Civilization: The Expansion Project
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Decreasing Total Game Time
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Author:  Flo de Haan [ 2009-01-12 16:14:03 ]
Post subject:  Decreasing Total Game Time
Please sit back and take your time to read this. Think about it for a while before placing a reaction.



I have been wondering for quite a while that our game actually takes a little too much time to complete.

I do like Velusion's scenario for shorter game. A great addition to the game (though I never playtested this, I think it will work, maybe after some slight changes)

But what I'm talking about here is the full game. I've always been a fan of Advanced Civilization, also because of its long timespan of about 12 hours. It provides you with a full day of gaming for a whole lot of people.

But 12 hours of gaming actually seems to be the limit for a normal game. if the game would last 24 hours it would be strechted over two days. But a game of 14 or 16 hours is just falling in between.

When you start a game at 9 o' clock (which may be early for some people who have to travel) and you play for 12 hours, you can finish it at about 21.00 o' clock. and people can travel back home, take some relaxing for the next (work)day. and this is just fine.

But you have to regard a diner-break and an optional lunchbreak. (we always do lunch somehow in between taking movement turns but diner requires half an hour or so where all players are eating, not playing)

this makes the game last until 21.30 avarage when you regard a gaming time of 12 hours.

In fact. The expansion requires 14-15 hours to complete. Which is just a little too long.

If you start at 09.00 you would finish at 23.30-00.30. In practice people will have or want to leave at that time, so you don't finish the game. No-one will want to finish those last two or three round the day after. This means the more players compete the greater the chance of player having to leave.

Maybe a 100 people in the world would like to start at 08.00 and finish at 23.30, maybe YOU (whoever is reading this) are one of thsoe

So I've been looking how to decrease playing time.

The two main reasons for the current playing time are
#1 The number of descissions to be made DURING a turn,
#2 The number of turns






Problem # 1:

I think it is preferable for anyone that gameplay goes as smooth as possible.
Forthe past games I was a non-playing Gamemaster so I could take notice ofhow things went much more independantly. When you are playing yourself it's always like your own turns go quicker than other player's turns.

I see problems at the following points:

Census count.
Ship Construction / Maintenance
Movement (!)
Trade
Calamity resolution
Purchasing civilization advances


As we were discussing this with experienced AND newcomers, we came to this idea:
This is kinda radical, but will work in our opinion.

Population Expansion & Census

If we combine Population Expansion & Census to be one phase, all players might sooner regard this as one action. Currently it happens all the time that half of the players have expanded, and sit back and wait when someone calls “Census' and then they start counting, where all other players have to wait. In our new option, player might give their census count as one action more often. Still experienced players might still wait for the next phase (census) any new player will soon get used to this new way.

Ship Maintenance / Construction & Movement

The key is NOT to wait 'til all players decided ships, but regard this as a movement turn. Currently the player with the highest census count is thinking over his ships, and the rest of the players are waiting. Once he's finished, the rest is considering and he's waiting. If no-one calls whose turn it is, actually all player may be waiting for nothing to happen.
Our new option is this: Movement is: First maintain ships, than construct ships, then move. Once you're moving, you cannot construct ships. Each player wanting to move will think about his ships anyway. This way, no-one has to wait for ship construction to be completed, before movement.
So Census no. 1 considers ships, than moves. secondly Census no. 2 considers ships, then moves. Whenever no.1 IS moving, no.2 can do ships, and when they don;t interfere, he can move as well.

Indeed, any experienced players will have to get used to this, but it will certainly speed up gameplay, which in the end all players will benefit from.

Movement:
We though about a time limit for movement, but you will have to have a timer for every single player. I think this can only be optional. Otherwise, once you start the time when the first player moves, it might occur that the last player didn't get to move at all because the limit is reached.
If you take 1 minute or 2 minutes per player, you will have to wait even longer than needed when more players can move simultaneously. Also it takes away the fun for a lot of players. Movement is a very important part of the game. So: time limit is only optional and a timer for every single player is required.

Trade:
We always play: No-one can see his cards until all cards are drawn. Otherwise the first two player can already trade, or take advantage of knowledge where other players didn't even see their cards.
Once all players received their cards AND all players purchased their additonal cards the time limit for trading starts. We recently take up 12 minutes. You can decrease total game time to up to 30 minutes if you consider a trading time limit of 10 minutes instead. Whenever you know this, players might even make trades quicker.

Calamity resolution:
What first takes some time is discarding excess calamities. Not every turn. First all minor calamities occur simultaneously. I think changing the Calamity Quickchart a bit will help. I'll post a different topic for this.
In the end, there's no way to decrease time for calamity resolution. It just HAS to happen.

Purchasing Advances:
In practice most player will shop simultaneously. Though player may want to wait for higher AST rankings to buy first. Allowing to shop simultaneously is a good thing. Though the Excel Credit calculator is a great way of counting out things, it does slow down when all player will want to check the computer. Especially when you have 18 players. I think this should only remain optional and preferable for up to 9 players.







And then we get to Problem #2:

The number of turns:

This is the current AST (regardless of order):

Image

We played our last five game using the time marker, moving along each round at the AST. Sometimes taking it up as game ender, sometimes just as reference to see what would happen if...
I did this on purpose to collect some data about game turns. Two times we used the time marker to end the game, one of which the game ended equally, but this time we were using an easy mapboard (not the expansion mapboard). Four times the game was not finished in time. (Even if we would continue playing.)

Opinions vary on if it should be allowed to be held back on the AST. If you take away this option, you take away a lot of fun. We experienced this when using the time marker. I believe it should be allowed to be held back on the AST at least ONE time. Regression should not make you loose the game. But maybe allowing a player to be held back two times increases the game length unneeded.
So I think we should make the AST allow you to be held back ONE time only. It more preferable to be abled to finish a game and only be held back once, than being held back twice without being abled to end the game (because people have to leave).

The last AST I created has the option to start the time maker one or two spaces back. Whenever you regard the time marker this way, you can still allow a player to be held back optional one time or two times. Ofcourse you can place the time marker one space ahead for default to create a shorter game, but I think we'd rather remove one column from the AST. We carefully have to see WHICH column, but it will decrease the game time with 45-60 minutes.

The Epoch Requirements
Secondly to make this possible, we would have to reduce the epoch requirements slightly. If players cannot keep up, they will be held back, but if we want this to happen only once a game (per player), it should not be too hard, but certainly not too easy.

If we see thay having 2 cities is not a problem, especially when we remove this one less space in Stone Age like for Egypt, the first problems might occur for player reaching 3 advances.
Secondly 3 advances above 100 seems to be a problem sometimes. And thirdly reaching 3 advances above 200 is the main problem all the time.

If we regard our maximum of being held back only once or optional twice this would be at this last point. It should not occur at the start (early bronze). It's best if being held back occurs at the end. Only players doing very well will reach 3 200+ cards in time. But if we want to reduce problems I think things should be a little smoother here. Maybe only 2 cards of 200 up is enough and giving 3 200 ups for the final space only.

If we remove the last column and make the previous last be the Final Space, we decrease the gaming time.This way, we should remove the two blocks for Saba and Minoa to give them both 2 turn in Early Iron Age. This way, later iron age last only 2 turns (or 3 turns for Indus, Parthia and Egypt)

I think, actually adding a sixth epoch will help. This sixth epoch is nothing but the final space. The colored one. If we move the requireemtns for late iron to only this space, you still have to reach this at the end, you just get more room to reach this.

If you can have 4 cities instead of 5 during later iron age, it can only be a lack of cards. (or real trouble). It think players not being able to move because they DO have the cards, but no enough cities is an unneeded extra turn. (especially when this means you cannot finish the game by this reason)

Also thus lowering the requirement for Early iron from 3 to 2 advances above 100, will take away most of the optional occurance of players being held back by this reason. (If they JUST reach thisrequirement in time, they will be held back for later iron as well, now they're only held back once for this reason)

So my proposal for Epoch requirements:

Current:
Stone Age: None (4-5 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 2 Cities (2-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 3 cities, 3 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 4 cities, 3 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age: 5 cities, 3 advances >200 (1-3 turns)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances>200 (1 turn)


New:
Stone Age: None (4-5 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 2 Cities (2-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 3 cities, 3 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 4 cities, 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age:4 cities, 2 advances >200 (1-2 turns*)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances>200 (1 turn)
(*removing the actual final space and make the previous space the new final space)


Ok, this is quite some information, I agree.

Please take your time to think about this, even before replying to this.

I'm interested in how other people regard this change.
Author:  Johannes [ 2009-01-13 12:08:52 ]
Post subject: 
Good point!
I agree at the changes to shorten the duration of a turn, but I don't fully agree on the changes to shorten the number of turns.

Census count: Sounds OK. And sometimes people first want to know the census of some other civilizations before deciding where to pop-ex and where not (if possible.)
Ships + Movement: Sounds OK. But it makes Military stronger, so maybe the price of it can be increased.
Trade: I disagree. With a maximum of 7 players the 10 minutes rule already exist, and with more than 7 players the extra time is needed, since there are more than 2 sets of commodity cards. A sharp time limit can shorten the turns, but it increases the number of turns, since people are not ready with trading and thus aren't able to purchase enough cards.
Calamities: I believe the only way to reduce time when resolving calamities is to rearrange their numbers, such that the calamities having secondary victims or beneficiaries are spreaded as most as possible. These calamities are Earthquake, Treachery, Famine, Civil War, Flood, Cyclone, Epidemic, Tyranny, Iconoclasm & Heresy and Piracy. Maybe Barbarian Hordes should counted too, since it has a controller. The only problem I see here is that there is no level 7 calamity in this sequence, so maybe we can switch the number of Corruption with either Cyclone or Tyranny. And "non-secondary" calamities can be resolved at the time another calamity will be resolved (like Slave Revolt simultaniously with Civil War.)
Advances: I agree using the computer slows the game up, but maybe we can use two computers, connected with each other, when playing with many people. And of course the computer input can be done partly during the movement phase of the next turn, when many people are waiting.

Hold back on the A.S.T. I believe it should be allowed to be hold back at least two times on the A.S.T. If a limit of one time is used, the Regression drawback on Fundamentalism doesn't make sense. And more important, players can choose to buy no expensice cards at all. It gives way more credits when purchasing cheap cards and later the mid-range cards have become cheap too, and gives 2 VP a card. This "strategy" now is punished by being hold many spaces back and I believe it should be kept this way.
New A.S.T. requirements I think it works fine right now, but maybe it should be made some easier. I don't like to reduce the number of A.S.T. places, but I have a counter-proposal:

Stone age: None (3-4 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 1(!) city (3-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 2 cities, 2 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 3 cities, (3 advances,) 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age: 4 cities, (3 advances >100,) 2 advances >200 (2-3 turns)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances > 200 (1 turn)

The one city requirement makes it unnessary for nations like Celts and Minoa to have a fifth round in the Stone Age. And nations like Babylon and Egypt now have a real option to build a city in the 4th round. After the 5th round they just have one city less than the others.
Maybe the requirements between bracklets can be removed, since often they are hold anyway.
Another way to make the +200 advances easier is to double the specivic credits: So <100>200 advance. Now, for example, if you want to purchase Diplomacy, Urbanism gives 10 specific credits (should then become 20) while some blue advances like Music gives 10 credits too.

*Starts waiting for Rulebook 3.1* :wink:
Author:  FortyTwo42 [ 2009-01-13 14:35:47 ]
Post subject: 
I agree the game needs to be shorter, but we do have to be careful.

Census:
I'm a little confused why your census takes so long. How do you count it? We look at our stock and our treasury, which are both easy to count ( usually in stacks of 5), and subtract from 55. Sometimes, I don't even make the players subtract - they tell me "I have 17 in stock/treasury", and I subtract. Counting while placing is ok when you're just doubling up, but later when you have limited placement, you want to focus more on where you are placing than what the count is.

Ships and Movement:
I agree with Johanness, it makes Military a lot stronger. Lets say I move last and have Astronavigation (or whatever it's called). Since everyone has moved, I can build a couple ships and go almost anywhere around the Mediterranean without notice. Currently, seeing that a militaristic person has a fleet of ships helps you decide if you want to buff up your coastal cities, but by combining ship building with movement, it is very dangerous.
I do think it should be simultaneous, but in a "finish in order" style. I believe the same is true of movement.

Something that we've done since starting the computer version is place our turned (moving) pieces on the border, instead of moving them all the way in. That way it's easy to undo those moves. So, everyone can start moving, and, even if you want to wait until someone does something, if they aren't aggressive, you can just keep what you have, if they are aggressive, and you move after, you can defend. The key to this is to "finish on time" You must announce that you are finished in the census order, then you flip everything, put things in stacks on the board, and don't touch your pieces again. Anyone who moves after you knows that you can't change your moves now, so they can react/finish moving appropriately. It has sped up play, because there is simultaneous movement even between neighbors who are planning on combat.

Trade:
I don't have much to say here, since I haven't played with more than 7, so we have always used a 10 min timer.

Purchasing Advances:
We usually keep a set of advance cards (or 2) so that everyone can look through them. I think 4 or 5 sets for a very large game is a good number so everyone can look through. Then, when a person has decided, they tell the gamemaster, give trade cards for the right amount, and the gamemaster marks the advance down. We do use the credit tokens, and sometimes people ask which specific advances they have credit for, but that doesn't take long. Perhaps if the cards said which advances they get specific credits from, it would be easier. Of course, we're using the old cards, and I haven't looked at the new ones yet.

Calamities:
I agree, not much room for improvement there.

AST:
I think this is more up you're alley, so I'll watch the discussion. So far, I like what I'm hearing. Although, it should be careful to note that in Johanness' version, a card can "count" as both a 100 and a 200 in the original - does 3 cards, 2 cards > 100 mean that really a person only needs 3 cards, or 5?[/i]
Author:  Johannes [ 2009-01-13 20:04:15 ]
Post subject: 
Well, simultaneous movement with two neighbours planning combat doesn't occur when I am one of the neighbours and move last. First I decide how many cities I can (or want to) build, computing how many tokens I have in excess compared to city support. This planning I can do (and often do) at my waiting time before my movement. But after computing these things I plan my whole movement because I have to decide how many and which tokens I can use fur combat and where to place the rest. When I planned to attack a city, and see I don't keep enough tokens (for example because someone "claims" an area which I counted as my region) I refrain from attacking the city and do something else with my tokens (in the example namely claiming the area speaken of, which costs my some tokens.)
So in theory simultanious movement can be done, and in practise it happens too, but sometimes (and at least often when I play Minoa) it doesn't work for me.

Advances: Nice Idea, but last times I played in homes with only a few room, so there was only space for one set of advances. But this is a nice idea for the game at the 25th of january in Leiden.

When I say "three cards >100, two cards >200", I count cards >200 as being cards > 100 too. If for example one player manages to purchase three >200 cards at the beginning of the game (so Early Bronze Age), that player is able to progress to the finish unless he/she doesn't have the required number of cities.
Author:  FortyTwo42 [ 2009-01-14 7:11:43 ]
Post subject: 
Johannes wrote:
Well, simultaneous movement with two neighbours planning combat doesn't occur when I am one of the neighbours and move last. First I decide how many cities I can (or want to) build, computing how many tokens I have in excess compared to city support. This planning I can do (and often do) at my waiting time before my movement. But after computing these things I plan my whole movement because I have to decide how many and which tokens I can use fur combat and where to place the rest. When I planned to attack a city, and see I don't keep enough tokens (for example because someone "claims" an area which I counted as my region) I refrain from attacking the city and do something else with my tokens (in the example namely claiming the area speaken of, which costs my some tokens.)
So in theory simultanious movement can be done, and in practise it happens too, but sometimes (and at least often when I play Minoa) it doesn't work for me.


Like I said, it's mostly about being able to move that initial stuff without committing to it. Allowing you the ability to "undo" a move means you can finish your turn early if all goes according to plan, and change something if it doesn't. Now, you may not want to "announce" that you'd attack a city if a person hasn't finished their move, but you can have those tokens ready.

Johannes wrote:
Advances: Nice Idea, but last times I played in homes with only a few room, so there was only space for one set of advances. But this is a nice idea for the game at the 25th of january in Leiden.


I'm talking about having the set of physical cards available. Just pass the deck around and let people look through the complete descriptions. I'd have the quick chart for everyone, and then they can look at the specific card they want from there. If your players don't like that, then I'm not sure what else you can do (other than a couple networked laptops).

Johannes wrote:
When I say "three cards >100, two cards >200", I count cards >200 as being cards > 100 too. If for example one player manages to purchase three >200 cards at the beginning of the game (so Early Bronze Age), that player is able to progress to the finish unless he/she doesn't have the required number of cities.


With that description, then this:
Johannes wrote:
Late Bronze Age: 2 cities, 2 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 3 cities, (3 advances,) 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age: 4 cities, (3 advances >100,) 2 advances >200 (2-3 turns)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances > 200 (1 turn)

Is, for the most part, the same as:

Late Bronze Age: 2 cities, 2 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 3 cities, 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age: 4 cities, 2 advances >200 (2-3 turns)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances > 200 (1 turn)

Which is a huge requirement reduction. A person only has to buy 2 100+ cards now, instead of 3. Most people buy the < 100s anyway, because they're easy points, but if you can skip the mids and just get your high point cards (get the two you care about and have the specific mids for, and purchase the cheapest one you can at the end for those last 5 points on the ending square)

The reason this works is that you can count one of the >200 as a >100, so the 3 > 100 is covered by the two from the Early Iron.
Author:  Flo de Haan [ 2009-01-14 10:07:17 ]
Post subject: 
Thanks everyone for reacting and giving your opinion

Johannes wrote:
Good point!
I agree at the changes to shorten the duration of a turn, ...


FortyTwo42 wrote:
I agree the game needs to be shorter, ...


So we all agree on this. What I meant in the first place is too look how we can manage to reduce game length. It is preferable that a game lasts no longer than 12 hours, but it should never take away the fun we currently have. I assume we all agree on this as well.

Now let's first look at the results for the in-turn changes:

Combine Population Expansion and Census:

Johannes wrote:
Census count: Sounds OK. And sometimes people first want to know the census of some other civilizations before deciding where to pop-ex and where not (if possible.)

FortyTwo42 wrote:
I'm a little confused why your census takes so long.


It's not actually the counting that takes long, it's just that if no-one calls it, most players are waiting on nothing. I'm not talking about experienced players, but I'm thinking about any new players. (also groups of player without any experienced player amongst them). If we change things this way, actually nothing changes for experienced players, so it won't hurt. It's just that inexperienced players will always regard 'Population Expansion & Census' to be one action from now on, which in the end will speed up gameplay.

Let's close this subject and move it to play test.

Combine Ship Construction and Movement

Johannes wrote:
Ships + Movement: Sounds OK. But it makes Military stronger, so maybe the price of it can be increased.


FortyTwo42 wrote:
I agree with Johanness, it makes Military a lot stronger. Lets say I move last and have Astronavigation. Since everyone has moved, I can build a couple ships and go almost anywhere around the Mediterranean without notice. Currently, seeing that a militaristic person has a fleet of ships helps you decide if you want to buff up your coastal cities, but by combining ship building with movement, it is very dangerous.
I do think it should be simultaneous, but in a "finish in order" style. I believe the same is true of movement.


Combining ships and movement indeed alters the uncertainty of what a player does, but this goes for any player. It does take away some time, and will encourage simultanous movement.

Indeed, Military gives some problems in this situation. Please let's not create even more problems by raising its price, but let's look at the inner problem first.

Currently Military says:”You maintain and construct ships, and move, after all player not holding military”

Currently when a player holds military, everybody knows the military ships before even moving themselves, BUT everybody still has to decide for ships even before the player holding military. So that doesn't change.

Most of the time, player's holding military will have as much ships as possible all the time. Both to use Military to its extend and to have as much tokens in stock as possible to expand. So you won't have to doubt about the military player(s) to build ships. It just might turn out good for you.

I think the best way to tackle the military problem itself is to change teh text for that card into this:

”You maintain and construct ships in normal census order, but move, after all player not holding military”

This way ONLY the military player build his ships as normal where all other players have sped up their movement. Since most of the times, a player holding military has a lot of tokens, he'll build ships first, then all players do their movements including ship building, based on their knowledge of military ships, and then the military player moves.

FortyTwo42 wrote:
Something that we've done since starting the computer version is place our turned (moving) pieces on the border, instead of moving them all the way in. That way it's easy to undo those moves.


I agree, and all things like this are optional additions to any experienced players. You can never demand this form all players or put this in the rulebook for official rule. But again I'm talking about any group consisting of inexperienced players. Our regular group of experienced players move as simulteanously as possible, but also here you can never demand players to move simultaneously if they have the option to wait for others to move. Some players prefer to wait for others to move completely, before even moving ONE token. You can never force them to already move by rule.

This is why we came up with the ship/movement combination. The only way we can speed it up RULE-WISE, is to change movement on a way like this. Any other 'houserule' will help additionally.

Let's move this to playtest

Trading time limit

Johannes wrote:
Trade: I disagree. With a maximum of 7 players the 10 minutes rule already exist, and with more than 7 players the extra time is needed

FortyTwo42 wrote:
I don't have much to say here, since I haven't played with more than 7, so we have always used a 10 min timer.


Just a notice that a time limit decrease by two minutes can help to speed up a game, and can decrease total gaming time by up to 30 minutes. When I was a game master for the last three games I noticed that NOT every turn, the time limit was reached. Half of the times, all players were done trading at about 10 minutes. This goes as well for the experienced groups as the inexperienced groups. I'd like to see what other opinions on this are.

Johannes wrote:
Calamities: I believe the only way to reduce time when resolving calamities is to rearrange their numbers


No you're creating even more problem by unbalancing things, than solving problems. Secondly I believe the calamity order is a sacred thing to most players.
Let's not create more problems than needed.

Purchasing Advances:

Johannes wrote:
Advances: I agree using the computer slows the game up, but maybe we can use two computers, connected with each other, when playing with many people. And of course the computer input can be done partly during the movement phase of the next turn, when many people are waiting.

Almost impossible in general, and just very few people would use two computers for a boargame. When I'm talking about the civ-administrator, which counts out credits for you, people stand in line BEFORE purchasing advances to see their credits. It sure does help in small groups, but in larger groups it rather slows down, and credit tokens become more handy.

FortyTwo42 wrote:
Then, when a person has decided, they tell the gamemaster, give trade cards for the right amount, and the gamemaster marks the advance down. Of course, we're using the old cards, and I haven't looked at the new ones yet.


First, take notice of the fact that both computer and checklist options are only be optional. A computer can not be set as official. And I'm talking about the full game where player have actual cards. The new cards show all attributes and specific credit. The Strategy Explorer helps to easily see what cards give credits to what. Otherwise everybody still would have to look through all the cards.

Also I see the advances quickchart as optional. Too many quickcharts make them slowcharts.

What most slows down is players counting out all options and then decide their best purchases. The Civ-Administrator does this for you, but as mentioned, this only works for small groups.

OK. This is it for the IN-turn options which actually are apart from the AST-related things.

Now the AST related problems:

Lower requirements
Johannes wrote:
Hold back on the A.S.T. I believe it should be allowed to be hold back at least two times on the A.S.T. If a limit of one time is used, the Regression drawback on Fundamentalism doesn't make sense. And more important, players can choose to buy no expensice cards at all. It gives way more credits when purchasing cheap cards and later the mid-range cards have become cheap too, and gives 2 VP a card. This "strategy" now is punished by being hold many spaces back and I believe it should be kept this way.


I was discussing this with Velusion as well. I think apart from this problem there is a need for change the amount of Victory Points per card-group. It should be more interesting to buy the upper cards. But I will discuss this in a different topic.

What I'm talking about is NOT TODENY players to be held back more than once, but to look for a way to don't make it happen in general. Whenever it happens it happens, but if it happens all the time, we'd better look how to fix things to make it happen only once in general and twice rarely.
In the end, every extra turn increases game time by about 45 minutes at least, and most importantly increases the possibility of the game to be quit unfinished which we tried to avoid.

By encouraging players to purchase the higher cards rather than a few cheap ones it not only becomes more realistic to move along the AST, but also will bring in more fun. Too many times I've seen games where players hardly got to purchase the higher card. Either by the game being too long to finish or by not have enough cities to purchase them

Flo de Haan wrote:
Current:
Stone Age: None (4-5 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 2 Cities (2-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 3 cities, 3 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 4 cities, 3 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age: 5 cities, 3 advances >200 (1-3 turns)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances>200 (1 turn)

New:
Stone Age: None (4-5 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 2 Cities (2-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 3 cities, 3 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 4 cities, 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age:4 cities, 2 advances >200 (1-2 turns*)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances>200 (1 turn)
(*removing the actual final space and make the previous space the new final space)


Johannes wrote:
Stone age: None (3-4 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 1(!) city (3-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 2 cities, 2 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 3 cities, (3 advances,) 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age: 4 cities, (3 advances >100,) 2 advances >200 (2-3 turns)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances > 200 (1 turn)


I think you are over-adjusting again. Having players requiring only 1 city, you could also have them require nothing, because just one city is no problem. Two cities is break even. let's keep it that way.
The game shouldn't be too easy.

Having 3 advances is not such a problem most of the time, but players are regarding the 100+ cards already when buying the first 3 advances. Actually most of the times is either this or being held back for early iron. I think requiring only 2 advances is too easy again, but when you reduce the number of 100+ by one (to be only 2 100+ cards) for Early Iron, players may have some time to get this.

I think the problem for the early game and mid game should not be the amount of cities, though it shouldn't be too easy as well. In the end, it's not the cities that count, but the cards. You cannot have 2 100+ cards when having 2 cities all the time, so at the time you have 2 100+ cards, you'd already have had more cities anyway. So maybe indeed requiring only 3 cities for Early Iron might be the right option, where having two 100+ cards still is a tough job at that point.

For the Late Iron age, I think you;re making things more difficult than needed. Players already have two cards above 100 and won't loose them, so mentioning only the 200+ cards is sufficient.
If players manage to get the 200+ cards already for the first requirement,they're just doing a good job. You could say: “Three advances above 100, two of which are above 200”, but in the end, player reaching two 200+ cards already do meet this requirement anyway.



MY CONCLUSION:

My conclusion for the in-turn problems:

Combine Population Expansion and Census: Playtest
Combine Ship construction and Movement: Playtest with the adjustment on Military:
”You maintain and construct ships in normal census order, but move, after all player not holding military”
Trading Time limit: Playtest at 10 minutes limit regardless of number of players.
Calamity Resolution: No reasonable solution.
Purchasing Advances: No reasonable solution, just houserules / house-'ways'.



My conclusion for the AST-related problem:

Playtest the following:
Remove one column only (the last one)
Change AST requirements like this:

Stone Age: None (4-5 turns)
Early Bronze Age: 2 Cities (2-4 turns)
Late Bronze Age: 3 cities, 3 advances (2-4 turns)
Early Iron Age: 3 cities, 2 advances >100 (2-3 turns)
Late Iron Age:4 cities, 2 advances >200 (1-2 turns*)
Final Space: 5 cities, 3 advances>200 (1 turn)
(*removing the actual final space and make the previous space the new final space)
Author:  Johannes [ 2009-01-14 14:07:32 ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
What most slows down is players counting out all options and then decide their best purchases. The Civ-Administrator does this for you, but as mentioned, this only works for small groups.
But the Civ-Administrator can be changed. There could be written a calculator in it which works the following way: You state as input a number (say 140.) Then the calculator outputs all different card purchasing with an cost of exactly 140, and says how many credits are wasted. For example it outputs Architecture, with 10 wasted credits (the specific ones from Sculpture.) It outputs Astronavigation and Empiricism with 10 wasted credits (since both cards are green.) It outputs Pottery and Astronavigation with 0 wasted credits (different colors and gives color credits to yellow and blue), etc.
This, with credits counted before, can speed the time up for players not willing to waste wealth or credits.

With your suggestion Military becomes weaker than actual, since ship construction can must be done before non-holders. So as a side-effect it can be made cheaper.

The time limit for trading can be held at 10 minutes for 9 players, but once I played a 20 players game (different map on which it was possible) with this 10 minutes time limit, and I experienced trading didn't go well enough, and many players weren't ready with trading after the limit was reached. So for really many players I still propose an easier time limit (maybe 12 minutes instead of 15 minutes.)

I still don't like the removal of the final square. I didn't explained why, but now I do. The problem is namely that it nearly often occurs that civilizations are seriously damaged by bad luck (Babylon suffering a Civil War followed by a Flood for example what really happened in septembre.) Players having that bad luck shouldn't automatically lose the game, so they must have the time to come back to a winning chance. For example in decembre I once was hold back to 0 cities, but at the end I ended up with 6 cities (caused by a calamity where I finally took serious profit from being the beneficiary.) Unfortunately the game ended, so I couldn't take advantage of my cities.
So I believe it should be part of the game that all players are held back 1 and often 2 times during the game, to give the bad lucky players a winning chance too. This would happen less with a too easy A.S.T., or with too few spaces to hold everyone back. That's way I believe the current A.S.T. is good (on a map which is large enough.)
Author:  Adrian [ 2009-01-14 14:08:26 ]
Post subject: 
technically speaking
with the alternate AST order, same trade length as 7 players, and with all 18 players dedicated, the game should take the same length as regular. if you have 0 confilcts in a game, it shuold not matter if there are 5 or 500000000 players, if you have dedicated players and same tradelength.

this game is only as slow as the slowest player is my experience.
we did one of our 15 players in approx 13 hours.

16-18 hours of game is perfect for 2-days game. 9 hours of gaming each day
Author:  Flo de Haan [ 2009-01-14 14:39:32 ]
Post subject: 
Adrian wrote:
16-18 hours of game is perfect for 2-days game. 9 hours of gaming each day


I'm not looking for a game of 16-18 hours for this amount of players when it's hard to get them all together for 2 days.

Johannes wrote:
With your suggestion Military becomes weaker than actual, since ship construction can must be done before non-holders. So as a side-effect it can be made cheaper.

There is no need for this yet, indeed the card becomes slightly weaker, but that doesn't mean it's ability isn't worth its cost. The main part 'moving last' is thill the only card in theg ame that givs this ability.

Johannes wrote:
So I believe it should be part of the game that all players are held back 1 and often 2 times during the game

Ofcourse. But removing a column doesn't take away this. Normally a game is finished by running out of time, before even reaching the final square. That's why I proposed to remove one column and say tha game is finished at that point.

Johannes wrote:
Players having that bad luck shouldn't automatically lose the game, so they must have the time to come back to a winning chance



That's when I direct you here:
http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=557
Author:  FortyTwo42 [ 2009-01-14 17:46:06 ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
It's not actually the counting that takes long, it's just that if no-one calls it, most players are waiting on nothing. I'm not talking about experienced players, but I'm thinking about any new players. (also groups of player without any experienced player amongst them). If we change things this way, actually nothing changes for experienced players, so it won't hurt. It's just that inexperienced players will always regard 'Population Expansion & Census' to be one action from now on, which in the end will speed up gameplay.


Who is placing the census tokens on the correct number? With new players someone should be calling out order - even if there is no Gamemaster, and experienced player should be leading the turn order to keep things moving. I usually do it in my group, even when I'm playing it's not a big deal. I just go around the table (because order of census doesn't matter).

Quote:
Combine Ship construction and Movement: Playtest with the adjustment on Military:
”You maintain and construct ships in normal census order, but move, after all player not holding military”



That sort of helps, but I still think that it is a more significant change. I guess my thought is, as long as you recognize that there is a big difference between knowing where other people have built ships before your move, it's ok.

First, I don't think there's ever a game with only inexperienced players. However, we should keep them in mind. Perhaps a "Guide to introducing CEP" is in order. Something that helps teach the game to new/less experienced players without bogging people down with all the details of the game. We all know its a complex game - more so than almost any other game I know. We also may give some one-line strategy pointers/thoughts to help people out a couple times until they get used to what is going on. Something like

"If you build a city this turn (even though you don't need it), it will be harder to build one next turn (when you do), but when your tokens double up, you can build two (or maybe three) without much trouble."
or
"With two ships, you can move a city and 4 tokens to that island."

When I introduce the game, I try to give people a little more freedom at the beginning. For instance, if someone tries to do something with a ship that they can't do, but I know a way for them to do it if they had built their ships a different way, then I'll let them "backtrack and change their ships" As long as it isn't unfair to anyone, and no one abuses it. I mean, by the middle of the first game, most people have figured out that during their pop expansion phases, they should be thinking about their move.
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