Planning cIV BTS MTDG III

In WPC there was attempt to solve this by a simple rule - if you want to declare war to someone already in war, you must do it in the half of the timer, which belongs to his opponents. Not that there cant be cases, where one nation is at war with 1 nation which is at war with another and those cant be combined correct anymore...

This is what we do as a house rule in our championship. That way there arent 72 hours turns.
 
Hi, I am Manolo, developer of this mod.
As we all know, civilization is a turn-based game, but when played at pitboss mode with simultaneous turns we are losing that concept but gaining the possibility
to play wiyh many teams without a strict order like PBEM.

With a strict order implementation at war times, this mod have the best of both worlds.

we have been playing tournaments for many years at the Spanish forum and before developing this mod we had many many problems with war. At peace there is no problem logging when you want but in wars you must establish a strict order of play or inevitably there will be problems, if you can log "out of your turn" and being able to touch things anytime that inevitably influence the war, even something as simple as changing a slider science or move some units hidden inside the civ or allow workers to make a road to destroy an enemy stack next turn.

I ask myself, how do you play at war? if you have a 24 or 48 hours turn how many time each civ have? the mod and gives everyone the same time.
Also, extended wartime turn duration only apply to civilizations at war, the others ones keeps their standard turn timer, so overall turn duration is shortened

also the web send mails (optionally): if your turn is ready, if some offer has been made to you at diplomatic window, all game events, fighting results, wonders buildings, units location with their experience and strength, cities production, statistics graphics with power, GNP (ideal for a demogame where there are few players logging into the game only but many want to watch).

Believe me, after playing with the system that we use I doubt that you wanted to play again the simple BTS, ask anyone who has used it and watch.

I can remove turn control from the mod, but It would be a step back, a return to a world of chaos and distrust of any out-of-turn enemy login.

Believe me, It is better to know that the opponent cannot log when he shouldn't.

This game looks great and we would like to participate but for many of us playing without the "web atpmod" its not an option, it would be like going back to the past.

But you decide, we do not want to impose anything, there's no problem about...best wishes and best of luck!
 
I was looking around the site Manolo, and it's pretty cool, it's good to see someone pushing beyond civstats, but when I logged on as a guest it looked like I was seeing stuff that shouldn't be publicly available, like graphs, specific unit losses (ie "your warrior killed attacking tank!"), etc. Am I getting this as part of the demo account experience or what?
 
I was looking around the site Manolo, and it's pretty cool, it's good to see someone pushing beyond civstats, but when I logged on as a guest it looked like I was seeing stuff that shouldn't be publicly available, like graphs, specific unit losses (ie "your warrior killed attacking tank!"), etc. Am I getting this as part of the demo account experience or what?

hi! in this games we like to see as If we where Barbarians!! That message, the warrior is a barbarian warrior.

We think this info its not relevant for those how are playing , but gives a good idea on whats going on for those that are not playing but still would like to just take a look to the game...

But I can shut down this feature for this game if you do not want it
 
In the end we will vote on what settings/features we want. It's not good to say "it's going to be that way or else we are out"
Trackers like civstats or PYT keep track of who logged in and when, no cheating is possible. you still did not answer what about the turn before war, what about if we want to change the turn order for convenient reasons. We apolyton players have our experience too how to manage double move problems smoothly. I just don't thin ka mod is really necessary-but if the majority of the players want it then it's fine by me.
 
hi! in this games we like to see as If we where Barbarians!! That message, the warrior is a barbarian warrior.

We think this info its not relevant for those how are playing , but gives a good idea on whats going on for those that are not playing but still would like to just take a look to the game...

But I can shut down this feature for this game if you do not want it
Well the main issue is about other civs who may not actually know about an invasion, and with out the information may have done nothing, but with the site they would have known, and so might have taken advantage of the war and invaded. I know at RB we had a PB where this knowledge would have totally changed the ending of the game. If you can turn off the spoilerly stuff like graphs and the turn log for a specific game or show only when it should be shown I guess the problem goes away. :)

Can anyone (ie mac players) install the mod?
 
@mzprox

The turn before the war is part of the rule, if you play second in that turn, you only can declare war in the second part of the turn, if not, its double turn.

The turn order cant be changed while at war, if not, a double turn would happen.

@lost_civantares

The web can show or not a lot of parameters. Magno can chose whatever you want.
 
Well the main issue is about other civs who may not actually know about an invasion, and with out the information may have done nothing, but with the site they would have known, and so might have taken advantage of the war and invaded. I know at RB we had a PB where this knowledge would have totally changed the ending of the game. If you can turn off the spoilerly stuff like graphs and the turn log for a specific game or show only when it should be shown I guess the problem goes away. :)

Can anyone (ie mac players) install the mod?

yes, I understand. I can turn it off.

The mod its a normal mod of civ, I guess mac users will not have problems. But i never try it really..
 
Hello all, I'm Robert from the Apolyton team. (can we make up a name or will we just be The Apolyton Team or something?)

Great that a game like this is being set up!
The more teams from different sites that participate, the merrier. Maybe we can even cover it on our mainpages as some kind of an international civ-event. (and raise awareness again for civ4 multiplayer which is still very alive!)

I personally believe that it's truely great that there are still people who are improving the MP experience of civ4! Like this Spanish Mod!
For civ4 MP in general it will be very very good if we can give this mod a push forward! Therefore I am leaning towards at least adapting the BuG part. (the website/android part) of the mod. Who knows what else there will be possible to arrange through a website in civ4 MP games.... But maybe that's a question to the devs of the mod!

Regarding the Double Move thing.
In my experience the Double Move rule should be solid and enforced in a consistent way. My main sorrow with a split-timer is that it's a hard timer.
I think that for good MP games no player should ever miss a turn during war. At the Apolyton Diplogame community we just pause the game if someone is not showing up. Some players play their turns quickly and leave plenty of time for their opponents to play. Therefore I have always loved it to just manually enforce the DM rule.

The turn order position has disadvantages and advantages.
Being first means you can use healed units to attack.
Being first also means that your resources may be destroyed during the turn switch.

I see no solution to that, neither with or without a mod.
Letting workers move at the end of the turn also introduces troubles. A double worker move is imho also an exploit. (buildings double roads, etc).
Not to mention that it introduces another round of movement, delaying the game.

All I can say is that players should perhaps anticipate on the advantages / disadvantages of being first in turn order. That's what a game is about as well. Maybe have a rule in place that the turn order is always reversed compared to the last war.

But to me most important is that I think we should give this BuG mod a chance for the sake of Civ4 MP's future. It's a truely great innovation! Of course we should be able to make some requests to the mods devs so that the mod also suits this game.
 
Thanks Robert! :thumbsup:

As portal and SD developer i can make any change needed if its possible to do so. But the mod and the double turn control is too much inserted in the mod development and trying to get it out will desestabilizad the mod. And we had been working on it for 2 years, and we really think its a really good feature.
 
Girls don't break rules? ;)
;)
:) Sommers uses the political correct male variant ...

So girls and boys / women and man are both considered player
I think LP is just poking at me because there was a big scandal (well mostly it was just a scandal in Provolution's mind:lol:) when I first started becoming really active on CFC (BTS MTDG I), about whether I was male or female (because I always use sexy female avatar). By now everyone knows better (as I have mentioned many times my wife, kids etc...) but back then I was amused with the whole thing and did nothing to discourage it (maybe even encouraged it a little:mischief:)... Perverse I know, but I can be a jerk sometimes as everyone knows.:D
 
I don't speak for all of Team Apolyton, I know mxprox doesn't like it, but I personally think we should definitely go with the Spanish mod. Double move problems seem to be the number one source of drama and issues in pitboss games. This mod seems to be the best way we all know of to solve it.

It avoids the inevitable shouting matches, pauses, reloads, accusations and all the rest. For a big game like this where all our passions are bound to get involved, this seems to be a fair, neutral, automatic way of handling it.
 
What I will say here (I did not dare say over at RB as it is not my "home" so I try to just be respectful and mostly keep silent) is that all these arguments about the settings and the Mods are really besides the point. Everyone is playing by the same settings, no matter what they are, so everyone is playing on an equal playing field.

Plus in a game with diplomacy, the game will be won and lost on the diplomatic front, no matter how good your micro or tactics are. A very good question was posed at RB, which to paraphrase was "Would you have fun playing a game (with influence civic/religion espy mission allowed) where we were throwing each other into anarchy every 5 turns?"

I had to think about that, because TBH, I never thought about it that way... In other words, who cares what tactics the game allows or does not allow, what counters to the tactic are available or not available, if some tactic is so powerful that it is the ONLY way to win if used properly, then the game suffers and becomes not fun, but just a chore of using this same overpowered tactic over and over.

I found this argument to be compelling, but as I thought more about it, it was only good, because I accepted the premise... ie, that if the mission is allowed, it will be so powerful that all teams will have no choice but to run espionage heavy enough to keep influencing everyone's civics and religion. But when I really think about it, this does not seem correct:confused:

Pinning M&M down into despotism in BTS MTDG II was EXPENSIVE. We basically had to devote our entire economy to it. We could not tech at all while doing this, let alone steal a tech. If EVERYONE in the game was doing this, NO ONE would be teching anything. This seems so far fetched I can't even imagine it.

Plus there was another major false premise I accepted in this argument... The idea that my opponent will keep foolishly trying to switch back into the civics or religion I switched him out of. I know if I faced this tactic, I would just stay in the civic he switched me to, and deal with it. Now he is denied that tactic and his whole strategy falls. I'm sure there is more to it, but I will research the RB threads and do the research so that when the time for debate on the settings comes, I will be talking good sense with good reasoning and information, not just spouting out my beliefs based on my jealous love of the Espionage system.

2metra made an excellent point over there, that if you are one of those who say "We must play this way or I ain't playing" or "My way is best and any other way is unthinkable" then we probably don't want you in the game to begin with. In my experience, it is always these rigid, fanatical ones who insist on this and that, and then a few days, weeks, months into the game, declare that the game bores them, or that some OTHER issue is hopelessly unbalanced and quit...

The main point is that setting don't matter as much as players. With dedicated no-quitter players we will have a fun game. Without, the game is doomed no matter the settings. That being said, I also am hopeful we get to use the Spanish Mod, for novelty's sake if nothing else;)
 
What I will say here (I did not dare say over at RB as it is not my "home" so I try to just be respectful and mostly keep silent) is that all these arguments about the settings and the Mods are really besides the point. Everyone is playing by the same settings, no matter what they are, so everyone is playing on an equal playing field.

Plus in a game with diplomacy, the game will be won and lost on the diplomatic front, no matter how good your micro or tactics are. A very good question was posed at RB, which to paraphrase was "Would you have fun playing a game (with influence civic/religion espy mission allowed) where we were throwing each other into anarchy every 5 turns?"

I had to think about that, because TBH, I never thought about it that way... In other words, who cares what tactics the game allows or does not allow, what counters to the tactic are available or not available, if some tactic is so powerful that it is the ONLY way to win if used properly, then the game suffers and becomes not fun, but just a chore of using this same overpowered tactic over and over.

I found this argument to be compelling, but as I thought more about it, it was only good, because I accepted the premise... ie, that if the mission is allowed, it will be so powerful that all teams will have no choice but to run espionage heavy enough to keep influencing everyone's civics and religion. But when I really think about it, this does not seem correct:confused:

Pinning M&M down into despotism in BTS MTDG II was EXPENSIVE. We basically had to devote our entire economy to it. We could not tech at all while doing this, let alone steal a tech. If EVERYONE in the game was doing this, NO ONE would be teching anything. This seems so far fetched I can't even imagine it.

Plus there was another major false premise I accepted in this argument... The idea that my opponent will keep foolishly trying to switch back into the civics or religion I switched him out of. I know if I faced this tactic, I would just stay in the civic he switched me to, and deal with it. Now he is denied that tactic and his whole strategy falls. I'm sure there is more to it, but I will research the RB threads and do the research so that when the time for debate on the settings comes, I will be talking good sense with good reasoning and information, not just spouting out my beliefs based on my jealous love of the Espionage system.

2metra made an excellent point over there, that if you are one of those who say "We must play this way or I ain't playing" or "My way is best and any other way is unthinkable" then we probably don't want you in the game to begin with. In my experience, it is always these rigid, fanatical ones who insist on this and that, and then a few days, weeks, months into the game, declare that the game bores them, or that some OTHER issue is hopelessly unbalanced and quit...

The main point is that setting don't matter as much as players. With dedicated no-quitter players we will have a fun game. Without, the game is doomed no matter the settings. That being said, I also am hopeful we get to use the Spanish Mod, for novelty's sake if nothing else;)

Completely agreed. :goodjob:
 
x-posted with Ozzy - Yes, pauses and reloads...:yuck:. Doublemove arguments :mad:... Creating doublemove Rules that work and don't cause people to quit when enforced [pissed]

About the sabotaged, bombed, pillaged resource at the end of the turn... Robert is right that there is no solution AFAICT in a strict "no-login out of turn" system. TBH using workers at the end of the turn in some 3-phase movement regime is not very elegant either, because the enemy (or some third party) could still come in right at the end of the turn and re-sabotage/pillage/bomb the tile.

Assuming that we even want to address this problem (maybe we want to just leave it alone and chalk it up to a simple tactical consideration), one way to deal with it could be to have a rule that says:
1. You can not re- pillage/sabotage/bomb a tile you just damaged and has just been repaired. You must leave it alone for 1 full turn, after the turn where it was damaged.
2. you can not move workers onto a pillaged/sabotaged/bombed tile for 1 full turn after they are damaged. This way the attacker is not robbed of his chance to deprive you of the resource but you are not permanently deprived of the resource.

EDIT: I forgot to answer your question:blush: Multi-Team refers to the fact that we have multiple teams with many players. The "Demo" in 'demogame' refers to "Democracy" as in everyone votes and reaches consensus on how to run the Civ. As you correctly surmised a regular "Demogame" (over here at CFC anyway) refers to a game where one civ is managed by many players and that civ faces the AI (similar to a Succesion game I think). At least that's how I understand it.

And yes I agree that playing against the AI isn't as fun;), which is why I always resist making rules that force humans to play like AI.
 
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