[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[pindicator]

Ninja edit is what I end up doing 9 times out of 10

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Currently trying to bait this lion into attacking me on the forest to get better odds, and it's not going great! Side note: why do people like to play with barbarians on but huts off, when the former is way worse for balance and luck, and the latter rewards investing in scouting? Multiplayer Civ4's many mysteries. Barbarians suck, and you should feel bad for continuing to vote for them to be on when the Civ4 combat system for the first 50ish turns is almost as bad as the Civ5 and Civ6 combat systems are the whole game.

I usually have offered that barbarians should be off, but goody huts are more unbalanced. You can manipulate huts, preserve them to get techs like optics or monarchy. At the same time, you want to pop as many as you can in the first 10 turns so that the probability of getting techs is higher. With barbarians off and huts on you get the most op huts. 

Random events are more interesting in that they often provide a choice - invest gold to get some benefit, or build some kind of building to get a reward.

[scooter]

I usually have offered that barbarians should be off, but goody huts are more unbalanced. You can manipulate huts, preserve them to get techs like optics or monarchy. At the same time, you want to pop as many as you can in the first 10 turns so that the probability of getting techs is higher. With barbarians off and huts on you get the most op huts. 

I don't totally buy this, with the exception of the popping of late techs. RtR once had a change that limited hut tech pops to something like the 10 cheapest techs, which I thought was a good way to do it. Weirdly, I don't see this in the changelog anymore for that mod. I don't think someone can win the game just because they popped Masonry on T20, but I absolutely believe you can lose the game by losing your starting warrior to a barbarian. We've played lots of games with one and/or the other on too, so I think the proof for that is there. Losing hammers early on is crushing. Your neighbor picking up some free beakers is merely irritating.


I also like that huts introduce some risk/reward. Talking Vanilla BtS for a minute, when huts are off, Hunting civs are nearly unplayable because starting with a scout is such a severe disadvantage. Huts on allows a Hunting civ to pay back that risk, and the improved results on huts is very meaningful too. In a mod setting where the warrior/scout thing is usually changed, it's still worthwhile because it provides some value to scouting. For example, I think the Civ6 city-state mechanic where the first-to gets a free envoy is a brilliant feature, even though I think it's a bit over-tuned. The calculus there is also shifted by how much weaker Builders are versus Workers, but the point remains. Our MP games have stripped away the value of good early scouting by insisting on huts off, even though I really don't buy that they're that bad.

Random events are more interesting in that they often provide a choice - invest gold to get some benefit, or build some kind of building to get a reward.

I agree, but a lot of them are pretty broken too and much worse than huts. I like the quests in particular, but again the balance is all over the place. I guess my thing with barbs vs these other two early RNG mechanics is that barbs aren't very fun. Losing a unit to something you had little to no control over feels horrible, especially when you planned on spending ~6 months playing this one game.

[Charriu]

I usually have offered that barbarians should be off, but goody huts are more unbalanced. You can manipulate huts, preserve them to get techs like optics or monarchy. At the same time, you want to pop as many as you can in the first 10 turns so that the probability of getting techs is higher. With barbarians off and huts on you get the most op huts. 

I don't totally buy this, with the exception of the popping of late techs. RtR once had a change that limited hut tech pops to something like the 10 cheapest techs, which I thought was a good way to do it. Weirdly, I don't see this in the changelog anymore for that mod. I don't think someone can win the game just because they popped Masonry on T20, but I absolutely believe you can lose the game by losing your starting warrior to a barbarian. We've played lots of games with one and/or the other on too, so I think the proof for that is there. Losing hammers early on is crushing. Your neighbor picking up some free beakers is merely irritating.

I did not include the hut change, because we haven't played a "huts on" game in ages and therefore I wanted to reduce the overall size of the changelog. I have no problem reintroducing this change if somebody wants to play with huts on.

[scooter]

I usually have offered that barbarians should be off, but goody huts are more unbalanced. You can manipulate huts, preserve them to get techs like optics or monarchy. At the same time, you want to pop as many as you can in the first 10 turns so that the probability of getting techs is higher. With barbarians off and huts on you get the most op huts. 

I don't totally buy this, with the exception of the popping of late techs. RtR once had a change that limited hut tech pops to something like the 10 cheapest techs, which I thought was a good way to do it. Weirdly, I don't see this in the changelog anymore for that mod. I don't think someone can win the game just because they popped Masonry on T20, but I absolutely believe you can lose the game by losing your starting warrior to a barbarian. We've played lots of games with one and/or the other on too, so I think the proof for that is there. Losing hammers early on is crushing. Your neighbor picking up some free beakers is merely irritating.

I did not include the hut change, because we haven't played a "huts on" game in ages and therefore I wanted to reduce the overall size of the changelog. I have no problem reintroducing this change if somebody wants to play with huts on.

I think I'm in a pretty deep minority on this one, so it may not be a big deal. Might be a future nice-to-have? Speaking of the barbarian issue.


Turns 15-16






I survived, and boy am I glad I sat on forest instead. I won at 96.7% odds, but I'm not sure I would have won at the ~75% odds I was getting on flatland. I wasn't even particularly unlucky. I don't have much else to add from these turns, and your FIN/PRO update for these turns already happened. I did have to decide whether to sit in place and heal (for 8 turns), or try to limp home and heal faster there. I'm opting for the latter so far. Moving SE onto flat ground was the main source of fear, and I survived that part. I may stop on the stone and heal up a bit, since I would be effectively fogbusting while healing, whereas parking on the sugar just helps Cornflakes fogbust for himself.


Speaking of, he settled his third city recently, which I am just now noticing. That double whip a few turns back must have been the settler after all.

[pindicator]

As much as I hate losing my first 90% barb battle every game, I think removing them entirely would just let the farmer gambit play go a little too far. At least that's what I remember from the yesteryear MP games.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

As much as I hate losing my first 90% barb battle every game, I think removing them entirely would just let the farmer gambit play go a little too far.  At least that's what I remember from the yesteryear MP games.

Penalizing the farmer's gambit should be the role of other players rather than the game mechanics - c.f. pb 51 my thread about 5 pages in when Ramk went into my lands with a skirmisher, setting me back 5 turns, and if he had been more lucky, 15-20.

[Charriu]

As much as I hate losing my first 90% barb battle every game, I think removing them entirely would just let the farmer gambit play go a little too far.  At least that's what I remember from the yesteryear MP games.

Penalizing the farmer's gambit should be the role of other players rather than the game mechanics - c.f. pb 51 my thread about 5 pages in when Ramk went into my lands with a skirmisher, setting me back 5 turns, and if he had been more lucky, 15-20.

Not on large maps, where the players are farther apart.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

As much as I hate losing my first 90% barb battle every game, I think removing them entirely would just let the farmer gambit play go a little too far.  At least that's what I remember from the yesteryear MP games.

Penalizing the farmer's gambit should be the role of other players rather than the game mechanics - c.f. pb 51 my thread about 5 pages in when Ramk went into my lands with a skirmisher, setting me back 5 turns, and if he had been more lucky, 15-20.

Not on large maps, where the players are farther apart.

But at that point, shouldn't everyone be playing farmer's gambit - using the barbs to penalize becomes too RNG-dependent.

[pindicator]

I'd argue fog-busting is fundamentally different than defending against avenues of attack from players, and despite my misgivings with barb RNG (i think i lost 3 90% battles in PB52 to barbs, so I have as much right to complain as anyone ) I think it's a skill that should be rewarded. If you take out barbarians, you're making the farmer gambit a lot easier because you're giving the player one less thing to juggle.