Some Pitboss questions

[Fosse]

I've been away from Civ IV for a while, but am now setting up a PitBoss game with some friends of mine. Taking a look at the application and readme has me convinced that we can get it off the ground, but I'd love to have some clearer understanding before we begin to minimize the speed bumps.

I hope that this forum can provide it for me, and thanks in advance for answers and thoughts.

1.) Only the person actually hosting the game needs to have Pitboss on their computer, right? That does seem to be the case.

2.) What exactly does the "Take Over AI" funciton do in a PitBoss game? Will it allow some players to play live, while an AI runs the remaining ones? Will unclicking it cause the AI to remain inert when a player does not log on for his turn? Or will unchecking it prevent the AI from doing anything when a player misses a turn?

3.) A City Elimination limit of 0 means normal play, right?

4.) What does the Admin password really do? It seems anyone can play regardless of what it is, so what's the advantage of having it or not?

5.) If a player does not log on before the turn timer is up, how will the AI play his turn? By this I mean, if he sets up city build and movement queues for his units will the AI respect them? Or should he expect to log back on after a single missed turn to find his queues erased, his workers ripping out his cottages, and his armies in the field of a war with the guy he had an alliance with?


Thank you. If there are any other PitBoss quirks I have missed I'd love to hear about them, and any advice is welcome on these points.

Regards,
Fosse

[MMC]

Re: Some Pitboss questions

Originally posted by Fosse
I've been away from Civ IV for a while, but am now setting up a PitBoss game with some friends of mine. Taking a look at the application and readme has me convinced that we can get it off the ground, but I'd love to have some clearer understanding before we begin to minimize the speed bumps.

I hope that this forum can provide it for me, and thanks in advance for answers and thoughts.

This is the right place, although the IRC chatroom #c4pitboss is also a good place to go.

Originally posted by Fosse
1.) Only the person actually hosting the game needs to have Pitboss on their computer, right? That does seem to be the case.

Correct

Originally posted by Fosse
2.) What exactly does the "Take Over AI" funciton do in a PitBoss game? Will it allow some players to play live, while an AI runs the remaining ones? Will unclicking it cause the AI to remain inert when a player does not log on for his turn? Or will unchecking it prevent the AI from doing anything when a player misses a turn?

No. Take Over AI allows a new player to join in, taking an AI slot. In a recent game I was involved in, we had a problem where we had 9 civs (5 Human, 4 AI) and one player accidentally took an AI slot, which meant we couldn't start (the first turn will not tick over until all human players have finished their turns. This includes empty human slots). Deactivating this option restricts players to the human slots.

Originally posted by Fosse
3.) A City Elimination limit of 0 means normal play, right?

Correct.

Originally posted by Fosse
4.) What does the Admin password really do? It seems anyone can play regardless of what it is, so what's the advantage of having it or not?

The Admin Password is simply a password for the savefile used by PitBoss, it doesn't affect people connecting to the game. The idea is for the PitBoss app to hold the master savefile, and the password is to prevent other people from taking that file and playing on (assuming personal saves haven't been taken, although I don't know exactly how a personal save matches the pitboss save - whether they are identical or subtely different).

Originally posted by Fosse
5.) If a player does not log on before the turn timer is up, how will the AI play his turn? By this I mean, if he sets up city build and movement queues for his units will the AI respect them? Or should he expect to log back on after a single missed turn to find his queues erased, his workers ripping out his cottages, and his armies in the field of a war with the guy he had an alliance with?

The AI does nothing. If build queues were initiated, they will be continued, as will order queues. Nothing else will be done by the computer and your civ will stagnate until you return.

Originally posted by Fosse
Thank you. If there are any other PitBoss quirks I have missed I'd love to hear about them, and any advice is welcome on these points.

Regards,
Fosse

There is an IRC chatroom (#c4pitboss) available if you have more questions. Although we don't necessarily promise to be able to answer.

[Fosse]

Thank you MMC. That clears up a lot.

I do have one more question, but it might have less to do with Pitboss in particular and more to do with SMTP.
Basically, I set up a gmail account to let Pitboss use that feature, and put what I thougth to be the correct information in each field (with smtp.gmail.com going in the SMTP Host field, and the correct login, etc below that).

Trying to play a couple of turns on a Duel map, using myself as the player of two different Civs,with a one hours turntimer and Simultaneous turns, I was unable to get Pitboss to generate emails to the two email accounts I was using and had properly entered into the game.

I really know nothing of SMTP, and am not sure where to even look for the problem.

Thanks again.