New "Ancient Empires" PBEM created

[Sparrowhawk]

/me is pleased to see someone step forward .....and someone who has apparently read the thread too

[SlowThinker]

Zedd, we welcome you!

There is my 'improved' techtree and unit table for this scenario here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=2254824#post2254824

Our house rules are here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=2298081#post2298081

They are little bit provisional, since they weren't oficially signed yet, also there are some minor suggestions for update later in the thread.
I think I will post a new version and ask people for an agreement.

[germanos]

Re: assention of the Hatte Lord

Originally posted by Zedd

Therefore I ask that any parties with diplomatic agreements toward ur nation pleas send private word and I will see to it that past promises are kept and friendships honored.

Welcome, oh Zedd of Hatta !

The war between Assyria and Hatta has long passed into memory. All that remains to be settled is the transfer of a unit of Farmers to Hatta, and then officially the peace-treaty can be signed. We will need to meet online for a MP-session, or perhapsYaroslav's CivDip v3.0 will be available to get the deal done.

My last post should make clear what deal was made on the border between our Empires, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
If you wish, you could contact Egypt, who's Pharoah has mediated to settle the conflict, if you want to have an unpartial view on the matter.

Yours truly, Imsu, King of Assyria.

[Kull]

From the Eastern desert comes confirmation that the Barbarian Horde slaughtered our Charioteers to the last man. The sounds of lamentation sweep across the land of Egypt, and Pharoah vows vengeance.

Elsewhere, Assyrian Skirmishers have blocked travel along the Great Sinai road near Petra, and Imsu is requested to withdraw them to the north.

The accession of King Zedd to the throne of Hatti is viewed favorably in Memphis.

(On Monday, Pharoah will be departing Memphis for a trip to the Great Cities of the North, and will be incommunicado until the following weekend)

[germanos]

Bump

for Stephan

[germanos]

To King Zedd:

The newest version of the civdip utility can be downloaded at

http://cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/civ2/download.php?id=3125

If you can get it running, I'll post a barter-file so that you can get the Farmers near Ishkandaroun.
Giving units is a bit labourous (sp?), and it will involve some more barters going back and forth. (this is so to prevent misuse of this feature).

[Sparrowhawk]

For Stefan, in hopes that he sees this before kengel does.

[Zedd]

germanos,
I have downloaded the newest civ2dip file, but have not had a chance to open it. Howevere i allready have java and the previous version of civ dip installed so I don't think it yould be a problem.

[germanos]

@ King Zedd:

This is great news.
Assyria hereby sends you the barter-file that will transfer a Farmer-unit located at 75,33 to you. If you accept (on your turn), peace will have been signed as well.

If I recall correctly, accepting the barter will prompt you to generate a new barter-file that you must send to me. I must then accept that barter, and you wil be able to move the unit in the turn there-after.
But this should be explained as well in the manual.

This labourous way is to prevent players passing on units from one to another and vice-versa, which could lead to 'dubble movement' of units in a single turn.

Yours truly, and Assyria is looking forward to the reign of King Zedd: may it be long and prosperous.


PS: file is zipped since I cannot upload .bat-files

[Stefan Härtel]

Sorry guys, I wasn't well this weekend. Here you go.

[kengel]

Uahhh.... 2.30 AM here...
Report following tomorrow....

[SlowThinker]

House rules - version 3

This is a 3rd edition of proposition of house rules. Of course any rule can be a subject of debate.
Edit: rules continue here: summary of rules added after version 3
Sentences are compiled from this thread, Rah and Aussie rules in MP forum etc.

It looks these rules are agreed unoficially by most players now, but...
as Kull noticed, we started with no special rules, and so we can't force new rules to anybody. Therefore players are asked to post an agreement or disagreement with rules.

I stressed movement with incomplete movepoints left is also a fortuious action (in the Reloading section).
Since Yaroslav's Civ2Dip utility allows unit giving, I added it in the list of possible actions.
I changed the text on several places, but meaning of any rule was not changed.

---

General

Settings
King, Barbarian wrath

Game speed
There is now a 72 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.

Turn procedure
Don't open the Demographics window (by both the F11 key or the menu). If you want to see the window content then do it after the final save or in a separate game load that will not be used for gameplay.

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.), a formerly revealed square that was out of your visibility gets in your visibility again...).
4.	You can NEVER take back fortuitous actions: combats, hut popping, tech stealing, movement with incomplete movepoints left 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.).

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.

In SoG scenario, the turn-based Event messages are intended for everyone, although in a PBEM only the first player sees them - hence the requirement for white player to make them public.

---

Diplomacy

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

Please distinguish between...
- Diplomatic Arrangements (may be broken, lying is possible, passed info may be false) and
- Barters (cannot be broken, info (maps) must be correct).

Diplomatic Arrangements
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) .
Any info may be offered during diplomatic talks (except restraints related to Map Making), but any info may be false (unlike info (maps) obtained by barters).

Barters
Barters and gifts are allowed using several methods: built-in Civ2 diplomacy (F3key), online (MP) play, Yaroslav's utility, exchanging map screenshots etc. But there are some restrictions: Description of allowed ways for implementing barters/gifts:
Maps	online (multiplayer) connection, AI diplomacy (F3 key), screenshots, Yaroslav's Tool (the official name is Civ2 PBEM Diplomacy Utility; the last version is 3.0 and may be downloaded from http://cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/civ2/download.php?id=3125) see restraints related to Map Making
Techs	online connection, AI diplomacy, Yaroslav's Tool (current version don't count with GL, so you have to pass the given tech also to the owner of the GL some way)
Gold	online connection, AI diplomacy, Yaroslav's Tool
Units	A. online connection (warning: units are homed to the nearest city of the recipient);   the online connection may bring some problems, so you must care about: obtained commodity caravans must not be delivered (they may be used only for wonder building); food caravans are OK) A given unit must not move (nor accomplish any other order) in the turn when given. B. Yaroslav's Tool (units stay homed to the original city)   possible negative effects are precluded: caravans are not rehomed, agiven unit will not be available for one turn notes: only the last version (3.0) of Yaroslav's Tool allows unit giving. AI diplomacy is forbidden because units are teleported
Cities	not allowed
Warning: AI diplomacy can bring problems - for example some unwanted info about opponent's civ may be revealed. Both gifts and barters and way of their implementation must be agreed by both sides before the realization.
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).

 

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: (not important now, I keep it here for our next game )
No map sharing (including screenshots - gifs, jpgs) until both civs have discovered the 'Map Making' tech, no use of map coordinates for specifying localities on the map, areas and squares can be determined using words only (for example: about 10 squares south-east from Babylon). Distances cannot be expressed punctualy: only numbers 2, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 ... ('about 2', 'about 5'...) may be used.
Coordinates may be used for determining boundaries only. Another way how to determine boundaries is sharing screenshots of the starting map (3500 BC).

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.

---

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 (management of cities in pre-turn stage, see Using 'Zoom to Home City' to adjust production)
(The priciple: Before your turn Civ2 shows cities where an improvement or a non-combat unit was built. In this stage it is possible to try some tricks. )
renaming cities must be reported (except adding personal notes after the city name end that help you to remember your plans).
automated settlers (to irrigate with no adjacent water}
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
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)

---

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

[SlowThinker]

Rules:
Kull, if you want to add any restriction for unit giving, please formulate it.
But I think we can discuss it independently from the agreement of the basic set of House Rules v. 3.

[Zedd]

I don't understand the part about opening a .net in SP mode. What would be an advantage of that?

[kengel]

After sleeping 48 hours, the greek ambassador is able to speak again
We are happy to announce the invention of something very useful, what we call the "wheel". Now it is very easy for the wifes to get their drunken husbands home.
Also, we had a first contact to an Assyrian emissary. The meeting was friendly and a lot of tales were exchanged.
Nothing new else...