Game Set-up and Bad Start Positions

FrustratedPoet · November 16, 2002, 07:08

I can imagine this scenario:

We set-up the game on December 1st and some poor team (it could be any of us) gets a terrible start position. I mean truely awful.
All they can see at the start is Tundra and mountains.
Quite understandably they complain, saying "This start is unplayable ... This'll be no fun for us ... Can we start again?"

This delays the start of play because we have to break off to discuss what to do.
Why don't we talk about this now?

It would be silly if we restarted the game several times until everyone is happy, but it would also be very unfair if a team that has put a lot of work and enthusiasm into the game (i.e. All of us) gets a start position that means they won't ever have a chance.

I propose that we set the game up a week before December 1st and everyone plays their 4000BC turn. This will be very quick because there is almost nothing to do except build your city, set Science and move your worker one square (and your scout if you have one).
This will also give everyone the chance to see their start position.

Every team should be happy to except a less-than-optimal start, of course. Anyone complaining that they don't have a cow, river, luxury and a couple of shielded grassland will not receive any sympathy I think, and for obvious reasons.

However, if somebody gets a truely awful start - and I mean REALLY bad - then they should PM all the other team leaders a screenie of it and if everyone agrees it would only be fair to start again then we can.
Of course, if the other team captains say "That's not so bad, stop being such a girl and get on with it" then the complaining team is stuck with their start.
Hopefully common sense will be used on all sides.

If we go through this process a week before the scheduled game start then we should be able to start on time with no controversies.

Any ideas, comment, criticism?

Spiffor · November 16, 2002, 07:18

Good idea

FrustratedPoet · November 16, 2002, 07:22

Thanks spiff.

Setting up a week early means on the 24th November.

Every team should be ready by then.
GS haven't picked our Civ yet, but we're voting on it right now and it'll be ready by the 24th.

GhengisFarb™ · November 16, 2002, 09:10

Quote:

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
Thanks spiff.

Setting up a week early means on the 24th November.

Every team should be ready by then.
GS haven't picked our Civ yet, but we're voting on it right now and it'll be ready by the 24th.

November 24th is my birthday.

I think every team should post the initial screenshot of their starting location in a "This is where we start" thread.

DeepO · November 16, 2002, 09:27

Quote:

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
November 24th is my birthday.

I think every team should post the initial screenshot of their starting location in a "This is where we start" thread.

Happy B-day then (okay, a bit early, but I'll prolly have forgotten it by then

)

As to posting each start position in a separate thread: no thank you. If your start is very bad, you might want to risk posting it, if it is decent or even good you don't want others to get any piece of information on you. So post as you like, as long as you don't force us to post ours

DeepO

ThePlagueRat · November 16, 2002, 10:06

Well...

Say starting loc. is on one tiny island, no rivers, no goodies .

Then you get depressed and post a screenshot after exploration.
Enemies will soon figure your status, and perhaps location.
Then we restart, and someone else gets mad...

If you post (part of) the map showing only your 10 first turns or so, there is no risk of getting exploited. Everyone can do that?
Never post the mini-map

DeepO · November 16, 2002, 10:16

Well... that's the risk you have to take. If you think your position is bad, post a screenie and risk that the others say: no way, my position is worse and we continue. But why would we give such a vital piece of intelligence when nothing is wrong? A lot can be learned from the first view of your starting position, if you show me yours I'll gladly start a thread here of everything I can deduce of it

Besides, part of the decision you got to make is where to put your first city; with no restart possible, moving your first settler will really be something to keep in mind.

DeepO

DeepO · November 16, 2002, 10:19

Besides, what is a bad island start position? if you can plop down 4 cities at the closest possible, you are hampered, but can still win the game... even if it becomes a little more difficult

DeepO

ThePlagueRat · November 16, 2002, 10:59

Well, on such a small island there is no way to get Map Making early since there are no neigbours to trade with.
How can you expand?

You'll just have to sit and wait for Map Making then.
(and risk the lousy pram on high sea waves too)

If we play on archipelago, such a sad thing is likely to happen.
On continent, we would meet eachother and compete/trade sooner.

IMO, we also need about 70% water to get some naval war significance. (I think Legoland will have privateers all over)
But that was the other discussion right?

DeepO · November 16, 2002, 11:12

I do agree that it has to be possible to ask for a restart when it isn't looking rosy, I just oppose the idea of having to post your starting position. Besides, this is a friendly game, if the starting pos is bad, most likely we will restart, even if the others have superb starts and will likely gain less.

If we are on archipelago, more of us will suffer, and going borg can really do wonders to your research budget. You'd be suprised how fast you get map making if you need to. Plus it has another advantage: your isolation will protect you to. (I'm not deying that I'd rather have a few cows on a continent, but if it isn't too bad, you can work with it

)

Maybe a rule would be that you need to be on the same landmass as at least one other player / AI, this will prevent those too isolated positions. If you're alone, it's your choice if you want to play it out (I would on a decent island), but at least everyone will agree that we are allowed to restart if there is no-one to conquer / trade with.

DeepO

ThePlagueRat · November 16, 2002, 11:36

You mean getting Mapmaking faster by building roads on every tile?

1)
What if there are 10 tiles being used foreach city and only 3 got road per city? - Tech would suffer.

2)
Ok, but in our (worst case) example you would have perhaps max 5 tiles being used foreach city and every one should have roads. (none with rivers or trade-goodies)
-Tech would be optimal.

Moving the slider only affects tech between certain intervals.
(i.e. both 50%, 60%, 70%, can yield 5 turns)
So there is no way to do it faster in a worst case scenario...

How can one research faster if cities don't grow beyond 5?

ruby_maser · November 16, 2002, 12:07

posting a screenshot for the other team captains to see gives away your general location due to the minimap. I am against any other team getting that type of info and then being empowered to say "suck it up, buddy".

at best, the minimap should be edited out before posting.

ThePlagueRat · November 16, 2002, 12:12

That's right! We cannot repeat it enough times...

Quote:

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
Never post the mini-map

Well, now it should be enough?

DeepO · November 16, 2002, 12:40

Quote:

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat

How can one research faster if cities don't grow beyond 5?

Why would you need cities of size 5? The Borg-style city placing means you cram those cities as close as possible, giving each 2-4 tiles to work on. Ideally, you would have 1 or 2 cities of size 6, the rest of them are size 1 or 2. In this layout, you generate 1 beaker as a minimum in each city each turn if you set the slider above 50% (corruption doesn't matter, you will always get 1). Of course it won't be the best solution, but you can research quite fast doing like this. And once you're off your island, you can easily make a palace jump: just import a few workers / settlers into a city on another continent, and disband your own capital. After which you build a few settlers on your original island, disbanding cities while making sure the remaining cities are spread out nicely enough to be at least somewhat useful.

Look at Aeson's SVC thread to see how he did this from the worst possible starting position on Deity (which BTW would for me be quite enough reason to ask for a restart)

DeepO

ZargonX · November 16, 2002, 14:18

Quote:

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat

IMO, we also need about 70% water to get some naval war significance. (I think Legoland will have privateers all over)
But that was the other discussion right?

Are you trying to imply something?

GodKing · November 16, 2002, 14:30

Just suck it up. If you get a bad start, deal with it. No need to b*tch all over the place. Who knows, every body may start in an amazing place!!! oh well, that is just life.

alva · November 16, 2002, 14:30

How about, we generate the official map,
show it to , let's say grampho (if off-course his willing to do this, duh), he check's out the different starting positions, and then gives the ok??

Inverse Icarus · November 16, 2002, 14:32

if you get a bad start location Aeson joins your team. simple as that.

Meshelic · November 16, 2002, 18:03

Yes we should generate the map first and have a mediator look over the starting positions and give the

if it looks like all the positions to start from look playable.

Still, in real life many many nations started out in basically crap to their knees? Lots of them. Some that chose the worst places to settle would eventually either move to a different location or work with what they had and just do it.

UnOrthOdOx · November 18, 2002, 10:05

Suck it up, and play it out. If worse comes to worse, you have an 'excuse' for losing. 'We werent outplayed, we just started on a crappy location'

There is no way to make it all fair, someone is bound to have the worst position, and someone else is bound to have the best.

alva · November 18, 2002, 10:09

no prob for me, as long as we all agree on it

Quote:

werent outplayed, we just started on a crappy location'

This will be used, by someone, no matter what

Arrian · November 18, 2002, 11:17

I like the idea of a neutral third-party looking at the map and making sure nobody is totally screwed.

-Arrian

WarriorPoet · November 18, 2002, 11:34

Third party....I don't know, I'd rather believe in the honesty of random number generation....besides, whose definition of "totally screwed" would we live by?

Finally, with a third party, how could we be ensured of their impartiality? What would be the appeals process?

Randolph · November 18, 2002, 11:52

I also think this is a good idea. We're all going to be spending a great deal of time on this; I'd like to see everyone have a real chance. If this were a "normal MP" game (or a personal SP game) I'd probably be of the "suck it up; better luck next time" opinion, but due to the scope of this game I'd hate to see anyone be "put off" by a horrible starting position. I also dislike the idea of "losers joining other teams" (the coherency of a team is important) making a reasonable chance more important (in my mind).

WarriorPoet · November 18, 2002, 11:59

How would you manage the third party situation? I say develope a small piece of code or have a tabular system ready for the third party human evaluator. Let them spy the start locations and run a numeric calculation based on terrain and resource values and distance required to find a position with at least "x" points.

asleepathewheel · November 18, 2002, 15:15

I don't have a problem with someone like Gramphos or Mark or someone else looking at it. There are so many steps that people could cheat, this one seems rather small to me. And i think eyeballing it should be sufficient. I mean, if its not in tundra or jungle, it should be ok. Its obvious which starts are just awful and should be restarted. Anything less than completely awful, I say play on.

WarriorPoet · November 18, 2002, 15:21

Okay AAW, I'll go with that...but what if one person is on a riven with four nearby hills with wine and on a river, and let's say there are also three cattle resources, and the other squares within city range are shield bonus grassland...meanwhile every one else started in flood plains with no hills...is this justifiable for a restart???

Randolph · November 18, 2002, 15:30

I don't think it should be about comparative disadvantage, just about "god awful". We should make some general statement to send to the moderator, like: "A starting position that makes a competitive game position during the ancient age beyond realistic probability" (Obviously needs some tweaking)

punkbass2000 · November 18, 2002, 15:39

One thing I like about the third party idea is that we can ensure that the AI doesn't get bad starts either.

asleepathewheel · November 18, 2002, 15:41

Quote:

Originally posted by punkbass2000
One thing I like about the third party idea is that we can ensure that the AI doesn't get bad starts either.

how nice of you loooking out for the AI