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luddite Wrote:Yeah, scooter explained perfectly why I don't like quick speed. I don't understand why you're saying it's a "phantom concern"- every quick speed game I've ever seen has issues with it. I admit, I don't have nearly as much MP experience as speaker, but if it comes up in every PBEM on this site I don't see why it wouldn't come up again here. The winner is usually the person who can best avoid doing any warfare at all.
How many quick speed games on a Medieval start have you seen though? Make sure you aren't basing your judgement on quick speed based on ancient start games, as the tech pace of medieval start games is significantly different.
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Shoot the Moon Wrote:How many quick speed games on a Medieval start have you seen though? Make sure you aren't basing your judgement on quick speed based on ancient start games, as the tech pace of medieval start games is significantly different.
Sure, it'll start slowly, but as soon as everyone has settled a few cities and developed a few cottages the tech pace will increase fast.
Getting to see how some other medieval start epic-style FFA games have gone would be extremely helpful.
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I don't see why these things are so important. Speed and difficulty level are just settings you need to adjust to. This game won't be replica of PBEM4. In this game no one can't totally hide what they're doing. If you're not correctly balancing your expansion rate and military there should be someone trying to take advantage of that.
Now Speaker suggested the game and its settings. I wouldn't open discussion concerning points that he did put up in his 1st post as given e.g. Difficulty level. That only left speed and pitboss game format open. Maybe sunrise could put up couple of test games so we can see which options pitboss provides. I still think sequential where everyone on same team can act simultaneously would be best assuming it works, but it needs to be tested. This should easily allow similar speed as we've in PBEM's.
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I'm sure the voice of someone who is generally inexperienced doesn't matter, but I would really prefer Monarch(Immortal is...too much, though). At the least, a bump to Prince.
We can be the Princes of the Universe.
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I am with Kuro. Noble is just ridiculous in my opinion - and this is coming from the 'we're all the noobish rejects' team players!
Monarch gets my vote.
To add - I think Quick speed is essential for this game.
Its slightly different to what we are doing but me, Kuro and bob played a medieval start FFA last night on quick speed and monarch difficulty with 120 turn limit on a small size map.
Armies did not obsolete really fast and I don't think the tech pace was that obscene due to the difficulty level and having enemies not so far away that you couldn't farmers gambit & had to pay for an army.
Now, using this as my yardstick (as it is my only experience with similar settings) - I would say that unless the map is so huge that we will be miles away from the other teams so we can skimp on defence for ages, then quick speed with a higher difficulty works for me.
"You want to take my city of Troll%ng? Go ahead and try."
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I continue to be 0kay with Quick for the purposes of the game being done in a reasonable manner.
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I'll throw in for quick. No opinion on the difficulty level.
Is plako now GM?
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Is there anyway we could get around the 48 hours per turnaround? If we can get it down to 24 hours per turnaround, it would be nice. Otherwise we might as well run a PBEM and save sunrise the trouble of dealing with save/reloads.
Also, if we turn diplo victory off, you can't even build the AP, is that okay with everyone?
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
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A 24 hour timer is never going to work. 6 hours for three people to play their turns? Come on. It's ridiculous. Similarly, PBEM is not practical. Emailing the save to 12 different players? We'd be lucky to get in one turn per week. Let's focus on solutions that are realistic.
48 hours feels like the absolute minimum amount of time for a turn. That's still only 12 hours for a 3-person team to play their turn, which isn't much. I think we'll have to increase the timer as the game goes on and more units appear on the board. Because the game is a Medieval start, it will likely last about 100 turns. If we played a turn every two days, the game would take roughly 200 turns = 6-7 months.... which is almost exactly how long the other Pitboss games have taken. And if it takes longer, do we even care? The Apolyton Demogame took 11 months, and no one seemed to object. If you want things to move faster, well, that's why we suggested Quick speed and Noble difficulty. Which a couple of you have objected to pretty vehemently, while also insisting that the game will take too long to play. 
About difficulty... the objections to Noble are pretty silly. You guys are stuck thinking in terms of the AI, where "Noble" means a very easy game. When there are no AIs and no barbarians, it affects very little indeed. Here's the relevant stuff from the XML code:
Quote:
<Type>HANDICAP_NOBLE</Type>
<iFreeUnits>8</iFreeUnits>
<iResearchPercent>100</iResearchPercent>
<iDistanceMaintenancePercent>75</iDistanceMaintenancePercent>
<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>70</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>
<iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>5</iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>
<iColonyMaintenancePercent>100</iColonyMaintenancePercent>
<iMaxColonyMaintenance>200</iMaxColonyMaintenance>
<iCorporationMaintenancePercent>100</iCorporationMaintenancePercent>
<iCivicUpkeepPercent>80</iCivicUpkeepPercent>
<iInflationPercent>90</iInflationPercent>
<Type>HANDICAP_MONARCH</Type>
<iFreeUnits>4</iFreeUnits>
<iResearchPercent>115</iResearchPercent>
<iDistanceMaintenancePercent>90</iDistanceMaintenancePercent>
<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>85</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>
<iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>6</iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>
<iColonyMaintenancePercent>120</iColonyMaintenancePercent>
<iMaxColonyMaintenance>200</iMaxColonyMaintenance>
<iCorporationMaintenancePercent>120</iCorporationMaintenancePercent>
<iCivicUpkeepPercent>95</iCivicUpkeepPercent>
<iInflationPercent>100</iInflationPercent>
Twinkletoes wrote that Noble was "just ridiculous" but that Monarch would be acceptable. So here's the actual difference between the two difficulties, after removing all the stuff about AIs and barbarians:
* 4 fewer free units.
* Techs 15% more expensive
* Maintenance costs increased from 75->90 and 70->85
* Colony and corporation maintenance increased, which we're not using for this game
* Civics upkeep increased from 80->95
* Inflation increased 90->100
Yeah, the maintenance costs are slightly higher. About 15-20% across the board. And... why exactly is this such a big deal? We're not playing against AIs, we're playing against humans. All it does is make the game slower. You can't spam cities anyway in this game, because we're playing Always War. You guys are just hung up on the name "Noble", because it has a stigma attached to it of "people who aren't very good at Civ4 play on Noble." Forget all of that. The difference between Noble and Monarch in a game like this is pretty trivial. Most MP games are played on Noble because there are no AIs. What's the point of increasing difficulty? Make the game slower? Wait, I thought that was what the objections were about in the first place! ![[Image: crazyeye.gif]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/crazyeye.gif)
Anyway, we don't really care about this. As I said, difficulty is pretty trivial to this game. If it kills you that much to play on Noble, we can do Monarch or Prince or whatever (although the difference is even more trivial on Prince, less than 10%). At this point, we don't really give a crap. We're sick to death of the endless bickering over these settings. Our team votes for Quick speed and Noble difficulty. If we get outvoted in favor of Normal speed or Monarch difficulty or whatever, we don't care. Just get on with the process of starting the game.
The Pitboss/48 hour settings are not negotiable, because it will be physically impossible to play the game under the suggested alternatives.
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That is fair I suppose.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
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