Ruleset loophole discussion & proposal

[Earthling]

There is a loophole in the current ruleset that I find unacceptable, regarding combat and double moves.

I wish to make the following changes, and propose that we put this discussion up to vote in the main forum. Of course, if you all don't see the need for it then the proposal could stop here I guess, first step is discussing it amongst ourselves and then seeing if other teams should vote.

Red is my commentary

5 Double Moves

5.1 -- Turn Split

Turns will be split between two warring teams/alliances as follows:
Phase 0 ... 40:00 - 39:00 ... Team 2
Phase 1 ... 39:00 40:00 - 20:00 ... Team 1
Phase 2 ... 20:00 - 0:00 ... Team 2

The method of determining who gets which part of the turn is 2 fold:
1. the parties agree between themselves to an equitable split. If this is not possible then:
2. The team that moved last in the turn of the declaration of war will get the last part of the turn.

If a party finishes the turn early, they can signify this by a post in a specified thread indicating they have finished their turn and the next party can play their turn. They do NOT have to end turn, but they may end turn to signify that they have finished their turn in lieu of public posting.

Phase 0 is skipped if none of Team 2's units survived a battle the previous turn.

5.2 -- Allowed actions

In phase 0 belonging to the designated party, the following actions are legal:
Promoting any unit.

No phase zero for promoting units exists

In phase 1 and 2 of the turn belonging to the designated party, the following actions are legal:
Moving any unit,
Promoting any unit,
Upgrading any unit,
Gifting a unit,
Drafting any unit.

This respective part of the turns for each team is the only part of the turn that these actions are legal.

If anyone uses auto-promote, or auto-moves, to gain an unlawful advantage, the Game Administrator may order a reload or have the offending units deleted from the game.

Slaving, changing city builds, and changing tiles worked, is legal during ANY part of the turn.

Reasoning: Don't know how this slipped through as it is, but there is a clear tactic/exploit made overpowered in these rules that I do not agree with. Namely, any team could "save" promotions on their units - not giving units promotions with their experience, to use promotions to heal when needed in a war against another team.

Of course, this is an unavoidable mechanic normally and I am not against the tactic as a whole, nor would I feel it would even be practical to try to outlaw.

The problem is that the ruleset gives one team a "free" time period just for promoting units, which seems rather unbalanced. Now, it may be that the intention behind the rule seemed to want to refer to units in battle the turn directly before, but this is NOT made clear. There is nothing that states that "saved up" promotions couldn't be used, and this would be almost impossible to police.

So while in general the first team to move in a simultaneous turns war may have a little advantage, an ability to exploit promotions and keep your army healed much stronger than an enemy is gamebreaking enough, and I'd rather have some sort of clarification.

As far as I can determine the game mechanic works the same for both teams regarding saved promotions; you can use a saved promotion on the same turn you attack with a unit - after the attack. With this taken into consideration I see no reason for an additional period of free promotions for the team playing later in the turn; indeed, it would only give them a chance to gain promotions from experience they did NOT have the prior turn and thus potentially unbalance a combat.

Examples:

A) What I think the Intention behind the rule was.

Civ X attacks first and damages a unit of Civ Y. Civ Y was at 4/5 experience and is now at 5/5 experience, and the unit sits around to heal, but doesn't get to promote this turn, so they promote during the "free" phase.

B) Example of how the rule is loopholed:

Civ Y is second in the turn, with a unit at 4/5 experience. They kill a unit of Civ X, and then, in the "Phase 0" portion immediately promote the unit, so it heals and isn't as vulnerable to counterattack.

C) Works for both teams

Civ Z has all of their units at 5/2, because they have not promoted their units. Civ Z attacks Civ W, and on the same turn, after attacking, they promote because they have unused promotions. (they could also do this on that "Phase 0") as well.

In short, I see the Phase 0 as it is as unnecessary, possibly unbalancing, and unpoliceable, especially so if teams are allowed to tactically promote units, which I can't possibly see that being ruled out.

I'd also be willing to bring this before the general forum for all teams if there is support and agreement and you all don't disagree/think I read things wrong.

 

[DaveMcW]

Personally I think denying A is a worse exploit than allowing B. Is there any way we can rule out both?

C is not a double move exploit, it works in sequential too.

 

[Earthling]

Well I think removing the whole "Phase 0" removes both A and B entirely.

Again I guess I should have noticed this earlier, mostly though there was so much talk about double move rules/dividing the timer and all that I didn't think how this could work.

That said, my opinion might not be the one a majority of people agree with. Anyway, the one thing I KNOW teams will use anyway is tactic "C" - there's no rule against keeping units at say, 5/2 experience until you want to promote tactically. And there's no way such a rule would be made/enforced. But this should, as far as I can tell, work the same for both teams in one turn - if they've saved a promotion like that either team can promote whenever they want.

So I see that "phase 0" as maybe redundant at best; possibly an unfair advantage/odd balance if I'm right otherwise.

Edit: Also I should mention, that again I think the "Intention" of the original ruleset was in the spirit of approximation to SP sequential turns. The idea being that a team gets to promote at the start of a turn. However, as it stands in our ruleset, this also breaks down horribly in the case of three or more teams at war. Because it would then seem, say if the order was

Team 1 moves, then Team 2, then Team 3

Depending on how you read it, ONLY Team 3, or both Team 2 and Team 3 but not team 1, would get this "promotion" phase and that's just silly.

 

[DaveMcW]

I would like to keep A and remove B.

Edit: I'm not so sure we even need to remove B.

Team 1 can promote,attack.
Team 2 can attack,promote.

Both have unique counterattack advantages.

 

[Earthling]

Yes, I believe A is within the "intention" of the rule - that if the team moving second (or third or fourth or whatever) doesn't get a chance to promote a unit that has "earned experience for a promotion in a recent combat," then they could do so.

However in practice I expect to see a lot of teams adding in a mixture of tactic "C" which is tried and true in SP and MP both. Effectively if a team is already employing the "C" tactic then they could alleviate the problem in A - because they could promote anyway.

Edit: With Dave's thoughts - and I do see the argument and agree in general, I think you're right that the intention behind the rule is reasonable, just not all consequences due to other rule arrangements had been foreseen. Here's what I'd currently think needs to be "fixed" - so however it needs to be worded in the actual games rules the purpose I'd see would be:

1) prevent a team from using the "Phase 0" to just gain promotions they got immediately from attacking. Essentially, this just seems like a double move to me all over. Consider the situation:

Team 2 declares war on Team 1, attacks and then ends turn. Since Team 2 was the last to move, they get the free phase 0, and then give any promotions earned to units right away.

I know that "saving" promotions in general could come into play and yes, this would mean not promoting later in the turn - but the situation above I see as kinda just like a double move exploit and I hope there would be a way to work around it so that the legitimate uses behind the rule could be maintained if still desired.

2) Fix ambiguities around three or more teams at war. This I think needs addressing no matter what because it is not clear what would happen. In general, of course, the unfortunate truth is that if Team 2 is in war with Team 1 and Team 3 and moves in the middle they are kinda dead anyway. But it would be very silly with 3+ teams at war if this "Phase 0 for promotion" only went to exactly one team or something, and the current rules aren't clear.

 

[TyBoy]

Team two is clearly more desirable, getting the opportunity to immediately use promotions gained attacking to help defend and promotions gained defending to help attack. Team one only gets to immediately use promotions gained defending to help attack. I can just imagine sitting there with an army on your border ready to declare and both teams trying to wait until the last second so they can claim the second spot.

Eliminating the promotion turn doesn't fundamentally fix the problem though, it just changes who has the advantage, with #1 still being able to immediately use promotions gained defending to attack while #2 doesn't get to immediately use any promotions. That's better than the current way, using promotions gained defending to attack isn't nearly such a significant advantage as the other way around.

The cleanest, closest to fair thing I can think of is make the proposed changes and forcefully define the person who starts the fight as player #2, maybe making it a rule that you can only start a war in the second half of the turn timer, or after the person you're attacking has already finished their turn. Who knows if everyone would get behind such a significant amendment though.


For a three-way fight to be a problem all 3 would have to be at war with eachother, which seems like an unlikely situation in this sort of game. Otherwise, if two of the players aren't at war with eachother just consider them to be on the same team, even if they aren't explicitly working together.

Saving promotions is an element of the game. Taking advantage of it requires that you win a combat without the use of a promotion that you had access to, so it's a tradeoff and a tactical decision.

 

[Earthling]

Yes, I agree that "saving" promotions is a tactical element and should still be allowed.

It appears to me from all I can tell, that "saving" promotions works equally for both teams of course, no matter if they take the turn first or second. And that's good imo.

So this phase 0 business just adds in another bit of lopsidedness - to be fair, going first in the turn order would be a little better otherwise too, as the person who goes first also gets to move new units/etc... first. But I don't think this is a remedy - and it's very un-policeable imo.

Any other have ideas about how this would affect Quatronia/the game? Is it worth bringing up in the main forum?