As for the patches argument - I couldn't reconcile the fact that you wanted to leave grey areas in the game rules while slamming down an ironclad rule on the patches.
That apparent inconsistency from you - both positions were justifiable, but still inconsistent with each other
I do not, nor have I ever, WANTED to leave gray areas in the game rules.
There is no inconsistency in my policy; you're just not understanding what the root priorities are. The same threads run through all of the policy decisions. I know they're obscure, and much more so for anybody (such as you and Arathorn) who are inexperienced with managing internet gaming ventures. I've got years of experience lined up to draw upon, from which I am aware of a whole array of pitfalls and problems that need to be avoided. These CAN be seen by anybody -- they are not secret or mysterious -- but like a hunter, someone who's been there before can read a library of information off a few subtle trail signs (damaged vegetation, marks on the ground, etc) where a newbie stumbles through and sees nothing of importance or use. In that situation, it is incumbent upon me to stop and explain what's up if I am asking something from you, but it is also incumbent upon you to look past your own nose or you'll never learn to track the game successfully.
You've got to start taking costs into account. Every policy action has a cost that somebody's got to pay. Where the cost to me to write a rule and the cost to a player to adhere to it are minor or negligible, while the costs to the quality of the competition for ignoring the problem are large, it's a no brainer. When the costs for the rule are high, it makes sense to write and try to enforce a sloppy rule ONLY if the costs of not doing it are even worse. That's where the judgement comes in. It's not so much a gray area, though there can be some of that. It's much more of a clear black and white area with known problems, that does not have a low cost solution.
In that undesirable situation, if a rule is written, a cost is imposed on the tournament. Likewise, if the rule is not written and players run amok exploiting the loophole or flaw, a cost is imposed. The best option of all is if the players take responsibility as a group to refrain from abusing the problem area, so there's no need to regulate it. That involves trust all the way around. The only way to convince an individual player that his game results won't suffer compared to others is he trusts those others not to abuse the option. If every player operates on good faith, being trustworthy, this concept CAN work. If some players push things too far, they have to be persuaded to reign themselves in, or else the trust collapses and there's no choice left but to impose costly regulation.
Look at corporate America. A few dozen jerks decided to abuse the accounting rules at a handful of big corporations, leading to theft of investor money rising into the billions (deceitful balance sheets leading stock prices to inflate artificially, with those in on the scam seeing their personal stock going up up up -- it was outright theft, as the money was coming from investors who got left holding the bag when the lies were revealed and the stock prices dropped). Those abuses didn't HAVE to take place. The corporations themselves could have policed themselves better. Too few people stood up to do the right thing, and now ALL the corporations will have to pay in adhering to stricter regulations.
It's the same principle. You don't write law to govern theory. You write law to correct unacceptable behavior. Law is only rarely proactive, aiming to head off some potential disaster that has never happened. New laws get written when bad behavior gets out of hand. Even in the case of forming up governments, like the way the USA formed its government, even then it is still in reaction to something else that has gone so far wrong it has to be discarded wholesale, and to start from scratch to rework it.
I don't WANT gray areas in the rules. I want responsible citizens who have the sense to behave well enough that we don't have to strangle our society with oppressive levels of regulation. For unlike nations, who have no option to throw in the towel and give up on the effort, here there IS such a thing as "too costly". That is the whole reason for my departure from RBE: the costs rose too high. And what drives up costs? Two things: 1) Those who behave poorly, requiring more regulations to be added to FORCE them to stay in line. Cheaters -- outright flagrant cheaters, yes, (the "chaotic evil" ones) but also those who fit the "lawful evil" description of those who cheat as much as the letter of the law allows them to get away with. Both are selfish and irresponsible, just in different ways. 2) Those who haggle too much, are too argumentative or too arrogant: the ones who continually demand more attention and special treatment.
That apparent inconsistency from you - both positions were justifiable, but still inconsistent with each other
You're comparing apples and oranges. The tournment rules are listed separately from the tactical rules. There's a reason for that, you know. The tactical rules (exploits especially) are a matter of balancing costs vs benefits, and are designed to make up for shortcomings in the game design. The tournament rules are organizational.
If we could rewrite the game to remove the exploits, we could get rid of most of the tactical rules. The game code is beyond our reach, beyond our control. The tournament is a different story. That is wholly within our control. We cannot, nor would we want to, get rid of any of the tournament rules. They provide the space in which we can play the game together in a meaningful way.
The whole point of the No Spoilers Rule, which is the number one top priority of the Epics, is to isolate each game in a box of its own, to ensure a 100% level playing field to all participants. That is what makes the Epics what they are. Everyone has the chance to play the same game. Late starters don't get advantages, and each player has to play in a manner where they can only guess at what kind of results others are getting. This can lead to odd events, like a number of players believing nobody will go for a certain scoring option, only to see a majority have the same thought and flock to pursue that "obscure" option. You just never know what others are going to do; what you do know is, they're playing by the same rules as you are.
And everything else pales as a priority to THAT concept.
When the RBCiv staff were working out the rules, I had proposed a first draft, but Griselda went over everything, too. She did not have the game yet at that time, but for the tournament structure, she did not need it to form opinions. One of the points she wanted to see introduced was a way to move the Report Day forward if everybody who was playing the game had finished. Why not? Why make everyone wait when there was nobody they were waiting for? That was a difficult point to defeat, and it took me a few passes at the argument to persuade her. One of the problems was pressure. If all but one or two of the players had finished, and the rest knew the reports could be posted as soon as they were done, the unfinished players would be pressured to hurry it up. That would be unfair, because those players would be playing under a pressure that others had not, and that would cause the conditions to be changed for some players. Another problem was intimidation. A lot of folks lead busy lives with games just a minor diversion, and they need to know what sort of commitment they are in for before they commit. Those who need four weeks to finish won't be comfortable with the idea that the timeclock might be arbitrarily cut short on them. They'd be less likely to sign on in the first place. There were a few other problems with this concept, too. It's very easy to look and see that everybody finished, so why should we all sit around doing nothing waiting for some silly deadline to arrive? It's is much harder to see what is LOST, what costs are paid out, if the rules are allowed to be sloppy just for momentary expediency.
An Epic game is like a time capsule: the player is put in it, and while inside he has no contact with the outside world until the capsule is dug up. You don't fiddle with that mechanism on a whim. You don't ask to have it changed around just because you personally have additional commitments (SG's) that require you to move to the new patch without delay. Your convenience is not unimportant, but it pales compared to protecting the integrity of the entire tournament.
I brooked no resistance on the patch issue because the decision had been made already. Whatever situation existed at the time an Epic was opened, that situation would be preserved for the duration of the Epic. We don't close down Epics in the middle. We don't change them around. We don't rewrite the rules, and we don't apply the rules inconsistently. It doesn't matter WHAT the issue is, it's not going to rise to the level of overriding the number one guiding principle of the tournament: that everyone plays the same game.
The argument was made at the time that some folks "don't care" about the scoring. I caught a lot of grief for being "too focused on the competitive aspect". That missed the point entirely. ENTIRELY.
If we aren't all playing the same game, too much is lost. We might as well be playing solo. What gives the Epics a dimension no other tournament has is the fairness and isolation factor.
The reason I don't play GOTM is not the exploits. I could choose to use them, or not, and still have a good time. No, it's the spoilers. We're all playing on the same map, but we're NOT playing the same game. A lot of folks pick up extra information from the spoiler threads: not just map info and that sort of thing, but also the progress of other players, hearing about moves that were tried that did or did not work, and more. That renders the comparisons moot. It taints what you might be able to learn. Did Player A make a great move you didn't, or did they have foreknowledge that you didn't, and thus had the answer handed to them? We all know that restarting the game repeatedly spoils the result. Why is that? Because if the player has additional information not available to others, they have the advantage.
If you are playing the exact same game as others, where no one has any privileged information, that adds a depth to the game. It adds depth while you play, and it adds depth to the discussions afterward. That's the key ingredient of the Epics.
For you to call my policy in that regard "inconsistent" just boggles my mind. I don't believe it's bad faith on your part, but when I have explained the situation and you still don't understand, I don't know what to do. It is like we are standing in the woods and I show you ten signs of deer tracks in a mossy patch, then show you ten signs of deer tracks in a leafy area, and you stand there and scratch your head and claim the tracks are inconsistent because one set is in the moss and another is in the weeds. Um... no. They're consistent because of the DEER, who passed through leaving the signs. No, you don't see the deer. No, the signs aren't the same in the different areas. No, I don't want to stand here and listen to you suggesting we head off in some random direction you've chosen because it looks to you like the easiest hiking trail. We have to follow the deer if we want results. Do you even know what we're looking for? What the signs mean, and where we should go next? Sometimes there really is no substitute for experienced judgement. After following the tracks I said that I saw, when we came upon the deer, you then claimed that had nothing to do with my judgement, that I just got lucky and that, really, your way would have been just as likely to succeed. You can insist on that if you like, but don't expect me to have a lot of patience for it. Even worse, all your loud arguing has made my job of tracking the deer worse, as you keep spooking it off and forcing me to track farther to make the hunt succeed. Sometimes I just want to throttle you!
Many folks got that impression at the time, which resulted in your lack of public support.
See, that's probably the thing that ticks you off the most. I am not moved by numbers. I don't go in for the idea of group petitions. I believe in the power of issues and ideas. An idea is not made more valid by having additional persons believe in it.
I can be persuaded that my tracking is faulty, or that there might be another trail to follow. However, if I'm on the trail of a certain deer and I can SEE the tracks and follow them, and they remain consistent, that's all the validation I need to proceed. I don't need consensus, and I may not stop to explain what I'm seeing and why I'm going in a certain direction, because I am focused on conserving my energies and getting the job done. If we stop for half an hour to haggle over whether or not those are real deer tracks, the deer's going to get half an hour further ahead of us. If I keep leading you to the deer over and over, why would you continue to insist that everything be explained to you, every decision justified to your satisfaction? Too much of that, and I get fed up with seeing that I spend all this time and energy arguing and haggling with you, instead of tracking the deer.
In baseball, the pitcher and catcher can argue back and forth (with hand signals and shakes of the head) about which pitch to throw next. The manager or coaches may send signals from the dugout. All manner of debate can take place, but once the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, the debate is over. The pitch is taking place and it can't be called back. And if you realize that you did not throw the best pitch, as you see that bat swinging around to make contact, you can't take the pitch back and redo it.
We don't change Epics around in progress. You should note that every time the tournament rules have been revised, the changes only take affect with future epics, not games that are currently ongoing. I have consistently been very firm about the No Spoilers rule. The patch rule in regard to Epics already underway is the exact same issue.
You and Arathorn and anybody else are welcome to disagree with the fundamental principle behind the Epics, but you will not get away with labeling the policy as inconsistent.
- Sirian
)), I really really liked Babylon 5. Yet, the show was one season ahead in the states. I COULD have gotten spoilers quite easily. I'm still peeved at a guy in a trading card store who gave me a spoiler about the final episode in season 3. I'm totally convinced that by following a "no spoilers" rule here, my enjoyment of the show went up a hundred fold. I participated in discussions after I had seen each episode, but I would not allow my enjoyment of future episodes to be ruined. It is exactly the same in the Epics.
This I think would combine well with the powder keg or 24-civ rumble themes; either you get a European game with lots of intrigue or a map with EVERY civ using EVERY UU! Is that crazy enough for you? 
I would set this one up by generating a map in the editor and then removing all strategic resources by hand - unless someone knows of a better way to do this? This would probably would be most fun on Emperor as well. 
by the human, but I just don't see any way of surviving AW on deity. My AW game on emperor was tougher than many deity games I've played. Of course, sample size = 1, so I may be way off.
