Team Strategy

[galdarian]

Fellow Q of the continuum

I pose a question ... "Can we build a Civilization to stand the test of time?"

Are we going to be ruthless warmongering tyrants? or the more passive resistant peaceful type? Do we go for the CS sling or ignore it completely considering that everyone else will aim for it?

Do we choose HC and go for an early skull or two? or bee line for Gunpowder with the French?

Everyone has an opinion and we want to hear yours!

 

[Super Sonic]

I say we forge strong alliances. They are essential in my opinion for a country to survive and prosper.

 

[Sherlock613]

I like the idea of peaceful buildup in the beginning, so play it safe with our neighbors, and then use our comparative advantage to "go medieval" in the middle ages.

The problem with rushing is that it rarely is beneficial long term. IMHO, a successful war is one where you grab land quickly and decisively and then end it. On the other hand, beelining gunpowder with the French or guilds with any civ (just by avoiding the top line of techs) would be fine by me. I love fighting wars, but only on advantageous terms.

For me, the ideal civ/leader combo would be a Financial India. If the civ/leader is restricited, I would love Pacal of Maya.

 

[Earthling]

I actually had great fun not going with the straight Financial/Great Scientist spam economy in the last Demogame - Cavaleiros was the only non-Financial team, actually, but we held up. The map was unique though, both land (quite large Pangaea for 5 teams) and resources - lacking some luxuries and stone/marble. But I'm really open to playing a lot of ideas or strategies and I think the evidence is a lot of different things could work - sometimes being the only one holding nice specific advantages (very fast expansion with Joao) pays off.

Anyway, some game settings calls might influence things, and I agree diplomacy will be important as it always is.

In short, I'm good with a lot of ideas, and have played most all of the civs a bunch anyway that I'd find most reasonable choices fun (obviously Toku is not competitive ). I was also pondering what we ought to do to help generate a little more interest in our team, haven't heard from Provolution but if we come up with some new hook to advertise for new players that could be cool too. Look forward to working with all of you Q.

Edit: Nice xpost, really, that's one of the surprising ones. Anyway I might second that if tech trading is off, I would definitely love choosing a surprising civ/combo for a certain playstyle/rush/gambit. We can of course hope to manage fine otherwise but teching does become the dominant factor in diplo relations if that's not the case.

 

[galdarian]

I actually had great fun not going with the straight Financial/Great Scientist spam economy in the last Demogame.

I would definitely love choosing a surprising civ/combo for a certain playstyle/rush/gambit. We can of course hope to manage fine otherwise but teching does become the dominant factor in diplo relations if that's not the case.

I up for doing something surprising. Out of the other 5 teams I'd put money on Lizzy and HC and maybe MM being in the mix.

Perhaps a late game UU (Russia / Germany / America)?

Peter would make an interesting start IF it was a good coastal spawn. I'd favour Germany over America, mostly based on the fact that the UB is better IMHO.

Am I right in saying that the only victory conditions worth worrying about are Conquest and Domination?

 

[Earthling]

Probably. I don't have a ton of demogame experience, the last one certainly finished 'early.' Though to be fair but that's usually the case in multiplayer - or essentially the game is won anyway even if it's not Conquest or Dom (like two big civs end up on different continents where it would be about impossible to invade, but the one with the tech/overall lead will win Culture or Space).

Nobody is going to win via early culture or Apostolic Palace or something though, and I would be very pleased if the game did get to the Industrial/Modern era. But definitely being strong earlier is good.

I would guess some team, if not multiple teams are going to go for England again...and as you mention other Financials are strong, Pacal is quite popular too. I'm still willing to defer to a general sentiment but I could see a fun case for trying out something with early religion => midgame UU/UB on a civ. I really ought to get a stronger idea myself but we still need some more activity on the team, and I don't want to turn people off if the small number of us here seem like we decided everything already for everyone.

 

[Super Sonic]

Don't worry, I'm still here . I may not have too much experience with multiplayer games, but my vote goes with building up forces and alliances, then striking later. Theres no sense in starting an early war, since the infrastructure to build to a quick victory just won't be there.

 

[TyBoy]

I disagree about strong alliances, or atleast much loyalty in them as an overall attitude. Our foreign policy should basically be "act like as big a jerk as you can possibly get away with." And you can get away with being a pretty big jerk.

Substantively, alliances amount to 2 things, tech trading and military cooperation. Looking over the last game even closely allied teams were willing to dicker endlessly over tech trades so that they were more or less fair. You don't need to feel loyal to another team because you've made some more or less fair tech trades. Similarly, lopsided military cooperation doesn't really happen in a multiplayer game like this. Teams will ultimately contribute based on what they expect to get out. They may cover it up with diplomacy, but if the spoils of the war aren't coming their way teams didn't seem willing to sacrifice much to the war effort. In the last game actually expecting lopsided trading between two teams pretty much killed alliances.

The main reasons for unchangable real world alliances don't really exist in multiplayer civ. All the teams have the same mixed cultural backround and the time span of the game isn't long enough to have any deep seeded mistrust of another team simply because you haven't known them for hundreds of years. Finally, nobody is just trying to live peacefully, there's a deadline in civ and you better win before it comes.

Multiplayer boils down to who can execute the most magnificent backstab. Everyone knows this and it will factor into every decision. We can do ourselves a big favor by being honest with ourselves about it. Assuming that a team will help you out to the end just because you haven't been to war with them yet and you've done some tech trading is foolish.

P.S. The problem with official communications is that they tend to get all dressed up in roleplaying language (which is fun) and don't end up saying what they mean or what's really important (which is bad). I was looking over the communications between team kaz and team cav from the last game and they tended to follow a pattern where an official message would go out, the other team would soundly reject or be offended by it, then it would be followed by a long chat where the team recieving the message would eventually figure out "oh, that's what you meant by that!" "that's why you want/expect that!" or "that's what you really want!" Figuring out what actually matters to your opponent/partner is the essence of diplomacy.

 

[Earthling]

That had something to do with certain Kaz diplomats, imo . From my perspective the official messages were much better than the chats still; if anything, it was our chats with different "ambassadors" that seemed to anger/confuse them - and a little so for other teams we dealt with perhaps.

That said, I was against my team being "loyal" to Kaz too as you would put it the whole time, and would rather have backstabbed Kaz when a chance appeared -though I wasn't around long enough into the game for that to become a factor, but we didn't follow through on a backstab anyway!

At any rate, I'm still expecting at least a couple of other teams to want to do the "roleplaying" thing. Personally I would pay more heed to a threat like the Mavericks (would rather take them out if at all possible) but we shouldn't count them all out, may have to adapt to their styles and I agree trying to have diplomacy first and foremost clearly express aims and goals is desirable. But The roleplaying facade (or not a facade per se, I'm ok with that too) can be useful still imo.

And lastly, people don't act rationally and I certainly wouldn't be surprised, if rules and settings like Vassals/PAs/city gifting are allowed that it would pay off to be friendly and popular - when it comes down to one civ getting defeated and wanting to quit/give up the ghost to another team sometimes it pays to not have ticked off their players to the last man.

But anyway, I should stress most importantly - I'm willing to work within the framework we collectively like, I'm not trying to be picky here, and with the time I have available would help out in any role. Tell me to participate in roleplaying/jolly good fun and that'd be great, or ask me to just be straight and simple, or avoid diplomacy altogether cause someone else is already chosen to represent that - it's all fine I think. I very much hope we have a nice democratic structure in the team making decisions throughout, and will try my part for that to carry through, so we don't get stuck with few players being overwhelmed due to other inactivity. I'd expect most things will develop as the game goes on anyway, so perhaps I or the rest of us should just get around to coming up with some better thoughts on other pre-game discussions and choosing a civ and such planning and all.

 

[TyBoy]

I enjoy a bit of roleplaying as much as the next guy. I guess my point is just to be clear about what you really want in communications. The form of them is not so important as long as you have that.

I wasn't really considering teams dropping out and gifting all their goodies to other teams. When that happens people do tend to use a sort of 'screw you' logic. Really though, if that happens the game is generally ruined anyway. Other than that I feel that the demogame setup really makes it hard for teams to choose the worse of two options just because they don't like who they're getting in bed with.

Overall, I just don't want to let being nice and loyal be a significant factor in decision making. It may well be the case that pursuing the win forces us to enter into a long term alliance. That'll be a means to an end though.