What I would love to lurk..

[Krill]

When PB18 is finished and everyone has had some time off I'm up for a 50 player game. We'd need a balanced map though...

I think the main issue is one of what mod is used, because I doubt people from other forums want to play RtR.

[Jowy]

Since we're sharing game concepts..

I thought about a solution for the "natural and balanced map" dilemma. Everyone wants to play on a natural looking map instead of a mirrored one. Everyone also wants to play a balanced map, but the only truly balanced map is a mirrored map, else there will always be things players will complain about. My game concept to work around this dilemma is to roll a natural looking map and do some minor balancing on it, then rank all the starting positions from the best to worst, then rank all the players from the best to worst, and give the best players the worst starting positions, and the worst players the best starting positions. I would lurk that..

[Qgqqqqq]

I would hate to be a part of that, as a lurker or a player. As a player, you're being told that you lost or did this poorly despite the fact that you had a far better start - or, conversely, you're watching other people do better than you and knowing it's solely because they got a better start. As a lurker, there's drama proscribed as player and map lists get nutted out, and there'll inevitably be disagreements as to how this was decided.

As a mapmaker or a player, I'd dislike that system. Mapmakers should be player-blind, and players should never have reason to feel persecuted or unfairly advantaged by the mapmaker. I get why you think that would work, but I really doubt it would, for myself.


Besides, I don't think there's that much of a problem, generally. There'll always be bitching about map balance no matter what happens, and honestly there's often flaws, but they rarely have a massive effect. The number of maps where a player start wouldn't have a chance before looking at opponents/their skill are few and far between. Some will be better, some will be worse, and whilst we obviously want to improve those as much as possible, I'm okay with that.

[TheHumanHydra]

We could do a really weird game where each player gets to make their own starting area (say, island), given certain amounts of each resource, tile type, etc. to use. That way it looks 'natural' in that every player's area is different, but no one can complain because they made it themselves and they had the same tools to work with (so it's 'balanced'). This would be an interesting optimization challenge in itself ...

There's my wacky idea for the month.

(Also, definitely not suggesting this for an intersite game.)

Edit: We could also do a bare map game (no resources). Shouldn't be too much complaining there, but slooow.

[retep]

What about full diplo game.

[sunrise089]

Make your own! Or better, rank people according to some arbitrary factor. Like naming schemes; we really need a tier list for naming schemes

My favorite naming scheme came from back in RBP1. "my naming scheme is based on historical cities from the Carthaginian empire."

When PB18 is finished and everyone has had some time off I'm up for a 50 player game. We'd need a balanced map though...

I'll play in a 50-player game that doesn't involve a gameplay mod

[novice]

With regards to Jowy's proposal, another option is to reveal the map and include the starting positions and leaders/civs in a starting auction. Not sure if that's something that's interesting to play or lurk, just thought I'd mention it.

I'd be more interested in discussing algorithms for a map script that generates natural looking, balanced, non-mirrored maps.

[Fintourist]

When PB18 is finished and everyone has had some time off I'm up for a 50 player game. We'd need a balanced map though...

I think the main issue is one of what mod is used, because I doubt people from other forums want to play RtR.

I'll play in a 50-player game that doesn't involve a gameplay mod

Yeah, that's a big decision. My personal opinion is that especially when we are talking about a large (15/20+ player game) RtR simply makes the game better:

1. I won't go too deep into this, but a) increased tech costs in the later eras and b) increased known-tech bonus are IMO the most crucial improvements of the mod.
- When you have e.g. 30 players like in PB18, it's inevitable that some players end up with large empires with a lot of research power --> Without increased tech costs leaders might just 1-turn all the industrial/modern techs. I prefer a situation where the last 2 eras are still a meaningful part of the game if the game situation is close enough that concession has not ended the game.
- When it comes to known-tech bonus: Civ will always be a snowball game and higher KTB won't change that. However, I really like how it helps challengers to stay in the meaningful distance from leaders so that there is still some comeback potential if stars are correctly aligned. It also reduces the amount of eras that struggling civs will fall behind --> Stronger civs still get to do their conquests with tech advantage, but it gives their targets a chance to reach some tech goals and thus a bit more tools to fight back.

2. The second important change in RtR that is emphasized in a ~50 player game is improved trait balance. In a 50 player game someone would be playing Pacal, someone Toku. In the base BTS the quality difference between those 2 leaders is considerable, and depending on mentality, potentially something that also makes the game less fun (I would personally like to start a game that is still semi-even on turn 0). In RtR I think it's more reasonable to state that every leader is competitive, which I consider a major benefit for a 50-player game.

I do like the slavery nerf, bug fixes, etc. but the above 2 topics are the big ones for me.


***


At the same time I understand players who dislike mods. When PB13 was being organized I remember thinking that I would prefer it to be base BTS instead of RBMod. I wanted to play something that I'm familiar with and did not want to spend energy in going through a change log and trying to understand how the mod actually impacts different strategies, learned rule-of-thumbs and so on. In the end I'm happy that the game was played with the mod though, it definitely made it a better and more interesting game (despite the fact that for our team it was a complete struggle from turn 0 until the very end). But yeah, I haven't really put that effort in ToW and SMEG, and that indeed impacts my interest reg participating or lurking those games.

I can also see how "purity" is something that is valued by some players as such (e.g. due to nostalgia).

Disliking a specific change or not trusting the mod makers to actually know what they are doing are worries that easily come to mind as well. But I think those go hand in hand with the above paragraph, which discusses the effort that one needs to put in familiarization of the changes.


***


Aaaanyways, I don't really have a strong opinion here yet. At the same time I honestly think that RtR provides a basis for a better game, but it would be absolutely awesome to have (players like) sunrise in the game and of course getting players from other sites to join the game is surely easier, if they don't need to adapt to a new mod (which in all honestly you can't call minimalistic, but it isn't a total complex mess either).

[flugauto]

I'd be more interested in discussing algorithms for a map script that generates natural looking, balanced, non-mirrored maps.

Divide the map into equal parts. Fill each part with the same content and a few bits of different content. Connect the parts with desert or tundra or ice.

[Krill]

I'm still trying to figure out how islands should be positioned, what sort of size etc between continents or shores (like in PB13 and a Torusworld map respectively).