What Types of Goals Should GOTM Set?

[leif erikson]

As you experience Civ7 GOTM-01, what do you think we should set for goal?
What features should we disable?
Other feedback that will help staff make GOTM worthwhile and enjoyable?

 

[raider980]

Figured I'd post this here too since this is the threads for suggestions. I can't play the save file of GotM01 because I don't own the two of the DLCs. I'm assuming the game was started with the Deluxe or Founders editions; I only bought the base game. So I guess that would be my first suggestion; only include features from the base game, not deluxe/founders so more people can play it.

 

[Acken]

Regarding goals there are 3 aspects to take into account.
* What importance do we give to legacy paths especially for ages 1 and 2 and how the GotM staff wants to deal with the game being separated in 3 parts.
* For "speed", civ7 has a lot less compression capabilities than it used to have due to ages. But these still exist in each age through milestones and defeating players.
* The game is separated in 3 different phases so gotm could be about partial runs and need to decide how to count intermediary results.

As I have suggested in other threads I don't find speed a very motivating factor anymore especially if only the last age completion is considered. This is especially true for non scientific victories. At least science victories will reward having built a strong basis to race through the last tech tree. The other 3 not so much considering their tech requirements require very little work in modern and their requirements are rather trivial. Sure you could get some difference³
If we consider all ages speed at least you have some incentive to play well to accelerate the early ages. Otherwise you would be rewarded to actually delay age 1 and 2 as long as possible to accumulate as much power as you can to burst through the final one. On elongated that is 300 turns of preparation... no thanks. If age1 and age2 are considered it creates some motivation to accelerate these ages. The part I don't really like is that you get a lot of acceleration through player elimination...

On the other hand if we focus on points it is not void of its own issues. Delaying an age end is also a factor to try to grab more delaying milestones to have time to get others. There's also a risk of equality. I can see a few options here to make legacy points a more thrilling competition:
* For equality risk we should play on abbreviated or standard rather than elongated ages. It's not very hard to get everything on elongated but good luck on abbreviated.
* Also for equality risk we could consider the actual achievement level rather than the milestones. For example wonders in antiquity. Someone doing 9 is better scored than someone doing 7 (game goal is 7) you get a proportional amount of points 7/7 vs 9/7. That's a bit more work on got staff to count all this though.

A bit more complicated to put in place but you could also consider points per turn. The ratio of points divided by turn count.

TLDR:
* If we go for speed, I would prefer if the total length is considered rather than modern only.
* For points I would prefer abbreviated or standard age length.
* A mix of both would be points per turn.
* Consider the path total value instead of the milestones. Proportionally adjusted to the total length of the path (see above).

 

[Selezin]

I would suggest that the number (and complexity) of civilizations available for the transition to new era be taken into account as additional points. This is not as serious a matter as legacy pach, but it is an interesting enough experience that forces players to focus not only on official victories, but also on other aspects of the game. Of course, some civilizations are achieved in an elementary way but for others it is necessary to work hard, building a game strategy.

 

[Selezin]

And I would also suggest making a starting save with the capital already set. I still continue to think that AI behavior is determined not only by the game grain but also by starting position of the capital. And therefore, different players will have completely different challenges. As far as I understand, some players who have already submitted reports for antiquity had no problems with wars at all, while others players were forced to constantly hold two fronts. And my own research confirms this.
Capital already set in the starting save will give the same behavior patterns for all players, which will equalize the chances.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I think at this point GotM will need to reinvent itself because Civ7 changed too much for the old formula to work well. Two different but related issues need to be addressed, with an overarching question being is it even a good idea to try and rank players?

• How can you "rank" players?
  If ranking has to stay i think Acken is right that turn-based ranking should take into account all 3 ages rather than just Modern. It's way too easy to get a huge head-start in modern after delaying the end of the previous ages. But i think Legacy points might be more interesting and that might also allow players to actually play in the modern age (for GotM1 my game was over in modern 47 without even touching Ideologies and the other games i played before barely lasted longer).
• How much do you want to limit player freedom vs how much do you want to allow diversity of play?
  This goes with the first point because if you want to have some ranking, you'll have to limit our freedom. I even see suggestions to settle the capital and prevent players from moving their founder. Is it really the direction GotM should go? With civilization offering an unprecedented level of customization in the way we build our empire do you really want to limit it to be able to get something that looks like a "ladder", even when there havn't been any real "ladder" for a long time.

Let's be honest with ourselves here, Civ4 was the last one to allow real "competitive" GotM as it was the last one where a dedicated anti-cheat mod could be implemented. Civ 5 GotM have been locked to "training session game" forever now. Even if we want to put the rose tinted glasses on and believe all the players will play fair, Civ7 have a lot of features that unlock through gameplay which means either those have to be forbidden, or not everyone will play the same game, making any sort of "ranking" moot. There are the Mementos which can be fun to play with, are you going to forbid their use forever? What about the legend-unlocked attribute nodes? What about the legend-unlocked legacy options? And then with civilization changing at age transition what about civilizations from DLCs? Are we allowed to switch to those when not everyone might have the DLC? None of that would really matter if GotM got rid of the "competition" aspect and we simply explained how we played, so that we could compare how much our games might diverge from the same starting point due to all the options offered by the game, but without the need to see who got the "best" result, especially now that it's harder to even tell what "best" means.
Now i've never been much of a competitve player so obviously i'm favourable towards removing ranking, other players might be more attached to it but i'm not sure it's still really relevent.

 

[EpicWestern]

I feel pretty strongly that we should be going speed instead of points in civ7, and I agree every age should be counted. The problem with points is that in order to maximize your play patterns remain similar across different games. It doesn't matter what victory path you plan on going for, if you go points you're always trying to build 7 wonders, always getting all the codices, always getting the resource slots, and always trying to take a few cities. Its even worse for exploration and modern ages because it means I'm shuffling missionaries/explorers around every game.

 

[EpicWestern]

And I would also suggest making a starting save with the capital already set. I still continue to think that AI behavior is determined not only by the game grain but also by starting position of the capital. And therefore, different players will have completely different challenges. As far as I understand, some players who have already submitted reports for antiquity had no problems with wars at all, while others players were forced to constantly hold two fronts. And my own research confirms this.
Capital already set in the starting save will give the same behavior patterns for all players, which will equalize the chances.

Strong agree here, there's also apparently quite a lot of variance in the way city states spawn between settling in place and moving.

 

[Knowtalent]

Strong agree here, there's also apparently quite a lot of variance in the way city states spawn between settling in place and moving.

Those are player choices though. We generally try and avoid making those decisions for the players.

 

[Manpanzee]

I have some reservations about pure turn count minimization in Civ VII, mainly related to the jump in age progress you get from eliminating a civ. Especially in the Antiquity Era, this could drive the optimal strategy toward "wipe two civs as fast as possible"*. It's true that focusing on warmongering sacrifices other things, but the nature of accelerating yields across eras means that getting out of Antiquity ASAP is desirable.

*(It's probably less of an issue in Exploration Era, since player progress on the legacy tracks contributes more toward age progress there).

GotM 2 had some issues, but I really enjoyed the Modern Era in that one. Trying to balance "get your target victory ASAP" with "pick up extra legacy points along the way" added a lot of interesting tension, and I think that aspect is worth exploring further. So I would endorse "total turns minus total legacy points" as a metric to try for future GotMs. I think that even there, it could turn out that turn count minimization dominates, and that a more balanced target could weight legacy points higher (e.g., subtract 2x legacy points instead). But that's a future balancing consideration, not a starting point.

"What to do about mementos?" is also a big question, and it looks like so far the mods have chosen to lock everyone into some generically available mementos as a solution. Personally, I would prefer allowing players to choose whatever mementos they like. There are several reasons for this:

1. Selecting mementos is an interesting layer of strategy that everyone misses out on if we have locked mementos.
2. (Hot take): If there is a memento balance issue, it's that most mementos are simply worse than the generic attribute point ones. If my assessment is accurate, then there really isn't anything to be concerned about w/r/t people being advantaged by grinding out locked mementos.
3. While there is technically a competitive element to GotM, it is more about having a shared goal to provide meaningful strategic exploration. If it turns out that some mementos are OP, so be it. Finding out that information is fun!