ideas for the 2nd Tournament?

[MarkG]

if you posted something about this in the 1st tournament thread, please repost here

[Out4Blood]

Should be on Monarch difficulty level.
Standard-sized map (all defaults basically)
Winner should be the earliest victory for each type.

[jimb0v2]

I agree with playing monarch, and the rest standard, but I think it should not be on a pangea. Pangea unbalances the game toward Domination/Conquest.

[Achnor]

I think the current tournament is too simple. I'd like a emperor-tournament.

But primary, what we need to focus on is the winning-criteria. Is it score alone or time of conquest/spaceship/Un-vote or what...?

I'm really enjoying the tournament. I like the idea of not going head to head but head *along* head with other players to see who's best and which tactics are used

Thats what *I* think...

Achnor

[Skanky Burns]

I agree with moving the difficulty level to Emperor.

Standard size map.
Archipelago, least amount of land.
All other settings default.

Thats what *I* think...

[jimb0v2]

Hmm, I would be a bit weary to restrict the way to win. Ideally it would be much better to raise the difficulty level and hope that the Domination/Conquest victory is not as viable there. Emperor or Monarch are probably where this is going to occur. In Regent the AI does'nt have enough production power to outsmart a human, and at diety conquest/domination becomes very unrealistic since the AI can have three or four cities going before you have two.

If it becomes clear that raising the difficulty level does not allow different victory conditions to become viable then I tihnk restricting the types of victory and size of map would be a good idea.

[jack_frost]

I'd rather see emperor difficulty since its too easy to dominate the AI at regant. With the weaker the AI, all your doing is seeing who can optimize a lead better. With a stronger AI your seeing how really good players can handle really difficult opposition best.

The counter arguement to this is - "but fewer people can participate at higher difficulties". True, but everyone will gain more knowlege from winning techniques against better opposition.


Choice of multiple civs on same map. Various map downloads - 1 for each civ. Interesting because we get to see how the choice of differant civs affects game play. And maybe to peoples suprise, a zulu player could find a great strat


Multiple victory conditions:

An earliest spaceship.

A highest score conquest (probably earliest as well).

Highest score cultural victory (with unnatural limits to combat).


I'd really like to see a 'non-military' victory type. I realize though that its hard to deal with circumstances like - an AI declaring war on you. It'd also be difficult to stop people from just cheating and going to war.

But otherwise everything just becomes an early rush blood bath. Even cultural victory can be achieved by just razing every other enemy civ.

Maybe a diplomatic victory is harder to do with rampant warfare? But that seems like 20 turns of bribery.

Anyone have any ideas?

[jack_frost]

Or we could just see who has the best score on a huge lowest land island map with 16 AI at diety.

Interesting since nobody could actually win this

[mgblst]

I like big maps, and i think most people want it a little harder. Perhaps we could have just one victory situation, so we would all be competing for a similar goal.

[jack_frost]

Same victory conditions bias game play I think. IE: fastest win = conquest. So does highest score, as we've seen in the last game. I just don't want to compete if all we're seeing is: who can execute an early rush best using the despotic population to unit strategy (proving to be the most efficent).

[Achnor]

Why not cycle through the different victory-possibilities?
Say, With this map the goal is the earliest military-victory ONLY.
On this map lets see who can win a diplomatic victory ONLY (and earlier).
etc. etc.

Achnor

[Out4Blood]

Just have the winners decided by earliest victory FOR EACH VICTORY TYPE. If this wasn't clear the first time. Winner for earliest culture victory, earliest spaceship, etc. Score creates too many obvious artificial "point bloating" opportunities. This way the culture freaks can compete together.

Emperor may be too hard fer some folks - although I'd prefer deity level :-)

[Kriton]

Or we could just see who has the best score on a huge lowest land island map with 16 AI at diety.

I completely agree! I think the lower levels allow for too much luck. Even if nobody wins, this would clearly separate the good from the great. And although it is a casual tournament, having it on diety would greatly increase its prestiege.

[Eli]

Well, Regent was challenging enough but there is nothing wrong with Monarch.

In the current game we didnt manage to experience the modern age at all because of the early space launch. I think that this victory type should be disabled.

Maybe some more interesting maps, and not simply random ones...

[jimb0v2]

Eli: How can you say it was not too easy? People basically just walked all over the AI.

Has anyone actually played a game on a HUGE 16 player Civ Map? It is currently not worth playing, after playing for maybe two or three hours it takes almost 8 minutes after I end my turn to where I begin my next turn. This is with all animations turned off, all view enemy civs moves off etc. All battle animations off. And yes I did have the video bug, but i got new drivers and that fixed it, but even AFTER that it still takes around 8 minutes per turn. No one can possibly take the time to micromanage a huge 16 player game, also the strategy of buying a tech and selling to 15 civs outweighs any other strategy in that game.

Personally I would prefer Tiny and Small maps where every turn you take is very significant.

But seriously, am I missing something with the huge 16 civ games?

I'm running a 1.4 ghz athlon with geforce 3 and 700+ megs of ram.

[Kriton]

after playing for maybe two or three hours it takes almost 8 minutes after I end my turn to where I begin my next turn.

You're right, of course. I actually do stuff in between so time goes by faster. But it is still frustrating. I guess small to standard is better.

No one can possibly take the time to micromanage a huge 16 player game, also the strategy of buying a tech and selling to 15 civs outweighs any other strategy in that game.

I can. Tech selling is all powerful. Even when you're a tiny speck on the map and the other civs dwarf you, you'll still be ahead techwise. Even with 8 civs this is helpful. Not much we can do about it though.

[Eli]

Originally posted by jimb0v2
Eli: How can you say it was not too easy? People basically just walked all over the AI.

And for some people it wasnt that easy.
I suggest three different tournaments, one on emperor-deity, one on monarch-regent and one on chieftain-warlord.
You can participate only in one, to prevent from deity people always winning the low-level tournament.

Has anyone actually played a game on a HUGE 16 player Civ Map? It is currently not worth playing, after playing for maybe two or three hours it takes almost 8 minutes after I end my turn to where I begin my next turn. This is with all animations turned off, all view enemy civs moves off etc. All battle animations off. And yes I did have the video bug, but i got new drivers and that fixed it, but even AFTER that it still takes around 8 minutes per turn. No one can possibly take the time to micromanage a huge 16 player game, also the strategy of buying a tech and selling to 15 civs outweighs any other strategy in that game.

Personally I would prefer Tiny and Small maps where every turn you take is very significant.

But seriously, am I missing something with the huge 16 civ games?

I'm running a 1.4 ghz athlon with geforce 3 and 700+ megs of ram.

Bah! I didnt try that, but I was sure that i'm safe with my 1.33T-Bird.

[jack_frost]

I think huge arcapeligo (sp) with 16 AI on diety would be really awsome, since I bet you nobody would actually win.

But aside from that - I just think there should be some kind of mechanism to stop one dominant strat from winning all the victory types.

trying to maximise a despotic hurrying early rush - just isn't interesting. Making the map really large, and hard and island based might make this strat less dominant.

[jimb0v2]

Has anyone actually played a 16 civ game successfully? It is not possible to finish one IMO. turns take upwards of 8 to 15 minutes per turn once you reach the 2nd and 3rd era. in the modern era you mide as well just take your turn and go watch a sit com for a half hour.

[Aeson]

I think 16 civs would actually be easier than say, 5-8. It makes tech trading much more powerful, and when you go to war with somone you are only fighting against a 16th of the worlds military force.

My vote would be for a standard or large map, continents, lots of water, 6 civs. Cold and wet for less flood plains (take a bit of a bite out of despotic pop rushing), 3 billion years. England as the Civ for their Naval UU. (make early conquest a bit less attractive, as golden age would come later, and bring more seafaring into the picture) Definitely different winners based on date for each of the victory conditions. Either that or specifying one type of victory to shoot for. This months game was the conquest/domination one it seems, so something else would be nice

[David Floyd]

My opinions of the previous (current) tourny:

Way too easy. Honestly. I'm not gonna submit a score or a game or anything because I didn't bother to finish, because of Thanksgiving and all that, but rest assured that I was walking over the AIs.

My suggestion for the next tourny's settings:
Level: Monarch or Emperor
Size: Standard-Large
Continents: Archipelago
Civ: English or Greeks, definitely (I HATED the Babylonians, personally)
Barbarians: Raging Hordes
Opponents: 6-8
Rest of the settings normal.

I think this would make for a balanced, but much different game. Some of you will complain that Archipelago on Emperor with 8 opponents is too hard, but this is a tournament, people - you want to **** the computer up on Regent? Fine. But that proves nothing.

One thing I disliked about the current tourny was the Pangaea map - that really isn't my style, and as was pointed out above it really restricts the strategies to early ICEing/REXing followed by Conquest. Or at least it would on a higher difficulty level.

[David Floyd]

And regarding 16 player games on Huge maps? That wouldn't even run at a decent speed if you ran that sonofa***** on the mainframe computer of the Starship Enterprise - and I mean the Enterprise-E, too.

[MarkG]

ok, how about this

standard size
restless barbarians
continents map
climate: wet
temperature: temperate
age: 3billion
level: monarch

[Achnor]

Sounds ok. But I was thinking. Is there a way to remove huts altogether or edit their properties since huts could have major impact early on in the game (e.g. you get barbarians, tech or settler). This could even out the game a bit but of course, you lose the 'chance'-part wich *is* a part of the game...I'm not sure what I want really....what do you think?

Achnor

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Achnor
Is there a way to remove huts altogether or edit their properties since huts could have major impact early on in the game (e.g. you get barbarians, tech or settler).

huts can be removed a bit easily

i'll make a poll

[EEKthedog]

Earliest spaceship would be cool.


imo it should be a map with a few large islands, and get 7 opposing AI's on Monarch or Emperor (last one preferred).

And no huts would definately improve fairness.

[Ahlyis]

The first tournament was a conquest fest. Furthermore, it showed that even with other victory conditions, early conquest followed by working toward the acceptable victory condition is still probably the strat that will win. But we can actually get around this.

Make the next tournament on an archipelago map. Play a couple of turns, then quit and check the end map to see what size island we started on. Restart and try again until we start on a reasonable sized landmass. Not too large, but not too small either.

All victory types except Conquest/Domination are allowed. We are not allowed to found or accept the overthrow of any city NOT on our starting island. If there are any other Civs on our island, we can crush them as we see fit.

We are allowed to explore the rest of the world. We can even go to war and annihilate the other Civs, but all of their cities must be razed, not captured. And we are not allowed to use settlers anywhere except our starting island.

This should reduce the desire to go to war, except possibly to claim our island for ourselves. Any other Civ we destroy is one less Civ to help us with the tech tree.

Assuming we do something like this, it will be interesting to see how tightly packed different players place their cities. How many cities can realistically help you on the island. Do you want more to try for a Culture victory? Or will you try fewer to reduce corruption and speed research?

It will be easy enough to verify if people followed the island restriction. Just watch the replay. As long as no city EVER shows up for our Civ on a different island, anything else is fine.

Comments? Thoughts? Suggestions?

[albiedamned]

My personal preferences would be Monarch, Standard map size, and continents. For difficulty level, while we should move up from the current tournament, I don't think enough people feel comfortable yet at Emperor. I suggest standard size because there have been too many complaints about game speed when you play on bigger maps with more civs.

We could play on an archipelago world, and I would not be opposed. But I think just shifting to continents will be enough to prevent the early domination victories of the current tournament. But archipelago would also be fine with me. Archipelago can be really frustrating however, especially if you lack resources and can't contact the other civs for a long time.

As for the civ, we should pick a civ with completely different traits from the Babs. So anyone that's not Scientific or Religious. I think we should avoid the Americans for now since their UU is broken (the air superiority bug).

[smellymummy]

no wet climate plz! the first tourney I had to take out all that jungle, sure distracted me, and I'd prefer to avoid huge jungles altogether - and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Continents is a good idea, what about small continents? Archipelago sounds real fun, but might be too frustrating for some. Small continents can give us the best of both world maybe..

Monarch is the way to go. Last tourney was regeant... let's see just how many people will be able to finish it on monarch before considering going a step higher.

Also, I assume the map is going to be looked at before, etc. by the tournament maker. the first tournament map was kind of fixed i think.... perfect river locations for perfectly spaced out starting cities, perfectly fitted hills, etc etc.

If the tourney map is going to be made like that, I hope we can avoid these kinds of easy made maps... it's kind of like quiting restarting until you get the right starting location. IMO having a bad starting location is much more challenging.

Finally, maybe we shouldn't play as a religious civ this time around. Maybe this time we can play as zulus, or aztecs? Maybe iroquois....


edit: just realized aztecs and iroquois are religious Replace with english or chinese

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by Out4Blood
Just have the winners decided by earliest victory FOR EACH VICTORY TYPE. If this wasn't clear the first time. Winner for earliest culture victory, earliest spaceship, etc. Score creates too many obvious artificial "point bloating" opportunities. This way the culture freaks can compete together.

Emperor may be too hard fer some folks - although I'd prefer deity level :-)

That's right, one winner for EACH VICTORY TYPE ( including Rank at 2050 ): 6 winners for each tournament. At Monarch, standard settings and continents, 8 civs. Right now Emperor+ is too hard for the majority of folks.