Adventure 57 - Comments and Scoring

[Ceiliazul]

Woah, something civ5 did right?? lol. I wish for a Civ5 expansion that lets you play Civ4 mechanics on hexes and with better graphics. (I know it'll never happen for both technical and business reasons.)

[timmy827]

Civilization V did barbarians extremely well, I think. Your concerns aren't directed so much against barbarians themselves as against the swingy nature of one-on-one unit fights or one-on-zero situations where a lone unit can wreck a worker and city. Civ 5 combat is inherently much less swingy, and cities possessing innate combat strength alleviates the latter. And the mechanic of recapturing workers is genius: turns an adversarial setback into a fun side quest. Overall it does have that smooth gradiation of barbarian activity.

Yes, you're right about what bugs me, and I'll concur that Civ5 does address that concern well. Some of that comes at a cost though - the less swingy combat is largely because there are multiple rounds, and I think that has to go with 1UPT or similar restriction on army size; Civ4 stacks where each unit was expected to last 3-5 rounds of combat seems like a clicking/micro nightmare. Maybe Sullla's 'new civ' idea of large army sizes working like MOO ship stacks would allow some good solution.
(The city innate strength and ability to bombard a unit down over a few turns doesn't need to be beholden to 1UPT, though in a 'stacks' game like civ4 it would be hard to have a city strength that was useful but not OP against barbarians, but not useless against a real player/AI stack.)

[Merovech]

Where is this succession game located?

The teach-a-man-to-fish department should tell you to just go to Civfanatics and search for threads started by Sullla, but here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=289313

Hey, timmy827 was on that roster, I'd forgotten that.

Wow, that was an interesting read. I've messed around with Rhye's in the past, and while I think that I like the mod overall, the lack of documentation prevented me from playing it much back then, and now knowing how deep the hidden mechanics really go means I probably never will.

[superjm]

Woah, something civ5 did right?? lol. I wish for a Civ5 expansion that lets you play Civ4 mechanics on hexes and with better graphics. (I know it'll never happen for both technical and business reasons.)

The SDK does exist you know, surely someone could explore something like this

[Compromise]

...

So take 250*1.626 = 407 points off my score, final score = 6861 - 407 = 6454.

Feel better Compromise?

I don't feel better; you completely kicked my <bleep>. Makes me look forward to the next event with even more bated breath....

This has been tried from time to time in Civ games. Civ 3 had random occurrences of disease in cities (-2 population) and Civ 4 has assorted random events. And there are mods that introduce such things, or attempt to recreate other historical backslides like the fall of Rome. Turns out that players hate hate HATE adversarial shit messing with their strategy. (Read the succession game where Sullla plays Rhye's and Fall for some serious rage.) So we have yet to come up with a palatable way to satisfyingly model this sort of stuff in a game.

I've been thinking about this a bit. The point of Guns Germs and Steel (GG&S) is that the guns and steel are a result of lots and lots of civ vs civ conflict. The civs who survive are better armed, and eventually their neighbors get the same techs and on it goes. So, you expect the civs with more neighbors to be better at warfare than those who develop in isolation. This is reasonably well modeled in Civ with tech research bonuses, trade routes, tech and resource trading.

The germs part of GG&S is a result of both the inter-civ contact and the fact that living in close quarters with other mammals (esp pigs and poultry) gives rise to epidemics that may devastate the population and even remain endemic in a less severe form. The price is population loss. The "benefit" is that if a formerly isolated civ is found, they will not have any immunity to the disease(s).

Eg influenza and smallpox old world to new world; syphilis went new world to old....

This isn't modeled at all in Civ. And random events are a terrible way to try to implement it because they don't carry the "benefit" of being able to infect those whom you meet later. For this to be palatable, it would have to be almost like the religion, barbarian-spawn, great person mixed generation, or wonder (it occurs somewhere, to someone, and you can aim for it) systems...somewhat predictable, but only in a statistical sense.

But much of the hate for the events system is that it interrupts all those great plans one has for one's empire. It's very satisfying to complete that World Wonder on exactly the turn you calculated some 30 turns earlier. Oh no...a slave revolt. Oh yay: Tin! Those are too disjointed, too random.

So...yes: I don't see a way to easily implement the "germs" of GG&S without irritating us micromanagers. The turn by turn, tile by tile planning just doesn't lend itself well to random events, especially negative ones.

@T-Hawk and Qgqqqqq: Again, thanks for a great map. I didn't notice the new world edits at all, and only found one un-nettable Fish resource way off near Pacal in the old world. And the developed barbarian super-continent was quite unique. Very well done indeed!

[Ceiliazul]

Agree, the barbs were perfect. I think Ruff created a PBEM map with strong barbs and the basically destroyed the 4 human civs in tech and religion...

[NobleHelium]

Well that's because that was actually an Emperor-level AI.

[T-hawk]

I don't feel better; you completely kicked my <bleep>. Makes me look forward to the next event with even more bated breath....

I'm working with a sponsor on an event we're hoping to open this upcoming Monday. It will be along the lines of a comment you made somewhere around here recently, focusing on a smaller number of better more efficient cities.

Eg influenza and smallpox old world to new world; syphilis went new world to old....

This isn't modeled at all in Civ.

The insurmountable problem here is that Civ is fundamentally symmetric, while the real world wasn't. If there were a disease mechanic where one civ could decimate 90% of another's population, you should be on the receiving end just as many times as the giving, and that would thoroughly suck.

[Compromise]

The insurmountable problem here is that Civ is fundamentally symmetric, while the real world wasn't. If there were a disease mechanic where one civ could decimate 90% of another's population, you should be on the receiving end just as many times as the giving, and that would thoroughly suck.

Well said.

Mapfinder to the rescue! All human players' civs start on continents with east-west orientation, other civs, and not in the ecosystem that gave rise to humans (since the ancestral homeland would have human-adapted predators, prey and parasites)....

Re the new event: Yes! Though I think timmy and Ceiliazul should spend that time reading Jared Diamond for background.

[Cornflakes]

Interesting adventure, although i couldn't find time to play it myself.

Regarding cities defending themselves: If cities had a "Summon Militia" button that turned a pop into a militia unit that could be moved the same turn it was summoned that could give cities a better chance of fending off barb attacks without loosing tiles/workers defenselessly. Maybe 2str + 100% vs barbarians + 50% defense. Maybe give it a discreet lifespan of say 5 turns and return it to the city for X amount of food added back to the box (modified down if the militia is not returned with full hit points).