da_Vinci

Another way to prevent runaway trains, would be to cap the number of cities a civ could have ... Maybe at the number required to build the national wonders?

Radical, you say? Unheard of, you say? Well, yes ... as that would take out the dom option ... and effectively the diplo as well. Conquest would still be possible, as would cultural and space.

Maybe not totally unheard of, as I do recall an OCC team pitboss game I played in ...

The unique thing about this is no one can grow large enough to be invincible if some tech equalizer is also applied ... so planning for survival at the top could be challenging.

The advantage is it reduces the likelihood of early elimination of some players ... I think it does anyway ...

While we are at it, maybe forbid city gifting and unit gifting? Nothing like being attacked by three civs worth of armies all fighting under one banner, with the payoff being the division of the city spoils, to take the fun out of the game for the one attacked ...

I am likely to have to scale back on pitboss in deference to RL too ... so just think of this as pushing the envelope ...

dV

oyzar

If you want noone to be eliminated we could just select always peace...

Bernout

I'm thinking beginner to intermediate level at either since a strong SP skill set will usually translate pretty well to MP performance (and of course the opposite is even more true once you figure out the AI's tendencies).

The main goal is to try to bring in new players who won't be so daunted by some of the very skilled players that are part of this community. Some people of course enjoy the game regardless but some are too competitive to even bother trying if they think they have no chance in hell of winning. There's also of course the learning opportunity even for players who have played in many games but feel they could do better. This lessening of skill differences should make for a more balanced game.

I know we have enough "veterans" here to support the idea of pairing people up. My main concern is getting enough new players to make a go of it. If we end up with the same pool of people playing that we always do then I think that makes it a lost opportunity.

I like your idea of anyone who has beaten SP in Monarch or higher difficulty level. I was thinking along the lines of anyone who has won a MP game say with 8 or more players in it.

I think having rough guidelines should be enough. We'd like some flexibility of course to balance out a game numbers wise.

lol

PitSuc it would be although with the understanding that the veteran is only an advisory role and would only be given what "power" the main team member allows.

In fact, to allow for personality conflicts and such we may just want to have a pool of veterans and allow them to change up as needed.

I suppose we should probe at CFC and elsewhere to see who is interested in the concept.

I can't stress enough that this is just a proposal and if anyone has an idea for a MP game they'd like to propose they should do so. Otherwise I guess we'll continue along these lines and see where it leads. I'm not in a huge rush to get started but I'll make sure to keep the conversation moving forward.

Bernout

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Bernout

Personally I like this idea a lot! 2 main reasons come immediately to mind:

1. As you have said, it helps balance those players who are lucky and start off with tons of expansion space at game start. Of course the whole initial city placement issue could be eliminated if we found someone with elite map editing skills and could put a solid map together for us. My only concern with that is custom maps, in past experiences, have always been unstable.

2. It makes city placements more critical when you know you have a limited # to work with. The overall concept is very similar to OCC. I would think 8 cities would work well would it not?

I like this idea as well which shouldn't be a surprise based on past conversations. The main reason is I believe it takes some of the power gaming out of the equation and would make nations behave more like real nations.

I would also be willing to use the NoScore mod again for the next game if everyone enjoys how FoW is working out thus far. Of course with the amount of tech trading taking place I'm not sure how much the research part of that mod is actually being slowed down.

Boo! As I said in my last post, personally I'm not in a huge rush to start the next game and noone has been hounding me seriously yet to do it. lol So we have time to chat and figure out what everyone wants to do. Since summer is so busy with everyone, perhaps we should just loosely target September for a game start.

Bernout

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whiplash

I'll play anything the consensus decides on.

Snarlin

Trust me...it's working just fine for some of us.

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classical_hero

I would like to see a prepared map so that it is basically even, so that we can see who is actually the greater player, since so many times it is often the location that decides on who is the winner. So perhaps that would mean an archipelago map so that each players starts with a similar, not necessarily the same start so that leads to a variety of trading possibilities. It seems to be the only fair option since it means all players will get generally equal situations.

Ebenezer

Personally I'd rather go back to a no-trading game. But I'd still prefer to use noscore for the other features (hut nerfing, scoreboard reading, etc). Adding Niklas's proposed increase in the KnownCiv modifier would allow trailing teams to catch up more easily. You'd have to be pretty far behind for a 100% research bonus to not be helpful.

Maybe by then I'll be knocked out of a couple of my current games and will feel like playing too.

oyzar

Even if the map is completly even (and that would be sorta boring, though it might be interesting with a perfectly symetrical torodial map), who you are next to and how you deal with them will decide just as much as who is the "greater player". Besides part of the fun is that those who aren't "greater players" should also be able to compete.

da_Vinci

The main idea seems to be to restrain runaway trains ...

Tech trading makes its own version of runaway trains (trading blocs), so maybe tech trading off with some tech catch-up bonus such as upping known civ modifier is the right answer there.

City limit is another way to retrain runaway trains ... city limit could be slowly advances as turns progress .... say 8 cities up to 50% of turns gone, then 10 between 50% and 65%, 12 from 65% to 80% ... or some formula like that.

Then, do we still want some way to increase the costs of war? Maybe city limit makes that unneccesary, as some of the incentive is reduced? Any limits on city gifting or unit gifting, or again, do tech and city limits already deal with the problem those restrictions would be designed to address?

Maybe a second goal is to reduce the vulnerability of the players at the bottom of the score and power ladder ... so overall, trying to narrow the range from strongest to weakest ...

Not really a simulation of reality, where the range is huge, but maybe better for overall fun?

dV

Hoplosternum

I think the problem is not runaway winners, after all someone will win whatever happens. But that the game went on and on long after the winner was clear.

If there is a runaway winner I think either one of two things should happen. Either there should be a concentrated effort to stop the winner. Or you call the game at that point. I don't mean once someone opens up a tech lead or hits the front in points everyone gives up. But this game was not very close for a long time. Nor was the previous game - a City too Far. Yet in both we played on and on and on.

I don't think the map helped. The starts were very uneven, some of the teams could not support one another and were penned in. It also didn't help diplomacy as there was a lot of seperation between the islands you couldn't easily get to others before astronomy. This meant that combining against the leaders was difficult and weak teams (like mine) were left to drift along rather than being knocked out.

I am coming to the conclusion Pangaea or mostly land maps (Highlands etc.) are better. There is plenty of luck with starts and early knock outs but at least everyone can get to a lot of others. You can always try and get allies vs stronger neighbours. And if the worst comes to the worst you are knocked out and don't linger on until the end.

I don't think the long term deal between the two leaders helped. And I would like to see such long term deals banned in future. I can see the advantage both of those teams got or potentially got from the deal. Basically they had agreed that only one of those would win (because the other would take no part in an alliance against the other). We can see now that this favoured Oyzar & Nik, but that probably wasn't clear at the time to either side. But it completely screwed over the rest of us as it prevented any gang up on the leader.

These long term deals are a considerably worse abuse IMO than the gifting of cities to keep other teams in the game. I think they should be banned in future. Deals are fine in the short term. Say 10 turns or so (like deals done through the diplomatic screen) but long unbreakable deals are simply bad. It's like playing 'buddy' Civilization, when you find out at the end that the two powers you were trying to split up were in fact run by twin brothers or lovers. Bleh!

I liked the team aspect of the game but I think some restrictions on city swapping is needed. I don't think you can stop unit swapping but it should be straight forward to restrict large scale city exchanges. Clearly there was some advantages to doing that for some teams. But only for some teams. You needed to have a close working relationship, be close neighbours and have decent traits to make it work I suspect. And if you have all those you already had a big advantage over several of the teams playing. So if we go teams again there should be a limits on city swapping. I doubt it was decisive though.

Having said all that I don't think the game was a failure. Hopefully most of us had a good time. I enjoyed building my empire and largely enjoyed the game even though it was obvious that winning or even being competitive was impossible from very early on. I liked many aspects of the game too. The team part and having a bit of space at the beginning of the game rather than being crowded early. I just think this game, like a city too far before it, was continued on long after it was clear who had won. And I found the end game when no one was even trying to stop the eventual winner winning rather pointless.

I like being able to see the scores. It helps me work out who is winning I know that you can do that to a degree with spying etc. but I think it will help the good players rather than the slightly more casual gamers if these things are hidden. Score graphs also help diplomacy IMO as it warns you when you need help and who is getting ahead.

Bernout

Well, we discussed this quite thoroughly in the last vote topic that was called for TTT. Which reminds me I need to re-read through it and see if we can come up with a better compromise there. But rest assured it will be a compromise as long as there are people who want to see a game played to the bitter end and those who do not. In any case, let's leave this for a different topic.

Hmmm...it'll be interesting to see what others think of this. In most games I've played there have existed deals of this type and to me it seems part and parcel of the human diplo part of the game. I've made such deals myself for various reasons although in all cases I had a shot of winning the game as a result. FoW is the first game I've played where we've given the players a more formal means of recognizing this type of coordination with permanent alliances.

We'll have to agree to disagree here. IMO there are still far too many easy avenues available to players to get information. The Fog of War game is after all called that for a reason. In any case, good diplomacy will get you most everything you need to know. Something which I myself neglect far too much and usually pay the price for. But I do know I haven't had any problem determining when I'm in trouble. lol

Bernout

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Hercules

Hi All,

Just to say I am responding to the invitation to participate in a new 'balanced game ', where veterans and noobs can share experience.

I echo almost all of the points made above by Hoplosternum. And it is just recently I learned of the concept of 'city gifting' and block 'tech exchanging'.

However I'll go along with what you veteran players decide on.

There is one issue I think could be improved upon to improve the game: tech stealing. This was the great equaliser in Smacx. Unless (probably) I have got something wrong, to me it is really quite expensive to steal tech (with ESP points); so much that I don't bother trying. Can that equation be changed or is there a simpler way.

Am I missing something?

Munro

I probably won't play in this one, but I'd be happy to create / review / provide a fair map for it, so that no-one gets toasted by the starting position.

classical_hero

YOu guys won the previous pitboss game since you had the best lands. Basically what I would like to see is a much greater balance in how the game is set up with the land. That is the key, since an equal start game would be boring since there would be no opportunity for trading, so similar starts and land would be good. This will remove the land issue since it is so often crucial in playing a game, since those who have the best lands will win the game, generally speaking. I have been in plenty of games and that has been the case.