City States PBEM

Harovan · April 17, 2003, 05:04

The idea of a cooperating city states game (as seen for instance here) has been around for a while now. Since I don't have the time for another democracy game, but would like to play a "smaller" version of it, I propose to play one in form of a PBEM game.

The rules I'd prefer are listed below. I'm open for suggestions. I think of a variable difficulty, 3 levels prepared (normal, hard, ironman). Participants would vote, what level to play.

6 (hard: 5, ironman: 4) human players, fully cooperating (no wars between humans), on a small continent, each with enough space to build one city with 20 productive tiles (15 land, 5 water). Building settlers is not allowed (settler made unavailable in the build queue), conquering cities is. Each human starts with 2 settlers and is allowed to build one main city and one satellite, but is not allowed to work more than "his" 20 tiles at a time (ironman: only one settler, no satellite city)
2 (hard: 3, ironman: 4) AI players on deity difficulty (with huge bonuses) each on a big continent. Corruption lowered to ~50%, to allow the AIs to build huge, fairly productive empires
Each AI has every strategic resource once, distributed widely across its continent (to encourage it to expand quickly). The humans have 50% resource supply (e.g. 6 human civs have 3 iron, 3 horses, etc.), shared fairly (who has iron, doesn't have horses, etc... so Knights are possible only with trading). The AIs start at fertile spots (hard+ironman: with one city prebuilt with a granary and enough cash for its upkeep, 100g?)
Each human player has a patch of 4 (hard and ironman: 3) luxuries of a unique type; these can be traded to the other humans, so every human can have 4 (or 3) different luxuries, if the AIs don't give better trades
Hand crafted map (I'd volunteer). AI civs are able to make contact and trade with each other after Map making. Human civs are separated from the AIs by at least 4 tiles ocean (8 tiles water, including coast and sea), to make invasions before Navigation very hard to impossible. Exploration and contact with suicide galleys is allowed (ironman: not allowed)
Every conventional victory condition allowed. The elimination of all AIs counts as collective conquest victory, a cultural or space race win of one human counts as victory for all

Who's up for this challenge? Let's see if we can gather together enough manpower to get this started.

CerberusIV · April 17, 2003, 06:56

Interesting idea.

I don't quite understand giving the humans a second settler if there isn't enough space on the starting continent to use it?

Having tried AU302 and in a couple of team PBEM's I suspect that even on deity this will eventually turn into a slaughter of the AI's. But it would be a challenge

I would like to try it. However I have a euro version so 1.14. Does that make it impossible to set the difficulty level and rule out players who don't have 1.21?

EDIT: some thought about which civs are allowed to the humans would be needed since the Japanese, Mongols and Indians don't need both iron and horses for their UU's.

Harovan · April 17, 2003, 07:06

Quote:

Originally posted by CerberusIV
I don't quite understand giving the humans a second settler if there isn't enough space on the starting continent to use it?

Well, you have 20 tiles to work, but your city can grow only to size 12 fairly long. So you're allowed to found one second city within your 20 tile radius, which uses the remaining tiles.

CerberusIV · April 17, 2003, 08:00

I would go for the ironman option - no second settler, no suicide galleys but four of a luxury each please.

Oh, and I just realised it doesn't matter so much about the difficulty level since the bonuses given to the AI's can be set in the editor regardless of what level the game defaults to.

CerberusIV · April 17, 2003, 08:15

Some creativity on strategic resource distribution will be required since you can AFAIK only trade a resource when you have more than one available.

So with four humans and two iron only two humans would get iron unless both iron went to one human who used one and traded the second to the other humans in turn.

Harovan · April 17, 2003, 08:25

You can trade your only resource. I have done that in my games. It's not available to yourself after this, of course. This approach needs a lot of coordination and preparation, because the deals last 20 turns and it's illegal to cancel them by declaring war.

marcuspeddle · May 13, 2003, 01:04

This sounds interesting. Can I join?

Harovan · May 13, 2003, 02:10

You can, but the interest in this game seems to be rather low, so I don't know if it ever starts.

CerberusIV · May 13, 2003, 05:04

I'm still interested so we could do it if we get one more player.

marcuspeddle · May 13, 2003, 23:31

*bump*
I'm using version 1.14. Is that okay?

ormuzd · May 14, 2003, 16:32

maybe I can join too except if you wish to play ironman
however I don't think this is possible to win

Harovan · May 14, 2003, 16:51

You are welcome. I would agree to "hard", but in this case we'd need one more player. But let's be optimistic, this idea now slept 4 weeks with 2 players, suddenly got 2 new, maybe we can catch one more and get it started.

Anatolia: We're all using 1.14f

CerberusIV · May 16, 2003, 17:39

Can we go with the four of us who have expressed an interest.

I will be away for the next week but if the rest of you want to finalise the rules and get the game set up I will go with whatever is agreed.

ormuzd · May 17, 2003, 09:39

fine
it seems the game will be in 2 stages - long build stage and short massacre

Let's see who will be the winner

I need to know only how could I trade my only strategic resourse to someone else.

marcuspeddle · May 17, 2003, 21:56

You'll need my e-mail address. It's suro2003@kornet.net. Looking forward to starting when Cerb comes back.

CerberusIV · May 24, 2003, 10:05

I'm back. Are we ready to go with this one?

Harovan · May 24, 2003, 11:02

Hmm, I didn't have time last week to discuss it.

Will we be able to beat 4 deity AIs, if contact is possible only after Navigation, while they can contact (and tech whore) right after Map making? Well, in this case we may see a SS launch yet before we contact the first AI. Or do we want to change the rules? Opinions on this?

CerberusIV · May 24, 2003, 16:49

It depends how we play our research. I assumed we would co-ordinate so that no-one researches the same techs and that whenever one of us discovers a new tech they give it to the others.

We won't need to spend anything on unit support until the AI's have navigation so should be able to all support high research rates. If we are also careful about co-ordinating building GW's we could get several of the early ones which will also hold back the AI.

I don't have much experience of deity so I may be a little bit optimistic here.

ormuzd · May 25, 2003, 11:44

The AI has to accumulate only 60% of the actual shield price of the wonders - this makes almost impossible for us to build anything (except maybe something very early - Colossus or Pyramids, the latter doesn't have any sense for one city).

IMO the only possible way for a win is the diplomatic victory.

CerberusIV · May 25, 2003, 15:08

Deity is looking a bit difficult. Should we play at emperor? That only gives the AI a 20% advantage on building things. It is certainly possible to overcome that by being efficient.

A cultural win is out because we will all be too close to each other but diplomatic is certainly on and space race at emperor should be possible.

I understand that we aren't allowed to found new cities after the first one but are we allowed to conquer and keep AI cities?

ormuzd · May 30, 2003, 14:03

so, will we start as four players on emperor?

Harovan · May 30, 2003, 15:09

My proposal: 4 players, 4 emperor AI civs each on its own medium sized continent. The AIs split in 2 groups per 2 civs. Both civs in a group can meet (and trade techs) after Map Making, the other group can be met after Astronomy or with the Lighthouse (sea bridge of at least 3 tiles), human civs can be met only after Navigation. Or do we want some more early entertainment? So far it sounds like a deadly boring ancient and medieval age. Opinions?

CerberusIV · May 30, 2003, 16:30

Ancient/Medieval was always going to be quiet. I think we should play at emperor level so that the humans have a reasonable chance at some early GW's. I am still interested in the original basic idea of a co-operative OCC for the initial part of the game and that has inevitable consequences in terms of pace and level of activity before navigation/magnetism.

I think the proposal is good and am inclined to go with it. Earlier contact with an AI just means an AI to beat up and extort from. If we are going to do that we might as well play on a pangaea map.

marcuspeddle · May 30, 2003, 20:35

I agree that early contact is not such a good thing. With just one city I will need time to build good defences and infrastructure before being set upon by the AI.

ormuzd · May 31, 2003, 05:35

Also the boring Sncirnt and Medieval will be played very fast - eit hone city and 20 squares you don't need to think much