24 hour games... too long

[ShuShu62]

Even the addicted can acknowlege the the biggest problem with CivWorld is the commitment of time the game requires of you.

While it is nice to have every moment spent at the screen matter, the game takes too long to spend every minute of the game in front of the screen.

instant combat was an effort to address this. (fight battles when you are ready to commit a couple hours), but had the opposite effect because you now had to be ready at any time and for longer periods of time.

They also allowed for slower harvest games, but again, that had the oppositte effect. The truth is, harvests are only relevant for hammers, and hammers only relevant for battles, so if you aren't battling, harvests are irrelevant. More time clicking links and playing minigames, on the other hand, is more important the slower the harvest rate.

One other counter intuitive aspect is coming to light. Shortening the time span for a single game also increases the need to be in front of the keyboard. The game I just played lasted 27 hours. The team in front lost the game when its team members went to sleep or to work after 10 hours. The team that won... never sleep. The first team led for 22 hours (the time it took for the first battle of the game to transfer locked wonders). Most folks on that team had not even set up their city before researching Industrialism much less done any harvests or spent any civbucks. In fact, the only minigame any of us had time for was the mazes. I spent some time in the caravan as I was finance minister, but that was a challenge and I was the only player on the team doing anything outside of the mazes.

The ultimate lesson is an old one... The bonus links have broken a game that once balanced many game components in a market driven game of opportunity to one where doing mazes is all that matters.

But there is a secondary lesson to be learned. Decreasing the time frame of a game from 1 week down to one day actualy intensifies the need to be online for every minute of the game. Many participants in the game headed off to work without sleep, or even worse... did not go to work at all. That level of commitment is not sustainable for a social game. Whatever the next effort from Firaxis is, it needs to tackle this problem that leaving the keyboard = guaranteed failure.

[Mica Dox]

I've been a part of the other team and I don't fully agree with you. What I can agree on is that running trough the tech tree with maze links plays a too important role in the game. And yes, to do that you do not only need access to maze links but also some players online to do the mazes and collect the bonus science/moves you get from them.

But it's not right that we won this game because we didn't sleep/ were online all the 27 h the game lasted. The game started at 10 pm here in Central Europe so I went to bed when the initial phase was done as your team locked the Pyramids and ours the Hanging Gardens. When I logged back in the next morning you had an enormous lead in science and started to grab culture victories with most of your team online whereas hardly anyone of us was online and our team captain was just about to go to sleep. We only did puzzles to get Great People and finished some cheap sciences the other civs already had in the next hours.

Our real science race didn't take that long (7 h maybe?) when several players of our team - including the captain and the co-captain - were mazing at the same time. After the Internet (and Apollo) you don't even need maze links anymore because you can run quick through the mazes and you get enough moves from boni and beakers. So we had SDI just when our science race brought us into the Industrial Era before the first battle started. We harvested production with switching Interior Ministers and using some CBs, built cheap troops and sold them to our captains who could get good live bonus from mini game. The rest was them winning the battles for us with these troops and their battle plus mini game skills .

So you might be right that your team would have probably won the game when it could have played all the time the game lasted - you had an impressive starting speed while having the number advantage that forced us into some mazing madness if we wanted to get the win and you couldn't counter that because many of yours were offline. But you are not right that we needed to be online all the time - most of us online in an important phase of the game and playing extremly focused with good lead of our captains and our science coordinator were enough.

And I also don't think that Firaxis have to care much about this problem because this was not the usual type of game but one with five of the best players worldwide as team captains and all experienced players in their teams and all really tried hard to get the win. In random games you can be away several hours and sometimes not even an era victory was scored in this time.

[ShuShu62]

Firaxis needs to worry about that type of game, because they all are that type of game now. They are all that type of game now because only seriously committed players stay with the game.

There are many reasons for that ranging from a poor tutorial to frustrating bugs. But the community could overcome those.

It is the required time commitment that they intentionally built into the game from the get go, that is the game's achilles heel.

[Mica Dox]

Of course they want you to be online longer times at their server because that's good for selling ads. I think this plus the temptation to use Civ Bucks to win them is the reason why they introduced all those mini games.

But even the event games normally last about 3 days, normal ones several days to several weaks; not to talk about those with so few players in there that they could last forever. So while I would like to see a change that makes city building more important and lowers the importance of maze links (I liked your idea in another thread to reduce the maximum amount of additional moves you can get per day) I still don't agree with your complaint that one would have to play 24/7 to have success in this game. As I have explained you in my previous post we didn't even have to do that in a game that lasted only 27 h; noone needs to do that - and I guess noone does so - in a normal game.

Edit: It's also a question of teamwork and coordination how long one has to be online to be succesful. It's a global game so most of the time someone will be online due to different time zones. So if the people who are online at the same time know what they should do in this time and everyone is told what to do before going offline the problem that noone can play 24/7 loses importance.

[RobG]

Mica, I have to respectfully disagree with you on the need to be online 24/7. Don't take the notion of being on for 24 straight hours literally. Think of it more as the need for a group of players to be on for hours at a time, using spam, and pushing ahead. In the game we are discussing. Your team simply did exactly what Shu Shu's team did. They used spam to catch up and then pass them in techs. One hurricane of spam followed by another. Spam doesn't expire. It has been in existence since mid-Nov 2011. That is a lot of spam. Shu Shu's team had two players tapping spam that was 4 months old (they used some links they found from one of our teammates). There are a lot of players not playing anymore with spam links just sitting there. The concept is simple, intensely use spam links to race to Robotics, build SDI (half costs for building weapons), wait for Industrial Era with a +50% prod bonus, and then build a massive army of modern fighters for cheap. CTA and SW become obsolete in the game. Anyone without the ability to steal SDI doesn't have a shot.

You may find some nuisance civs like mine in the game stealing econ eras, but beyond that it is a spam war. Spam short cuts the math formula of the game.

[Mica Dox]

Well, I don't see the point we disagree in, Rob . I know that you have to have several players online at the same time (and to use spam links) to run through the tech tree and I also know that running through the tech tree takes some hours a day. And I don't claim anything else in my replies.

My problem with shushus initial post is that he takes that 24/7 literally as he complains we would have won because we were online all the time what simply isn't correct. This and that he takes the event games for every game.

btw.: the game would be much more fun IMO if having maze links would lose importance. You wouldn't have to search Facebook for them any longer and there would be more strategical options than trying to win the science race or grab some eco era victories.

[Mica Dox]

Okay, there is one point I disagree with you:

Your team simply did exactly what Shu Shu's team did. They used spam to catch up and then pass them in techs. One hurricane of spam followed by another.

I don't know how shushus team handled this but the most links we've used in this game were from our team members, especially our captains. So they got 5 moves several times from each team member online and could go through the mazes what brought the rest of us not only the 5 moves per click but also bonus moves from them for finishing the mazes, so we could finish mazes, too, what brought bonus moves again. And after Internet and Apollo the doubled bonus and beaker moves are enough anyway if you have some people who do mazes in the same tech. So the hurricanes of spam from inactive players we would have used aren't correct, either.

[ShuShu62]

...My problem with shushus initial post is that he takes that 24/7 literally as he complains we would have won because we were online all the time what simply isn't correct. This and that he takes the event games for every game....

so I am trying to see where I took 24/7 literally. In truth, I couldn't even find myself refferencing 24/7 at all. that was a concept you introduced.

if you are reacting to: The team that won... never sleep. Lets just say, that your misunderstanding of that statement is an indication that you are new to the community.

You also need to be careful with your perceptions. I am not complaining. Certainly not about losing the game. I am an advocate for the game and am trying to understand why such a cool game failed, and if such a game is always doomed to fail.

... he takes the event games for every game....

The event games are every game. You may think it is fun to field thousands of militia, and I will admit to having shared that desire myself, but it is not the game. That is when the game has ceased to be challenging in its own right, and people are looking to push its limits in search of something new to do.

These days, all games either have one guild team or multiple guild teams. A single guild team can do whatever it wants in the game. Quite often, that means getting folks Mona Lisas but sometimes it involves building 10000 militia and spreading rumors of Space Monkey sightings. If multiple guild teams are in the game... it will play like an event game.

Since you have played a few games with Nazgul players. Haven't you ever noticed that the Nazgul on your team disappear from chat for hours. Have you never noticed that they are never in your game when you call out a maze? That is because they are playing a different game as an event game. They are always in an event game.

I get the same feeling from team Fenris players and team Mongo players. They seek out competitive games, and they play them, competitively.

[Mica Dox]

so I am trying to see where I took 24/7 literally. In truth, I couldn't even find myself refferencing 24/7 at all. that was a concept you introduced.

[...] the game takes too long to spend every minute of the game in front of the screen.

[...]

One other counter intuitive aspect is coming to light. Shortening the time span for a single game also increases the need to be in front of the keyboard. The game I just played lasted 27 hours. The team in front lost the game when its team members went to sleep or to work after 10 hours. The team that won... never sleep.

[...]

But there is a secondary lesson to be learned. Decreasing the time frame of a game from 1 week down to one day actualy intensifies the need to be online for every minute of the game.

This has nothing to do with me being new to the game (I ain't btw.) or to the community (that's correct) - you claim that your team lost and our team won because yours couldn't be online all the time the game lasted but ours. But we didn't and we didn't need to be - some intensive hours with well coordinated teamwork were enough. Sure one can't do that everyday, it's too exhausting. But there is also no need to do so.

Since you have played a few games with Nazgul players. Haven't you ever noticed that the Nazgul on your team disappear from chat for hours.

They usually tell me before, so do I. Teamwork, you know?

Have you never noticed that they are never in your game when you call out a maze?

No.

[RobG]

Mica, the reality of spam and of Shu Shu's two team members going to bed and/or work is that if they didn't, all the benefits your team reaped (Apollo, Internet) would have been their's. The game could have ended even faster. Your team simply had to do less to pop already discovered techs and then jump straight into 5k and 10k mazes which is where spam is it's most powerful. The amount of spam used in that game wasn't generated just from those players, just during that 27 hr period. By your team or any team that played in it. They were using any link to spam they could find. I know players who have banked months worth of spam just for these types of games.

The reality of this game was startling to say the least. It uncovered a loophole more massive than players want to acknowledge. It has existed for a long time. This games was spam on steroids. Civ bucks were rendered essentially useless. Town size didn't matter. Mini wonders didn't matter. All that mattered was who was going to find and use the most spam.

Civ World is (was) one big math formula where the key to the formula had always been in the mini wonder events. Not any more.

[Mica Dox]

Mica, the reality of spam and of Shu Shu's two team members going to bed and/or work is that if they didn't, all the benefits your team reaped (Apollo, Internet) would have been their's.

I don't deny that, Rob:

So you might be right that your team would have probably won the game when it could have played all the time the game lasted - you had an impressive starting speed while having the number advantage that forced us into some mazing madness if we wanted to get the win and you couldn't counter that because many of yours were offline. But you are not right that we needed to be online all the time - most of us online in an important phase of the game and playing extremly focused with good lead of our captains and our science coordinator were enough.

What I deny is that we've won because we've spent more time playing. All of us slept and most of us had to go to work, too (not me this day, but this wasn't because of the game). So if we neither had more maze links nor spent more time playing than shushu's team than something else must have made the difference. Be it that most of us are located in an European time zone while most of shushu's team are located in an American one, be it our gameplay, be it both or something else. Choice is your's. I know that shushu's team managed to get an impressive start and I know that we could manage to win the game nevertheless and I'm pleased with that .

[Monqi]

There seems to be a critical phase (which can be very short) in this type of game and you need to be online en masse when this occurs if you want to win. If you're lucky with the timings, this doesn't require a huge investment of time (Mica's team), if you're not, you need to be online all the time to take advantage of it (ShuShu's team). You might not need to be online all of the time to win, but you can definitely lose if you sleep. Having said that, if manipulating the timing of this critical phase was part of the strategy for Mica's team - hats off to you

[ShuShu62]

....Our real science race didn't take that long (7 h maybe?)...

Oh, master of the literal... By your own admission, you had to spend everyminute in front of the screen. Just how many facebook players do you think are inclined to prefix 7 hours with 'not that long' anyway?


Mica, Moscow Never Sleep... ask Moscow yourself if you don't believe me. Moscow also never lose. (Okay... other literals out there, I am aware that Moscow has lost)


Moscow would have lost if
1) Our link sources did not log off
2) My teamates followed our captain's lead rather than thinking they could beat Tamara and Andrey in a battle.

In the first scenario, we lost because we did not put in enough time.
In the second scenario, you guys would have lost because you didn't put in enough time.

Ultimately though, the point of the original post is still that the game requires players to be online too much... and reducing the timespan of the games from one week to 24 hours exacerbates that problem rather than alleviates it.

[Mica Dox]

I hope that using the names of players here was a mistake only ...

Anyhow: so what you say is that your team had chosen a strategy that should end or at least decide the game before our captains could play out their battle skills? And that you didn't count in that players of you had to go to work/sleep plus that your team didn't stayed focused on this strategy? So there is no need to complain about the amount of time you had to use because that was a part of your strategy: if you want to rush through a game and decide it before the battles can take place you need to get the techs to a higher price than the others and you have to collect a lot of eras because early/midgame eras don't count much against Hollywood doubled endgame era victories. There is no need to complain about the lack of time that costed you the victory - as you claim it - because your team used our absence to get this strategy working, because your team didn't count in that you'll need your two players with the links to continue it and because your team changed its strategy before the game was decided.

All in all your team's plan backfired against it because you didn't finish it: we got the techs cheaper and we could win your wonders in battle so that we could save our Great Persons for our modern wonders to get culture era victories in addition to the domination ones what brought us the necessary fame points for the win. But that's not a fault of the game, but of your team.

[Mica Dox]

Oh, master of the literal... By your own admission, you had to spend everyminute in front of the screen. Just how many facebook players do you think are inclined to prefix 7 hours with 'not that long' anyway?

7 h are not that much in comparision to the 27 h the game lasted and even if you count in the additional time for harvests, battles, puzzles, placing Great Persons in wonders, ... your claim that winning this game demanded to play every minute of it is still wrong. I know that one can't and shouldn't do this everyday - not only because it takes to much time but also because it is too exhausting. But there is also no need to do so even if you want to play Civ World and win your games because only the few event games are so intense and even most of them are way slower.

[ShuShu62]

... All in all your team's plan backfired against it because you didn't finish it...

The plan never backfired, because it was never implemented...

However, I am pretty sure I could have pulled it off unilaterally if it weren't for all the other folks playing through the wee hours of the night. You really have no idea how much your team is indebted to Lex and Monqi for halving the number of caravan wins I got that night do you? Did you think to thank RobG for building that golden age at 5am, 5 minutes before I was going to use it for TWO eras (after a delayed caravan).

Ultimately though, the strategy failed because I slept for the 4 hours when the teammates who would have worked towards that strategy were logged on. And ultimately, that is the motivation for this posting.

I stayed up all night, because my team needed me to stay up all night if it was going to win. I would have made the same post whether my team won or lost. In fact, I have yet to see the team averages that state how much we lost by, if we lost.

Facebook games cannot have a negative impact on real life to that extent if they are going to be successful.

[Mica Dox]

I've probably been sleeping when these events happend but I know that little things can make a difference when extremly skilled captains are playing with experienced players each. So if players from other teams than ours crossed your plan while competing for their team to win worked to our advantage I don't have a problem to admit that we've had luck in this point than. We've also had luck that at least one of the random players who joined us was willing to help and really helpful. But if you say that not all players in your team were working on the same strategy I think this will have had a bigger influence than players from third teams, time questions etc. We didn't have this problem, so I'd still say that teamwork lead in the right direction by our captains and our science coordinator was the key point for winning this game (or at least having the top 3 ranked players from our team). I'm sorry that this game was so hasty nevertheless because their wasn't time for explainations, so I couldn't learn from our captains in it.

For the time problem: I still don't see it as a real problem because I consider this type of games still as special events. It's usual IMO that you invest more time, energy (and money) in a hobby for special occasions than you could do every day. And if you can't afford to take the time and energy on the date the game takes place, you might lose a game or your teams wins it without much help from you. So what? There'll be another game when time is on your side.

And even if you consider it a problem I don't see a solution for it. As long as a game is based on real time competition the amount of time you play it will always be a factor. There are online games that have implemented night phases during them you can't do much what would solve the problem that games are decided while you sleep for most players, although I doubt they're implemented because of this. But that would also mean that you've had to use different servers for each time zone what would take a lot of fun out of Civ World because playing and communicating with people worldwide is part of the social aspect of the game.

Limiting the number of maze moves you can get per day would bring a better balance into the game, make science harvests more important (what opens strategical questions) and take some speed out of the special event games, so I like this idea. But else? I think bug fixing would help the game much more than implementing drastic changes to gameplay.

[random user]

You just needed me on your team so we could have ended the game in 12 hours ~~

[ShuShu62]

oh, all right... you need me to concede that you were right way back when?


[COLOR="#FFFF00"]You were right way back when.[/COLOR]
(P.S. and that means I was wrong way back when)

Interstingly, we had first crack at a civ, and I concidered making your suggestion but didn't for two reasons.
1) Experienced players are more ignorrant of the Professor than is good for them
2) Nazgul only need one slot to put all their modern figthers in, so the landscape is irrelevant.

I needed you on my team to talk sense into the noobs... errrr, actually. Another voice of reason advocating gold eras from a position of past experience rather than conjecture might have tipped the scales in the pre-game conversation. Though nobody said it, more than one 'implied' that I was lying about raising 7 digit gold in pre-game chats. One later retracted but unfortunately, was not online long enough to carry the day for us, though he did propose what would have been a winning strategy, especially if I had thought to implement it before babynazgul woke up.

[RobG]

Sounds like someone was in the wrong nation. (LOL!) What? Oh it WAS our civ that won all the econ eras? The Weather Goddess was not happy when she missed out on the one player she was hoping to have on her team.

Wish both you and the Professor could have been in the game where math formula of the game was laid out for everyone to see and it took one minor miscalculation on my part and then 7 - 8 hours of Moscow leaning players perpetually online and their related spam, selling sci at 9 gold per to finally catch and pass us. It was quite the reveal.

[Mica Dox]

Wish both you and the Professor could have been in the game where math formula of the game was laid out for everyone to see and it took one minor miscalculation on my part and then 7 - 8 hours of Moscow leaning players perpetually online and their related spam, selling sci at 9 gold per to finally catch and pass us. It was quite the reveal.

I've been in your team in this game and was part of a team doing Superconductor mazes to sell tons of science for 9 gold in another game and believe me: even being on the losing side is more fun than doing that .

[Mica Dox]

and then 7 - 8 hours of Moscow leaning players perpetually online and their related spam

But I'd still say from my experience that maze spam doesn't really matter in this phase of the game anymore. It's (way too) important to lock early wonders and to get the road to Network (-> Internet) and Space Flight (-> Apollo Program) done fastly, but several players all mazing in Superconductor for a longer period of time are getting enough doubled moves from each other and from the beakers to get through one revealed maze after the other..

[RobG]

I've been in your team in this game and was part of a team doing Superconductor mazes to sell tons of science for 9 gold in another game and believe me: even being on the losing side is more fun than doing that .

I was hoping you would remember that game. The formula for playing that I was referring to much earlier in this thread, that Moscow always uses is exactly what I was referring to in general (not specifically the 27hr game). As I remember Mica, they may have gotten the double maze move bonuses and the revealed maze solutions, but I watched for hours as the same names kept logging back into the game over and over. They were still relying on wall spam (most likely old by that point in the game). That was the closest I have ever seen Moscow get stuck with no way to win out the game and all other era types (besides Econ) voided by the circumstances of the game.

[Mica Dox]

As I remember Mica, they may have gotten the double maze move bonuses and the revealed maze solutions, but I watched for hours as the same names kept logging back into the game over and over.

Might be for this special game ... I slept while they were turning also economy to their favour so I can't say anything about it.

[ShuShu62]

Rob found a much simpler way to summarize my original post...


We will agree the game does not require to much of our time as soon as Mica convinces both our wives that they do not 'Hate CivWorld'.

Note to Firaxis/2K... while causing spouses to hate a game can be a small source of pride, it is ultimately a very bad business model.

[RobG]

We will agree the game does not require to much of our time as soon as Mica convinces both our wives that they do not 'Hate CivWorld'.

Mica retreat now while you can. Even if you had 100k in hammers to burn, SDI, Gladiators in place, and modern fighters, you would be no match for my wife when she catches me getting up at 3 am for a battle. LMAO! You should have seen the look on her face the night she caught me Skyping game strategies with my fellow team mates. Think scorched earth policy.......

[Mica Dox]

*lol*, looks like I should be glad to be single