Ruleset Discussion

[Lord Parkin]

Here is the ruleset from a past MTDG at CFC. Please post below if you want to suggest any updates/revisions/additions to this ruleset. It's a few years old, so there will probably be a few adjustments needed.

Note that the house rules for this game will be incorporated into this ruleset as well - namely nukes being banned, and civic/religion swap spy missions being banned.

Anyone from any team should feel free to contribute to this discussion (but please stay on topic). The purpose of this thread is to get all the ideas in one place so we can finalize a good rule set as quickly and efficiently as possible.

All suggestions for alterations should be made in this thread by 4 June 2012 at 11.59pm UTC. After this date, the new ruleset will be rewritten with adjustments, and teams will have a few days to vote either "yes" or "no" on this ruleset. If it passes, the rewritten version will become the official ruleset for this game.

1 Out of Game Actions

1.1 -- Team Espionage
Using external forms of intelligence gathering against opposing teams is forbidden.
example: Entering Team Forums, joining multiple teams using different accounts, actively petitioning other players for information, looking around on the CFC (or a 3rd party website) image database for screenshots and save uploads, or anything else deemed as deliberate espionage is not tolerated will be harshly dealt with.

1.2 -- Screenshot Trading
Screenshots taken in-game of a city, minimap, or anything else may only be given, traded, or exchanged to other teams once one of the pair knows paper.

1.3 -- Save Manipulation
Editing the save file (with or without a utility) is not allowed. Any actions that would allow you to edit or view the save file of another team is not allowed.
​

2 In Game Actions

2.1 -- Suicide Training
Knowingly sacrificing a unit to an ally in order to yield experience points to the victorious unit is forbidden.
​

3 In Game Gifts

3.1 –- Military Unit Gifting
Gifting/receiving units for the purpose of fighting an enemy while in an ally's territory who isn't at war with them, and then gifting it back to avoid it being killed is prohibited.
Great People are excepted from this rule, and may be gifted at any time.

3.2 -– Naval Unit Gifting
A team may never gift units loaded in a naval vessel to another team, nor may they gift a loaded naval vessel.

3.3 –- Double Move Gifting
Units that have attacked in a turn are not allowed to be gifted to any other civilization.

3.4 –- City Gifting
Gifting a city to an ally when it is about to be taken in war, or to somehow gain an advantage is prohibited. Gifting cities are only allowed as gifts of goodwill and should not be abused to deny right of conquest or to keep a civilization alive indefinitely and out of the hands of an aggressor.
​

4 Game Procedure

4.1 -- Turn Timer
The PitBoss server will give each team 24 hours in which to play the save and pass it on to the next team. If a team is unable to play in time, they may post a request for an extension in the turn-tracker thread, and state the reason they believe it should be granted. AFTER the extension request and rational have been posted in the turn tracker, that team may then pause the game.
The game may remain paused up to 120 hours, at which point any team may un-pause the game so play may resume.
An official vote to “continue sooner” may be posted by any team in the turn-tracker thread. Each such vote by a team will reduce the 120 hour extension by 24 hours.

4.2 -- Awareness
If you discover a rules violation it is your duty to inform all participants (via Game Forum) of the violation or the solicitation thereof by any player.

4.3 -- New Exploits
If you discover a new exploit it is your duty to inform all participants (via Game Forum). Amendments for banning newly discovered exploits will require a majority vote.

4.4 -- Voting
After the game has commenced votes are tallied by team, not by individuals within the teams. Three-fifths (3/5) Majority.

4.5 -- Punishments for Violations
Violations of these rules will be dealt with through the use of various in-game sanctions decided upon by Team Vote. Possible punishments include: Gold Payment, exclusion of a team member for a certain amount of turns, a formal warning, or anything else deemed appropriate by a majority vote. A Team Member has the right not to be tried twice for the same infraction (i.e. double jeopardy).

4.6 -- Defeated Teams
If a team is defeated, any player on that team is permitted to join another team. These "refugee" players are free to share any information from their old team with their new team. This includes any images or screenshots or treaty documents that they "salvaged upon fleeing from the burning rubble of their last city." They may NOT engage in team espionage by reporting information on their new team to any other team. Additionally, defeated players may opt out of the remainder of the game.
​

 

[Lord Parkin]

Added a deadline to the first post, so we can keep this moving along. Please make any suggestions for changes/additions to the ruleset by 4 June 2012. After this, we will rewrite the ruleset (if necessary), and have teams vote "yes" or "no" on the rewritten version. If the vote passes, the rewritten version will become our official ruleset for the game.

 

[Kloreep]

1.2 -- Screenshot Trading
Screenshots taken in-game of a city, minimap, or anything else may only be given, traded, or exchanged to other teams once one of the pair knows paper.

So... we instead trade the same information through painstakingly written descriptions?

This just seems too fuzzy to me. I appreciate the spirit of linking it to in-game map trading capability. But practically speaking it mostly just sounds like a PITA, frankly.

 

[Lord Parkin]

It's an old ruleset, and I agree that seems a bit of a pointless rule.

How's this instead: "screenshots can be traded between players after they have contact"?

 

[Kloreep]

Yes, that's my personal opinion (haven't consulted with team). Sorry, should have been clearer.

 

[Kloreep]

I would think this would go without saying, but perhaps not, so to be sure, a contact rule would be good:

-Teams will not make diplomatic contact (meeting privately to discuss the game, game-related deals, etc.) until they have met in-game.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Hmm, surprised that wasn't already in there... but yeah, good addition.

 

[2metraninja]

Also in conjunction to what Kloreep had proposed, I would propose rule that teams dont exchange maps and screenshots before it is possible in-game (paper).

 

[Lord Parkin]

Also in conjunction to what Kloreep had proposed, I would propose rule that teams dont exchange maps and screenshots before it is possible in-game (paper).

In conjunction? Do you mean in opposition? Because those are two mutually exclusive rules.

The way I look at it is, teams are going to be able to describe the territory in words if they're determined enough. Thus limiting screenshots until after players have Paper doesn't really accomplish anything.

 

[2metraninja]

One thing is to say Team A is our neighbor to the west, other is to send screenshots where all the relief is visible plus all the resources, city positions and garrisons.

Just like in the real world, where smart and determined persons can go around the exact written rules (like printing 1000's of pages of WinXP source and then carrying them in 10's of big bags abroad and then 100's of volunteers typing the source back in computers once they are in Europe, because the written law forbids only electronic version of that same source be exported). People can be specific and use words and time and diplomacy to describe specifics about maps, but then this takes time, efforts, skills, thenit takes the receiving party to put efforts, time and imagination to recreate in their minds the picture so they can make plans based on this information.

More frivolous compare would be if you say to your friends "My girlfriend have nice big boobs" au contrare to actually showing your friends pictures of your naked girlfriend There is distinct difference in the approach and the effect, right?

 

[Majic]

Isn't it pretty much the same discussion as the mod-discussion ? It takes time and effort to decode the demographic and espionage numbers, same as it takes time and effort to discribe and figure out a screenshot. Some teams if not all will if neccesary try to discribe their map in diplomacy if screenshots are not allowed.

 

[HUSch]

4.6 and 1.2 are not clear
if the 1. team lost with axes or mace, no paper, no infos or what?

btw
2met
everybody can violate the rules, the admins don't know all.

 

[talonschild]

The paper idea is a good one, mirroring in-game. Sure, you can try to talk about terrain and stuff beforehand, paper just makes it easier. Like in Real Life. Enforcement - ah, I leave that to team captains. After a civ goes bust, all is declassified. Doesn't matter if they were wiped out by barbarians on turn 1. What difference does it make?

 

[Aivoturso]

4.4 -- Voting
After the game has commenced votes are tallied by team, not by individuals within the teams. Three-fifths (3/5) Majority.

In my opinion not all decisions should be decided by simple majority. Suppose there is a majority alliance in the game and a rule violation happens. According to 4.5 punishment would be decided by team vote. Even if people try to be just, ingame allegiances can have impact on severity of the punishment.

For that matter, if any decisions that impact directly the game are put to vote (punishments, rule set amendments etc.), the vote cannot happen completely outside the diplomacy. IMO, even if the voting system would not get abused, even a suspicion that it may have can be enough to severely disrupt the game.

IMO, game impacting decisions should be decided so that there is no room for in-game manouvering. Basically I see two options here. First is that any game impacting decisions will be decided by unanimous team vote (or possibly by decisive majority, traditionally 5/6 in many national parliaments). Second option is to leave these to be decided by sole Admin decision. Combinations of these methods are also possible e.g. punishments by Admin decision, rule set amendments by unanimous vote.

On the other hand, decisions that do not really impact the game, could be put to majority vote (e.g. will the game be paused for the Holidays).

In a nutshell, I believe that making major game changing decisions should not be left to simple majority. Minor decision however can be.

 

[Kloreep]

On the Paper rule:

So if I go into Paint and draw a 5-year-old's style recreation of what I see in-game, is that kosher, or are teams forbidden from trading any image files - be they screenshots or not - until Paper?

If I make an ASCII map of an area, e.g:

GGHPDD
GGGPPD
HhPPPD

Can I trade that pre-paper?

As I said, I appreciate the general idea, but in practice it's fuzzy and highly circumventable.



On 4.4: I agree having the teams vote on rules after the game starts is suspect and bad. That said, if the decision is in fact left to the teams, I don't see a better way to do it than one vote per team.

IMO, anything we fail to get hammered out beforehand would better be left to admin fiat. Better a dictatorial but unbiased decision than one made from positions within the game. (Perhaps a couple other mods/respected civ community members might volunteer to join a "Supreme Court" with R_Rolo to make any post-start rules rulings that are necessary?)

 

[grant2004]

I enjoy the no screenshot trading until paper concept. I've played with that once before, and remember finding the discussions that resulted from that rule very entertaining during the early part of the game. Nobody was anal enough to spell out exactly what the territory they could see looked like to another team. They gave generalities "We're on an island" or said what resources they had, but not necessarily where. Based on vague descriptions and our own observations of the map we then had to piece together our own idea of what the map looked like. Which wasn't totally correct. It was like looking at an old map of Earth where some cartographer put the great lakes in Tennessee. We had the rough idea, and it was good enough.

As for clarity of the rule, the way I remember interpreting it is that only one team needs paper, the same way map trading works in game. And for enforcement. That's not such a big deal. Nobody is going to win or lose this game over a screenshot. And I don't think teams are going to tolerate people cheating for such trivial gains. This is merely a way to add a little more flavor and fun to the game, I'm all for it.

As for what constitutes a majority. I prefer having a single definition of this, so there is no debate about if a vote is 'major' or 'minor' a simple majority should be sufficient for any issue that arises. I expect that most teams will act fairly on these votes, because even if their ally breaks a rule, they won't want to give them a pass and invite people to break that rule again to their team's detriment.

A high requirement for a vote to pass (5/6) will create more problems than it solves, especially with the number of teams we have. 5/6 is 7.5 teams out of 9. Meaning at most we could have 1 dissenting vote in such a structure. I think it's more likely that 2 teams will vote to prevent a fair ruling, than 5 teams will vote in favor of an unfair one.

 

[Aivoturso]

A high requirement for a vote to pass (5/6) will create more problems than it solves, especially with the number of teams we have. 5/6 is 7.5 teams out of 9. Meaning at most we could have 1 dissenting vote in such a structure. I think it's more likely that 2 teams will vote to prevent a fair ruling, than 5 teams will vote in favor of an unfair one.

The two major issues where I see simple majority vote is problematic are punishments for rule violations and any ruleset amendments. Honestly, I feel that any majority rule for both is inherently risky idea.

I believe that it is quite unfair to leave deciding judgements on rule violations to players at all. If severity of punishment is voted for by the teams, there is always going to be diplomatic repercussions. That is how human mind works. Even when trying conciously avoid your judgement being clouded by these kinds of things, your subconcious does not listen. And as I said before, it is not actually necessary for any such decision to be unfair. Just the doubt that it might have been can seriously damage the game. That's why I'd rather leave judgements to Admin(s) if possible. Obviously we can, before the game begins, agree on a general guideline to help admins on the decision.

As for ruleset amendments, I am tempted to say that I'd rather not change rules at all during the game. However, I am aware that unexpected things tend to happen. Especially if you're counting it not to happen. Therefore I believe we should prepare for that eventuality. IMO, any change to rules is not fair unless everyone playing does not agree it is fair. Hence, my preference would be that changes to the ruleset are to be decided by unanimous decision. 5/6 or 3/4 majority or such is IMO also bearable. Though, even if one team feels wronged by the change in or addition to pre-agreed rules, it can hurt the game.

 

[YossarianLives]

I enjoy the no screenshot trading until paper concept. I've played with that once before, and remember finding the discussions that resulted from that rule very entertaining during the early part of the game. Nobody was anal enough to spell out exactly what the territory they could see looked like to another team. They gave generalities "We're on an island" or said what resources they had, but not necessarily where. Based on vague descriptions and our own observations of the map we then had to piece together our own idea of what the map looked like. Which wasn't totally correct. It was like looking at an old map of Earth where some cartographer put the great lakes in Tennessee. We had the rough idea, and it was good enough.

This is also how I feel. No image files going between teams until paper is discovered.

How about a rule against hiding your research? In other words, no consistently changing to your desired tech right before the turn flips, then back to a "dummy" tech at the start of the new turn.

 

[OT4E]

Gifting a city in espionage purposes must be banned!!! Gifting a city and returning it back causes many exploits, please restrict city gifting or prohibit at all!

 

[Inao]

City gifting should be allowed only at the end of a war, as a peace condition. Of course fake war should be forbidden.
I agree with the rule forbidding screenshot exchange before paper. Any other ways to precisely describe the map should be consider as cheating the rule. In my opinion, it's the intentions behind the rules that must be respected.