|
Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
|
PBEM25 Organizing/Tech Thread
|
Ceiliazul Wrote:Wow Comm, that took like 3 seconds! Some mere pedestrians lurk. I lurk. Seriously, though, I was just glancing at the thread the right time. I promise as a ded-lurker my mission will be to make the other guys paranoid.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. Ceiliazul Wrote:I'm an MP rookie, I'd like to join this game if it shapes up as a newcomers' game. I can play 0500-0700 GMT best I'm technically a newcomer! I have very few posts here! Pref settings btw: NTT Emperor (let's keep expansion honest for a change) Quick Speed Ancient start (later eras take a long time to set up tech pace and often end in spam of the era units) Espionage is a wash for me I thought with PBEM the play time wasn't specific? Am I mistaken? How does it work? Edit: I'm all for banning elephants and the "balanced resource" setting if we don't have a tailored map. There are a few CIVS I really don't want to see: Inca: You don't have a strat resource or aggressive, and inca can basically cheese choke you at minimal cost. No thanks Mali: Exact same thing, except weak to Inca. If we all have a reasonable early strat resource, the others shouldn't be too bad.
Preferred Settings:
Quick Speed (though I am not averse to normal) No Active Espionage No Tech Trading No Elephants, Nukes or Corporations No Inca or India No Financial Leaders or Sury Noble/Prince Difficulty (am not picky) Barbs On - raging would be an interesting change of pace  Normal Diplomacy Screenshot Trading/Diplo allowed after having met in game Huts Off Events Off Vassal States Off Permanent Alliances Off No Coastal Blockades Heroic Epic/West Point qualifying unit has to be your own As for the map, I would personally prefer something lightly edited and natural feeling with reasonably balanced starts; i.e. - no one is screwed for strategic resources.
So we have 8 (I think) signups now, which is a tad too much for just one game. So we should split it into 2 games then.
For a twist, how about we copy PBEM4 and have both games play the same map? One game for Greens and another for the Vets?
If you're splitting into two games it seems to me you should take advantage of divergent preferences; i.e. have one game high difficulty / one low, or one game with diplo and one without.
Preferred Settings (and a few questions)
Quick Speed Espionage on! :neenernee Why does everybody hate this, is it overpowered or plain annoying somehow? I must have admit I haven't actually gotten around to doing any espionage yet  No Tech Trading Quote:No Elephants, Nukes or CorporationsAre elephants overpowered? If so, how? What's the downside to nukes and corporations? I'd really prefer all civilizations and leaders being allowed, with restricted leaders on. Experienced players could voluntarily handicap themselves a little (since this shapes up to be a newbie game), taking on a challenging combination. Can we agree to some minor anti-rush rule? Emperor difficulty (what I've been playing with, I like the reduced expansion speed) Barbarians On, but raging might end up with me being a dead newbie Quote:Normal DiplomacyWhat are the alternatives? Screenshot Trading/Diplo allowed after having met in game Huts On Events On Vassal States Off Permanent Alliances Off Quote:No Coastal BlockadesIs this overpowered, or just annoying? Quote:As for the map, I would personally prefer something lightly edited and natural feeling with reasonably balanced starts; i.e. - no one is screwed for strategic resources.Also, I'd love to have WarriorKnight on my team. If another team were to form we'd have 6 signups, would that be doable? oledavvy and Cull both explained a wish to play with a team mate as well. I imagine teams would be a little faster than solo players. I also like the greens vs vets idea, though. Catwalk Wrote:Espionage on! :neenernee Why does everybody hate this, is it overpowered or plain annoying somehow? I must have admit I haven't actually gotten around to doing any espionage yet Both, can be used in a variety of ways to be extremely game-breaking PBEM13 Spoiler Catwalk Wrote:Are elephants overpowered? If so, how? What's the downside to nukes and corporations? Elephants = An eight strength two-move unit that comes online at construction. They completely dominate the medieval battlefield. Late game turns into nuclear holocaust when nukes are on. Banning them allows for conventional warfare instead of just nuking your opponent to death. For corporations see Krill in PBEM4 to get an idea of just how game breaking they can be. Catwalk Wrote:What are the alternatives? A no diplomacy game or limited to in game diplomacy. Catwalk Wrote:Is this overpowered, or just annoying? Coastal blockades allow you to basically deny large numbers of tiles and starve coastal cities with a few ships. I'm would be okay with not banning it. It just is a really annoying and imho broken game mechanic. Catwalk Wrote:I imagine teams would be a little faster than solo players. I also like the greens vs vets idea, though. I'm open to the idea of parallel games, however, I think it may be a better idea to only do one game in the interest of not keeping too many PBEMs going at once. Additionally, having multiple people on each team would work better for keeping the save moving.
We're okay with espionage on, it's just that the people don't like the spy unit simply because they're too good as sentry units. A spy in neutral territory is untouchable, and settling a couple of them in good spots is impossible to dislodge. Considering how important vision is in MP games, they're too good. Sentry nets should be vulnerable to attack. Hence we're just not allowed to build spy units (and hence can't run spy missions), but feel free to allocate EPs to anyone.
Elephants are overpowered because whoever gets ivory will absolutely dominate that era. Cheap macemen? Hell yeah. Nukes are overpowered because again they will dominate that era, whoever gets them first will land some on everyone else's capitals and cripple them. Corporations I'm a bit iffy on. Barbarians are a bit random, but we tend to tolerate them. We never have anti-rush rules, rushing is already hard enough to make pay off. Huts and events off, they're way too random and there's nothing as unbalanced as say popping horseback riding from a hut. Coastal blockades are brokenly powerful, there's no reason for a galley to blockade tiles they can't even move to (3-tiles away). If they only affected the square the galley is sitting in, that'd be okay. Quote:Are elephants overpowered? If so, how? What's the downside to nukes and corporations? Yes, noobiphants are overpowered. At 8 str, they can get 5 xp easily w/o civics and come at the same time as late classical units like catapult. Why so overpowered then? They have the same anti-mounted strength as a pikeman (an entire era and 1000's of beakers in front), have winning odds against spears in their own era, and completely break normal medieval counters to classical melee like maces and xbows in the strength of raw base str and access to shock. Simply put, nothing can attack a basic axe/elephant combo effectively until MUSKETS, and thats a CLASSICAL era units getting this! Coupled with the fact that they are rare and tend to spawn in bunches near only a few civs, elephants are understandably suggested to be banned. What irks many is that they weren't even close to that good historically! Quote:Experienced players could voluntarily handicap themselves a little (since this shapes up to be a newbie game), taking on a challenging combination. Can we agree to some minor anti-rush rule? If I actually believed you guys weren't sandbagging me (I have MP experience, but it's limited) I would accept some cherry tapping and use say washington/america or some such. However, absolutely no on the "no rush" rule. That's going to allow people to expand with impunity, and who is best equipped to take advantage of that? Good players. It's not a rule that will help rooks much, but skips an important part of learning the game. Quote:Emperor difficulty (what I've been playing with, I like the reduced expansion speed) The problem with barbs is that they are ALWAYS chancy. There is ALWAYS a chance that someone gets very unlucky and loses a city at a 1% chance of it happening. I've lost a city with a full health archer to a damaged warrior...later in the game you can use collateral and #'s planning to circumvent this, but in the very early goings the amount to prepare to have NO chance of getting barb-screwed is so much that it's a sucker bet. I think barbs, huts, events are all 100% objectively terrible ideas in competitive MP settings. We don't need additional luck factors above and beyond player choice. Emperor I have no problem with. I am not a fan of someone getting horse archers t13, nor am I a fan of losing instantly (though rare, it can happen with events where ALL your navy in a tile disappears or you get an uprising before it's possible to defend). I'm not a fan of roman tower shields near me. These things are a farce in competitive play  .Quote:Is this overpowered, or just annoying? I don't see why they're such a big deal. Much more deadly is when they just burn your cities. More importantly, naval investment is a very real strategic decision made by the player, much unlike huts/events. Quote:I imagine teams would be a little faster than solo players. I also like the greens vs vets idea, though. Who are our vets? I ask this somewhat seriously, because on these forums I'm new and largely only know previous pitboss players from reading up. About PBEM 13: |
