Adventure Five Results

[LKendter]

I think the Internet has fragmented attention spans.  

I agree 100% with that statement. 1 straight hour of game play is tough for me now. I use to have no problem spending a whole night on a single game.

[Cornflakes]

Haven't had a chance to read through the few threads, but I actually made a couple unsuccessful attempts. First attempt, I founded 2nd religion after France and was immediately swamped by missionaries. Tried to build Mahabodhi Temple but lost to France by a turn. My religion was snuffed out, and without a religion there was no point in continuing. why I didn't just declare war to kill the missionaries I'll never know  but the AI must have sensed the theme and responded with surprising intelligence!

2nd attempt I gunned for early HS, barely beat France to the first religion by just a couple turns, but Cleopatra captured the Industrial city state very early and rolled right along through my capital in an impressive fashion  

3rd attempt I was doing much better but left for vacation and was unable to finish. I took the religious belief that prevented reduction of religious influence due to losses in theological combat. I used France's flood of missionaries as folder to spread my religion to Egypt and Kongo, putting most envoys into Yerevan to make Debater promoted apostles. I was on the verge of eliminating Greece (who just founded a 3rd religion) and a few turns from Conquistadors to take out France and their religion, stockpiling gold for upgrades from Church Property from all my Egyptian and Kongolese converts.

All in all, I have to say I was much more impressed by the AI performance in this game than in any other single player Civ6 game I have played.

[T-hawk]

If people watch streams out of laziness, then that must also be the reason that they watch youtube videos and read reports, they are all just different methods of experiencing someone else's perspective of a game.

I'll admit that calling the phenomenon laziness might be uncharitable.  But you're acknowledging my broader point: there's been a shift from playing games to watching them.  Whatever the reasons may be, it's true.  Civ 3 and 4 engendered the active community that they did because the streaming and video platforms didn't exist then, so participating meant actually playing the game.  Civ 5 and 6, along with most every game of the last ten years, have a much greater ratio of passive watchers to active content producers.

The community for Civ 3 and 4 existed at a unique point on the historical timeline, and it's not something that can be replicated with any amount of game or scenario design.  The Epics worked then because people accepted the idea of waiting several weeks to report and compare.  Nobody has that patience now when you can jump in on any stream for instant engagement.  Every event that falls flat has a bunch of people echoing "I might have played but didn't want to spend the time."  That's never going to change now.  The power of instant gratification from so many other sources is just too strong.

[RefSteel]

Every event that falls flat has a bunch of people echoing "I might have played but didn't want to spend the time."  That's never going to change now.  The power of instant gratification from so many other sources is just too strong.

This may be in part because of "the power of instant gratification," but that isn't the whole story at all. A lot of people are living highly over-committed lives, mostly for economic reasons, and don't have much time for games - especially games that require large blocks of time, continuity of planning, and time at their own computer without any more urgent use for it. Real life should always takes precedence over gaming, and at some point it does for everybody. I know I don't have time to play games the way I used to, mostly for health-related reasons - although I also recognize that my situation is highly uncommon. I'm the rare bird who does finish (and report) Adventures and Imperia two weeks after they close because it does take me 6 weeks of stealing time in bits and snatches to play a full game.

Another factor, very much related, is exhaustion: Even when people have time to play games, if they're wiped out from work and myriad other obligations, they may not have the energy to play in an event that feels "important" because they're going to be reporting it in an open forum - especially so when the game feels like another social obligation.

Finally: Feedback is a huge driver of reported games like this. In MP and SP events alike, it's really hard to play a game and provided a detailed report when you feel like nobody's even reading. Often lots of people do read, but when none of them comment, there's much less of a draw - for the person who posted the report, or for others - to play and report the next event. In that case, it's not a question of instant gratification vs. delayed gratification: It's a question of instant gratification vs. the hope of maybe getting delayed gratification, but probably not. That choice has nothing to do with the attention span or laziness of the would-be player.

[Athmos]

The Google Docs spreadsheet for the Civ6 Epics/Adventures has been updated to include Adventure Five. We had no finished games and only suboptimal made it to Turn 200 to reach all three scoring benchmarks. Needless to say, this is another disappointing result from a competition perspective. I blame myself for this, as I haven't been finding the time to play these games either. Really wish I had played this one, as my initial test run of the first 50 or so turns to check playability was significantly ahead of these results (I immediately attacked and captured the nearby Industrial city state to gain some space). Part of the fun of Single Player events is playing your way out of subpar starting positions, or at least it used to be in this community. This game didn't seem to catch anyone's interest aside from timmy, who couldn't finish due to an unlucky early AI rush.

I have one more game idea on my list to try. If there's no interest after that, I think the Civ6 competitive events are probably dead. At the very least, someone else will have to take over the responsibility for running them.

I actually played this game and enjoyed it a lot. I don't have much time however - and only started on the last week end before report date. As an inevitable result, I only played a shadow.

I'm sad as I enjoy RB games a lot, but usually don't find the time to complete them in time (I don't invest the time would be fairer), and specially to report. This time was even worse as I decided to play a training game before to work on my focus. So I actually played another game on Emperor (standard map size tho I think) and won a religious victory without spreading. In the end it was actually a very different game, tho. Then of course I didn't find the time to play the actual game before it was too late...

I will no go an try to post a shadow report (it will be from memory only as I'm writing during lunch break).

[T-hawk]

A lot of people are living highly over-committed lives, mostly for economic reasons, and don't have much time for games ... Even when people have time to play games, if they're wiped out from work and myriad other obligations, they may not have the energy to play in an event that feels "important" because they're going to be reporting it in an open forum - especially so when the game feels like another social obligation.

This is all true... but why would it be any more true now than fifteen years ago?  Yes, people grow up and acquire life obligations... but why aren't there new people fifteen years younger in 2017 with fifteen fewer years of obligations doing what our old guard did in 2002?

Because those people have grown up with video and streaming on every device and are so much more accustomed to passive consumption rather than active participation.  Their over-commitment is to Youtube and Netflix and Twitch and Facebook.  A game of Civ 5 or 6 takes half as much real time as did Civs 3 and 4, but people won't carve out even that much against so many other low-effort options.

[RefSteel]

This is all true... but why would it be any more true now than fifteen years ago?  Yes, people grow up and acquire life obligations... but why aren't there new people fifteen years younger in 2017 with fifteen fewer years of obligations doing what our old guard did in 2002?

For instance: College tuition exploding and median income declining, together with growing expectations of longer work days at tech jobs even at entry level, expectations of way-beyond-full-time hours put in at e.g. "coding boot camps" and in the job search itself, which is perpetual for the reasons note above, and the transition of most other jobs to service economy with schedules completely out of the employees' control and salaries that demand working multiple jobs to make ends meet, especially when servicing student debt (actively or pre-emptively). Millenials have a really terrible deal.

It is also true that companies like facebook have reduced holding people's attention and passing ads in front of their eyes for the maximum number of seconds per day literally to a science though, and it's absolutely true that forums like this are competing with a huge amount of that.

[The Black Sword]

People are still putting in a lot of time and effort playing and reporting MP games over a longer time period than a SP one. I don't see how that squares with people not having the patience to play a SP game.

[suboptimal]

A lot of people are living highly over-committed lives, mostly for economic reasons, and don't have much time for games ... Even when people have time to play games, if they're wiped out from work and myriad other obligations, they may not have the energy to play in an event that feels "important" because they're going to be reporting it in an open forum - especially so when the game feels like another social obligation.

This is all true... but why would it be any more true now than fifteen years ago?  Yes, people grow up and acquire life obligations... but why aren't there new people fifteen years younger in 2017 with fifteen fewer years of obligations doing what our old guard did in 2002?

I would put forth the argument that 10 years ago the real time strategy genre (which I'll include the Civ series in) was much more popular than it is now.  The current focus seems to be on the real-time PvP and Team v Team shooters - look at all the competitive leagues and how much attention they grab.  There's also the significantly larger number of games to choose from to play that divides up the potential gamer pool.