Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Command Nexus => Topic started by: Dolgorukov on January 03, 2013, 04:06:03 AM

Title: Team PBEM Game - With Time Controls similar to Chess?
Post by: Dolgorukov on January 03, 2013, 04:06:03 AM

I'm curious what you guys think about Team games where there is one team per faction and no human player can belong to more than one team. The closest I've ever gotten to a team game was a single faction democracy game not too long ago.

While a high number of human players in a game often makes for a slow game, teams of humans could theoretically produce fast turn-arounds on game turns. Sounds promising!

However I foresee the following downsides:
1) one player may end up taking full ownership of the faction, resulting in loss of interest by other members of team.
2) Consensus building within a team takes time which slows down the game.

To mitigate these disadvantages, I propose time limitations where each team has only a limited number of hours for the whole game. Like in chess the clock only pauses when it is another team's turn. This creates the pressure to plan ahead and encourages every available team member to push turns in order to minimize the number of hours elapsed since it became your team's turn. Teams that run out of time, are eliminated from the game and control of their faction is turned over to AI.

Time Controls could be agreed upon where for example every 50 turns, additional time is added to the clock.

5 to 7 human faction games at an average of 1 turn/day (maybe even faster in the beginning), could this be a possibility? Perhaps tie in the results of these games to the current ladder ranking system to keep the competitive spirit and commitment of individual players alive?

I propose to start an experimental game with 5 teams (at least 3 players per team). Who is foolish enough... err "brave enough" I meant to say... to try this? (Opinions on the subject and attempts to talk me out of this are welcome, after all, you may save me and a few others the disappointments that come with learning things the hard way!    :) )

Title: Re: Team PBEM Game - With Time Controls similar to Chess?
Post by: t_ras on January 04, 2013, 05:32:49 PM

I've participated in time limited democracy games. They tend to be very slow. The best player will always dominate the scene leaving the other players without too much interest (though I've seen some separating responsibilities).  It would be good for players that want to learn from the best. I would gladly play such a game with EarthMichael for example.