...the fuck happened with the community?

[Dhalphir]

For me the late start games lack the special something that makes Civ amazing - that slow, methodical build-up over dozens of turns, each individual action insignificant but adding up to success or failure. I never feel as much ownership over a civilization when I start late.

[Cheater Hater]

My idea with a modern game is that I like all the options the modern era provides (air combat, naval combat with actual variety, maybe even Corps and Nukes if they can be balanced enough) but I don't like how the way-later eras start (you have all your stuff, but it takes forever to get anything else). I want it to feel like a normal (ancient-era) game, but when stuff starts to happen you aren't using Maces and Knights, but instead Gunships, Tanks, Infantry, Fighters, Battleships etc., and what does that do to tactics. I don't know what I need to do to accomplish that though (just make some stuff cheaper? Revert the super-Settler change? Start in Ancient Era but just put all the stuff on early techs?), which is why I haven't done that much with it (that, and my general procrastination).

[OT4E]

I was surprised that none of those who played in renai or indu PB signed up for medi. As I remember only scooter had signed up for renai after indu. All those games were great and didnt become boring, taking just months but not years.

If you want to play more PBs this year you definitely need to start separate thread and get people. Also come with your set of options and dont leave it to vot for, do not make my mistake.

[T-hawk]

My idea with a modern game is that I like all the options the modern era provides (air combat, naval combat with actual variety, maybe even Corps and Nukes if they can be balanced enough) but I don't like how the way-later eras start (you have all your stuff, but it takes forever to get anything else). I want it to feel like a normal (ancient-era) game, but when stuff starts to happen you aren't using Maces and Knights, but instead Gunships, Tanks, Infantry, Fighters, Battleships etc., and what does that do to tactics. I don't know what I need to do to accomplish that though (just make some stuff cheaper? Revert the super-Settler change? Start in Ancient Era but just put all the stuff on early techs?), which is why I haven't done that much with it (that, and my general procrastination).

What you want is a later era start that accurately represents how civs arrive into that era, rather than the artificial setup granted by the later era start options. Things like developed villages and towns and roads, a real history of great people (some settled, some GPP accumulated, the cost counter up to 500 or so) religions spread around, an appropriate amount of the world defogged, some national wonders already built (ideally world wonders too but that seems impossible to balance). Basically everything that an era start doesn't do but a real civ does.

It'd take some dedication in the worldbuilder and maybe even some DLL hackery to manipulate things that WB can't, like the GPP cost counter. I'm not volunteering but just tossing up some discussion.

[OT4E]

Randomize map, let AI play 200 turns and take over...

[El Grillo]

All of those could be handled with python event scripts, especially if combined with the "point-buy advance start" options (though that might require the .DLL, I'm not sure if it has callbacks set up).

If I were feeling ambitious, I'd give each player a 11x11 defogged map of their start, let them decide where to found their 3 cities, and then provide a snake pick draft with bundles like:
- 8 pop and 8 improved tiles distributed and placed as you choose
- 400h worth of buildings of your choice
- 2 settled great people and accumulated GPP of your choice
- a holy city + shrine, and your religion auto-spreads to new cities you found
- a full map reveal and one corporate executive of your choice
- every 50 turns, choose a new pair of leader traits
- units that start their turn in a size 6+ city get +1 movement
- full passive espionage benefits on one opponent of your choice

Then I'd mod/WB in those effects and the game would immediately go off the rails and everyone would have a fun time.

[Fenn]

Randomize map, let AI play 200 turns and take over...

I'd play that.

[El Grillo]

Wasn't there a PBEM organized along those lines? Deity AI autoplay with human takeover.

EDIT: It was PBEM60.

[Cheater Hater]

My idea with a modern game is that I like all the options the modern era provides (air combat, naval combat with actual variety, maybe even Corps and Nukes if they can be balanced enough) but I don't like how the way-later eras start (you have all your stuff, but it takes forever to get anything else).  I want  it to feel like a normal (ancient-era) game, but when stuff starts to happen you aren't using Maces and Knights, but instead Gunships, Tanks, Infantry, Fighters, Battleships etc., and what does that do to tactics.  I don't know what I need to do to accomplish that though (just make some stuff cheaper?  Revert the super-Settler change?  Start in Ancient Era but just put all the stuff on early techs?), which is why I haven't done that much with it (that, and my general procrastination).

What you want is a later era start that accurately represents how civs arrive into that era, rather than the artificial setup granted by the later era start options.  Things like developed villages and towns and roads, a real history of great people (some settled, some GPP accumulated, the cost counter up to 500 or so) religions spread around, an appropriate amount of the world defogged, some national wonders already built (ideally world wonders too but that seems impossible to balance).  Basically everything that an era start doesn't do but a real civ does.

It'd take some dedication in the worldbuilder and maybe even some DLL hackery to manipulate things that WB can't, like the GPP cost counter.  I'm not volunteering but just tossing up some discussion.

This is interesting (and certainly worth doing), but I'm not sure it's exactly what I wanted. All of these ideas have the base of "I want to play with the toys I never get to play with", but they go about it in different ways. Your way wants to start a game 200 turns in, while my idea wants to start a game 0 turns in, but with tanks instead of horses. Your way certainly seems like less work (relatively), so let's start with that for now if people want to play it.

The basic problem is that a game is generally won (or at least narrowed down to a couple major players) 100-150 turns in, and we want to get to that point without spending six months getting there and/or recruiting 15+ players (as the giant games are generally the only ones that get to the Modern era while still being competitive). Ideally I also want to see that without super-large empires and/or stacks (just highly-varied ones). We've already seen that the AI can't produce a balanced result (see: PBEM 60), so ideally you'd have to do it manually. El Grillo has the idea of WB+Python scripts, but it feels like there's a simpler way (if more-tedious): just run a hotseat game and do it all manually (assuming you can somehow transition it to a PB/PBEM). I think I'd actually be willing to do this, but the biggest problem is combining map balance and play balance. The play balance shouldn't be that bad if you mirror (or close-to mirror) everything, but map balance is more difficult, especially since I wouldn't make a map. The easiest way would be to play on a map that's completely mirrored, but another alternative would be to play on an old map (since we're going to the Modern Era, you would have most/all of the map anyway). Any other ideas and/or preliminary signups?

[Dhalphir]

The point about establishing settings before you start a thread is a great idea. Anytime a thread get started with the intention of having a discussion about settings it ends up going on for 4 or 5 pages with no consensus or progress until somebody finally makes a summary post suggesting a bunch of things and everybody inevitably agrees with it because it's the same settings we always use.

In my opinion, if you're going to make a thread for a pbem or Pit Boss, one ought to do a little bit of research to figure out workable settings and then post the thread with those already proposed.

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