PETTING ZOO FOUR - PLAYERS SURVEY - 17 AUGUST 2005 1) The Game 1a) what "hearts"/"spades"/"clubs"/"diamonds" did you chose and how did it work out? Clubs. Don't think it made a big difference. IT WAS CHOSEN BY A "FRIEND" THAT SIGNED EK UP AGAIN THEN BAILED LEAVING TO SOLO CORULE EK ONCE A GAIN! Spades and would chose it again. Plans and tactics that were made before game started were forgotten to accomplish when the game actually started :) clubs and I liked it Hearts Spades - would choose it again :) Diamonds since it seemed to offer the least complexity and best defense. I chose a spade. Seemed to work out just fine... I don't think there was a distinctive advantage or disadvantage to the islands shapes once one survived the early stages. Clubs. i was defeated immediately Spades, Fine hearts. worked out well - i thought it would be the easiest map in terms of mobility. [Bungy - I tried to make the start continents as equal as possible this game. Then adding in that tiny tech bonus for the less popular choices just about helped flatten out the ratios evenly] 1b) did you get your economy off to a good start? I Think I did YES, ESPECILLY EDUCATION LEVELS Definetly no Yes missed first update (unexpected company) and relegated to fodder Strategic mistake: aggressive iron first strategy, which was ill-advised given resources and GO_RENEW (see below). as usual. Yes other than one mistake, yes. I thought so. Yes, I started mining dust immediately and feeding it into a bank for update #2. Later I realized the value of packing uws into gold mines rather than iron mines (duh). From that point on, every main island sector possible was given over to producing dust. [Bungy - most players got off to a reasonable start. I took notes of who had problems, and I took snapshots of their settings every update for the first 5 updates or so. Then I offered them advice for areas to improve] 1c) how did you do on initial expansion? We did very well, secured Terminator islands fast, killed a fodder fast. And then we got routed off our kill by Lunachicks. Our invasion force just sufficed for a fodder, but was much too light to resist a determined attack. That set us back quite a bit, in particular since we had gambled for an early kill. good. decided to focus on expansion and it was totally worth it as i barely claimed a couple islands before my neighbors, which gave nice buffer space. I think I started too late - my neighbors had some of the islands near me. CLOSE IN, JUST FINE. DISAPPOINTED BY BAD LUCKS AND THE 2ND TIER ISLANDS. N/A I didn't Terrible, was second to almost every expansion island Fairly well Slow I would give us an '8' here... Pretty good. Got almost every surrounding expansion island. Identified an initial fodder for early invasion but couldn't locate his main island before someone else (Plundaria) had hit it. Thus I was one of the last to actually attack another's home island. [Bungy - I think all players at least got off of their home continents] 1d) how did you like/dislike the Terminator defenses? They were fine. Mildly amusing and entertaining. Made you feel like there was a half-intelligent POGO owning those sectors for an update or two. MOST EXCELLENT WAY TO DELAY ROLL OF FODER AND RUNAWAY EXPANSIONS FROM OTHER PZS. Liked them. Slowed expansion. Mountains were as hard to get as they were supposed to. here Bungy gets a '9' Too strong in some areas. They were very nicely set up. 5 They were okay, better to have them than not to have them ? Loved it. fun and slightly challenging. [Bungy - I like the terminator idea. It limits the initial expansion, gives everyone a taste of combat, and makes players have to earn their expansion territory. Terminator is here to stay in the PZ series.] 1e) did you focus on tech, expansion, both, neither, or other? Too much on expansion. Took out a fodder but fell behind on tech Started with both, finishing up with tech tech. I focused on expansion. With tech, I just wanted to make sure I was close to the leaders at lower levels (no further than an update or two behind). As the diplomacy with Lunachicks evolved, I was able to let him become the tech driver while I focused on "acquisitions" (including other tech leaders), further reducing tech spend. focused on expansion, lagged in tech. Emphasis on expansion, relaxed tech pace. EDUCATIONS both, but tech got slightly more emphasis. neither i think, i was killed too early Both, but more toward the tech side. [Bungy - With the lower tech log base, players were able to gain a tech lead. It still looked like tech moved pretty quickly, as I too like a slower tech game.] 1f) how did you do with diplomacy? So-so. EXCELLENT. DECLARED WAR ON ALL COUNTRIED THAT FIALD TO MAKE SUFFICIENT TECH AS THEY HURT TECH BLEED NUMBERS. THEN PROCEEDED TO CAUSE RADAR SACKEDS WHEREVERE LEFT UNATTENDED(5). LATE IN GAME OFFERED PROTECTION TO ALL PEACE LOVING NATIONS. GENEROUS OFFER OF PEICE ALSO GIVEN TO COMBATANTS IN EXCHANGE FOR CRITIKE OF TACTICAL ATTACK STRATEGIES! THEN WENT ON VACATION. never do very well as i am quiet. had good relations all game with two strong neighbors, but i suspected the other two of eyeing me, and sure enough they eventually attacked. haven't opportunity You mean to tell me that there were diplomats out there?? Well, I thought I did ok, until the end. Poor. Attacked nuke_em w/o NA from Mr Ed... Survived till end game because of it Could have done better Not good enough - if we did, we would be amongst the winners ;) Worked like a charm. An early NA with Plundaria allowed us each to focus on the more fodderous neighbors. Ultimately this NA lasted all game ending in a one-for-the-record-books declaration of mutual friendliness between Resvon and Plundaria. In the mean while, a developing partnership with Lunachicks was benefiting both nations as joint invasions began being planned and home islands fell more quickly. Ultimately, the final success was more a result of poor diplomacy on the part of Bordello than on superior diplomacy on the part of Luna or Resvon; people did not want to see him win. It was unclear was provoked this, but we were happy to leverage it to help garner support. [Bungy - Diplomacy? Talking to your neighbors is essential.] 2) Game Setup 2a) Double Civs - did you like the double civs start & 21% civ growth? double civs made the start week not that boring and scripted. civ growth - ok YES I liked the double civs start. I'm not sure how much difference the slower civ growth made. Lunachicks managed to depopulate our disc, and we theirs, but I figure the same would have happened with standard growth. So So helped a bit Was okay Good for start, but still maxed island pretty soon. Yes. It was fine. Not really noticable beyond some early point. Yes yes [Bungy - Civ growth was still pretty quick, especially when starting with 4k civs] 2b) Resources - did you like the flat resources and qty of iron/dust/oil? YES Too much oil not enough dust, but I’m sure that was the plan yes Yes. easy, but quite boring a '9' here - with FOOD enabled, we would have fert=7 :) 9 Yes, sort of. My problem with flat resources is that you can use every sector as mine. Since you can, you must: you try hard to minimize non-mine sectors. Highways are right out. That leads to cramped, mobility-starved countries. Routes are a vastly inferior substitute, since they're such a PITA to build, maintain and visualize. Moreover, with GO_RENEW you can ill afford cms for roads (see below). We rotated dist centers every update, and sometimes used two or three per large island. Blerch. Without GO_RENEW, you can choose to postpone mining dust. You get the same dust, just a bit later. You lose the postponed dust's interest, which is a one-time loss. If you do that with GO_RENEW, you lose dust and thus bars forever instead. You lose money every update for the rest of the game. The problem is not an issue if only mountains have dust, because you can't do anything else with mountains anyway. I hated the fact that the winning strategy basically came down to maximizing the number of gold mines. If there were fewer dust sectors or not renewable or something it would have been nicer. It just wasn't "fun" to try and have islands of nothing but gold mines. [Bungy - I can't believe how many 'g'old mines there were. At one point in the game, there were more 'g's than 'm's. I totally did not expect this, considering that there was only 5 dust in the industrial sectors. Next PZ game won't have this, sorry. I like to use flat resources for simplicity, and the expansion islands had significantly less resources than the start continents to not give excessive production bonuses to land hogs.] 2c) Map layout - world size? ok good straightforward layout N/A Just right. Seemed about right. GOOD. MORE EXAPNSION NEAR ME, NOT AS MANY NEAR NEIGHBORS. Right for number of people Yes good ? Was good [Bungy - This map size of approx 50x24 per player seems to be a decent ratio between player spacing and not too much territory per player by endgame.] 2d) Map layout - types / varieties of start continents? No opinion. Yes CLEVER FUNNY! No complaints. funny 9 choice of start island did not make that difference in the end. cool. In my area they play radio commercials for Belvader Vodka, In one spot they discuss the finer points of rock paper sissors. I always think of the Zoo, even though I didn't play that game. Nice variety of start Was good nice variety [Bungy - influenced by watching the Poker matches on TV] 2e) Map layout - player placements as in fairness of distribution? Sure. ONLY ONE FODDER NEARBY. PLEASE SURROUND WITH MORE FODDER NEXT TIME. No complaints. fine with me. N/A A nice trip between especially with early ships. random is fairest FODDER[tm] is always somewhere else... Yes As my co-ruler already stated - fodder is always elsewhere :) [Bungy - I was as random in placement as I could be, using a deck of cards] 2f) Map layout - expansion islands, more / less / variety? good Was okay I really like lots of small islands - but it is still an '8' for Bungy I would of liked more. The 13 square islands were useless. GOOD, 2/3 TYPES NICE MIX No complaints. Possibly more expansion variety ok right amount of variety i think Variety would have been nice. [Bungy - there were 3 types of expansion islands! There were 2 of those little circley guys next to everyone start continent, then 1 of those spindly things per player, and then one of the bigger round ones per 2 players.] 2g) Map layout - expansion islands, too close/far, too easy/tough? Difficulty varied with type; I liked that. Too tough for just one frigate and by time I got more others had arrived. I need to make more frigates early, but live and learn. good spacing good GOOD, MAY BE BIT CLOSER SO SEE WITH RADAR WHEN MAKING TECH. NOT MAKE TECH==IN THE DARK. well balanced. Just right. Both were equally annoying. Not sure why they had to be made unfun to work with. As above [Bungy - I tried to vary the difficulty depending on the value of the expansion island.] 2h) Tech - tech was log 2.00 with 25% bleed, too fast / slow? Seemed fine. slightly too fast, toys were already outdated after a trip from one continent to the other..... Too fast. No complaints. GOOD TECH BLOOD. good A little too slow seemed plenty fast when i was alive, but the endgame took a real long time. Too fast [Bungy - With the lower tech log base, players were able to gain a tech lead. It still looked like tech moved pretty quickly, as I too like a slower tech game.] 2i) New Unit, Plane, Nuke - liked / disliked? (shepherd, F3, 7kt nuke) didn't use... AS ONLY RECEIVE OF 7KT NUKE, STILL SAY CAN LIKE IT. GOOD EXIT STRATEGY. shepherds owned and i still had a couple alive at the end. f3 was nice, ask EK about the 7kt Didin't use them. Negligible impact, I guess. f3 was only a marginal improvement over f2. Early nukes could be fun, but 7kt was prohibively expensive for us. Shepard didn’t use, f3 didn’t use, 7kt Nuke never built sheperds: completely useless (missing 'light' flag) f3: could have done without 7kt nuke: only one has been used, and it had an effect :)) Didn't use shepherd. Did not like F3. They were far more valuable than they should have been in terms of air stripping. Awesome for pinbombing airports (since they didn't trigger sams). Worked wonders against jet fighters, both attacking and defending. That's just way too much... 7kt nuke - didn't use. Seemed a waste of resources for little value, so why bother. Had no real use of them [Bungy - The shepherds were supposed to be just about worthless, for the players. The F3 was supposed to be a slightly better F2, that cost just a little more. I tried adding in the 7kt nuke to spice things up, but I think I overpriced it.] 2j) Modified Power report - how did you like the '?' for digits? great modification ALSO REPLACE PLAYER NAME WITH ??? I liked very much. Improves gameplay Mildly amusing. I've always rather liked the hidden-ish aspects, but don't think it ultimately mattered one way or the other. Liked Better than numbers but still telling quite a lot I don't like the fact that this system has only this preset coarseness, of powers of 10. It also breaks my player tools. 5 good idea - still telling too much though. Great idea, but may have in the thousands range Yes - adds more guess work and some realism. [Bungy - I think this was a big hit.] 3) Micromanagement 3a) too much or too little? Not too bad... Too much FINES Too much, as always :) Seriously, this game was fairly normal in that regard. n/a No problems here with the design. All problems with micromanagement were self-imposed. Still think entire game has too much but that’s another story Just enough. perfect amount. the boring commodity moving was at an extreme minimum, so all the micromanaging was in building/moving/using units. Was okay, we were three to share the work [Bungy - I tried to reduce micromanagement via the NO_FOOD, flat resources, and fairly vanilla setup. Sometimes keeping it simple works best.] 3b) approx how much time per update were you spending on country management? 1 hour. Don't know, varied probably a bit maybe 2-3 hours if going slow, but i could do it in 30 minutes when rushed. and then lots of just idling on the server. 2 HRS, NO CORULE too few. i missed few updates at the beginning No idea - co-ruled country. but country management was not a big issue. we had lots of time for planning/building for conflicts :) Actually I lost connection due to time-outs more than once while meditating over the island map. Once each island was setup, it was pretty minimal. Maybe an hour or two per update. And much of that was just building out new bridges, infrastructure or military assets. Early 2-3 hours, peaked around 3 to 4, then lessened 2 - 3 hours I don't know how much time I spent on playing, much less how that time was distributed between country management, fighting, planning, chatting, fooling around and what not. [Bungy - I tried to figure on about 2 hours / update would be reasonable.] 4) Update Schedule 4a) too fast / too slow? fair perfect. allowed people to stay interested for several months. No complaints. I got exhausted toward the end, but that's not uncommon. GOOD MIX. Good, I like longer time between updates too slow during my brief life but may have turned out to be too fast later. Seemed about right. Needed a longer initial time to get it started. Weekend skips were what really slowed it down (plus your vacation and weenies how wouldn’t vote for updates to be turned on.) It was a good mix Was okay good - the problems we had were self-imposed. As solo player I would have been unable to get a good start though. [Bungy - always a tough issue. There's players that want to play faster, then there's others that need time for RL.] 4b) convenient / inconvenient time(s) of day? N/A Mostly fine. I think anytime in the 10pm to midnight range is best. They sucked. GOOD MIX We coped. I don't think I made many ups. I think every 49 - 50 hours would good. it was rolling update, so it was always inconvienient :) Thank you for keeping the weekends free for life. For the remaining inconviniences we were co-ruling. The 7 AM updates sucked. Maybe rotate by 1 hour, 23 hour, 47 hour, etc. was good. Was okay [Bungy - Rolling updates always suck, for someone.] 5) Additional Comments and Questions for the Deities Looking forward to PZ7 - The Seven Sins GENGU KAHN AND HILTER, JUST YOU WAIT. YOU *WILL* BE SHOOTED! SO LOOK OUT - YOU HAVE BEEN WRANED! I really really hated turning home islands into gold farms. My strategizing had more to do with how much stuff I could offshore than with what necessarily made sense. Further hindered defenses (because you didn't want to sacrifice the sectors) or finances if you did sacrifice. Distances were pretty fun. There was a point before Partimers through in the towel where I had 3 separate battle fleets of 60+ ships each complete with land and air units. They were huge and ready to crash 3 separate beaches at the same time... it was going to be epic. So I was sad... but it was fun planning for it. The distances really made such assets necessary. It was a fine game. Thanks for hosting it! bungy, this was a fantastic empire game. the setup was simple but it made for an extremely playable game. little micromanagement, balanced fighting and plenty of time to do it. the players were fun as well, definitely a good experience. Thanks for running the game Great game, even though I got knocked out early. First game I got sacked! Learned a lot. Thank you for running a great game. Great game, glad I played. This may be a bit off topic. I know co-ruling has sometimes been criticized fg in the newsgroup. I'm personally glad the possibility exists. Co-ruling was the only option to play for me since the game was a long term game and I wouldn't have had any chance to play solo. Co-ruling doesn't make the game that much easier, it takes time to get to know your co-rulers and with all the different thoughts and coughs in the beginning of who's taking care of what and talking what to whom (diplomacy) - it's challenging but rewarding once it works :) It gives the game a different kind of interaction compared to playing solo and I like it. Also to me co-ruling has been the only possibility to continue playing Empire. I'm not too vocal in the games and prefer a low profile - there aren't many in the Empire world who knows I'm a woman, then again - I haven't played that well to arise much publicity either :) It has been good fun for quite many years by now! I want to thank you for providing these PZ games, also you've done great job as a deity - the two PZ games I have played so far have been absolutely great time! Just a thought, in looking at the power report it was obvious the power that Lunachicks and Resvon had the game might have ended sooner if hidden wasn't enabled [Bungy - Thanks everyone for playing, and being patient during the power outage, and miscellaneous lock-out bugs.] (end PZ4 survey)