race, and then there is conquest defeat to worry about. Any team of SG players should be able to prevent these slim chances of losing the game.

It might actually be very exciting to have to fight for your life! instead of abuse the AI a dozen different ways. You might actually want to work on diplomacy instead of just rejecting/laughing at their threats.

And so what if a couple teams are defeated? As long as they get a nice long strategic game (not a Humbaba situation), it's a good learning experience.

 

[BLubmuz]

About Deity level, i must remind you that Deity BtS is far below Deity Vanilla/Warlord. Basically it's Immortal with some more research/building bonus.

About the map in SG 17, i think that the teleporting trick wasn't planned by KCD. Nonetheless he left that sea channel to the south. He seemed deluded to see that exploit, but maybe i'm wrong.

What is puzzling me is that - despite we put a lot of efforts in exploration (we sent a GM to scout "Japan") - we knew only very late the whole map. So late that we couldn't have defined a low-profile research strategy. As i posted in FE thread, we has a setback with serious risk of strike after we wiped Mansa. At the time we recovered (and this delayed our war with Sury maybe more than take the Hades) we were so powerful in research that paras haven't delayed us.

The winning teams managed to reveal most of the map long before us. I did not analyzed their games because the download block at the time and i'm too lazy to do it now. I only say that i'm - a bit - perplexed by how they reached such an early knowledge of the map and so they planned their research and strategy.

Back on topic (SG18) what i ask is a good mix of war, research and build, like we has in some previous game. The level doesn't matter for the competition, it's the same for all teams. It can even be settler, the field will still be evened. Higher levels just mean more difficulty, but it's there for all.

 

[Folket]

I do not think the teams will have difficulty with deity. Perhaps one team will loose the game. If we make it a hard deity game things will be different. One continent with 3 war mongers and all religions founded on the other continent, but that would just be sadistic. But a deity game could scare away potential new players. We need to consider regrowth as well.

The map was definitely designed to use teleport. Otherwise there is no reason to have mountains there.

As for our game, I think we could have done it faster if we decided on a cavalry victory and had chained units through the canal in the middle. Walk through the Qin/Tokugawa corridor was a great waste of time.

As for exploring. Attacking Hades and getting astronomy are both gambles. I do not see how any amount of exploring would tell you what is the better option.

 

[Frederiksberg]

KCD, I'm not sure that your deadline in SGOTM16 was trivial. And if it was, maybe it was not tight enough? In many games with Chess a a prominent example time is an important factor and the ability to spend the available time in the best possible way is part of the game. My guess is that an SGOTM could be done much faster and with almost the same quality of play if multiple deadlines are added to help the teams spend time in a more careful way. And hopefully a faster game would also be a more fun game.

 

[bestsss]

I'll try to briefly describe what Plastic Ducks did and why galleons looked natural to us.

At the beginning Duckweed proposed bulb of engineering+astronomy (this is a standard 4 GS bulb avoiding civic service) but the major point was the lack of water tiles, just too few.
We knew about the longbow defended barb cities very early on (6 turn or so), so that was a major stopper for all out very early assault too.
We settled the island early (30ish turn) to benefit from the commerce and since stone was visible - the pyramids doubled the research rate. Settling early the stone isle made sure we had a boat to explore there was a discussion between Duckweed and Doshin to ferry a worker or explore - the total cost of exploring was 6 hammers(!) as the galley returned upon discovering an ocean coastal tile blocking the west -- clear evidence of the doctored map. Since there were too many ocean tiles - Astronomy was a clear call.

The barb cities were discussed: to send a spy (w/ barb culture visible on Mansa's) and the attempt to meet the AIs - that meant whipping a settler, sending at the edge of the mainland, waiting like 15 turns or so before we could whip a galley and paying a maintenance (+whipping a spy) in attempt to meet the AIs. (note spies do work as emissaries and establish contact with the other players)

So the Astronomy looked more like a plausible solution. Once we got it -- settled the suspicious canal city that had fresh water (hence lake on the west) and gave it to Tokugawa to maintain it.

Notes: trebuchets are very strong and cost effective vs immortal AIs, the UU is an extra bonus. Since the research came from caste/representation specialists, the bulbing scientists were sort of by-product that synergies perfectly (and we had no contamination for kossin to pull the wrong one). Engineering speeds up the land assault as well, grant the extra movement. The power of the *pre-req* Astronomy and the long, long chains is well known too.

Personally I wished not to see the galleon chain once again. If possible to be avoided in the next scenario, please. Deity punishes over-expansion (in deity terms) greatly -- the costs are higher the techs are more expensive and then the inflation hits even harder.

 

[Folket]

Still it is a guess. Perhaps kcd_swede decided to do a coin flip to decide if assaulting hades or getting astronomy was a better choice. Before you have your galleons you do not know how useful they will be. It could have been a dead end. When a map has been so edited and designed saying "natural" does not cut it.

Perhaps kcd_swede has some kind of history of things so certain things are "natural" but I have not played enough of his maps.

 

[pepe26]

Finally some people who agree with me that the Hades Underworld region really screws people over. Part of our reason to attack MM as the earliest team to declare war on him, was to get through his torritory, capture his coastal city and whip galleys as soon as possible...


One more thing that is not connected to map design however:

I did an analysis of the culture graphs of each team. It CLEARLY showed that no one could have went Mids early! The increase of culture output per turn (CPT) just never amounted to anything higher than a 5 CPT increase.

Later I had to realize that this analysis led to a completely faulty conclusion.

 

[pepe26]

bestsss, has PD ever set up a cottage capital?

 

[bestsss]

pretty much the previous game (sgotm-16). Cottages make sense w/ long term goals in mind. We went for early Pyramids - there were quite a few tests to get them as soon as we could (i.e. stone+Maths), and more tests to see when classical starts AIs tend to build them.

 

[bestsss]

Folket: It could have been a dead end..

I will try to bite:
While exploring you notice Mountain Peaks and coastal Ocean - the former is impassible (even for subs, subs can go through ice blocks), the latter is impassible for galleys.
The north part was clearly reachable and the mountain ridges appear to connect the South to the North, the North has barbarians w/ culture and known to have longbows in, culture = castles for barbarians (sucks).
Instead concentrate to the problem at hand, exploring past the ocean both west and south (doable via culture but not given) and get engineering.
In the worst case scenario: Engineering bulb is very useful for warring, no matter what. You will still have the great scientists while getting there, indeed you can bulb machinery and manually research engineering - instead of bulbing astronomy. Then you have useless astronomy and optics, possible trading chips, though - you have Mansa sitting next to you. Still it's visible you have to ferry troops at least to the South (visible ocean tiles!), galleons are still better in that regard.

 

[Doshin]

Small things add up, and a huge amount of thought and testing went into all aspects of our game. The devil is in the detail. For instance:

• We found a turn in which to build the Pyramids in a second city. This did not slow down the wonder itself, but generated 17 at a time when we were generating +4 GPT. This allowed us to research CoLs at 100% for a single turn, and thereby make an Alpha <---> CoLs trade before it was closed off.
• We identified the earliest possible date on which to build the Mids (T53) but in fact delayed this slightly, to T57, so as to better set up our cities and balance our Workers across the empire.
• There were several times before T100 in which our economy sank down to 0 gold, but this was always carefully controlled (letting us reach an important tech one turn sooner, or settle an additional city, or generate a GS rather than an accidental GM, and so on).
• bestsss has already mentioned our exploration of the southern coast, which proved to be a dud, but had definite potential and confirmed (at least for me) the validity of bulbing Astronomy.
• GP production was ridiculously tight. The first GS was generated on a turn when the Pyramid city had 98 GPP with +11 GPP per turn. The second GS was generated from the city with the least amount of GPs at the time:
  
  
  Spoiler :

  
  
  Mid City, which here has 199GPP, would generate our fifth Great Person. Bronze Beaver here generated our second.
• Astronomy was bulbed on T94. On T93, our island city had a Settler with 99/100 hammers invested (a Rep citizen was run to bring the total hammers from 97 to 99). This overflowed into a Galley which had 59/60H invested. On T96 we had a Settler, Worker, and Galleon available to claim the overseas Gold, and an Archer ready to explore the southern continent.
• The early Galleon let us identify a possible canal city as soon as we possibly could, and Duckweed correctly identified which units should be sent to explore.
• These decisions cumulatively kept us away from the barb cities.

We did not settle the southern coast until very late (city #8), and that was done to claim an additional health resource rather than to meet the other AI via popped borders. I think we met Sury, Qin, and Toku later than several other teams. This was a failing in our game, I think, but one that did not impact our strategy or victory date.

I don't know whether a "culture bridge" approach that ignored Astro entirely would have been as successful. The crucial military tech (for us) was reached on T97 and we started warring on T103. If another team could start warring before T100 and still reach Engineering or Guilds before T105, this approach may have been able to outpace us. I am not sure. I am skeptical about talk of a T140 finish, though.

EDIT:

So, to kcd's credit, there was an opportunity for chaining for teams that wanted to invest in up to 51 galleys or 33 galleons. Or an opportunity to attack by land, except the need for a galley to cross over to Peter. Or an opportunity to invest in a small fleet of about 10 galleys for mini-chaining to Toku and Peter.

This scenario provided so many options for different paths to victory that it's hard to imagine there could be more. Frankly, I'd like to ask for a round of applause for kcd.

This.

 

[pepe26]

I do agree as well! Very fun map. I enjoyed this game a lot... Well done.

Just to be clear again... if I'd have to give the designer a grade, it would be very high indeed! My criticism was not meant to accuse, merely a suggestion for the development process of the next map: to keep map balance in mind.

Enough of this. Thanks for the map and for making the effort to make SGOTM18 as well. Looking forward to it!

 

[Fippy]

Problem with Galleons are not the units, but this very unrealistic possibility to cross almost everything with Forts. This screws up map makers intentions, and simplifies the best winning strategy to: Bulb Engi/Astro line, spam Galleons + Trebs + any other units available since Trebs can beat everything an AI hoards on Immortal..and win.
Some people try selling this as very challenging strategy from what i did read, not what i think about it for sure.