Team mode is fatally flawed!!!

[Drakken]

I can't believe I've been playing this game since it was released and now I find a ridiculous flaw in it. I just tried to play a team game... OMG all players on a team combine their research together. They also share the effects of wonders. Who is the idiot who thought that up?

I like to play an epic long game and it is impossible to do with teams as all research will be done in atleast half of the time or less.

It is also impossible to take on a team of computer players by yourself as they will always outtech you. Now instead of teaming you could set it up so the AIs are always at war with you but then there is no diplomacy at all just constant battle.

There should be an alliance option where players can be made to be allied but not teamed so each can take there own research paths and their own wonders as well. They can share LOS, go to war together, etc. but they should not share research. I am greatly dissappointed in this finding. The game has lost a game type that I am very interested in playing.

I can win on both Immortal regularly and Deity sometimes. I play with no tech trading, aggressive AI, raging barbs, and on marathon setting. The game seems to have nowhere else for me to go. I would really have liked to play against the AIs all allied against me but not war all of the time.

 

[KMadCandy]

I like to play an epic long game and it is impossible to do with teams as all research will be done in atleast half of the time or less.

well, tech costs are adjusted to increase by the number of still-alive civs in the team. same with GPPs (when your teammate gets a GP, the cost for your next one increases a bit, by half if there are 2 on the team), i forget what else. the wonders that are not shared are Versailles and Taj Mahal, so grab them yourself if you want 'em. also ask your AI teammate to research something else when a tech with a "bonus" is one or two turns away ... things like liberalism, founding a religion if you want to be holier than thou, music for the GA, etc.

MP hint: don't kill the other guy's teammates. cripple them to the point of uselessness. that way the team still has the "you have 3 civs researching so your techs cost more than if you had just 2 civs left" but no benefit from #3

i've played one game where i was teamed with an AI (gandhi, teammate was asoka) and our rivals were also teams of 2. was fun, but not something i want to do every game. sometimes i sign a PA when playing OCC. i always leave the PA option on, so that the AIs can sign them. makes the game more exciting (meaning i'm more likely to lose that way).

one of the most games we played was we were teamed and both OCC, the AIs were not teamed but not OCC, and our goal was conquest. we succeeded!

i play team mode with hubby since i'd feel terribly sad when he demolishes me guilty for beating him up mercilessly. we have fun. that's about the only way he ever plays Civ any more, if it's not team MP with me he'd rather mod

 

[Blaarg]

The game was never balanced with teams in mind.

 

[Lord_Zath]

Just start a game and sign open borders and trade that way. Then you don't share stuff unless you want to.

My biggest beef with team mode is that when one person declares war or gets into war, I'm dragged into it. I've lost many cities to that.

I agree it would be nice to do it Age of Empires II style. That brings back memories of bombarding my teammate's town centers, stables, and barracks while she was off attacking the enemy with her knights .

 

[Honkoid]

I think it's broken because of diplomacy. Have to AIs with different religions in one team and diplomacy is no fun anymore. One likes you, the other one hates you, both go to war with you and hate you even more.

 

[Astax]

I play multiplayer ALL THE TIME. And the team feature is the best part of the game. Sharing wonders is really great, with this you have a role on your team and you arent competing against teamates, just the other team.

Same thing for research. This allows some players to specialize in research while others build up production and build armies. If the game was any different, there would be serious problems in multiplayer.

 

[Drakken]

Ok. first off I'm not even thinking multiplayer at all. I don't care what penalty you are given for research you still research way way faster. I do not want guns in the game while I'm still in B.C.

I was looking moreso to play a game against 17 allied AI's on noble and see if they could beat me. I am currently playing against 10 AI opponents with war always on and I am about to get rifles. It looks like I will win playing this way. I was just hoping for a game like this that entailed some diplomacy as well.

What the game lacks is for alliances that don't share research and wonders but do have military type alliances. You can keep your version of the team game. Personally I think it is stupid and throws the pace of the game way off. But they could add alliances in addition to teams for a challenge that follows closer to the original game.

 

[magicalsushi]

Okay, so suppose team members didn't explicitly share research. All they'd need to do to get almost the same effect is research different techs and then trade them to each other. Okay, let's ban that too. Now we have a situation where you're allowed to trade with your opponents, but not your allies. Your ally scrimps on military techs and someone invades him. You have gunpowder, he doesn't even have guilds or engineering. Can you gift him some tech to help him? No. Could you gift it to an actual opponent if they were in the same situation? Yes. This seems stupid to me.

It only makes sense for team members to share research. The only alternative is to ban tech trading between team members, and that seems stupid to me. As others have pointed out, the game wasn't really designed for team play. If it bothers you that team games have faster technological progress, it's probably easy to alter the tech costs in the XML. I haven't tried it, but I don't see why you shouldn't change the value of the tech cost multiplyer for the game speed you play. IIRC, marathon games are 4 times as long as normal games, so if you were playing with teams of 3, you could triple that multiplier so that techs cost 12 times as much, which will make up for having 3 people in each team.

This approach doesn't work if you have teams of unequal sizes, but that's grossly unfair in the first place, so it's to be expected. It's also a bit harsh if a team member dies - but again, that's perfectly reasonable. I imagine it'll be important to protect other team members in such a game. I've not had a chance to mess around much with team games yet, and I'm not bothered about the faster tech progress anyway, so I don't know what kind of results you'll get if you try my suggestion.

I agree with Honkoid's comment about teams with different religions. The main thing I did notice in my brief dallience with team play is that diplomacy is pretty much impossible when team members have different opinions about the different members of other teams.

 

[KMadCandy]

The main thing I did notice in my brief dallience with team play is that diplomacy is pretty much impossible when team members have different opinions about the different members of other teams.

what makes me giggle is that when hubby and i are a team, the diplomacy screen lists the modifiers we'd give each other if we were played by the AI. one time i was his worst enemy! i pulled a cathy and slapped him .

 

[BeefontheBone]

what makes me giggle is ...

Oh come now - everything makes you giggle.

 

[Oiler]

agree w/astax

team play rocks when humans are involved - there are 4 of us that play (2 per team) w/6 ai thrown in...

wow, what a strategic dynamic this adds to the game - couldn't imagine playing single player at this stage - coordinate attacks, research, etc

and, couldn't imagine just playing against/with the ai only

 

[Light-Giver]

Just start a game and sign open borders and trade that way. Then you don't share stuff unless you want to.

My biggest beef with team mode is that when one person declares war or gets into war, I'm dragged into it. I've lost many cities to that.

I agree it would be nice to do it Age of Empires II style. That brings back memories of bombarding my teammate's town centers, stables, and barracks while she was off attacking the enemy with her knights .

I had the origional age of empires, i remember that game and i did just that, except i had a army of missionarys and i obsorb my allies citys
Civ 4 has something like that but it isnt as ez and is VERY expencive, by sacraficeing a great artist or espionage, both are not to reliable.