Epics Feedback

[KMad]

1) How do you feel about the difficulty of the games we've been running? Would you like to see more Gentle/Medium/Extreme games?

i'm new and haven't won any yet, altho i did play out one to the bitter end so that counts right? even the extreme where i was in way over my head was fun. so i like the variety of levels.

2) Should we run more Warlords games? (I've been sticking mostly with Civ4 1.61 because the turnout was VERY low for the first two Warlords games, so please let me know if you want more games on the expansion!)

i play both but when i play warlords it's without vassals enabled 90% of the time, so it's kind of missing the point of warlords . what i want is for the RB designers to give us games they put their heart into, if that's one game more than the other, so be it .

3) What kind of games would you like to see? Let me give you some general types:

my thoughts on your general types:

a) i love trying, and most of all reading about successful, fastest finish type games, but i can get that from HoF gauntlets on CFC so i don't need it here.
b) points scoring events i haven't been a part of yet, but i am about to start the current ones. i've never tried to design a point system, i hope i never have to. i like that the systems in the two examples you mention are short and simple.
c) restrictive variants, some look crazy fun, some make me question your sanity (even more than i already did), some scare me to pieces. they're definitely fun to read about!
d) adventure 19 was the rule-breaker i was in, i don't know if there have been others. it was great giggles for me. i don't think we should do something that off the wall every month, but if someone could think of a different sort of crazy rule-bender a bit in the future i'd sure sign up for it too
e) no scoring doesn't bother me at all. i'm really new to all this so i'm in the "oh wow, we all started with the same thing but look how different we ended up!" honeymoon phase. i'm in the minority there looks like.

4) What game speeds should we use?

i can't stand quick, it throws me off. i'm very used to epic but am adjusting to normal now that i've started playing in SGs that use normal speed. so i'm okay on normal or epic, but quick i'd really think twice or three times about even downloading the file.

5) Are the games too long? Too short? There have been a lot of incomplete games turned in recently - should we try to implement scenarios that are easier to finish quickly?

my incomplete was from having left it too close to the deadline and then not going back to it, due to being more captivated by other things. signed up for a new SG, real life, this and that. it wasn't the scenario, it was me. i started the wang kon game, i haven't finished but it seems like it won't take long, i hope i didn't jinx myself into a 48-hour long game by saying that!

6) Anything else I haven't covered yet: what would you like to see that we're not providing right now?

cake like the little old lady says they serve at civanon.

[DaveV]

Any tips from the fathers around here regarding bringing girlfriend, baby, job & RB together?

Your real-life relationships are much more important than Civ. Spend time with your baby and your girlfriend as a first priority. Having fun in your spare time is fine, but make sure it *is* spare time. If you are playing Civ and neglecting your more important relationships, it sends a very clear message that even young kids (and especially spouses/girlfriends) will absorb.

[BWardly]

Any tips from the fathers around here regarding bringing girlfriend, baby, job & RB together?
mh

Whipping the baby will not make it grow up faster! Even if you give it a ton of surplus food first.

[Methos]

Any tips from the fathers around here regarding bringing girlfriend, baby, job & RB together?

mh

Our daughter will be seven weeks old this Saturday and I've found I play more Civ with her around than I did before. Civ4 is designed to be run entirely with the mouse, meaning I can hold and feed her with my left hand while playing with my right. My sessions may not be as long, but I tend to play more.

Our daughter won't take to the breast, so my wife pumps and we feed by bottle. While my wife is pumping I'm feeding and watching her (while playing civ). When she wakes us up in the middle of the night the first thing I do is turn the computer on, than get her ready.

Getting her to sleep is often my job too (also done at the computer). Putting a boppy in my lap and having her sleep on it works very well. Plus she's right in front of me (for those times I have trouble getting my eyes off the screen).

Other than the occaisional "Hon, she's been sucking on an empty bottle for a few minutes now", everything is going great!

[VoiceOfUnreason]

With the disclaimer that I may not be the right audience here (It's been almost a year since I finished a game, including solo play....)

1) How do you feel about the difficulty of the games we've been running? Would you like to see more Gentle/Medium/Extreme games?

I was drawn in by Adventure 2, at a time when I may not have beaten Normal speed yet. So I'm at the Extreme game end of the spectrum

2) Should we run more Warlords games? (I've been sticking mostly with Civ4 1.61 because the turnout was VERY low for the first two Warlords games, so please let me know if you want more games on the expansion!)

I want more games that generate reports from the good players. That seems to mean more 'nilla games... I wish that the enthusiasm had been transfered to Warlords, because I prefer the fixes that went into that game. But it hasn't happened.

3) What kind of games would you like to see? Let me give you some general types:
a) Fastest-finish competitions (ex: Adventure Four)
b) Points scoring (ex: Warlords Three, Epic Eleven)
c) Restrictive variant (ex: Always War, Honorable ruleset, etc.)
d) "crazy" rule-breaking game (ex: Adventure Nineteen)
e) no scoring

Of late, the games I've enjoyed most have been the "oh, I didn't know the game could do THAT" sorts of things. So the Theme based scoring variants haven't gotten me very interested, as compared to game mechanic scoring (Epic Three?)

4) What game speeds should we use? More Epic speed, less Epic speed? Should we experiment with Quick or Marathon speeds? (There was a very low turnout for Quick speed in Adventure Seven, and Marathon is pretty broken, but we CAN run games if there is desire for them.)

No strong opinions

5) Are the games too long? Too short? There have been a lot of incomplete games turned in recently - should we try to implement scenarios that are easier to finish quickly?

Length hasn't been playing into my ennui at all - I've been abandoning games at the end of the opening - there's not much you can do about that.

6) Anything else I haven't covered yet: what would you like to see that we're not providing right now?

I wonder about MOD based games. It would be nice to see a game where whipping works the way it should....

[Sullla]

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who shared their thoughts in this thread. The comments have been excellent, and will be incoporated into future games immediately. I don't have the time to respond to each of you individually, but let me summarize some of the major talking points. Warning: Sirian-esque length post to follow.

- Generally speaking, the community seems to be pretty happy with the mixture of difficulty levels that we're running. There were several suggestions for a few more relatively unrestricted games at Emperor difficulty, which I'm going to implement as soon as we run through our current slate. Darrelljs contacted me with a great idea along these lines, which we'll put into practice sometime later this summer.

I'm going to scale back the Gentle Adventure just slightly; I chose to run two of them relatively close together (Adv 18 and the soon-to-open Adv 20) because I wanted to pull some more faces into the community. Ordinarily, I expect that about 1 out of every 6-7 games will be in the "Gentle" category. They're great as change of pace scenarios and to infuse our community with new blood, but shouldn't be the central focus. (Largely because our players often advance past this stage very quickly!)

- There is not a clear agreement about how we should handle the Warlords expansion. I'm torn about how best to deal with the issue, because a majority of the community either prefers Civ4 1.61 or simply does not own Warlords, yet we have a significant minority that would prefer to be using the expansion (minus vassal states). I'm actually very happy that Ruff is running a game right now on Warlords, since it will serve as a gauge on community interest. Hopefully, the low turnout for Warlords One and Two were due to the fact that they were unappetizing scenarios, not due to a lack of interest in the expansion itself.

In any case, with the release of another expansion shortly which will surely contain all of the features added in Warlords, I'm taking a "wait and see" policy for the moment. My hope is that Beyond the Sword will be the definitive version of Civ4, we'll all love it, and that will be that. If it's poorly balanced though, we'll have another can of worms to sort out.

- On that note, it was suggested that we drop the "Warlords" tag for expansion games in the future, and I agree with this idea. In light of the second expansion, this will just get too confusing. In the future, all games will simply be Epics or Adventures - just make sure to pay attention to the version in the scenario description!

- In terms of what types of games to run, there is also no clear agreement, but this isn't really a bad thing. With preferences all over the place, we will keep running all different kinds of scenarios and leave it up to each individual to pick which ones look most appealing. In fact, quite a few people said that they were happy with the current crop, which I take as a good sign. The only type of game that attracted a sizable number of negative comments was the "fastest finish" concept, with several folks mentioning that this was something better left to the CivFanatics Game of the Month and Hall of Fame. An excellent point. I won't rule out these types of games completely (they're fun to break out from time to time, especially if combined with some kind of restriction) but they can be given less of an emphasis in the future.

- There was a very wide consensus that Normal and Epic game speeds are the ones to keep using. Some prefer Normal, some prefer Epic, and a good majority seem happy with either one. There was enough interest in Quick game speed to perhaps very rarely run a game on that, but certainly not often. (Perhaps a revival of T-Hawk's "Speed Racer" game, Civ3 Epic 24, at some point?) I heard absolutely zero interest in Marathon speed, so we will not be using that one. Which is probably a good thing, since it's broken.

- On a related note to the game speed issue, there were several requests for longer game lengths, to avoid running out of time. I'm somewhat reluctant to do that, because that means fewer overall scenarios and more downtime between playing and reporting for those that finish early. However, there is a point to be made here. I'd like to keep the games on Normal speed to the standard 4-week length if at all possible (with exceptions for unusual conditions) but I will look into having some longer lengths for Epic speed games that involve a lot of fighting or the like. Clearly 5 weeks was NOT enough time for a lot of people in Epic Ten, for example.

- T-Hawk suggested that we ditch the linking of Epic speed to games that revisit the Civ3 Epics. I agree, and was thinking about moving in this direction already. I did want to stick with the Civ3 Epics for Civ4's Epic Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, but after that we'll move away from the list for good. (I was sticking to the list because I felt those games fit well with the schedule; Civ3's Epic 13 "Passive-Aggressive" would NOT be a good fit because so many community members have just played out that variant in succession games.)

In the future, I would like to continue using the name "Epics" for games on Epic speed, and "Adventures" for games on Normal/Quick. This has been the established trend, and otherwise we might as well ditch the whole notion of Adventures altogether. But the Epics won't necessarily have anything to do with the Civ3 Epics, or they might reprise games out of order, or whatever. This makes the most sense to me logically.

- There were also some comments that we try to tailor the length of games (including game speed) to the type of victory being pursued, the best example being T-Hawk's criticism of Epic speed for Epic Eleven. Now there actually IS a reason for that in Epic Eleven (which I will explain after the game closes) but the general point is well taken. In the future, we'll try to use Normal speed for games that wouldn't gain much from Epic speed, particularly builder ones. An Always War variant, on the other hand, should probably be on Epic. I will keep this in mind, believe me.

- Quite a few people mentioned that they enjoyed the "Comments from the Sponsor" idea. I hope that we can keep this going too; darrelljs did a great job explaining his thoughts on Adventure Nineteen, and hopefully Ruff will do the same with his game. I still have a number of questions about some of the earlier games (especially Epic Six, the Always War one) that Sirian never answered... Anyway, the comments are a good trend that should continue.

- There was also some mention of frustration with slowness in getting the main RB website updated. This is simply out of my control. I have requested access to the RB server multiple times, but it has not been granted to me. I am trying to do the best I can here, putting preliminary results up on my own personal webspace within 3 days of each game's closing, but I simply cannot touch the main website without access to the server. Results for Epic 10, Adv 19, and a Worldbuilder file for Adv 19 were also sent to Griselda over a week ago now. I hope that she will have time to add them soon.

I would also like to update the succession game page and add results for the "missing" Epics/Adventures, but it seems silly to do that work until the current backload gets solved.

* * * * *

OK, I think that addresses everything. Again, thank you all for your comments and make sure to have a nice weekend!

[T-hawk]

(Perhaps a revival of T-Hawk's "Speed Racer" game, Civ3 Epic 24, at some point?)

When you're ready, I'd be happy to step up and sponsor. Civ 4 supports this perfectly with the "Always Peace" option. That's what I was going for in the original, hence all the weird rules tweaks, which would be unnecessary in Civ 4.

[Ruff_Hi]

Quite a few people mentioned that they enjoyed the "Comments from the Sponsor" idea. I hope that we can keep this going too ... hopefully Ruff will do the same with his game.

Already written!

[Compromise]

I thought of one other issue: tribal villages.

While I enjoy the mini-game of trying to grab huts before the AI gets them, huts add a big element of randomness to the game that is largely outside the player's strategic control.

I like being able to compare between different players' games, but when one person pops Bronzeworking and another loses her first warrior to barbs from the same hut, that seems unfair. I'd rather have the comparisons be based on strategy rather than luck. And with religions, AI wonder choices and war declarations, I think there's plenty of randomness already.

It's not a dealbreaker for me, but for competitive games, this is an issue that scenario designers might wish to consider.

Edit: I completely agree with Atlas' assessment (in the next post) of how huts influence the game.

[Atlas]

I thought of one other issue: tribal villages.

While I enjoy the mini-game of trying to grab huts before the AI gets them, huts add a big element of randomness to the game that is largely outside the player's strategic control.

I like being able to compare between different players' games, but when one person pops Bronzeworking and another loses her first warrior to barbs from the same hut, that seems unfair. I'd rather have the comparisons be based on strategy rather than luck. And with religions, AI wonder choices and war declarations, I think there's plenty of randomness already.

It's not a dealbreaker for me, but for competitive games, this is an issue that scenario designers might wish to consider.

I agree, the randomness of the huts is.... well pretty random. I think that the difficulty level should be a consideration in choosing to use huts or not.

On High levels the huts help the AI and generally provide the player with little benefit, but on lower levels they provide a bonus that is nice. I mean the Mansa Money Bags reports where people popped Currency or Bronze Working were just priceless. I loved them. I think for the easier games huts should be default, for normal games huts should be considered for their role in the variant/game, and for the extreme games I think huts would need a compelling reason to be enabled.

Huts have a place at RB (IMHO because they can be fun), but not in every game. They can make games easier and more difficult depending on the level and certainly make the game more random. I think they will end up being something that each sponsor should consider on a per game basis.