PBEM questions (Ctrl-N, SP mode, confidence...)

SlowThinker · May 23, 2002, 13:35

I posted some questions about PBEM to CivFanatics, but not all were answered:
Although some sentences are declarative, all are meant as questions: comments are expected.

Activating unit before Ctrl-N

Originally posted by Kobayashi in PBEM FAQ
you must activate a unit that was fortified or asleep and then press CTRL-N before you save

Is this really needed? If I click Ctrl-N although no my unit is awaken then all units (sleeping and fortified) loses remaining movement points. I can't move them and I suppose the AI neither...

______________________________
Why do you save BEFORE the Enter key?
Why the net mode is used for PBEM games?
I think there is another approach possible: At the end of turn, you could draw the Civ window down so that you don't see the map, press Enter and save the game (the hotseat or regular mode would have to be used in place of the net mode). Then you have probably no problems with Ctrl-N and AI changing your settings.

Originally posted by Henrik
sometimes the AI changes production when it isn't it's own turn, ie, when a city belonging to an AI civ is taken by another human player, the surounding cities belonging to that AI controlled civ will switch productions in order to counter the new threat

I supppose the hotseat or SP mode would do away with this problem, the Xin's LazyCiv program wouldn't be needed.
And why not to use the regular SP mode (you can hexedit the .sav file and set more than 1 human player)? Then we could use the cheat menu for the diplomacy (unit gifts,...), we could increase the cost of city bribing, the weaker player could play chieftain whereas the stronger one deity etc.

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Cheating and confidence
I noticed saves attached to PBEM threads use passwords. Unfortunately then people can't watch games, and moreover...
...I think this suspecting approach isn't tactfull. There may be people that like cheating (although I don't believe it ...

). But the cheating is harder if everybody trust you and harder if it is very easy.
I think the PBEM is about confidence, you can always cheat if you want. The password may be good only if you don't want to open a different game in error.

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Prince level

posted in the Guide to PBEM V1.0
PBEMs are generally played on the "Prince" difficulty level since it wont give bonuses to the civs which are controlled by AI (this means that units belonging to other civs wont get bonuses when one of the human players is playing his turn).

Could you tell me which bonuses? Combat bonuses? AFAIK there are no other bonuses than those for attacking barbs ...

Scouse Gits · May 24, 2002, 16:22

I agree with your Ctrl-N point and also the Prince level comment - passwords are used to protect the innocent from accidents - in our school we have circulated the psws just in case someone cannot continue -- I for one simply do not play with anyone I suspect of cheating.

I suspect that your other thoughts on playing in normal mode are suspect - but I have not seriously thought them through

SG[1]

SlowThinker · May 24, 2002, 19:31

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
I suspect that your other thoughts on playing in normal mode are suspect - but I have not seriously thought them through
SG[1]

I suspect the net mode is some prehistoric relict when somebody thought cheating will be prevented this way...
I don't see any reason to mark a human's civ as AI's civ. It is a nonsense and brings problems needless to say (? is the order of words correct?). Hotseat (or SP?...) must be better or I am missing something.

The singleplayer mode with edited byte 47 was used with classic Civ2. I thought it will work with MGE the same way, but I tried it now and it doesn't work

. It looks bytes
39 changes which human player is used
40 player's map which is used
41 player's civilization number used
are more significant.

Anyway the cheat mode for the diplomacy can be used for the hotseat mode: you load the hotseat game as a SP game, turn to cheat mode, then save as scenario and start as hotseat again. But it looks laborious (but less laborious than connecting to the online game...).

Darius871 · May 25, 2002, 01:07

As for passwords I'm not as concerned with another player cheating as I am about some anonymous nutbar screwing around with the game to give himself a laugh.

SlowThinker · May 25, 2002, 07:31

I understand perfectly. First time I loaded a PBEM game I was very dissapointed I can't see the content (and laugh). Fortunately I found out the password is a decoration only.

Chris 62 · May 25, 2002, 12:34

Originally posted by SlowThinker
Activating unit before Ctrl-N

Is this really needed? If I click Ctrl-N although no my unit is awaken then all units (sleeping and fortified) loses remaining movement points. I can't move them and I suppose the AI neither...

You don't need an active unit to do this.
Ctrl-N ends all possible movement of units.

______________________________

Why do you save BEFORE the Enter key?
Why the net mode is used for PBEM games?
I think there is another approach possible: At the end of turn, you could draw the Civ window down so that you don't see the map, press Enter and save the game (the hotseat or regular mode would have to be used in place of the net mode). Then you have probably no problems with Ctrl-N and AI changing your settings.I supppose the hotseat or SP mode would do away with this problem, the Xin's LazyCiv program wouldn't be needed.
And why not to use the regular SP mode (you can hexedit the .sav file and set more than 1 human player)? Then we could use the cheat menu for the diplomacy (unit gifts,...), we could increase the cost of city bribing, the weaker player could play chieftain whereas the stronger one deity etc.

Hotseat mode was never tested properly, it's loaded with bugs.
Messing with the save via hexeditting isn't a good idea.

______________________________

Cheating and confidence
I noticed saves attached to PBEM threads use passwords. Unfortunately then people can't watch games, and moreover...
...I think this suspecting approach isn't tactfull. There may be people that like cheating (although I don't believe it ...

). But the cheating is harder if everybody trust you and harder if it is very easy.
I think the PBEM is about confidence, you can always cheat if you want. The password may be good only if you don't want to open a different game in error.

Not everyone you play can be trusted, better to be safe then sorry.
People aern't perfect, there are many chaeters, just look at this forum, there is a thread where half a dozen people admit to cheating in live games.

______________________________

Prince level

Could you tell me which bonuses? Combat bonuses? AFAIK there are no other bonuses than those for attacking barbs ...

The AI plays at Cheiftan while you play at Diety, in PBEM, this can cause problems, especially in defense, since in MP the defender often loses.
Also, the AI has a tendancy at higher levels to add "phamtom" shields, meaning that a city with say 12 shields actually produces 20 or more with the AI at higher levels.

I play in a LOT of these games, in fact I'm in three now that have already passed the one year mark in real time, so I have a bit of experience with these games.

SlowThinker · May 25, 2002, 13:58

Chris 62, thank you for the detailed answer.

Not everyone you play can be trusted, better to be safe

But how do you want to be safe? The password gives you nothing. Everybody can reveal the map in 15 seconds.

Hotseat mode was never tested properly, it's loaded with bugs.

Could you be more concrete? Do you want to say the game corrupts between the save-load?
IMHO it cannot fail, especially if you load the same civ that were saved (you have to drag the window out so that you don't see the opponent's map).

Messing with the save via hexeditting isn't a good idea.

Hm, see my second post on this page.

the AI has a tendancy at higher levels to add "phamtom" shields, meaning that a city with say 12 shields actually produces 20 or more with the AI at higher levels.

From the single player I know the AI's shieldbox has width 8 with deity. Do you mean this?
I run a test under SP now for other difficulties: chieftain 15, warlord 13, prince 12, king 12, emperor 9, deity 8.

So the AI under king has also a disavantage?

An additional question:
How do you process the diplomacy?
The online connection is a terrible vision for me. Why not to use the cheat mode? It can be used also with hotseat or net mode (loading as SP, then saving as scenario).

SlowThinker · May 25, 2002, 17:47

Originally posted by SlowThinker
I run a test now for other difficulties: chieftain 15, warlord 13, prince 12, king 12, emperor 9, deity 8.

So the AI under king has also a disavantage?

I did a mistake: King is 10. This matches what I always heard: that AI plays King (not Prince).
(But the tests were done in singleplayer)

Originally posted by Chris 62
The AI plays at Cheiftan while you play at Diety, in PBEM, this can cause problems, especially in defense, since in MP the defender often loses.

The fact that there is no such an advantage in SP is generally known.
And now after my test I think there is no such an advantage in MP: load the attached scenario into MP, take germans and you will se the battle results will be equal. Rules.txt is modified: Warriors have 10 attack, 10 defense and 100 hitpoints so that fortuity is low.