Just a Fun Game

[Ruff_Hi]

Where do you announce reports about non-tournament games? Here or somewhere else?

Anyway, just finished a write up for a game I recently finished using BAT.

BAT stands for BTS Artistic Tweaks and started shortly after BUG. It takes BUG and to it adds several beautiful artistic mods that alter the graphics for terrain, units, buildings, and leaderheads. This results in each civilization's buildings and units having a unique look shared within ethnicity groups.

[Ruff_Hi]

A couple of questions for my few readers ...

1. Was story too slow / fast?
   
2. Was the content right?
   
3. Anything more (or less) that you might want to see in future?
   
4. Did you feel ripped off when I called the game?
   
5. What did you think of my new screenshot toy (Highslide) that provided to 'pop out' pictures?
   [LIST=]
   
6. I really liked it - enables me to show bigger pictures than my site typically supports (780 pixels)
   
7. Also works like a charm for those 'graph summaries'
   
8. It was dead easy to set up ... web site linked to above gave plenty of different examples
   

[*]Based on my observed stats and ignoring the 16.5% people who hit my site using a phone (320-480px), 99.5% of people were using a screen with at least a resolution of 1024px. I might change my site to use that as a base instead of the 820 that I was previously using.
[/LIST]

[Dantski]

Not directly answering your questions perhaps but..

1. I felt like the content per page was relatively low, first 2 pages have 3 screenshots each and an amount of writing that doesn't encourage people to just skim read. The # of screenshots you were taking for the game in general was good but I feel like each page could be a little longer. We aren't in the 56k era now so you can fill pages up a little more.

2. Whats with the automatic -1 relations in this mod on meeting AI's?

3. The screenshots that popped out didn't pop out that far and really didn't allow me to see more than before. If they popped out significantly further they might let someone see more details (build times/resources/etc).

4. Calling the game was good in this case, mopping up for 50 turns is tedious. When something is tedious its unlikely you're going ot be motivated to post interesting content.

5. Your point 6 is isn't a question :neenernee I think that 0.5% not using 1024 was me on my laptop. I don't think using 1024 or 820 is that important.

[Brian Shanahan]

1) Have to agree with Dantski on low comment per page. I like a bit of analysis when reading others' games (a) helps me learn, b) I like reading)

2) As I said I'd like more analysis, but the content was good, giving me an idea of what was happening without overloading.

3) I think you could guess by now.

4) Haven't got that far.

5) I like it, gives you a chance to fit the pics around your site layout, but allows us to get more detail if needed.

6) I'm 1280*800 so a change up wouldn't affect me.

A question for you, how do you get the leaders randomly picked like that (the AI ones)? Anytime I've played an unrestricted leader game it's only me that gets the randomness.
I'm probably missing something obvious.

[T-hawk]

As Dantski said, too slow in the beginning. I'm not sure what to make of the content... it was a perfectly ordinary Monarch difficulty game, which isn't really compelling at this place in Civ 4's lifetime. Of course you were mostly showing off the mod which you did well.

[*]Did you feel ripped off when I called the game?
A little bit... I missed the "'mercy rule" declaration at first and nosed around for a minute looking for the "next" link until I realized what had happened. I think it's okay to do that, but you owe the reader at least a decently full paragraph exposition of the game situation and why continuing is not necessary. At least describe your path to what would be your victory.

[*]What did you think of my new screenshot toy (Highslide) that provided to 'pop out' pictures?
Er... I didn't even notice it, never moused over any of the clickable pictures. It's useful for those graphs.

[*]99.5% of people were using a screen with at least a resolution of 1024px.
Yeah, 1024 is the standard for web presentation nowadays. I write for not any fixed width and just let the text flow, but do try to keep screenshots under 1000 wide except for big overviews.

BTW, why is all the text italic? I feel like I'm reading something that somebody else quoted on a forum.

[Ruff_Hi]

1. I felt like the content per page was relatively low, first 2 pages have 3 screenshots each and an amount of writing that doesn't encourage people to just skim read. The # of screenshots you were taking for the game in general was good but I feel like each page could be a little longer. We aren't in the 56k era now so you can fill pages up a little more.

Thanks for your comments.

Yeah - you'll never get a T-Hawk analysis on something from me but I do tend to show more pics than write words.

I also think I tend (well, try) to hint at where I am going re strategy instead of laying out my strategy and then describing how I went on the execution side of things.

This report ran to 11 pages because I was playing a set, reporting on it, playing another set, reporting ... etc when usually, I play the whole thing and then report. If forced me to report stuff that I wouldn't have in the past.

My next scheduled game will not be quit - I totally don't see myself as dominating it. I have a few mods that I am putting together to play it so it will take me a while to play and report on it. I am hoping it will be an epic story.

2. Whats with the automatic -1 relations in this mod on meeting AI's?

No idea. I don't think it is BAT related (I would be very very surprised if it is). I put it down to 'Aggressive AI' being checked.

3. The screenshots that popped out didn't pop out that far and really didn't allow me to see more than before. If they popped out significantly further they might let someone see more details (build times/resources/etc).

Hmm - my hosting site has a hard limit of 250kb per file so I am limited to some degree on large pics. I had to offload 1 pic to photobucket in this report. Leave that with me.

What did you think about the single picture representing multiple graphs that you can 'zoom' in on with a click? I sometimes hover over screenshots and wait for the civ4 tool tip to come up.

5. Your point 6 is isn't a question :neenernee I think that 0.5% not using 1024 was me on my laptop. I don't think using 1024 or 820 is that important.

:neenernee to you too I would have had to be you and your +1 because it reported as 2 different IP addresses.

[Ruff_Hi]

A question for you, how do you get the leaders randomly picked like that (the AI ones)? Anytime I've played an unrestricted leader game it's only me that gets the randomness. I'm probably missing something obvious.

Thanks for your comments.

No idea - It always works that way for me when I select unrestricted leader. It shows the AI leader and civ as random.

[Ruff_Hi]

As Dantski said, too slow in the beginning. I'm not sure what to make of the content... it was a perfectly ordinary Monarch difficulty game, which isn't really compelling at this place in Civ 4's lifetime. Of course you were mostly showing off the mod which you did well.

Thanks for the comments.

Monarch was too easy for me - future reports will be Emperor+. Looking back at it, I guess I did show of BAT / BUG / BULL a little but I see that as my role (mod co-author and all that).

Not that I want to stir the 'BUG not for RB events' pot at all - I fully support it not being allowed and I am quite happy to carve out BUG components for approval as desired and my time permits.

[*]Did you feel ripped off when I called the game?
A little bit... I missed the "'mercy rule" declaration at first and nosed around for a minute looking for the "next" link until I realized what had happened. I think it's okay to do that, but you owe the reader at least a decently full paragraph exposition of the game situation and why continuing is not necessary. At least describe your path to what would be your victory.

Ahh - sorry about that. I did say that I was crushing my opponents (or thought I did) but I certainly didn't map out a VC. To be honest, WangKon was next to die and then Sury II (the toad) ... and that would give me all of the East side of the land.

[*]99.5% of people were using a screen with at least a resolution of 1024px.
Yeah, 1024 is the standard for web presentation nowadays. I write for not any fixed width and just let the text flow, but do try to keep screenshots under 1000 wide except for big overviews.

Noted. I like a little more structure (see comments below).

BTW, why is all the text italic? I feel like I'm reading something that somebody else quoted on a forum.

We once got a game report from Carrot that I really really liked and I've tried to model my reports on his (but without a slavish copy). My selection of italics was to present a more conversational tone and allow color to show quotes, call outs, etc. I just revisited his report and noted that his pictures don't show the grid or yield - I must remember to turn those off for screentaking purposes.

[Ilios]

FWIW Ruff, I enjoyed your report.

[Compromise]

Just read through it. I agree with most of the opinions expressed above.

For instance, instead of a screenshot of each leader as you meet them, use wide-view screenshot of the map with the leaders' capitals noted. Maybe the leader screenshots would be useful in a single Highslide that you could click on?

Also, summarize the quest offerings and your opinions in a short table indicating when you got each quest, what you thought about it, and when you finished/abandoned it.

It's difficult to follow the diplomacy from screenshots with a bit of text in between. An overview map with the various factions laid out, either color-coded or with added lines, would help understand the situation.

And since most of your readers have played lots of Civ, they will expect the AI's tactics to be quirky. Highlight only a few of the most interesting, perhaps again using Highslide to give a blow-by-blow of the tactics?

And yes, even though I was expecting it (because I read other people's opinions above), it was still a surprise when the report ended. Maybe put the "Mercy Rule" notice in the final paragraph so that the report ends with, well, the final decision.

I think Highslide has some real potential. Mostly as a way of providing graphic detail to those who want it, but not requiring every reader of your report to go through everything. Eg, what you did with "a few lucky combat results" was cool.

Finally, I always enjoy reports with a debriefing: what would you do differently next time. Not with spoiler information, of course, just decision making. Examples: I would've waited to trade for that tech or I would've researched it myself; I would've built cities in different places or different orders; Such and such building or unit or city was useless and I should have done <x> instead.

But thanks for the writeup. Always fun to see people thinking about and enjoying Civ!

PS: I love the bat watermark on the demographics screens!