Game settings

[DribNairb]

Most of the game settings have already been specifed in the Pre-invitation post, but since there are a few options still left open I'd like to start the ball rolling with my suggestions:

Choose Religions ON (Doesn't really affect the game but may affect roleplaying)
Permanent Alliances ON (I'm sure word-of-mouth alliances will exist too but it's nice to have the option of permanently joining forces)
Random Events ON (I don't think they unbalance the game very much and can make things a little more interesting)
Advanced Start - 1500 points sounds good to me

Also I'd like to suggest that everyone plays within the spirit of Civ's turn-based rules. ie. No deliberate double moves to gain an advantage and no exploiting bugs in the game if there are any.

Finally, I assume this is to be played with BTS patch version 3.03?

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Here are the game settings for Chaos and Civility:

My idea for this game is to be one that isn't necessarily just about warfare (although there is no getting around conflict, of course).  This game would be aimed at more mature players who want to engage in a little bit of roleplaying, political intrigue, and exploring how Civ IV can be used as a basis for a long-term strategic roleplaying game of sorts.   And when I say "long-term" I mean a year or maybe longer!

• This will be hosted on a dedicated laptop "game server" nothing fancy, but it will be available 24/7, on battery backup and with a reliable broadband connection.
• This game will be meant to be a long-term commitment; this game may well last over a year, depending on how aggressive players are and how many factions form to counter-balance those aggressive players. 
• I am dedicated to seeing this game through to the end; it will NOT end right when you are starting to get your empire built up!  Well, not unless I get hit by a bus or trampled by a camel.  Yes, that means even if I get killed off in the midst of the game, I will still continue hosting it (although I hope that doesn't happen!).
• CivStats.com will be used, to aid in the notifications and review of global points stats (trying to keep everything fair; you will know everything that I as the game host will know).
• 18 players total, all human.
• Huge map, Hemispheres, 3 continents with islands, Varied shape, medium sea level, temperate climate, cylindrical wrap.  Players can mix and match leaders/civs, and multiple picks of the same leader are allowed.  Note: a patch is needed for the pitboss, as this option is currently broken, however.
• Epic game speed (so units won't become obsolete before you have a chance to use them!)
• "No tech brokering" will be enabled -- thus, you can trade only techs you've researched.
• All victory conditions will be allowed, although hopefully this will not result in someone pulling off too early of a victory.  The goal is to keep this game going, not to rush through it.
• Turns will be 20hours long, simultaneous.
• Advanced Start, in Ancient Era
• Advanced Start: 1500 points
• No predesignated teams, although you can of course form alliances if you wish.
• Early rushing will be discouraged--but not illegal--for the first millennium or so, to allow newer players a chance at survival against ultra-early rushing.  You won't be kicked from the game if you do rush, although please understand that beating up newbies is not the intent of this particular game.
• Vassal States allowed; goody huts off (unbalances a MP game); Barbarians enabled (not raging though); city flipping allowed; city razing allowed; cylindrical map wrap; AI takeover allowed (in case a player quits, we can invite another human to take over).

Please post if I've left anything out. 

[Capsavian Hopewell]

great minds think alike!  I've merged your post with mine on the same topic.

Any comments on DribNairb's suggestions?

[Carolus Maltman]

Most of the game settings have already been specifed in the Pre-invitation post, but since there are a few options still left open I'd like to start the ball rolling with my suggestions:

Choose Religions ON (Doesn't really affect the game but may affect roleplaying)
Permanent Alliances ON (I'm sure word-of-mouth alliances will exist too but it's nice to have the option of permanently joining forces)
Random Events ON (I don't think they unbalance the game very much and can make things a little more interesting)
Advanced Start - 1500 points sounds good to me

Also I'd like to suggest that everyone plays within the spirit of Civ's turn-based rules. ie. No deliberate double moves to gain an advantage and no exploiting bugs in the game if there are any.

Finally, I assume this is to be played with BTS patch version 3.03?

Wow, are we proactive for what? I was just putting together my own!

I think we'll be using the latest patch once we start... so that might be 3.03, but we're hoping for later?

No idea on the Advanced Start points... I have to play around with it, I haven't tried yet.

A hearty 2nding of the Choose Religions option, and Random Events. They're quirky and definitely good for roleplaying.

I'd personally vote Permanent Alliances OFF. It completely dominated the late game of my most recently completed PTBS, where one of the laggards joined up with one of the top 3, which instantly gave him all the techs, and now everyone else had to look for partners just to compete... so I (leader) teamed with the 3rd or 4th place guy, and we dominated the rest of the game, winning an eventual conquest victory. If you want to vote for an ally to win a dimplomatic victory, you can... but I think the military victories should not be shared.

Thoughts?

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Yes, we will definitely be using whatever the latest patch is when the game is set up (maybe even by this weekend, if I get the time to do so?!)  We will keep it patched as new versions are released.  I think this is pretty standard.

The 1500 points helps skip the issue of having to wait 30+ turns for your first settler to emerge, only to be eaten by a bear two turns later (yes, that has happened to me more than once, I'll admit!).  With 1500 points, you can build 3-5 cities, with units and a few starting techs.

Random events--I'd forgotten about that one!  Yes, I agree that would be good to include, as would choosing religions.  Makes it more roleplaying-ish.

Good points about Permanent Alliances, Maltman.  Unless there are any objections (in which case we will vote), I think we will turn Permanent Alliances off.  Players can still ally, of course, but not receive "Instant Empire -- just add water!".

It sounds like everyone is much more experienced than I am...hopefully I don't get knocked out of the game after two months! 

[Troymk1]

The Advanced Start is REALLY painful.  I think that if you research techs first then you get to see the new resources, not sure yet. One thing is almost sure. you won't be happy with your placement once the map is truly revealed!

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Well, with a game of this size, organizing an accelerated real-time start would be next to impossible, and although I am looking forward to a very long game, I'm not sure how many players would be willing to have the first five months consist of single-unit moves. 

Yes, resources are revealed when you research a tech such as animal husbandry.  But, that will actually help you in figuring out where to place your second city (you cannot research anything with your first, which really is not unlike the normal way of playing in that respect).

My only concern is religions:  how are they allocated if more than one person researches polytheism?  Does anyone know?

[nooble]

What is this "double move" you speak of?

And I vote no for permanent alliances. 

[Darius Silva]

I was in a pitboss game where you started with 2 citys and 1 settler aswell as a few units. They were placed by the admin in a fair way...    Sadly the game ended because the host disappared, but the idea was good.

Rather than waiting months to have something interesting happening there were action from the start. If you just give the players a starting civ, which is fair when it comes to resources and location, or start by giving the players 3 settlers and x amount of units we don't need these weeks and weeks of startup boring things....

[Carolus Maltman]

I was in a pitboss game where you started with 2 citys and 1 settler aswell as a few units. They were placed by the admin in a fair way...    Sadly the game ended because the host disappared, but the idea was good.

Rather than waiting months to have something interesting happening there were action from the start. If you just give the players a starting civ, which is fair when it comes to resources and location, or start by giving the players 3 settlers and x amount of units we don't need these weeks and weeks of startup boring things....

Is it possible that we set up the accelerated start to give us the points to use ONLY for a couple of initial techs, warriors, and settlers? No additional cities. So as long as everyone is honest with what they use it for, then it will give us a nice speed up, but not make things terribly unbalanced or cause other follow-on issues?

[Capsavian Hopewell]

nooble -- double moves, to my understanding, are when you are the last player to take your turn.  Thus, a new round of turns becomes available and you can then take a second turn right away.

I have no problems with double moves, unless you are at war with someone.  If you are able to make a double-move when at war, that's just plain rude.  But for peaceful turns, it's OK.

I'm guessing the consensus will be:  if you declare war with someone, you cannot make a second move until after your opponent has had a chance to make his move.  Otherwise, you are two moves into their territory before they even realize they are at war, which is just not fair.

Darius -- Advanced Start takes care of that issue, but with the added bonus of allowing each player to choose their own setup, instead of relying on the game host to do that.  Then, the host can't be blamed for a bad city placement. 

I highly, highly recommend everyone experiment with Advanced Start, 1500 points in single player before we start this game. The mechanics of the Advanced Start are such that there is no Undo button if you make a bad decision, so please learn how it works.

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Maltman -- I think that would be a possibility, sure, but of course we would have to rely on a gentleman's agreement.  Even with civstats running to show us points, there's no way to know if the points were gleaned from techs, population, or land area.

If we did that, I would also suggest we disallow pre-purchasing of any religious techs, to avoid the problem of religion disbursement (as I am still unsure how that is handled).

So, we could say:  with your 1500 points, you cannot purchase religion techs nor additional cities.  But everything else would be acceptable?

One nice thing about your suggestion is that this would eliminate the problem of having two players accidentally start with cities too close together.

The more I think about it, the more I am liking this suggestion.  What say others?

[Darius Silva]

Yeah, giving points seems good and give us plenty so we can get a good start.

Most of the pitboss games I have been in have died within the first month because of the host disappared and I suspect they gave up hosting because of the slow pace in the beginning.

I personally like the custom setting in individual games where you can choose to start with 3 settlers, 3 workers and 3 units.

[Capsavian Hopewell]

The only way this game will cease is if the host dies.    I assure you I am in it for the long haul.

That said, I do think granting 1500 points should be adequate in helping to speed up the early moves.

Unless there is an uproar to the contrary, here is what I am proposing for the Advanced Start:

* 1500 points
* You may build only ONE city
* You may NOT purchase any religion techs, beyond Mysticism
* You may otherwise research anything else, and build anything else (as many settlers, warriors, workers, scouts, etc. as you can afford);
* You may also purchase population and culture for your lone city, as well as visibility.

These rules will help keep things fair and balanced (oh gawd, that sounds too much like Fox News!).

[DribNairb]

* You may build only ONE city
* You may NOT purchase any religion techs, beyond Mysticism
* You may otherwise research anything else, and build anything else (as many settlers, warriors, workers, scouts, etc. as you can afford);
* You may also purchase population and culture for your lone city, as well as visibility.

I believe in advanced start you are limited to 2 units per city, which means only allowing one city leaves the choices rather restricted.
I would suggest lifting the restriction on one city since Advanced start already ensures there is no overlap between civs (although obviously they may start quite close). Otherwise the restrictions sound fair enough.

[Troymk1]

cap do a hot seat game and do your advanced start parameters to test Ok?

Religions are random amongst those who researched the techs

SO 3 chose Buddhism 1/3 will get it

2 choose Polytheism 1/2 will get it etc...


Oh and there's a bug with choosing religions. You don't get a missionary.

[failedreality]

How much RP'ing are you looking for in this game?

[Capsavian Hopewell]

DribNairb -- You bring up a good point, although in my experimenting (albeit in single player) I was able to place more than two units per city.  This may be another bug, as I believe the manual/civilopedia says somewhere that only two of the same type can be placed per city.

While Advanced Start does restrict the area you can place your cities in, I have had numerous single-player test games where one of my cities ended up touching a neighbor's borders right away.  This even happened to my capitol once or twice!

So really, sticking with one-city placement actually will help players avoid those crushing starts. 

However, I will experiment some more and see if I can indeed place more than one unit of the same type in a city.  If not, maybe a compromise would be two cities?

Troymk1 -- you never do get a missionary with those early religions; only with later ones such as Christianity or Confucianism. 
I'll experiment with religion allocation some more, but in my experience it seems that the first person to make their move in Advanced Start always seems to be awarded the religion.  May just be because I've only played single-player.

failedreality -- as much roleplaying as you wish!  This will be up to the players, but this game was set up with rp'ing in mind; for example, I'm going to be writing news articles concerning my nation's events, and I plan to organize an International Geographic Society with other nations, so we can settle on names for the continents, rivers, mountain ranges, etc.

It's up to the players to decide how much roleplaying they want to engage in though. 

[Troymk1]

True, if you only have one city you don't get a missionary. However I believe the bug applies at all times.

[DribNairb]

DribNairb -- You bring up a good point, although in my experimenting (albeit in single player) I was able to place more than two units per city.  This may be another bug, as I believe the manual/civilopedia says somewhere that only two of the same type can be placed per city.

I've just tried it out (albeit in single player) and it seems you can have up to 2 military units PLUS up to 2 workers and 2 settlers per city. My feeling is that if you only allow one city in the advanced start most players will probably start with a couple of settlers anyway and there's still nothing to stop them settling close to another civ. I would have thought it very unlikely that any player would find themselves trapped on more than one side by another civ starting very close to them (especially on a huge map).

Therefore FWIW my vote is to allow any number of cities in the advanced start, but I'd be surprised if many players started with more than 2.
I agree with the no buying religon techs. We'll know immediately if anyone breaks that rule!

[failedreality]

failedreality -- as much roleplaying as you wish!  This will be up to the players, but this game was set up with rp'ing in mind; for example, I'm going to be writing news articles concerning my nation's events, and I plan to organize an International Geographic Society with other nations, so we can settle on names for the continents, rivers, mountain ranges, etc.

It's up to the players to decide how much roleplaying they want to engage in though. 

Not to drag out the turn timer anymore, but I would think if you want some good RP'ing I would extend the turn timer, well maybe..  I don't know..

I know if you want us to script up and RP something all the time, it might get difficult in the later stages..

Especially if you have like 6-7 games going and you only have time to play your turns, when will have have the time to RP up something in the forums here..  Just an idea.  I'm sure most will curse my name or spam me about it.

After typing all that I'm really not sure what I'm talking about, work sucks..
ha

[DribNairb]

Oh and there's a bug with choosing religions. You don't get a missionary.

Just tested this out in single player and I still get a free missionary for a religion with Code of Laws and Philosophy, even though I chose Hinduism as one of the religions - so I don't think there's a problem with this.

[DribNairb]

Not to drag out the turn timer anymore, but I would think if you want some good RP'ing I would extend the turn timer, well maybe..  I don't know..

I definitely don't like the idea of extending the timer. An epic game is 750 turns, and we are expecting this game to last nearly the full distance. That's 2 years assuming no problems. Even if you roleplay once a week that's still 100 posts per player - sounds plenty to me

[Capsavian Hopewell]

Yeah, I'm not seeing a bug with missionaries, either; for early religions, I've never gotten a missionary (that I recall), however I always do for later religions.

I've just tested in a hotseat game (never used that game mode before!), and it does seem as though the religions are dished out randomly amongst those who researched it.  So, I'm neutral on religion techs now; we can permit or deny that branch of research, I'm OK either way.

For starting cities...I have found even in the hotseat game I just played, where two players' starting locations were butted right up against each other, just with two cities each.  So, if someone does decide to place a second city right away, they do run that risk.

failedreality--curse you!  LOL, just kidding.  Actually, I think once-daily turns is still a good idea; after all, there won't be action EVERY day, so it's not like you are required to develop your nation's back story every single day.  Some players might opt to RP only minimally, while others (like me) have no life and will be doing quite a bit. 

I'm only playing in this one game (other than single player), so I can focus my efforts on RPing and on keeping the game running.

I might be able to get this set up as early as tonight, if I don't get interrupted by the phone anymore this afternoon!  I will send an announcement to everyone whenever the game is launched though.

[Capsavian Hopewell]

I definitely don't like the idea of extending the timer. An epic game is 750 turns, and we are expecting this game to last nearly the full distance. That's 2 years assuming no problems. Even if you roleplay once a week that's still 100 posts per player - sounds plenty to me

I agree with this.  It will be plenty long enough the way it is.  Heck, some of us might have kids grow up, go to college, get married...by the time this game is won. 

[Troymk1]

How will we handle vacations?

For example I will be heading to Germany in November and Australia in Jan.

[Capsavian Hopewell]

If you will be gone for more than, say, three days in a row, you can either find a temporary replacement to play for you, or else turn your civ over to the AI while you are away.


OK, I'm attaching a screenshot of the pitboss setup screen.  Here are the game settings (we just need to decide on the start rules, regarding religions, techs, # of cities, etc.):

[Draconis]

I am happy with all the settings, except I HATE space race as a victory condition.  As for multiple towns, this could make for a great advantage for some who have better starting areas.  If you want more then one city then build settlers.  By the time barbarians are advanced enough to raize a city you can have warriors or the like already built.

[karayanev]

I hear Space race is much more interesting in BTS, so maybe we should leave it on

[Draconis]

I havent tried it in BTS, so maybe we should leave it on.  That is if it has improved.