The Dance of Civilizations [Pitboss Diplomacy Game] [Setup Thread]

[Toni]

Well Robert and all the players who signed in haven't really talked about a starting date. I guess we need to do that Robert, what would be a good date to aim for? It would be great to have one, so we can all organize and plan accordingly.

I think that mid August sounds good? 2+ weeks is plenty to set rules, have some more players join in and for Ozzy to build us an amazing MAP.

[Robert]

BtP was epic.
I'm not sure when we'll start. Most probably somewhere in August.
Perhaps you can find someone who wants to play the first weeks for you? Perhaps Ozzy wants to?

We'll make sure that we keep your nation small enough to keep you in the game

edit @Toni:
Perhaps 3 weeks, first we need 1-2 weeks to determine the rules and give players a chance to join.
Then Ozzy needs 1-2 weeks to create a map.
So I'd say somewhere 3rd week of August.

But if September 1st will make Heraclitus join then I'd gladly wait 1 extra week.

[Robert]

@St Jon:

4# I really do question how this could ever be enforced.

Well, it takes 3 to organize such an espionage cheat. How would you start it? Ask someone: "Hey, let's cheat."
I doubt that it'll be possible to organise a group of 3 that's willing to cheat.

And there's always the chance that even if a group of 3 is going to cheat that blatantly, it'll come out anyway.

Not to mention that it's not an easy cheat.
You have to give up espionage to other civs, which makes you an easy target.
And you make yourself vulnarable to your cheating partners. Perhaps your cheating partner will take advantage of you and not steal your techs but changes your civics, puts some cities into anarchy and attacks you.
What are you going to do about that?

#3: I would like a mandatory Story Thread basis for this if it is to be allowed at all.

I really do question how this could ever be enforced.
j/k, it would be good to make a story post about it (a thread is maybe a bit too much ) but making that mandatory is maybe too much.
But reporting such a thing IG in the story thread is obviously better (story points!) then an ooc post in the org thread.

I do still worry about people being cornered at the very start and left with months of a lost cause.

That's a message to Ozzy: make sure that starting locations won't place people into a cornered position. (= only 1 neighbour)

#7 What if 1 player simply refuses?

We reload, or if needed, kick him from the game.

[The Priest]

Great to see the progress and energy. Excited already.

Couple of thoughts:

1. I've be really pleased if Ozzy were to do the map. Very happy to leave it to him to sort. My only comment on some of the thoughts have been we need to be careful that the 'new world' doesn't unbalance things too much - on the concept map we have some nations will have access to the new world far easier than others (some may be blocked in by cultural borders quite easily) and a rich new world can easliy give an extra bonus to those already ahead in tech (the four leading nations get to astronomy 50 turns before the main pack, and in that time clean up the new world and increase their lead even more). I'm still in favour of the concept map, and trust Ozzy, but we do need to be careful.

2. I would drop rule 4 (tech-trade). There is hardly an exploit here since I can't actually 'allow' you to steal my tech. OK i can not build EP against you, but even so, the cost to you of the uncertain business of building up teh EP to steal the tech would, I think, make this a very poor strategy. (or at least sufficiently poor we don't need to protect against it). If it has ever been done, and people know that it works, I would be happy to ban it, but without that evidence it seems an uncessary rule.

3. Measured war and rule 7. I think is good, but we need more of a common understanding of what is appropriate in war and what isn't. Otherwise we will get quite unpleasant OOC arguments. I have tried to draft something which may help. This is keeping the rule basically as Robert has written it, but adding in the glossary some guidance as to where the threshhold is, and the ethos involved. I hope this helps. Without some common understanding, I think this could lead to problems (as someone else on here had already said - we either clarify the concept or drop it).

Glossary:

Measured war

A Civ Diplo Game has to balance two factors in war.

1. This is Civ - Warmongering, conquest and domination is a perfectly acceptable and honourable way to play. There is no intention that Diplo games need to be 'builder orientated' (though that is just as acceptable a strategy too).

2. This is Diplo - No civilisation should be crippled with the result that the game stops being fun for the player involved.

This means that there is a balance to be struck. War is costly for the aggressor, building up forces while other nations race ahead, so the victor should be able to make real gains from the war. But if they gain too much, the loser may be crippled.

Its impossible to make a hard and fast rule out of this, because that can just be exploited (e.g. a loser refusing to make a reasonable peace because 'the rule' will then kick in and save them). But as a guide, a 25% loss is an appropriate threshhold (loss being an overall measure, not just a city count - losing 3 tiny fringe cities may be much less of a loss than 1 major city). More than this may well be crippling the loser. But a loss/gain up to this probably is appropriate benefit for the victor. Again this can't be a rule - taking a small bite out of a neighbour every ten turns will cripple them, but having won a war against a neighour a millenium ago doesn't mean you can't fight with them again.

This concept of measured war is enforced in rule 7.

Rules:

Minor change to rule 7 to make the link:

7. If 51% of the players believe that a war is no longer a 'measured war'and therefore should end, then it must end. This to avoid that civs will be cripled too much by a war. The terms of the end of war are in such a case: immediate peace for 50 turns. It is advised for both parties to agree on the best possible terms for peace before this happens.
Such an end of war must be organized in the org thread. (ie. players must announce their opinion regarding the end of a war in the org thread).

Such judgements over 'measured war' and an end-of-war vote are only OOC! Not IG (like: my ally is losing this important city).

[The Priest]

Also, 1b sounds good to me I think.

One thing to clarify - this does mean these old techs can't be gifted to more backward nations - I presume that is what we want.

And one thing I'm not sure of - how are we to know when 60% have the tech. To avoid arguments we would need a tally of the 'old techs' online so there is no room for confusion, but how would this tally be kept up and by whom?

[mzprox]

Few thoughts on measured war:


-I dont really like the ooc vote about ending a war. And usually its not the war what is problematic but the peace treaty after. I think most of the reparations should be made in money/tech/goods/units and then colonies and the last option should be homeland cities. I would forbid that a stronger nation could seize a weaker civ's homeland city permamently at all. Or maximimum 1/ lets say 50 turns or so..

-I think we should not allow the razing of cities of pop 5 or higher (unless for some reason the owner agrees)

-We may have some ooc enforced vassalage rule. ie: no permament vassalage, but not breakable for a given time depending on the treaty the winner and loser agrees. This would be an alterantive of total (or almost total)annihilation: the loser nation would get back most of its cities and the chance to stand up again.

-an interesting -and not unlikely- scenario: 3 realitively weaker civs are at war with a strong advanced one. The odds are quite balanced however one of the weaker civs because of its strategic position becomes the stronger one' primary target. Lets say during the war he loses half of its cities and about to die soon. The other two are still strong, ready to continue the war and send more troops. What should we do now?
-The weaker civ could say that its not measured war because he got totally smashed.. cries, quits, whatever
-the big one could say it's logical to weaken the easiest target, and while it has lost most of its land the sum power of his enemies are still the same or higher than his.
-the other two would be eager to continue.. It may seem that eventually they will win the war so they press the third civ to refuse any peace offer for the promise of the future victory.

We may have a rule here that a civ which loses 50%+ of its cities or 33%+ including its capital must capitualte and become a temporary vassal of the civ who conquered most of its cities. (this rule would work for any situation not just the one above)

[Jeroen Schweitzer]

I dont really like the ooc vote about ending a war. And usually its not the war what is problematic but the peace treaty after.

My preference is to leave this not too pre-planned. There is a mechanism to deal with excess through the ooc vote, so let's let the game run it's natural course.

[Robert]

mzprox, I think your rules limit the wars and the game way too much.
The 'vote' thing is not ideal, but it's only a last option thing. If civA won't stop conquering civB cities then the game has an option to force the war to end.
Normally both parties should reach a peace deal before that happens.

Reasons why a weak civ should not just wait till the strong civ is forced to make peace? B/c a smart strong civ stops conquering cities at a certain point but continues to pillage land, destroy military units, block searoutes, etc. So there's no reason for 'the world' to force peace, but every reason for the weaker civ to accept a peace proposal at certain terms.

I would not make much more definitions about what's acceptable then the ones The Priest made.
That means that in every situation we have a tool to end a war to protect a player. The 25% guide The Priest made sounds fair to me. (as a guide). (though for bigger civs it may be 33% or 50%) (imagine Rome in BtP at the end, nobody should complain if it would lose 50% of it's cities)

If we limit war too much it'll limit the fun, imho.

[Robert]

What about not allowing razing cities at all? (just as a game option).

[Heraclitus]

But if September 1st will make Heraclitus join then I'd gladly wait 1 extra week.

I don't want everyone waiting for a week just because of me.





Would anyone be interested in playing DoC for the first week or two?

[Heraclitus]

And one thing I'm not sure of - how are we to know when 60% have the tech. To avoid arguments we would need a tally of the 'old techs' online so there is no room for confusion, but how would this tally be kept up and by whom?

I have a simpler idea that requires less record keeping. Its also more flexible at being fair even if some player happened to get more than one age ahead.


Lets just keep tabs on the World Age
(World Age = (sum of the ages of all players) / number of players)

We all know which ages there are, every player knows which age they are in and can self report it. Also every player can check on other players quite easily (since we all have the Civ4 paper tech tree that came with the game and has tech color coded acording to which age they belong to)

There are 5 ages but I've assigned them numerical values I think are balanced.

For each player
Ancient = 0
Classical = 1
Medeival = 2
Reneissance = 3
Industrial = 4
Modern = 5

Any tech from the previous world age is free to trade (dosen't cost vouchers)

We could have special effects to balance they system further.
Special effects: (just suggestions modify them further)
Writting +0.10
Printing press +0.15
Scientific Method +0.25
The Internet +0.5
Future tech +0.5

to what the player's age is considered to be

(examples:

-16th century Italy would have 3.25. The global age of the world would probably be 2.8 or something which would be rounded to 3 so all tech from age 2 would be free to trade

-Germany 1900 would be age 4.5 (4 from age 0.5 from tech)
USSR/USA 1960 would be age 5.5 (5 from age, 0.5 from tech)
USA 2000 would be age 6 (5 from age, 0.5 from tech, 0.5 from internet)
USA 2020 would be age 7 (5 from age, 1 from techs, 0.5 from internet)
Japan 2020 woulbe be age 6.5 (same as US just without internet)

I hope we can all agree that in the 20th century techs from the 19th century are "free" to trade.

[Heraclitus]

What about not allowing razing cities at all? (just as a game option).

Nay, it would limit diplomacy.

[OzzyKP]

Would anyone be interested in playing DoC for the first week or two?

Yea, I could get you started.

[St Jon]

I reckon City razing is a must - even homeland - as it is just part of the game. Example. I capture your City but my motive is that it overlaps mine far too much. I don't want that City at all I just want it gone and nothing more. Perfectly legitimate reason for a very limited War.

No Rule can be placed that Civ A can claim that losing 1 particular City to Civ B is unreasonable. War is part of the game and if that City is so precious then Civ A should have protected it better.

I really would prefer no Tech Trades at all, still less extending it, but if it is allowed will I be allowed to use a Tech Trade Pact? These are very powerful with good planning and can catapult 2 Civ's at the beginning.

Do we allow Civ annihilation? This in cases of moribund Civs that have no chance and will log in 1 in 10 Turns. MMC gave up on England and it was useless to keep England alive as he declined to quit the game. There was little point in Persia by the time I joined BtP and had basically been abandoned. Capo kept a Korea without hope alive by his wonderful stories whilst a less committed player would have just chucked them in the dustbin of history. Logic says that Russia should have been destroyed by Rome without a tear being shed and HRE was not much better. There must be some kind of limit of tolerance towards disinterested players with Civs that are so weak as to find a Sub will be close to impossible.

With Conquest eliminated from the Victory Conditions there must be Domination. Cultural is extremely hard to achieve - always that 3rd City - and Diplomatic via the UN must be just about impossible in a human game. Ozzy's plan to use Apolistic Palace was the first I'd ever seen! Really, without annihilation, you are left with Space and Clock and I would regard them as the 2 worst in a human game as by that time the result is already known.

[Black Knight 427]

What about not allowing razing cities at all? (just as a game option).

City razing should be allowed.

I do have a question. If I where at war with anouther person and I came out on top why should I have to pay reperations.