Civ3 Democracy Games- Poll 5

Rhothaerill · July 12, 2003, 15:17

This will be the fifth in a series of polls regarding Apolyton University and the four Civ3 democracy games played here on Apolyton. Per the initiative of Theseus in this thread http://www.apolyton.com/forums/showt...threadid=90953 we are attempting to increase the attractiveness of each with introduction pages, new ways of approaching players, and generally more fun. This fifth and final poll will provide a compilation of ideas from posters in the thread to improve the visibility of the four democracy games. Please vote on whether you believe we have enough support for this to take the initiative further and ask the owners (MarkG and DanQ) for their support in this endeavor. Thanks.

The primary idea for increasing the visibility of the democracy games is the addition of an introduction page. Currently there is no clear-cut introduction for any of the democracy games. Any new players wishing to discover “what’s goin’ on over there” must wade through piles of forums for any truly useful information about what we’re doing, where we are in games, etc.

The proposal is this. For each of the four democracy games (the single player C3DG, the Play The World Democracy Games I and II, and the Intersite Democracy Game) an introduction sheet will be linked to the Civ3 main page, as well as being a topped thread in the respective forums (not the private forums though).

Visibility: We need to get better coverage on the front CivIII page of 'poly. I suggest that at the top right, the links be changed as follows:

News | Archive
Downloads | FAQ | Help
Reviews | Links | Suggestions
Price Comparison
Strategy Articles | Stories
Forum-General
Forum-Strategy
Forum-Creation
Democracy Games
Apolyton University

The introduction pages will contain information such as:
All democracy games: Democracy and the way a DG works.
All democracy games: What makes a Demogame more fun than, for instance, Multiplayer.
All democracy games: Roleplay and Fun (articles of the S.P.I.N. or Berserker are very useful).
All democracy games: A newspaper design. Include recent developements/stories, links to such things as a FAQ, registration, etc.
All democracy games: A thread devoted solely to explaining the concepts and how you go about joining a team and that can't be posted in afterwards
All democracy games: “Interviews” with some of the team members about why they play the game and the fun they have while playing.
C3DG: Current sav/map/report, and updated with the next chat time and location.
PTWDGI&II: A team intro written by each team where bias is okay (i.e. my team is better than the others because…)
ISDG: stories about what has happened in the game so far (without giving away any information to the other teams). This will obviously have to be handled delicately.
ISDG: Due to the sensitive nature of the game, the intro page should be topped in the C3DG and not the ISDG so there is no danger of linking to the ISDG without authorization.

Dominae · July 12, 2003, 16:07

All good stuff. Makes you wonder why it has taken us this long to get this implemented.

Oh, and the AU "visibility" suggestions are also no-brainers (i.e. good).

Dominae

Theseus · July 12, 2003, 17:24

I agree...

One thing: All of these special pages should be *inviting.*

Aidun · July 12, 2003, 17:40

This is a very good idea, I can see some of the suggetions I did in it. Nice initiative Roth

.

Aidun

Hot Mustard · July 12, 2003, 17:45

Yes, of course - excellent idea.

I just hope this won't add to the common lag and downtime problems...

asleepathewheel · July 12, 2003, 18:29

Beta · July 12, 2003, 19:53

Yes -

OPD · July 12, 2003, 21:02

I think the PTWDG2 is the way of the future. The is SPDG is unlikely to attract much new attention (me and GodKing tried unsuccesfully to lure new people in a while ago) unless it is from other site's demogamers coming to join in beating deity, the first PTWDG is far too underway for anyone new to seriously join in. But the PTWDG2 is still in it's infancy, I can only speak for one team but we are crying out for new members and new imput even if it is just stuff about how rubbish sunshine are. And the ISDG is something that can only really be accessed from being a part of a DG first. Perhaps anything concerning DG's could be slanted to the PTWDG2, "join a team today" or something like that would be good maybe even with a scores chart to show how each civ is doing. Things are only just getting started and new people can take a serious hand in guiding the destiny of a civilization.

Rhothaerill · July 12, 2003, 21:42

I agree that the PTWDGII is the easiest of the "team" democracy games to get involved with since it just got underway, but that shouldn't discourage newer people from trying the PTWDG and the ISDG. Nuclear Master and I have both recently joined PTWDG teams as well as the ISDG without first being "known" too well (I think we've become known since then.

BTW, I hope that newer members do take a look at the Mohammed Al Sahaf and Monkey teams in the PTWDGII since those two have the lowest number of team members. The smaller a team is when you join it, the more chance you have to contribute in the long run (part of why I joined Vox Controli midway through)

OPD · July 13, 2003, 07:43

Pfffft

I'd worry more about team Tabemono than MAST if I was you.
MAST membership has increased by 2 in the last week, thats 40%, if this trend continues MAST will be the only PTWDG team around in a few weeks. My initial assesment is that all other teams will die out through lack of membership within 3 weeks while MAST will eventually consume apolyton with everyone who visits poly being in MAST.

GodKing · July 13, 2003, 12:23

Good turnout so far.

Yes, btw.

MrWhereItsAt · July 13, 2003, 22:29

Wish this had been signposted to us in the DG forum as well.

These are excellent ideas, and some effort has gone into them in the past, but we are never quite sure how to present this stuff to everyone - threads can be titled: "read this first!" or "all you need to know", but that doesn't work. I guess we can look into ways to improve the threads we have there (eg Demo Game FAQ etc), but we need to make them more visible. And BTW there is a glorious thing for the second game called the Directory, maintained by yours truly that has all the links to basically every thread started for the game, all savegames, reports of turns played, polls... you name it. It is a few days behind ATM but it is normally magnificent.

I would have to disagree vehemently with the idea that MP games are the only way for the future. There are countless things we haven't tried in the SPDG, and for every MP player there is there must be dozens of SP only players here - playing MP means completely different tactics to going head to head against the AI. And how many MP games actually are finished? I live in NZ - my timezone prohbits me from anything more than PBEMs, which would take forever. There are bags of people who read these forums who just can't play MP civ due to the sheer time commitment involved.

The only reasons the MP games are flourishing right now are that MP is relatively new to Civ3 still and the teams are staffed mainly by ex-DGers and Strat wizards who have "graduated" in a sense from SP and are looking for higher challenges. There is a lot of advantage to the SPDG that you just couldn't get from MP alone.

Furthermore personally I find it a little difficult to get into the PtWDGs due to the (IMO) excessive roleplay elements involved. Sure a little can be fun, and I'm not one to get others to stop, but it seems more daunting to me than mixing it up with Civ veterans.

I will probably post more later - I should have a lot to say on the Demo Games.

Rhothaerill · July 13, 2003, 23:43

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
Wish this had been signposted to us in the DG forum as well.

It was...all four democracy game forums had a thread posted in them about this right after I posted the polls.

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt but we need to make them more visible.

Which is in my opinion the key to all this. More and better visibility is what all the demo games need.

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt Furthermore personally I find it a little difficult to get into the PtWDGs due to the (IMO) excessive roleplay elements involved. Sure a little can be fun, and I'm not one to get others to stop, but it seems more daunting to me than mixing it up with Civ veterans.

For me personally, that's part of the fun of the PTWDG's. But I mainly joined them because I really like the idea of a bunch of people contributing to a team's success. The roleplaying is just an additional part of the fun.

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt I will probably post more later - I should have a lot to say on the Demo Games.

Keep 'em coming. The more ideas we have the better.

Panag · July 13, 2003, 23:49

hi ,

Rhothaerill , you should ask a demogame mod to top all of these polls and keep them nice in order on the front page , .....

have a nice day

Tiberius · July 14, 2003, 05:41

I voted yes

Rhothaerill · July 15, 2003, 00:40

Last but not least the DG bump for anyone else who wishes to vote on this.

Like the AU we'll be taking this to Mark and Dan for their input soon.

bongo · July 15, 2003, 04:13

Hey, is it still possible to join PTWDG 1?

Well, that's...interesting

BigFree · July 15, 2003, 06:50

Yes, it is Bongo. Just check out the PTWDG Forum and make your request there.

Master Zen · July 19, 2003, 23:17

This is a great idea.

If there is anything I can do to contribute, please say so...

bongo · July 22, 2003, 03:34

I've just joined a german civ-site. Their front-page could be used as an inspiration(read: copied

)
http://civ2-forum.gamigo.de//index.php?s=
Click on 'Civ 3 - Allgemein' and then'Wichtig: Die DemocracyGames'.

This may be excactly what you are looking for.

GhengisFarb™ · July 23, 2003, 17:58

Good idea, but how hard will it be to find people with the time to do this?

bongo · July 24, 2003, 03:58

Some of it can be done very fast, others may take a long time and never actually be finished. I really like how they organize stuff at webring. In each forum they have a 'library' thread with links to older threads which covers much of what a FAQ normally do.