Ruleset Discussion

[HUSch]

Indiansmoke I concur
If you play mps, you play for yourself and so you 've to live with your reputation (we meet at least another time), teams haven't it.
But I think the most want to play for fun and get the most from good/ successful plans in building wonders (like oracle in the last, I don't know what was more fun for SANCTA-members the building itself or the long pause which Cav needs) or attacking/winning cities (I remember a C3-DG at GWT where we won surprising 3/4 of the enemy cities).

 

[Indiansmoke]

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

Good lad

 

[Krill]

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....

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.

People always end up arguing over definitions...better to teach everyone what is an is not acceptable than to deal with the fallout in game once a mistake happens.

But I think the most want to play for fun and get the most from good/ successful plans in building wonders (like oracle in the last, I don't know what was more fun for SANCTA-members the building itself or the long pause which Cav needs).

For me it was figuring out it was possible to chop the Oracle in 1 turn and somehow still keep the economy rolling, instead of completely collapsing. Took me hours to get that balanced...the amount of pauses were the most annoying part of the game. April had 4, maybe 5 turns completed in that month alone because of pauses.

 

[obsolete]

Gifting a city to an ally when it is about to be taken in war, or to somehow gain an advantage is prohibited.

LOL, this just cracks me up. Just about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you do in this game is because it somehow is supposed to gain you an advantage. Or is this game just too easy for some?

Anyhow, I have to agree with IndianSmoke, I think most of those voting for simultaneous turns don't know what they are voting for. I forsee a lot of ing about "so&so just took advantage of double-movement exploit AGAIN!!!"

 

[Lord Parkin]

What about gifting a city to allow an ally to upgrade units? To me this seems perfectly okay, and has been done many times in many demogames before. Really, it's no different than gifting units to be upgraded, which is written into the game mechanics as allowable. So surely gifting cities for this purpose should be allowed.

I agree that gifting cities when they are about to be taken in war should be disallowed, though.

 

[obsolete]

I agree that gifting cities when they are about to be taken in war should be disallowed, though.

You will never come to any consensus on this. A SMART person who sees things coming ahead of time, will simply do it anyway. So where do you draw the line?

 

[BCLG100]

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.

Yes so if it does happen there has to be a consequence. CDZ is quite happy playing with honour rules but it is everyone else that wants to put in place a written structure etc but then no actual punishment if they're not enforced so just what is the point in having them? Yes people have accidents but even accidents should be regulated, a reload might not go the exact same way on the following turn, i.e. the combat odds could vary etc so there is obviously a point in reloading if that happens.

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....

And yet in the 3-4 years i have been playing i have seen people using highly suspect or underhand methods to alter the game in there favour, either by ignoring the rules or directly breaking them. Ignorance is not a defence.

No it is not more unlikely to happen, all it takes is one person to log in and break a rule and unless the other team mates are round his house it is unlikely to stop him.

TBH i see little point in this argument we've been having so far, no consensus has been reached at all and all that is now happened is that the argument has moved away from the pause issue, then on to the sequential/simultaneous issue and now we're having the punishment issue. In the meantime however nothing has been accomplished.

 

[akots]

Indeed, agree with BCLG, there are multiple ways to break the game in PitBoss and an example is as how one is going to control loading of the save by a player in the offline regime. That section always puzzled me. And it is true that the save can be opened offline without much problems under certain conditions.

How does this gets straightened out by reloading? Especially if done from the very start and regularly.

But certainly, inspection of team fora by the admins will eventually reveal this. Not immediately, it would have to take some time. IMO, this can be reliably detected within 5-10 turns after the fact and if the fact is repeated during this period of time, another 5-10 turns are needed to be assured that this is the case. And the temptation will be at its peak at times of war of course. How does anybody sane replay there 5 or 10 turns?

IMO, certainly, the team which breaks this rule has to be AI-ed or eliminated from the game by retirement. Either way is fine even if the actual damage might be minimal due to doing this at the time of peace.

There are other possibilities of abuse of game mechanics as rather clearly stated in the OP-posted rules which are not exhaustive but would seem to be sufficient. The game is quite complex and these violations sometimes are hard to spot.

Naivete of some of the players who "try to play PB for the past 3-4 years" (no personal pun intended) without knowing or understanding the mechanics of the game is essentially puzzling. Especially if such an opinion is expressed with considerable authority of a seasoned veteran.

Whereas reasonable opinions are dismissed by the very same personae without even slightest consideration in an absolutely impolite manner of speech.

While friendliness and good spirit intended for this competition by the organizers is highly appreciated, either there should be rules with punishment or no rules at all, just gentlemen agreeing to play a fair game. If gentleman is caught cheating, he must confess and withdraw on his own. To start with, that personae were not gentlemen since gentlemen are not supposed to cheat.

So, let us be THE tech gentlemen and pledge fair play and forget about the rules. Or be thorough and discuss every little punishment to be imposed on rule-breaking team.

Since Civ4 is quite a tough game requiring considerable planning forward for success, essentially even a minor punishment would lead to distortion of plans and would mean substantial disadvantage of the punished team which might even quit. Therefore, the admins of the game should be analyzing their materials regularly and with all due scrutiny. They also must have considerable experience and be adept at the issues of game mechanics to be able to detect rule violations even if those acts are unreported by the team which might suffer from these violations made by their rival.

 

[akots]

I agree that gifting cities when they are about to be taken in war should be disallowed, though.

Well, IIRC there was a situation in one of the PB games I was involved when there were two armies besieging the same city. Obviously, the owner was at war with both civs at that time. So, he decided and gifted the city to one of the player in exchange for peace. How is this against the rules and why it should be disallowed?

There are other situations like that.

The only thing which seems to be abusive in gifting cities is that keeping a civ alive indefinitely. And even that had been an issue of considerable debate in Civ3 ISDG. No clear decision was reached on the matter IIRC but such acts are always considered dastardly and bordering to abusive.

 

[akots]

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.

No difference whatsoever, but it will eliminate the subject of senseless dispute on the subject of double moving and city and unit gifting, etc. It is a minimal effort decision.

If map is balanced like it looks it is going to be, there is not much need for resource trading.

And you'd be surprised how much diplomacy can be in such an AW game! There were one PB game which was completely won by diplomacy around turn 120 or so with 4 teams playing. The leader of the team was Dynamic so it was obviously coupled with impeccable planning and management. But decisive blow was diplomatic. And there is no need to be unfriendly because AW is set just for convenience to prevent abuse of game mechanics. Also, tech rate will be slower because of lower trade income and expansion with large number of cities will be harder due to lack of foreign income.

Tech trading was obviously a joke but it might prevent certain exploits associated with espionage missions although these I believe were fixed with the latest patch.

 

[Earthling]

I don't think the discussion of gifting cities is at consistent with what the intention/history of that rule really seems to be.

Scenarios like exchanging cities for peace, or two teams being allied completely against a third team and both already at war, I do not think are the *intention of the rule and I would accept clarifications to say that's not so.

What the rule is after - and I think because this can/would/DID happen in previous demogames, is something like:

Civ A declares war on civ B and looks poised to completely dominate them. Civ C is a third and completely uninvolved civ who's at peace - and the players/team for civ B decide their situation is hopeless and just gift all TEN of their cities to Civ C, and then the players go to join Civ C's forums. So in-game, civ A can't continue the war because their units are kicked out of territory again and they'd have to DoW on Civ C.

In other words, I'd think the rule is specifically meant to deter that type of "kingmaker" or "ragequit" situation - not disallow gifting of border cities/surrendering cities for peace etc... This was what the rule appeared to be/SHOULD have been in the last BtS demogame and what I'd support now - no gifting cities for reasons like to kick units out of territory or blantantly set up a third civ to win just because your team is going to lose/quit.

 

[akots]

It is rather hard to make a clear line between these conditions you described. No easy answers here. IMO, Civ C should refuse. There is also a vassal option for this condition. This was again seen and done by this very CFC team in the Civ3 ISDG number 1 played in PTW. IIRC, CFC team was a vassal of another substantially more powerful team even though there was no official in-game vassalage. Vassalage in Civ4 is usually prohibited in MP games since it can be easily abused into nonsense.

On the other hand, there was a PBEM I played in Civ3 where player C at first refused the gift of multiple cities but then accepted and the game ended by him winning. For details you can check a spoiler here: http://www.civduelzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2103 and the tread of the game was here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=105764

This were a game between gentlemen and obviously, all three players were fine with the outcome and manner of how it were handled. As long as participants do not object, there is no point to make a rule about that and argue ad nauseum. Concept of fair play is absolutely subjective and individual.

 

[Earthling]

I don't see how it's hard to make a clear line between conditions at all. Giving your cities to a third/neutral party to skew the game or kick units out of borders during wartime is NOTHING like surrendering a border city for peace talks or something.

In other words, what I'm saying is while you could possibly have different views on whether one or both situations are ok, the Rule we make regarding this will probably be very clearly in its application to one, both, or neither type of scenario. I don't think that if a rule is finalized, hypothetically, about gifting cities to third parties as described that the Rule would then be unclear or misapplied in other situations.

I wasn't exactly clear on what went down at the end of the last demogame (BtS demogame) and it wasn't just this issue that seemed to matter, there was other controversy/some teams just ran out of players but I'm still under the impression that's the Intention behind this rule was. I'm hoping it wouldn't be an issue and would encourage my team not to make it an issue this game even if the option was there so I don't particularly worry too much about the rule on this myself, but it should be clear and straightforward regardless of what it is.

 

[akots]

Exactly same I wanted to say. There is no foreseeing of the ethical aspects of this or that city gifting deal. If all parties involved and concerned agree to that, why it should be disallowed by game rules? I beg your pardon but I don't see the point and don't understand the principle here. If rules are to be created for the sake of the rules without concern for actual gameplay, that might be done either but would seem to be a complete waste of time and effort apart from increasing postcount and server load.

Might be not a bad idea since I've set a goal of finally attaining the alluring 4000 postcount. Still 54 to go as of this moment.

 

[Irgy]

I don't see any disallowing of city gifting neccesary. There's no point making rules and penalties against rage-quit, because rage-quitters aren't going to pay much attention to them. King-making is just successful diplomacy from the made-king. In a game which is meant to include diplomacy then good on them. King-making is only a failure of games that don't want to have a diplomatic element.

If I was civ A and civ C accepted a city from civ B which I was about to capture, then I would consider that as good as a declaration of war by civ C. I would declare war on C and take the city anyway. If civ C doesn't want war with civ A they should have thought about that before accepting the city, and if civ C doesn't want war with civ A they should have thought about that before attacking into a strong alliance. The most civ A should lose is a turn from culture ejection, as civ C is unlikely to have any culture in that city (and if they do then giving it to them seems all the more reasonable).

Even gifting all your cities to another civ is not significantly different from allying with them. A well co-ordinated two civ alliance is stronger than a single civ controlling twice the cities, so I don't really see where the abuse comes in.

My opinion on any sort of rules is that if you can't draw a line then don't draw an ugly smudge to make up for it.

On the other hand for things which are genuinely and obviously cheating, like playing ahead from a save somehow or the optimising-moves-for-the-known-random-seed thing that someone was (quite possibly falsely) accused of in the last game, it's quite simple. Honor system, backed up by enforcement to the extent that it's possible, and in the case of proven cheating throw the book at them.

 

[Sommerswerd]

King-making is just successful diplomacy from the made-king.

Even gifting all your cities to another civ is not significantly different from allying with them.

I agree with this.

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

It seems to me that this is exactly what the admins tried to do last game... with disasterous results... Not the infraction mind you, but the choice/method of punishment/sanction. And it ended up sinking the whole team in the end.

I do agree with the overall concept however, that the best way to handle "punishment" is for all of us to accept that the admins will decide, if and when any "punishment" is needed, and what the "punishment" will be. And we all agree not to bring up the issue or argue or fight about it outside of our private forums. Just play-on and let the admins handle the disputes as impartial arbitrators. Less rules, more play.

I think the problem last game is that we were not all willing to keep quiet about the dispute and just let the admins decide. In the players' defense, the admins did not make a swift, clear ruling. And the game was paused while they ruled (possibly the most damaging part, in retrospect). We should always just keep playing and let them apply whatever "punishment" prospectively, if at all.

On another note, it really already seems like there is going to be alot of disagreement over the simultaneous turn/ double move issue. I would really rather not have a situation where you have to be an expert on the nuances of double move rules to be able to take the team's turn. That just further limits your team's turnplayer options, and risks necessitating pauses (as DaveShack discussed) or causes a team to quit because no one is enough of an expert to play the turn.

Maybe re-consider playing with sequential turns, and just use shorter turn timers.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I think the problem last game is that we were not all willing to keep quiet about the dispute and just let the admins decide. In the players' defense, the admins did not make a swift, clear ruling. And the game was paused while they ruled (possibly the most damaging part, in retrospect). We should always just keep playing and let them apply whatever "punishment" prospectively, if at all.

I believe the word you're looking for is retrospectively.

But yes, I agree with your point that over-long pauses are very damaging to the game.

On another note, it really already seems like there is going to be alot of disagreement over the simultaneous turn/ double move issue. I would really rather not have a situation where you have to be an expert on the nuances of double move rules to be able to take the team's turn. That just further limits your team's turnplayer options, and risks necessitating pauses (as DaveShack discussed) or causes a team to quit because no one is enough of an expert to play the turn.

No need to be an expert. In the first turn of war, it'll be decided whether you're playing in the first or last half of the turn. Then you just stick to that. Not that hard.

 

[HUSch]

Even gifting all your cities to another civ is not significantly different from allying with them. A well co-ordinated two civ alliance is stronger than a single civ controlling twice the cities, so I don't really see where the abuse comes in.

That is only if you have the same res and no big wonders.

[/QUOTE]
On the other hand for things which are genuinely and obviously cheating, like playing ahead from a save somehow or the optimising-moves-for-the-known-random-seed thing that someone was (quite possibly falsely) accused of in the last game, it's quite simple. Honor system, backed up by enforcement to the extent that it's possible, and in the case of proven cheating throw the book at them.[/QUOTE]
Against this I 'd vote for "new random seed" like in ISDG-final.

btw
without this I 'd suppose EVG (the enemy) thinks/cries about cheats very often and has real cause for that.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I believe the word you're looking for is retrospectively.

No, I did mean prospectively as in relating to or taking effect in the future, as opposed to retrospectively, which means related to or affecting things in the past.

The reason that "punishment"/sanctions should be applied prospectively and not retrospectively, is because when punishments are applied on or in the past (by reloading saves, invalidating moves, re-doing turns etc.), the game has to be paused until the admins make a ruling. This is because there is no point in continuing the game when everything might be undone with a re-do or reload.

When the game is paused indefinitely, frustration builds, interest dwindles, tempers flare, and fingers are pointed. Bottom line... people quit.

Applying punishments prospectively means that the punishment involves the future, rather than turns that are already played. Past turns are treated as water under the bridge, play continues, as normal while the admins deliberate, and they make a ruling like "OK we have decided that as punishment for past exploit abuse, team A will set their research to 0% for 10 turns, then gift all the gold to team B."

Then that's it...decision is made and play continues... no posting about it in the UN... No whining, No complaining... Aw Mr. Kimble I have to go to the bathroom... nothing... THERE IS NO BATHROOM!

No need to be an expert. In the first turn of war, it'll be decided whether you're playing in the first or last half of the turn. Then you just stick to that. Not that hard.

This post by Krill and This post by Indiansmoke are pefect illustrations of how complicated and unweildy simultaneous turns are really going to be. I don't think it is as simple as "whoever moves first in the war is first"... problem solved.

 

[Indiansmoke]

And yet in the 3-4 years i have been playing i have seen people using highly suspect or underhand methods to alter the game in there favour, either by ignoring the rules or directly breaking them. Ignorance is not a defence.

No it is not more unlikely to happen, all it takes is one person to log in and break a rule and unless the other team mates are round his house it is unlikely to stop him.

BCLG you are a veteran and a great player in this game and I am certain that this game can benefit greatly from your input and your participation.

So if you think that some short of official punishment is needed for braking the rules then I am sure you know what you are talking about and why you are requesting that.

All I said is that I have not seen someone repetedly braking the rules on purpose. If you have witnessed that then fair enough.

I will say this and rest my case like a good lad I am.....My opinion on the subject is that we need clear rules and a gentelsman's spirit as punishement will lead to unbalance and premature/unsatisfying game ending.