Some technical questions about PBEM

[Claus]

Hi everybody!

I'm about to open a PBEM game, but before that I would like to know some details:

1.
How is it possible to prevent a player from re-opening a file several times until a battle produces the "correct" outcome? I loved Alpha Centauri for that: If you played your turn twice, the other players got a notice.

2.
What SMTP server do players with online accounts (e.g. gmx.net) use? Or do they just have to do it the "hard" way, i.e. send it by hand?

3.
Is it possible to exclude a player in midplay? I mean, PBEM games can be running for years, and it happens that some person doesn't have the time any more to go on playing. Would the whole match have to be stopped? I hope not.

Thank you in advance!

[CanuckSoldier]

1. unforunately nothing

2. Right now only smtp servers that operate on port 25 work, I'm hoping this will change in a patch.

3. Yes, if you, as the PBEM admin set the admin pw on turn 1(Shift Alt D) you can play any players turn and ofcourse as that player you can "retire" them from the game.

CS

[sabrewolf]

claus:
every ISP has an SMTP server. if you for instance are at T-Online, it's going to be something like
mail.t-online.de or smtp.t-online.de
you might need authentication, but you can find that stuff out via the ISP website.

speaking of authentication: i will need to do that... does civ4 support it?

[sabrewolf]

canuck: can you also let the AI take over and later replace the AI again with another player? i know pitboss does something like that...

[CanuckSoldier]

Not as far as I know that's not something possible with the PBEM mechanics, although I think that is possible with pitboss.

CS