Apolyton University Succession Game - Part 2

[Rhothaerill]

As outlined here: AU Succession Game I am starting an effort to make an Apolyton University Succession Game. However, with Conquests coming out in little over a month, and the fact that a succession game would, by it's nature, take longer than a regular AU game, should we wait for Conquests before starting a succession game?

[vmxa1]

It could take longer than its announced date, so go for it.

[Konquest02]

I say start the first one with PtW then move on with Conquest once the first game is over.

--Kon--

[Dominae]

Assuming everyone plays their turns regularly (within, say, 48 hours), the games should be quite advanced by the time Conquests comes out.

I say go for it.


Dominae

[Rhothaerill]

vmxa1 and Kon, did you both mean to vote for "start now"? That is what it sounded like in your posts, but there is only one vote for "start it now" and I'm pretty sure Dominae was the one who voted for that one.

[vmxa1]

Whoops I did not even notice the vote, so here ya go.

[Master Zen]

we had started an AU succession game at MZO when poly crashed in April. Probably took around 2 months to finish more or less. I guess we could start a PtW game and finish it before C3C comes out.

Oh and btw, sign me up, I don't have much time to play civ these days but the 10 or 20 turns we each would get is short enough

[Theseus]

START IT NOW!!

Go back... there are ample notes here and at MZO to get a pretty cool game going and done before C3C.

One contribution I can definitely make is in recruiting... if we get this going, I can harang some of the "greybeards" ( ) into participating.

[:cough: GS recruiter :cough:]

[Master Zen]

btw, what are we going to do when many people join? I mean we can't have a SG with 25 people....

At MZO we split the game in two (a 1.21 and 1.14 version) and two teams were formed, so it was kind of a competition.

Just an idea, if we do this (have many games) we could:

1) To it randomly selected so we get an interesting mix of players who don't necessarily have played with each other before (I like this for diversity's sake).

2) To let the people organize themselves into teams

[Tassadar500]

Master Zen brilliant idea. I think we should do it that way.

[Rhothaerill]

That is a great idea if we get a bunch of people (which I'm of course hoping for ). And I like option 1 if it is divided into two teams. With option 2 there is the possibility of the "schoolyard syndrome" where the "graybeards" would get picked first, etc. And I want to make it clear that everyone should have an equal shot in this.

[Master Zen]

yes, I think the educational aspect would be much better if we could get different people with different experience levels and play styles on a same team.

I'd say 5 is the optimal number of players in a game. This guarantees about 6-7 "rounds" for each of them (assuming a 10 turn round) and participation in all eras.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Theseus
One contribution I can definitely make is in recruiting... if we get this going, I can harang some of the "greybeards" ( ) into participating.

Are you making fun of my grey beard?



Nah, succession games are not very much my cup of tea. I will lurk here at Apolyton.

[Master Zen]

Ok, I went back to check on the old succession games played at MZO played months earlier. There were three games played.

Two of them were the AU succession games which were started by Dominae. Like I mentioned, one was with 1.21 and the other with 1.14 since at the time many people did not switch because 1.21 had not come out for europeans.

AU SG1 1.21 was played by Dominae, Thesues, Nor Me, BigDork and Konquest02.

AU SG1 1.14 was played by FrustratedPoet, Panzer32, Arrian, Sir Ralph and myself. We never finished the game though as may people quit for time reasons.

Both of these games were identical: Rome/Emperor/Standard.

The third game was the FSGO game (FSGO= For Sexy Guys Only) a more light-hearted game where the AARs were probably the main fun of it all. It was also with Rome albeit a different map and on Monarch. The participants were Togas, BigFree, WhiteBandit, E_T, MrWhereItsAt, and myself.

I would advise those who haven't played a succession game to look at those threads to see more or less how it is, and how the AARs are done. The link is: http://central.masterzen.net/index.php?showforum=49. Check the FSGO thread which is simply hilarious, trust me

What I found most fun is the unpredictability of it all. It is fin to have the guy before you suddenly set you up in a war or having the next guy found a city in a spot you weren't thinking of. After all, everyone wants to win, but everyone has a different way of achieving it.


/me thinks he should also talk to Arrian and ZargonX about finishing the 1.14 game...

[Arrian]

Yeah, yeah, I know, we should finish that game. We do have it won, though.

Anyway, fire it up now. One thing I would like: let's make the turn rule 24 or 36 hours - so that if someone like me (who is often away on the weekend and fails to log on the internet even once) doesn't hold up the game. If it passes the 24 or 36, people should go right ahead and grab it. If "my turn" gets skipped in that manner, I will have zero objection. I think that way the game has a better shot at completion.

-Arrian

[Mountain Sage]

I would say start it now, just to get the feeling...
I noted that Dominae puts a 48h time-set for the completion of the game (well, each 'chapter'). This could be a bit tight sometimes (some of us do work sometimes )

[Dominae]

Mountain Sage, that's 48 hours to complete your block of turns (usually around 10). With 5 people on each team, you therefore play 10 turns every 5-10 days. I'm sure everyone here puts at least that much effort into Civ3, regardless of work constraints (there's no use in denying it, I've seen your AARs in various threads!).

In any case, if you fail to play your block within 48 hours, it just passes on to the next person. So there's no real pressure.


Dominae

[alexman]

I'm confused now. I thought it was going to work like this:

Originally posted by Rhothaerill
The way I see this working is as follows…a succession game is a game where many people will play a certain number of turns. Everyone who played would then post in a DAR thread set up for this game where they would then describe their game and how it is going to this point, as well as posting a screen shot and the saved game. Then a poll would be started regarding the savegame that we all believe is the “best” one to continue with. Once the poll closed, then I would post the savegame, and everyone would then play the next block of turns with that game instead of the one they played the first block with.

[Dominae]

I'm confused too.

I guess if Rhoth is setting this up, that's the way it's going to be.

So maybe a 4-5 day period per block is acceptable (time enough to play the turns, write a report, etc.).


Dominae

[Rhothaerill]

The way I was thinking of setting it up in the Part 1 thread isn't a true succession game in the style MZO used. The way I was thinking it would go was so that everyone who wanted to would have a chance to play a turn block and post how they did and see how the rest did. And then the group as a whole would poll to decide which game to proceed with. This way no one is constrained to play in a set time period if they aren't able to, and everyone can play every single block of time if they want to.

But that was just how I had envisioned it going. It's certainly up for change if the majority of people want to see it proceed like MZO's succession games. Also, if we divide into teams, it would make it a little more difficult to play it the way I had seen it, though I have a few ideas about that too.

What do the rest of you want to see? Should we do it the way I had written it, or change around my thoughts a bit? I'm fine either way. MZO's way would probably go a bit quicker, but my way was designed to be a teaching tool and make it so that newbies who wanted to play turn blocks but weren't comfortable posting about them could still do that.

[Dominae]

Your way.

[Master Zen]

For the educational aspects of the game, I would definitely agree to your way.

The MZO games were made for fun mostly and thus were more "traditional" SGs (Apolyton really doesn't have a SG tradition although we do in the Spanish forum, and CFC also does)

[Konquest02]

I think you're confusing Sucession Games and what Theseus proposed as "Au introduction games". But I agree that your way is much better for learning on how to play the game. That way, we should have 2 teams of 7-8 persons for it to work properly... Beyond that, it's just too much people... With this number of people, it will make that most people will get chosen at least once in the game...

--Kon--

[Rhothaerill]

Perhaps I should call it the AU Modified Succession Game to avoid confusion with a true succession game. It's a hybrid of a succession game mixed with the ability for everyone to play every turn block, etc. and post DARs like in a regular AU game.

BTW, my thoughts on teams and polling for whose save will be used for the next turn block will depend on whether we go with a competition between teams. Since we have no private forum for each team (nor should we) all the polling will take place in the open which would lend itself to tampering if we let it. For example one team could vote for the save where someone on the other team had war declared on them before being prepared, etc. I think it's safe to say that the AU players are very averse to cheating so polling for the other team would be conducted on the honor system with regard to the team members, though it would be open to everyone to vote.

[Rhothaerill]

Also regarding teams, Arrian had the idea of a warmonger team and a builder team. I think that would be a great idea since they are two inherently differing philosophies and both valid strategies that should be explored. Both teams/philosophies would take the same save and see what they could do with it basing their actions on their team concept (not that builders can't warmonger occasionally or warmongers build things ). This would also limit any tendencies to "copy" what the other team is doing since they are going at it in different ways.

I still have some testing to do with the scenario I started creating for this, but I think it will work well for both strategies.

[Arrian]

/me ponders playing on the builder team.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Arrian
* Arrian ponders playing on the builder team.

Civ life has come full circle.

[Rhothaerill]

One more thing about the scenario I'm creating...I'm trying to make it so that it's not quite as much of a killer as the last few AU games have been. I don't want to dumb it down, but I also don't want to start losing AU players to nearly impossible games.

AU208 only had three players beat it, most everyone stopped AU402 for computer performance reasons, and I haven't seen anyone's DARs on beating AU209 yet. That kind of says to me that we need something that is challenging and will teach people new ideas, but is still a manageable scenario.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by alexman



Civ life has come full circle.

Hmm...

Stage I:

CivII vet, used to beating CivII on Diety by basically ignoring the AI for a few thousand years and then buying most of their cities with spies, followed by howitzer blitz. Attempted a similar approach: ignore the AI, research myself (no trading), get a big tech lead, squash AI.

This worked on the first two levels. Favorite civ: Greece.

Stage II: Hmm, old strategies not working on Regent. Things are not going well... rethink. Must trade some (not lots, but some). Must prepare for inevitable AI aggression, and then manage to crush them with a counterattack... usually in the middle ages. Yeah, that works nicely. Still vulnerable to early attacks, though. Favorite civ: Babylon.

Stage III: Hmm, paper-thin military in the early game a bigger problem here on Monarch. Major trouble out-expanding the AI. DAMN THEM! They building my wonders! They're stealing my city sites! Their trade demands are ridiculous! I've gotta figure out how to beat them to the punch.

Favorite civ: Egypt

Stage IV: To create, we must destroy! Wow, if I go attack the AI in the ancient age and things go well, I can build all I want later! The search for Ultimate Power begins.

Favorite civ: Japan (China a close 2nd, Egypt a strong 3rd).

Stage V: Chaos is my name. Can't imagine NOT fighting in the early game. Walking past an undefended AI worker with an exploring warrior would require serious willpower. Archers ARE useful, I'll be damned! Really useful, in fact... Favorite civ: Rome

Stage VI: ?



-Arrian

[Rhothaerill]

Nice life-history Arrian. Mine was a bit different as I tried to use tactics from the Call To Power series in my first Civ3 games (including very wide city spacing) and failed miserably.