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When the old Civ Goon steam group was active and we played online games (one set game day every day, 2h session, if everyone agreed, we'd go on longer, if one wanted to stop, we'd stop.), the diplomacy wheeling and dealing was good. And often the race to victory was one or two countries, with the rest remaining too far behind, but that didn't mean they were out of the game. Usually the major powers tried to use the lesser ones as bludgeons to harass the bigger ones, or as uranium farms, or as countries producing units and gifting them over the border, or something. The World Congress votes were also a huge player diplomacy circus. I once partook in the most amazing backstab where I and a fellow goon were bribed by a strong country to build a navy in secret to send it to his aid, and after receiving insane amounts of gold, built it, sailed across the ocean, and then using private game chat, sold our allegiance to his opponent, and the most powerful civ with a good lead in game was toppled and brought down by the navy and invasion force he paid for himself. It was this Steam Group years ago. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonciv We really didn't have much of house rules besides no war declaration for first 40 turns or so. Sometimes games would start from medieval age to speed up games. There'd be a set time to play, such as Sunday 1200 GMT, and the session lenght was 2 hours. If you had to leave earlier, AI took over or you could have someone else play as your civ, but people would play for that two hours. After the two hours, we'd often keep playing but only if everyone agreed to go on and as soon as one would want to quit and save, we'd stop as not to drag sessions on without players. We'd post announcement for a "sub" in case a player didn't show up, and I don't think we missed many games at all. The subbing player would get like a quick recap from the original player of his general plan and strategy, and that'd be it, he'd execute his vision. The games were good times, and the diplomacy was of no equal. Backroom deals were plenty, and negotiations, too. You could sell units, navies, workers, take resources, sell them forward. The AI will never be able to replicate a global rogue mercenary army on a whim, nor can the AI play neutral between two superpowers, selling info on both of em and come out as the winner of the game. It was proven throughout the games that going for victory right away was dumb, it'd only lead into a global coalition against you as your numbers start racking up. All players aimed for victory, unlike in a computer game. So you had to play a little bit differently, and not be really distinct from the rest. Or if you were, better make sure you can steamroll the world. War would evolve weirdly when one turn a huge coalition breaks apart, peace was brokered by some, and the whole diplomacy chart turns upside down and the world is a mess. I wish I had some screenshots of Steam Convos that are pages of pages of policy and trade discussion, then a sudden all caps "MOTHERFUCKER YOU SOLD ME OUT AFTER 300 TURNS YOU TRAITOR!" and incoherent typing. Here's some screenshots of the all amazing all chat. This picture is the great naval backstab with Sweden aiming for world dominance, trying to fight back the other major opponent, morocco, and paying for a huge foreign armada to help him. One turn before he'd be backstabbed. Up until the very last moment, he believed he had basically won the game by beating back Morocco.      I forgot the context besides the fact that the other player was asking furiously if some extra military exercises were being done behind his border, and everything was firmly denied. 
Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 09:39
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I love reading people's MP stories  Here's mine from Civ 5. If anyone can give me a quick summary of the Civ6 MP experience I'll stick in in the OP? I simply haven't had a chance to even get into SP, let alone MP, but I'm hankering for some MP action so hopefully I can join up in a few months.
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Aug 5, 2017 09:58
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Roland Jones posted:Double posting because I make good decisions: Single slot still open here. We can get started immediately if someone fills it. JeremoudCorbynejad posted:I love reading people's MP stories I could try a more detailed write-up of my experience in the Spring Goon Game, but I'm not sure it's the best way to sell people on the game as I got stuck in a very bad starting position then executed an extremely questionable plan before dying horribly. Also, going to read your account thing here. Might try maintaining something like this for the above game if/when it gets started, if people would be interested.
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Aug 5, 2017 20:47
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Why did you minor civs do that for the leaders? Why Kingmake when you can destroy everyone and assume the throne yourself.
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Aug 5, 2017 21:33
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Jastiger posted:Why did you minor civs do that for the leaders? Why Kingmake when you can destroy everyone and assume the throne yourself. Because they can't destroy everybody. They are already losing, and survive at the convenience of the major powers. The only reason the major powers do not consume the minor powers is because the other major power can take advantage of a two front war. They kingmake just enough so that the two major powers battle to a point where both powers are weakened enough that one of the minor powers can gain more ground and become a third power. The Human Crouton fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 21:45
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The Human Crouton posted:Because they can't destroy everybody. They are already losing, and survive at the convenience of the major powers. The only reason the major powers do not consume the minor powers is because the other major power can take advantage of a two front war. Heh for sure, for sure. It all looks really fun and intricate and those stories make these games the best.
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Aug 5, 2017 22:00
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Alright, with Byzant filling the last slot, midsummer game is a go. I'll be taking screenshots and notes on this, though I won't upload them immediately because, well, that'd give everything away. Other people in the game, feel free to send me friend requests (though I might contact you first) for diplomacy and stuff. I love chatting with people about the game and stuff. Also, this marks the third time in a multiplayer game I haven't had fresh water in my cap. If you count "not having it immediately and having to move a turn for it", then all four of my multiplayer games have denied me fresh water. The game seems to think I deserve to die of dehydration.
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Aug 6, 2017 00:59
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Jastiger posted:Heh for sure, for sure. It all looks really fun and intricate and those stories make these games the best. That was what got me to try Crusader Kings and now I have logged so many hours playing that and then CK2. Also, this is not only my first multiplayer Civ VI, but the first time I've played Macedon. Looks like I'll have
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Aug 6, 2017 01:55
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ibntumart posted:That was what got me to try Crusader Kings and now I have logged so many hours playing that and then CK2. Alexander is ridiculously tough, so I doubt you'd lose quickly, at least. Unless you were subjected to a very early rush or something, you should be more than able to hold your own in a fight. On that topic, our lineup is Amanitore, Trajan, Alexander, Curtin, Hojo, and Cleopatra. I'm thinking this game might be a bit aggressive. Otherwise, no real focus among the civs; they're all pretty generalist. Anyone can do anything here basically.
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Aug 6, 2017 02:13
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ibntumart posted:That was what got me to try Crusader Kings and now I have logged so many hours playing that and then CK2. Build encampments, build Hypaspists and Hetairoi, pick someone to run over, rely on your uniques and conquests to keep you up to cultural and scientific speed, never stop being at war.
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Aug 6, 2017 02:18
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Roland Jones posted:Also, going to read your account thing here. Might try maintaining something like this for the above game if/when it gets started, if people would be interested. I would be into reading that once the game ends.
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Aug 6, 2017 16:52
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A short AAR of Goon PBEM Game 3 This was concluded a couple of weeks ago but it took me time to get to this. Anyway... I was playing China and decided to try for a culture victory. My capital started surrounded by many (at least 10 if not more) jungle tiles and I managed to build the Cichen Itza, which gave me a nice culture boost. Add the Oracle and some great people and I was at the top of the science and culture charts for some time. Things were going well. We were all divided into two large continents, 3 players on each. I had no idea what's going on on the other one but on ours, a player dropped out of the game early which left us with AI America, which wasn't much of a threat. The other player was Arabia and he too was content to remain peaceful so we were both just happily building, sciencing and slowly filling out the continent. Arabia eventually dropped out of the game too (he said he was too bankrupt to salvage the game), and I remained the only human on my continent.  The situation around turn 70. See the minimap. I have three major cities and have just built 2 new ones by the sea. The AIs are not competitors. And then people from the other continent started dying... Two players were knocked out of the game in quick succession and it turned out that Ulvino, playing as Scythia, has conquered the whole other continent. At this point, I'm panicking slightly. I'm still mostly keeping pace with Ulvino in culture in science but I know I won't be able to stay in the game much longer if I only have 5 cities and he has something like 15 or so. I need to conquer my continent too... so I do just that. Convert to theocracy so that I can build units with faith, build and buy an army, then kill Arabia and then America just after that. Easy going since I have muskets and bombards and they don't. I do know that I will need a navy too. Unfortunately I'm mostly landlocked and my two coastal cities have terrible production and haven't even finished harbours yet. I'm rushing them but before I even finish the first proper ship, my eastern coast is already swarming with Scythian privateers and ironclads. My army is still mopping up America when Ulvino invades. He takes my coastal city and goes on to finish me.  And at this point, it all goes downhill. I'm not that weak but my army is all over the map and I'm unable to amass a proper force. Ulvino is also outproducing me badly. I only have 3 or 4 usable cities, the rest are freshly taken Arabian and Amecian ones and they need some time to grow and build infrastructure (also, build improvements - the AIs didn't bother with that much). This war can't be won. And won't be.  A view of the continent for the original American and Arabian players so that they know what happened to the place. When tanks appear on the scene, it's game over for me. Ulvino has so many units that he has grouped them into corps and armies. The bonuses for doing that are crazy, and my single units are getting massacred. When I combine my units into corps, they're stronger but also half as many and it doesn't really help. My capital falls. And soon after that, Ulvino takes the American and Arabian capitals too and wins the game.  Fun fact: I didn't know you can take cities with ships only! Not having a navy sure isn't a good idea. Ulvino has taken all my undefended coastal cities easily.  Also: Partisans are fun! 
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Aug 9, 2017 11:14
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Trying to win a non-military victory in MP is a bad idea.
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Aug 9, 2017 14:40
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Gort posted:Trying to win a non-military victory in MP is a bad idea. A culture victory is an especially difficult play, if it's anything like Civ 5 (which I'm given to understand it is). What about religious? Any chance of pulling that off in MP?
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Aug 9, 2017 17:27
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:What about religious? Any chance of pulling that off in MP? It's a bit like the other non-military victories - any half-decent player who is in danger of losing to a religious victory will attack you militarily, meaning that you need to have enough military to beat their military, which in turn means that you might as well have spent the effort you spent on trying to win a religious victory on building your army more. In Civ - and in MP particularly - all other aspects of the game are subordinate to the military aspect, since the reaction of a rational player to losing peacefully will always be to attempt to win militarily. If you can win a non-military victory, either your opponents weren't trying, or you had enough military to easily win a military victory. Or some weird edge-case like you started in the information era or something.
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Aug 9, 2017 17:36
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I think you could get lucky with two military powers having to fight each other allowing you the time for an alternate victory but that's going to be a rare occurrence.
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Aug 9, 2017 18:40
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Or you're one of the two remaining military superpowers who are locked in a perpetual hellwar. One of them might edge out with another victory type.
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Aug 9, 2017 19:36
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The AI is completely 100% busted if you are friendly with it. I set up a game specifically so I could be everyone friend and it's insane, they'll give you pretty much anything. Australia on the Earth map so I wouldn't be close enough to the AI to trigger their unending murderous rage. I have a friendship declaration with everyone except Greece. I messed up and forgot to put a civ in Africa so Greece went a bit nuts, I should have switched Elizabeth for Kongo.  Peter really wants those spices, see how long the scrollbar is, I milked him for every single great work he had.  Don't mind if I do. The reason I didn't pick up the relic was that I had no place to put it.  It was really easy to be really friendly with everyone until the industrial age where they started complaining about wonders, great people, stealing city states et.c. but since we've been friends for so long they still accept declarations of friendship. I bought open borders for 1 gold from everyone until recently when they started demanding 2 gold instead and Pericles pressing me for a whole 7 gold to let me sell my blue jeans and rock music in his cities.
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Aug 9, 2017 21:05
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Good CivGoons -- does anyone have advice please on game configuration or a mod that would extend science and culture development times, without extending unit build times? I'm playing multi-hour nerdfests with friends, and we would like to have more time to do exploration and conquest in the early and mid game before flight, nukes, etc., without Marathon setting's strange extension of unit and building construction times. I liked the last few pages of MP reports!
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Aug 10, 2017 07:34
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Wrennic_26 posted:Good CivGoons -- does anyone have advice please on game configuration or a mod that would extend science and culture development times, without extending unit build times? The Take Your Time series of mods multiply tech and civic costs, come in a variety of strengths (x1.5 as well as 2 through 5), can be stacked for even longer research times, (i.e. you can run x2 and x3 at the same time to get x6) and alter tech and culture independently (so you can have 2x culture costs and 3x science costs if you want). EDIT: Apparently some people are saying they don't work with the new patch? Seem fine to me. This one and presumably its variants don't have any complaints, and also multiply Great People rate. Glidergun fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 08:14
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Those mods are pretty good. But the problem when extending science/culture with a really big modifier, is that the AI keeps building units and stacking them in their cities. When they declare war, the game automatically unstacks these dozens of units and teleports them all over the map, probably right at your doorstep or inside your borders when you have open borders and they declare on someone else. So maybe the AI doesn't do city projects, but keeps building units when there's nothing else to build. - edit instead of making a new post: - I've been thinking about going back to Civ 4 for a bit after not having played it since Civ 5 came out. I'm just curious how well it holds up. So, how does it play after all these years? Have the mechanics become archaic? Is there stuff that is difficult to go back to? Things like railroading every drat tile. What about obligatory mods? I remember RevDCM, which I couldn't play without. I've always missed some kind of revolution mechanic since. It's also a much better game for roleplaying, instead of just playing for a victory. John F Bennett fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 08:39
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I've been playing some Civ 4 lately and enjoying it. Actually it's the interface rather than the mechanics that hasn't aged well. Although I bet there's some kind of interface overhaul mod around, given what a fanatical  following Civ 4 still has.
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Aug 10, 2017 13:26
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Eric the Mauve posted:given what a fanatical
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Aug 10, 2017 16:47
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I could never get into civ IV and thought it was clunky and badly explained. Civ V is still the series' best for me, although I respect others' opinion that they prefer civ IV, or even civ III. Two years from now, we might have our two civ VI expansion packs, and it might become my new favourite. If not, I'll always have civ V.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:55
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Civ 4 was fun because it had a very bombastic feel to it with huge numbers and such. Civ 5 was a nice sweetspot even though I still miss being able to combine units into a roaming ball of death across the map. I might top out at Civ 5 as well if god awful districts is the future of Civilization.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:12
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Civ I actually still holds up and is pretty fun. More complex doesn't always mean more fun.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:12
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I thought everyone hated Civ 5, what has changed?
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Aug 10, 2017 19:20
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Your Computer posted:I thought everyone hated Civ 5, what has changed? The base game sucked hard but after two expansion packs it became hella good.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:24
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Your Computer posted:I thought everyone hated Civ 5, what has changed? Civ 4 True Believers hate Civ 5 for not being Civ 4. 5 would be better if the diplomacy weren't so godawful. Being such as it is, though, I find myself bouncing back and forth between them. Civ 6 is a catastrophe though. For now.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:28
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Eric the Mauve posted:Civ I actually still holds up and is pretty fun. More complex doesn't always mean more fun. Yes. The trade route and stacking mechanics should be used in Civ 7.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:31
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Hey, it's me, meaning this is the one and only game of MP Civ I've ever tried. It was supposed to be a newbie game, but someone with experience snuck in as a ringer and started backstabbing and slaughtering people with much higher tech, to the point where I bailed at the end of our first session. Lag was horrendous, too.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:06
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Eric the Mauve posted:Civ I actually still holds up and is pretty fun. More complex doesn't always mean more fun. I loved bombarding a coastal phalanx with my battleship and having the battleship sink. Wait, did I say loved? I mean hated.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:23
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homullus posted:I loved bombarding a coastal phalanx with my battleship and having the battleship sink. Wait, did I say loved? I mean hated. Yeah that 0.2% chance event that could only happen when I already had the game won really ruined everything for me too
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Aug 10, 2017 20:29
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It could actually be a 50% chance event under certain circumstances (non-veteran battleship attacks at 18, fortified veteran phalanx on a mountain defends at 18) If you're bombarding a phalanx with a battleship you're just loving around, though
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Aug 10, 2017 20:34
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I tried to find any information whatsoever on Civ 1 combat mechanics and failed miserably. In all seriousness, if I was gonna be designing Civ 7's combat, I would allow units to stack infinitely, and when defending the best unit in the stack would defend, so you can do stuff like a spearman guarding a catapult against enemy horsemen. The downside to stacking like this would be that any damage your unit took when defending the stack would be also suffered by the other units in the stack. Bam, no more annoying peacetime traffic jams and no more AI nations with a unit in every hex. The AI would be able to handle it, and in wartime you'd have an incentive to spread your army out, but you wouldn't be forced to do so. You could still ram 200 horsemen through a mountain pass if you were sure you weren't going to get ambushed. I'd probably eliminate the "ranged attack" game mechanic entirely as well. Archers and siege units would be addons to armies which would provide attrition to adjacent enemies and city walls, while aircraft would go in a big bucket labelled "airpower" that grants bonuses to everything your other forces do.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:42
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Gort posted:Yeah that 0.2% chance event that could only happen when I already had the game won really ruined everything for me too Eric the Mauve posted:It could actually be a 50% chance event under certain circumstances (non-veteran battleship attacks at 18, fortified veteran phalanx on a mountain defends at 18)
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Aug 10, 2017 20:42
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Gort posted:I tried to find any information whatsoever on Civ 1 combat mechanics and failed miserably. I would like stacking with a limit, and a more clever combat equation which considered the whole combined army, kinda like in EU4, for ex.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:47
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We're already doing a post-mortem on Civ 6? At first districts seemed great and I thought they were fun. But now that their novelty has worn of, I find myself disliking them more with each play. I like the wonder tiles, though. Also, when I see screenshots of Civ 5, I'm always surprised how good they look. I had almost forgotten the art style, even though I have 1200 hours in it. I don't like the sparse forests of Civ 6. And yes, Civ 1 is perfect in its simplicity and is still a very good game and I love the graphics. Civ 2 and 3 have aged badly imo.
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Aug 10, 2017 22:11
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Civ 6 districts are good. They're just in a horribly unbalanced game. The cost of districts going up with each tech is terrible. Districts are a central strategy to the game. Why make them harder to get. Why give holy sites and campuses such similar adjacentcy bonuses? They are the first two available districts and you are already limited by population size. That population moddifer is what forces you to choose between them. They don't need to compete for the same spot. And who builds theater squares? Way too huge of an investment for the payoff because you probably built the campus already and every tech you get makes the theater square more expensive and less valuable. It's just a messed up good idea. The Human Crouton fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 22:24
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The Human Crouton posted:And who builds theater squares? Your mom (if she's playing as Victoria)
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Aug 10, 2017 22:26
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