Finding the time to NOT have fun

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by djtool:
people who chastise you for not making a computer game a priority in your life are to be ignored.

Keep in mind that it's not really "just a game" - getting into a multiplayer game is making a commitment to other human beings.

Zap's situation is understandable - frankly, I can't imagine keeping a game going at a 12 hour pace when the turns are taking that long.

But people who go AI regularly, on whim, really ought to consider sticking to single player where they're not screwing other players over.

Again - I'm not talking Zap here.

[Zapmeister]

I'm currently in 2 other games, both on the Faerun map, so potentially leading to large and demanding positions as well (although not there yet).

I think I owe it to the other players to offer these positions to anyone that thinks they can handle the time commitment that they may come to involve. So that's what I'm doing here and now. They're both 24-hour games at the moment.

One game (Machaka) has 4 human players, one AI and one abandoned position. Oh, and you're not allowed to make gem-producing items. Annoyingly, the name is Human_God_-_No_Clams,_other_gem_making_trinkets

The other game (R'lyeh) has 14 humans and 2 AIs, with no house rules. The name is Faerun_Folly.

Please read this thread and understand the potential time commitment before accepting either position.

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Had you considered asking if the other players would agree to a slower pace?

Yes, but then I realized it wouldn't make any difference, even if they agreed. I'd still want to quit regardless of whether turns ran twice a day, once every two days or once a week because 90 minutes is too much to take out of any day, however infrequent, if that ninety minutes is a chore as opposed to gaming fun.

[Sheap]

Color me obvious, but the problem of turns taking too long can be avoided by not playing on Faerun, or any map bigger than about 200 provinces, even with 17 players in the game. When the game gets down to 4 or 5 people (or as often as not - STARTS with that few), and you're playing on Faerun, and you've got 100 provinces to deal with, that's just not going to be fun. Less fun if you aren't winning.

It's easy to pick a number of provinces per empire that you happen to like, and then assume that it scales linearly with the number of players in the game, but it doesn't. More players does mean a bigger map is required, but it's logarithmic, not linear.

[Blitz]

There's the basic reason why I don't play Online. The maps are too fuggin huge and take way too long to finish. If that's your bag, fine. I can't possibly dedicate an hour a day to update a game, let alone 2 hours on one game in a 12-hour cycle. There are plenty of really nice smaller maps. My friends and I play on Ormus quite a bit. Fits 4 nations pretty well, ends up in a 2-2 situation most times... and we finish the games in about 40-50 turns usually. Even played Online, that's a month and a half, and even in the end my turns rarely took longer than 10 minutes to finish.

[Frosted Flake]

Have you considered not micromanaging everything. 3 hour turns boggle my mind!

frosted flake

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Frosted Flake:
Have you considered not micromanaging everything. 3 hour turns boggle my mind!

frosted flake

Actually, it was 90 minute turns, twice a day.
If I didn't play as well as I can, I wouldn't enjoy the game at all.