First Draft of a Ruleset for Succession Games, Email Games, and General Use

[Bowsling]

Whew! That was a long title.

Anyway, as the title suggests, I have drafted up a little ruleset covering exploits and such, for use in PBEMs, SGs, or your own personal games.

It is still just a draft, so I want feedback about rules, or anything you think I may have missed.

Spoiler :

Section A: Domestic Exploits

1. It is not allowed to break in to the city screen pre-production phase to maximize production.
2. Deficit spending is not allowed. The player must have enough gold reserves to maintain a deficit without having units disbanded or buildings demolished.
3. Adding workers to cities is tolerated only as long as it does not cause the city to starve.
4. Intentionally starting civil disorder in cities to stop starvation is not allowed.

Section B: Diplomatic Exploits

1. You are not permitted to declare war on another civilization if you are giving them a per turn deal that you are not receiving anything per turn in exchange.
2. Trading cities in order to have the city's garrison returned to the capital is not allowed. If you trade cities via diplomacy, the involved cities must be empty of units.

Section C: Military Exploits

1. If you declare war on your turn, you are not allowed to attack cities of your target until the next turn. An exception to Rule 1.0 is in the case of a city that has been founded during the last 5 turns in your territory or in a position to immediately gain any of your tiles.
2. If an airbase is removed in any way by your own doing, all air units based in it must be have been removed beforehand.
3. Intentionally having military units destroyed by a unit that has creates non-combat units through enslavement is forbidden.
4. It is not allowed to sign a Right of Passage with a computer player and then station a unit on a strategic or luxury resource to prevent them from connecting it.
5. Putting a submarine or other invisible unit in the way of a ship belonging to a computer player with the intention of using the sub bug to have the computer declare war on you is not allowed.
6. It is not allowed to prevent unit landings using non-combat units.

Section D: Multiplayer Rules

1. If a player controls more than one civilization in sequential order, they must save and exit after each turn rather than continue.

2. Showing screenshots is not permitted until either party has the ability to trade maps.
2.1 An exception to Rule 2.0 is in the case of a screen that is not unique (i.e. a wonder splash).
2.2 Another exception to Rule 2.0 is if the screenshot does not reveal excessive information and is intended for entertainment or other non-related purposes.

3. Players are only allowed to discuss game issues once they have met in-game.

4. Intentionally allowing another player to capture non-combat units is not allowed.

5. Reloading the save should only happen in case of a crash or a mistake while saving, and should be reported in the game thread.

6. City names must not be named in a way that they can be confused with anything else that can be traded. (i.e. naming a desert city “20 gold (per turn)”)

7. Any military action taken against another player must to be reported. The location, attacker, the defender, the result and the hit points remaining on the winner should be clearly documented.

8. If there are computer players involved, hidden nationality unit attacks must be reported once any of the computer players has the capacity to build them.

Section E: Scenario-Specific Rules

Part I: Mesopotamia

Part II: Rise of Rome

Part III: Fall of Rome

Part IV: Middle Ages

Part V: Mesoamerica

Part VI: Sengoku

1. Invisible units are not allowed in the territory of a computer player if the intention is to create a worker suicide situation.

Part VII: Age of Discovery

1. No pre-placed cities outside the Americas can be razed.

2. Trading treasure resources to computer players is forbidden.

Part VIII: Napoleonic Europe

1. City razing is prohibited.

2. Britain and France must stay at peace with their respective satellite states, and in case of a war, must make peace as soon as possible and: in case of a war, attempt to avoid engaging them in combat as much as possible

Part IX: World War Two in the Pacific

1. City razing is prohibited

Section F: Third-Party Software

The following third party applications are permitted:

-CivAssist II*
-MapStat
-Apollo

*Once any player has the capacity to build invisible units, the use of the World Map feature is disallowed.

 

[Glasnost]

Nice job!

One question comes to mind immediately.

2. Trading cities in order to have the city's garrison returned to the capital is not allowed. If you trade cities via diplomacy, the involved cities must be empty of units.

I was thinking that could this be maximum of 1 unit for situations where you want to trade a city you have captured at the same turn and can't move the unit which captured it out from the city?

 

[Bowsling]

Yes, I'll probably have to rethink that one, as well as rights of passage in PBEM, as the current rules allow one to go romping in another human's territory without their permission.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm not all that great at MP, but I don't really understand the rule about capturing cities on turn 1 of a war.

 

[Bowsling]

Essentially, so that someone can't just waltz their stack in beside someone else's city and then either force the other player to declare war, giving the attacker the war happiness, or allowing their stack to attack straightaway. However, I will change this to a rule over RoPs.

 

[AnthonyIII]

I read somewhere on this forum that in the "Rise of Rome" scenario, you can get Massilla for free if you ask the celts for an alliance on the first turn. Is that worth mentioning?

 

[Glasnost]

I wonder if it could be modified like this:
"You are forced to declare a war in situations where you enter someone's terrority with an intention to attack a city in next turn"

IMO sneaky city attacks should be allowed in situations where you can reach enemys city in the same turn where you move your troops in his lands. This can be countered anyways with good forest placement etc.

Also I think the single player feature of "declare war or leave my territory" should be added to multiplayer rules somehow. Maybe like this:
"You can ask a netral player wandering around in your territory to leave your territory or declare war and regarding their decision they should start moving out the shortest way or declare war"

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Ahh. Basically, it's a rule to prevent ROP rape, as opposed to stopping 2 or 3 move units from taking border cities.

I'd be all for that - it may be that the right way to phrase it is:

"If you declare war, any units currently in your opponents territory must leave before attacking."