I've been very busy the past few days, but the hurries should be over now... I will post the final(ish) rule-set sometime tomorrow, and
we'll start the game on the 30th.
It's best to announce all times in GMT, to avoid any misunderstandings.
For now I propose a starting time of 11 AM (11:00) GMT on the 30th (Sunday).
That's 2 PM here in Finland, and 7 AM on the West Coast of America; I think that's a good enough compromise. I do have Monday entirely off though (unexpected), so if there's any players from the Western parts of the US, I could agree to start a little later. I'm not sure of our other players, though. As to how long the game will take, I cannot say, but I suspect at least 5-7 hours. Regular mp games are over in a flash because they're all about early rushes and are almost always played on Online speed; despite this, they can still take up to 2 hours, so we may well be playing for even longer. We could always save the game, I suppose, but it'd be hard to fit everyone's schedules again to resume it. If the late game proves too tedious (trade route reassignments, blech
), and/or impossible to play (too short turn timer), we can simply call it a day and declare a 'winner' (if wanted). X hours of fun will have been had anyway, so, mission accomplished.
fickle said:
Dynamic turns seems to be having a few issues and I would suggest against it as a result. We could create our own kind of dynamic turn timer by having the turn timer be 60 seconds for the first 100 turns, then save and reload while extending the turn timer an extra 60 seconds every 100 turns.
Dear oh dear... Which part of this game *doesn't* have issues, I wonder?
Thing is, though, that afaik, you can't do this atm. Your timer is either dynamic, stays the same all-game-long, or is disabled; there is no option to set a custom amount of seconds.
If it were possible, then it would indeed be the best solution and there would be no problems. Here's hoping for a quick patch...
Sometimes, 60 seconds really isn't much. If tech, civics, and district placement line up, you can easily need more time than that. I think that the best way is to just have no turn timer at all, and rely on people to act end their turns in a reasonable time
In our test game, the game froze up on Uppercut's turn. Without a timer being set, we were stuck waiting indefinitely. Now granted, I'm not sure if a timer would've helped, either, but we had no freezes with it enabled. More tests would need to be done to get more data points, but I don't want to wait any longer to start the game (we've waited enough already!
). So, unfortunately, for this game I don't see any other option but to go with the dynamic timer.
Magnive said:
I think that this is the best way to go. If you're stubborn and think you can win, then you're welcome to try, but don't be surprised if it ends up just making things worse for you.
I think this is a fine rule; I'll add it to the list as I make the rules file. I'll post it for evaluation tomorrow, but there's not time for too many changes, as the game will be upon us in just a few short hours from that time. If we must deviate from the rules, as our experience dictates, it's no big deal ofc. The aim is to find the best possible rule-set through active play, so the rule-sheet is mainly a good starting point, with only a few absolutes baked in.
Magnive said:
Possibly. It might be easier to have separate sets of game rules. For example, one announces that they're hosting a game (or looking for somebody to actually host) with the 'standard' rules, or with 'advanced diplomacy' or somesuch.
I agree. Unless played with the 'default rules' (whatever they will shape into), each game should have its own thread here at CFC, where the rules can be negotiated before starting.
LzPrst said:
But a few rules I agree with, alliances should be publicly announced and have a specific duration, say 10 turns. Another suggestion would be that alliances could be limited to development levels. Maximum 1 alliance in early ages, up to 2 in medieval/renaissance, unlimited in industrial etc. Huge blocs for WW1 (& more) shouldn't show up until later (immersion, right
). I think rules that define nr of turns of war allowed per captured city start complicating too much, and detract from game mechanics such as war exhaustion. I'll play regardless, but I think less is more, provided all players are gentlemanly.
I'm a bit confused, as you seem to be suggesting *more* restrictions here, not less.
If alliances are to be publicly announced, there can ofc be no secret alliances, which I think was the bone of contention between me and Magnive. In any case, for this game there will be no secret alliances; in future ones this rule may be changed, if all players agree to it, but imo it goes against the idea of this group (or at least has a grave danger of doing so), so I prefer to boil that kettle of fish at another time when the cooks are more experienced, so to speak.
With the new added 'pillaging clause', I don't think we need the restriction for number of war turns before you can claim the conquered city (or cities). You will simply announce your war goal, take that many cities, and then ask for those cities in a peace deal. If the other player refuses, you can apply pressure in the form of pillaging, killing his units, etc (anything but taking more cities), until he either concedes to peace or is doomed to failure because of total economic collapse. Granted that you could still abuse this system and refuse to cede the cities just to spite the attacking player; but at that point your effectively removing yourself from game; and anyway, we have to rely on people's good character and allow some air in the rules for them to breathe, so to speak. I think the best guide might be to role-play and think 'What would I do as the ruler of my country if this were real life? Would I let Paris burn or cede Strassbourg over to the Kaiser?'. What's best for your citizens is best for the country!
EDIT: As for a restriction to the number of allies based on government (or era), it's seems like a good idea, but there are already enough rules to remember. In a future game we will try it for sure, but I think it's best to go without it this time. Most players would agree that smaller blocks of alliances are more fun and dynamic, so let's just trust things to evolve in that direction purely naturally.
I should've put a note about it in the op I guess... Let's just have 
Imo, it requires either Beavis & Butthead -level stupidity or outright malice to design the timer system as you describe, hiding a vital customization behind an obscure load-screen. I wouldn't trust the game not to freeze under such circumstances. We'll go with the dynamic timer for this first game; if it doesn't work out, we can always disable the timer or do the loading-shenanigans in all future games.
]
