General Pitboss Questions

[DMOC]

Since we seem to be starting on a Pitboss game soon, I'd just like to ask some questions. Maybe Lord Parkin or someone else can answer.

1. How do you know who is online and who isn't? I know you can check http://civstats.com, but is there another way? Other questions I have concerns civstats.com -- how come some civilizations are revealed and some are hidden in the scoreboard listing and what's the point of having the score graph when there's no image there? And lastly, what's this "server down" thing I keep hearing from DaveShack?

2. When you click "end turn," your turn ends but can you do anything to your units? Can you still move after you click "end turn," say, if, someone declared war on you unexpectedly and you need to move your spearman to defend his chariot. If so, then what is the point of the "end turn" function, really?

3. How do you contact other civs in the game?

[Joshua368]

Originally Posted by DMOC

2. When you click "end turn," your turn ends but can you do anything to your units? Can you still move after you click "end turn," say, if, someone declared war on you unexpectedly and you need to move your spearman to defend his chariot. If so, then what is the point of the "end turn" function, really?

Yes, you can still move around units (if they haven't used up all their movement points already of course) as well as switch city builds and research and such. The point of end turn is to let the game know you've finished, if all players end their turn before the timer is up, the next turn begins and the timer is reset.

[DMOC]

Thanks for the explanation.

How long is the turn timer for this game? 24 hours? I think I heard somewhere that 20 hours as the game timer is like 24 hours for real life.

[Lord Parkin]

Originally Posted by DMOC

1. How do you know who is online and who isn't? I know you can check http://civstats.com, but is there another way?

When you're logging into the game (or others log in while you're logged in), you'll see messages in the loading screen (or in-game screen) to let you know that other civs are logged in. But Civstats is probably the easiest way.

Originally Posted by DMOC

Other questions I have concerns civstats.com -- how come some civilizations are revealed and some are hidden in the scoreboard listing...

You mean the "Unknown" civs? That's because Overload UT (the guy who owns the site) never completely updated the civs for BTS. Thus, any BTS civ appears as "Unknown" in Civstats. However, you can easily see which civ everyone is in-game by mousing over their names, plus we'll also have a list of who is who here in the forums once the game gets started.

Originally Posted by DMOC

...and what's the point of having the score graph when there's no image there?

Previous feature of the site that got removed because it didn't work properly for BTS, I think.

Originally Posted by DMOC

And lastly, what's this "server down" thing I keep hearing from DaveShack?

I think this mostly refers to DaveShack's own computer - the server will lock up or reset and "go down" occasionally. DaveShack resets it himself when he gets home. If you're referring to Civstats server downtime, that happens occasionally too, but is usually fixed within a few hours.

Originally Posted by DMOC

2. When you click "end turn," your turn ends but can you do anything to your units? Can you still move after you click "end turn," say, if, someone declared war on you unexpectedly and you need to move your spearman to defend his chariot. If so, then what is the point of the "end turn" function, really?

In a sequential turns pitboss (like the main MTDG we're playing in), you can't move anything until it is your turn. In a simultaneous turns pitboss (which is what we'll be using for our intra-team game), you can move units after you press "end turn". However, most games I've played in have a rule where if you're at war, you're not permitted to log back in to make new moves after you hit "end turn". This removes any issue with people abusing and exploiting the system.

By the way, the point of the "end turn" function is that, once everyone has played, the turn automatically flips over - regardless of if there's still several hours to go on the timer. This provides some incentive to try to log in as early as you can in the early game, because the turns can move a bit faster this way. Occasionally we might get 2 turns done in a day, for instance.

Originally Posted by DMOC

3. How do you contact other civs in the game?

A couple of options: either shift-click on their leader name on the scoreboard, or else click the "notepad" icon in the upper-left corner of the screen and shift from the "Events" tab to the "Chat" tab.

However, I should point out that this in-game chat system should really only be used for quick chats about trades, or chatting while two of you are logged in. There are a couple of bugs with messages disappearing and the like, so if you really want to contact other players for things that'll take more than a half a minute to discuss (for instance, an alliance against a third party), it's better to other methods - eg PM's on the forum.

[Lord Parkin]

Originally Posted by DMOC

How long is the turn timer for this game? 24 hours? I think I heard somewhere that 20 hours as the game timer is like 24 hours for real life.

The pitboss timer is usually set such that the turns will "roll over" (assuming not everyone has played) after 24 hours in real time. However, "real time" does not correspond exactly with "pitboss time" - the latter is slower. This is partially because each time someone logs into the pitboss, the game pauses until they've loaded the game, then adds 2 minutes to the timer (in case they happened to log in just a few seconds before the end of the turn, so they'll have time to play). So each login adds 2.5-3 minutes to the turn timer, and with 9 players that's already almost 30 extra minutes per turn. Additionally, the pitboss timer just seems to be generally slow - even when left to itself, it will fall behind an actual clock.

As a result of this, the pitboss timer is usually set a few hours under 24 hours, so that turns will roll over in 24 hours in real time. The exact amount that the pitboss timer is set to depends on the size and scale of the game. (For instance, if you're playing an 18-player game on a huge map in the industrial era, you'll want the pitboss timer to be no longer than 20 hours.) In our game, with 9 players in the ancient era, I'd suspect that a pitboss timer of 23 hours would be more appropriate. Once the middle ages arrive, 22 hours will probably work well.

Hope that explains it.

[DMOC]

Thanks! This answers a lot of my questions.

I hope we can get the game started soon (and that civstats gets updated for BTS)!


EDIT: Oh yes, on civstats, some leaders have asteriks to their left. This means they're done with their turn, right (same goes in game)?

[hell_hound]

is it worth trying to organize a quick play session at some point?

[Toch]

Question: If i join main pitboss game, when it is not our turn is it absolutly dumb-resist or some of my setings could affect game somehow ?

[Joshua368]

Do you have anything that might actively effect the game, like "Workers begin automated" or whatever? You probably won't hurt anything logging in.

[Toch]

i have settings like: automated workers leave old improvement, leave forests etc. but nothing automatical when build...

[Lord Parkin]

If you have auto-promote, I think that takes effect and stuffs things up immediately.

Aside from that, and the automated worker thing, there should be no probems.