ISDG ~ Ruleset

Furiey

No Longer Just Lurking
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This is the Englist version (thanks Calis) of the ruleset being discussed at Civforum.de

1.Teams

1.Every player may only be member of one team.
2.Moving from a still active team to another one is not allowed.

2.Espionage and diplomacy

1. Any form of espionage, except the in game forms of espionage is prohibited. It is explicitly forbidden to enforce access to the internal/secret forums of other teams, or to open save files of other teams.
2. The save file must not b opened with any program, other than C3C 1.22. (I think this includes CAII?)
3. Exchange of screenshots and map information, other than general hints of directions and way descriptions in form of landmarks, are not allowed before one of the trading partners has discovered map making.
4. Diplomacy and communication between teams/players is not allowed before meeting in game.
5. Information gathered from the pre-save must not be given to other teams before receiving the real save. (What is a pre-save)

3. Irreversible actions and turn logs

1. Irreversible actions are all in game actions that can’t be undone without reloading the save.
2. Irreversible actions are not allowed with pre-saves.
3. Only one player at a time is allowed to execute irreversible actions.
4. When playing the turn, any irreversible actions done by another player, have to be repeated in exactly the same order as they were done originally.
5. All teams have to make sure that 3.2 und 3.3 can be assured at any time. In case this can’t be assured, the referees are allowed to dictate a way to enforce this rule.
6. For all actions a log has to be written, as long as they can’t be seen precisely in the following save.
7. For all battles a detailed log has to be written and provided to the attacked team when sending on the save.

4. Contracts and alliances

1. The compliance to contracts is voluntarily.

5. Team interaction

1. Workers and artillery units may not be used multiple times in one turn by voluntary trading them to another team.
2. Teams may not declare war and peace immediately after that to cancel in game contracts.
3. A resource or a city that has control over a resource may only be traded once per 20 turns between two trading partners, unless the interruption of the trade was caused by a war opponent. In the latter case, the trade may be activated again.
4. A team may not scrifice units to another team to get promotions, or to create great leaders.
5. An allied victory is excluded. Only one team can win the game.

6. Borders and right of passage

1. Whoever has one or more units within the cultural borders of another team at the end of his turn by his own fault has to declare war in game.
2. Whoever has one or more units within the cultural borders of another team at the end of his turn NOT by his own fault (cultural expansion, founding of a new city or cancellation of ROP) has to make sure his unit(s) leave the opponents territory within a minimum of turns, or declare war.
3. Rights of Passage must be given explicitly in the embassy forum and can be cancelled at any time.

7. Prohobited actions

1. Actions (in game or diplomacy) which are not explicitly mentioned under 8 or 9 or which fulfil the requirements mentioned under 9.1 may only be executed after being confirmed by the referee(s).
2. It is not allowed to break into the build order of any city at the beginning of the turn to change builds.
3. Goto, as well as all other "automatic" orders are only allowed if they will be finished within the same turn.
4. Only empty cities may be gifted.
5. The naming of units and cities may not be misleading fort he other teams (e.g. calling a settler „worker“, or calling a city "map making” and offer it as a tech in the diplomacy screen). In cases of doubt the real type of this unit has to be disclosed to other teams.
6. Using graphic mods that give more info about the map than the original graphic are not allowed.
7. When stealing techs, only one tech per attempt may be stolen.
8. Units may only be moved from one ship to another one time per turn.

8. Allowed actions

1. All actions that were usual and unpunished in previous DGs, are allowed, as long as they are not explicitly prohibited by these rules.
2. Secret building of wonders (e.g. Palace prebuild)
3. Palace jump by abandoning capital.
4. The Great Library allows techs that need Education as a prerequisite. (like jumping into the IA by capturing the Glib).
5. Exchange of techs and joint research plans are allowed.
6. Workers may be exchanged to reduce unit upkeep.

9. Limitation of the game mechanics

1. Units with the ability "amphibious attack" are not allowed to attack cities from seaside, except for berserks and marines.

10. Time limit for turn playing

1. The first turn is excluded from this rule. At the beginning of the second turn, the time accounts are opened with a starting amount of 48 hours.
2. At the beginning of every turn the time account will be increased by 24 hours.
3. Addition: Beginning on December 13, the time account will be increased by 36 hours at the beginning of each turn.
4. The time account of a team will be decreased by the time used for playing the turn.
5. The time account cannot exceed 96 hours. No more time will be credited.
6. In case the time account falls below 0, the referee will click through the turn (and sends it on to the next team).
7. As long as the forum is not reachable, or the game is haltet, no time will be deducted from the account.
8. The sending of the turn and the calculation of the turn time will be done with “Lemmings turn clock”.
9. Presaves are created voluntarily.

11. Penalties

1. Penalties are decided by the referee. Team leaders are at their disposal for consultancy.
2. A team shall not be punished for the mistakes and or misdoings of a single player. But the game balance has to be re-established. The purpose of the punishment shall be to compensate the advantage a team gained by violating the rules.
3. Players, who gain access to information in an unintended way, have to skip until the information gets irrelevant.
4. Players, who intentionally break the rules, can be excluded/banned from the game temporarily or permanently.
 
There is one last bit of German in there

Spieler, die über nicht vorgesehene Wege Informationen erlangen, müssen so lange aussetzen, bis diese Informationen irrelevant werden.

Which I think is the left over German translation of the previous sentance.

That's right.

The save file must not b opened with any program, other than C3C 1.22. (I think this includes CAII?)

CivAssist is forbidden.

1. Units with the ability "amphibious attack" are not allowed to attack cities from seaside, except for berserks and marines.

Archers and upgrades have the ability "amphibious attack".

This is the Englist version (thanks Calis) of the ruleset being discussed at Civforum.de

This is the version of DG6. A proper Translation of the ruleset from MTDG2 to german may help to find a ruleset that will work for both sides.
 
For comparison the CFC Civ 3 MTDG II ruleset:

1.0 - Game Information
1.1 - The Save

All teams are required to play the save within 24 hours, unless they request an extension in the Turn Tracker thread. After playing the save, they must send it to the next team via email. Additionally, the turnplayer must post in the Turn Tracker thread to indicate the save has been sent. The next team's 24 hours begins after said post.

1.2 - Battle Logs
Teams are required to send a battle log to the team(s) they attack during their turn, indicating what units attacked, and what the result was. This includes bombardments as well. A sample line could read: "4HP Rifleman attacks 3HP Mustketman - Rifleman wins, still 4HP".

1.3 - Punishment
The game administrators are responsible for handing out punishment after a violation of a rule. Punishment may be limited to one single player or the team, but it will not be overly harsh or cruel. It could include forced anarchy, forced payment of gold, removal from the team forum for a period of time, or other actions. If a team feels it is unfair, they may appeal the decision.

1.4 - Clarifications
If a team would like to ask the administrator's approval for an action they want to undertake to see if it is against the rules or not, they may PM the administrators and get their interpretation. It is advised that if a team is in doubt, they ask the administrators and get a clarification.

1.5 - Refugees
After a team has been eliminated from the game, its members may apply to become members of another team still active. They are free to share any information they have with their new team.

1.6 - Acceptable Utilities
The following out-of-game utilities are allowed: CivAssist II (v2.0.2387) and MapStat (v2.11.0). When using these programs, please use the latest version. If you would like to use a utility that is not on those list, or a new version of an approved utility, please contact the administrators.

1.7 - Turnplayer Preferences
Turnplayers for a team must have "Always Renegotiate Deals" off in their preferences.

2.0 - Banned Exploits
2.1 - Coordinated Capturing of Units

It is prohibited for teams to capture and recapture each turn units such as workers, catapults, and other non-combat units for the intent of using them twice in a turn against another team.

2.2 - Leader Sacrifices
Teams are not allowed to intentionally provide another team with units for the purpose of generating a Military Great Leader.

2.3 - Contact Trading
Contact trading in-game is allowed at Writing. While a team may send emails to any discovered teams, regardless of whether or not they have Writing, out-of-game contact between undiscovered teams may not occur unless they meet in-game or another team (with Writing) sells the contact to another team.

2.4 - Map Trading
Screenshots and visual maps cannot be traded between teams until Map Making is researched. After that, teams are free to trade screenshots as a normal trade item. Verbal maps (descriptions of the terrain, however detailed, as long as no images are involved) are allowed without any prerequisite.

2.5 - City Trading and Misleading Naming
Teams are not permitted to trade cities with the intent of teleporting units. Teams cannot name or rename cities or units with the names of technologies, resources, maps, units, or gold, nor can they rename units to pass them off as another unit type to confuse the other teams. If in doubt, teams should contact the administrators about their proposed name.

2.6 - Reloading
Reloading the save because of unfavorable outcomes or events is not allowed. If you are playing the save and the game crashes on you, it is permitted to load the save again, but please notify the administrators as well.

2.7 - Save Manipulation
Using any utility for the purpose of altering the game save or a game event is prohibited.

2.8 - Build Sequence
Teams cannot break into the build sequence to change anything, including actions such as hurrying production of a building/unit, changing prebuilds to the desired build, changing city laborers around to prevent a riot, and changing any build to another build (say, from a factory to a rifleman due to nearby enemy units). Instead of taking these actions during the build sequence before your turn, please make these changes during your turn. If a team is wondering whether something would be considered breaking into the build sequence, please contact the administrators.

2.9 - Ships' Visibility
It is not allowed to use up all of a ship's movement points and then press Fortify All, which will fortify not only the units in the boat, but also the boat itself, giving increased visibility on the next turn.

2.10 - Auto Go-To
Units can get double movement (as the second turn of movement happens earlier than it should) if the auto go-to command is used for distances over 1 turn. Do not use go-to commands for over 1 turn of distance.

2.11 - Negative Spending
Teams may not have a negative income when they end their turn which would put their treasury below zero gold, at the expense of just a few units or buildings, in order to gain advantages, such as running full science, which they could not normally afford with their regular income. Although having a negative income is permissible, perhaps to finish research of a technology one turn quicker, exploiting the game in the aforementioned manner, in a way that the disbanding of units and buildings does not make up for the commercial gains, is not allowed. If a team does end with a negative income and gets the in-game pop-up saying buildings/units have been disbanded, they should let the administrators know.

2.12 - Civil Engineer Exploits
It is not allowed for a team to use civil engineers to contribute shields to the construction of a building, and then rush that building and switch to a unit, as the shields from the civil engineers will carry over when they should not. Additionally, teams cannot partly build a city improvement, rush it, and then switch production to another building and continue this process, as the civil engineers' shields will be counted once for each rush, providing a false number of shields.

If anyone could translate this into German we could post it at Civforum.
 
(What is a pre-save)
A Pre-Save is a gamesave you can get before the real gamesave comes in and is created from the previous team with just open they save and immediately end the turn. The reason for it is to check and plan ahead the micromanagement and speed things up.

I think someone had once post a (better) explanation about it.... found it:
From kleinerHeldt at CivForum.de

Okay try to make the word "presave" clear.
To create a presave, you open your save and end the turn immediately. Saving it and give it to the next team, making clear that this is just a presave. Okay there is the little trick making every citizen a specialist before saving the presave, just to encode F11.

We once started to make presaves to give them to the next team, if your own team needs much time for his turn. This presave is just for the micro management for the other team. They aren't allowed to make any irreversible moves, but they can have a look at their citys and start making their MM.

There are several players here who really need or want these presaves, but there are also some who don't like them. It's a long discuss and we made the rule that presaves are optional. There is no rule to force a team to make a presave. If you don't want to, you don't have to.

For me there are several problems with the presave (f.e. getting informations about barbarian moves) and if I could decide it, I would ban them. But that's just mho.
 
I don't think we've ever used pre-saves at CFC, the save you pass on is the one that is played, but perhaps some of the intersite players have better knowledge of this than me.

Another immediate difference is the CFC rules allow CivAssist & MapStat as they do not reveal anything more than you can find out in-game.
 
CivAssist is forbidden.

You don't mean I have to do everything with pencil and paper?!? Hey, come on, we are living in the age of computers... Why should we spend hours in order to do the work that a computer can do for us in a split-second?

I like rule 1.6 in the MTDG II ruleset much better... :goodjob:

Rule 6.1 & 6.2 in the ISDG ruleset: I assume "Right of Passage" not only means the one that can be aggreed to in the F4 screen, but also "verbally" communicated aggreements? Like for example:
Team A: "Our warrior would like to march north to explore the unknown up there. Would it be ok, if he passes through the territory of town X? It will take 3 turns and then he is out again."
Team B: "Ok, go ahead. But in 7 turns one of our warriors will be marching south, and we expect that he is granted free passage through your territory as well."

Otherwise that rule wouldn't make much sense. (Most probably neither the offending side wants to declare war in such a case, nor does the offended side want to have war declared upon... :D if they can as well come to an aggreement and live in peace.)


Other than these two points, both rulesets look very good to me. Let's just form the union of both sets and start the game... :D
 
Well, go ahead and combine the two into one post, then we can check for discrepancies. Any rules that conflict can be marked in red by either team if they have a problem that needs discussion.

"I assume "Right of Passage" not only means the one that can be aggreed to in the F4 screen, but also "verbally" communicated aggreements?" - I assume that item 6.3 answers this question. The ROPs must be documented in the Community Diplomacy Forum (when we get one).
 
You don't mean I have to do everything with pencil and paper?!?

You can use you your fantasy, too. You can also use a "Sandkasten". I myself am used to use html-tables.

Why should we spend hours in order to do the work that a computer can do for us in a split-second?

Cause this is fun. :)
I like to think myself and don't let the computer do the funny part.

Rule 6.1 & 6.2 in the ISDG ruleset: I assume "Right of Passage" not only means the one that can be aggreed to in the F4 screen, but also "verbally" communicated aggreements?

Neither F4 nor other agreements are (directly) relevant to this. There should be a special thread in every embassy. There can be posted "Right of Passage granted" or "Right of Passage revoked". A restriction to "unit xyz" may be possible, too. Other restrictions are illegitimate. "Right of Passage revoked" can always be done and becomes operative as soon as the other team receives the save. If the save is at the other team at the moment of revoking, the aktual turn is unaffected by revoking.
 
Cause this is fun. :)
I like to think myself and don't let the computer do the funny part.
Well, for me the fun part is the big strategical thinking, not the tedious micro-management...

Neither F4 nor other agreements are (directly) relevant to this. There should be a special thread in every embassy. There can be posted "Right of Passage granted" or "Right of Passage revoked". A restriction to "unit xyz" may be possible, too. Other restrictions are illegitimate. "Right of Passage revoked" can always be done and becomes operative as soon as the other team receives the save. If the save is at the other team at the moment of revoking, the aktual turn is unaffected by revoking.
This sounds very good, however. :goodjob:
 
No, thank you, Furiey. After thinking on it, I'm pretty much out of the game. CivForum wants to create a biq with a custom map (70 X 80?), then they want to pass practice saves to their buddies on a different team, plus they don't want CFC teams to verify and document turn information using CivAssist II or any other program. It's just too much of a setup to me.

1. In oder to prescribe the number of map tiles in the game, they would have to have a biq with a custom map. That means in order to complete the biq for final game play, they would have to click on "Generate Map" from the pull down menu. This of course would allow them to see the entire map (to include starting locations) before the game started.

2. These presaves CivForum wants to pass onto their other website team are basically practice turns. I have no doubt about it. Think about it, just for a moment. First you get your practice turn, then you get the real turn. No thanks.

3. Plus they won't allow a simple computer program like CivAssist II to document turn numbers, years, and other important information as the game progresses through the ages. This is all too fishy for me. Unjustifiably fishy. I believe I'm out.
 
1. In oder to prescribe the number of map tiles in the game, they would have to have a biq with a custom map. That means in order to complete the biq for final game play, they would have to click on "Generate Map" from the pull down menu. This of course would allow them to see the entire map (to include starting locations) before the game started.

I don't know what you mean, but it's seems you have missunderstood some things.

2. These presaves CivForum wants to pass onto their other website team are basically practice turns.

Any irreversible action on presaves is not permitted.
 
Cyc, please, don't give up completly. There are not that many active C3C players remained and any Intersite event needs support. I think, however, it will be better if Lanzelot will substitute you at negotiation Gang of 4 forum. He has more optimistic view on life. For clearity, we may make this forum bilingual i.e. each final document will have two language version.
 
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If i was a team leader and had that presave and i would move warrior XY on a mountain, use the information and make another move - the same as planned before the information cheat - with the real save.
How would i get caught?

There is no difference to real save. Without trust the hole game is worthless anyway.
 
Cyc, don't leave us :bowdown:
You are one of the pillars of the CFC side. And I'm sure these discrepancies can be solved. After all, the final decisions will be made by the referees, not be this or that poster on Civforum.

Let me start by explaining some of the points of dispute:
1. In oder to prescribe the number of map tiles in the game, they would have to have a biq with a custom map. That means in order to complete the biq for final game play, they would have to click on "Generate Map" from the pull down menu. This of course would allow them to see the entire map (to include starting locations) before the game started.
No, the two referees, justanick and Furiey, will perform this task. None of the 4 teams will see the map beforehand.

2. These presaves CivForum wants to pass onto their other website team are basically practice turns. I have no doubt about it. Think about it, just for a moment. First you get your practice turn, then you get the real turn. No thanks.
Firstly, the rules state explicitly, that creating a pre-save and passing it on to the next team is voluntary. And then psyche/metatron is right: one could perform the same kind of cheats with the real save. We just need to have trust in each other, that every team plays fair. Without that we can as well forget the entire thing.

3. Plus they won't allow a simple computer program like CivAssist II to document turn numbers, years, and other important information as the game progresses through the ages. This is all too fishy for me. Unjustifiably fishy. I believe I'm out.
I don't care about CAII that much, let's just forget it. Calis is right: on a small map (like this will be) and with only 4 opponents it won't save that much of time. I can live with an excel sheet to keep track of my numbers...

Lanzelot
 
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