Suggestion: Ruins OFF

[Arilian]

Hello,

Can we play the GOTM with 'ruins off' if the GOTM participant mostly agree?
It is a big luck factor, getting 20culture+1 pop vs upgraded weapons+map could mean 20 turn end game difference....

Maybe a vote like for Info addict should be done.

I like ruins actually, it is more fun to play with them imho, but it is against competition.

 

[leif erikson]

This has long been a debated issue in GOTM. In most Civ4 games, the huts are removed.

Will consider this after the Info Addict issues gets resolved.

 

[MatthewT]

I agree. Ruins are too luck dependent. I turn it off in my solo games.

 

[FeiLing]

It would be pretty boring without ruins.

Now if there was a way to make a ruin give the same no matter when it is taken that would be a welcome way to make GOTMs less luck dependent.

 

[Monthar]

Unfortunately it's not just when the ruin is picked up that's causing problems with GotM. Even if I picked up the first ruin on the same turn with the same unit as someone else, we can end up getting something different out of it, which has always been my main complaint about having ruins turned on for GotM. Even if I replay and make the exact same moves for the first 50 turns I end up with something different from all the ruins than I had in the first play-through.

 

[Arilian]

Actually, if you do EXACTLY the same, they will give the same thing.
But even the slightest deviation can/will result completely different things.

But this does not matter, as players will no way do exactly the same.

 

[pontias]

i agree with feiling - would be boring without.
doesn't bother me if it's different for other people.

 

[kamikazees]

I would be less likely to build scouts if there were no ruins. No chance of upgrade and less pressure to get everywhere first. I would likely build another warrior instead. That could have both and minuses, but it is something to consider.

 

[Smirk]

If there was a vote I'd vote to exclude them, competitively its just very unbalancing. Since we agree to play the same map and victory condition, adding them to the mix does create inequality.

Take gotm43, if you lucked out and got a ram with your initial warrior, thats at least a 6 turn bonus (rough estimate of what it would take to build the unit). But the real picture could be much different, a 6 turn earlier ram would face a much weaker and thus easier to take city. And you could very well capture an early city with the ram alone if you popped it early enough, might be risky but its probably better to try it early than to pay for the ram for the next 20 or so turns while you build up your war machine.

 

[Ribannah]

I also prefer to play without ruins.

A Scout is still important to quickly meet rivals en city states, to map the land and to find natural wonders.

 

[trueblue]

I like my ruins!

 

[Monthar]

A Scout is still important to quickly meet rivals en city states, to map the land and to find natural wonders.

Folks tend to forget how important this part of scouting really is and focus only on grabbing ruins. After all, just meeting all the civs quickly means any tech they already know will cost fewer beakers for you to research. At the higher difficulties the AI starts with free techs, so the faster you meet them all, the faster you catch up.

 

[Halcyan2]

I am in favor of ruins mainly because it better simulates the average game that people will be playing.

In particular, the lack of ruins significantly impacts the value of Scouts and will likely change many player's typical build orders. That in turn affects how representative the GOTM's are of a typical game.

On the other hand, if Ruins were off by default and most games did not include ruins, then I would argue that GOTM should follow that and also have no ruins....

 

[tommynt]

As there allways dies a little something in me when I pop a barb notification of a camp i m standing right next to - no ruins d be great for my heart longlivity

but then is getting a pop at right time just fun

also they help quite a bit as human is usually way better at finding and taking use of them as ai - so harder difficulties get slightly harder

overall still my vote is no ruins

 

[Gamewizard]

I enjoy the early race for ruins, so I vote to keep them.

 

[limboldt]

I always hoped for an update for the ruins...I do not think that anybody likes ruins with barb infos or maps. For balancing them I hoped for sth. like a choice what you get or do there, a little bit like the random events in Civ 4.
In Civ 2 or 3 it was even harder, you could get settlers or cities...

I agree that because the competion is to achieve things faster then the other players the ruins benefits are to different to call them balanced. My first warrior in the hun-game changed to a battering ram in my first ruin, that was not the best reward for that point of the game...
On the other hand we will never have the very same conditions, I replayed several games to try to see what I have could done better and found a complete different situation, AI players that were strong before were killed and so on.
And the difference between what missions you get from the city-states is as influencing then the ruins. When I get a mission that I have already nearly solved it is a big difference compared to sth I can not solve.
I sometimes had lucky combinations, one mission was easy to fulfill, I recieved horses for example from the new ally and another city-state asked for horses. And in conclusion I will get the same advantages as in the ruins that way: culture, units, faith, growth...
Concerning the ruins I would say when we ask statistics two players finding 5 ruins will have nearly the same advantage then other players who found 5 ruins. So we are back in balanced strategy, because players who decide to build scouts and move them clever can achieve this advantage in the same equitable way.
I like the idea of GOTM, but we have to see that playing really the very same game and only playing style is the factor that makes the difference is an illusion.

So after all that considerations I would vote to keep them.

It always will be a game, the first choice to go North or South is most of the time not a decision that you make because of brillant strategic thinking, and even this desicion could decide if you end the game 20 turn ealier, because you find a special city state or a very good settling location first.

 

[Waraddict]

Even if I picked up the first ruin on the same turn with the same unit as someone else, we can end up getting something different out of it

This is related to one of the check box in the advanced setting. I think by default the box is unchecked and you always got the same thing provided you made exactly the same moves. If you tick the box you ll get a different reward everytime. This also work for the combat calculation i believe.

 

[Monthar]

You're talking about the random seed box which has to be checked before the initial save is created and is never checked for GotM. I'm talking about replaying GotM games and still getting different results for the ruins.

 

[Ribannah]

If the replay is exact that normally shouldn't happen. Note that even changing the order of your actions is a deviation.

However, a few random events such as City State quests are independent of the main random number generation and if the AI gets one of those, and then responds differently, your ruins may yield different results even if you do everything exactly the same. This will rarely occur in the opening though.

 

[budweiser]

I do not believe that the huts make that big of a difference. That's like saying your team lost a football game because of the result of a single play when there were hundreds of other plays that also affected the outcome. I vote to keep them in.