New "Ancient Empires" PBEM created

[kengel]

@ Steve & Tanelorn: I promise to keep care for whatever civ I will get responsibility. I am specialist for challenges
@ Stefan: LOL... it seems we are coming from the same "old europe" country ... Nice to meet you and thanks for the hint with the version, now I am sure it will work
@Slowthinker: Also thanks for the hint, I will have a look for the houserules.

@all:
Does there exist any readme to this scenario/PBEM special, and which civ could I take over? If there exists any time scheduling, I will take the time slot, if not, I would prefer to rule the civ of the hopeless and despaired with the lowest city number. Are there any special game goals or role plays dedicated to the civs?

If you are searching for a reliable and good second join player, may I suggest Sparrowhawk?

[kengel]

Time passed, and the hopeful new leader had spend some time to study the "house-rules" (though beginning from page 24 only), which are acceptable at all (thanks, Slowthinker, for your big efforts to write it down. It helped a lot!).
Some remarks from my side:

48 hour deadline
I strongly suggest not to let the AI take over a players turn, if he passed the deadline. AI completely messes not only that players civ, but has also tricky side effects with other civs (triggering trading of advantages, surprise attack, instant wonder building, govenrment change, ...)
Better, some neutral person takes over the turn of that player, ended with Ctrl-N.

Unit giving
I would like to add an additional rule:
Any traded unit, which needs shield support or affects city happiness, must have a new home city after trading. If it is a NON-unit after trading, it must be deleted.
This rule prevents from using a feature which is most advantage for republic/democracy. If there is an allied city in your home land, you could move (all) your units beneath the allied city, trade it to your ally, he will trade it back to you the next turn, and -voila- you got an expenseless NON-unit.

[SlowThinker]

A readme is in the scenario package.
(Concerning documentation - about 3 pages back you can load my two .doc documents that contain peace and war techtrees with units and improvements and one .html document with units arranged by type).
Read last two pages of this thread - a conflict started between Hittites and Assyrians.

No time scheduling.

I would prefer to rule the civ of the hopeless and despaired with the lowest city number.

You are late . I came couple turns ago and I got it.
The opening screen shows this:
Hittites (7 cities, 17 units)
Greeks (7 cities, 12 units)
Anyway Assyrians have 13 cities and Pyramids so you can feel hopeless easily.

Of course Sparrowhawk will be welcomed too.

[germanos]

Originally posted by kengel
Time passed, and the hopeful new leader had spend some time to study the "house-rules" (though beginning from page 24 only), which are acceptable at all (thanks, Slowthinker, for your big efforts to write it down. It helped a lot!).
Some remarks from my side:

48 hour deadline
I strongly suggest not to let the AI take over a players turn, if he passed the deadline. AI completely messes not only that players civ, but has also tricky side effects with other civs (triggering trading of advantages, surprise attack, instant wonder building, govenrment change, ...)
Better, some neutral person takes over the turn of that player, ended with Ctrl-N.

Unit giving
I would like to add an additional rule:
Any traded unit, which needs shield support or affects city happiness, must have a new home city after trading. If it is a NON-unit after trading, it must be deleted.
This rule prevents from using a feature which is most advantage for republic/democracy. If there is an allied city in your home land, you could move (all) your units beneath the allied city, trade it to your ally, he will trade it back to you the next turn, and -voila- you got an expenseless NON-unit.

Welcome Kengel

I fully agree with your propositions for the house-rules.
Remember that the 48 hour deadline has been expanded to 72 hours, and that you are likely to get more time if so requested (real-life can sometimes mess up with any game-scedule.) The Ctrl-N idea looks very good.
Perhaps Tanelorn or Steve would be willing to fulfill this little time-consuming task?

[joking]If you like strong challenges, why not pick the Hittite and continue the war with mighty Assyria [/joking]

[SlowThinker]

kengel,
There are 2 versions of house rules - did you read the last one?

Unit giving is allowed by online connection only, so units are always rehomed to the nearest city.
I prefer to talk about 48 hour dealine later, so that some rules are valid as soon as possible. germanos - I don't think it has been expanded, Kull only proposed that and nobody answered...

[SlowThinker]

time limit

OK, I perceived we can talk things about time limit now... but we should separate it from 1st edition of house rules.

Originally posted by Kull couple of pages ago
- Time Limit. Having played some other PBEMs, its safe to say that 48 hours is a VERY short period, especially now that the empires are growing. Given that we have international players in multiple time zones, and none of us want to be checking 'poly every other day...

This is one reason why I suggest to post saves ALSO by an e-mail. You needn't to check Poly, only your e-mail. You can also turn on automated warning on your mobil phone about incoming e-mails or to ask your predecessor to post warning e-mails directly on your phone.

I think that some preparatory notices like 'I will play today evening' or 'I can't play next 24 hours' would mentally prepare the next player for his turn.
If I start to prepare free time for my next turn only after my predecessor played then I will sure play later than if I can anticipate the moment of the predecessor's play.

I think the 'time limit' should be interpreted as time in which you are supposed to play or to make clear when you can play. Skipping a turn is a disaster that mixes up player's plans - so it should be used in extreme situations only.
Anyway players should try to play as fast as possible.

Originally posted by kengel
Better, some neutral person takes over the turn of that player, ended with Ctrl-N.

kengel, do you mean the neutral person won't move with units, only press Ctrl-N? A good idea, but I think it should be used in those extreme situations only.

[kengel]

All right, so I will contact Sparrowhawk, if he is willing to take some civ's fate...
I downloaded the scenario & techtree and had a first look. It looks indeed interesting!
Though I have had some technical problems in loading the scenario (I needed to rename some files since I have the german language version installed), it seems to run now.
Stefan, how did you get running the scenario? Did you need to create the scenario folder (I did not have any installed in my version)?

Originally posted by SlowThinker
kengel,
There are 2 versions of house rules - did you read the last one?

Yop, got version 2, the last posted rules I guess...

Originally posted by SlowThinker
Unit giving is allowed by online connection only, so units are always rehomed to the nearest city.

I have to admit, that I am not sure about that point, but I thought, that the units get NON units if the nearest city is not a city of the own civ.
(maybe I am wrong, I did not try it yet).

Originally posted by SlowThinker
This is one reason why I suggest to post saves ALSO by an e-mail. You needn't to check Poly, only your e-mail.

I also prefer email, but I will go with the majority.

Originally posted by SlowThinker
kengel, do you mean the neutral person won't move with units, only press Ctrl-N? A good idea, but I think it should be used in those extreme situations only.

In the other PBEM I am involved with, occasionally a turn is subbed by an ally. If you rather prefer someone "real" neutral, any nice external civ player could do a Ctrl-N hit or alternatively join in MP online mode. I let it to your suggestion, if that person might do some obvoius unit moves or city management, or just ends the turn without doing anything else.
Of course, I agree that should only happen in extreme situations
For further go on, I suggest everybody posts his preferred times for moving, so maybe me and Sparrowhawk could choose the vacant civs more wisely in agreement to a clever time scheduling (this might speed up game a lot).
My preferred moving times are dayly between 18.00 and 24.00 GMT.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by kengel
If you rather prefer someone "real" neutral, any nice external civ player could do a Ctrl-N hit or alternatively join in MP online mode. I let it to your suggestion, if that person might do some obvoius unit moves or city management, or just ends the turn without doing anything else.

I think anybody can ask a friend (that is not in the game) for a replacement.
I supposed the 'Ctrl-N only' solution would be used if somebody is naughty, don't play his turn and don't answer. Then 'Ctrl-N only' is probably better than an AI turn.

My best time is 17-23 GMT, but daytime may be possible too.

[Sparrowhawk]

I received an email from Kengel telling me of the vacancy in this game, and though I am intrigued, I am also unsure....

I have never played a scenario (mainly because I have never been interested in modifying the existing civ rules) and as a result I haven't the slightest idea how it is different, though I have read this thread, and will download the tech tree and readme file.

Not sure if I should be committing to this, as I am also in the PBEM Kengel is in (for several years now) as well as the Civ2 Democracy Game (come check it out ) and one of the Succession games, and while none of these by themself take much time, I am not clear how ofter the turns are cycling in this one, and wouldn't want to be the cause of a hold up. (but if I read correctly, 7 players and a 72 hour time limit, so a max of 18 days could pass between my turns?... and if everyone one played a turn a day it would be more like 7 days between turns?)

Either way, I am interested, and will either commit or decline tomorrow after reading the above mentioned downloads.

As for available times, GMT baffles me, but I am usually available to play North American 6-10 Central Time.

Sparrowhawk

p.s. How would creating the scenario file, or whatever it is effect my other games? Or would it?

[kengel]

Originally posted by SlowThinker

I think anybody can ask a friend (that is not in the game) for a replacement.
I supposed the 'Ctrl-N only' solution would be used if somebody is naughty, don't play his turn and don't answer. Then 'Ctrl-N only' is probably better than an AI turn.

100% Agreed

Sparrowhawk, nice to C you! As you I have same concernments about messing up my civ folder with a scenario. However, though I am no expert, scenarios seems to be easily implemented (without side effects) in the gold edition (You just put all files into a separate folder), things seems to be just more complicated in the "german" civ2 MP version.
However, I have to admit it is lots of time consuming to get worked into a completely new tech & units tree, though somewhat interesting.
I had a first look at the scenario, and it seems Paul did an excellent job. Especially I am impressed, that this scenario is based on real history (maybe this time I can learn more about history )

[SlowThinker]

SoG techtree

Originally posted by kengel
However, I have to admit it is lots of time consuming to get worked into a completely new tech & units tree, though somewhat interesting.

Since I am a newbie with this scenario too, I started an all-in-one document that contains units, improvements and wonders with their stats on the techtree. Techtree is divided in economic and war parts, and can be downloaded here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...24#post2254824
(There is also a re-ordered Units.htm document: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...35#post2238035)
Remember it is not always correct.
I have newer versions on my hard drive, so let me know if you want them.

[Kull]

Egyptian Engineers in the city of Abydos have unveiled a most unusual contraption - a "Ladder Tower". They have assured Pharoah that this structure will allow our forces to climb atop the walls of the fortified Nubian City of Thebes, thus rendering it's defenders helpless before us! Soon my brothers...soon.....these last insolent holdouts will lie prostrate before the God-King of Memphis!

Elsewhere, Libyan horsemen were encountered and defeated in the far deserts of the West.

[Sparrowhawk]

Though I appreciate the invite to join, I have thought about time constraints for me, and my lack of knowledge of scenarios in general and don't feel it would be fair to the others for me to join this game at this time. I will continue to watch this thread however, and who can say what will happen in the future.

/me

[Kull]

Originally posted by Sparrowhawk
Though I appreciate the invite to join, I have thought about time constraints for me, and my lack of knowledge of scenarios in general and don't feel it would be fair to the others for me to join this game at this time. I will continue to watch this thread however, and who can say what will happen in the future.

* Sparrowhawk

A suggestion for Sparrowhawk and Kengel: Take a day or so and try the single-player version of this scenario. If you are like most people, you'll find it's very easy to learn and will soon get hooked - it's almost as addictive as "regular" civ!

[SlowThinker]

my lack of knowledge of scenarios in general

You don't need a knowledge of scenarios in general - you'd need only to conform with a different techttree.