Historical saves in a sequential pitboss
- Thread starter DaveShack
- Start date
You're exactly right; hope there's nothing else anyone said causing too much confusion. Though, really, I think it's impossible that you've never played sequential! Unless all the civ you've played is multiplayer, sequential is exactly the same as any single player game - you just replace AI teams with all human teams, and everybody takes turns like normal. Just because it's Pitboss doesn't change how sequential turns work out, though of course simultaneous turns is a different option. The biggest concern of some people is that sequential can take longer, but we're on teams with lots of people to discuss/decide/play the game, so I'm not worried about it myself.
Part of the reason for the thread was to close the one apparent difference between PBEM and Sequential Pitboss, namely that in PBEM you have historical saves to look back to. The experiment showed that sequential does have saves as well.
So what we're left with is, sequential pitboss is exactly the same thing as PBEM from the game play point of view. It has these additional benefits over a PBEM.
One disadvantage of pitboss -- no easy way to capture saves for the admins other than to have teams capture a save at beginning (or end) of turn and email it or upload it.
So what we're left with is, sequential pitboss is exactly the same thing as PBEM from the game play point of view. It has these additional benefits over a PBEM.
- No need for the admin to force an absent team's save. Just let the timer roll.
- Anyone on the team can look at the save. This is possible in PBEM but clunkier.
- Multiple people can play parts of the turn in a pitboss. In particular, a team can have a builder do the cities, and a general move the units.
- No "mail delivery delay" excuses.
One disadvantage of pitboss -- no easy way to capture saves for the admins other than to have teams capture a save at beginning (or end) of turn and email it or upload it.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
Can you explain the bit about multiple people playing the turn? That sounds very interesting.Part of the reason for the thread was to close the one apparent difference between PBEM and Sequential Pitboss, namely that in PBEM you have historical saves to look back to. The experiment showed that sequential does have saves as well.
So what we're left with is, sequential pitboss is exactly the same thing as PBEM from the game play point of view. It has these additional benefits over a PBEM.
- No need for the admin to force an absent team's save. Just let the timer roll.
- Anyone on the team can look at the save. This is possible in PBEM but clunkier.
- Multiple people can play parts of the turn in a pitboss. In particular, a team can have a builder do the cities, and a general move the units.
- No "mail delivery delay" excuses.
One disadvantage of pitboss -- no easy way to capture saves for the admins other than to have teams capture a save at beginning (or end) of turn and email it or upload it.
If the admin have access to the server there will certainly be dozen of autosaves generated every turn that can be looked back on...
@ CommandoBob : Just try to set up a pitboss.. It is pretty simple to see how different people can play different parts of the turn just by logging in at different times...
@ CommandoBob : Just try to set up a pitboss.. It is pretty simple to see how different people can play different parts of the turn just by logging in at different times...
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
Sorta difficult at the moment since I don't have a copy of the game.
But I am hoping to change that on Dec 25.
From the beginning of a team's turn until the end turn is pressed (enter or the end turn button) you can login any number of times. Two can't login at the same time of course, but the team can use as much or as little of their 24 hours as needed to let anyone look or act who wants to. It's not like the old PBEM method where you had to either keep the game open or use task manager to kill the civ process to keep it from making a save.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
That sounds Nice!
One issue I have had as Turn Player is just finding a big enough block of time to get everything done for one turn. Normally, it takes me 2 hours to play one turn (which includes everything from modifying the last turn log, downloading the save, playing the turn, logging stuff, screenshots, sending the turn on, uploading images and posting the turn log).
To be able to do a little bit at a time; Wow!
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
This I know is definitely the question of an Inquistive Idiot. 
Here goes:
Since the game is hosted on a server, does any player need to have Civ IV?
Could I, currently lacking Civ IV/BtS, log into the save (at the proper time) and do things (change build orders, reassign citizen tiles, start a war, etc.)?
Here goes:
Since the game is hosted on a server, does any player need to have Civ IV?
Could I, currently lacking Civ IV/BtS, log into the save (at the proper time) and do things (change build orders, reassign citizen tiles, start a war, etc.)?
Yes, anybody connecting to the PitBoss server must have a working copy of cIV BtS [v.1.37??] installed on their machine.
WIthout BtS, you're a blind teammate
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Indeed. All the players must have the correct expansion and version of the game to be able to log in. Only the host can do without some of the game files - and then only a few (like the Art folder, I think).Yes, anybody connecting to the PitBoss server must have a working copy of cIV BtS [v.1.37??] installed on their machine.
WIthout BtS, you're a blind teammate
Art and sounds.
The save you download can't be uploaded again... It is only the official save at the host that matters... New random seed on reload means that new reloads will be totally different from previous ones. Without this they will be the same if the same actions are taken...
The save you download can't be uploaded again... It is only the official save at the host that matters... New random seed on reload means that new reloads will be totally different from previous ones. Without this they will be the same if the same actions are taken...
Don't think so... But then i've never played sequential turns in pitboss so i guess it might be possible... This will be a severe disadvantage of sequential turns then... Either lose replayability of give unscrupulous people the opportunity to preplay battles to their advantage...
Surely we could turn on to get a new random seed on reload? That wouldn't be good in solo games, but in this setting it shouldn't be a problem, and would save us from the kind of exploits that oyzar and HUSch are hinting at.
You are right random seed on reload would prevent this specific abuse of pre-playing. There are still half a million exploits you can do with pre-playing though(mostly to do with information you should not have).. I had not considered this at all as i have very little experience with downloading saves and sequential pitboss... Basically if you can download the current save you can abuse it. If we can't trust people to not abuse it i don't see how we can play sequential pitboss at all.. Hence i believe random seed on reload should be off(since we have to trust people to not abuse the exploits anyways).. Should probably add a rule about pre-playing in the ruleset though...
The more I hear, the more I wish we would switch to Simultaneous turns instead. I've been opposed to it before, but it certainly has lots of benefits, and far fewer drawbacks than Sequential it seems.
Yes, there are half a million exploits that can happen in any game. But speaking for the veteran MTDG players, I'm confident they won't allow any of that sort of thing to happen on their team. It goes completely against the spirit of these games. We don't have to make an explicit rule about every conceivable situation.
