Warlord-Noble Multiplayer Game

[Lord Parkin]

I've observed Joshua's posts and comments in many threads, I don't think he qualifies as a weak player.

I meant play with him in the same game, not on the same team.

My sister is in New Zealand right now. She's spending a month there for vacation. Wave at her if you see her.

Heh, will do. I'm in the south island though...

 

[Alsark]

I've observed Joshua's posts and comments in many threads, I don't think he qualifies as a weak player.

Heh, I think he meant just being in the same game together (since there will be two experts per team), not to pair them together as a team.

:Edit: Lord Parkin beat me to it, heh.

I wouldn't be able to host until after this semester of school is over, since I go to Indiana University. As such, I am on a school network, which has all sorts of firewalls and port blockages that you have no real way to work around. Next semester, though, I am going back home, at which point I could easily host. That won't be until like mid December, though.

 

[dankok8]

I'll host if the number of civs is 8 or so.

 

[eris]

Mountain Time here. Nights and weekends are fairly flexible except for the incursions of real life.

 

[Joshua368]

I leave you guys alone for a few days and you all start talking behind my back and calling me a weak player or a strong player or something you lost me.

I might be an "experienced player" in SP but keep in mind that I still have a grand total of like half an hour of actual multiplayer experience, excluding co-op vs AIs and very open hotseat. I can help with the basics but I don't know if I should be trying to "teach" people to survive in a MP environment.

 

[Alsark]

I leave you guys alone for a few days and you all start talking behind my back and calling me a weak player or a strong player or something you lost me.

I might be an "experienced player" in SP but keep in mind that I still have a grand total of like half an hour of actual multiplayer experience, excluding co-op vs AIs and very open hotseat. I can help with the basics but I don't know if I should be trying to "teach" people to survive in a MP environment.

Nah, it's not really to teach people how to survive in a multiplayer environment. From what I hear, a multiplayer environment is just constant, all-out warfare, which doesn't sound appealing to me. I say we should just play the game as though we were playing a single-player game (with the exception of having the preference of not killing off certain leaders - in this case, the other humans).

I'll host if the number of civs is 8 or so.

Eight? Like... eight total? That seems a bit too few. Again, the current plan is to have four human players per session, with two sessions. That would leave room for only four AI, so two teams of AI. That wouldn't be enough to keep the humans occupied at all, because I would HIGHLY prefer that the human players leave each other alone until, perhaps, one of the teams is about to win. If the humans kill each other off then the new players won't have a chance to learn. So we need quite a few AI, so as to keep the humans busy if they desire warfare.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Nah, it's not really to teach people how to survive in a multiplayer environment. From what I hear, a multiplayer environment is just constant, all-out warfare, which doesn't sound appealing to me.

Well, it depends on where you play and who you play with.

If you play on Gamespy with random strangers, then you can pretty much guarantee constant all-out warfare, as well as a turn timer set to Blazing fast speed. I've played a few games this way before, and haven't ever actually lost a game (being far more experienced than the average player there), but... boy it gets the adrenaline pumping when you only have 30 seconds or so to move all your military units. Personally, I don't particularly like this method of play, since it's really not like civ at all - you have no time for thought and strategizing, just build-build-building with the military.

On the other hand, playing online with someone you already know from a forum tends to lead to quite long and peaceful games by comparison. The games that I've played most often are the slow-paced (1 turn per day) huge pitbosses (often with 18 human players), which are certainly not all war-war-war. (Instead, they're mostly diplomacy-diplomacy-diplomacy. You've got to keep on your feet with organizing and maintaining alliances, otherwise things tend to fall apart quite rapidly.)

The main difference with large multiplayer games (compared to single player games) is that human players are far less predictable and far better at strategizing in wartime than the AI. The element of surprise is hugely valuable in multiplayer: I've won many games simply by a surprise naval invasion of 20-30 units, razing several core cities within a few turns. (This includes the Intersite Democracy Game that finished earlier this year, where the team that I was leading [from the Strategamer site] decimated the CFC team exactly in this way. But I digress.)

Basically, getting back to the point - I wouldn't expect a game amongst forum members to degenerate into war-war-war amongst the experienced players, even if we didn't have the rule discouraging war between humans. But let's play with that rule anyway, since I think it sounds like a good idea to help out the newer players.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I actually consider blazing quite slow...I play single player games faster than most MP games (except, of course, when MP ends early due to quitting). I could totally use blazing in SP and have it be meaningless.

On that note, if this is a PBEM or something with really really long turn timers, I'll have to opt out . An immortal/epic game on a large map is about 3 hours for me...patience of a little kid prevails...!

 

[Lord Parkin]

I actually consider blazing quite slow...I play single player games faster than most MP games (except, of course, when MP ends early due to quitting). I could totally use blazing in SP and have it be meaningless.

On that note, if this is a PBEM or something with really really long turn timers, I'll have to opt out . An immortal/epic game on a large map is about 3 hours for me...patience of a little kid prevails...!

Oh my gosh... you must have barely any time to think!

Seriously, perhaps it's just me, but I like to take a considerable amount of time over my games. I haven't checked, but I'm sure that many of my Civ4 games have lasted for well over 20 hours (Marathon speed, mind you). I recall that the last game of Civ3 I played (before I moved on to Civ4) lasted 96 hours. And then in multiplayer with Civ4, Pitboss games usually last for 10-12 months. I guess I'm a sucker for having a lot of time to think out the best possible strategy for any given game.

It's difficult to tell which of us is the odd one out (blazing fast or crawling slow) without polling everyone around the forums. However, I will say that many of those that I play multiplayer games with take an equally long time to play their turns as me - but then, maybe that just reflects who I play multiplayer games with.

 

[Joshua368]

TheMeInTeam represents the latest in scientific breakthroughs of a highly advanced Civilization AI supercomputer. Able to run 2,000,000 calculations per second, he is able to outwit human and regular CPU opponents while thinking and moving at speeds unknown to living organisms.

 

[r_rolo1]

No computer will ever be able to gripe that a &/&/(%&&/$()/)(& AI stoled a UN victory right under his nose while it shouldn't based in visible diplo like TMIT can do in IM

 

[Lord Parkin]

TheMeInTeam represents the latest in scientific breakthroughs of a highly advanced Civilization AI supercomputer. Able to run 2,000,000 calculations per second, he is able to outwit human and regular CPU opponents while thinking and moving at speeds unknown to living organisms.

Ah, that explains it then. Wow, this must be quite some super-AI, especially if it has the ability to interact with human players by posting in forums!

 

[Bluestew0]

Seriously, perhaps it's just me, but I like to take a considerable amount of time over my games. I haven't checked, but I'm sure that many of my Civ4 games have lasted for well over 20 hours (Marathon speed, mind you).

I think I'm a faster player in general too. I'd probably do better if I slowed down though. I generally finish my marathon speed games in 7-10 hours. Of course TMIT apparently plays over twice as fast as me.

I have running cooperative MP games with a friend of mine. He has got to be one of the slowest players alive. It drives me nuts sometimes waiting for him to end his turn. Even early in the game when you may have a scout and perhaps a worker...I scream at my screen...WHAT THE #%@&$ could you possibly be doing???? End the frickin turn!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TheMeInTeam represents the latest in scientific breakthroughs of a highly advanced Civilization AI supercomputer. Able to run 2,000,000 calculations per second, he is able to outwit human and regular CPU opponents while thinking and moving at speeds unknown to living organisms.

. I'm just an above average RTS player!

I can certainly think and move quickly, but I'm guessing there are a number of people out there that would make me look slow...

Anyway, it's just preference. Because the margin for error thins considerably starting with monarch and each jump after, I had to memorize a lot of patterns to be able to move quickly and still win at immortal. Ultimately rather than slowing down I just massed games and my move choices gradually got better. There's nothing to say that approach is better than carefully thinking through each and every move, consulting the forum, or perhaps even making excel sheets to run numbers on an optimal decision. It depends what you're looking for out of the game.

I honestly think I'd learn a lot from someone who could just repeatedly tell me what the optimal move in a given scenario is (I don't forget easily...I still remember a heroic epic city from a noble game with my friend on an earth2 map 5 months ago...it made a lot of knights by itself). On the flip side, I've refined a lot of controls such as queuing and waypoints. I've done so much wooden boat crossing warfare that intercontinental warfare @ galleons feels really easy, as does controlling 50 + unit stacks mid-war and not taking more than 90 seconds.

It would be great to trade that info so that one can do both, although the problem is the nature of the players to begin with. I don't want to wait 10+ minutes before making a decision, and others don't want artificially oppressive time limits.

 

[LikeTheDog]

What do people think of playing a game this weekend?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Easiest way is for us all to get each others' MSN addresses.

Mine is:

unknownman102
at
hotmail
dot
com

(Spaced out so I hopefully deter any spambots. )

I'll go through the thread and add people who have listed their MSN addresses in their profiles. That way, when we're online we can all join in a conversation and discuss the game.

 

[Bluestew0]

If you're looking for chat addresses, mine is:

bluestew0 on yahoo instant messenger. I don't know it works with MSN as I seldom use it.

 

[Lord Parkin]

If you're looking for chat addresses, mine is:

bluestew0 on yahoo instant messenger. I don't know it works with MSN as I seldom use it.

I think you can configure it to work with MSN. Need the full address to be able to add you though (is it just @yahoo.com after bluestew0?).

Much easier to coordinate if we're all available on the same messenger program.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No computer will ever be able to gripe that a &/&/(%&&/$()/)(& AI stoled a UN victory right under his nose while it shouldn't based in visible diplo like TMIT can do in IM

That's what you think. Possibly it can be programmed to loop complain about the same things (barb galleys, random events, losing at high odds very early in the game), or just whatever beat it recently (such as the UN or a DoW due to having a vassal causing the AI to average diplo disposition).

It might even be programmed to post an average of about 14 times a day, in theory .

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, I beleive that a undetermined number of posters could be replaced by that AI until someone noticed that something was wrong But being in discussion with context....

Human- I like flanking in my mounted units

AI- I hate nukes

Human - Nukes!!!!!!!!!!?

AI -And barb galleys... I hate to see them spawn !

Human - yup.... their chance of appearing is way to high

AI - Like you , I also hate random events.

Human- .......

Well, you got the idea