Thoughts for SGOTM 14

[Gumbolt]

You could set objectives such as to gain and keep certain city spots! Of course there are ways to make these things a bit tougher.

For instance placing one of the locations under Shaka's capital already on a plain hills. You could equally set up 3-4 killer barb cities with nasty stacks of axes or other units defending them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

What about two tiers (similar to a Challenger save in the XOTMs) but on a much bigger degree, i.e. Victory-Condition-wise à la SGOTM.

For example, a team that thinks that they are "the awesome" plays for UN Diplo while other teams play for Apostolic Palace Diplo. We'd still get comparisons between the games, since a lot the same strategies can be used (they are both Diplo games) but the AP Diplo games have a competitive advantage in that they can theoretically beat the UN Diplo games, time-wise.

However, the Laurels are NOT tiered, just like in any game where we have multiple Victory Conditions. In this game, there is only one type of Victory Condition that can be used for winning (or perhaps the backup winning condition is shared by all teams, such as Space) and your team must decide which one of the two primary Victory Conditions that it will target before the game begins... if they happen to win the type that they did not choose, then they "lose" just as much as if they had "won" the game via a Domination Victory and thereby "lose."

The teams that take the "Challenger" version are decided completely on a voluntary basis but we use community peer pressure to encourage "stacked teams" to play the Challenger game or else get mocked by everyone else.

We'd also play with identical starting saved games, so there isn't concern about divergence due to map differences... just different chosen Victory Conditions stated before the game starts (with, as I said, possibly having the same "backup" Victory Condition for all teams).


Or, we could loosen it up a little bit, in case the concern is that an AP Victory might actually not be easy to pull off on the map... meaning that a non-Challenger game can win via AP Diplo OR UN Diplo, while the "Challenger" teams can ONLY win via UN Diplo (and the "Challenger" teams would "lose" if they won via an AP Diplo Victory). That way, if the map somehow proves to be too tough for an AP Diplo Victory, at least every team will still have the chance to compete for a regular UN Diplo Victory.

 

[Gumbolt]

It is an interesting idea but I would avoid the AP. I think on higher levels teams could get a pre ad AP win unless teams required astronomy.

The main issue here is which teams should be using the challenger save?? PD and OSS?? All the top 3-4 teams from last game?? Where do you draw the line??

I think stick to one standard game but make it interesting enough so the top teams have to play past 1000ad.

 

[Mitchum]

How about the goal of revealing every tile on the map first (including map trading or satellites)? Mapmakers could have a lot of fun with that without necessarily doing too much map building.

This is an interesting idea. It takes emphasis away from exploration and any tricks associated with it and gives all teams the exact same information about what lies in the fog.

Here's another off-the-wall idea. What about giving each AI an additional tech (yes, this has been done before). Some could be early techs and others could be late-game techs; best would be if they are staggered throughout the tech tree. The teams wouldn't be told what they were but would have to figure it out. The constraint would be that the player would have to obtain that particular tech from that particular AI (could be trade, could be espionage). That would prevent teams from walking over any AI that had a late-game tech, which is the typical domination style of play of most of the top players/teams. WFYABTA would have to be considered, of course. The save where you actually get the tech would have to be uploaded to the server so that the staff could verify that the tech was received properly.

 

[Gyathaar]

As for the game with 'prison' setup.. I actually started making such a map for sgotm once, but never finished it.. its not so hard to set up in so that the advanced barb units are unable to roam around.

Other ideas I had was returning to the civ3 sgotm game of not allowing the player to build boats.. and make the players find another way to island-hop

Also a game where you were not allowed to build roads (to connect resources or luxes you would need to build cities or forts on them and rely on coasts or rivers..) no city capture from AI unless you pillage all nearby roads/rails first.

 

[LowtherCastle]

This is an interesting idea. It takes emphasis away from exploration and any tricks associated with it and gives all teams the exact same information about what lies in the fog.

That's funny. I miscommunicated my idea. What I meant was that the Victory Condition is: Reveal every tile on the map.

Another, relatively uncomplicated idea would be to just play any old game but give each AI some hard core defenders, like infantry, with the AI trait that would leave it at home. Make it hard to capture the AI capital. Or maybe Gyathaar or someone would know how to mod it so that each AI city settled automatically starts with a couple infantry, walls, and castles... and make the VC conquest or domination...

 

[kossin]

It's all nice and well to try to make the game last longer for the top teams... but this will make it harder for all teams.

Isn't the goal to push the limits? Don't add fake ones unless it's to create a scenario a la SGOTM12.
But that's just me, I prefer to still play Civ4.

 

[Habitus]

An Always War Culture game could solve the just press end turn 75 times aspect, or even an Always War, Raging Barbs, any VC game with Great Wall given to an AI (probably unreachable till later game if possible too).

 

[Frederiksberg]

If the goals for each stage were meaningful in terms of overall strategy towards an end goal, then the winning teams would simply run away by mid game.

At some point the best teams would surely run away. But that's only fair, how else are they going to win? The later stages would still have interest because they would give away some information about how far the other teams are in the game. And if you give points to all teams according to the turn they completed a stage it still makes for an interesting race even if you are, say number 5, and battling to keep the team at 6th place behind you. It will, of course, become clear much earlier who has the lead and the chances of winning the overall game, however, I believe it will be more interesting when you know your close competitors and feel the exitement of having a couple of teams chasing you, or you chasing the leaders.

- Setting goals like first to a tech/wonder/etc tends to limit strategic options in game play. For instance, first to Currency basically means that everyone rushes to Oracle Currency.

I didn't put much thought into the goals in my suggestion, but I did actually consider your point and my answer is that any team would have to balance winning the current stage against winning later stages. In the example, if you Oracle Currency you miss the opportunity to Oracle CS or Machinery. Building the Oracle will also slow your REX and make it harder to get to 8 cities fast. So by fine tuning the goals (e.g. put Astronomy as a later goal) you could make many teams think twice about oracling Currency rather than Machinery or MC. Actually this is an insight that can be used in a normal game as well. It can be bad to optimize too much for a single intermediate goal if the cost is too high! (Example: You whip Universities in cities with little growth to speed Oxford a few turns but in the end this slows down your victory date because these cities remain less productive for the remainder of the game).

Another, relatively uncomplicated idea would be to just play any old game but give each AI some hard core defenders, like infantry, with the AI trait that would leave it at home. Make it hard to capture the AI capital.

I had some similar thoughts. An example would be a Rennaisance start (As done in another SGOTM) to shorten the game while keeping the opening phase. We start with two settlers, the AI gets 3 settlers, knowledge of Rifling and rifles to guard their initial cities. Perhaps throw in a few bonus techs for the (Monarch or Emperor) AI and give all AI+player knowledge of tech that are seldom researched in a normal game (Fascism, Flight, Advanced Flight,...). Something like that should set the scene for a modern war scenario where you get to use some advanced types of units you don't normally use.

Could be combined with an alternative score function - maybe something like population/number of turns (Similar to Wonder SGOTM) with any victory allowed.

 

[BLubmuz]

If you give Industrial Era units to the all AIs, even the most peaceful leaders will attack the human. Rifleman vs warriors or axes? Not mentioning Infantry.
MGs can be a solution.
Another solution can be to mod the UnitInfo.xml so that the chosen unit has iMoves=0. But this is more complicated, since it will require to modify also BUFFY.

To my taste, the most interesting games were the "Back to the Future" (maybe SG09?) and the SG12. In those games the balance between the warring and teching skills was perfect (always to my taste).

Something like that or even an AW game with a VC other than Dom or Conq.
But no advantages to the Emperor AIs in a AW game, please.

 

[fizbankovi]

AW has quite a nice feeling to it...

 

[Gumbolt]

Always war is interesting. Especially if we are not even going for a conquest game. Give China the great wall. Put us on a pangea in the middle of the land.

I like the idea of some AI starting with a world wonder of some sort. Again we don't want to create a game that has no strategy choices early on. Yet we don't want a game that leads to an obvious starting choice.

I for one am sick of us starting SGOTM next to or near gold and silver. I count the last 4 or so games having started near one of those 2 resources. No wonder we are always out teching the AI so easily.

 

[BLubmuz]

I for one am sick of us starting SGOTM next to or near gold and silver. I count the last 4 or so games having started near one of those 2 resources. No wonder we are always out teching the AI so easily.

Oh well, if you're tired of gold and silver, next start can be with 4 gems in BFC, as it happened once to me in a HoF game. Possibly on a PH with marble or stone.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Or perhaps with BOTH Silver and Gold, but with 0 Food Resources to be able to partner-up with them.

As for my Challenger idea, it would be voluntary, so I wouldn't force a team either way. I suggested AP and UN simply because the two Victory Conditions could at least lead to similar gameplay in many ways, still allowing for the games to be comparable instead of being like 2 separate competitions. And, it wouldn't make the game harder for all teams, since we could have every team be allowed to go for a UN Victory, while only some of the teams could optionally win via an AP Victory.


I do think, however, whatever kind of map gets used, that the starting area needs to be well-planned... there shouldn't be Resources which could affect City 1's location that only appear if our Scout/Warrior/Settler moves in one direction and not in another. That's a thought which leads directly to the next point...

One feature of the map that I would really like to see, as was suggested previously, is to pre-reveal a good portion of the surrounding area (say, a roughly 10 square radius) before the game begins. Doing so would allow a much greater percentage of the initial pages' worth of discussion to focus around discussing strategy, rather than on fog-gazing, saved-game-comparing, flying-camera-piloting, goto-command-terrain-height-plotting, etc.

 

[Frederiksberg]

MGs can be a solution.

Giving the AI Railroad and some Machine Guns in a Renaisance start game is a good idea, it rules out the risk of an early (fatal) AI attack and forces the player to research at least until Artillery before full scale war can start.


Starting with a developed map i.e. where both the player and the AI has many cities is also an interesting idea. A variation where the player is given a large number of underdeveloped cities (in particular no courthouse) on several islands/continents could be interesting because it would force the player to decide which cities to liberate (need to know Feudalism). Perhaps throw in a free GE so that Palace can also be moved very fast. This would certainly lead to an interesting pre-game discussion.

EDIT: Such a game could be called "Financial Crisis" and the teams would be playing as Greece

 

[BLubmuz]

Giving the AI Railroad

I was thinking to some MG, not the tech. MGs are expensive and you risk to have the AI crippled trying to build a lot of them.

EDIT: Such a game could be called "Financial Crisis" and the teams would be playing as Greece

Nice catch! or maybe Portugal or Celtia (Ireland) or Rome (Italy)

But don't name the leader after ours, please. I can try to suicide my civ in that case.

 

[fizbankovi]

or just a simple pangea emperor map, with realy crappy city sites for the human?

 

[Gumbolt]

I was thinking to some MG, not the tech. MGs are expensive and you risk to have the AI crippled trying to build a lot of them.Nice catch! or maybe Portugal or Celtia (Ireland) or Rome (Italy)

Let's just play the American and have debts of trillions.

Or give us a start with an empire losing 20-30 gold a turn at 0%!! Of course the teams would have to work hard to keep the empire alive.

As for the gold/ silver. When you get a start that allows a team to get civil service from the Oracle you have to question the challenge from it. 1-2 gold with 3-4 food resources is an overkill in some respects. That game with the French allowed GLH and a Oracle grab. Meanwhile many of the AI were nerfed tech/expansion wise. That being said the game was a lot of fun due to the fallout challenge aspect.

I agree with Dhoom on the start. Putting a key resource 1 tile outside the area that we can see and letting a scout/warrior determine what we can see is a bit cruel. Especially if your capital just misses a silver resource or stone/marble.

What about an espionage challenge where by you must have 20k+ espionage vs 2-3 Ai before you win the game by culture/domination? The challenge could also be that you have to steal certain techs from the Ai by espionage. Would this show on the log?? Hmmm.

Which might also mean trying to keep many of the AI alive. If you are required to kill all the other Ai beyond those you hold the Ep points on you may have a challenge. Collecting EP points for the fun of it but deciding which AI to keep alive would offer an interesting choice.

 

[fizbankovi]

^culture win, where none of your culture cities can be built by u?

 

[kossin]

Just tick 'random personalities' and start the SGOTM already