Best Victory, listed alphabetically:
Compromise - Domination, 1320 AD
Qgqqqqq - Diplomacy, 1898 AD
regoarrarr - Space, 1894 AD
Ronald - Domination, 1824 AD
sunrise089 - Space, 1941 AD
Normal Victory:
Jaxian - Culture, 1816 AD
Congratulations to all the winners.
Normally I post sponsor comments as a prelude to my own report, but I didn't play this one, so here you go now.
The idea came to me when thinking through other BTS features that we turned into full games. Colonies in Colonization, corporations in Something Fishy and Friendly Takeover, forest preserves in Tree Huggers, and enhanced Golden Age in Mach Five. Then during a game of Alpha Centauri when looking at infiltration info, it came to me to do that in Civ 4 with passive espionage. I could have set up the EP directly with DLL hacking, but it seemed a lot more fun and sizzley to let the players do it themselves with Great Spies.
Inca fell into place as the player's civilization. We've never used it because of Huayna's obviously overpoweredness, and the swingy nature of a quechua rush, but it worked well here. Financial and Industrious should let you snag techs and wonders just ahead of rivals. And if there was any time to permit a quechua rush, this would work, with the variables of scouting and directional guessing taken out of play by the spies. Looks like nobody tried it, which is probably just as well. (I really don't know if it works on speeds other than Marathon, or if the AI hooks up metal or horses too fast.)
The variant rule against spending EP came into place naturally. The scenario wasn't meant to give dozens of cheaply stolen techs, just the passive info. It was unavoidable that the EP would still allow a deep discount on stealing techs, so I worked around that by categorizing the victory results as you saw. Stealing was available as a crutch if you wanted, but not necessary.
And culture victory is also an easy way out, so it was demoted although not banned. It was left enabled because I wanted the AIs to try culture and the player perhaps to see that via the espionage and have to stop it. Looks like the AIs didn't quite perform strongly enough to seriously threaten for culture, although Mansa in Sunrise's game turned in a hilarious result, getting his capital past double legendary but the third city at only 16k.
One problem was that the AIs would eventually accumulate enough EP that you'd lose the passive visibility. I chose the AIs mostly to alleviate that; all of them have a lower than normal propensity for espionage. The low-espionage group turned out as a decently good mix of builders and aggressors which was fine.
Donut was the map script because of its predictable shape, that you could scout it easily with the spies and get onto the business of espionage. I actually made pretty minimal editing - mostly just added several goody huts for the spies to play with, and a couple of the Calendar luxury resources. Mansa landed as the player's neighbor and I left him there, expecting that the player could either make religious buddies with him for trading, or else conquer him as a low-military soft target. I did notice the asymmetric distribution of the AI starting locations, giving Cyrus a lot of land on the far side, which I welcomed to let him pose some late game rivalry for the player.
Anyway, sounds like players enjoyed it. It was indeed timed right in a lull between major multiplayer events. Six full reports plus late Timmy does indicate enough interest to keep going.
I have another idea on the stack, which may have a bit of technical challenge to set up, but I'll see if I can open it by this Monday to give something to do before the CFC and RB demogames really start. It will be an easier "just for fun" type of scenario, with tech trading most definitely OFF.
Compromise - Domination, 1320 AD
Qgqqqqq - Diplomacy, 1898 AD
regoarrarr - Space, 1894 AD
Ronald - Domination, 1824 AD
sunrise089 - Space, 1941 AD
Normal Victory:
Jaxian - Culture, 1816 AD
Congratulations to all the winners.
Normally I post sponsor comments as a prelude to my own report, but I didn't play this one, so here you go now.
The idea came to me when thinking through other BTS features that we turned into full games. Colonies in Colonization, corporations in Something Fishy and Friendly Takeover, forest preserves in Tree Huggers, and enhanced Golden Age in Mach Five. Then during a game of Alpha Centauri when looking at infiltration info, it came to me to do that in Civ 4 with passive espionage. I could have set up the EP directly with DLL hacking, but it seemed a lot more fun and sizzley to let the players do it themselves with Great Spies.
Inca fell into place as the player's civilization. We've never used it because of Huayna's obviously overpoweredness, and the swingy nature of a quechua rush, but it worked well here. Financial and Industrious should let you snag techs and wonders just ahead of rivals. And if there was any time to permit a quechua rush, this would work, with the variables of scouting and directional guessing taken out of play by the spies. Looks like nobody tried it, which is probably just as well. (I really don't know if it works on speeds other than Marathon, or if the AI hooks up metal or horses too fast.)
The variant rule against spending EP came into place naturally. The scenario wasn't meant to give dozens of cheaply stolen techs, just the passive info. It was unavoidable that the EP would still allow a deep discount on stealing techs, so I worked around that by categorizing the victory results as you saw. Stealing was available as a crutch if you wanted, but not necessary.
And culture victory is also an easy way out, so it was demoted although not banned. It was left enabled because I wanted the AIs to try culture and the player perhaps to see that via the espionage and have to stop it. Looks like the AIs didn't quite perform strongly enough to seriously threaten for culture, although Mansa in Sunrise's game turned in a hilarious result, getting his capital past double legendary but the third city at only 16k.
One problem was that the AIs would eventually accumulate enough EP that you'd lose the passive visibility. I chose the AIs mostly to alleviate that; all of them have a lower than normal propensity for espionage. The low-espionage group turned out as a decently good mix of builders and aggressors which was fine.
Donut was the map script because of its predictable shape, that you could scout it easily with the spies and get onto the business of espionage. I actually made pretty minimal editing - mostly just added several goody huts for the spies to play with, and a couple of the Calendar luxury resources. Mansa landed as the player's neighbor and I left him there, expecting that the player could either make religious buddies with him for trading, or else conquer him as a low-military soft target. I did notice the asymmetric distribution of the AI starting locations, giving Cyrus a lot of land on the far side, which I welcomed to let him pose some late game rivalry for the player.
Anyway, sounds like players enjoyed it. It was indeed timed right in a lull between major multiplayer events. Six full reports plus late Timmy does indicate enough interest to keep going.
I have another idea on the stack, which may have a bit of technical challenge to set up, but I'll see if I can open it by this Monday to give something to do before the CFC and RB demogames really start. It will be an easier "just for fun" type of scenario, with tech trading most definitely OFF.
