One feature a lot of turn-based strategy games has is play-by-email. This allows for a relaxed, unhurried game between two players. However, one issue is that a PBEM game can be very slow.
If Steffen ever decides to add PBEM support to C-evo, I humbly submit these ideas which may help speed up a PBEM C-evo game.
There are two factors that can make a PBEM game slow:
* Diplomacy. Diplomacy goes like this:
1) Player one sends emissaries for a diplomatic meeting
2) Player two accepts the emissaries
3) Player one proposes something, such as exchanging technology dossiers
4) Player two accepts or rejects, possibly proposing something else (usually a technology exchange, possibly a peace treaty)
5) Player one proposes something else, such as another technology exchange.
6) And on it goes.
A simple diplomatic meeting where two players enter in to a peace treaty and exchange some technologies can easily take over a week with a PBEM game if both players make one move a day. This is a bit slow.
Some possible solutions to this problem:
1) Have a special “humans hate each other” mode where humans never have diplomatic contact with each other and are always at war with each other.
2) Have a special “humans love each other” mode where humans, as soon as they send emissaries to each other, always say yes to each other’s proposals.
3) Have teams; people on the same team, as soon as they find each other on the map, exchange all technologies and are in alliance. People, however, can not have any diplomacy at all and are always at war with humans on other teams.
4) Maybe something more complicated, where one player sends the computer a list of things they will accept and not accept to do for the other human; for example, the human can say “the most friendly I will be with this human is cease-fire, and I will only change this technology for that technology and so on”.
5) Maybe even have modes for how free one would be with one’s technology (in the most free mode, we would trade flight for pottery; in the most stingy mode, we would only give pottery if we got flight or better, or maybe have a “we will trade any technology they have that we are one step from having for any technology they don’t have but are one step from having”. This would be more complicated than simple team-based alliances.
The other big potential problem with PBEM games:
* At the beginning of the game, a player accomplishes very little in a single turn.
A game starts something like this:
1) One player, on their first move, moves their settler one square, starts building a road, changes their city production to settlers, and starts researching “The Wheel”. The other player does the same.
2) The next day, there’s nothing to do but wait for the settler to build the road, wait for the initial city to build its second settler, wait for the technology to be researched, etc.
3) Around the third day, the first technology will be researched, the settler will have built its first road, and it’s time for him to build his second road.
Point being, there just isn’t that much being done per turn in C-evo’s opening.
One way to handle this is to just have the players agree to be online a lot the first couple of days they play a given PBEM game, so they can quickly move past the opening. However, if this is not practical with the players, some ideas for speeding the opening up:
1) Make the initial city have more population, more settlers on the map for the player to control, and maybe even a town guard or two to start exploring the map.
2) Allow the player to start with a few technologies that make the game more interesting, such as map making.
3) Have a “circle of influence”; have it so each human can make all of their moves as long as they stay within a given distance of their initial city. They can make diplomacy or war with AI opponents, explore stuff within the circle, etc. Maybe have a year cap on this; for example, after 1000BC this “do all you want within your circle” rule ends and it becomes I-go-you-go.
When a given player does something that makes a unit of theirs leave their “opening circle”, their turn ends. Human player 2 then makes their move. If player 2 leaves their circle (a given distance from their starting location) before player 1 left their circle, when player 1 plays their second turn, their clock is turned back to the time when player 2 left their circle and it is now an I-go-you-go game. While this does leak some information (player 1 will know when player 2 left the circle), it also speeds up the opening.
There are a lot of ways of handling this. Maybe have it so player 1 does stuff for 10 turns (as long as they don’t do anything that gets them too close to the other player), player 2 does stuff for ten turns, and decrease the number of turns in a row a given player moves (have it maybe be like 10 turns for each human, then five turns, then two turns, then standard I-go-you-go, with a rule we go straight to I-go-you-go if you get too close to another human player).
4) Allow cities to build things, grow, and have settlers make improvements more quickly in the opening.
Any other thoughts on how we can speed up diplomacy and C-evo’s opening in a PBEM game?
Standard disclaimer: I am very happy with the game Steffen has freely given us. This is not me demanding Steffen implement ideas, but a brainstorming session I’m sharing with everyong here.
Posted 5-Feb-10 08:44 by samiam