Finding the time to NOT have fun

Zapmeister · #1 July 19th, 2004, 07:20 AM

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 · #2 July 19th, 2004, 07:26 AM

Quote:

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 · #3 July 19th, 2004, 08:41 AM

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 · #4 July 19th, 2004, 09:05 AM

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 · #5 July 20th, 2004, 01:15 AM

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

frosted flake

Zapmeister · #6 July 20th, 2004, 01:23 AM

Quote:

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.

Tuna-Fish · #7 July 20th, 2004, 01:38 AM

IMHO, Sheap is right. For some strange reason people think that bigger map = more fun. In my experience, the best part of a dom game is the early and middle game, and the game just goes worse as it drags on, because in the endgame everyone has access to all tech and items, and esp. after some decisive castling you cannot really hurt the opponents all that much. I'd say that either figure out winning rules with what you will not have to occupy huge tracts of land to win, or play in such small maps that the map is not bigger than (preferred amount of provinces)x 4.