New "Ancient Empires" PBEM created

[tanelorn]

God be with you, man.

[SlowThinker]

House rules

This is a proposition of house rules. Rules that are already in question are blue bold. Of course any rule can be the subject of debate.
Sentences are compiled from this thread, Rah and Aussie rules in MP forum etc.

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General

Settings
King, Barbarian wrath

Game speed
There is now a 48 hour deadline. If you can't make it, post here, and we will undoubtedly give you some more time, if you have a good excuse. If you are late, expect your turn to have passed. Don't be shy to take your turn when the guy before you has not shown up in time.
After (or before) 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'. Action is
		a movement or another order to one unit
		rushbuild
		improvement sale
2.	You didn't intend to execute 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 (new terrain is revealed, a new unit is detected, a formerly revealed square has changed (an irrigation is built on it, a foreign city has changed size etc.)...).
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.).

Comment: Again it looks complicated, but it is precise. And with a strict 'no reloading' rule I would be a little bit nervous when playing.

There have been written two opinions already:
germanos: Reloading when you made a 'movement typo' as you describe is tolerable IMO.
Kull: no reloading

Getting info from saves
Revealing the starting map is legal, because a player that has already played all civs in SP games has the same info at his disposal.
Reloading/opening savefiles of passed turns in order to get some last information or to find out a detailed info about events that went between your two turns (for example who killed your unit) is legal, but you must be cautious in order to avoid the AI moves with units of other human players and reveals them to you:
In MP mode (Main Menu / Multiplayer Game / load a saved multiplayer game) you can open ONLY files that were saved right before your turn (by your predecessor) or by yourself.
It is possible to open a .net game also in SP mode (Main Menu / Load a game) - but you have to change the default .sav option to .net. In this case you can open also save, other than the save from the civ that directly precedes yours: you will go to your own civ (as chosen) but since its not your turn, you will not be able to move any of your units. The player is nothing more than a bystander/onlooker.

Reports
Players are not obligated to report anything about a course of player's turn. But things that would cause an international incident in a SP game can be accomplished only under war. War can be declared both privately (by e-mail) or publicly (in this thread).
So if your unit or city dissapears you will know that the originator is one of civs you are in a war with. (Still I would prefer introduce a rule that demands to report these events, at least battles where attacker wins etc. Also because we have not too much of units in the game.)

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Diplomacy

Diplomacy can be managed both privately (by e-mail) or publicly (in this thread).

All diplomatic arrangements (alliances, tech, unit, gold, city trading, trade agreements = to allow caravans to be delivered etc.) are allowed, but any agreements can be broken when advantageous (unlike barters) .

Contact: No diplomacy until after the first physical unit contact between two civs. (But players are allowed to publicly declare their progress on the thread.)
Map making: under construction, see thread

Barters are allowed (using Yaroslav's utility, built-in Civ2 diplomacy, online play, exchanging map screenshots or any other way) except:
	wonder trading (you cannot pass a city with a wonder)
	obtained commodity caravans must not be delivered (they may be used only for wonder building); food caravans are OK)
	map exchanging without possession of Map Making by both civs (see supra).
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 one. Also the screenshot must be true (but you can blacken some areas - if you announce it).

Diplomatic contact with AI is forbidden. You may never initiate a contact and you must always refuse all diplomatic contact with other civilization (when you play your turn) UNLESS you will do something you and the human leader of that civ have agreed to.
A question: what if one of civs will be controlled by AI for long time?

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Tricks and ploys

Not allowed:

black clicking
(1. Right click on black area - reveals continent number - try not to look at that small numeral in the status window that represents the continent number.
2. Double click on revealed area - reveals cities (terrain help is not shown on a city) - don't double click in unknown areas
3. Left click on black or revealed area - reveals cities (map is not centered on a city) - center map by the right click only)
unsinkable boats and non-crashing aircraft
(this is done by just moving your boat/craft 1 less space than its available movement and pressing Wait followed by using the End turn keyboard shortcut)
caravan re-homing
(unlike normal units you cannot hit the 'h' key to change the home of a caravan - however the 'support from this city' option is available from within the city screen. This way it is possible to build caravans in small cities and to rehome them to large ones.)
stealing shields and immediate tech use
(The priciple resides in clicking on units in the window of supported units when Civ2 shows a city where an improvement or a non-combat unit was built:
Suppose you have several cities close to one another. If you have all units stationed in these cities hosted by the first of which (in establishing sequence), maybe you can save the maintainance shields for them by re-host units while processing cities. Here's a demonstration. You have 3 cities A B C, in which A is your first city. All of your units in cities B and C are hosted by A. You rush build non-military units or buildings in B and C so that at the beginning of the next turn you'll be sent to city screens of B and C. While in city screens, you re-host units inside cities to B and C, respectively. Since B and C are processed before A, you save the maintainance shields for those units. You then move units in B and C back to A and re-host them before moving back, so that you can save again the next turn.
Use of this trick to produce wonders, improvements and units in the same turn as discovering the requisite tech is also disallowed.)
renaming cities
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.),

Allowed:

city bribing
unit bribing
incremental buying
pre-worked settlers
automated settlers (to irrigate with no adjacent water}
food caravans (any use is allowed (except rehoming))
ship chaining (transfer cargo from ship to ship in 1 turn)
diplo-guiding (using a diplomat or spy (or other unit that ignores ZOC) to lead other units through an enemy's zones of control.)
reading 'near city' notes (to use 'near city XX' notes in a city window to locate unknown cities)

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If you break a rule by a mistake nothing horrible happens. But you should announce it and warn other players.

Edit: phrasing only

[germanos]

BUMP

who's next? The Greeks or the ever absent Minoans?

In reply to SlowThinkers post:


Thanks for the effort

I incline to agree with all you mentioned,
exept the automated Settler thingy... Anybody would have to irrigate adjacent to water. The automated Settler bug is clearly not the way it should be (why would we get the 'pop up' if we would irrigate regularly?)

Germanos.

[La Fayette]

Re: Minoan Civ

Originally posted by Kull
New Minoan Player:

EZRhino will be joining the Army at the end of September, and has agreed to step aside in favor of Lafayette. I hope you'll join with me in wishing him the very best as he goes forth to serve his country.

LaFayette, welcome aboard and get ready.....your first turn is coming soon!

I had problems with my connection to Apolyton. That's why I didn't reply sooner.
My best wishes to EZRhino (if he's soon joining the Army, it means he's about 40 years younger than I am, and I bet anyone would agree that, given the choice offered, one would take youth rather than experience ).
I am ready (and if something bothers me, I'll ask my friend SlowThinker who seems to have been doing a lot of thinking about this game ).

[SlowThinker]

Automated Settlers

I adopted automated settlers from MP rules. I think the main reason in MP games is that many players play very fast and so they want not to bother about Settlers. This is not our case.

Authors added a necessity of adjacent water for a better simulation. But from strategic point of view efficiency from a Settler building Irrigation is lower that benefit from building roads or mining. And it is even lower if you have to build an additional irrigation to get to water. This is why I wanted to allow auto-settler... But

...I ran some tests now but i wasn't able to anticipate when a Settler would build a road and when irrigate. Another problem is that Settler's work is not doubled with automated work!

Conclusion: I agree with germanos.

[SlowThinker]

La Fayette, you are a fully-fledged player and so you are asked to express your opinion to rules.

[SlowThinker]

Rules

I edited 'Getting info from saves': of course you can load also your own saves.

[Steve Clark]

Sorry for the delay, slipped my mind.

[germanos]

Welcome aboard LaFayette

It's your turn now, as the minoans move after the Greeks.
Since Yop is still very absent in all of his games, Assyria now considers you as the rightfull ruler of Minos.


Re: rules

On the loading of saves:

There is the possibility of loading saves, other then the save from the civ that directly precedes yours, without the AI moving units of other players.
In this case, you do NOT choose the 'Multiplayer Game' option from the startup menu, but you choose directly the 'load a game' option (as opposed to the 'load a saved multiplayer game').
To load the .net game, you simply change the default .sav option to .net, and the game will be loaded up as a normal save game.
Note that in this case, you will go to your own civ (as chosen) but since its not your turn, you will not be able to move any of your units. The player is nothing more then a bystander/onlooker.

During some events (like battles or so) people might want to know what exactly had happened on the battlefield, and I tend to allow such information gathering, especially since players will have an option to anticipate what to do when their turn will be up, and thus it could save time, and keep the game moving at speed.

Please share your thoughts on this,
germanos

[La Fayette]

Hello

I have just had a look at the save sent by steve.

Here is my problem:
Anything (units, advancements, improvements,...) looks like civ2 'vanilla'. Nothing corresponds to the scenario 'Seeds of Greatness'.

Of course I haven't played.
Could someone explain what happened and tell me what to do ?

[Cyrion]

Contrary to the usual MP games (remember my problem last Monday?? ), you have to put your save in the folder corresponding to the scenario you're playing!

If you don't, the game will use the standard graphics and rules...

[germanos]

LaFayette: what Cyrion said.

You can download the scenario from the link that is in the first post of this thread.

[SlowThinker]

Rules - 'Getting info from saves'

I can only agree with germanos. I reworked the paragraph.

So that means you can find out who killed your unit ...

[La Fayette]

LF comes to power and notices that it is very easy to guess who was ruling the Minoan Empire: spare settlers are busy building a road on a remote mountain, spare skirmishers are wandering to and fro, anything but useful scouting, and spare boats are stacked idle in a coastal city.
LF smiles and says: 'at least I should be able to do better than that' and the Minoan people shout: 'LF we love you'.
'Love at first sight' isn't it?

(I don't know who plays after me, so here is the save )

[La Fayette]

1) Thank you to Cyrion and Germanos for kind help

2) AFAIK all 7 civs now have a 'permanent' leader. Could someone post a list of civs in the right order, with name and e-mail of the leader?

3) About SlowThinker's proposals, I agree with Germanos: no tricky irrigation. The other rules are OK, except DIPLOMACY.

Here is my opinion:
In a game with 7 human players, there are 2 main possibilities:

3-1: Allow (almost) anything in the field of diplomacy (which is (almost) SlowThinker's proposal) and the game becomes a 'diplo game': the winner will be the best liar

3-2: Forbid (almost) anything in the field of diplomacy and the game becomes close to a SP game in MGE (since the AI is generally so hostile that diplomatic achievements are very unlikely): the winner will be the best (let us say the luckiest) player

IMO diplomacy must be discussed AT ONCE .

IMO nothing else than the following should be allowed between allies:
map swapping, authorisation to steal techs, authorisation to deliver commodities peacefully, no sneak attack.

But I am ready to play a 'diplo game' if the majority feels like it.

(we might then agree to use French as diplomatic language )