Ruleset Discussion

[akots]

Based on all preceding discussion if I might suggest to play the game with Always War and Technology Trading turned ON. This would get rid of most of the somewhat absurd situations you are trying to describe here.

 

[Krill]

thx Krill, interesting post, i 've a note of understanding to
Civ R can make a double move (can it move in civ M - time/turnhalf) or when should/can the neutral civs move?

Civ R can move at any time, but if it declares war, or gifts during the wrong phase of the turn, that is an illegal move. Basically Civ R can not move units that are relevant to the war until the correct turn phase.

 

[akots]

Also, with double move argument, it will be just easier to prohibit logging in out of turn. Or indeed, don't play simultaneous and stockpile enough supplies for the game to last for 3 or may be 4 years considering pauses and other breaks.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Based on all preceding discussion if I might suggest to play the game with Always War and Technology Trading turned ON. This would get rid of most of the somewhat absurd situations you are trying to describe here.

What difference does Tech Trading On make if it's Always War?

By the way, I'm against Always War regardless of Tech Trading settings, because it limits any resource trades / open border trades / etc, essentially limiting diplomacy to military talks only. While I'm sure some hardcore players would be in favour of that, there are a lot of people like myself who enjoy friendly diplomatic banter, and Always War pretty much kills that. This is a democracy game, not a ladder game.

 

[DaveShack]

I prefer to win by good play, not by invoking rules.

Meaning?

What will "punishments" achieve? What does complaining about pauses, double moves, teams switching their technology at the end of the turn, "unfair" gifting, etc. achieve? Winning by rule, IMO. Last game, we had a team that complained about another team switching tech (thus avoiding espionage) -- so what if they didn't think of it themselves... We had a team that complained about another team taking too long to play turns -- try having 90% of your team get hit by RL issues and then see how fast you play. There was a complaint about perceived "bad luck" that ended up chasing off a turnplayer who was innocent (or at least never proven guilty) and ending the game.

I have yet to see a legitimate reason for complaint, in all the MTDG's I've played in. Lots of illegitimate complaints... so why the draconian rules approach?

 

[BCLG100]

What difference does Tech Trading On make if it's Always War?

By the way, I'm against Always War regardless of Tech Trading settings, because it limits any resource trades / open border trades / etc, essentially limiting diplomacy to military talks only. While I'm sure some hardcore players would be in favour of that, there are a lot of people like myself who enjoy friendly diplomatic banter, and Always War pretty much kills that. This is a democracy game, not a ladder game.

Don't think you caught the sarcasm there LP....

@ Dave, I think darkness was meaning if we have rules we also need to have some form of punishment, else what is the point in having the rules? These rules should be established before the game starts.

 

[pindicator]

Krill, i have one question with the ruleset you presented. What happens if Civ M & N are both attacking Civ P, but then Civ N decides to backstab Civ M while still at war? (Say Civ P's military has been defeated, the war is in mop-up, and Civ N wants to gain the element of surprise by attacking Civ M before that civ is ready.) With sequential moves within the FWP or SWP that the two attacking civs share, it would prevent this from being an utter mess.

But what happens to the turn order afterwards, with 3 civs all at war against each other? Would the turn order then be split into thirds, with Civ M & Civ N using the FWP & SWP rules within the timeframe of their side of the turn to determine who goes first and second between Civs M & N? (I imagine Civ P would be first overall or last overall depending on whether they took FWP or SWP in the initial 2 v 1 war.)

 

[Earthling]

I like Krill's proposed rules regarding pretty much everything in a *two*-party war. I do not agree with that ruleset when wars start to involve three or more teams; I feel the third/fourth/etc.. team declaring war should be able to do so whenever at their choice and only then be locked into that turn order from then on.

Regarding pauses/"penalties"/other rules:

I am REALLY against the idea of "penalties" or "gold payments" for various things. I understand the concern over limiting pausing; I'd rather just do something like give a team x official timeouts they can use at any time, with the expectation of doing so only when really serious, and after that they could only pause by consensus of all teams after asking publicly. Don't try to set up some system for people to "buy time" etc... And regarding punishment, I don't see a way that really works out to have codified in the rules in advance; looking at what happened the last demogame (though I wasn't around anymore at the time) I highly doubt any similar situations would be resolved by "punishment rules" in advance. Let final admin decisions be made on something really serious; minor disciplinary things like if one player logs in and does something wrong handled on their own too.

I would be happy to discourage/rule out some of the espionage-related things that came out of last game but then again I've never been a huge fan of the whole espionage system anyway so I don't really care if it's even just turned off or something.

 

[DaveShack]

@ Dave, I think darkness was meaning if we have rules we also need to have some form of punishment, else what is the point in having the rules? These rules should be established before the game starts.

Yes, I understood that. One point of having some minimal set of rules is to clearly identify what isn't tolerated in the MP community. I would agree with that. Most people are here to have fun and are like me -- rules are a necessary evil but I'm not too bothered by the possibility of them being broken. What does bother me is the small but extremely vocal subset of the players who often want lots of rules, so they can then complain and try to impose punishment the moment an opponent even seems to break one.

There are very few things I would personally consider punishable in one of these games. Getting access to more than one team forum would violate both the game and the forum rules, and will get the perpetrator(s) a ban. There are a few really egregious exploits of game mechanics that would warrant compensatory actions (if possible) or a rollback.

Pausing should not be punishable, unless a reasonable unbiased person finds that there is no possible justification. Think about this -- what do you do in a SP game when you first meet a new civ, most importantly the first new civ? Do you stop a couple of minutes to consider whether to attack and see if you can pick up a first victim? In the MTDG world, you find out who it is, spread the news to your team, discuss what to do, send a message, wait for a reply, and then finish your turn. If contact has been delayed by the map and you have alphabet already, it is to your team's advantage to trade immediately, if the opportunity presents itself. You can't let 2 turns pass by waiting for a reply if you want to get the most benefit. In sequential turns it might be 5 days till you play again, but not in simul. There will be things that are make or break, that have to be decided before hitting enter. And don't get me started on the subject of turnplayers who might have to grab their passports and fly for 14 hours at any time. Suppose my team has 3 competent turn players but all 3 of them are hit by something the same day, perhaps we don't know till just before the turn ends. You can bet I'm going to punch pause first and then post in the forum. A turn skipped at just the wrong time could mean death for a team.

We should only have the minimum necessary rules.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I tend to agree with Dave. Having a short list of things which are not allowed is fine. But going and bureaucratically crafting a long list of punishments to be applied in every conceivable circumstance doesn't achieve anything positive. All it does is to make it so that a few extremely litigious individuals can ruin the fun of the game for everyone else by harassing other teams and the admins to enact punishments. That only serves to kill interest in the game. The game runs much smoother if everyone just takes a deep breath and patiently works things out in the context of the situation, rather than having a list of punishments which will inevitably be lobbied for by some individuals who see a benefit for their team in doing so, regardless of the circumstance.

 

[Darkness]

@ Dave, I think darkness was meaning if we have rules we also need to have some form of punishment, else what is the point in having the rules? These rules should be established before the game starts.

Exactly!

We should only have the minimum necessary rules.

I completely agree.

I just think that it is vital to also define the penalties/punishments for breaking of each rule before the game starts. That way it is all set and defined and then there shouldn't be any haggling and negotiating about a punishment that is given if a rule is broken.

Then it is simply a matter of determination of guilt by the game admin (which is probably not nearly as simple as it sounds) and then just looking up the punishment in the rules and applying that punishment.


I sincerely hope these punishments will not be needed. But IMHO, it is better to be safe then to be sorry...

 

[Krill]

Krill, i have one question with the ruleset you presented. What happens if Civ M & N are both attacking Civ P, but then Civ N decides to backstab Civ M while still at war? (Say Civ P's military has been defeated, the war is in mop-up, and Civ N wants to gain the element of surprise by attacking Civ M before that civ is ready.) With sequential moves within the FWP or SWP that the two attacking civs share, it would prevent this from being an utter mess.

But what happens to the turn order afterwards, with 3 civs all at war against each other? Would the turn order then be split into thirds, with Civ M & Civ N using the FWP & SWP rules within the timeframe of their side of the turn to determine who goes first and second between Civs M & N? (I imagine Civ P would be first overall or last overall depending on whether they took FWP or SWP in the initial 2 v 1 war.)

This rule was only designed for 2 party wars, with multiple civs on each party. It isn't designed to deal with 3 party wars (perhaps the easiest way to enforce and for each team to do would be a 72 hour turn, 24 hours per phase, and each party playing sequentially).

On the backstab, it's fairly simple to understand what would likely work, or not work. Either log in early (before the other team) and declare war, and then follow the rules as above to make sure the correct phase split is followed if it is a 2 party war, or if it is a three party war, probably best to split the turns into 3 phases. Who moved first on the previous turn should be documented anyway, because even if it is a mop up and they have units together, the attacks are still in a sequential environment.

I like Krill's proposed rules regarding pretty much everything in a *two*-party war. I do not agree with that ruleset when wars start to involve three or more teams; I feel the third/fourth/etc.. team declaring war should be able to do so whenever at their choice and only then be locked into that turn order from then on.

Everytime that has been tried it has been a nightmare to follow. 4 teams in a war, 48 hour turn timer, 12 hours per split. And if that split is when you are supposed to be sleeping...blah, not fun. Also, it forces some teams to take the majority damage in an attack (ie first team to attack has to have the catapults by gifting), in which case the rules are starting to have a large impact on the diplomacy of the game; you always want to be the one playing last in the sequence of your teams.

The way they declare isn't changed, it is just that it keeps the game flowing, as each phase is only sequential when it comes to the actual attacks, but the rest of the time it is still simultaneous, so the game continues to flow. When you start adding multiple hard phases into the game, it drastically slows it down. With 6 teams, you can go from a turn every day/2 days, to a turn a week quite quickly, and that kills the participation. As the rule is written, it requires some co-ordination between teams if they are in the same theatre (if they aren't it really doesn't matter).

 

[Indiansmoke]

I don't think it is necesary to have punishment for braking the rules, just clear cut rules that are easy to follow and cover all aspects.

In case of a rule brake a reload should resolve the issue. I know it could be open to abuse but this is something we must put faith on as punishment will only lead to game imbalance.


Regarding the multiple civs at war....pausing the timer for the next person to play is the ONLY way. 12 hour or 16 hour for every team is not good and it leads to loads of missed or sloppy turns and eventually to game quiting.

 

[BCLG100]

Yes, I understood that. One point of having some minimal set of rules is to clearly identify what isn't tolerated in the MP community. I would agree with that. Most people are here to have fun and are like me -- rules are a necessary evil but I'm not too bothered by the possibility of them being broken. What does bother me is the small but extremely vocal subset of the players who often want lots of rules, so they can then complain and try to impose punishment the moment an opponent even seems to break one.

There are very few things I would personally consider punishable in one of these games. Getting access to more than one team forum would violate both the game and the forum rules, and will get the perpetrator(s) a ban. There are a few really egregious exploits of game mechanics that would warrant compensatory actions (if possible) or a rollback.

Pausing should not be punishable, unless a reasonable unbiased person finds that there is no possible justification. Think about this -- what do you do in a SP game when you first meet a new civ, most importantly the first new civ? Do you stop a couple of minutes to consider whether to attack and see if you can pick up a first victim? In the MTDG world, you find out who it is, spread the news to your team, discuss what to do, send a message, wait for a reply, and then finish your turn. If contact has been delayed by the map and you have alphabet already, it is to your team's advantage to trade immediately, if the opportunity presents itself. You can't let 2 turns pass by waiting for a reply if you want to get the most benefit. In sequential turns it might be 5 days till you play again, but not in simul. There will be things that are make or break, that have to be decided before hitting enter. And don't get me started on the subject of turnplayers who might have to grab their passports and fly for 14 hours at any time. Suppose my team has 3 competent turn players but all 3 of them are hit by something the same day, perhaps we don't know till just before the turn ends. You can bet I'm going to punch pause first and then post in the forum. A turn skipped at just the wrong time could mean death for a team.

We should only have the minimum necessary rules.

That's fine, if the pause rule is included- which i am not a big fan of. Then there should be a punishment for breaking it. I agree that we should have as few rules as possible which is probably why i'm advocating for not including the pausing as it adds needless complications but if the majority want that then it's fine.

For instance, what if during a war someone continually accidently makes a DM? is the turn constantly rolled back and if so does the offender get punished or if it is an accident is play allowed to continue but what if it is repetitive at what point is the offender punished by say, having his civ kicked to AI for a certain number of turns?

 

[Lord Parkin]

For instance, what if during a war someone continually accidently makes a DM? is the turn constantly rolled back and if so does the offender get punished or if it is an accident is play allowed to continue but what if it is repetitive at what point is the offender punished by say, having his civ kicked to AI for a certain number of turns?

Booting a civ to AI for a certain number of turns is an awful punishment, as it effectively kills the interest of a whole team at the fault of one individual. The obvious solution if such a circumstance arose would be to temporarily ban that particular player from acting as turn player for a certain period of time. No more, no less. Let someone else on the team step up to the plate. Deal with the cause of the problem, don't go sabotaging whole teams just out of some sort of primal lust for punishment.

 

[BCLG100]

Booting a civ to AI for a certain number of turns is an awful punishment, as it effectively kills the interest of a whole team at the fault of one individual. The obvious solution if such a circumstance arose would be to temporarily ban that particular player from acting as turn player for a certain period of time. No more, no less. Let someone else on the team step up to the plate. Deal with the cause of the problem, don't go sabotaging whole teams just out of some sort of primal lust for punishment.

No it doesn't, people cannot emphasise how this is a team game one minute and then not a team game another, the team itself has a duty to moderate their actions, have additional turn players and ensure stuff like this doesn't happen. I am not meaning that this is the first line of punishment but that it should be included in say a 3 strikes you're out sort of rule.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Well either way, I highly doubt we'll see anyone continually abusing the double move thing, because it's so easy to spot and rectify. Maybe there'll be an accident once or twice, but then we'll just reload and continue. I just can't see it happening that someone deliberately does it over and over again, because it gains them no advantage (reloads) and only serves to lower their reputation. No benefit to it.

 

[Darkness]

I don't think it is necesary to have punishment for braking the rules, just clear cut rules that are easy to follow and cover all aspects.

Why even have rules if there is no punishment for breaking them? There is always the possibility of one person trying to gain an unfair advantage, so let's just be prepared for that.

This seems a lot like what we call in the Netherlands "Struisvogelpolitiek". Ostrich-tendencies. Just stick your head in the sand and don't notice anything, and then problems will automatically pass you by...

 

[Indiansmoke]

Why even have rules if there is no punishment for breaking them? There is always the possibility of one person trying to gain an unfair advantage, so let's just be prepared for that.

This seems a lot like what we call in the Netherlands "Struisvogelpolitiek". Ostrich-tendencies. Just stick your head in the sand and don't notice anything, and then problems will automatically pass you by...

In the 3-4 years I have been playing pitbosses I have never seen someone braking the rules repetedly on purpose. I have seen people unaware of the rules or rules that did not cover many situations, but not people trying to brake them on purpose.

This is even more unlikely to happen here as this is a team game. So it will have to be a group of players that decide to brake them on purpose not a single person....

 

[Darkness]

In the 3-4 years I have been playing pitbosses I have never seen someone braking the rules repetedly on purpose. I have seen people unaware of the rules or rules that did not cover many situations, but not people trying to brake them on purpose.

This is even more unlikely to happen here as this is a team game. So it will have to be a group of players that decide to brake them on purpose not a single person....

OK, have it your way. I'll shut up now.