quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 04-04-2001 02:27 PM Perhaps each player gets a set of units/cities which they control (and they can pass the control of those units to other players as they want/need)...

Well, well, this is fascinating. Would this also tie in with the idea of 'provincial/state/regional governors' -- i.e., that while one player is the 'big boss' (king, emperor, whatever), the others are in charge of different geographical areas of his empire (as opposed to your idea of controlling different 'functions' such as war, diplomacy, etc.)? And would it also allow underhand dealing, i.e. revolts, secessions, coups, where one or more of the 'governors' set themselves up in opposition to the king -- or is this meant to be truly co-operative, i.e. no back-stabbing??

Under this agreement, the two (or more?) sides share the end-of-game points between them. This means less points than if one super-civ beat all, but it could be one way for the lesser civs to stay in on the action, and steal the glory from the superpower(s).

The main difference, though, was that there we were proposing simply that Civ3 should include this among victory conditions: i.e., that if you went for an allied victory, a combined score would be given at the end, not individual scores or rankings. We assumed, tho', that the alliance would be like any other alliance, i.e. breakable! (In which case the game would default back to individual victory.) I do like the idea of an unbreakable alliance, tho' -- maybe that should be allowed for as an option at the negotiating table: only to be entered into with great caution!

Massively Multiplayer Civ

I've described my ideas about a hierarchical cooperative Civ in there. Very similar to what's been described here. The catch, of course, is synchronization between all the players. A team of humans versus lots of computers is even less fun than single player, so it'd have to be against other teams of humans. By this point, we're up to dozens of players (at least!), and you can't play 'real-time turn-based' (a turn-based game, but one in which everyone is sitting in front of their computers at the same time) in a game like that. The conenctions would fall apart in minutes.

Airdrik: you just send messages around asking for current positions in the games and people playing the games post messages saying which positions are open. You make an agreement and your playing MP civ with as well as against other humans.

That's a cool idea! Players would develop reputations as excellent city adminstrators and such and thus be in high demand to play for your team. Of course, you'd have to worry about them double-crossing your civ as soon as they're in. Basically the entire team consists of mercenaries you can never completely trust. Hey, the more intrigue, the better! I've always thought Civ was never Machiavellian enough.