Neilo Neilo

Metaverse League Round 4

▼

Metaverse League Round 4

Let the games begin!!!!!

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hi all and welcome to round 4 and a new season of the MV League. First i would like to congratulate the Celestial Crusaders for their victory in season 1.

A big welcome to all our new players that have joined us. We hope you like the league as much as the rest of us do, and we hope you stay with us for a long time.

Please check out this thread guys, The MVL and the AltMeta, we have been trying to get the MVL into the AltMeta for a while and now we are finally on the road to do this. We do need your support though. It will not be a quick and easy process for Kryo but he is willing to do this if there is the support to go with it. Please drop by this thread and lend your support to this effort.

As most of you know we shook things up for this round with a player draft. For those that we unaware of this i will explain. We have a new team for this season, The Eternal Evildoers/Villainy (not sure yet on the name) and to fill this new team in a fair manner and to try and create a level playing field across all teams we instigated a draft. The captain of each team stayed a member and everyone else went into the player pool.(Silverbeacher was appointed Team E captain).

Each team then had two draft picks each and the rest of the team spots filled randomly.

So here are the new look teams,


(Xei Win Toh has abstained from play until the arrival of TA)

See your captain for the new forum passwords at the Galactic Core.

As the league expands there is a need for more people to help administer and run the league. Here is a rundown of "official" positions.

Commissioner - Neilo
Vice Commissioner/Score Keeper - Firebender
Score Keeper - Silverbeacher
Rule Moderation - Mumblefratz

Also we have two current threads guys, the MVL Round 4 Draft and Discussion thread and the MVL Rulebook thread.

It is in the MVL Rulebook thread that all rules for the league will be kept. Mumblefratz will keep the OP of that thread updated with the current rules as they change across rounds. Bar for a change in the way ties are managed i do believe that the rules are very similar as to round 3.

Without further delay here is the Round 4 challenge,

A Diplomatic Victory(alliance) in a small map with 5 opponents.

Habitable planets - Abundant
Number of stars - Occasional
Number of planets - Common
Star density - Tight Clusters
Anomolies - Common
Asteroids - Rare
Tech rate - Very fast
Minors - random (enabled in DL)

Enable,
Blind Exploration
Mega Events
Super Abilities
Surrenders
Tech trading
and of course all victory conditions.

End of round - Midnight NOV 30 2007 (forum time)

Please guys leave all discussion to the Round 4 Draft and Discussion thread, as to leave this thread free for game submissions. It does get hard to sift through alot of posts to find a submitted game. Thanks.

Well, here's to a re-invigorated league and a nice challenge for round 4.
Good luck all and enjoy your games.
metaverse
83,215 views 261 replies
Reply #52 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Still off topic? I'm rich in love
End of quote


...but you're poor in score. Hey, is this the thread where we post our Round 4 scores? Because I don't see any scores. Just a lot of hot air from some teams. Let me set you guys straight.



FTR, I used a custom race with Super Diplomat ability.


Siege of Centauri
Reply #53 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
End of round - Midnight 30/11/2007 (forum time)
End of quote

I guess this is a common way to represent dates in a number of countries, however in the US the standard is month/date/year and so this would be shown as 11/30/2007. While I don't particularly care to promote one standard over another there are obviously dates that could be confusing between these two methods. I suggest that we try and avoid any possible confusion by listing dates in the same manner that they are listed in each post which means this date should be listed as Midnight November 30, 2007. While I do realize that this does take a few more characters to type it does avoid confusion and also does not require the rest of the world to follow the US standard.

Actually the superior standard is really year/month/date because dates represented in this standard collated in ascii sequence are sorted in increasing date order as well. Of course like most things the most logical standard is the most infrequently used.
Reply #54 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Very true, i should have realized, but i only had a few minutes whilst in a hotspot for my wireless. Will fix it up soon....
Reply #55 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I suggest that we try and avoid any possible confusion by listing dates in the same manner that they are listed in each post which means this date should be listed as Midnight November 30, 2007.
End of quote


i agree, but i'd suggest this format: 30 NOV 2007. it's fewer characters, and because it's all capital-sized letters it stands out to persons with short attention spans or reading disabilities (i have mild dyslexia).
Reply #56 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My computer is fixed, I'm already working on my second game now! ^_^
Reply #57 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually Silverbeacher PM'ed me at the Core about an issue that I had forgotten about until now. It particularly applies to Alliance victories although it can also influence any victory type.

The issue is that no mention has been made of the initial relationship settings when beginning the game. In general I think these should always be set to "unknown". Clearly setting opponents to "friendly" or "close" could have a large impact in an Alliance victory.

We could have a specific rule about this but I think this is something that more properly goes with a definition of the game settings in each rounds thread (i.e. in this threads OP). What do others think?
Reply #58 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Does establishing the relations higher in the setup menu not trip the cheat flag? I've never messed with them, they are always on "unknown" so I have no clue.
Reply #59 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Always unknown would be my understanding, but what about opponents.
Reply #60 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
how about you specify for each round.

like...

"have two races on wary, and one race on freindly, with the rest on unknown"

But to do this you'd have to chose what races are in the game manualy and I personally like to just hit (whatever # of races) and then put an "x" in the randomize races box. I'm a very choosy person.
Reply #61 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ohhh, i had not thought of this. One can change all opponents to friendly without tripping cheat flags. The game will not let you start off with relations set at close.

So this should really be addressed, and the races too. Obviously for this round there would be no changes but in future "alliance victory" rounds we may wish to implement some other settings.

Having everything set to unknown would be akin to having settings at random, and we already discussed that nothing should be set to random.
What i propose is to have all opponents set to neutral, let's take the middle ground and let your game decide it any further.

As for the races, this will be harder to find some common ground on i believe. There are far too many variables as to what races to use. Leaving these to the players choice may be a little cheese in some cases (we will never know of course), but it will be far less of a headache trying to figure out how to implement this.
Reply #62 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Having everything set to unknown would be akin to having settings at random, and we already discussed that nothing should be set to random.
End of quote

No, this is not quite the case. Unknown here doesn't mean unspecified it means that you have no previous contact with that race. I think if you start out with anything other than unknown (even starting as "wary" or "at war") means that you can immediately talk to them and trade techs etc. even if they're across the largest galaxy (medium in our case). Basically unknown says you haven't met them and then as soon as you do meet them they probably take either a minor liking or a minor disliking to you based on your current ethics.

I think unknown is the way everyone should set all opponents at all times. I suppose we could get into specifying relations as part of the rounds definition but I think that's too tedious. Every game I've ever played except one was with unknown relations.

The one time I set relations was the very first time that I played suicidal. I wanted it to not be quite so hard so I set all my opponents to "friendly". This actually changed the reported difficulty from suicidal to obscene, but setting relationships does not set the cheat flag. Also this can be a major advantage to any game, not just political alliance victory types. If everyone starts out friendly then you get extra time before you're attacked.

I vote for all unknown all of the time. Just as with specifying races (of player or opponents), having specified variation of x races set to y relationship and so on just gets too tedious.
Reply #63 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Unknown is the only way I've played. I tried another setting one time and didn't really like the "who's out there?" surprise taken away(I use random races). If the opponents are set to some known status, I believe you would all of a sudden see a plethora of quicker games being submitted and I don't think that would necessarily be a good thing.
Reply #64 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i say go with "unknown"
Reply #65 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have been under the assumption that "unkonwn" meant "random", and so have been setting relations to Neutral for ages now to get what I thought was an even start. That's what I did for the game above. I'm the only submitter so far; if there is a wish to make a ruling now, then FTR I don't mind playing another game for this round to keep things even.


Reply #66 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have never changed the relations settings and I assumed that everyone would have it set at unknown or random. I think unknown is the way to go.

Sentient species taste better... Sentient species taste better...
Reply #67 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i started a game with relations set to friendly. but now that the question's been raised, it does seem more fair for them to be set to unknown. i wouldn't mind starting a new game (i'm not enjoying this round's settings in any regard, and i don't feel particularly attached to the game i've played so far).

this also touches more broadly on the issue of customizing opponents. should players be allowed to pick the opponents on their maps, or should it be random? should custom opponents be allowed, and if so, should their be a limit? should players be allowed to modify the alignment and aggression of opponents? what about picking their bonus point assignments for them?
Reply #68 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm the only submitter so far; if there is a wish to make a ruling now, then FTR I don't mind playing another game for this round to keep things even.
End of quote


i started a game with relations set to friendly.
End of quote

For my 2 cents I don't think it's that big of a deal. At most it's a minor thing that modifies the effective difficulty level that you're playing at. We don't police the difficulty level that people play so I don't see that it matters all that much.

Clearly the most impact it could have is on an unusually fast alliance win. I don't believe that anyone has intentionally set relationships for purposes of gaining an advantage in a league game. I'm sure everyone has basically just played as they always have. I see no point for people to be concerned enough about this that they feel they need to replay a game that's already been finished. However, it is reasonable to make a decision for how we will handle this in the future.

I think things like picking the race of your opponents falls into the same category as picking the race you play. Also the selection of your racial abilities, political party and super ability in DA. These are effectively game stategy choices. If someone chooses a particularly "good" race in regards to the above and chooses opponents that make it somehow easier to win faster or score more points then I would suggest that such choices are indicative of a depth of knowledge about the game and can legitimately be called a "skill". There are many things about the game that we specify to try and make the game the same for all players. However there are certainly limits that are both of a practical nature and are desirable. After all everyone can't play the identical game and some things need to be left up to player preferences.

I would say about races that people should be able to choose any race they want and to customize it anyway they can within the specifics of the round. As for opponents I would say that they can pick any race for opponents but otherwise should not customize an opponent other than selecting intelligence. I think most folks would consider modifying an opponents default racial abilities to make them play below their normal capabilities not proper.

However this brings up a point that I didn't think of prior to this and that is what specifies an opponents configuration. Is it the *.raceconfig file in the My Games\GalCiv2 directory? If so then I've always left the raceconfig files that I've used in the past. Does this mean that the AI plays the race with the abilities I had when I last played that race. If so then I think I'm gradually making my opponents better since I feel I choose better abilities then their defaults. Does anyone know how this works?
Reply #69 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't personally feel that anyone would need to restart their games. To be honest, the difference in Diplo status is still minor, and its not that easy to get Ally status off the bat without being able to back it up.

As for Race Configurations, as someone that plays with race configs A LOT let me clear up some things.

When you start a game and do NOT modify your opponents, they (at Intelligent, Normal settings) get ONLY what appears for their BASIC stats (the ones that appear when you select a race) You can't lower or mess with those (it will trip the flag if you do) but you CAN add to them, like any race. This will actually make them HARDER but does NOT change the difficulty level.

If you alter the Economic Bonus and/or the Extra Ability sliders, this WILL change the difficulty level to match, either higher or lower depending.

And yes Mumble, the AI will use the last settings inputed for a race, that means if you have made your opponents have more abilities, they maintain those when you play again. So yes, they should be getting "better" lol.

Does that clear some things up at all?
Reply #70 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You have it pretty much wrong. There isn't much point in customizing relations unless your trying to live out the star trek empires and want everything to be the same as in the series.

First, setting relations to anything other then unknown(even war) drops your score and even your reported difficulty depending.

Second, pre-setting relations doesn't help much. The relations drop like a hot potato if they develop a military before you(even if you pay tribute it only works for so long).

Reply #71 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i got a better game with unknown relations anyway.
Reply #72 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And yes Mumble, the AI will use the last settings inputed for a race, that means if you have made your opponents have more abilities, they maintain those when you play again. So yes, they should be getting "better" lol.
End of quote

I think I like that. It's only fitting that the AI plays with what you feel are the best settings for that race. However that doesn't mean that the settings that the human uses are ones most effectively used by the AI. But overall I think this is probably a benefit.

First, setting relations to anything other then unknown(even war) drops your score and even your reported difficulty depending.
End of quote

I knew about the lowered difficulty but didn't know it made a difference to score unless it's simply the score difference due to reduced difficulty which is really pretty minor.

Second, pre-setting relations doesn't help much. The relations drop like a hot potato if they develop a military before you(even if you pay tribute it only works for so long).
End of quote

I agree that this isn't the end all and be all but there is *some* advantage that an experienced player can gain here. I'd be willing to bet money that by setting relations as high as possible, which I assume is friendly, and getting the SCC early, a year 0 alliance victory is easier than it would otherwise be.
Reply #73 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Home pc is now fixed... hopefully the game I completed will post.
Reply #74 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with Mumble on these issues.

You can pick your opponents
Relations unknown.
Reply #75 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I knew about the lowered difficulty but didn't know it made a difference to score unless it's simply the score difference due to reduced difficulty which is really pretty minor.
End of quote


The difficulty goes down if you have set most(if not all) of your opponents to be friendly. There is another (though smaller) penalty per race with pre-set relations.

Btw, the highest relations you can set yourself to is "Close". I've never played a game with AI at close in the start but I think its safe to assume it has some kind of impact on the score(maybe a quick victory with the opponent at "Close" doesn't count for as much).