Tech too fast in large pitboss games?

[the oob]

I may be starting another pitboss game soon (will have a recruiting thread here if/when I do) which will run concurrently with my existing game, I'm not sure how many players it's going to have but it will probably be somewhere from 10-18. A concern I have is that with tech trading on in a game with lots of players the tech will develop far too rapidly, and am deciding whether I should have tech trading enabled or not. The downside to disabling tech trading is that tech will develop too slowly, I'm trying to strike a balance.

So, anyone here who's played or is playing an 18 player (or thereabouts) pitboss game with tech trading on, are you finding that the tech develops too fast?

And for anyone in a similar game but without tech trading enabled, are you finding that tech develops too slowly?

 

[naf4ever]

Tech doesnt develop too slowly with no tech trading turn on. When peoples empires get rolling they will easily be able to pump 500 to 1000 research points a turn into science. Trust me if you are on a huge map you will hit future tech before the game ends. It will be much more fun too as the medieval ages and such wont go by in a flash and the units there will be more relevant.

 

[IglooDame]

I'll have an answer for you in a month or three; I'm hosting a 15-human (& 3 AI, however long they might survive) pitboss game @ 24hr-turn speed and we're about a month into it. However, it is only a standard-size pangea map that probably won't permit more than two-four cities on average per civ, which ought to keep the individual research levels down somewhat. That I know of, no one has gotten to Alphabet yet and rough guess is it is still a couple dozen turns away for anyone beelining to it.

 

[Fosse]

I'm in two brand new Pitboss games, so I can't speak from experience (It's really hard to find Pitboss games, by the way. If you can't host them yourself (which I am doing for one of them) then it's tough to recruit and get them started).

My guess is that in groups of 10 or more players you'll find a few blocs develop that trade fairly loosely among themselves and things go considerably faster than in single player, turn wise. This may be balanced out in terms of what the time "feels" like since you're playing the game over many months instead of several hours. You might not actually want to play a game with standard tech rates unless you get a lot of play sessions in with everyone on board.

No tech trading might lead to some interesting races and situations though, and would probably much more fun in an MP environment than in a SP one (where it is, in my opinion, kind of a drag).

One solution I've seen others come up with for tech rates in MP is to implement a house rule whereby you can only sell a tech if you actually did the research for it yourself. So I could buy Education from IglooDude, but then IglooDude could not sell it to the oob. That may be worth considering for you.

You may also want to find a mod that only makes techs take longer to research and does not change the gameplay in any other way. Finding a crew to play with, say, 150% beaker cost should be easier than finding a group to commit to an Epic game at 24 hour per turn (or a more ambitious mod, for that matter).

Anyhow, I'll be looking for your recruitment thread regardless of what you decide for tech.

 

[the oob]

Anyhow, I'll be looking for your recruitment thread regardless of what you decide for tech.

I started my second game about a month ago (currently 1120BC). My first one has been going on for several months (currently 1590AD).

Next time I start a game (which I will when one of my current games finishes) I'll have a thread up looking for people, keep an eye out for it. Chances are there won't be many spare places though since I'm going to offer the places to people who have previously played in or are currently in one of my games.

I hear you when it comes to the problem of it being difficult to find a pitboss game. For me it's a good thing though, since I only play in games that I host (that way I get to pick the settings ), and it makes it much easier for me to find players (and replacements when I need them).

 

[Fosse]

oob, how does one go about hosting multiple Pitboss games? I can get two instances running, but cannot figure out how to choose which one to log into. As much as I don't want even more tasks cluttering up the old toolbar, I would love to start another game up, and with Pitboss starting your own is definatly the fastest way to do so.

Thanks,
Fosse

 

[the oob]

oob, how does one go about hosting multiple Pitboss games? I can get two instances running, but cannot figure out how to choose which one to log into. As much as I don't want even more tasks cluttering up the old toolbar, I would love to start another game up, and with Pitboss starting your own is definatly the fastest way to do so.

Thanks,
Fosse

You need to give each pitboss instance a unique port. Go to your second instance of pitboss, open your CivilizationIV.ini file, find this section:
; NetComm Port
Port = 2056
and change it to some other number, say 2057. Remember to forward this port as well on your router.

Then if your IP address is, say, 202.27.184.3, then you connect to your first game with the address 202.27.184.3 (which is the same as entering 202.27.184.3:2056, since 2056 is the default port), and your second game with the address 202.27.184.3:2057

Of course, as the host, you would connect using the servers internal IP address rather than the external IP address (as you would have already been doing) since it's on the same network as you (or is the computer you're on). The port part remains the same however.

 

[Fosse]

Hmm... so Pitboss gets its port from the CivilizationIV.ini? Does this mean having to alter Civ IV's ini each time I want to open the two Pitboss games? I am running on my personal PC, so I like to reboot it at least once a day to keep it from crashing overnight. This means reloading both games every day, which could be a bit cumbersome if I can't do it with simple shortcuts. Is there a way to set Pitboss to use different Ini's like you can with Civ itself?

I don't have a router, just the PC and the cable modem... does this change anything?

 

[the oob]

Hmm... so Pitboss gets its port from the CivilizationIV.ini? Does this mean having to alter Civ IV's ini each time I want to open the two Pitboss games? I am running on my personal PC, so I like to reboot it at least once a day to keep it from crashing overnight. This means reloading both games every day, which could be a bit cumbersome if I can't do it with simple shortcuts. Is there a way to set Pitboss to use different Ini's like you can with Civ itself?

Yeah you use different ini files. See this post.

I don't have a router, just the PC and the cable modem... does this change anything?

Don't know much about cable modems, but if you haven't needed to forward a port for pitboss already then you won't need to worry about it for the second instance I suppose.

 

[Fosse]

Thank you, oob. You're fast becoming my hero. A test show's that you don't have to worry if you don't have a router.

Civilization4.ini is going to be the most populous file on my drive!

Thanks oob. This really helps out. PBnotify seems to be having trouble, but Overlord's Pitboss Webstats works perfectly with it this way, and having an RSS feed is actually more convenient than only an email, IMO.

 

[the oob]

PBnotify seems to be having trouble

You should be able to run two instances of it, I'm doing it right now. If you're referring to my modified version of PBnotify (see the sig), then yeah I think it may have problems with multiple instances, but atm I'm just using Screes version plus OverloadUTs stats stuff.