New Civ4 Pitboss (38?)

[Krill]

Sorry, distracted by food.

In the next version of the mod Zulu get a small need to the ikhanda. With that in place, I'd say the only civ which outright benefits from the start techs is India, that is the only civ that had start techs altered as a nerf. The other civs are basically...well, I'd expect everyone to pick a leader on the way down unless the starts had stupidly high tech requirements, because the ub and uu are essentially flavour.

But to be clear, that's actually a map balance issue. If techs are irrelevant to play the start to a close to optimal solution, then even India becomes stronger and the extra start techs shouldn't have an unreasonable effect on the game.

Also, we have time. We could easily make a mock up map, and give the starts to players to run a pregame snake pick and see how the the micro affects things with out without extra techs.

[Mr. Cairo]

Is there a reason why the reduced starting tech costs in RtR 3.x weren't added to the more recent RtR 2.x versions? Just from the comments in this thread it seems as though a slow early game is an issue for some players, so what's the opposition to the RtR 3.x change to starting techs?

[Krill]

Long story short: 3.x did more than just change start techs that got played in 1 game and I haven't had time to rebuild it, as it had quite an element of "let's test this in a game and see if it works", 2.x is supposed to be a stable release and there has been no clamour for a new 3.x game.

Fwiw, the next 3.x is basically 2.0.8.3 plus naval units, tech cost scaling with start tech rebalance to the civs and if someone could code it, a new IND trait (can build national wonders twice, +100% production of forge) as that needs SDK mods.

[GermanJoey]

I mean, we don't need to make the starting techs so cheap that they're PB27 level, right? We just need to lower their Huge-map cost somewhat so that if we get random civs, or a 20 person snakepick, then somoene won't get up screwed over by their starting spot. (and also the ancient era doesn't last for 100 turns). Note this also has the benefit of putting a lot less pressure on the mapmakers to make sure that the requested non-mirrored starts are fair for all players.

IMHO, we should just lower the bases costs of these techs so that their real scaled cost in the live PB38 game is about what they'd be on a "standard" worldsize map.

[GermanJoey]

About civ picks: IMHO, a 20 (or more!) person snakepick would be awful because it would last like 2 weeks and everyone will end up frustrated and/or insane by the end of it.

What I'd like better would be if we could just get 3 leaders and civs* to choose from, and choose what you want based off that. (with Pro/Inca being soft-banned, I guess)


edit: just saw these; either one is fine with me too.

For the picking method I propose the PB32 method. You get rolled a leader and civ, can reroll the leader, the civ, or both. You get three chances.

I could always roll a whole roster of unrestricted matches, and then have people rank them Diplomacy style. That would give you a lot to consider, good agency, and fill some time

[dtay]

In the next version of the mod Zulu get a small need to the ikhanda. 

[OT4E]

About civ picks: IMHO, a 20 (or more!) person snakepick would be awful because it would last like 2 weeks and everyone will end up frustrated and/or insane by the end of it.

What I'd like better would be if we could just get 3 leaders and civs* to choose from, and choose what you want based off that. (with Pro/Inca being soft-banned, I guess)

3 combos (single draft) means we need to have 60 different combos what is impossible. May be something like we did in pb36 or like Audrien talks about (pb32)

[Krill]

I mean, we don't need to make the starting techs so cheap that they're PB27 level, right? We just need to lower their Huge-map cost somewhat so that if we get random civs, or a 20 person snakepick, then somone won't get up screwed over by their starting spot. (and also the ancient era doesn't last for 100 turns). Note this also has the benefit of putting a lot less pressure on the mapmakers to make sure that the requested non-mirrored starts are fair for all players.

IMHO, we should just lower the bases costs of these techs so that their real scaled cost in the live PB38 game is about what they'd be on a "standard" worldsize map.

Having played in both PB27 and PB18, tech costs in both were stupid. In PB27, with tech costs scaling and the lower starting tech costs, granaries were being built in the mid T20ies with slavery already present! And in PB18 you had 4 cities down before you could build them in most cases.

On Monarch/Standard, tech costs are 59 (Fishing), 74 (Myst, Mining) and 89 (Wheel, Hunting, Agri) beakers. On Monarch/Huge they are 69, 85 and 103 respectively...

BW, Pottery and AH on the other hand? 179 v 207, 119 v 138 and 149 v 172.

Ultimately I just want to play in a game where I've not lost on T0. Decent map balance, preferably natural and aesthetically pleasing is a good start. The tech costs thing is less a balance issue per se and more of a desire to not spend up to two months trudging through tech.

Hell another choice is to just play a Classical era start.

In the next version of the mod Zulu get a small need to the ikhanda. 

I've been trying to pick Zulu since PBEM16, and some bastards keep on picking it from me. So I've been nerfing it ever since, and at some point I'm going to be allowed to play it!

[Mr. Cairo]

About civ picks: IMHO, a 20 (or more!) person snakepick would be awful because it would last like 2 weeks and everyone will end up frustrated and/or insane by the end of it.

What I'd like better would be if we could just get 3 leaders and civs* to choose from, and choose what you want based off that. (with Pro/Inca being soft-banned, I guess)

But we have a lot of time to do the snake pick, if we close further entries well in advance of the presumed start date sometime in the new year.

[Krill]

Entries have to be closed by beginning of map design process.