We are working on a new map, dividing it into a standalone West and a standalone East part.

We remove the AST from the map, to make this a seperate piece of cardboard.

We can do three things:

1 provide the west part with an 9 player-AST and the east part with a 9 player-AST, and to put them on top of eachother when you play both sides.

2 provide the west part with an 9 player-AST and the east part with a 9 player-AST, and provide both parts with a 18 player AST.

3. Provide both parts with a 18 player-AST only and tell you shouldn't use half of it for either West or East.

First:
I took a closer looking at the current AST order:


It seems totally random to me, maybe on purpose, but I don't know why this is so. You can never tell who's next on the AST. When you sit next to eachother as well as AST order you can always negociate more easily and speeding up the game that when you gotta look for the other end of the table. Beside everyone now has to wait on many civilization to move. When you are 18th on the AST, you have to wait for 17 players to move.


Thinking of the former Advanced Civlization AST order:


You can see this is clockwise, and that's working great


Now when you apply this system to the both sides East and West you get this:


But you can see this generates another problem.

Nubia has to wait for the full west map to move before making descissions.
It's not only about movement, When you have two gamemasters (for east and west), any tie occuing east has to be made after all ties in west are solved (if nessecary)

My proposal is to change the AST in this:



Here you see, first Hatti, Assyria and Egypt move. And at that point the East part can take off regardless of the other 6 west civs. THis speeds up time very much to me. West and East can do things nearly simultaneously.

Besides when you play only West or only east, you can take half of the AST and not be bothered by unused civ from the other part.

Making it easier to produce only one AST and making a dividing line between them, or create two seperated AST's and include only one half per set, to put them together when you play both sides.


another thing:
Minoa (former Crete) used to always move last as the early shipbuilding resulted in a lower census. Why not take this up in the basic rules this way.



Does anyone have major complaints on this new way of ordering the AST? Or maybe another way of ordering the AST including a motivation for that.

I'm not sure I do see a benefit. I'd actually much rather it alternate completely around the board because this lets players move quicker.

In my mind it should work in shifts where (most likely) people won't interfere with the concurrent move and the AST is ordered as a trade off for a better AST entrance benefit. So how it stands now I see the follwoing happening:

Simultanious move #1: Minoa #1, Saba #2, Celts #3
Simultanious move #2: Assyria #4, Rome, #5, Maurya #9
Simultanious move #3: Babylon #6, Carthage #7, Dravdia #10
Simultaneous move #4: Hellas #8, Kush #11, Nubia #12
Simultaneous move #5: Persia#13, Hatti #14, Iberia #15
Simultaneous move #5: Indus #16, Egypt #18
Simultaneous move #6: Partia #17

IMHO things should be shifted around for it to be easier for players to move simulantiously (which should be stressed) rather than wait for others.

In your example you have at most 2 people moving at a time - where as I think you could have 3-4 players making their moves at once.

I'd be interested in what others think.

Indeed I'm interested in players having experience in playing more than one game with this AST.

actually I haven't got much experience on a full game.

So If you follow the logic of letting 3-4 people go at once perhaps the AST should be ordered as such:

Simultanious move #1: Minoa #1, Saba #2, Celts #3, Maurya #4
Simultanious move #2: Assyria #5, Rome, #6, Dravdia #7
Simultanious move #3: Babylon #8, Carthage #9, Kush, #10
Simultaneous move #4: Hellas #11, Nubia #12, Partia #13
Simultaneous move #5: Persia#13, Hatti #14, Iberia #15
Simultaneous move #6: Indus #16, Egypt #18

Theoretically, provided none of the nations are very close to touching, the turn should only take as long as the slowest player in each simultaneous move. The AST Might look a little weird though because the requirements wouldn't be easiest to hardest.

Option 1 is off if we regard your AST order.

Maybe a double-sided AST is an option.

One side:
Minoa #1
Saba #2
Celts #3
Maurya #4
Assyria #5
Rome #6
Dravdia #7
Babylon #8
Carthage #9
Kushan #10
Hellas #11
Nubia #12
Partia #13
Persia#14
Hatti #15
Iberia #16
Indus #17
Egypt #18

Other side:

WEST:
Minoa #1
Celts #2
Assyria #3
Rome #4
Carthage #5
Hellas #6
Hatti #7
Iberia #8
Egypt #9

EAST:
Saba #1
Maurya #2
Dravdia #3
Babylon #4
Kushan #5
Nubia #6
Partia #7
Persia#8
Indus #9


I've created maps of these orders. to me it's more clear to understand.





p.s. From now on, it's 'Kushan' not 'Kush'
http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtop ... light=kush
and it's Parthia not Partia, to be sure!
(Like I made up the names

I've thought out an ever better order based on the same system you proposed.

This is the idea.
When we stick to your idea, this is the result: (like in my previous post)




Image 1 shows the AST for 18 players.
But image 2 shows what happens when you divide it into east and west.

The problem is, if you only play the east part of the game, your system is gone up in smoke. (look at image 2)

for west things kinda work out, but for east, you see the following problem:
Dravidia is after Maurya and they are neighbours. The same for Parthia and Persia and Indus.

So only part of you system is true for this order.


Besides, it would be even better if west and east would move in turn.

Your system shows Minoa, saba, celts, Maurya, Assyria, Rome, Dravidia, Babylon.
that is in turn: W-E-W-E-W-W-E-E.



So I created a new order based on your system but, SO, that each next civilization should be as far as possible from the previous. (or at least have one civilization between them).

But this should apply not only if you plat 18 civs, but also apply when you take only either the West or the east map.

Please look at the following two images:






The first image shows the AST order for 18 players.
Each next civilization is on the other end of the map, so the least interference as possible and it switches from west to east to west to east and so on.

The second image shows what happens if you split these into two seperate AST's
for both the west and the east part each next civilization switches to the other end of the map, so the least interference as possible is being reached.

This results in the following AST order (list form:)



01 (W) Minoa
02 (E) Saba
03 (W) Celts
04 (E) Indus
05 (W) Assyria
06 (E) Nubia
07 (W) Rome
08 (E) Persia
09 (W) Hatti
10 (E) Dravidia
11 (W) Carthage
12 (E) Kushan
13 (W) Hellas
14 (E) Babylon
15 (W) Iberia
16 (E) Maurya
17 (W) Egypt
18 (E) Parthia



WEST:
01 (W) Minoa

03 (W) Celts

05 (W) Assyria

07 (W) Rome

09 (W) Hatti

11 (W) Carthage

13 (W) Hellas

15 (W) Iberia

17 (W) Egypt

EAST:
02 (E) Saba

04 (E) Indus

06 (E) Nubia

08 (E) Persia

10 (E) Dravidia

12 (E) Kushan

14 (E) Babylon

16 (E) Maurya

18 (E) Parthia



If we take this system for creating AST order, I think this is the best option to do so.

You can split the AST into East and West for one side of the AST-cardboard. and use the full AST on the other, without touching the actual order.



the number AST groups the can move simultanoeusly (like you described) are now reduced from 6 to 4:

1 - Minoa - Saba - Celts - Indus - Assyria
2 - Nubia - Rome - Persia - Hatti - Dravidia
3 - Carthage - Kushan - Hellas - Babylon
4.- Iberia - Maurya - Egypt - Parthia


Note: ofcourse, movement is censur order, but at equal census which might occur more often at 18 players, AST is next.
Any other tie that has to be broken at AST is similar to movement.
(like city attack, multiple secondary calamity effects, etc.)

I am not sure if changing of AST order should be done that easily.
From my point of view, AST order is linked to the "easyness" of the
AST. So Minoa with the most easy AST is also first in AST order.

Don't we change the balance of the game with changing AST order??

Changing the order of the AST does not change the difficulty of AST requirements of each single civilization. This difficulty is merely based on the possible city sites, agricultural areas, vulnarability to possible calamities and access to other civilizations. In the end the movement is not based on the AST but on census which is more influenced by the above mentions.

For example, when playing minao, having the lowest census early in the game by building an early ship, does influence movement order immediately. from that point Minoa's AST position doesn't do that much for movement situations.


In fact the order of the AST does not have real effect on the game, when it comes to balancing. It's merely a handy guiding rule in breaking ties or deciding in which order to do things.

I don't think so.
Many aspacts of the game are decided by doing something before
or after the other players.

If I develop Politics, somebody after me may buy a defense card..
Movement is decided in cases of the same census by AST.
Somebody gets the last trade card from one order, maybe be having
the better AST order...

So this has real effect on the game!!!

Ofcourse, but this is secondary.

As you can read in velusions first post: The choice of the current AST was not based on the dificulty of AST requirements for each civilization but based on civilizations to move simultaneously or do actions simultaneously.

If you regard that system you should go and try to make that system perfect. and that is what I've proposed.

I first thought AST-ing in neighbour order would be good becasue you can discuss things. Velsuion helped me off of that though because it might even take MORE time to play instead of less time.

When you're purchasing civilization advances, it's even better that your direct neighbours are NOT directly before youor after you instead of all in a row.

ofcourse it might help to know what your neighbours do, but it also helps the neighbours after you, and therefore the chances that this is positive or negative are equally (50%-50%) considered over all 18 civs.

What I meant in my previous post is that, the downside of playing Minoa (because of the need for early ships) is compensated by its AST requirements, not by its AST position. (Equally, in Advanced Civilization, CRETE was 5th on the AST order. WHY? becasue that was order clockwise, not in order of difficulty)


If a stack runs out of cards, the players not getting a card are those with more cities, and secondary those who are lower on the AST. You might feel bad by missing one card through your AST position, butin the first place you have a city more than the players getting a card in the first place. so you migth get that extra card anyway. An ever higher number,for stacks running out are mostly the lower ones. So in fact that downside is merely based on how you do in the game and how you play, and only secondary on your AST positiion

Merlok does have a point. Changing the AST order around could have some serious consequnces. It is generally considered better to be higher on the AST.

After looking at the proposed list though I think the general order of hard > easy is generally intact. IMHO there are a few nations that are hard to play and a few nations that are easier and a lot of mediums.

I think that the order proposed by Flo will probably work. The benefit of having 4 players move at a time in a 12+ player game is huge and probably outweighs slight imbalances. If other people would move a few nations around to scale it better (hard > easy) I would be open to tweaking that list.

I suggest it be put through the ringer in testing though - because it is quite a change.

I'm fine with anyone proposing a change to my list.

But as long as it is done by the same system like I described

1. switch from east to west
2. on each map-side (e/w) switch from one end to the other.

So that, no two nations moving after eachother on one side of the map are neighbours.



Otherwise, there is no need for a change at all.

I agree with the idea of taking one from west and one from east alternately.
I agree in having within one part of the map (east or west) kind of jumps to prevent neighbors.
I am happy with your proposal for the west map, as actually only Hatti jumps two steps up.
OldPlace Name NewPlace
1 Minoa 1
2 Celts 2
3 Assyria 3
4 Rome 4
5 Carthage 6
6 Hellas 7
7 Hatti 5
8 Iberia 8
9 Egypt 9
As the three have the same AST requirements, I think it should be ok.

Unfortunately that is not the case for the East Map.

1 Saba 1
2 Babylon 7
3 Maurya 8
4 Dravidia 5
5 Kushan 6
6 Nubia 3
7 Persia 4
8 Indus 2
9 Parthia 9

There are a lot of changes and I will take a look on finding another order
which has no neighbors back to back and will be a little bit closer to the
old AST order.

Ok, here comes my proposal for the East Map.

Old order was:

I propose to have only two small changes:
Maurya <-> Babylon and Persia <-> Nubia
This would lead to:

There is just one very small neighboring between Indus and Parthia,
but only very small changes in the ordering...

Also a minor fact: As these two are the last on the AST, if playing only
the east map, they should have enough time for some negotiations
before they move, if thats possible. And movement actually is ordered
by Census not be AST anyway.

Ok, sorry... one more problem.
I am happy with East and West as stand alone solution.

But if they are together we have Assyria and Babylon back to back.

Some more thought is needed here