Seeds of Greatness: Game #2

[Peaster]

We have done a play-test of the Wrath version, and we are finally ready to start Game#2! You can DL the scenario here:

http://www.cullivan.com/civ/scenarios/sog/index.htm

People not accustomed to .hot mode should read this (courtesy of SlowThinker): http://home.tiscali.cz/cz045662/civ...Hot-NetPBEM.htm

Hittites - Peaster
Babylon - Peaster
Assyria - Eurisko
Egypt - ISeeAll
Persia - Bostero
Greeks - Bostero
Minoans - Straybow

I asked Kull for his advice, and he wrote "Make sure everyone understands it's an honor system game. In the end you have to have mutual trust that everyone understands it's just a game, and the real objective isn't winning, but rather the chance to role-play as an ancient near eastern despot. To me, that's the REAL fun in the game, and the only thing that can legitimately retain people's interest over the long term."

[Peaster]

Code of Laws (house rules): These are based on the rules for Game#1 compiled by SlowThinker, and on the various proposals and votes taken in the playtest for Game#2. Any rule can be added, deleted or changed by a +1 vote (eg 4-3) until the game starts. After that, a +3 vote is required to make changes (such as 5-2 or 3-0).
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Settings: Deity, Barbarian wrath, MGE, Hotseat mode

Game speed: 24 hour deadline. If you can't make it, post here before the deadline. We will probably give you some more time, if you have a good excuse. After 24 hours (with no excuse), the next player's clock starts. They should hit Ctrl-N for the late player, and play their turn. After you do your turn try to send e-mail (or PM) to player(s) that play after you.

Reloading: You can reload typos and similar mistakes ONLY under following conditions:

1. You can take back only 1 'action' [a movement, or other order to a unit, a rushbuild, an improvement sale].
2. You didn't intend that action - you did it by mistake.
3. The action cannot be taken back if ANY kind of new information is revealed by that action
4. You can NEVER take back fortuitous actions: combats, hut popping, tech stealing etc.
5. You must correctly repeat all actions between the last save and the mistake that is taken back. The game cannot be reloaded if there is any fortuitous action (combat, hut popping, tech stealing etc.) among actions that are to be repeated (so it is suggested to save after combats, hut popping etc.).
6. You can reload if the AI declares war when using F3.

Getting info from saves: Revealing the starting map is legal. Also, you can inspect event.txt and rules.txt. Opening savefiles of past turns to get some lost info is legal [but in SP mode only, and only as your civ].

Reports: Players must report all battles and the results. For human-vs-human battles, report exact locations, and all units involved. You must report all diplomatic actions by envoys (tech-thefts, bribes, new embassies, etc). A declaration of war must be announced to the other player - but this can be done either privately (email) or in the thread. In this scenario, the turn-based Event messages are intended for everyone, although in a PBEM only the first player sees them - hence the requirement for the white player to make them public. You must report all techs received as gifts.

Playing a turn: DL the previous save, open it in hotseat mode [it will open at the end of the previous player's turn], then (without watching the screen) hit Enter twice to start your turn, play, hit Ctrl-N, center the screen on a black area, save the game, exit with Ctrl-H [or you may use F11 at this point], and post the save. Do not open the Demographics screen during game play; but you can save, hit F11, and then reload if you like.

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Diplomacy: Diplomacy can be managed privately (by e-mail, PM...) or publicly (in this thread). Giving units or cities is not allowed, but mutually agreed captures and bribes are allowed. Giving gold, techs, or maps (after MapMaking) is allowed. But you may receive at most one tech every three turns, and must report these. Lying during diplomacy is permitted and agreements may be broken. Barters cannot.

As long as both sides agree you can use F3, civ2dip or a MP session (please see the Game#1 rules for more details on all this). Basically:
* You may use F3 for diplomacy with another King ONLY with their permission, and ONLY for actions previously agreed on. If the AI tries to initiate contact, you must refuse.
* Warning: AI diplomacy can bring problems - for example, some unwanted info about opponent's civ may be revealed.
* The AI may declare war for no reason. Save your game before using F3. You can reload (and use another method) if the AI declares war.
* You cannot use F3 to end an alliance if this would cause units on either side to teleport. If you decide to use civ2dip to end it [possibly with 3rd party help], the other player must accept (warning - this will NOT teleport units, which might be a problem for you if the other player decides to sneak attack). Since this rule is not perfect, players are encouraged to choose their allies carefully, make "pre-nups", and to refrain from such exploits.

Contact: No diplomacy is allowed until after the first physical unit contact between two civs. But players are allowed to publicly declare their progress on the thread.

Until Map Making: No map trades, no screenshots, no use of map coordinates allowed. But you can say "about 10 squares east of Nineveh".

Barters cannot be broken or crooked (unlike arrangements). For example if you agree on exchanging map screenshots then you cannot refuse to send your map after you get the opponent's map. Also the screenshot must be true (but you can blacken some areas - if you announce it).

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Tricks and ploys

Not allowed:

1. Double click on a revealed area - this reveals cities (terrain help is not shown on a city).
2. Left click on black or revealed areas - this reveals cities (the map is not centered on a city) - so, center the map with a right click only.
3. Unsinkable boats and non-crashing aircraft
4. Caravan re-homing
5. Stealing shields and immediate tech use (see Game#1 rules)
6. Renaming of cities must be reported, also re-using names of dead cities.
7. Automated settlers (to irrigate with no adjacent water}
8. Blatant cheats (revealing the map through the cheat menu, editing stats in rules.txt, reloading hut and combat outcomes, cheat-o-matic (this is a tsr that allows the game parameters to be changed on the fly while the game is running.) etc.)
9. Only Greece can attack the fortified barbs intended for Jason [just east of the Black Sea]. Likewise only Persia gets the Sinbad barb [in the far SE corner of the map].
10. No gifts of units or cities. No more than 1 tech gift can be received per 3 turns [does not include thefts, techs from your own beakers, from conquests or from the GL].
11. No tech gift may be accepted unless you have its pre-preqs. This includes tech from conquest. Accidental exceptions (from theft etc) must be corrected ASAP by researching the pre-reqs of the new tech.
12. You can only pop one hut (or barb village) per turn.
13. Van deliveries are limited to 2 per turn (not including vans for food, wonders or domestic trade).
14. An alliance cannot claim victory - only a single player can win.
15. No MP sessions (unless you talk to RobRoy first about the problems this can cause).

Allowed:

1. city bribing
2. unit bribing
3. incremental buying
4. pre-worked settlers
5. food caravans
6. ship chaining
7. diplo-guiding (using a diplomat or spy (or other unit that ignores ZOC) to lead other units through an enemy's zones of control.)
8. reading 'near city' notes

Footnotes:
* The rule on ending an alliance is still under discussion. We should try to settle that in the early game ( a simple +1 majority vote is enough).
* Likewise, we should discuss bribing ASAP. Probably unit-bribes will be legal - not sure yet about city-bribes.
* Persia will get a few exemptions (2x hut limit, auto-settlers). The first player to get the monarchy tech must offer it freely to Persia. If Persia accepts, she must then research the pre-reqs, and she cannot give/sell monarchy to another King.
* if the GL does not work properly, we'll talk.
* latest revisions = 2 vans per turn, no MP sessions, slight update on Persia (a few lines up).
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If you break a rule by a mistake nothing horrible happens. But you have to announce it and warn other players.

[RobRoy]

Lessons Learned

A lengthy test game was conducted to confirm that Barbarian Wrath and hotseat mode would work satisfactorily. Lessons learned from the test game, include:

1) The hordes are not as quite as nasty as they seem, at least if you have decent techs. So, think twice before spending all your gold on walls. Trust your Palace Guards.

2) Attacking barbarians seem to operate at a handicap in the early turns against smaller civs, especially when attacking cities. This handicap seems to vanish, suddenly, once the defending civ reaches about six-eight cities. The exact handicap isn't known, but the test game saw numerous examples of defending units surviving barbarian attacks, contrary to their owner's expectations. Of course, when Battering Rams attack your green, unfortified skirmisher on the plains, the skirmisher is still the likely loser.

3) For kingdoms with lots of hills - A fortified spearman on hills can probably survive a Battering Ram, especially if it's a vet, and that's a relatively cheap defense.

4) A veteran fortified skirmisher defending an unwalled river/hill city held out by itself for several turns, usually with 2 Bronze Infantry or Battering Rams attacking each turn.

5) Defending barbs never seemed any weaker or stronger, regardless of number of cities.

6) However, for kingdoms set in plains/grasslands - You can probably defeat any horde-barb near your city with an e.chariot (or a vet skirmisher) before it can attack you. Keep back-up units nearby. Roads help, to connect your cities, and to keep the suburbs under control too.

7) Early pirates are more nuisance than threat, if your cities are defended. They also seem to suffer the mysterious handicap when attacking smaller civs. But like all barbs, they'll pillage anything but roads. Their boats, however, can kill yours, even when they suffer the handicap.

8) Pirates get more problematic when you reach the six-eight city threshold. And the Sea Peoples are scary. But a vet Chariot I + a few minor units can do the job on plains.

9) Event barbs still happen. Assyria lost 2 cities to Storms in the test. They should make some kind of plan to deter that (eg post some skirmishers as a sacrificial wall?). We never saw the terrifying "Scythian Horde" unit, but it'll make the Sea People look like skirmishers if/when it comes.

10) IF (a very big if) you can kill the stack at the center of a new swarm, you might take out 40-50 barbs at once (I saw this idea in a thread at CFC).

11) Building cities is a mixed blessing and should be done more thoughtfully than is typical in a civ game. Some players rushed to build new cities just in time to greet the first barbarian spawns. Some players managed to hold all or most of their cities, but some lost several cities. In all these cases, however, the units diverted to defending the cities were not engaged in hunting goodie huts and barbarian towns. The civ that seemed the strongest at the end of the test focused entirely on hut/town hunting, and did not expend any resources on building (or defending) cities, until the majority of huts were popped. Your Palace Guard can hold your capital without any help. With the 1/turn hut limit in place, the situation is different, but players should still be extremely cautious about when/where/whether to build new cities.


(If you have more contributions, post them in the test game thread and I'll consolidate them with Peaster's and my comments, here)

[ISeeALL]

# RESERVED FOR TIME-TABLE

Guys, before we make many turns, the last-minute idea about who plays when. I now have info about when 5 of 7 players usually make their turns. Ideally, nations should be assigned also in such a way, that each next player waits minimal time for a previous player to make his turn. I don't mean that all nations should reassigned. I just want to see if there is room for optimization and in case there is we can reassign a few of us.

Here is when folks usually do their turn:

(time is GMT, in European format)

RobRoy - 01:00 - 04:00

Plat.Rex - 07:30 - 10:30


Bostero - 17:00 - 20:00 (and up to 3:00)

ISeeALL - 20:00 - 23:00

Peaster - any time




As you see, there are still gaps between 04:00 and 07:30 as well as a very large gap between 10:30 and 17:00

Heresson and Straybow - please post when you play, not necessarily in GMT, I will convert myself.

[Bostero]

thanks Steve,
i promised you to play this game since long time ago. now i'm present.

btw, make sure to post the rules in order to assimilate it ASAP.

good luck,

[RobRoy]

SEEDS of GREATNESS
Barbarian Wrath PBEM
Deity Level, Hotseat Mode

Has now begun!

Check out the House Rules post and Lessons Learned posts few posts up.

Any FW/MGE version of Kull's scenario should work fine. The different versions (1.2, 1.4) just have a slightly different PBEM events file and a slightly different wrath .scn file. These are only relevant for the first player (Hittites), who initiates the scenario.

Hotseat PBEM procedures are slightly different from .net based PBEMs:

- Download the previous players .hot file into your AE-3500 directory;
- Start Civ2, selecting "Multiplayer Game", then "Hotseat", then "Load a Saved Hotseat Game", and select the previous players saved .hot file in your AE-3500 directory;
- Press ENTER immediately to get to your turn (you will briefly be exposed to the previous players map, but he should have centered on a black area, and you should already have pressed ENTER, so there's no problem, here, right);
- Play your turn;
- Press Ctrl-N when you're done (but NOT ENTER);
- Center the map on an out-of-the-way area (e.g., upper right corner);
- Save your turn, while your End-of-Turn signal is still flashing;
- Upload your saved .hot file for the next player (order listed in first post).
- Exit out of the game using Ctrl-H, rather than Ctrl-Q.

ST's link has some more info:

http://home.tiscali.cz/cz045662/civ...Hot-NetPBEM.htm

If you'd also like to shrink the map before saving, use Ctrl-X. Shift-Z right-sizes it if the previous player elected to shrink it.

Reminder: If you'd like to view the F11, demographics screen, only do it after you have saved (and preferably uploaded). If you do it on a live file, it resets the tiles worked by each AI city to the default. And every city but the active player's, is an AI city...

Monarch names can only be entered at the time the game is started. If anyone really objects to the default names and wants to use another one, we can probably hex-edit it, if no one minds.

WARNING: We are, provisionally at least, allowing players to engage in .net sessions if there is some permitted diplomatic activity they'd like to do that can't be done via hotseat F3 or something like Civ2Dip. However, because this will change the game from hotseat to network, it screws up several things, including barb spawning. So we'd need to restart the game at that point as a new hotseat scenario. This gives every civ an extra turn's worth of production. You should notify everyone before you engage in such a session, so we can ensure it's done with as little impact, as possible. The least disruptive time to do such a session would be at the end of the last turn (Minoan) and before the next first turn in a game year (Hittite). On the positive side, though, we can't think of a whole lot of situations in which you'd really need to engage in such a session (remember unit and city gifting are not permitted).

[RobRoy]

In the dawn of pre-history, a barbarous warband comes to dominate the Halys basin in Eastern Anatolia. Their Warlord, tradition names him Mursilis, decides not to exterminate the original inhabitants completely. Instead, he installs himself in their largest village and initiates a remarkable process of assimilation, adopting many elements of the local laws, culture, religion, and language. Though implementing the process with the violence typical of the era, the conquerors change as much as the surviving aboriginals. After several generations a new culture can be identified. Their chief, secure in the knowledge that his ancestral lands are protected by hereditary Palace Guards, begins to send out skirmishers to explore the surrounding areas, and presses the unassimilated natives into service to expand and improve his realm further. Stories about these men from Hattusas, the Hatti, these Hittites, spread North, South, East, and West.

Babylon is up...Heresson, I think.

[Peaster]

Well, this is exciting - been waiting over a year for this game!

Originally posted by Bostero
i promised you to play this game since long time ago. now i'm present.

Glad to see you are still with us, Dario! Good luck to you, too.

[Bostero]

re:

i dled this zip file:
V1.4 PBEM Game Files (FW & MGE Only) (546 kb) (new)
is that right?

[Peaster]

Yes, that's right. I think there may be two .scn files, and you want the wrath one. But RobRoy (post #6) says it doesn't matter.

[Peaster]

"Mesopotamia, in general, refers to the area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Assyria, was the northern portion of Mesopotamia, who's capital was Ashur (until 883 BCE, when it was moved to Calah/Nimrud) and whose reach included the major city of Nineveh (Ninua). Sumer refers to the southern delta region, whose primary cities included Ur, Uruk, and Eridu. Akkad was a region north of Sumer which included the area around modern Baghdad as well as the ancient sites of Babylon, Kish, and Nippur.

The political organization of the region was basically a collection of city-states. Sargon of Agade (2371-16 BCE) united the regions of Sumer and Akkad. His descendants eventually lost control of the empire due to pressures from the Hurrians, the Hittites, and other invaders, not to mention internal pressures. In the south Sumer again gained ascendancy, dominated by the city-state Ur. Sumer then collapsed under the Amorites around 2000 BCE. They established many sub- kingdoms including Assyria and Babylon."

http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/assyrbabyl-faq.html

Heresson?? You are late! Hate to start the game this way, but I've Crtl-N'd for Babylon, and played the Assyrian turn. There was some talk in the play test thread about re-assigning civs by time zones. If this plan is serious, it should be announced here (preferably yesterday).

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by RobRoy
- Press ENTER immediately to get to your turn

Press it TWICE ... and don't watch the screen when doing it...

BTW Peaster included hotseat procedures in his Code of Laws already, although procedures are hidden in the middle.

Originally posted by Peaster
After that [the game starts], a +3 vote is required to make changes (such as 5-2 or 3-0).

In extreme situation an alliance of 5 civs can harm an alliance of 2 civs if they bring about a rule disavantageous for the small alliance (like "Greeks and Minoans aren't allowed to move their units" )

No tech gift may be accepted unless you have its pre-preqs. This includes tech from conquest. Accidental exceptions (from theft etc) must be corrected ASAP by researching the pre-reqs of the new tech.

And what about pre-reqs of pre-reqs?

[ISeeALL]

Heresson, Straybow, please read my post # 4 in the beginning of the thread

[Bostero]

igor, i don't have any special time. i check the forum everyday, at anytime.

well, i check it any time from:

2:00 pm to 12:00am. (GMT -3 )

[ISeeALL]

Platy, you are up