[LURKERS] Sweet 16: Civ Party Fun Time and Philosophical Debate

[spacetyrantxenu]

Not necessarily second to last. In a large game there's bound to be enough players doing questionable to heinously bad things to allow warrior first guy to avoid the bottom tier at least. Coming back to win from a slower start could be possible with enough sloppy play by others and good play by warrior first guy, but I wouldn't count on the field playing that poorly around here. In the most plausible case warrior first guy gets behind early and eventually can at least be relevant with his extra land after eliminating the nearby neighbor, but as Mardoc said, the big winner is whoever else borders the eliminated player and didn't slow his own snowball to gain extra land.

[Hesmyrr]

I can see the warrior rush being viable if the map consisted of several islands that only house two civilizations. If so, the player who warrior rush will be likely to have control of enough land - regardless of whether the islands are connected by coast or not - to be in advantageous position, and also won't have to spend so much in military expenditure.

[Serdoa]

That's exactly the point. It can work, but there have to be quite a few things working out in your favour that it actually makes sense. Not having to invest in military is of course a plus, but if I look around our games here, it seems the winning strategy is to go as low on military as possible and just whip it in when necessary (what you often can see by your neighbour whipping heavily while power grows).

And even if all came true, you would need to know it on T0, else you set yourself back just to gamble that you can raze the city of a neighbour you don't even know if you have close-by. And that he himself isn't building a warrior - or just scouting in your direction.

That said, I agree that it can lead to someone leaving the game early. Not sure that's so bad though in the general sense. I wouldn't have put them like that if they started with warriors obviously, as that would have made it too much luck-based that someone is just stumbling in the right direction. But if someone makes the decision to build a warrior T0 so be it.

[sunrise089]

@Mardoc - You're right, but that's the point I'm trying to make - farmer's gambit is the stronger strategy. I'm just annoyed a bit that it's seemingly so dominant that it's essentially the only option for the crucial early game. I mean the community seems to prefer civs based overwhelmingly on starting techs to lead to faster cottages, UU be damned, and while a good strat I just personally find it lacking a bit in flavor.

Versus the AI on higher difficulty levels the human player pretty much has to go for a farmer's gambit anyways and restart if they get DOW'd. You can add in raging barbs to try and keep people a little honest, but the barbs are even less competent than the AI. With actual skilled humans to play against I wish there was some way where a mix of strategies in the early game was the right call.

Say the 2-civ islands start was unknowable T0 but happened pretty often. Players would have to consider building warriors, but if they always built them they'd be behind on the more conventional maps. That's probably not a fun arrangement, but I feel a bit like by removing diplo (something the more skilled micro players tend to be on the margin less skilled at), by removing real-time mechanics like double moves, and by making maps where worker-first no-war is always the right call we're simply bringing back RB Epics and Adventures but reported in real time. I know that's an exaggeration, and I know that 100 people playing ~20 pitbosses and ~60 PBEM's isn't enough iterations to have perfectly solved Civ IV, but I still have an ill-feeling towards the spoiler threads being full of the same sort of early game plans.

Now Serdoa may in fact have subverted that a bit with this map, so I'll keep an open mind. But it's interesting that krill for instance equates "possibility of tactically successful early war" as "questionable map."

[Serdoa]

I think Krill equates a good map with a map that a player makes strategic choices on depending on information he has. And on this map if he had gone warrior first he could kill an opponent - but not because of a strategic choice or any information available to him but because of "dumb luck". That's something he doesn't like so that's probably where he is coming from.

[Mardoc]

I guess I fail to understand several parts of your argument, Sunrise. What's so interesting about warrior wars? You either win or you lose, no strategy beyond deciding whether to bet. Part of why we want to have guaranteed metal and distance is so that if you get into a war, at least it's an interesting one with tactics and unit composition decisions.

Also, what's wrong with 'bringing back RB Epics and Adventures'? I enjoyed reading about them, and would have played if I had more time.

You can somewhat get the mechanics you're talking about in duels. But otherwise, I think there's no real way to make Civ into that game - you're better off looking for a different game entirely. Diplomacy has conflict right away, for example. As does League of Legends.

[sunrise089]

@Mardoc - I'm uncertain whether I'm really asking for civ to be a different game, it's more me just sharing my vague unease about farmers gambits since not a lot else is happening and I had recently seen krill's complaint.

As for Epics and Adventures, I enjoyed them as well. I'd not at all mind a mix of the current MP games with maybe some occasional SP games thrown in too, but with the AI we have to play against and without variant play, that turns into the old Game of the Months at CFC with its own issues.

You either win or you lose, no strategy beyond deciding whether to bet.

I guess this is what I care about. I disagree, and think deciding whether to bet in many sort of games is an interesting decision in and of itself.

Certainly it's ideal as Serdoa says to make meaningful (and as a spectator interesting) decisions based on information you've received. In theory letting players pick their civs after seeing their starts accomplishes this. We're essentially saying the quality of the game in aggregate is better if we let the guy considering the Vikings know his cap is landlocked, or the guy pondering India know his cap is largely flat and unforested. But I wonder...

RB is playing lots of chess these days, and at the risk of getting this wrong since I'm a total novice, my understanding is many strong chess players play a mix of openings even though statistically said openings vary in effectiveness. Obviously you don't want to play an opening that leads to markedly worse outcomes, but by varying things a bit and introducing some randomness you keep your opponent from over-optimizing against your preferred play and have a positive side benefit of making the game more interesting to spectators. The quality of play I'd think would be stronger if the same openings were always used, since essentially the game would have fewer branches in its move trees and so the remaining moves could be more optimized, but the game would have less flair.

Now all that said, the example of warrior first I started this with may have been ill-advised since as others have said a warrior kill raises the odds of not coming in last but lowers the odds of coming in first, and most people play to win. So distilling things down, what I'm pining for is an early kill to increase one's chances of winning, but for an unsuccessful early attack to still cause them to fall, and for the equilibrium to be each game having some but not all people start warriors or at least develop for early aggression.

[Bobchillingworth]

side benefit of making the game more interesting to spectators

I think this may be the crux of the disconnect between you and Mardoc specifically, and lurkers and games in general. A lot of players here have very similar openings for BtS games because they insist on playing on only a small collection of maps, usually Seven's Torrusland or something similar, maybe occasionally a donut. While watching players battle on a map with highly variable terrain like Highlands would be more interesting from a lurker's perspective, I can speak from the personal experience of PBEM 3 how incredibly frustrating it is to sign up for a game and realize that the map defeated you 30 turns in.


Perhaps you have a point that players ought to consider picking a civ for rushing potential instead of starting techs or UB or whatever. I suspect that people are turned off from early aggression with the ambition of eliminating a rival due to the perennial failures of Aggressive Romes and Charismatic Mongols to pull it off, but I could be wrong. Perhaps you ought to join a game and show everyone how it's done


If you want to lurk a game where a player invests in ancient age warfare and regularly employs it to their advantage, I suggest checking out one of Nic's.

[Ichabod]

Not sure if you are following PB13, Sunrise, but, as far as I can tell from my player perspective, it had quite a bit of fighting in the first 100 turns.

[sunrise089]

@Bob - Preventing player frustration is certainly important. Just thinking out loud, but maybe something like a map crafted towards more diverse strategies AND even more info provided to the players could work...

As far as showing people how it's done, even if my limited skillset was up to it, it doesn't change the 'early fighting is best for those on the sidelines' problem if that is indeed universally true.

@Ichabod - Thanks for the recommendation. I fully admit I've not sampled every game. I'm only speaking from the more recent games I've played in and/or followed.