the oob
Retired PTBS host
The oobs second (well, actually third, but second for this forum) pitboss game. I realize this is a very long and detailed post, but I figure, if you don’t have the patience to read this announcement, you certainly won’t have the patience to play a pitboss game 
I’m going to start a new game which will run concurrently with the game I’m currently hosting. The game settings will be as follows:
* Game starts at 2am UTC, saturday the 20th of may, there will be an accelerated start session, see below for details
* No. of players: 18 minus the amount of people who don’t show up to the accelerated start (more details on this later)
* Turn timer: 24 hours.
* Map type: Pangaea
* Map size: Huge. Make sure your computer can handle a map of this size, especially in the late game.
* Sea Level: normal
* Speed: standard
* Turns: simultaneous, 24 hour timer
* No barbarians (prevents early game imbalance)
* No technology trading. Bear in mind that it is quicker to research techs which are already known by other players, which should help offset some of the tech imbalance that the no tech trading rule will cause.
* No city flipping after conquest (so when you take a city, it won’t flip back, or at least not to the original owner… not certain how this option works… anyway I’ve left the ‘city flipping after conquest’ box unticked, which is the default)
All other options are default
Although I can’t make this happen in the game settings, I forbid declarations/acts of war for the first 10 turns (4000 BC to 3640 BC), otherwise you just know some poor sap is going to be gone before they have a chance to do anything, after all I expect there will be beginners as well as experts in this game.
Rush anyone in that time and be kicked. Once 3600 BC comes along however, feel free to unleash your inner tyrant. You may of course make preparations for a rush in the first 10 turns, anything goes as long in that time as it doesn’t necessitate a declaration of war.
What you need to do if you want in:
1) Post here with your choice of leader, email address, and MSN address (you must post the leader on this thread, but you can PM your email address and/or MSN address to me if you prefer). Since we’ll be meeting on MSN for the accelerated start (see below) you will need this program or some equivalent, and you’ll need to add me to your contact list: the_oob
hotmail.com. Bear in mind this is different from my email address, which is theoobgmail.com (and note that the former has an underscore, but the latter does not, don’t mix them up).
Check the thread to see if your leader has already been taken… I’ll edit this post to keep track of them, but the thread may be ahead of my editing.
2) I am currently running a test server for people to try out before we start the game. When you’ve completed step 1 I’ll PM you with instructions on how to connect to this server (ip address, password, etc.), try it out. Please give the test server a try before the accelerated start session, so you can contact me if you have difficulties getting in and we can get it sorted out.
Bear in mind that it’s just a test server, I will be restarting the server for when the game starts, as explained below.
3) You must attend the accelerated start session at 2am UTC time (saturday the 20th of may). I’m in New Zealand, so it’s 2pm for me. I’m targeting people anywhere from the west coast of Australia (it will be at 12pm saturday for Perth) to the east coast of the united states (10pm friday for New York)… anyone from outside that area is welcome, but you may find the hours difficult.
Check here for when that is for your time zone:
There will only be one of these sessions, just to get through the early part of the game where turns will pass very quickly. You are required to be in the game from whenever we start (which will probably be within half an hour of the planned time) to 4am UTC time. After that people can leave as they wish. Anyone who leaves beforehand will be given time to reconnect (and should contact me on MSN as soon as possible, I will leave it on during the game for this reason), but if it becomes apparent that they won’t be back for the rest of the session they will be replaced by an AI for the remainder (they will be able to take the game back later though, they are still considered to be in the game).
For this session we will be meeting on MSN first, I will add you to a group conversation as soon as I see you online. We will start the game at 10 minutes past the hour (2.10am UTC time) regardless of who is there and who isn’t. At 2.10am UTC (or thereabouts) I will start the game with whoever has come to the meet, so while I plan for 18 players I expect there will only be somewhere from 10-16 depending on how many people show up. Try to arrive early, but remember that we’re meeting on MSN, not in the game, since I won’t be starting the real game until 2.10, so I can exclude those who haven’t showed up rather than have a bunch of AI run empires.
4) After the accelerated start we will have no more planned times for everyone to be on, so all you need to do from then on is take your turns. I will be using Screes email notifier to tell you when it’s your turn, and I expect people to use some kind of program that tells them when they have a new email (such as the gmail notifier). Anyone who misses 3 consecutive turns (which would entail not taking a turn for at least 72 hours) without notifying me that they are going to be away will be replaced by an AI player immediately and then replaced by a human player as soon as is convenient. Once you have been replaced by a human you will not be able to take your game back.
Dealing with outages
There will be outages on occasion, particularly when I am away from the computer and thus will not notice such an outage immediately. The cause of these will usually be the ADSL going down. The system for dealing with these is as follows: if you try to connect to the game but can’t, try messaging me on MSN if I am on. If I'm not, try connecting again 5-10 minutes later, as I may be simply rebooting the server or some such. If you still can’t connect, email me telling me so. Of course, make sure the problem isn’t your net connection itself… try going to google or some such as a test. Once the connection is back up I will email everyone who emailed me to tell them so. Note that I will not email anyone who didn’t email me, since there isn’t much point in their case, I assume that they never tried to connect during the outage so for them it made no difference.
I will only reload the game under the following circumstances: 1) the outage lasted for at least 3 hours, where I judge the outage as having begun when I was first emailed concerning it, and 2) at least one of the people reporting the outage requests a reload. You should request a reload if you expect that you will miss your turn because of the outage. If you like, you can email me to tell me of the outage, and then later email me requesting that the game be reloaded if it becomes apparent that you won’t be able to take your turn because of it.
Alternatively, if the outage lasts past the end of a turn, I will grant any requests for a reload regardless of the duration of the outage.
Current players
Me: Elizabeth, England
richm: Catherine, Russia (eliminated)
CB Droege: Cyrus, Persia
Grizzle: Montezuma, Aztec
Brizza: Mansa Musa, Mali
Classical Hero: Isabella, Spain
Fuse: Frederick, Germany
crazyjoe0813: Washington, America
William (don't know if he's on the forum): Louis XIV, France
Also a few AIs due to an accident at the start, but I don't want anyone taking them because they have the usual unfair starting advantages that AIs have.
Note that some people have been removed from the above list because they didn't show up to the first session or left before it started and thus are out of the game.
Reserve players (in order of precedence)
swiss1
J_Rocket76
EDIT (3rd of August 2006)
After reading some stuff on the forums a problem we may face occured
to me, so I'll set a rule now: players who are in a state of war may
not gift their cities to other players. This is to prevent the
following scenario: player A marches forces up to player B's city,
player B then gives the city to player C (possibly in exchange for
gold) to prevent player A (who is not at war with player C) from
capturing it.
This amendment has also been sent by email.
I’m going to start a new game which will run concurrently with the game I’m currently hosting. The game settings will be as follows:
* Game starts at 2am UTC, saturday the 20th of may, there will be an accelerated start session, see below for details
* No. of players: 18 minus the amount of people who don’t show up to the accelerated start (more details on this later)
* Turn timer: 24 hours.
* Map type: Pangaea
* Map size: Huge. Make sure your computer can handle a map of this size, especially in the late game.
* Sea Level: normal
* Speed: standard
* Turns: simultaneous, 24 hour timer
* No barbarians (prevents early game imbalance)
* No technology trading. Bear in mind that it is quicker to research techs which are already known by other players, which should help offset some of the tech imbalance that the no tech trading rule will cause.
* No city flipping after conquest (so when you take a city, it won’t flip back, or at least not to the original owner… not certain how this option works… anyway I’ve left the ‘city flipping after conquest’ box unticked, which is the default)
All other options are default
Although I can’t make this happen in the game settings, I forbid declarations/acts of war for the first 10 turns (4000 BC to 3640 BC), otherwise you just know some poor sap is going to be gone before they have a chance to do anything, after all I expect there will be beginners as well as experts in this game.
Rush anyone in that time and be kicked. Once 3600 BC comes along however, feel free to unleash your inner tyrant. You may of course make preparations for a rush in the first 10 turns, anything goes as long in that time as it doesn’t necessitate a declaration of war.
What you need to do if you want in:
1) Post here with your choice of leader, email address, and MSN address (you must post the leader on this thread, but you can PM your email address and/or MSN address to me if you prefer). Since we’ll be meeting on MSN for the accelerated start (see below) you will need this program or some equivalent, and you’ll need to add me to your contact list: the_oob
hotmail.com. Bear in mind this is different from my email address, which is theoobgmail.com (and note that the former has an underscore, but the latter does not, don’t mix them up).Check the thread to see if your leader has already been taken… I’ll edit this post to keep track of them, but the thread may be ahead of my editing.
2) I am currently running a test server for people to try out before we start the game. When you’ve completed step 1 I’ll PM you with instructions on how to connect to this server (ip address, password, etc.), try it out. Please give the test server a try before the accelerated start session, so you can contact me if you have difficulties getting in and we can get it sorted out.
Bear in mind that it’s just a test server, I will be restarting the server for when the game starts, as explained below.
3) You must attend the accelerated start session at 2am UTC time (saturday the 20th of may). I’m in New Zealand, so it’s 2pm for me. I’m targeting people anywhere from the west coast of Australia (it will be at 12pm saturday for Perth) to the east coast of the united states (10pm friday for New York)… anyone from outside that area is welcome, but you may find the hours difficult.
Check here for when that is for your time zone:
There will only be one of these sessions, just to get through the early part of the game where turns will pass very quickly. You are required to be in the game from whenever we start (which will probably be within half an hour of the planned time) to 4am UTC time. After that people can leave as they wish. Anyone who leaves beforehand will be given time to reconnect (and should contact me on MSN as soon as possible, I will leave it on during the game for this reason), but if it becomes apparent that they won’t be back for the rest of the session they will be replaced by an AI for the remainder (they will be able to take the game back later though, they are still considered to be in the game).
For this session we will be meeting on MSN first, I will add you to a group conversation as soon as I see you online. We will start the game at 10 minutes past the hour (2.10am UTC time) regardless of who is there and who isn’t. At 2.10am UTC (or thereabouts) I will start the game with whoever has come to the meet, so while I plan for 18 players I expect there will only be somewhere from 10-16 depending on how many people show up. Try to arrive early, but remember that we’re meeting on MSN, not in the game, since I won’t be starting the real game until 2.10, so I can exclude those who haven’t showed up rather than have a bunch of AI run empires.
4) After the accelerated start we will have no more planned times for everyone to be on, so all you need to do from then on is take your turns. I will be using Screes email notifier to tell you when it’s your turn, and I expect people to use some kind of program that tells them when they have a new email (such as the gmail notifier). Anyone who misses 3 consecutive turns (which would entail not taking a turn for at least 72 hours) without notifying me that they are going to be away will be replaced by an AI player immediately and then replaced by a human player as soon as is convenient. Once you have been replaced by a human you will not be able to take your game back.
Dealing with outages
There will be outages on occasion, particularly when I am away from the computer and thus will not notice such an outage immediately. The cause of these will usually be the ADSL going down. The system for dealing with these is as follows: if you try to connect to the game but can’t, try messaging me on MSN if I am on. If I'm not, try connecting again 5-10 minutes later, as I may be simply rebooting the server or some such. If you still can’t connect, email me telling me so. Of course, make sure the problem isn’t your net connection itself… try going to google or some such as a test. Once the connection is back up I will email everyone who emailed me to tell them so. Note that I will not email anyone who didn’t email me, since there isn’t much point in their case, I assume that they never tried to connect during the outage so for them it made no difference.
I will only reload the game under the following circumstances: 1) the outage lasted for at least 3 hours, where I judge the outage as having begun when I was first emailed concerning it, and 2) at least one of the people reporting the outage requests a reload. You should request a reload if you expect that you will miss your turn because of the outage. If you like, you can email me to tell me of the outage, and then later email me requesting that the game be reloaded if it becomes apparent that you won’t be able to take your turn because of it.
Alternatively, if the outage lasts past the end of a turn, I will grant any requests for a reload regardless of the duration of the outage.
Current players
Me: Elizabeth, England
richm: Catherine, Russia (eliminated)
CB Droege: Cyrus, Persia
Grizzle: Montezuma, Aztec
Brizza: Mansa Musa, Mali
Classical Hero: Isabella, Spain
Fuse: Frederick, Germany
crazyjoe0813: Washington, America
William (don't know if he's on the forum): Louis XIV, France
Also a few AIs due to an accident at the start, but I don't want anyone taking them because they have the usual unfair starting advantages that AIs have.
Note that some people have been removed from the above list because they didn't show up to the first session or left before it started and thus are out of the game.
Reserve players (in order of precedence)
swiss1
J_Rocket76
EDIT (3rd of August 2006)
After reading some stuff on the forums a problem we may face occured
to me, so I'll set a rule now: players who are in a state of war may
not gift their cities to other players. This is to prevent the
following scenario: player A marches forces up to player B's city,
player B then gives the city to player C (possibly in exchange for
gold) to prevent player A (who is not at war with player C) from
capturing it.
This amendment has also been sent by email.
