5th Tournament suggestions

[MarkG]

how about going back to Regent? smaller or larger size? more civs? wet, cool climate again?

[Achnor]

My suggestion:
Any difficulty
Pangea
12 Civs
normal, normal and 4m yrs

Choose the most peaceful civ's and make this a science-tourney! The latest few rounds have focused on war...I think it is time for a peacful game to explore the other forms of victory...or perhaps limit the victoryconditions alltogether to a space-only win?

Achnor

[mengo76]

nice idea... i just started a game where i picked the 7 least aggressive opponents according to what you can find in the rules editing part of the scenario editor. i think india and france were the least aggressive (info is at home, i'm at office)

[Duncan Idaho]

Even if you set the victory condition to Space Race only, that doesn't stop the Domination-oriented players from, well, simply dominating. Especially on a Pangaea map surrounded by all non-militaristic civs. A bit like telling an amoebe in an petri dish to stop multiplying and evolve.

I suggest a huge pangaea map, 16 civs, hot and dry desert lands and allowing Conquest victory only. Anyone who finishes the map before the deadline wins the tournament

On a more serious note, Pangaea sounds good. We haven't done Pangaea since tourney #1. Make it productive, but not too fertile, maybe a little arid.

Mark, I recommend you listen to what everyone posts on this subject and then do the exact opposite of that. That'll teach us.

[player1]

Originally posted by MarkG
how about going back to Regent? smaller or larger size? more civs? wet, cool climate again?

Regent?

NEVER!

Monarch is fine.

But, it would be interesting to have one tournament on Emperor or Deity level.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Duncan Idaho
Mark, I recommend you listen to what everyone posts on this subject and then do the exact opposite of that. That'll teach us.

hehe, i followed the "people's call" on the 2nd game doing an archipelago map and everybody complained that it had too many islands

[Conqueror]

Large map with small islands and max water, that'll teach us

[DrSpike]

I'm hoping to have the time to participate in tourney five when it starts. I would say monarch and up, and restrict the victory condition to any single condition. Personally I think an early launch would be a good test, excessive conquering isn't going to help so much as with a score based system. I don't rate the scoring system at all actually, because it's just based on territory, citizens and the date of the win, regardless of victory type. Whatever the victory type the best scores are always going to be from players that take over the map except for a few cities. Of course this is worth trying out...........once.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Achnor
My suggestion:
Any difficulty
Pangea
12 Civs
normal, normal and 4m yrs
Achnor

Please, no!

I never play with more than 7 opponents, because the interface is nearly completely broken for civs 8+. Yes, you can get to them via the Diplomacy button, instead of the Foreign Advisor, but a lot of information is missing, like who's at war with who.

Pangea eliminates a significant fraction of the game by removing any purpose to navies, and to naval wonders.

You need a balance between "all islands" where you don't interact with other civs until 500 BC or later because you don't share a continent with anyone, and Pangea, which is too far in the other direction.

I don't care about difficulty, though I do prefer Monarch. Regent's just a bit too easy, and Emperor / Deity seems to force you to be an ugly barbarian horde of horsmen.

- Gus

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by MarkG
hehe, i followed the "people's call" on the 2nd game doing an archipelago map and everybody complained that it had too many islands

That was *my* suggestion for that tournament, and I liked that tournament!!

But considering the popularity of my suggestions, I dont think I'll offer any for this tournament

[Arathorn]

An extreme variant game. Monarch.

Science must be set at zero for the entire game, that is you can not do any science yourself.

Only win condition enabled, space race.

Would help eliminate the barbarian horde approach, as you would really need to be a tech broker, which is incompatible with the barbarian horde. It would emphasize diplomacy, without a diplomacy win available.

I have no idea how to enforce the variant, other than by trusthing the players. That, of course, is acceptable, IMO.

I would suggest continents, with regular water percentage. That way, there would almost assuredly be a trading partner or two available before oceans could be crossed, but it would still be important to cross the oceans.

Weird, I know, but I think it's doable.

Arathorn

[Ursa Major]

Single City Option!!

I tried it out and that is one of the toughest things to do. Try and win when you are only allowed one city thats it!!. I think that france with production/commerce is a good one for this. Or production and science.

Would probably have to be on a smaller map, and reagent level.

Also you gotta give us a great starting location or its impossible to do.



I also love the no WAR option of the game.

You are not allowed to declare war on anyone else.
You cannot do trade embargos.
You cannot do alliances.
Your armies can never go into the enemies land.

You can defend your own land and attack an enemy force in your land but you are not allowed to attack troops that are passing through.

The ultimate pacifist game.

[DrSpike]

Or we could learn to play the game properly first Wacky games are great, when you've played the game to death and need a extra challenge. This is not yet the case IMO.

[Achnor]

Duncan: "Even if you set the victory condition to Space Race only, that doesn't stop the Domination-oriented players from, well, simply dominating. Especially on a Pangaea map surrounded by all non-militaristic civs. A bit like telling an amoebe in an petri dish to stop multiplying and evolve."

You are correct but only to some degree. I think we all can agree that inventing every single tech yourself is not the way to achieve a space win. You have to trade with other civs or it will just take to long time. This will prohibit warmongering because if you annihilate a civ it means one less civ to trade science with...

The essence is this, winning civ3 can be done in two ways:
1) Kill em all (let God sort them out). Dominition victory
or
2) Be friends, trade tech. Space-win (and others).
The thing is that it is very difficult to combine theese two. If you declare war the other civ (and possible others as weel) won't trade with you and you are forced to make every tech yourself.

Conclusion: If space-win is the only option, you can't kill everyone. You are "forced" to play peacefully wich I think is about high time we try!

If this isn't a real-life scenario then nothing is

I think this idea is brilliant if I may say so myself (and I just did

Achnor

[Conqueror]

A tournament with pop rushing disabled would be a great idea If such option is doable with some editor.

Also i like very much of the idea that only one or two victory conditions would be enabled, that would make most people change their strategies and completely rethink how to play the game.

Monarch level is good tournament level, perhaps even Emperor, but not Deity, as to win deity its almost always the same strategy - pop rush, pop rush and pop rush those units... IMHO its boring.

Anyway only some toughts here to cheer up a rainy day, as long as Mark keeps publishing those tournaments ill play them, no matter the rules or settings

[Sirian]

Mark, something I've found fun lately is a "builder" game: a map with 60% ocean coverage and 60-70% capacity on number of opponents. This really increases the amount of land available per civ, space between civs, and pushes the player into lots of city expansion. It has made for a quite a contrast to every game I've played with the max number of opponents available on that map size. The AI's can also spread out more, as they like to do, and are capable of building up a larger "roaming" group of units to send on the attack, which adds its own wrinkles to the diplomacy. Another key factor is the scarcity of resources: less are added to the game when there are fewer civs, so they get spread out more, become harder to trade for, and require much more effort to run out and grab if your homeland lacks a key resource.

This basic concept could be modified in any number of ways, such as shutting down some or most victory conditions, tailoring the terrain to favor AI expansion (hot, wet, flat) or to hinder everyone's expansion (cold, arid, rugged). With 60% water, the landforms tend to be less important, because even archipelago gets stuffed in there and can come out like a pangaea or nearly, but it could impact the game.

Large maps with 7 opponents or standard maps with 5 opponents can fit this bill. Huge maps are possible but run really sluggish on a lot of PC's. All that space and the need to fill it also changes priority on wonders. Those that help per city (pyramids, sun tzu, smith) take on greater value vs those that help one city (colossus, shakespeare, newton) or give a special ability, since you tend to have a lot more cities. Whether you play military aggression or peaceful expansion, or some combo of both, there's a lot more building, planning, working of the land, etc, and fewer civs means less value from tech brokering.

Since you always remove goody huts (to cut down on the luck factor? Or some other reason? The AI's are also slowed down by this, you know), and set barbs to raging (would be a LOT of them wandering all over the place, for quite some time, to train the AI's up to hordes of elite units), it might be interesting to give the player a bit of a disadvantage, too. Consider this possibility:

Zulus
Monarch
Large Map
60% water
Continents
Hot, Wet, Flat
Opponents: the five scientific civs (Bab, Persia, Germany, Greece, Russia), plus French and Egyptians

And make sure the player does not start on a river.

That would be my suggestion.


- Sirian

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Sirian
And make sure the player does not start on a river.

Since when do we start on a river?? Ever??

[Sirian]

I don't know about the first Apoly tourney game (didn't play it), but both the second and third started on rivers, and the start in the third one was quite rich. There's nothing wrong with a river start, and lack of river precludes the OCC (for the most part), but I suggested a building scenerio and think it would be more interesting with a dry start.

[Duncan Idaho]

I think Skanky's remark had something to do with rivers no longer being ON tiles.

[Skanky Burns]

Actually I made that comment because in the last 5 or so games I've played, I have not had access to any fresh water...

You are right, Sirian, about the other tournaments... short memory