Planetfall PBEM 2

[Sian]

Tracker : http://mistbinder.org/tracker/tracker.php?game=pf2

Player List

Sian of Morgan Industries : Sianist at Gmail
Mardoc of Pirates : RBMardoc at Gmail
Maniac of Data Angels : Peter_Steenbeke at Hotmail
Sareln of Cybernetic Consciousness : Sareln09 at Gmail
Iskender of Spatans : Rbiskender at Gmail

[Maniac]

Cool!

There may be a person already participating in my ongoing Planetfall PBEM interested in joining a second PBEM. That person will soon go on vacation until mid July however. I'm assuming that fits just fine as Bigger said he wanted some time playing Planetfall single player first.

I will probably be interested in joining that second PBEM, yes. I'm just hoping it gets delayed until my other games are further along.

Are you talking in terms of months then? No interest in joining one in the near future?

***

Discussing settings... Personally I'm also interested in the input and thoughts of people not participating in this PBEM.

I played lots of SMAC multiplayer back in the day, but I'm not familiar with the usual multiplayer settings for Civ4 or on Realms Beyond. I'm only now playing my first Planetfall PBEM myself, as before it was pointless to start a PBEM for a mod still in full development. Therefore I'm wondering about the reasons behind some of the usual multiplayer settings.

Scattered Landing Pods yes/no? A majority here prefers Scattered as non-Scattered makse the game too easy for players with early rushing skills. I'm wondering, does that argument still count in a multiplayer game with humans? My theory is, if everyone starts close together, and one human is running over another faction, be it human or AI, then the other humans can come to the aid of the losing party, and bring some balance of the power to the world. Interventions seem less likely to happen when the other factions are far away from the warring parties, especially in Planetfall where you might have to cross oceans choke full of Isles of the Deep to come to someone else's aid.

This intervention scenario is exactly what's happening in my ongoing Planetfall PBEM: the University player was gobbling up the AIs on his continent, but I and another player declared war on the University to put a stop to him. I wouldn't have done so if I was too far away from the University to get there in time, or too far away from my resupply lines.

As you can read, in that game the presence of AIs oil the wheels of diplomacy, like city states can do in Civ5. Leading to the next question:

AI civs yes/no? Many games don't have them. What's the reason? As mentioned, above, are they considered too advantageous for those who start near them? Again, is that not neutered by the balance of power effect of all humans being able to reach other in a decent time frame? Other reasons for having AIs around:
1. they add a diplomatic aspect to religion, an extra reason to spread your religion as wide as possible, kinda lacking between human players
2. the more factions, the more interesting the Planetary and Concordat Council can become.

Unity Pods yes/no? The dominant tendency in multiplayer has always been to turn off unity pods and goodie huts. Many people see multiplayer as a pure test of skill, and want to remove as much randomness from that competition as possible. I have always argued to turn them on however. Reasons:

1. If you remove all game features that contain an element of randomness, because it detracts from the test of skill, then you'll be left with a very boring, streamlined and nerfed game in my opinion. Many people say that unity pods/goodie huts are "imbalanced", but at the same time they also admit they're fun. Isn't that what's most important?

2. Some factions are specifically designed with easier pod popping as one of their strengths. I'm thinking of the Spartans and Pirates here especially. Turning off unity pods removes one of the reasons to play those factions.

3. The reason to play a multiplayer game instead of single player is the interaction with humans, no? It adds an aspect of diplomacy to the game, another skills one must master to win the game. Accepting that the art of diplomacy is one of the required game skills, I personally don't see it as a problem if one player get somewhat ahead through luck. If that happens, it's the other players' job to ally together to bring the leader down. If they don't, rather than blame their loss on random chance, they should blame their own shortcomings in one of the skills necessary to play the game well.


Starting era Arrival/Expansion? In my ongoing PBEM, we started in the Expansion era. That era gives you all level 1 and 2 techs excepting Archeology and Social Psych (the prereqs for Centauri Meditation). Reasons:
1. It gives us four extra civs to choose from.
2. You start with more stuff, so the first couple boring turns where you can only move one unit per turn and haven't met anyone else yet get reduced.

[Sian]

offhand i can only remember 1 pbem which had a AI in it, and that was a traincrash in slowmotion since, from what i gathered, it was made to strong and grabbed all religions and all wonders, otherwise AI's are usually to weak and murks up the picture, in terms of who's the better player replacing it with who's the luckier player (same reasons why huts are usually banned, and in this mod from what i can see huts are effectively even stronger).

Scattered landing pods, as said most pbems are played on some kind of hand crafted map, but being futher away from each other, yeah probably a good idea.

In general the opinion is that people should win because they're good, rather than map related reasons which players have no influence on.

As for which starting point? ... meeh, usually ancient is played but its not the only one, and if theres good reasons to play another then that can certainly be played

[Mardoc]

Mid July would be a good time for me; if you're planning to delay til then to start, you can count me in.

It's just that my current games are on T6 and T15, and I know from experience that they start to consume a lot of time around T50-75. I really don't want to hit the busy stage with all my games at once. Given three more weeks to progress my current games, though, they'll be nicely staggered.

[HidingKneel]

Mid July would be a good time for me; if you're planning to delay til then to start, you can count me in.

Need a dedlurker? I can offer a font of hard-earned wisdom gleaned from my half-finished game as Deirdre, stumbling through the tech tree like a drunken idiot .

[Mardoc]

Need a dedlurker? I can offer a font of hard-earned wisdom gleaned from my half-finished game as Deirdre, stumbling through the tech tree like a drunken idiot .

That would be lovely

[Bigger]

Mid July would be a good time for me; if you're planning to delay til then to start, you can count me in.

It's just that my current games are on T6 and T15, and I know from experience that they start to consume a lot of time around T50-75. I really don't want to hit the busy stage with all my games at once. Given three more weeks to progress my current games, though, they'll be nicely staggered.

hehe, I like how I'm signed up before even knowing this thread, hehe. But, given Alpha Centauri was the game that made me hooked on pc gaming and the civ franchise (I've played thousands of hours of single player), I'm not sure I can refuse.

Mid-July would be ok for me, late July would be better. I haven't actually had time to play any single player for this mod, but I'll have plenty of time in early/mid july to do so. also by then thestick should be back to turn playing for pbem35, and I should be dead in diplomacy .

Maniac (and others), I'm currently writing an Alpha centauri themed werewolf game, to be played here when the current WW game finishes (hopefully). I hope you'll join us, I promise it'll be much fun .

[Bigger]

I also wouldnt mind a ded-lurker, if anyone's interested. Maniac, what is the optimum number of human factions for your mod? Do you recommend having 7 factions for balance, and filling in with AI where we are short of humans?

You should probably re-post a link to the mod as well.

[Maniac]

offhand i can only remember 1 pbem which had a AI in it, and that was a traincrash in slowmotion since, from what i gathered, it was made to strong and grabbed all religions and all wonders, otherwise AI's are usually to weak and murks up the picture, in terms of who's the better player replacing it with who's the luckier player

Could you or anyone else give specific reasons why AIs are considered to murk the picture? Perhaps some of the reasons don't apply to Planetfall, or I could try to improve certain AI code. For instance I could try to make the AI more likely to sign defensive pacts when there's someone attacking AIs one by one.

(same reasons why huts are usually banned, and in this mod from what i can see huts are effectively even stronger).

Unity Bays can't be built in an Expansion start, so that's an extra argument in favour of an Expansion start. Of the three issues (scattered landing pods, unity pods, AIs), this is the one I feel strongest about. Frankly, I'm not sure if I'd like to play a game without them.

Besides the reasons mentioned earlier (Spartan & Pirate strength), unity pod popping (and capturing the native life that has infested the pods) is supposed to be one of the strengths of a pro-Planet economy. Not having them could make one of the game's major strategies not worthwhile.

Scattered landing pods, as said most pbems are played on some kind of hand crafted map, but being futher away from each other, yeah probably a good idea.

I'd like to hear why being further away is a better idea, to see if the reasons still apply to Planetfall. For instance, do people's opinion take into account that the difference in strength between unit levels is much lower in Planetfall, so it isn't as dramatic a problem to be temporarily behind a unit tech level? Or that forests can't be chopped for massive hammers in Planetfall, meaning you can't quickly rush an army, and opponents should have more of an advance warning?

In vanilla settings the worry is probably two players starting close to each other, and one being able to rush another, or one being cut off from expansion space. Does the rushing worry still apply when EVERYONE is close to each other, meaning other factions can always come to each other's help if one faction is running away with the game and rushing another human or AI? Do people take into account the existence of sea bases in Planetfall, meaning there rarely is such a thing as having no expansion space?

Up until now, all Planetfall multiplayer I was aware of was two friends playing with each other. PBEMs are new, so the standard close-together positioning hasn't been multiplayer-tested, and what I'm saying about balance of power is only theory. But I'd like to give it a try. AFAIK it's a setting no one has ever tried in multiplayer, right?

Need a dedlurker? I can offer a font of hard-earned wisdom gleaned from my half-finished game as Deirdre, stumbling through the tech tree like a drunken idiot .

What's a dedlurker?

Mid-July would be ok for me, late July would be better.

Sure. That gives me more time to fix the bugs discovered by PBEM1.

Maniac (and others), I'm currently writing an Alpha centauri themed werewolf game, to be played here when the current WW game finishes (hopefully). I hope you'll join us, I promise it'll be much fun .

Certainly!

I also wouldnt mind a ded-lurker, if anyone's interested. Maniac, what is the optimum number of human factions for your mod? Do you recommend having 7 factions for balance, and filling in with AI where we are short of humans?

Planetfall hasn't had much multiplayer activity, so I can't give a recommendation. Personally my preference goes to all 11 factions (human+AI) on a standard map.

For participating humans, I guess 4 or even better 5 would be best. Five is uneven, so you can't get an eternal 2vs2, and it's still few enough that the time between receiving your turns gets too long.

When deciding number of factions, take into account that the entire ocean is colonizable. So if it is decided to play without AIs, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be best to play on a small instead of standard map?

You should probably re-post a link to the mod as well.

If that's allowed on this forum, I'll start a general Planetfall thread for questions and discussing suggestions to make the mod better for multiplayer.

[Selrahc]

RE: Unity pod popping
Unity Pods are ramped *UP* goody huts. I wouldn't play another PBEM with Unity Pods enabled.
Unity pods cascade. Bob in the current PBEM popped lots of explorer units with his early unity pods, and used them to pop dozens of pods. I popped some cartographic data and some energy credits, then had all further exploration blocked by worms. The Spartan "exploration bonus" pales into insignificance compared to the effects of popping some unity rovers or choppers.

If I was going to reccomend a fix, I would say dramatically increase the negative effects of popping pods. Make all/most pods not popped by Culture generate Mindworms. This is a blatant ripoff of the idea behind lairs in FFH, but I think it works. If you're going to have super bonuses available in the early game, have them tempered by risks.

Popping a great result is fun. Being one of the players that isn't getting great results, and is probably resigned to ignominy due to it is just immensely frustrating.

meaning you can't quickly rush an army,

To quickly build an army in the early game, run Energy, build scout patrols, then upgrade to your most powerful available unit.

Does the rushing worry still apply when EVERYONE is close to each other, meaning other factions can always come to each other's help if one faction is running away with the game and rushing another human or AI?

Imagine a 5 player game. A rushes B. C intervenes, D and E watch. A, B and C are all weakened. D and E continued growing stronger.
This is why precedent has shown that intervention is not going to act as a balance. People are incentivized not to intervene.