Turn Discussion

[Krill]

Yup, a flexible turn timer is a very good idea; but no one ever knows how flexible it has to be until a situation arises that needs it. Which returns back to game admin role who has sole responsibility to enforcing the rules and turn timer splitting etc. It also helps if the teams views aren't set in stone though...

 

[HUSch]

1. We need a construction so that the cheat-accusation is minimized. For me the best way is new random seed as in the ISDG-Final. For example: there we (GWT) fought a 50% combat after few turns without combat and won, without nrs it would be very difficult to do it, EVG would have in their mind the question: why now and not before?

2. The participation depends on interesting situation in the game like war. MS has in this game a long time no real interesting questions, so there was no/little participation. In my opinion the number of members has little to do with it. If we have had a rotation of players in this game, perhaps the situation would be other, but I don't think so. For that you need at least a second player.

 

[donsig]

Yeah, wars make things interesting - until one side gets the upper hand. Then those losing the war also lose interest, sometimes to the point where it is difficult to get the turns played. The trouble with Civ is the best way to any of the victory conditions is to dominate the map and this requires war. Sommers pointed out that a no-war game would just be a space race game. It is also true that any multi-player Civ game that allows war will deteriorate into war and a race to dominate. It is a fact of life that any such game will have those who lose wars and find reasons for the losses.

It would be great to have an active admin but is that likely to happen? Even if we do find someone for that role there is always the possibility RL will interfere for the admin just as it can for players.

 

[Kaleb]

basically the whole forum hates the game admin instead of hte other teams, but that keeps the game moving, so...

Haha! loved that

I agree that a flexible timer would be really handy. Simul turns really work fine and take out a lot of gaming the system too.

How would we build teams for this and is it worth inviting people from other forums to take part? I didn't know anyone from Team Kaz at the start but I'd really enjoy playing with (most ) of them in another team game.

 

[DMOC]

The problem with that is that the team with all the skilled players who worked together go to 1 team, leaving, say, 1 team with only 1-2 experienced players.

 

[Indiansmoke]

The most important thing is balanced teams, both in skill and in participation mood.

Can this be achieved?


About always peace game, yes it would be a space race or a culture win race for that matter, but what is wrong with that?

Working together with your team to find the quickest way to win space or culutural win is fun IMO... and I think it will be the first always peace diplo game!

While I love always war games I equally like always peace games as there is still lots of skill required to achieve a win.

Also always peace would solve the issue of double moves and would allow for a fast paced game to keep the interest up...even a 20 hour simul turns timer would be possible....

 

[Sommerswerd]

Overall I think (and I know I have opponents on this) that reduced participation... more than anything else, is what kills the game. And reduced participation is not caused by a difficult war... Like HUSCH says, reduced participation is caused by people feeling like there is nothing to decide on... I would add that reduced participation also results when folks feel that they have no power or influence to decide anything.

When the forums open up, I encourage people to look at the level of participation when there are polls or votes going on... even on seemingly mundane decisions... Participation is probably much higher. That is why I would like to see some rules making polls mandatory for certain decisions... (city location and tech choices for example) .

A different idea.... What about playing with all victory conditions on and having a rule that teams are compelled to vote for the candidate with the highest score after 'X' number of elections...? So you can abstain/obstruct in the first 'X' elections, but then everyone must vote for a certain team. This would give folks a sporting chance at destroying the diplo wonder (AP or UN) before the 'X' election. There could be a different/higher 'X' value for Apostolic P, because it is available earlier... Or the rule could be that you have to have a certain score to gain compulsory votes... or a certain relative score... like 'X%' higher than everyone else to compel the votes.

To make being attacked less hopeless and de-moralizing, we could have a rule that all periods of war (when ANY team is at war with another) can only be 'X' turns long, and MUST be followed by 'X' turns of compulsory peace (say 10 turns of war then 20 turns of compulsory peace). This would make conquest victory much more difficult.

Or We could also have a rule that wars must be consented to ahead of time by a majority of teams... There are ways to include war without necessarily making it a game-killer...

Donsig is right that the disadvantaged team will have a huge incentive to quit in a war. That is one reason I think letting players swap teams at will might lessen the effect of people becoming disgruntled and quitting. If someone active can join and possibly take over playing turns for a team where interest has dwindled, we might be able to keep the game going.

I also think that compulsory periodic turnplyer switching, either by vote or by an administrator, would increase participation, and thus make it less likely that the game will end prematurely. I can say from experience, that when you get a chance to play the turn, you become much more informed/involved in what is happening in the game.

 

[donsig]

Donsig is right that the disadvantaged team will have a huge incentive to quit in a war. That is one reason I think letting players swap teams at will might lessen the effect of people becoming disgruntled and quitting. If someone active can join and possibly take over playing turns for a team where interest has dwindled, we might be able to keep the game going.

Switching teams at will? It worries me that you seem unconcerned about conflict of interest under such a system. It sounds like you're suggesting individuals from winning teams be able to step in and take over losing teams. First of all I'm not sure why anyone would want to move from a winning to a losing team. Second, what's the difference between, say, someone from Team Kaz taking over for SANCTA and SANCTA gifting all their cities to Team Kaz?

I also think that compulsory periodic turnplyer switching, either by vote or by an administrator, would increase participation, and thus make it less likely that the game will end prematurely. I can say from experience, that when you get a chance to play the turn, you become much more informed/involved in what is happening in the game.

I think mandatory switching could cause problems if there aren't enough potential turn players on a team. I think a system where there are multiple turn players available is best. The more players allowed to play a turn the faster it can get played. It shouldn't matter who plays the turns so long as he or she is doing what the teams wants.

The key to sustaining good participation levels is to keep the game fun. We need to remember that we all define fun in different ways.

The best idea I've heard so far is having an admin who is willing and able to monitor the game. How do we go about seeing if we can find one?

 

[Krill]

*shrug* I'd do it again tbh, but it's best to pick someone who has great all round knowledge of the game, is universally respected, and is known to inhabit the forums in alot of their spare time.

There aren't that many good candidates.

 

[donsig]

An admin is a good idea but if there isn't anyone available then we'd have to try to design a game that would work without an admin.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I think you'd be best off with a game where the only win conditions were conquest and domination, maybe with heavy barbs and a crowded map.

Perhaps with 2 settlers, 2 warriors and a worker per team, as well. Or maybe start in classical times. Basically, get things going really fast - Civ IV games are pretty incredibly boring early - explore and wait for a worker to be built while researching worker techs.

 

[azzaman333]

An admin is a good idea but if there isn't anyone available then we'd have to try to design a game that would work without an admin.

Impossible for an MTDG.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think you'd be best off with a game where the only win conditions were conquest and domination, maybe with heavy barbs and a crowded map.

I like the crowded map idea... But i am not sure how having conquest and domination as the only victory conditions will stop teams from quitting when they are losing in a war... The only way to stop teams from dying out is to let players who are still very interested in continuing the game to switch over and take control of the losing teams to try and turn things around... For example, if players from Kazakhstan who still want to continue the game switch over and take control of the teams that want to quit, we could continue the game. Eventually, the players who are angry/ dejected/ disillusioned and quitting now might become interested again and come back after the dust of the war settles.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

SANCTA isn't quitting cause of war issues. At least, that's not why I wanted to pull the plug.

I advocated quitting the game cause of the cheating allegations - I did not and do not think there was a way to clear Memphus' name, so I wanted out in protest.

As I saw it, either we continued to have great luck, in which case allegations would be raised that we are STILL cheating, or we had worse luck, in which case those who thought we were cheating would be justified.

It's a no-win situation for the team in general, but Memphus in particular if we replaced him.

At least, that's how I saw it. So I pushed (hard, as you'll see when/if the forums open up) to quit the game in protest.

 

[donsig]

As I saw it, either we continued to have great luck, in which case allegations would be raised that we are STILL cheating, or we had worse luck, in which case those who thought we were cheating would be justified.

I thought we had put new rules in place to ensure any stroke of good luck would be seen as just that. A stretch of SANCTA bad luck could have been seen as the RNG Gods balancing things out. It's unfortunate SANCTA chose to quit in protest. The way SANCTA quit (gifting cities) and the timing (while losing a war) were also unfortunate.

There was an investigation and no proof of cheating was found. That was not enough to convince some people but that's to be expected. Forty-six years later there are still arguments over who killed JFK. The point is, the investigation was made and accepted in that the game continued. The accusers did not threaten to quit in protest. I think it would have been better had SANCTA played on but that's moot now. Perhaps when the forums are opened some of those intent on holding a grudge against SANCTA will have a change of heart.

In any event I hope we can all move on to another game. I'd really like everyone to consider an all peace game. As Indiansmoke said it could be a fast paced game. We could bring forward the lessons we learned in this game and learn a few more to prepare us for a more traditional (with war) game afterwards.

 

[Krill]

Sorry to ignore the rest of your post donsig, I do intend to answer it later on, but just a quick comment on the how to quit point:

Ideally someone could have been found to play out the rest of the turns, and the point was raised early on about that. We also offered the cities to Saturn, but Plako didn't want them, and I can't really fault him on that, it's still a losing proposition, so the only remaining choices were retire the civ and gift the cities. Perhaps retiring the civ was the best way to go about it, but we (or at least, I) didn't think that at the time.

I honestly though that if Kaz had the cities Cav/MS/Saturn would have banded together to fight out a battle versus Kaz, and either side could have won that, partly due to the fact that the entire eastern side of the map is open to boating because there were no units over there. Perhaps a pause and a few days to sort stuff out would have been in order, but the game would have had some life in it. It wouldn't matter who won so ljng as people had fun fighting it out.

 

[HUSch]

Sommer
You can demand polls, but what is, if nobody makes a statement? Is then the team disqualified or what? MS has since long only 2 participants and 1 Player. I remember, when I were in the Team "Aloha" last MTDG, BCLG was TP with 1-2 members, who gave support.
It's cost pains to participate in a team, if you aren't TP, because you 'va less infos. There are some, who make good plans, but after a pll-decision about it the transpose comes with their daily trifles and then the TP has more infos at the next gap.
MS-outcome/position is a direcz consequence of my play and this is really not better than average.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Averse as I am, to the idea of a Always peace game, I have to admit that it is a very very logical option. I almost loathe to admit how much sense it really makes... I really enjoyed this game,... it was an awesome experience, and I leaned so much about Civ and blogging/forums and online-chatting and about people in general, and so much more... But when I think about it, all that fun happened primarily while we were all AT PEACE. Once the war started, everybody quit... I mean we can give all the reasons/excuses we want but it all boils down to this... If there had never been a War we would all still be playing. I'm not sure how to proceed though, since the preparation/anticipation for the War was also part of what made the game fun.

My point is about Polls is that they create more interest. When the forums open up, hey maybe I will be wrong... Maybe MS was having polls all the time and people still lost interest... Maybe there was alot of info on what was going on in the game and MS players just didn't care...

This is my first time playing a game like this and I am speking purely from the observations I have from the experience on my team. I don't have all the answers about how a polling system would work, and I would definitely not want to disqualify a team because they just did not care to do a poll or did not have enough players to poll... I am just trying to come up with ways to keep alot of folks interested in the game. I think frequent polls are a good way to do that.

 

[Krill]

If there had never been a War we would all still be playing

Gotta disagree here, and I've tried to not get involved in the argument, but hopefully I can help explain what happened here. This isn't the first time such an issue has occured either, I can think of at least 2 other instances where it got out of hand and 2 were it got stopped cold.

Regardless of what happened to the rest of SANCTA, Memphus was holding it together. Memphus only left for one reason: the allegation of cheating after the admins had investigated the game. It wasn't the war that did it, I think he'd have happily fought to the bitter end (just as he did in the SANCTA PBEM that got started).

This has happened before, and some old timers may remember it: the PTW ISDG had incidences of a team, GCA (GameCatcher Alliance) winning battles at insane odds (horsemen killing Numid Mercs in Civ3 against Apolyton) and against CFC in an earlier war. This lead to bad feelings between the teams, and the players on the teams, and the game eventually got abandoned. A mod was called in to check the results...it took him a week to sort it out, and he didn't have the moral authority over the players to keep them happy to continue playing.

If there is one important lesson to (re)learn from this game, it is that accusations of cheating should be carried out tactfully, and ideally when there is some evidence. And once a ruling has been reached, accept it and don't continue to antagonistic in public.

This is one of the reasons I wholeheartedly believe an active game admin is needed. Any problems arise, the admin can nip it in the bud right away, in one day maximum. One team starts to wonder about combat results (and guys, you aren't the first and won't be the last, so don't think this is aimed at you) then the game admin will have known that the battle was coming weeks in advance, and can be around for when the battle takes place. The game admin can anticipate potential points in the game where something that appears untoward may occur, and moniter it closely behind the scenes in real time.

Always peace is not a bad game type to play, on a large maps with lots of space and an interesting diplomatic set up then there can be lots of decisions to make. Just make sure that the decisions keep on occuring. This entire gametype is designed to create those questions, and the teams survive on making those decisions (which is why the poll idea works for some teams). No decisions to make = No forum activity = Team death.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I wonder if folks can see/agree that if there was no war, there would never have been an allegation of manipulating combat results, because there would not have been any combat in the first place...

I am still not sure that an Always Peace game is the only possible solution, but the logic seems unassailable to me... and I think that even if we play with war turned on next time, we need to have some strong solution to keep the game going once war starts... We are making a big mistake if we ignore the impact that War had on the way this game ended... It is hard to swallow the notion that a whole team just quit because of accusations or hurt feelings... Honestly, accusations and insults tend to fly pretty willy-nilly online in general... I mean someone in this forum just insulted/called me childish, or something like that a few days ago... Its just trash talk... you move on... right?

I can't help but point out the irony, that some people were very supportive of the idea that SANCTA was just playing well... until people started quitting. That really just seemed to bolster the idea that something was wrong...