Longturn Forum

"Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.""

Thanks for the tips and feedback.

Even though I have never played against humans, I do have some serious experience with Civilization II in prince mode. So I would put myself among the experienced players.

emilio wrote:Even though I have never played against humans, I do have some serious experience with Civilization II in prince mode. So I would put myself among the experienced players.

Humans are far more dangerous opponents than any AIs available. They can execute economic synergy strategies and coordinated invasions that no AI opponents can quite manage. My experience in the past with playing multiplayer games of Civ (Civ3, Civ4) is that "Can beat the computer at high difficulty" still counts as "Noob" when facing humans. Also, the Longturn ruleset is different in many ways from classic Civ2, and so one needs to learn a different set of strategies.

Despite my own extensive experience playing Civilization games, I was a noob 2 months ago when LT44 began.

Also remember that my assessments are based on limited and sometimes incorrect information. That list is a list of my judgements and misjudgements, not an objective assessment of true skill. I would guess that about 30% of that list is wrong, but I had to make a decision of SOME sort, and thought it would be a good idea to offend and alienate my fellow players and potential team-mates by sharing some of the criteria I was using to make a ranked list of 35 people who I don't know.

Yeah, that Cunningham's Law is spot on

While it definitely helps that you have played single player civilization games, the multiplayer can present some really unexpected challenges. Yes the players can be really smart and they can co-operate but that's not the really difficult part.

A good example is your enemy grabbing land next to you and doing it with incredibly bad city locations. The city locations may be so bad that both players waste lots of land and can't really settle well. Sure you could attack that player but the problem is that it may get too expensive and while the computer players are coded to give up and making peace when it kind of makes sense, the human players can just keep wasting your resources even while it means doom for both of you.

One basic rule is that remember that the human players can make some really weird moves or errors and those can't be anticipated because they may be weird errors and you can't just guess when someone makes really stupid moves while everything else makes perfect sense

... and then there is diplomacy

Yeah.

Diplomacy is very different. Basically you don't make formal peace treaties (in-game treaties) but instead agree in private chat that you won't attack. Sometimes you may make formal treaties but most governments allow easily breaking those deals and then it makes no sense. Instead peope worry about the reputation they have and that's a different story...

Then the human players may misunderstand what you tried to agree them with and that's even more complicated

My previous example was about basic differences what it comes to a specific situation. Similar stuff may or may not happen more

Very well, I'm a noob then

With all these complexities you guys are talking about I'm so excited to get started!

One question though: How do you guys make sure no one is cheating by creating multiple accounts? In game theory this is called a Sybil attack, I think.

I'm not sure what measures are taken to prevent that, but I have heard that in the late game with large empires and loads of units to command in huge wars, that turns can take over an hour (if you're trying to play properly). Making multiple accounts so that you can do this with two or three nations at once is quite the time commitment. And then if you go on a vacation, you have to get regents for each of these nations at the same time!

So one deterrent to that would simply be the hassle!