SGOTM3 Rome - Maintenance Thread

[DJMGator13]

Hmmm...did he do it on purpose? muahahahaha....

Which he????

Sesn for luring other teams to a harder game

or

Me for taking 24 minutes to respond?

 

[microbe]

Good news all!

Team Sesn has misinterpreted the rules, making things more difficult than they had to be. Of course, this will make our eventual victory all the more impressive ....

At any rate, in post 48 of this thread, civ_Steve asks this very question, and MB answered in turn 51.

Don't worry that you are alone. Your answer made our team's life more difficult too.

Whatever, I must say in the future PLEASE MAKE THE RULES SIMPLE!

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Don't worry that you are alone. Your answer made our team's life more difficult too.

Well, before I just felt like an idiot, now I feel like a jerk too.

If it helps, we screwed up on about three declarations, when you could have only messed up one by now....

 

[DJMGator13]

Well, before I just felt like an idiot, now I feel like a jerk too.

Don't feel that way. Teams could have waited for MB to answer directly before proceeding.

The variant is interesting, but has actually given all teams a break over a straight AW game.

 

[microbe]

Sesn, that's fine. I appreciate your help, and as I said, I didn't expect to do it "right" anyway since there is just too much confusion in these rules.

My apology to Mad-bax in advance - I do appreciate very much your effort in setting up these games. SGOTM1 and SGOTM2 were great pleasure to play. But I do feel frustrated in SGOTM3. There are just too many rules - there are 10 items in the official game announcement, and a hell lot of more pages for "clarification", some of them scattered around various threads. This makes it very difficult to focus on the real game play.

In the future, we should have very straightforward rules. If any rules cause confusion, we should have a "rules clarification" thread explicitly designed to clarify these questions, and NOBODY except mad-bax or whoever setup the game could post there. Maybe the question I asked had been asked before, but I didn't know that nor did I want to search all the threads to find out.

 

[microbe]

Teams could have waited for MB to answer directly before proceeding.

It's a politically corrcect answer, but sorry it missed the point. We are playing for fun, not for pausing the game now and then just to make sure we are getting the rules right.

BTW it's my personal opinion (or rant). I'm not representing the whole team.

 

[mad-bax]

I'm getting a bit cheesed off with this. There is absolutely no confusion in the rules. The whole of this discussion wa dealt with very early on in this thread and in team threads where the question was asked. But to reiterate...

1. The twenty turn rule is intended to prevent teams sandbagging, and keeping an opponents settler (or single town) alive in order to delay the next war declaration.

2. War will be declared on the first opponent you make contact with, on the turn you make contact.

3. Thereafter, war will be declared on successive opponents at 20 turn intervals (i.e. twenty turns after the start of the last war) with two exceptions. A. You want to declare on another civ before 20 turns expires. B. Another civ declares war on you before 20 turns expire.

4. If you run out of civs to declare war on, then the you must declare war on the next civ on the turn you make contact as in case 2 (above).

That is the whole rule. There is no more. So, If you declare war on Civ A on turn 20, and then CivB declares war on you in turn 25, tell me... when do you think you should declare war on civC?

I find it incredible that people who can play this game to at least a reasonable standard (which is every single participant BTW) find it difficult to count to twenty.

Perhaps I should do it for you?

 

[scoutsout]

Let's see if I've got this straight:

"Grasp thy the Holy Hand Grenade, and pulleth thy the pin of said Holy Hand Grenade." When faced with a new enemy, thou shalt cout to twenty. Thou shalt count to twenty, and the number thou shalt cout shall be twenty."

"If thou shalt delay thine count to twenty-one, thou shalt be heretofore be labelled a sandbagger, and be forever cast amongst the reloaders..."

"If thou shalt chose to lob thy the holy hand grenade at turn nineteen, thou shalt be chastised as a 'dastardly' (but honorable) war-mongering bugger who should have played this as an ....

....AAAAaaaawwwWWWEEEE game".

Seriously gang... just lay off Mad-Bax. Play the freakin' game. Enjoy the slugfest. I won't say "I feel your pain"... but that's because I've got enough of my own to contend with.

There's a cold waitin' for whoever 's .... "CivX" first.

 

[microbe]

I have no comment if you insist "there is absolutely no confusion in the rules". I guess I and all other people who DID get confused were just unable to count. I am sorry to have bothered you guys for not being able to comprehend this simple ruleset.

I must clarify that I didn't mean to accuse anyone. I just wanted to tell my feelings of what I view as a more enjoyable game. So please do not take it personally.

I'm getting a bit cheesed off with this. There is absolutely no confusion in the rules. The whole of this discussion wa dealt with very early on in this thread and in team threads where the question was asked. But to reiterate...

1. The twenty turn rule is intended to prevent teams sandbagging, and keeping an opponents settler (or single town) alive in order to delay the next war declaration.

2. War will be declared on the first opponent you make contact with, on the turn you make contact.

3. Thereafter, war will be declared on successive opponents at 20 turn intervals (i.e. twenty turns after the start of the last war) with two exceptions. A. You want to declare on another civ before 20 turns expires. B. Another civ declares war on you before 20 turns expire.

4. If you run out of civs to declare war on, then the you must declare war on the next civ on the turn you make contact as in case 2 (above).

That is the whole rule. There is no more. So, If you declare war on Civ A on turn 20, and then CivB declares war on you in turn 25, tell me... when do you think you should declare war on civC?

I find it incredible that people who can play this game to at least a reasonable standard (which is every single participant BTW) find it difficult to count to twenty.

Perhaps I should do it for you?

 

[grs]

MB: without any need to get emotial my opinion on this:

The ruleset for SGOTM3 is/was/and will be too complicated. We are not idiots, but many things have not been clear from the start and microbe is 100% right that the whole SGOTM misses an anchor, a place where all the general rules are and a second place where all the specific rules (for the variant) are. It is quite hard to navigate through the whole SGOTM as it is - playing this months variant makes it even harder.

The competition still is fun, but in hidsight I wished I would not have chosen the variant this month.

 

[AlanH]

Can I suggest a slight rewording of your Rule 3?

3. Thereafter, war will be declared on successive opponents at 20 turn intervals, in the order in which you make contact. If war with any opponent starts before their scheduled declaration date for any reason then no declaration is required on that opponent's due date and there is no change to the rest of the schedule.

 

[Mistfit]

MB ~ I'm having a blast with this variant. I actually hope to see a team or two loose this time. Even If that happens to be Team Mistfit. I've always thought that SG's were missing one big thing...The possibility of loosing. Keep up the good work.

 

[Demiurge]

I'll second that Mistfit. The possibility of losing is why I keep moving up in levels. That and what I've managed to pick up by playing the SGOTM. My games are so much more exciting when I'm not guaranteed a win.

 

[mad-bax]

Can I suggest a slight rewording of your Rule 3?

3. Thereafter, war will be declared on successive opponents at 20 turn intervals, in the order in which you make contact. If war with any opponent starts before their scheduled declaration date for any reason then no declaration is required on that opponent's due date and there is no change to the rest of the schedule.

Agreed.

Syntactically and otherwise blemish free as usual Alan.

 

[mad-bax]

I'll second that Mistfit. The possibility of losing is why I keep moving up in levels. That and what I've managed to pick up by playing the SGOTM. My games are so much more exciting when I'm not guaranteed a win.

Am I that transparent?

It is indeed my intention that I basically provide two different games on the same map. One winnable, and one loseable. This game is a test really to gauge the level of expertise within the playing community to enable me to set the difficulty. The next game will hopefully approach my objective of 50% victory rate for the variant.

For this game it would appear that all the teams should find a way to win, though for some it may be touch and go for a while. With hindsight it would have been easy to simplify the rules and to make the game harder, but I based it on my own performance which is just not good enough.

Remember that this is your event and that I only facilitate it, so all feedback is taken extremely seriously. Obviously, I have learned that future variants must be kept very simple, with black and white rules. It's a pity actually, since I had some ideas that might have been fun. Some people have contacted me with variant ideas, and those ideas will be worked into games at the earliest practicable opportunity, although maybe not exactly as proposed.

There is no need to be shy in criticising what I do. I don't take it personally, and I don't need my ego stroked. I do this because I enjoy it, and I enjoy it because it is a challenge and an opportunity for me to express myself in a limited way.

The reason I am disappointed with the discussion about who and when to declare war with is partly disappointment in myself for not forseeing all the possible permutations and variations that could be possible, along with my inability to communicate the intent of the rules clearly, and also disappointment that the clarifications I have had to make due to my shortcomings are not being read by everyone and questioned at the time. So I find myself writing the same thing over and over again in different ways, and thus screwing it up over and over again in different ways.

I'm not perfect, and I'm not cracker - don't want to be. I'm just one of you, no better - no worse. Try to bear that in mind if you can.

 

[samildanach]

"If thou shalt delay thine count to twenty-one, thou shalt be heretofore be labelled a sandbagger, and be forever cast amongst the reloaders..."

I haven't played this variant before. But I've got a feeling that it may prove to be tougher than AWE.

Edited. M.B.

 

[mad-bax]

Sam. Please edit your post to remove the spoiler information you accidentally included. Thanks
(The first paragraph contains tactical information on how you played the AA).

 

[Mistfit]

hmm.....permutations...Pull out the Websters....Ok Got it...

A complete change; a transformation.
The act of altering a given set of objects in a group

You guys always find of making me feel as if I don't know the English language very well.

 

[microbe]

Mad-bax:

Please do not give up your ideas just because I or a few players have complaints. We don't have to be in every SGOTM game.

Seriously, I have a suggestion in a previous post: have a specific "rules clarification" thread which only you can post. People still ask questions in the maintenance thread, but any new clarification could be added to the clarification thread. At the very least, keep the game announcement updated with such information. This way people won't have to go through the entire maintenance thread to look for the answers they want.

In general, I do think SGOTM should have simpler, less ambigious rules than normal SG, because there are so many different teams playing. The rules should make sure as much as possible that every team has the same understanding. That said, it doesn't mean you can't have sophiscated rules, but it will just need more hard work on your side, and probably scare away lazy players like myself who do not enjoy having pen and paper aside when I play the game.

Thanks again for organizing the games. Now we are at war with everyone anyway, so we can eventually stop worrying about the rules.

 

[akots]

... 3. Thereafter, war will be declared on successive opponents at 20 turn intervals (i.e. twenty turns after the start of the last war) with two exceptions. A. You want to declare on another civ before 20 turns expires. B. Another civ declares war on you before 20 turns expire.

... That is the whole rule. There is no more. So, If you declare war on Civ A on turn 20, and then CivB declares war on you in turn 25, tell me... when do you think you should declare war on civC?

I find it incredible that people who can play this game to at least a reasonable standard (which is every single participant BTW) find it difficult to count to twenty.

Looks like we have to declare to Civ C on turn 40. Or am I wrong here?

Timing of war declaration in this game really matters. And luck with MGL matters even more. Consider this a spoiler or whatever. Overall the game + the rules is not the best choice for GOTM or SGOTM but still we agreed to play and should play. On the other hand, if it is a couple of lost workers or 21 or even 22 turns instead of 20... does it really matter? IMvHO not much. Especially considering that some of our team have not read the rules or discussion at all. Just turn on PC and play the game. So what? It is fun after all and should be considered as this and only this. Score and other awards are there just to stimulate the competition. It is an SGOTM after all. Well, if it does matter what is supposed to be done in this case? Take away the variant bonus? With being at war with half of the world for centuries? And trying to compete with other teams who remained at peace from the start? That is even more unfair either.