RBP2 (Realms Beyond Pitboss) Planning Thread

[athlete4life10]

Poll 9: Difficulty
Prince > Monarch > Emperor > Noble

Poll 10: Huts
*Normal - 2nd vote
*No huts - 1st vote

Poll 11: Random events
*Normal - 2nd vote
*No random events - 1st vote

Poll 12: Contact with other teams AND posting in the public player thread
*Always allowed - 2nd vote
*No contact until in-game contact. - 1st vote

Poll 13: Screenshot/map trades
*Always allowed - 2nd vote
*Only after paper tech is discovered - 1st vote

[Mortius]

Looks like Mortius poked his nose into my work...

Sorry, I didn't know if you appear before Friday.
My post deleted

[LiPing]

(and you are going to have problems defining detailed forwarding of messages later on).

[a LOT of editing later]
Yeah... I agree with you, I'm having trouble writing this already without [spoiler], I'm getting more tempted to withdraw the idea.

What I am trying to mean is something like this, let's say there are four teams, A, B, C + D, A has contact with B, B has contact with C + D, A can't attempt to send messages to C or D using B as an intermediary trying to set up some alliance etc.

[Mortius]

Poll 9: Difficulty
Prince (we play with no tech trading, and I think Prince is high enough with this setting)

Poll 10: Huts
*No huts

Poll 11: Random events
*No random events

Poll 12: Contact with other teams AND posting in the public player thread
*No contact until in-game contact.

Poll 13: Screenshot/map trades
*Only after paper tech is discovered

[Broker33]

Poll 9: Difficulty
Monarch > Prince > Noble

Poll 10: Huts
On I like some randomness

Poll 11: Random events
Off

Poll 12: Contact with other teams AND posting in the public player thread
*No contact until in-game contact.

Poll 13: Screenshot/map trades
*Only after paper tech is discovered

[Jowy]

Poll 9: Difficulty
Monarch > Prince > Noble.

Poll 10: Huts
On.

Poll 11: Random events
Off.

Poll 12: Contact with other teams AND posting in the public player thread
No contact until in-game contact.

Poll 13: Screenshot/map trades
Only after paper tech is discovered.

[Speaker]

I am curious why you guys want the difficulty level to be higher than Noble? It is very rare for a MP game to be played on anything other than Noble. Remember that the difficulty levels were designed to even the playing field against the AI, for lack of good enough programming to scale the AI's playing ability. You'll have enough to worry about from your opponents, without having to worry about extra unhappiness and unhealthiness, and increased costs. Just my humble opinion.

Sullla will hopefully be posting our choices for the polls as soon as he reads the email I sent him with my thoughts.

[Olodune]

I am curious why you guys want the difficulty level to be higher than Noble? It is very rare for a MP game to be played on anything other than Noble. Remember that the difficulty levels were designed to even the playing field against the AI, for lack of good enough programming to scale the AI's playing ability. You'll have enough to worry about from your opponents, without having to worry about extra unhappiness and unhealthiness, and increased costs. Just my humble opinion.

I would argue that as difficulty changes at least two game mechanics change significantly:

1) At higher difficulties the economic costs of expansion become more important. In MP play at noble the main constraint on building more cities seems to be "can I defend this city effectively" rather than "can I afford another city now". Not saying which is better.

2) The relative value of traits change. Higher difficulty (in my opinion) means: Org is more valuable and Imp less so.

[athlete4life10]

I am curious why you guys want the difficulty level to be higher than Noble? It is very rare for a MP game to be played on anything other than Noble. Remember that the difficulty levels were designed to even the playing field against the AI, for lack of good enough programming to scale the AI's playing ability. You'll have enough to worry about from your opponents, without having to worry about extra unhappiness and unhealthiness, and increased costs. Just my humble opinion.

Sullla will hopefully be posting our choices for the polls as soon as he reads the email I sent him with my thoughts.

Personally I'd like a slight bit more restriction on the happy/health and maintenance cost side of things...with no tech trading on I didn't want to go all the way to monarch but I won't be disappointed if it does...on top of that I'm just tired of noble...

***edit: Olodune makes the same point and more much more eloquently above! /edit***

[sunrise089]

I am curious why you guys want the difficulty level to be higher than Noble? It is very rare for a MP game to be played on anything other than Noble. Remember that the difficulty levels were designed to even the playing field against the AI, for lack of good enough programming to scale the AI's playing ability. You'll have enough to worry about from your opponents, without having to worry about extra unhappiness and unhealthiness, and increased costs. Just my humble opinion.

Sullla will hopefully be posting our choices for the polls as soon as he reads the email I sent him with my thoughts.

Um...do health/happy caps still scale with difficulty? I thought that was gone.

Speaker, I don't know if you follow the first pitboss game at all anymore, but we probably should have chosen a much higher difficulty level. Because of the trading blocs that emerged, civs are getting like 1 tech every 2-3 on average on normal speed. Deity tech costs might have slowed that down a bit.

Honestly, in this game with tech trading off it just becomes a question of how much we want to limit city spamming and how fast the tech rate will be.