Pitboss 18 Organizing Thread (RB Mod 34 Civs)

[spacetyrantxenu]

Smaller than normal for sure. But five seems too small a base to start with.

[Catwalk]

Memory considerations aside, I think it'd be more fun to play this on a very cramped map. Wars will lead to civ death more often, as opposed to being crippled and left for dead. This will trim the player count nicely throughout the game. It'll also be less time intensive, making it easier for us to recruit a high number of players and get them to play it out.

[Krill]

See if you can load this map.

[dtay]

Commodore should ultimately dictator-decree the answer, but I don't think we should make this a "super-cramped" game. Just make it normal. Small side of normal, sure. But normal. The variant is the number of players. I'm not sure why we want people to be dying early more than normal. Why would a 30 person game create more "might-as-well-be-dead-but-aren't" civs than 3 ten person games would? Yet we wouldn't insist on making 3 ten person games be cramped so civs actually died quickly.

[Krill]

Idea for the dictator (that seems to be what we're going with):
- cramped map (room for ~ 5 cities per player + 1-2 more cities on islands)
- quick speed
- 16h timer to ensure a timely conclusion of the game (lost turns are acceptable, give advance orders during peace turns)
- 2 or 3 volunteers keeping themselves unspoiled in case someone drops out
- warm bodies accepted into the game (no reporting expected, no major planning expected), as long as they commit to playing on time and seeing the game to its conclusion
- I don't think RBmod will be a problem if we need a mod to play with this many players anyway, what bugs me about the mod is having to load it rather than the mod itself

I think this would help us complete the game without stressing anyone out. Also, it seems counterproductive to sign up as teams if this is intended to be on the casual side of things and the novelty is the size of the game (in terms of players).

In a game with this many players, what would a 16h timer translate to in RL hours? Are more hours added the more players are in the game?

Memory considerations aside, I think it'd be more fun to play this on a very cramped map. Wars will lead to civ death more often, as opposed to being crippled and left for dead. This will trim the player count nicely throughout the game. It'll also be less time intensive, making it easier for us to recruit a high number of players and get them to play it out.

Your previous two post are basically just wrong in a lot of ways regarding having a playable game that people will actually want to play once it has started.

PB15 was a cramped map, less than 130 tiles per player, and was one of the most stressful games I've ever played. Constant vigilance from attacks and the proximity of others means that from T0 you are in effective conflict with others. PBEM34 was effectively a test game and even there, with a 3 city limit agreed beforehand wars were constant; add in simultaneous turns and that's even more difficult. In PB15, we called the game c. T150, 1 person had died and out of the 6 remaining players 3 didn't have any chance of winning, and the game, if played to the conclusion would realistically have lasted a further month at least. Making the game more cramped doesn't lead to people dying any quicker, unless they give up and suicide by giving away cities and really that behaviour has been deplored by a significant number of people.

On top of that, the length of the turn timer isn't entirely relevant: People are only going to play a game (and specifically their turn) when they have free time in a day, so the pace will be either a turn a day or a turn per two days. Trying to go any faster than that will just lead to people checking out of hte game because no one enjoys missing turns, and any slower (even a turn every 2 days) will likely lead to boredom and the game ending prematurely, like in so many other games that have been tried. All that is needed is a a timer that gives roughly 1 turn every 24 hours (maybe 25 hours because sometimes the player that ends turn regularly ends turn at 2000 on day but can't get to it until 2100 the next, but short pauses manage this fine).

Quick speed? The only effect this will cause is that warfare is less productive and leads to a more prolonged game because it's less profitable to build units to kill stragglers (main effects being fewer turns to actually use units before they obsolete and healing time).

I think people are seriously overestimating the amount of space on a 124*124 size map. On Torusworld with inland oceans (44% water) and 8% peaks (base map prior to further edits that gives good geography), there are only 217 land tiles per person. After further edits to carve out islands from mainlands and split up segments of the map, that should quite easily drop, which is what Commodore wanted to do IIRC. PB13 map is 108*60 if you ignore the shit tundra and ice for 18 players, so really the map dimensions are about the same as Torusworld maps are made up of 95% useful land on a per player basis. The main difference is that toroidal maps have people placed all around you so there are fewer safe spaces to expand to (ie there is an element of land grab that isn't present on cylindrical maps). Having a little extra space (not necessarily the full 124*124 but probably no smaller than 124*108) can give some breathing room.

[darrelljs]

Ichabod is the one I am officially teaming with. I think sunrise089 said he would join in if we are using base BTS.

+1 to just let Commodore The Most Munificent and Generous do what he wills, including assigning civ/leader combos .

Darrell

[Old Harry]

As the most devilishly handsome and intelligent member of this community Commodore should be given free reign to dole out what small pittance of tiles we mere players receive. Praise be to Commodore.

[WilliamLP]

Memory considerations aside, I think it'd be more fun to play this on a very cramped map. Wars will lead to civ death more often, as opposed to being crippled and left for dead. This will trim the player count nicely throughout the game.

I think this is just incorrect. The only profitable wars in Civ 4 are quick, certain, and decisive. You only have the luxury to finish someone if you have a very defensible empire with coasts or chokepoints. The opposite is true on a cramped Torusland map. Since you need to commit much more than you kill for a war to be cost effective, an opportunistic neighbor will just take advantage of you if you make the effort to finish someone off, so in practice it will rarely happen.

Defeated players would linger on for months of real time even more, not less. They tend to live until their tech disadvantage is so massive that they can be killed cost-effectively, and perhaps well beyond that.

[Catwalk]

Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with the problem of dead players lingering for a long time until they're killed off? Or should we ignore it?

[Krill]

PB7 awards scheme and spending 5 minutes a day to mail it in isn't difficult, so long as you actually, you know, build units and don't give cities away for free IMO.