Training Day games

[Snaildog]

I thought it'd be a good idea to have a (sticky?) thread linking to all of the Training Day games, for newbies like myself to find easily (especially with the Search disabled). I just finished reading through Sullla's first one, and it was very useful; if you're looking to attract new peole to succession games then this would help greatly (as would having the Succession forum visible on the main Forums list, but that's another story )

Here's the one I just read through; if other people post links to recommended ones then I can edit them in to the first post:

SUL3: Sullla's Training Day Game - A shortish game played on Regent, with a good start and a quick conquest to get into a winning position. It wasn't played through to completion.

 

[amirsan]

THis sounds good to me! I hate having to go all around the whole forum to find some of these training games. I would agree on making this stickey.

 

[Snaildog]

Heh, nobody else seems too wildly enthusiastic If people start posting links to good training games I'm sure it'll be useful.

 

[amirsan]

Amirsan1- Deity Newb Attempt- Join!!


Join especially if your new in Diety and Join if you wanna show off your skills to newbies .

 

[Sirian]

The old training games are dead. The forum mods cleared out all the old saved games to save space on the file server. They cleared out the tutorials as well as the normal SG's.

I spent a lot of time and effort in writing up a training package, only to see it scuttled by random forum maintenance. I can understand that the forum needs maintained, and that SG's form the bulk of the file server usage. It even made sense to drop old saved games nobody would ever need again. Too bad we didn't get any advance notice that would be happening, or we could have stopped the ruination of the training threads. Too late now.

The theory and lessons are still there, but without the games to download, you can't get any hands on experience and won't get much, if any, value out of the lessons.

I did my part, though. I volunteered a lot of time to teach. I did a lot of work to make sure folks beyond just those being trained at the time could benefit, that anybody coming along later could follow through the program and learn the lessons. All of that is gone now, wiped out. There's no use linking to it without the saved games.

Your best bet now would be the GOTM Quick Start Challenge, or full immersion into the detailed reports of RBCiv Epics.


- Sirian

 

[Snaildog]

I think that there's more to be gained from just reading the threads then you indicate, though; not to mention that it's very entertaining. Downloading the saved games is nice, but I'd say the main benefit is from reading the experts discuss strategies and give out all the helpful tips. Just my opinion.

 

[Sirian]

If players could pick up all the details and be able to apply them just by reading, they could do that in any SG. The reason training games are popular is that hands-on experience builds increased comprehension. Sure, you can learn something from reading the training threads. You learn a lot more by playing the games, testing the theory, comparing your moves (knowing why you made them) with the moves of others, seeing exactly where you do well vs do poorly, and have an expert analyze your result and criticize both positively and negatively.

In short, I respectfully but strongly disagree with you. The saved games were indispensible to the value of the training.


- Sirian

 

[ChrTh]

Full agreement with Sirian. One thing I'd like to add, though, is that the Save Game gives you something else that the write-up doesn't: what wasn't done. When you read through a write-up, 90% of it is what was done: I scouted NW-W; I mined; I ordered up a Temple. While in the TDGs there are some counter-proposals and explanations, most of the time, the road not travelled never comes up.
What I do when I see a situation in a SG (regardless of whether it's a TDG or not) that I don't understand the motives, I'll download the game, do what I would've done in that situation, and then compare the results. That is probably one of the most illuminating practices you can do, because not only does it show the advantages (if any) of doing something else, it'll show the disadvantages of what you're currently doing (possibly in all your games). Granted, it's nice to have Sirian et al. give you blow-by-blow analysis, but when the time's not available, there are still things you can do to improve your game. Reading the threads are good, but their practicality and illuminosity have limits.

 

[Speaker]

On a personal level, I read many of the old SG threads, training and otherwise, without looking at any saves and was able to progress from a Monarch player to a Deity player very quickly. I took the concepts I read about and tried them in my own games and found that to be a great combination.

 

[Sullla]

Sirian is 100% right when it comes to needing the save games and interaction with other players to get the real training game experience. You can read through the forum threads and indeed get some good advice from it, but the overall effect is not the same at all.

There is more than one level of comprehension when it comes to all concepts. It's one thing to know how something works; how a car motor runs, or how to beat a Deity AI (for example). It's another thing entirely to know WHY they work. Anyone can copy the moves that a highly skilled player makes and probably enjoy a great deal of success. But unless you know why the experienced player is making those moves - what the motivation and reasoning is behind them - you can never do anything more than ape the moves of others, never contributing anything yourself to the greater pool of knowledge.

Training games give one-on-one interaction not found anywhere else (other than sometimes in competition games) and have far more discussion than a typical game. That's why they fill up in sometimes less than an hour when a new one is announced on these boards. They are extremely demanding and time-consuming for the person who runs them, and I can speak from experience on that point. Training games give you the whole nine yards: lots of substance, no fluff. That cannot be reproduced from simply reading through the game threads of past games played.

But it still can't hurt to take a look at past threads if the reader is truly interested in seeing how they played out. If there is sufficient interest, I see no reason why this couldn't be stickied and put at the top of the forum. I leave it to someone else though to track down all of the various training day games and link to them.

 

[Sirp]

On a personal level, I have had a similiar experience to Speaker. I learnt alot from reading training games (and other succession game threads, but less so), but I have never downloaded a save from someone else's training game.

The reason why training games are more valuable to read than just any succession game, is that if you read 'just any succession game', you're going to be reading a game played by some of the best players, right? (If you read a game played by weaker players, well, you're going to learn bad things instead of good things). Good players are going to tend to be already familiar with the fundamentals of the game: why to build a granary in your capital, why to research pottery, why writing is so good to go 40-turn research on, and so forth. WHY you should do something isn't going to be explained in such games.

In a training day game, all this detail is going to be there, explained in great detail. You are going to find explanations of all sorts of game fundamentals, which simply aren't going to be found elsewhere.

Sure, I don't deny that the saves are valuable, but I don't think that the threads without them are valueless.

Also, some of the more recent training games still have the saves available, although Sirian's TDG and Sulla's second TDG are probably the best TDGs, imho.

-Sirp.

 

[Speaker]

I agree with you Sirp. Sullla's second TDG was the game that really helped me break through along with Cracker's Opening Play article.

 

[Sirp]

Cracker's article wasn't available until well after I became a Deity-level player, (well, I didn't see it until then anyway), and by that time I disagreed with alot of his analysis

Among other things, cracker claims that gold, food, and shields are of interchangeable value early on. Most good players I know consider the relationship food >> shields >> gold early on. (Where '>>' means 'is much more valuable than')

-Sirp.

 

[Speaker]

Nit pick if you like, but it taught me about micromanaging and efficiency and that made all the difference to my playing. I was able to beat Monarch easily without worrying about waste at all, but after reading Cracker's article, it was like a lightbulb clicked on in my head.

 

[Sirp]

Oh, I don't doubt that the article does teach alot of good fundamental skills, and I have noticed that lots of players have improved their skill through it. I was just pointing out my personal reaction to it.

But.....I'm sure that people could heavily nit any of my training games too Heck, I have been known to know less than my trainees in some areas!

-Sirp.

 

[Speaker]

Speaking of Training Games, how is your half of EG2 running? No spoilers of course but is it going smoothly? We had to drop Infoman and picked up ControlFreak in his place. After that little hiccup, however, all is peachy.

 

[Sirp]

It's going well, other than one player's anti-social behavior, which led to not only me removing him from the game, but him being banned from the forum for a week.

I'm choosing to continue the game with just four players, and it's going well.

-Sirp.

 

[hotrod0823]

I have to echo what sirp and speak have said about the TDG. I feel rather lucky to have played in Sirians Game and a few that Lee and Sullla put together. Lets just say I would still be struggling on Regent.

A quick side note I played a hot seat game last week with a buddy of mine that first introduced me to Civ2. We were playing more to pass the time while we caught up - it had been 2 years since we last saw each other. Anyway he and I were each playing different civs on the same map but were following each others moves. He chose Persia and I went random and got France.

I started on Pottery, prebuilt for my granary with a baracks then proceded to a 40 turn gambit on Writing. He was doubfounded. Couldn't believe I would "waste" shields on a granary, research on pottery and not research, in his mind the essentials, WC, Bronze and IW.

Lets just say in the end after 2 hours of play I had 3 times the number of cities . He opened his eyes to the potential. Everything I did in that small game to pass the time were things I learned here by doing and my reading.