Thoughts for SGOTM 14

[Habitus]

A Random Personalities SGOTM would be fun i think, trying to figure out who the AI really are, no idea whoes safe and whoes the crazy ones, could even do something like mad scientists Sury game.

 

[BLubmuz]

Just tick 'random personalities' and start the SGOTM already

Yes, enough discussion, many interesting ideas and many rub... less.

Let's start the thing or the discussion will continue until Xmas.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yes, enough discussion, many interesting ideas and many rub... less.

Let's start the thing or the discussion will continue until Xmas.

Yep Alan and his great team have enough advice. I would keep the difficulty at emperor or Immortal and lets play. They have had 2-3 weeks rest.

 

[LowtherCastle]

An idea to understand AI behavior better. There are, for instance, six AIs. The goal of the game is to win by some VC other than Conquest (probably domination) plus to have 3 AIs each conquer 1 other AI, leaving 3 AIs at the end of the game.

 

[shyuhe]

An idea to understand AI behavior better. There are, for instance, six AIs. The goal of the game is to win by some VC other than Conquest (probably domination) plus to have 3 AIs each conquer 1 other AI, leaving 3 AIs at the end of the game.

Conquer or vassal? I imagine if you keep on bribing the AI to attack another AI, this shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.

 

[Ronnie1]

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

Just tick 'random personalities' and start the SGOTM already

Combine these 2 ideas and you have a real test IMO.

 

[Gumbolt]

Conquer or vassal? I imagine if you keep on bribing the AI to attack another AI, this shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.

Trouble with this AI's can go into and out of being vassels. You could be a turn from winning and one might decide it should be a free state again. Vassels off???

As for AI getting Ai to conquer eachother. Take out all but one of each of the Ai cities and the Ai can effectively destroy the other AI. From my experience the Ai rarely even wipe eachother out. You would need a few nut job AI who liked warring. What would we gain from this experience??

 

[Deckhand]

Fun > Challenging
Choices > Scripted

 

[AlanH]

Neilmeister has very kindly volunteered to create SGOTM 14 for us.

The sign-up thread is here

 

[lymond]

I'm going to suggest that maybe we do something with a "slice of Americana" theme. Maybe a Wizard or Oz theme where you have to kill off the Wizard. Sounds pretty fun IMO. whatcha think?

 

[Deckhand]

I just hope the wizard isn't named Humbaba.

Maybe we would need to reveal all the map tiles to find him?
How many of the ideas from this thread could be combined into one game?

 

[neilmeister]

I'm going to suggest that maybe we do something with a "slice of Americana" theme. Maybe a Wizard or Oz theme where you have to kill off the Wizard. Sounds pretty fun IMO. whatcha think?

That a great idea lymond, I hope you don't mind that I use it!

 

[lymond]

Hey, go ahead, neil! You know, I'm just here to help out.

I amaze myself sometimes with my creativity

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Hey, go ahead, neil! You know, I'm just here to help out.

I amaze myself sometimes with my creativity

Yes, well, too bad that you didn't convince him to reveal a bit more of the initial surrounding lands, which would have been an excellent way to put aside the whole flying camera/goto-height-mapping/etc debate... by making it moot.

In case it's not obvious, that's an implicit hint that it would still be worth enacting such an idea and thus revealing a bit more land in the starting screenshot before the game begins.

 

[lymond]

In case it's not obvious, that's an implicit hint that it would still be worth enacting such an idea and thus revealing a bit more land in the starting screenshot before the game begins.

Which makes it a bit explicit, hey Dhoom? I with ya though, chief! Fight the Power!

 

[AlanH]

Doesn't that just mean there's a whole lot more fog to peer under, a bit further away from the start point?

 

[Gumbolt]

Doesn't that just mean there's a whole lot more fog to peer under, a bit further away from the start point?

I would think you could use the flying camera from any point on the map. So revealing more map is not doing much.

Why don't you just reveal the entire map and be done with it?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Doesn't that just mean there's a whole lot more fog to peer under, a bit further away from the start point?

No, not really. By that point, you will have decided where to settle your first City relative to the land that you see (relative to Hills, Forests, etc that could be discovered via those techniques but not by a team that does not use them). Similarly, the direction in which you send your initial Scout/Warrior/Settler doesn't become as luck-based in the case of a not-extremely-carefully-planned-out distribution of Resources/Hills/Forests/etc.

By the time that additional info is needed (for determining if the initially-selected City #2 location will "stick" or will be potentially altered), every team will have had good number of turns to send out an exploring Warrior/Scout (and likely multiple of such units).

The value of using the flying-camera trick or goto-terrain-mapping instead of just sending out units to explore goes down so much in relative value as to make these techniques negligibly valuable.


In the last game, for example, had the western Gold, western Marble, and eastern Pig all been revealed from the start, teams could have had a much fairer game that wasn't based on either using these techniques in place of sacrificing one's empire for early exploration, as well as versus those who did neither. Given such a situation, teams could still have done poorly by choosing not to explore FURTHER (missing out on circumnavigation, missing out on meeting the AIs early on), but the reliance on "gaminess" would have greatly been reduced in favour of more strategic decisions (i.e. do we send out an early explorer, costing us a bit of empire development, in hopes of snagging circumnavigation, etc).


I do not profess to be an expert in either of the flying camera or goto-mapping techniques, so why don't we ask experts in those techniques: will revealing some more of the nearby area (a radius of somewhere between, say, 6 and 10 squares around the settler), be enough of a change to reduce those techniques in value so as to make them of negligible use for most cases?

 

[neilmeister]

I did reveal a few extra tiles, as you can see from the starting pic. The tiles that are in shadow were originally fogged. This is more than enough for all teams to decide where they might want to settle their capitals. I even tried to make the decision not straightforward, there are some interesting tradeoffs IMO.

As your original starting unit can explore (unlike SGOTM 13), there is no excuse for not exploring enough to decide where to send your first settler.

I personally don't think the FCT will prove very useful.... but I am no expert in its use.

 

[BLubmuz]

This is the second if not the third game where i read about that darn Flying Camera.

Would anyone please deign to teach me how to activate it?
The only Camera command i know is Alt+F and it just changes the perspective (good to take screenshots).