New pitboss

[2metraninja]

Thank you Lord Parkin for posting those fine formulated suggestions. I am glad to see you care for game ethics and managing players relations after being accused so many times of abusing those yourself. I see this as move in the right direction

As for city gifting, it is not said we will have this disabled, we can vote on it. I just want to explain the idea behind totally forbidding city giving, which is that it is very hard to know or control why exactly this city/cities gift was made. Every time someone gift a city there must be admin intervention and investigation. And every time there will be doubts.

That said, I am OK with playing without forbidding city gifts, I just think it makes things way less complicated and shenanigans- proof with those forbidden.

As for how double-moves are regulated and enforced, here I can have my say. All players must do all in their power to not make double- moves and dont exploit the turn timer to their unfair advantage. Double- moves are spotted by checking a game tracking utility such as civstats. There it is clearly visible when someone is played twice before an opponent and if this opponent complains that there was a war going on or just declared (and provide screenshots in case of dispute), the game admin rules and the host reloads to a point before the double- move is made. The ofending party is asked to avoid such behavior in future, as it will only lead to slowing and disrupting the game (besides nerves and frustration for the involved parties).

I asked if everyone is sure he knows how the no- double move works, does anyone know what is it?

 

[Friendly Fire]

I personally believe City gifting is just part of the game rather than anything that needs a Moderator to intervene in. You can simply bully someone into giving you a City that you would take anyway but lose troops doing so. The downside for the unfortunate victim is that the price of refusal is that at least another City will go as well and great damage caused. Even if it is done for mutual strategic gain then that is just part of Civ geopolitics and cannot be regarded as some form of cheating.

I don't honestly see why you should not be able to sell, or give, troops to an ally in time of crisis. Again, it is the way the world works in that it is a way of fighting a war without ever declaring one. Most importantly is that it must be done as secretly as possible to avoid antagonising the opponent. There must always be the question of 'just where did those tanks come from'?

Double moves are a flat cheat, and we all know it, but there has to be the caveat that you cannot allow an infinite turn because the losing player in a war simply declines to play their turn. It is fine to extend the clock but a double move has to be permitted if one party has just decided that they have had enough without bothering to tell anyone. It does happen.

Really in all of these debates it should be remembered that this is Metra's game and he must have final say over it all as he is doing us the kindness of hosting.

 

[Elkad]

City gifting can lead to a pile of problems. Allies swap cities around to take advantage of reduced-cost buildings, to build national wonders faster, to raise production of UU, or to leverage other traits. A tiny city gifted (and re-gifted constantly due to culture flipping) near my capital allows my ally to steal techs at a hugely reduced cost.

Unit gifting has problems of it's own, but not as pronounced. Mostly UU swapping, or things like trading Imperialist settlers for Fast Workers

Regarding Espionage, the big issues are the civic/religion swap missions. They cost a tiny fraction of what they should, cost your opponent turns in the wrong civics, and then turns of anarchy to fix the problem. Or you can swap your ally to other civics and allow him to avoid the anarchy.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

City gifting can lead to a pile of problems. Allies swap cities around to take advantage of reduced-cost buildings, to build national wonders faster, to raise production of UU, or to leverage other traits. A tiny city gifted (and re-gifted constantly due to culture flipping) near my capital allows my ally to steal techs at a hugely reduced cost.

That's more a problem of excess really. Obviously the same city shouldn't be allowed to swap owners every two turns just like that.
The tech stealing thing is only an issue in the first place because of the MP community's fetish for Tech Trading Off, just saying.

Unit gifting has problems of it's own, but not as pronounced. Mostly UU swapping, or things like trading Imperialist settlers for Fast Workers

That's the free market and division of labor for you.

Regarding Espionage, the big issues are the civic/religion swap missions. They cost a tiny fraction of what they should, cost your opponent turns in the wrong civics, and then turns of anarchy to fix the problem. Or you can swap your ally to other civics and allow him to avoid the anarchy.

I would consider this a coup and thus a reason to go to war and demand a huge compensation from my enemy for this vile act. This can be handled in-game just fine.
I can't think of anything to refute your second point.

 

[2metraninja]

The point Elkad is trying to make is that most of those semi-exploitative things will give advantages to the more experienced players who have encountered those and know more ways to abuse them. About "Obviously the same city shouldn't be allowed to swap owners every two turns just like that.", this requires again someone to complain, then the host to make investigation, then issue a judgement (which wont be nice for the one being found guilty) then maybe reload to few turns earlier, etc, etc, which is underirable situation. But as I said I am OK with all those allowed.

I will summarize things later today and if there is no someone with very strong feelings against something, that it will require vote, then we proceed with picking civs and leaders and then we ask Seven to make the map for us so we can start this game.

 

[SevenSpirits]

I've been checking this thread to stay up-to-date, but I'll be gone for the weekend. Maybe when I get back, you'll be ready for me to make the map?

Since I'm here, I thought I'd explain why I prefer to play without city gifting.


Here are some scenarios where city gifting seems silly to me.

1) You have a stack of units besieging an enemy city, about to capture it. The owner gives the city to a random other player that you are at peace with. Your units are instantly teleported outside of the city borders. Regardless of whether you are willing to declare war on the third party (assuming you don't have enforced peace with them), your units have been teleported and there's nothing you can do about that.

2) You are at war with an opponent and have almost eradicated them from the map. They only have their capital left. Your dozen unhappy faces of war weariness will finally be gone! But instead, some other opponent settles a city at the north pole and gifts it to your opponent. Every time you manage to locate their remaining city and get forces over there to destroy it, another ridiculous city is settled somewhere on the map and gifted to the civ you are trying to conquer. You have crippling war weariness for the rest of the game.

3) You rent out your city with the Mausoleum of Maussolos for a turn to anyone who is about to start a golden age and is willing to pay you for the privilege.

4) You piss off another player, so they give all their cities to a third party and the third party now wins the game because of it.

What these scenarios have in common is not that they are inherently unfair. It's that they are massively affected by city gifting, to a disproportionate extent. In one scenario, a city gift somehow repels an arbitrarily large army. In another, it indefinitely extends war weariness by uncounterably blocking the end condition for it that's built into the game. In another, it multiplies the power of a wonder many times over. In the fourth, it allows losing players to decide the outcome of the game singlehandedly.

The question is, do you want to play a game that's about these kinds of interactions, where you can conspire with other players to abuse game mechanics that were designed for games against the AI? Maybe you do. I can see the appeal of a game like Diplomacy, where your interactions with the other players is the point of the game, and the game mechanics themselves are just an underpinning for these interactions.

On the other hand, maybe you want to play something that is more based on the mechanics of the game - for example, the mechanic where if your troops are about to capture an insufficiently defended city, they don't just arbitrarily teleport away without your involvement. Or the mechanic where each wonder can only be built by one player in the game, ever. Or the mechanic where war weariness goes away once you've fully assimilated someone's territory. If you want a game more like this, then I think a ban on city gifting is a very efficient and effective inclusion. City gifting is a very overwhelming mechanic in terms of its ability to completely eclipse other mechanics, and in my opinion the way it's implemented is not up to the task of handling multiplayer games in a nice way.

 

[2metraninja]

Well summarized, Seven.

Those all and more exploits (like I was to declare a war and attack a city of one guy in previous game, then he see my ships coming, gifts the city to another guy, the other guy slaves one LB as the original owner is not even in slavery, then upgrades 2-3 archers to LBs where the first guy dont even have the tech for building LBs and then regift the city with all those 3-4 LBs in it. Needless to say I called off the attack) be avoided by simply forbidding city gifting. Yes, it gives more options for roleplaying purposes to be able to gift cities, but there will be more upset people with it on than off, I can guarantee it

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

1) You have a stack of units besieging an enemy city, about to capture it. The owner gives the city to a random other player that you are at peace with. Your units are instantly teleported outside of the city borders. Regardless of whether you are willing to declare war on the third party (assuming you don't have enforced peace with them), your units have been teleported and there's nothing you can do about that.

Don't you know that the friend of my enemy is my enemy? Unless this third party is willing to gift the city to me it will be hunted down and destroyed.

2) You are at war with an opponent and have almost eradicated them from the map. They only have their capital left. Your dozen unhappy faces of war weariness will finally be gone! But instead, some other opponent settles a city at the north pole and gifts it to your opponent. Every time you manage to locate their remaining city and get forces over there to destroy it, another ridiculous city is settled somewhere on the map and gifted to the civ you are trying to conquer. You have crippling war weariness for the rest of the game.

Hunt down and destroy whoever is supplying my enemy with all those cities, simple as.

3) You rent out your city with the Mausoleum of Maussolos for a turn to anyone who is about to start a golden age and is willing to pay you for the privilege.

*dollar signs pop up in my eyes with a cartoonish KACHING sound* Okay now I definitely want city trading on.

4) You piss off another player, so they give all their cities to a third party and the third party now wins the game because of it.

Everyone else teams up to fight this third party, really do I have to explain everything? This could just as well be applied to the Permanent Alliances setting, and I don't hear anyone whine about that.

The question is, do you want to play a game that's about these kinds of interactions, where you can conspire with other players to abuse game mechanics that were designed for games against the AI? Maybe you do. I can see the appeal of a game like Diplomacy, where your interactions with the other players is the point of the game, and the game mechanics themselves are just an underpinning for these interactions.

Well duh, why else would I play Multiplayer?

Anyway, since this seems to be such an important issue to you, how about a compromise: Cities may only be gifted on the same turn that they were founded, as part of peace settlements or with permission of the host/a majority of the players.

 

[2metraninja]

OK, based on the votes so far, expressed opinions and a bit of my power as the organizer of the game, here are the settings of the game:

Tick boxes checked:
√ No random events
√ No vassal states
√ No tribal villages
√ No tech trading
√ Unrestricted leaders
√ Take over AI
√ Simultaneous turns
√ Turn timer 24 hours

All the others are unchecked (not activated).

Rules:

1. War double moves (for shorter double-moves or DM). No war double-moves are allowed. Game will be reloaded in case of a double-move. Here in red is what war double moves consist of:

1.1 Player A plays in turn X, then Player B plays after him in the same turn X and declare war to Player A. The turn switches and Player B plays before Player A.
1.2 Player A plays in turn X, then Player B plays after him in the same turn X without declaring war to Player A. The turn switches and Player B plays before Player A and declares war to Player A.
1.3 Player A and Player B are already in war. Player A plays first in turn X in the turn split. Player B logs in after him in turn X, then log off and before the turn advances to turn X+1, Player A logs in in to the game again.
1.4 Player A and Player B are in war. Player A plays second in the turn order, but he logs in before Player B.


2. Turn order and turn split. Once in war, there must be maintained a so called Turn split. Turn split is the part of the timer where you are supposed to do your moves. Normally, turn is split in two parts - first and second. But sometimes in complex wars, timer can be split in 3 or more parts. Say Player A and Player B are in war. Player A plays first in the turn split, then Player B plays, but after him Player C logs in and for whatever reason declares war to Player B. Then on the next turn, Player C must wait for Player B to play before he makes his moves. But because Player B must wait for Player A to play first, Player B is in the middle part of the turn split. Normally, half the timer makes a turn split, but when in war, players must be extremely causitous and play as early as possible to leave more time for their opponents to play their turns after them. Also, if the player who waits for his time to play misses for whatever reason his window for play, the game must be paused or there will be reload if the turn switch to X+1 without the player(s) in the second or third or whatever number miss their turns.

3. Pauses. Anyone can ask for a pause if he is about to miss the turn. Missing a turn in peace time sometimes is OK and it does not guarantees a reload. Missing a turn in war on other hand is a reason for reload. Ofcourse, all efforts must be made that you play your turn in timely manner and do not make it that requires a pause. If you find the game paused, you must ask in the thread why is the game paused.

4. City gifts. City gifts are allowed, but once gifted, the city cannot be gifted again to anyone in the next 20 turns. (This makes giving/selling/extorting cities for diplomatic uses possible, whyle makes the shenanigans uses almost impossible, or at least impractical)

5. Civ/Leaders picking: Unrestricted leaders with snake pick. In the game setting, the order of the snake pick will be reversed for setting who is Nation 0, Nation 1 and so on (have some impact on the obscured game- mechanics).

6. Map will be Cylindrical Large Continents, made and tweakid a bit by SevenSpirits to ensure the starts are all viable. Game dificulty is Noble. Everyone starts with a scout.

That are the rules for now. If there are very strong opinions against something or something substantional to add, do speak now, otherwise - we proceed with the snake pick.

As reminder, here is the snake pick order list:

1. classical_hero
2. Luthor_Saxburg
3. Friendly Fire
4. Hercules90
5. 2metraninja
6. sinimusta
7. methinkso
8. Imp. Knoedel
9. Filon
10. Cristoval
11. Elkad
12. dick76
13. HBHR
14. ReallyEvilMuff

Classical Hero had already chosen Elizabeth. Luthor Saxburg is the next one to choose.

 

[SevenSpirits]

To clarify, you specifically want me to use the "Continents" map script for the basis of the map?

 

[SevenSpirits]

Discussed a bit with 2metraninja. I am taking my directive to be:

* Map with multiple landmasses. Not all players on the same landmass.

* Enough room that everyone can get 8 cities without any cultural overlap with other players, and still some room to settle more cities.

 

[2metraninja]

edit - crosspost with Seven

 

[ReallyEvilMuff]

Sounds really good, thanks for taking the time to build a map for us! And also thanks for clarifying the rules, very useful for those new to the type of game.

I'm hoping for an uninhabited continent in the middle with the late game resources can't wait to see what tricks you put in it for us sevenspirits! I do hope you limit the 1 tile islands, but I feel privileged just getting to play on a specially designed map.

Let's get this rolling!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

What about Permanent Alliances?

 

[2metraninja]

Permanent alliances are off.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I can see that, but why?

 

[2metraninja]

To be honest, I never though about having them enabled.

I played only once with PA enabled, but this was friendly game of players vs AIs. AFAIK PA makes 2 civs to become as a team? Sharing techs, espionage, etc? This will make it too unfair if other players cant share techs and espionage, wonders effects, etc, while selected ones can.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I played only once with PA enabled, but this was friendly game of players vs AIs. AFAIK PA makes 2 civs to become as a team? Sharing techs, espionage, etc? This will make it too unfair if other players cant share techs and espionage, wonders effects, etc, while selected ones can.

They become enabled by Fascism and Communism so it's only a lategame issue anyway. I think it's nice because it allows weaker civs to join forces to catch up with otherwise unstoppable superpowers.

 

[sinimusta]

I'd rather have them off so that there would be only one winner if any.

 

[Friendly Fire]

1. War double moves (for shorter double-moves or DM). No war double-moves are allowed. Game will be reloaded in case of a double-move. Here in red is what war double moves consist of:

1.1 Player A plays in turn X, then Player B plays after him in the same turn X and declare war to Player A. The turn switches and Player B plays before Player A.
1.2 Player A plays in turn X, then Player B plays after him in the same turn X without declaring war to Player A. The turn switches and Player B plays before Player A and declares war to Player A.
1.3 Player A and Player B are already in war. Player A plays first in turn X in the turn split. Player B logs in after him in turn X, then log off and before the turn advances to turn X+1, Player A logs in in to the game again.
1.4 Player A and Player B are in war. Player A plays second in the turn order, but he logs in before Player B.

I know this Player A declares war on Player B but cannot actually attack Player B until they have moved rule from many previous games but have never understood it.

If I see an opening for a sudden blitzkrieg on my neighbour then why should it not be exploitable? It is their fault for not checking their borders and watching me build up troops next to them. I can understand that the following move Player B must move before me but not why they should have a free turn to bolster their frontiers. By the same token I cannot understand why if Player A and Player C both agree for a combined attack against Player B why that likewise should not be permitted. For a smaller power often the only real chance they will get sometimes is the element of surprise.

I obviously accept the rule, it's been the same in every other PitBoss I've ever played, but I would like to know why it is held to be such a sacred cow that surprise should never be implemented as a legitimate tool of war when in the real world it has so very often been the pivitol factor in deciding the fate of conflict.