What settings do you recommend for PBEM?

[Colfox]

Hello!

Been playing CIV off and on since my friend showed me the first CIV years ago and I was still sitting at his computer when he woke up the next morning to go to work. Now I'm into CIV 4 (vanilla), and some of my friends and I want to try a PBEM game. We've all been playing solo, with the occasional internet game, and we want to give this a shot.

My question to you all: what settings do you recommend?

I assume "Quick" speed (I much prefer Marathon for my solo games, but I suspect we'd still be playing when I'm old and gray).

With or without AI civs? Teams or solo? Which maps tend to work best? Any specific option boxes to have checked or unchecked?

I imagine some of it is personal preference, but I figured I'd toss this out there for all you PBEM vets. Hopefully a few of you can spare the time to share of your accumulated hard-won wisdom.

Thanks!

 

[pirke]

It depends completely on what you want. If you can only manage one complete turn a week, make it a short game. If you can play one complete turn each day, you can obviously increase the game length.

Some tips: start with only a few players, 4 to 6. Decide what kind of game you want: a short and combat intensive, or a long play where space race and culture victories are allowed. Choose an appropriate map setting for what you want. Keep in mind that a large map means a long game. Quick speed or normal speed are both ok, don't set it higher, in single player you can skip a few turns when waiting for something to complete, in PBEM in means doing every turn nothing and mailing it on to the next player. If you don't play daily, it might be the case that you have to wait a few weeks for that one item to complete so you can finally do something. Last but not least, decide whether you want AI to play or you want to stick to the human players.

Also, play the turn as soon as you get it in your mailbox, ASAP. With 6 players each waiting 4 hours (due to timezones or whatever reason), it'll take 24 hours for each turn. If your game will take 600 turns... you do the math.

Finally, just do what would seem fun for all of you, whatever the settings are. If the game ain't fun, somebody will drop out and everybody looses.

 

[Colfox]

Thanks, Pirke. I appreciate the input.

 

[Mitchum]

I put this together for another thread. It seems to answer some of your questions, so I'm adding the link here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6373466&postcount=36

 

[burlicconi]

just bare in the mind that having AI can make game unbalanced...