Planning cIV BTS MTDG III

[Kloreep]

Indeed. I can't remember which team that was that voted completely OFF, and maybe they can voice their opinion, but I'd think they'd fall on the side of banning those missions if they didn't want Espy in the first place.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Do you think spies OFF voters would prefer all missions or banning as many of them as possible?

Were not going there. Settings discussion is closed. plako, you called for the discussion to be closed so we could move on. So the discussion is closed. Settings are final. Let's move on.

Indeed. I can't remember which team that was that voted completely OFF, and maybe they can voice their opinion, but I'd think they'd fall on the side of banning those missions if they didn't want Espy in the first place.

We're not going to start inferring the meaning of votes. The votes speak for themselves. Hey, I'm not happy nukes are banned, but we need to move forward. Do we really want to start a 3 month argument on one game setting? No, we don't. Settings are final. Lets move on.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Sommer, that is a criminal miscounting of the Spy votes. Deliberately counting in a skewed way which supports your personal preference and then declaring the matter closed is completely unjust. The Germans, Spanish, Realms Beyond and Civfr voted against the civic/religion swap missions, which already makes 4 even without counting the Civ Players vote (which indicated them being okay with removing the two missions if necessary).

Please don't resort to underhanded tactics to skew the true votes.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sommer, that is a criminal miscounting of the Spy votes. Deliberately counting in a skewed way which supports your personal preference and then declaring the matter closed is completely unjust. The Germans, Spanish, Realms Beyond and Civfr voted against the civic/religion swap missions, which already makes 4 even without counting the Civ Players vote (which indicated them being okay with removing the two missions if necessary).

Please don't resort to underhanded tactics to skew the true votes.

I'm going to pretend not to be insulted by that completely over the line personal attack. "Criminal"?

Again, settings are final. The mapmaker has called for the settings to be final. Its late here and Im going to bed soon.

 

[fluffyflyingpig]

Quote:
Originally Posted by KyanRB
Take your time mate. It's an important decision and you'll have more fun playing someone you chose, rather than someone you got stuck with because you were rushing.

If we're all gonna be playing this for a year, we can wait a bit longer.

All the best

Kyan


This.

 

[plako]

If OFF vote is ignored then why not ask them which one they would prefer? Also no single team should make freezin desicion, it should be admin desicion or at minimum wide consensus among teams.

 

[BobCW]

I'm going to pretend not to be insulted by that completely over the line personal attack. "Criminal"?

Again, settings are final. The mapmaker has called for the settings to be final. Its late here and Im going to bed soon.

"hey guys i have to bed time so DISCUSSION CLOSED."




You are going to kill this game dude.

 

[Kloreep]

Also no single team should make freezin desicion, it should be admin desicion or at minimum wide consensus among teams.

Indeed. It's not what me and my team want, but I think the votes speak for themselves. If it really can't be agreed that the proper count is to ban those missions, then it's R_Rolo's call how this is finalized, not any of ours.

 

[Sommerswerd]

If OFF vote is ignored then why not ask them which one they would prefer? Also no single team should make freezin desicion, it should be admin desicion or at minimum wide consensus among teams.

Its not ignored. trying to count OFF as something else is ignoring it. What are we saying here? Once again (just like with the Mod "testing" issue) those Spanish arent smart enough to vote how they want? We the all knowing english speaking sites have to recast their vote to what we think is best? Is that it? So now Spanish Apolyton is not only unqualified to test a Mod, they are also unqualified to cast a vote the way they want?

And the reason I am closing the vote on this is because we need to move on to leader selection... which TBH is kinda iffy with a thing like Spies still up in the air. That, and the mapmaker was calling for the settings to be closed. CFC is supposed to be coordinating this thing, and moving the process along. As everyone knows, I am happy to have a 300 post argument about this, but all the arguing in the world changes nothing. Settings are final. The coordinators have to move things along. We can't ask for an admin ruling on every issue, and anyway the admin is for the game, not the planning/setup. Admin ruling?!? Are you serious?... No. Voting on settings is closed.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Folks at Spanish Apolyton, would you prefer Civic/Religion swap missions banned, or Spies on completely?

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Map settings =/= rule settings.

 

[OzzyKP]

I don't have a dog in this fight. I honestly don't care if spies are completely on or civic/religion switches are banned, I just hope this spat doesn't disrupt the game.

My official position: can't we all just get along?

 

[2metraninja]

Where to start? If that's really true, this game isn't worth playing. RB has a couple mac users - if we have three cheaters on our team, that's three times as many as necessary to make me quit in disgust.

I am not saying where those guys who will slip on the wrong way are, I am not accusing anyone, but the fact that this happened and ruined or threatened to ruin games in multitude occasions, makes me believe this can and will happen again.

"Only to look" is so cute explanation, but why would we bother of playing around with excuses and accusations, when we can just make it impossible and thats it.

Furthermore the idea that this mod would stop people from cheating is just silly.

I cant and dont want to accuse anyone of being terrorist, but I am happy there are metal detectors on the airports, as I have seen enough airplane hijacks and bombings to think this could never happen. I know I myself dont want to die while traveling to a holiday or on business trip for someone's weird and twisted belief in which god is right and which is not, nor I want to die to serve as warning and punish to the world imperialists. I have better things to do with my life. Yes, accidents still happens, but does this makes metal-detectors unnecessary or bad thing?

Double moving is quite simple to detect and fix.

I agree, sometimes it is, but what then? What happens if someone logs in when it is not his time? How this will be dealt with? Immediate reload? If so, then I am OK with it. This is serious question - if we agree that the game will be reloaded on each and every "login just to look", then we might not need APT mod. But since I know how destructive multiple reloads, pauses the decision or ruling to be made, needing to re-play turns (which can be affected by later teams play) etc, etc, act to the game, I dont think this is perfect solution too.

And what if given player is the last to play and the turn switches? How you know that he did not moved anything when the new turn begun? This cant be spotted. APT mod have answer to this too - he automatically loses connectivity on turn switch.

Whereas the difficult thing to detect is abuse of bugs, which a mod will only increase the potential for.

Yes, I agree there are other bugs/exploits to be cheated with, but this is still not a reason to not deal with the most obvious and trivial way of taking unfair advantage in simultaneous pitbosses.

But against cheaters, the solution is simply for everyone to hold their teammates to high standards. Adding a mod can't fix that.

Agree with that, and yet, I have seen a turnplayer doublemoving and his teammates knew nothing about this. It takes to upgrade only 1 archer to MG and no one of his teammates will notice, but it will still save your city from surprising attack and save him the shame of not doing what is best to defend your team cities. One could double-move and catch the enemy fleet and destroy it, actually winning the game with that single move, but he can say to his team-mates and allies and enemies: "The feel was in a tile, where my enemy just did not saw it and he dont have proofs.

As for the declaration-of-war double-move which APT dont cover, it is times easier to be spotted. A normal war lasts for 10 to 210 turns, thus making the task of spotting a DM 10 to 210 times easier, right?

 

[Lord Parkin]

Regarding the lack of proper cost scaling of the civic/religion swap spy missions: you have to remember it's one of those things which was only really discovered after the release of the final 3.19 patch. If Firaxis were still patching Civ4, issues like this (and others) would have been fixed already. However, as the patching for Civ4 has stopped, we have to make a choice.

We can either:
(a) choose to play the 3.19 patch without any limitations or alterations - pretending that it was a holy grail of perfection, despite the logical flaw that this is not how the patching process works. (It is a finite process limited by time and money constraints, which asymptotically approaches but never achieves perfection.)

Or:
(b) choose to play with some minor limitations or alterations, which tweak a few partly broken elements of the game that were simply not noticed prior to the final patch.

It seems to make more sense to agree not to abuse those few parts of the game which we know can be exploited for a disproportionate gain - like banning extra free techs from the Oracle. Just because Firaxis was limited by business constraints (time and money) doesn't mean we should just keep playing the final patch as if it never needed any further corrections. New and obscure exploits continue to be discovered, and as we learn of them we should use our newfound knowledge to attempt to fix them - rather than to abuse them. The incorrect scaling of civic/religion swap spy missions is certainly one such issue worth addressing.

It is for this simple reason that we should all be opposed to having the civic/religion swap spy missions in the game in their current form. The crux of the issue is: do we fix something which is known to be broken, or leave it in the game to be exploited? I would have thought the answer was obvious - if it's demonstrably exploitative, fix it.

Regardless, railroading a decision on an exploit like this is not acceptable. We have plenty of time to resolve this split issue without coercion before the game starts.

 

[grant2004]

We've got two votes that need to be clarified. Obviously the off vote, from Spanish Apolyton, but also this one, I believe from CivPlayers: "Spies - ON (small restrictions possible, like no changing civics, if diplomacy is on then no "friendly espionage")"

That's a pretty ambiguous vote. To me it seems like they are voting for spies ON, but are saying that restricting certain missions won't kill them. I'm not sure that vote can be reasonably counted in either column, mostly it seems like a vote against OFF.

I think we can take a little time to clear this up, maybe 24 hours. But we need to keep moving, we're already falling badly behind on the civ and leader selection. If the teams don't clarify those votes it is 4-3 in favor of spies on completely, and that's the right setting to select as the winner.

 

[OT4E]

Allright, sorry for confusing. I thought that we need to express our expectations instead of choosing from 2 alternatives. That's why our vote was ambiguous.
Let's ban these missions, I dont think they are so important for balance. Espionage is still very powerful weapon.

OT4E
CivPlayers Team

 

[x_MiTH_x]

We are trying to define our choice about spies. We think we'll be able to do it today.

 

[r_rolo1]

Moderator Action: Well, I will refrain of making further comments until all the ambiguous votes are cleared out, but as a personal preference ( don't take this as word of God ) I think that partially limited espionage would be the best option. I think that the drawbacks of civic/religion swaps in terms of balance are clear to everyone ( that always stroke me as wierd since my espionage SGs, where I was having empire civic swaps @ 300 EP or less and city revolts @ 500+ :/ ), but the oposite direction is also quirky .

Anyway, let's wait for the spanish apolyton team word on this

 

[Sommerswerd]

Thanks Civplayers for clarifying. Of course I will happily accept the result of clear and unambiguous votes.

 

[Magno_uy]

Folks at Spanish Apolyton, would you prefer Civic/Religion swap missions banned, or Spies on completely?

spanish team is reconsiderering our vote. We let you konw soon