G-minor 99 (CFC) by T-hawk

[Sullla]

Except that the Hall of Fame mod is like the MapStat mod from Civ3. Oh sure, you COULD go through the map and count up every single tile and work out the Domination limit for yourself. But in practice, no one was ever going to do that by hand... MapStat did change the gameplay by providing extra statistical tools that the player wouldn't otherwise have access to.

The Hall of Fame mod (and your BUG stuff, Ruff) are the same thing. Yes, you could track everything that it does by hand... but you won't, and two dozen little extra features do in fact add up to changed gameplay. I mean, your mod tells the player what turns are the optimal ones to whip!

I'm not saying these things are nice and all for those who like them, but no, I don't believe it's quite the same game anymore. My irritation with the CivFanatics Hall of Fame group is that they FORCE you to play the game with said mod, preferring an altered experience to, you know, the actual Civ4 game itself? That'll never make sense to me.

[sunrise089]

Except that the Hall of Fame mod is like the MapStat mod from Civ3. Oh sure, you COULD go through the map and count up every single tile and work out the Domination limit for yourself. But in practice, no one was ever going to do that by hand... MapStat did change the gameplay by providing extra statistical tools that the player wouldn't otherwise have access to.

The Hall of Fame mod (and your BUG stuff, Ruff) are the same thing. Yes, you could track everything that it does by hand... but you won't, and two dozen little extra features do in fact add up to changed gameplay. I mean, your mod tells the player what turns are the optimal ones to whip!

I'm not saying these things are nice and all for those who like them, but no, I don't believe it's quite the same game anymore. My irritation with the CivFanatics Hall of Fame group is that they FORCE you to play the game with said mod, preferring an altered experience to, you know, the actual Civ4 game itself? That'll never make sense to me.

Not disagreeing, but here's my take:

As a predominantly non-microing player the BUG mod would help my game tremendously. I don't use it because I don't want to deal with loading and unloading mods any more than I have to, but I know I would perform better in games with it. T-Hawk, or players like him, would probably not benefit much since they probably WOULD check each city each turn for optimal whip points. So I consider BUG/HOF mod as basically a buff for non-micro inclined players.

Now I can imagine something just like this for MP guys. When we play RB MP games, I notice many players just aren't very quick with moves. Not necessarily that they have issues with the length of the timer, but rather I can win most fastmoves when the turn rolls. I can guess why this is - I have a fast PC and a fast internet connection, all of my settings are right, I have a numpad on my keyboard, and I understand all of the movement penalty rules. Now imagine a "non-gameplay altering" mod that allowed a MP player to indicate their units and where they want them to move when the turn rolls. Then upon the turn rolls the AI moves their units instantly fast (like how the AI can always capture workers even in simultaneous MP). It could be argued that this mod isn't letting the player do anything the very best players under the very best conditions couldn't do themselves. In that way it's much like BUG.

So I agree with Sullla...in my mind these mods do effectively alter the gameplay. However I'm sympathetic to Ruff in one way - perhaps the idea version of civilization should not involve either micromanagement or even manual unit movements. Compare it to chess, which is a pretty idealized strategy game IMHO. In chess I don't think it would be a problem if a robot arm actually moved the pieces for a player, and at high levels I don't think it would really be an issue if a computerized printout listed like all of the pieces and their positions if someone wanted that info for some reason. That's because in chess the board and the physical piece movements are secondary to the strategy. Now in civilization that's obviously not true, but I could buy the claim that it should be. For instance, say I say to myself "my strategy is to whip every unit for maximum overflow and for minimal pop" and my opponent says "I want to grow my cities as large as possible for the incoming switch to hereditary rule." This is strategy (and it is a "strategy game"). If everyone was on an equal footing it isn't terribly clear to me that game success needs to be correlated to hours in front of the keyboard, no more than speed on web connections, or (this comes up in our RBP series) availability to play right when the turn rolls.

[Ruff_Hi]

The Hall of Fame mod (and your BUG stuff, Ruff) are the same thing. Yes, you could track everything that it does by hand... but you won't, and two dozen little extra features do in fact add up to changed gameplay.

Maybe I am arguing semantics, but I don't think that the BUG mod changes how the game acts (that is my definition of gameplay). It certainly changes how the player acts (maybe that is your definition of gameplay). Using the second definition of gameplay, lots of things change that - simply playing the game more changes how you play. Does that mean that we shouldn't play the game?

My view is that the ramp up for new players is much less using the BUG mod than not using it. Information that the more advanced players will learn to use over time is more accessible.

For my money, the BUG mod reduces the importance of micro and (relatively) increases the importance of strategy. I don't see anything wrong with that given that Civ is a strategy game .

I mean, your mod tells the player what turns are the optimal ones to whip!

This isn't correct - well, maybe it depends on your definition of 'tells'. We had lots of internal discussion about what 'optimal' means. One camp said that it is the first turn when you can whip (or whip at a reduced cost) while others said that it is the turn that generates the most overflow. In the end, we decided to just show the production points where the population cost changes and left it to the player to determine their own optimal point. When I play a game without the mod, I sit there with a calculator and manually calculate the production whip points - very dull and not why I am playing the game.

Oh, there is an alert that triggers for the first turn that a build can be whipped - I hate all of the alerts and I turn them off ... thus I tend to forget they are in the mod.

[dazedroyalty]

Maybe I am arguing semantics, but I don't think that the BUG mod changes how the game acts (that is my definition of gameplay). It certainly changes how the player acts (maybe that is your definition of gameplay). Using the second definition of gameplay, lots of things change that - simply playing the game more changes how you play. Does that mean that we shouldn't play the game?

I agree with this! Gameplay is not changed by the BUG mod, only the players ability to have access to information. For a new player to the game (or one who hasn't spent hours on forums studying mathematical calculations on the best time to whip), it is immensely helpful to have all of that right in front of you.

In competitive play, I understand the reason to not use BUG or other such mods. The simplest even playing field is the original game sans modification.

That said, if the purpose of any given competition was to see who had the best strategy alone rather than the best knowledge of game mechanics, using BUG would actually make sense to me.

[novice]

Micromanagement is builder tactics; eliminating it would be analogous to eliminating all combat tactics from the game. Civ is a strategy game but also a tactical game for me. If you don't like micromanagement I guess BUG is great - but for me part of the joy of Civ is discovering new tricks to optimizing my empire.

[T-hawk]

We had lots of internal discussion about what 'optimal' means. One camp said that it is the first turn when you can whip (or whip at a reduced cost) while others said that it is the turn that generates the most overflow.

It can be either depending on the situation. Mostly depends on the happy cap. If it's not an issue (you have happy headroom or will not whip again within the 10 turns), most often optimal is as soon as possible or asap at a reduced cost. If happy is tight, then you want to get the most mileage out of each whip, which means max overflow. And a granary is a special case, where the optimal point is most often "when the granary's hidden food storage will fill up before the next growth" which translates to when the food box is half full.

There's another essay to be had here, about the dichotomy between Civilization acting as a strategy game versus acting as an accumulation of micro-actions, but I haven't got time tonight.