SDMB Multiplayer Civ 5 games

The Game Room
41

We finished our first game - it was the second one we started with Terminus Est, Rand Mcnally, Krinthis (fat kid), Adarmus and I.

The game moved along at a good pace, taking about 10 hours in total. We tried a ring map with balanced resources which is very multiplayer oriented… it’s a little weird since if you want to go to war with people across the map it’s difficult, it’s more geared towards battling your neighbors, but a decent map type.

I took an early lead in most categories, expanding into some quality territory early on… when it was clear I was ahead, fat kid and rand teamed up to attack me from both ends. Fat kid took my only port on the inner sea, crippling my ability to project naval power, but I gradually fought them both back and retook the great city of Dickopolis one turn before it was razed to the ground.

I took an army through Terminus’ territory to start counterattacking Rand’s homeland, but then fat kid cross the middle ocean with a fleet and landed behind me, trapping my army between them. I bailed and they took out Terminus together. I did give Rand a parting gift of a nuke on the way out.

I decided I could hold them out of my own territory where I had various bonuses (himjei castle, 25% bonus in friendly territory, city-buffing bonuses) while I worked on doing a space victory. Which would’ve worked - except I didn’t notice we didn’t disable the time victory, and we were running up against the end of game clock.

I kept ferrying naval nukes on carriers to Fat Kid’s territory and hit him with quite a few. He’d been building 8 nukes in all his cities off of one uranium resource tile - and the second time I hit moscow with a nuke, it wrecked the uranium mine - so everything he was working on was lost. Between that and just losing tons of people, Adarmus was able to roll over his territory, coming back from third place getting to third in the score.

I was an economic, technological, and cultural powerhouse - I could’ve won a cultural or space victory in about 25 turn at that point - unfortunately the game was ending in 15 turns due to the time victory. In the future, I’m going to turn time victory off because it’s a pretty unsatisfying way for the game to end. Adarmus rolling across fat kid’s territory that was weakened by my nuke strikes actually gave him the top score by a bit - it was only when on the second to last turn I hit Adarmus with all the nukes I had left I got his population just low enough to barely edge him out in the score.

Had the game gone on another 10 turns, I would’ve easily won with either a space or cultural victory - but because of the last minute squeeze of the time victory, it ended up being a really close finish.

Anyway, it was a really good game and I’d like to start another one with the same group, and anyone else who wants to give it a try.

42

We finished the first game we started with 7 players. Krinthis (China) got out to an early lead and absolutely steamrolled the rest of us. He was on his way to conquering the entire map when we decided to just call him the winner because none of us could offer even token resistance.

I don’t know how he was able to just totally run away with this game when the others ones we’ve played were much closer.

Anyway, we’re looking at starting a new game on Wednesday. Everyone is invited, the more the merrier.

Game options are up for discussion. The map type is a pretty big question. I wasn’t a huge fan of pangea and it can be kind of unfair with some civs getting stuck between others and others having their own corner… maps with a wrap around world negate this to a large degree (since there are no fixed sides) but there are some non-wraparound multiplayer maps that are more balanced like 4 corners and ring.

Are all victory conditions fair game? I’m not sure I like diplomatic victories unless we’re playing with a lot of city states - the issue becomes… why would one human player vote for another human player other than to just spite a third party? They’d be voting for themselves not to win. I guess maybe there’s a longer term implication that there are rewards to playing a nice civ that helps others in that others may help you win down the road when they have no realistic chance, but I could imagine a diplo victory being unsatisfying. On the other hand, it’s very deep in the tech tree and another power would be able to stop it, so it’s fair game I suppose.

I’ll turn off time victory - it’s unsatisfying to have the game simply come to an end at a fixed date.

We also have the option of doing team games with permanent alliances if that’s how people want to go. We have an idea of how well most people play and may be able to come up with decent teams.

Anyway, give me your feedback, we’ll decide on how to start on Wednesday. Anyone who’s new and interested feel free to contact me and join our new game.

43

I usually play fractal. It’s a very random map. It’s usually a pangea. But because it’s highly random I can see not wanting to use that one for a multiplayer.

44

I can see us doing 3v3 or 4v4 team game on a Pangea map. That way, no one gets screwed too badly if they start on a bad position. I think there may also be maps better balanced for team play.

45

When you do team, do you share research and visibility or is just like you have a defensive pact? I vaguely remember that in Civ IV a team basically shared everything.

Here’s the screen shot for the last game - I didn’t get the one where beef won, but I think he has it:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/76561197973001542/screenshot/595811297833741428?tab=public

46

Missed the edit window. Here’s beef’s win:

Notice the nice radioactive plume around his capital :slight_smile:

47

Not that I have a dog in this fight, but wouldn’t a team game take diplomacy completely out of the picture?

And I enjoyed the trash-talking earlier.

48

It would mostly take diplomacy out of the picture - I guess you wouldn’t necesarily have to be at war all the time but it’d limit your options. We were also thinking of a team free for all - 2v2v2, or 2v2v2v2 if we can find the players. 3 players/teams can be an awkward number though - two go to war and the third one grows stronger in the meantime and then trounces the weakened sides.

We started a new game tonight - 7 players and one AI (to see how well the AI could do) on a large tiny islands map, no teams. I wanted to see what would happen if we had a game where it was harder to go to war due to all of the seperate land masses and encouraged more people to build their empires. Of course… despite having tiny islands, and a big map to play us on, Krinthis and I got started on the same damn island, which no one else had to deal with.

If everyone is around today (Thursday) we can continue our game - otherwise plan on doing the Monday/Wednesday thing like we have been. But anytime all 7 of us are around we can play.

If we get two concurrent games going again, we’ll probably do a 3v3 east vs west or similar type map.

49

We (me, RandMcNally, Love Rhombus, and Res) concluded our 4 man nighttime game in a really quick time - about 6 hours total. We tried the four corners map which is a decent layout that’s balanced, but it was a lot smaller than most maps are, so we were packed in pretty tight, which I guess kept the game moving along.

I became an economic powerhouse as egypt - despite the shortage on space I decided to give each city plenty of territory, so I only built three and eventually captured a fourth from a city state. But I used the space to grow supercities - my capital ended up being 32 population with 150+ production, 200 culture, and 300 beakers by the modern era. And since I was egypt, had marble in the area, and took the tradition policy for building wonders, I could crank them out like crazy - most wonders (on quick pace) took me under 8 turns to complete.

Rand and I ended up having some massive battles with 15+ units on each side, but we both had bonuses for fighting in our own territory so whoever tried to venture into the other’s territory would lose and it stalemated.

I eventually out-teched him and used my economic power to churn out a huge modern army - I had 5 or 6 modern armor, 6-8 rocket artillery, a few mech infantries, about 8 bombers, a bunch of guided missiles, and a few nukes (which we both had agreed not to use) - I had them lined up on my border ready to launch my big attack. I gave Rand some warning (with the simultaneous turn system it’s kind of crappy to sneak attack someone, because they might’ve already moved units they’d have otherwise used and such), so… he decided to betray his SACRED WORD not to use nukes… within about 3 seconds of war being declared, I was hit with 4 or 5 nukes. My entire army was wiped out. Because our territories were so close, he hit all my cities and my retaliatory nukes were dead too. I lost about half my population. I had nothing left… all within about a 4 or 5 second span.

Nothing, of course, except pure awesome. Despite being nuked twice and attacked by Rand’s entire rather large army, the mighty city of Heliopolis was left standing. Glowing, empty, but standing. That was the gateway to the rest of my empire, so despite absolutely killing everything I had with nukes, he was never able to take my territory.

I cranked out a few mech infantry and arty units as fast as I could to desperately hold on to what I had, and with the help of the great wall bringing his assault to a crawl, I repulsed a few attacks. My cities were halved - or worse - in population, the land was useless due to fallout - but I kept all of my buildings. I still cranked out a ton of culture. With the one city that wasn’t building emergency military units, I cranked out workers to get rid of the fallout… hitting a few critical manufactories and other high production squares near my capital. You see, my cultural output hadn’t been affected by the war - all of my cultural buildings were still intact. So after two dozen turns of defending my wrecked but still fighting empire, I was filled out the 5 policy branches.

Res had hit my capital with another 2 nukes, taking the opportunity of my weakness. My bustling capital, economic powerhouse, formerly population 32… was now population 7. But I’d cleared enough fallout around manufactories to put all 7 of those citizens to high-production work, and I used maritine city states to keep it from starving, so I was still able to crank out the utopia project pretty quickly.

So in the span of a turn, I went from first to third in population, from having a bigger military than the rest of the world combined to only one or two units, and from having my territory completely covered in fallout… yet still managed to pull out the win.

50

Wow dude! This was like reading a saga! You do a great job of recounting a game.

So you won a cultural victory. I usually play with all the victory types disabled except for domination. I’m still not fully recovered by the one time the AI won a technological victory just as I was poised to conquer the world.

51

Yeah, if it weren’t for the badassary of Heliopolis, the Great Wall, and me accidentally dropping a nuke to close to my own guys, Heliopolis would have burned to the ground.

And I didn’t want to use nukes, my hand was forced. I had them during the 3rd war of Egyptian aggression, but kept them back because I could hold my own, but with very little turns remaining, and no aluminum to upgrade my forces, I had to do something.

Res and I had been preparing for the moment of final gasp, but it didn’t work.

I will say myself though, the placement of my nuke drops was a thing of beauty. I believe the first one was dropped to take out your own forces, then two to knock out your impressive military units, and the rest to knock down your other cities, while Res did his own thing.

Shame about my lack of follow-through though.

52

Remember we’ll be continuing game 3 (the islands game) at the normal time tomorrow.

We probably won’t be playing on Wednesday, though - 4 of us in the game have Dirt 3 and it’s going to be an epic Dirt 3 binge this week.

53

Beef and I had a 1v1 earlier today. I’ll let the screen shots speak for themselves:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/76561197973001542/screenshot/594686769566921621/?tab=public

http://steamcommunity.com/id/76561197973001542/screenshot/594686769566925316/?tab=public

54

Off topic, but whenever I capture Atlanta I can’t keep it. I HAVE to burn it to the ground.

55

Krinthis sucker punched me and barely eeked out a victory. We had a mostly peaceful game going for 15 turns so I wasn’t very prepared militarily. He burned a few great people for golden ages and set about his whole empire cranking out samurai. My biggest city was near my border and he ended up rushing it with a whole shitload of guys. I almost defended it too, except the japanese special ability for wounded units to fight at full strength is nuts. My city was surrounded by a bunch of guys at 20-60% health, which is normally a relatively safe position to be in, but since they attacked at full strength at every turn it was brutal. I didn’t account for that factor enough when planning my defenses - I figured my city could hold out long enough for my superior production (and tech) to ramp up enough to repel an invasion.

56

I feel like sucker punch sounds so much worse than “cleverly exploited his strengths and my weaknesses.”

57

Sometimes it’s weird to go to war with someone. During the OCC game I know I could have wiped someone out fairly early on in the game. There wasn’t a time when I didn’t have the edge in military, but I’da felt like a huge dick doing so.

58

I totally agree. I think after playing with you guys a bunch I’d feel comfortable declaring war on you and beef, but with someone we’ve never played with or who is not as used to the game? I’d definitely feel like a jerk.

59

We’re resuming the 6 man (possibly 7 man) islands game tomorrow (Monday) at the usual time.

60

I won’t be around tomorrow, doing family stuff for Memorial Day. I’m fine with an AI taking my civ.