EitB XXXVIII Setup and Tech Thread

[Kragroth]

Kragroth, I understand that you mean well, and your desire to get this game started quickly is commendable, but I think you may be getting ahead of yourself here. As mapmaker I cannot in good conscience implement settings which have only one vote as of an arbitrary deadline unilaterally declared by one player. I also do not understand why ties are being decided one way or another in favor of "defaults". For settings where you have a clear consensus, such as huts, no more work needs to be done. Telling me to ban Orthus on the basis of 2v1 votes however puts me in an awkward place, and I'd really rather not make a decision until I know what the majority of players want.

Thanks. Note a couple of things: 1. Really Evil Muffin is a new player and has a natural lack of opinions. Eclipse has barely made any notes on desired settings. So yes some of these things don't and won't have the full contingent of votes. At the very least putting all of these up gives people an incentive to say something. If people have the opportunity to say something and do not, then you should feel more confident I 2v1 and other decisions.

2. You have to have a method to resolve ties. If 3 players want something and 3 do not, you need a tiebreaker. The natural tie breaker is the default setting. I.e. if 3 players want barbs and 3 do not, the players who want them win by default because barbs are a base setting.

3. If people are going to commit to playing roughly a turn a day for thr next x period of time, it's not unreasonable to ask them to vote on the settings that directly affect the game. 2 days should be more than enogh time to vote. By Wednesday night peo0le should have had plenty opportunity to post their say and for you to start working on the msp.

[Qgqqqqq]

I never voted for no tsunami or no stasis. I simply said those were things people commonly banned - as a matter of fact, I'm in favor of including both.

As for events:

Core Events:

• Armageddon Counter Events
  
• Insanity Trait Event
  
• Adaptive Trait Event
  

That's the sort of things that are integral to the game, and are lost with no events. Another that comes to mind is Aeron's Chosen, and I know there are more. Yes, FFH was originally designed for vanilla civ...but there's a reason we all play FFH2. Many of the mechanisms of FFH would not be possible without many BTS features, and one of those is events.

Kragroth, its been under two days since we even knew what the teams were. I'm all for getting this rolling, but given we're going to be playing this game for several months, I'd prefer everyone gets ample oppurtunity to weigh in rather than have discontent from the outset.

[Kragroth]

If you wanna go quoting:

some FFH mechanics are handled under the hood as events so the "no events" option was mainly for debugging. now however you could turn off random events completely for a more balanced game.

At any rate. Aeron's Chosen = Unbalanced. Armageddon Counter = Unbalanced at its core (besides you voted for Hallowed Ground which nixes it anyway). I will concede that if we have someone who wants to be an Adaptive or Insane leader then we should allow events for that person's sake. However, please note that this issue needs a patch for the next release, disabling events should disable all events other than the AC, Adaptive, and Insane Events. The whole point of EITB is balancing the game and events ARE unbalanced!

I don't want discontent either, but we can't wait forever. Give everyone until Thursday night to choose the game settings. Seriously, we expect people to take 5 minutes each day to play a turn, it's not unreasonable to ask them to take 5 minutes and thoroughly vote on this stuff in the next couple of days.

I'll modify your votes to be pro stasis and pro tsunami. Let the record state that I am now anti-Tsunami.

[Kredom]

the only thing i would like to note, is that luck is part of any strategic game, events are part of it, as are the barbarians, the huts and everything else that gives eitb, fall from heaven, or civ its appeal.

I understand if you leave everything on in the game, it would be too much decided by luck, but i dont like the idea of leaving everything off.

I want at least events on. there are some civs better prepared to handle bad events, and that is part of the balance. There are civs that can go hut hunting, without the concern of barbarians, while other civs get better initial units to handle barbs, and other civ that need to risk ealy expansion, to get to the late unstoppable units.
The events issue doesnt need to be fix. It might be good to be able to disable the option, but we've been playing for years with it, and sometime you are lucky, and sometimes you are not (iam usually the unlucky one)
this is why i voted (and you didnt count me) that i want huts, lairs, and events on.

[Qgqqqqq]

Kragroth, I plan to implement an option called Non-Core Events Disabled in the next version of EitB. It wont be available for this game, but we are working towards it in the future, and there will be an option for it - just be patient

Kredom, REM, I've started us a thread in this forum.

[Kredom]

Anyone is against this settings?

Barbs: Yes.
Huts: No or far away (mapmakers choice)
Lairs: No or far away (mapmakers choice)
Events: Yes.
Victory Types: Conquest and Domination
Map: Inland Sea perhaps with Islands (mapmakers choice)
Speed: Normal/Quick (i think quick will be too quick)
Difficulty: Mapmakers pick (suggestion: Immortal)
Always War: Yes
Orthus: No
Acheron: No
Raging Barbs: No (althouh i would like yes, to make things harder at the begining)
All Unique Features: mapmakers choice
Living World: No
Tech Trading: No
Wildlands: Yes
Hallowed Ground: mapmakers choice
Tsunami: No 2v1
Compact Enforced: off
Stasis: Yes
Duplicate Civs: Yes (not in the same team)
Ban Clan: No
Gifting Cities: Yes ( "on the first turn in your teams possession only.")
Infernals/basium: off

any1 want to change any of those settings? and why?

Perhaps if city giting is off, some strategie are useless, and clan becomes more balanced.

[Kragroth]

I'll make a new post to tally votes with name later. I'll be sure to include your previous emails. As a note though my previous summation is pretty accurate.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Barbs: No
Huts: No
Lairs: No
Events: Unsure how important they are to eitb, preferably no
Victory Types: Conquest and Domination
Map: Inland Sea perhaps with Islands (mapmakers choice)
Speed: Unsure what works best
Difficulty: Mapmakers pick
Always War: Yes
Orthus: No
Acheron: No
Raging Barbs: No
Living World: No
Tech Trading: No
Wildlands: No idea
Hallowed Ground: no idea
Tsunami: No idea
Compact Enforced: no idea
Stasis: No idea
Duplicate Civs: Yes (not in the same team)
Ban Clan: No
Gifting Cities: Yes ( "on the first turn in your teams possession only.")
Infernals/basium: off

any1 want to change any of those settings? and why?

Perhaps if city giting is off, some strategie are useless, and clan becomes more balanced.
[/quote]

I think barbs/huts/lairs/events off should be standard. If you are worried enough for a map that you want to mirror it or hand draw it for balance, then you shouldn't want to introduce elements that could completely throw the game out of balance like an unlucky barb spawn. I don't understand that logic at all, unless barbs are integral to the way that eitb works. The only time I understand barbs to be useful is to provide hassle to civs who would otherwise have easy expansion time over civs clustered. But with a made map that should not be an issue.

Bare in mind what is essentially large duel with always war will involve early skirmishing, having barbs on ruins the fun of those completely. There isn't much point sending a unit or 2 to harass the enemy for them to be killed by barbs en route, or worse help the enemy by clearing barbs near their lands for them.

So I think barbs make the game much less fun

[Qgqqqqq]

Kredom, those seem fine. The only one I'd want to clarify is speed being quick - honestly, I hate to make drama, but I'm not sure I'd want to play a normal speed game. Bear in mind that the Pitboss had quick speed with three civs but the tech pace was still very slow (because of Deity/huge, but my point is we don't need to go to normal - and accept a massive slowdown in game speed - to avoid the techs rocketing by).

@REM: We've established that events need to be on for some of the leaders to function correctly.

[Kragroth]

Only if people choose an adaptive or insane leader.

For sameness sake Q, could you post your exact feelings? I'll collate these later