SGOTM 11 Rules Discussion

Gumbolt · Jul 17, 2010

I do hope teams are not reloading saves or changing civics outside the active players turn. My understanding is the only player who makes any changes to the live game is the active player. If you change civics on the live game you would have to live with those changes and wait 5 turns to change them again. The non active players should only be viewing the save game. This is why pause mode is quite useful as it stops you changing anything beyond viewing save.

This actually has further implications. E.g. You wouldn't reload a save because a combat went the wrong way. You also don't let every team player try the save to attack a city and pick the most successful attack on the live save. Crazy!

Any tinkering or testing should be done on a test game created from what you know of the map.

I would hope AlanH will be looking at all the saves to check number of sessions played to ensure no team is abusing the rules.

AlanH · Jul 17, 2010

Gumbolt said:
I would hope AlanH will be looking at all the saves to check number of sessions played to ensure no team is abusing the rules.

From the first post in the Maintenance and team threads:

All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Yes, I am checking!

neilmeister · Jul 17, 2010

I asked because I thought it would be a violation, but I wasn't 100% sure. We can already calculate all the benefits/losses of changing Civics, I suppose I was just wanted to confirm that the 'shortcut' was indeed 'illegal'. It is, and therefore we won't be doing it.

What I was asking is totally different to attacking multiple times, and keeping the best result, or replaying anything. There is no RNG involved in changing civics.

My team has been active in that several team members have been loading the save after each turnset, in order to comment. I'm sure if we were falling foul of Alan's checks, we would know by now.

Mad Professor · Jul 17, 2010

neilmeister said:
My team has been active in that several team members have been loading the save after each turnset, in order to comment. I'm sure if we were falling foul of Alan's checks, we would know by now.

There's certainly nothing wrong with each and every team member opening a copy of the file after a turn set to look carefully at what's going on and comment, as long as you don't change anything "non-reversible".

AlanH · Jul 17, 2010

There's certainly nothing wrong with each and every team member opening a copy of the file after a turn set ...

... nothing wrong as long as everyone is very careful not to change anything. The more players do this, the higher the probability that someone will screw up.

da_Vinci · Jul 17, 2010

The list of reversible (and therefore permitted) explorations that the rest of the team can do is pretty short:

Change citizen assignments to tiles or specialists

Change sliders

Change build queues

Change research queues

(That is all I can think of)

These represent the things that we may do and undo within a single turn in an XOTM, none of which (I hope! :eek:

) are considered to be any sort of a replay. So in an SGOTM, the entire team is permitted to CAREFULLY assess the position using these reversible explorations.

Anything that would require loading up a save to be undone is non-reversible. Also non-reversible is any movement of a unit (some of which I suppose could be considered "reversible", such as peacefully moving out of a city and back in during the same turn).

Not official, since I am not the boss, but my understanding of this.

dV

Gumbolt · Jul 17, 2010

da_Vinci said:
The list of reversible (and therefore permitted) explorations that the rest of the team can do is pretty short:

Change citizen assignments to tiles or specialists

Change sliders

Change build queues

Change research queues

(That is all I can think of)

These represent the things that we may do and undo within a single turn in an XOTM, none of which (I hope! ) are considered to be any sort of a replay. So in an SGOTM, the entire team is permitted to CAREFULLY assess the position using these reversible explorations.

Anything that would require loading up a save to be undone is non-reversible. Also non-reversible is any movement of a unit (some of which I suppose could be considered "reversible", such as peacefully moving out of a city and back in during the same turn).

Not official, since I am not the boss, but my understanding of this.

dV

Now why does everyone wait till third month in to ask these questions?

Contacting ai without doing trades? It is not something I have done outside my turnset?

Question is how does any of the above actions affect way game logs sessions. You need to draw line somewhere.

da_Vinci · Jul 17, 2010

Gumbolt said:
Contacting ai without doing trades? It is not something I have done outside my turnset?

Good point, the reverisble diplomatic explorations ... although BUFFY posts a lot of that for us, but who is WHEOOHRN, trade deal can be made, etc. Negotiating is reversible, sealing the deal is not, I have always assumed.

dV

Gumbolt · Jul 17, 2010

da_Vinci said:
Good point, the reverisble diplomatic explorations ... although BUFFY posts a lot of that for us, but who is WHEOOHRN, trade deal can be made, etc. Negotiating is reversible, sealing the deal is not, I have always assumed.

dV

The safe play is to leave much of this to the active player to ensure you are within the confines of the rules.

BLubmuz · Jul 17, 2010

da_Vinci said:
Good point, the reverisble diplomatic explorations ... although BUFFY posts a lot of that for us, but who is WHEOOHRN, trade deal can be made, etc. Negotiating is reversible, sealing the deal is not, I have always assumed.

dV

Gumbolt said:
The safe play is to leave much of this to the active player to ensure you are within the confines of the rules.

Not only 3 months after a competition is started, but the 10th SGotM. Shame.

da Vinci's post regarding reversible moves is correct, but not on this point:

peacefully move a unit in own territory

peacefully or not, it's irreversible.

On the contrary, exploring the trade possibilities and other not-so-small things like WHEOOHRN, is perfectly reversible, if you actually don't seal any trade agreement (techs, resources, gold). Thus this can be safely explored by any non active member to ensure the active player will take in account those informations for his/her TS.

AlanH · Jul 17, 2010

Gumbolt said:
The safe play is to leave much of this to the active player to ensure you are within the confines of the rules.

Correct!

As I have said before, why does everyone want to fiddle with the save? You should discuss the team objectives and tactics, and let the player with the mouse get on with playing to that guidance. If you need information between turns, then get it from the last player in his/her post-turnset report, or from the next player in her/his pre-turnset evaluation.

It's a *succession game*, with one player following another; not six players fighting over one mouse.

neilmeister · Jul 17, 2010

AlanH said:
Correct!

As I have said before, why does everyone want to fiddle with the save? You should discuss the team objectives and tactics, and let the player with the mouse get on with playing to that guidance. If you need information between turns, then get it from the last player in his/her post-turnset report, or from the next player in her/his pre-turnset evaluation.

It's a *succession game*, with one player following another; not six players fighting over one mouse.

It's because we are all control freaks, who believe we know best

@ BLubmuz - even at 3 months into the 11th SGOTM, its always good to clarify the rules to make sure we don't do something dumb.

Ronnie1 · Jul 17, 2010

It's a *succession game*, with one player following another; not six players fighting over one mouse.

That's just funny! :lol:

da_Vinci · Jul 17, 2010

da_Vinci said:
Anything that would require loading up a save to be undone is non-reversible. Also non-reversible is any movement of a unit (some of which I suppose could be considered "reversible", such as peacefully moving out of a city and back in during the same turn).

BLubmuz said:
da Vinci's post regarding reversible moves is correct, but not on this point:
peacefully or not, it's irreversible.

Oh my, was I ever vague with my language on that one! :lol:

My point was that the reason why I had to add the statement that "any unit move is non-reversible" was because of the risk that some might consider peaceful back and forth unit moves as reversible ... not that I thought that they should be considered reversible.

As to why would we want, as teammates of the active player, to examine the position in that much detail, I suppose this feature is what makes the game so educational for less experienced players ... not to mention keeping them out of hot water. I am always learning new things from the suggestions of my teammates about the turnset I am going to play

dV

T-hawk · Jul 21, 2010

I have something of a rules question -

I have played one turnset for Barley Demons so far. I want to play another, but I've uninstalled the HOF mod (including deleting its registry entries) and will have to reinstall it. Will that flag anything as bad by the reload detection?

AlanH · Jul 22, 2010

I don't like it, but I guess I have to live with it. It will look the same as playing the turnset on a new PC.

Gumbolt · Jul 28, 2010

I know a lot of people read these forums who are not in a team. What are the rules if random people start posting in a team thread giving advice or making comments on games?

I know i have reported one such incident immediately after it happened but is there any ruling on this? (I would hope all the team leaders would report this asap and ignore the posts.) It is hard to stop forum members outside the game from not posting. I can see how one random post might influence a team.

Should the rules include a small bit on expectations of those viewing threads who are not playing in a team. Perhaps when, if at all, it is acceptable for them to post on a team thread.

ChrisShaffer · Jul 28, 2010

Nobody outside our team has ever posted in our threads, aside from the occasional SGOTM moderator answering a question or responding to a request. I just assumed it was forbidden, and would prefer that this be the official policy.

AlanH · Jul 29, 2010

SGOTM team players sign up to the rules of the competition. Unfortunately, unless we make the team threads private and lose our spectators, we can't easily enforce rules on those spectators. Postings by non-players are pretty infrequent as far as I know, and I don't think I have ever seen spoilers posted in this way.

If non-spoiler advice or suggestions are given then it's up to you whether you accept it or not. If anyone posts spoiler information, it's already too late to hide or ignore it - you can't unlearn something. So all you can do is let me know and I can PM the poster and ask them to cease and desist.

Erkon · Jul 29, 2010

Anyone who wishes to post in a team's thread while the game is active must be a member of said team (apart from staff and moderators of course). All non-team-members are spectators, and must not interfere in any sense (direct posting, PMs, emails, chats, etc). This is part of the honor system which is fundamental to the GOTM/SGOTM setup. Sorry if this was not clearly stated in the rules or game setup.

The teams are not held responsible in case a non-team-member posts and there will not be any automatic penalties applied to teams who have unwanted visitors. However, we ask you to discourage further postings etc :goodjob:

EDIT: xpost with Alan

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