Adventures and Epics for Civ 6 Discussion

[BRickAstley]

So with the release of Civ 6, I put together and ran the introductory adventure that I think has been wildly successful. With that wrapping up, I would like to keep it going and run more events for whoever is interested. I wanna bring up a few discussion items first though:

1) How are we setting these up?

Since I ran the first Adventure, and have a plan/ruleset/map ready for an Epic 1, I am totally fine to keep setting these up for play. However I wasn't here for the Civ4 events, of which Sirian/Sullla/T-Hawk were the main sponsors. Do any of you want to have a major hand in setting these up as we progress through Civ 6's life cycle?

Also even if no one else wants to take a major hand in sponsoring a lot of these, anyone is welcome to pitch ideas or even a full scenario for play of course. Last thing I want to do is to lock out anyone else from running events.

2) Epic or Adventure?

For Civ 4 we had separate Epic and Adventure games being ran as time goes on. As best as I can tell, they were initially set up differently but eventually the terms seemed to be somewhat interchangeable between the events. The best I can tell, there are a few different major ways we can define these to be set apart for clarity moving forward:

a: Adventures are casual, Epics are competitive
b: Adventures have very customized map setup, Epics have very customized rulesets/scoring systems.
c: Adventures are original events, Epics are old events re-purposed for the new game.

When I've been thinking about putting together my idea for Epic 1, I've kinda been assuming a little of all of these. Am I missing something historically that would offer more clarity, and/or does anyone have further thoughts on these definitions?

3) Patches

So there's been zero word on an initial patch for the game, either content or date. It's also unknown whether saves from an older patch will be compatible moving forward, and it's confirmed that Steam doesn't let you go back and play under an older patch. It seems like with all of that, there really isn't another option but keep going with events and hope the patch cycle doesn't cause any major disruptions. Anyone else have any knowledge/advice here?

Thanks everyone.

[Sullla]

Brick, thanks again for setting up the first Potluck event for Civ6! I also thought that it was a great success, especially in turning out some new faces to the community. As far as your individual questions:

1) I think that it would behoove the community to have one person in charge of organizing the Civ6 events overall, with the understanding that a lot of the events will be designed by community members who put a specific scenario together. That person in overall charge should not be me.   I can likely take part in a good number of the events, but I would prefer to avoid the responsibility of organizing them as well. Brick, you have done a fantastic job over the past few years with Realms Beyond, and as long as you're willing, I would nominate you as the titular head of the process. What we want to avoid is a disorganized situation where no one is really in charge; in my experience, that tends to lead to irregular intervals between games, and poor turnout for the events that do take place. (On a related note: we should think about reorganizing the RB Civ website to reflect the fact that events are starting up again. Yes, we can do it all in the forums, but that tends to lack permanence. I like the fact that I can go look up a Civ3 event from 2002 and instantly see the scenario design and the final results, without needing to search around in ancient forums. It could also draw more traffic to Realms Beyond; imagine if we had a front page that was actually current.)

2) The original distinction between the Epics and Adventures was simply the game speed they were played on. Epics were done on Epic speed, Adventures were played on Normal speed. That distinction eventually fell by the wayside, and the current situation is pretty confusing, as Brick's post attests. I would suggest scrapping the distinction and go back to calling all of our events "Epics", since that was the original name. I don't think there's a lot of enthusiasm here for games played on a speed slower than Normal right now; maybe we'll do one for a chance of pace someday, but they won't be common. Why not call them all Epics and be done with it?

3) Patches traditionally have wrecked havoc on RB events.   A lot of you won't remember this because it was so long ago, but Civ4 had a terrible track record with this. We delayed a lot of events while waiting for patches, only to see those patches get delayed repeatedly. In the end, the best path forward was to run our events normally and just accept that some of them would have patching issues. This will be much worse with Steam's auto-enforced patching, unfortunately. Does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of patches while playing our events (?) I think that's possible from what I've heard. Anyway, I would not suggest waiting on patches based on past experience. Play the games and work around the patches that do come out as best as possible. 

On another note, I think a large section of the community has purchased Civ6 by now, and those who haven't are either not interested (very understandable) or waiting for a Steam sale (also very reasonable!) We have a sense for what the most common strategies are here in the release version of the game. That means it's time to start working against the OP strats with some variant fun.   I'm going to try and organize the first Succession Game shortly, and we'll see what happens from there. I think Civ6 will be a very good game for Single Player variants - I think that's where the interesting stuff will be for the moment, while the AI and MP are being sorted out. Because Civ6 relies so heavily on city planning, I also think the gameplay is ripe for the Succession Game format. I would love to see a revival of them again. We'll see what develops, I have some ideas already...

[fluffyflyingpig]

Brick, great job so far.

The first event was kinda haphazard due to the lack of a firm reporting day. When DOES adventure 1 close? Are you going to give the latest of late signups a starting save?

[rho21]

Does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of patches while playing our events (?) I think that's possible from what I've heard.

It's possible for the publisher to make it really easy. Paradox are great at this: for all their modern games they put old patch versions in the Betas section of the game properties in Steam. Select the patch version you want, wait for a short download and off you go.

Without this support... well, it should be possible if you start Steam in offline mode.

[Rowain]

Hi BRick

Thanks for you work and setting game 1 up

So with the release of Civ 6, I put together and ran the introductory adventure that I think has been wildly successful. With that wrapping up, I would like to keep it going and run more events for whoever is interested. I wanna bring up a few discussion items first though:

1) How are we setting these up?

Since I ran the first Adventure, and have a plan/ruleset/map ready for an Epic 1, I am totally fine to keep setting these up for play. However I wasn't here for the Civ4 events, of which Sirian/Sullla/T-Hawk were the main sponsors. Do any of you want to have a major hand in setting these up as we progress through Civ 6's life cycle?

Also even if no one else wants to take a major hand in sponsoring a lot of these, anyone is welcome to pitch ideas or even a full scenario for play of course. Last thing I want to do is to lock out anyone else from running events.

In Civ3 Sirian was the head of Epics. While several other people sponsored games he was in a way the QA-manager for the Epics by discussing rules/ special ideas or various points of a setup with him. Most of the time someone would propose an idea and then he and  Sirian would start discussing and fleshing it out.

2) Epic or Adventure?

For Civ 4 we had separate Epic and Adventure games being ran as time goes on. As best as I can tell, they were initially set up differently but eventually the terms seemed to be somewhat interchangeable between the events. The best I can tell, there are a few different major ways we can define these to be set apart for clarity moving forward:

The starting difference was the game-speed. Later Adventure were also used for the more unbalanced ideas. Games thought just for fun while Epics remained more on the serious side.

I doubt there are many interested to play civ6 on Epic but OTOH perhaps a longer build time brings the AI-boni better to bear and help them ?

One problem I see with Epics now is the lack of a Map-editor.

[Fluffball]

I'm very curious to see what cool ideas people have for making the game challenging. Many of the things you might do in Civ4 to provide a challenge (always war, terrible terrain, bad position, bad economy, minimal military, etc.) are not at all punishing in Civ6.

[T-hawk]

That person in overall charge should not be me.  ... Brick, you have done a fantastic job over the past few years with Realms Beyond, and as long as you're willing, I would nominate you as the titular head of the process.

Second this, Brick in charge.  It can't exactly be me or Sirian if we haven't bought the game.

(On a related note: we should think about reorganizing the RB Civ website to reflect the fact that events are starting up again. Yes, we can do it all in the forums, but that tends to lack permanence.)

Disagree here.  Keep everything in the forums.  The front page will inevitably fall out of date.  The internet at large has learned this, forums stay alive and dynamic, static sites rot.  For permanency, archival subforums and index posts work.  Amazon Basin figured out all this for Diablo stuff a while ago.

2) The original distinction between the Epics and Adventures was simply the game speed they were played on. Epics were done on Epic speed, Adventures were played on Normal speed.

This wasn't exactly true.  Epics were bigger and more competitive games.  Adventures were smaller and casualer and weirder.  They weren't defined by game speed.  Game speed was a consequence, not a definition.  Epic speed opened more room and pacing for strategy, while normal speed would cycle through more games faster.

I agree that distinction was more confusing than it was worth, and we should stick to a single name.  But I'd go like this: Call them Adventures for the first few noncompetitive exploratory events, then a single line of Epics once the game is patched up and solid for tournament play.

And yes, stick to normal speed.  Nobody these days has the patience for epic.  Heck the MP folks think even normal speed is plodding compared to quick.

Does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of patches while playing our events (?)

It's possible to tell Steam to stay offline and not patch.  But enforcing that would be a complete mess, the casuals and noobs wandering in will never do that correctly and we can't be yelling at them for that.  We'll just have to take the patches as they come.

[LKendter]

For me keep the maps small. Based on the performance on my 2 year old PC, I can't see playing larger maps. 12Gig of memory, and I get my first ever low memory error playing the game.

I suspect most people that don't have brand new PCs, will be able to handle large+ maps.

For me, I'll be looking for lightweight games. I don't ever see playing 6 on deity.

[Yazilliclick]

(On a related note: we should think about reorganizing the RB Civ website to reflect the fact that events are starting up again. Yes, we can do it all in the forums, but that tends to lack permanence.)

Just throwing it out there but maybe it's a good case for middle ground like a wiki. Doesn't have the static nature and limited ability to update like static web pages but does allow for better and less cluttered organization. Forum posts can work and you can do things like stickies with index links and such but they always tend to get pretty clunky and ugly as it gets larger. Plus the posts tend to take up room in an area meant for discussion (not a fan of half the page being stickies). Anyways just an idea

Agree with Brick being the general organizer if willing.

[BRickAstley]

I've suggested a wiki before and set it up for any member to edit, but nothing ever came of it. Same with the front page, that requires people with talent and time to continually update it, and I don't know of anyone who will fit that.