Important Ruling

[Ginger_Ale]

Provo, #2 doesn't make you tell them the names, it makes you tell them they have changed the names.

And sorry for the last sentence, I cannot confirm or deny any team with that request.

 

[Provolution]

One idea I have for the proposed rule is a thread for renaming of current cities (these ones not included, this would be new) to eliminate this problem again. New cities are not subject to this.

City lists aren't important unless a city or more is being renamed from its current state.

In Western Law, I keep oriental law,shariah and tribal law out if this, no penalty can be meted out retroactively to past events.

I can agree to the following:

All met neighbors are entitled a list of changed city names, not unmet civs.

or

no city renaming is allowed, Period.

or

city renaming is subject to label renamed cities with (RENAMED)

or

we leave the rules as they are, we can change names at our whim.

 

[Provolution]

Provo, #2 doesn't make you tell them the names, it makes you tell them they have changed the names.

And sorry for the last sentence, I cannot confirm or deny any team with that request.

I disagree on Two, since we did not meet two of the civs and they have not mapped us either, they have no right to ask for our city names.
What they see in the F11 screen is all they need to know.
We are not confirming that we swopped palaces or added a settler, we want them to have that insecurity.

 

[donsig]

As you have said earlier, they can (and most likely) know via F11. You do not have to say it is either true or not.

The issue here (as RM said) is the renaming of cities.

Is this fair?:

1. No team / individual punishment in game (it was not a deliberate attempt to confuse enemies, obviously)

2. Letting other teams know capital and other city names have been shifted.

3. Editing of rules to prevent this in the future.

This is about as low as we can go before we waive this isuee.

What do you mean this is as low as you can go before you waive the issue? READ THE RULE. It clearly pertains to deception in trading. The proscribed punishment is for the offending team to forfeit twice what was not traded! Not only was there no trade involved we could not even trade with anyone at the time! Ok, so even if you say we're guilty what do we pay? We traded nothing so we owe the Donought Team two times nothing?!?

Give it up. We did nothing wrong and broke no rule. Further more, the rule in question is bad and should be thrown out anyway. Declare us not guilty, throw the rule out and let us play the game. It's just starting to get intertesting...

 

[Rik Meleet]

So we used an exploit to move our palace and they used one to figure out what we did. What's the bid deal. Seems like we're all even.

F-11 is not an exploit. I know why you regard it an exploit because in a 1 human, rest AI game F-11 gives you an idea who the AI are. In PBEM this is different as the main screen shows the player who the opponents are.

The rule was written to prevent one team from offering something in trade and then renaming either a city or a unit in an effort to live up to the letter of an agreed trade but not it's spirit. In the first place that scenario does not apply here. In the second place, that sort of double dealing should be allowed. Any team that fell for it deserves what they get.

So that means you agree with me that the rule "2.4 - Misleading through Renaming" is incomplete.

A large part of this game involves WAR. War involves keeping secrets from your enemies. Do you really expect us to play this game and have wars where we're all nice and show each other exactly what we're up against. For crying out loud, deceipt and deception ARE within the spirit of the game. We're not playing again the stupid AI we're playing agianst human players who know this flippin' game inside and out. Sure, we need rules to ensure no one is tampering with the save to give themselves an advantage but we don't need rules that force us to *play nice* and reveal our strategies.

You can lay this game any way you like and you don't have to reveal your tactics, nor your strategies (and that includes Free Palace Jump). But that is not the issue here; the issue is that team TNT mislead the other teams by renaming a city that was not the original Capitol with the original Capitol's name. By doing this, team TNT gave misleading information to the other teams. That has to be corrected in a way that doesn't harm team TNT, but will emove the harm done on the other 3 teams.

 

[Provolution]

Well, they are not mislead at all. However, we will not change our city names again.
Tell them we are innocent per the present rules, and that we support a rule change for future reference. No harm was done to the other teams.

Ginger Ale, I have two questions. What exactly did you tell the other teams about us.
Number two, which team did not suspect the palace jump?

 

[donsig]

You can lay this game any way you like and you don't have to reveal your tactics, nor your strategies (and that includes Free Palace Jump). But that is not the issue here; the issue is that team TNT mislead the other teams by renaming a city that was not the original Capitol with the original Capitol's name. By doing this, team TNT gave misleading information to the other teams. That has to be corrected in a way that doesn't harm team TNT, but will emove the harm done on the other 3 teams.

And whose brilliant idea was it that we can't mislead other teams? We've met team Donought and began tech trade negotiations. Are you telling me we can't lie about what techs we have or don't have? We flat out lied and told them we got alphabet by popping a hut because we did not want them to know we researched alphabet. Is that against the spirit of the game? We are at war with them now. Is it against the spirit of the game for us to conceal the fact that we have a ready source of iron?

Here's another question. If we had timed our palace jump and renaming of the cities so that there was not such a dramatic pop change - i.e., if we had disguised it better would it have been legal or illegal? Or would the answer to that question depend on our intention. Well, we didn't mean to mislead anyone, now did we? I've said it before, you can't make rules based on intent alone. Either it's ok to do something or it's not.

Beyond all this Rik, what harm was done to the other teams. It seems they quite easily figured out what was done. By crying foul they are not trying to even the playing field. They are trying to get us punished so we will be disadvantaged and they will gain. If anyone is going against the spirit of the game it is the two teams seeking advantage from the poorly written rules. They are trying to exploit the rules of this game not us.

 

[Rik Meleet]

In diplomacy you can say whatever you like.
What you did was not illegal, according to the rules at the time. That was told you in this thread several times.
You did not intent to mislead; I'll accept that from you. But that doesn't change the fact that you did mislead.
If you'd planned the Palace jump in such a way that there would have been no dramatic pop change the response might have been delayed, but would still be there. Renaming is a delicate issue and this was trampled upon. Not by intent but trampled on nonetheless.
There is no way you are going to be punished for this, whatever you think other teams demand. Your palace jump was not illegal. And it will not be considered as such. - Your renaming ignited discussion on the rules, and rightly so.
A rule change can never be considered a punishment.
The harm to other teams cannot be assessed by you. I can guarantee you the other teams are not out to punish you; they are out to have corrected rules.

To summarise: TNT is not accused of anything and will not get a penalty. The renaming is now under discussion as the rules on that are shown to be incomplete. A result of this rules-update could be that the renaming of CarpetBomb will be openly notified.

It is of no use discussing this. The decision lies with the admins of the game; Ginger and Regent.

 

[Provolution]

Well, for the legitimacy of the admins, I support their previous ruling. They cannot change their mind on this thing, and we all agree we broke no rule. Besides, we are not to inform on the palace jump, we would like to leave the potential we added workers or settler.
Point is, I find it unfair to be forced to educate nations we did not meet, or will not meet for some 40 turns or so.

We are NOT to inform the other teams on our city names.

 

[donsig]

In diplomacy you can say whatever you like.
What you did was not illegal, according to the rules at the time. That was told you in this thread several times.
You did not intent to mislead; I'll accept that from you. But that doesn't change the fact that you did mislead.
If you'd planned the Palace jump in such a way that there would have been no dramatic pop change the response might have been delayed, but would still be there. Renaming is a delicate issue and this was trampled upon. Not by intent but trampled on nonetheless.
There is no way you are going to be punished for this, whatever you think other teams demand. Your palace jump was not illegal. And it will not be considered as such. - Your renaming ignited discussion on the rules, and rightly so.
A rule change can never be considered a punishment.
The harm to other teams cannot be assessed by you. I can guarantee you the other teams are not out to punish you; they are out to have corrected rules.

To summarise: TNT is not accused of anything and will not get a penalty. The renaming is now under discussion as the rules on that are shown to be incomplete. A result of this rules-update could be that the renaming of CarpetBomb will be openly notified.

It is of no use discussing this. The decision lies with the admins of the game; Ginger and Regent.

Then why pray tell is there a moratorium on play? Didn't Ginger Ale post in the turn tracker thread for play to halt until a determination is made? If no rule was broken then why stop play?

And if no rule was broken Rik then why should our name change be made public. Your post makes no sense. You say no rule was broken and there will be no penalty and your team did not intend to do anything wrong BUT your team DID do something wrong so we'll have to tell the other teams what you did. Are you practicing running for president here or something? You've done a great job of stradling the fence by saying we didn't break the rules but we're guilty nonetheless.

You are correct, a rule change cannot be considered a punishment. But changing the rules and then applying the new rule to something that has already happened CAN be considered a punishment. That's why it's not allowed in the real world.

If the current rules are incomplete that is not our fault. It is up to us to look at the rules and be sure we do not violate them. You have already said we haven't done that. All the admins have to do now is say that no rule was broken and let play continue. Nothing more should be said about the names of our cities. If the admins want to re-write the rules that's fine - but any changes should not be applied to what we've already done.

 

[vbraun]

I told you the palace jump was considered an exploit and that it would hurt our reputation, now we are basically playing world vs us.

 

[vbraun]

The only way we can get out of this one is to rename the cities back. Now everyone knows of our Palace Jump so there is no point in keeping the city names as they are now.

If we refuse to rename it, the worst case scenario is that the teams decide to not play any more. Again that is the worst case scenario and I do not want that to happen, heck I don't want it to even come close to happening.

I reccomend we revert to the old names.

 

[Provolution]

I suggest we stick to the old names. They have no right to change this about.
GOTM players have no right to use that alleged status to strongarm players from other civ communities. We play by the same rules.

 

[donsig]

Hmmm... if the other teams decide not to play does that mean we win?

 

[Provolution]

I can live with the other teams giving up. But as they signaled in the public thread, it was not a biggie for them. They basically acknwoledged they were there to hurt us and reduce our diplomatic options. Now I have a countermove in the out of game espionage investigation.

 

[vbraun]

I suggest we stick to the old names.

I assume this means we will rename the cities to their original names?

 

[Provolution]

I assume this means we will rename the cities to their original names?

No team, in particular teams we have not met, has the right to abuse the UN to strongarm other teams to divulge intelligence. They are playing a high game here, and they learn from every response we make in the thread.
They want to feel out the team. Hence, we need to leverage this situation to confuse them even more. I expect you to represent the team as the majority wants it, and both mapmakers and moderators are adamant no rule was broken.
Hence, they will only know that Dancing Banana is the new capital, not the old one . For an unmet Civ, that is quite a bargain.

 

[vbraun]

Something that takes 3 seconds could improve our relations with the other 3 teams. It would be in out best intrest to rename them back, as it no longer serves a function.

Why did we rename the cities in the first place?

 

[Provolution]

Did you notice we are at war? For the other two teams, we have not met them.
The reason we did this is for internal rules. We polled the capital name as Dancing Banana, the rally to rename it failed.

For notification, Iroq is possibly dead before the other teams know what is going on.
With striking out Iroq early, we are in position to specialize more on our continent and take out the rest. Immortals are as good as Medieval Infantry, so we can drive this game a long way with a minimum of techs and our cities on rivers. With a superbalanced map like this, only the most unorthodox survive.

 

[vbraun]

There was no discussion on wether we should keep the capital called Dancing Banana...

I will post a poll on wether we should rename it back.