New "Ancient Empires" PBEM created

[Zedd]

I think the reasoning for that is in MP games the unit is not abailable until next turn automaticly. When playing a PBEM there is no such limitation, so one was imposed by civ dip so that in 2000 BC you can't gift a unit to a civ that plays next, then they have imediate use of that unit in 2000BC.

That said, I do think there should be a limit of some kind. like max # units gifted per turn or something. Is there any such limit in MP?

With all evidence in light i would say to ST's self imposed limit to 1 per city.
I would also say that Kull made a good statement,("Units shall not be exchanged if the sole purpose is to achieve an exploit, i.e something outside the normal flow of the game.")
If we can't trust each other to play fairly there are alot more problems than unit gifting. All of us in this forum are well past "Newby" stage and can conduct ourselves accordingly.

[Zedd]

Originally posted by SlowThinker

Ah, we remember now ... it was Babylon who attacked the peaceful Assyrian people sneakily. We remember... Egypt protested and warned Babylon that Pharaoh couldn't tolerate that. Also Persians, Minoans, Hittites and Greeks expressed they would support Assyria - the victim of the attack. We remember... Then Babylon started a war against these four civs without warning...
Therefore you are right, it is Assyria who should ask for a compensation.
But bloodthirsty Babylonians will continue their attack and destroy many Assyrian cities soon.

(Zedanu sighs)

While it is true Assyria was the one to attack babylon, from Dedanu's accounts it was justifiable. But in thier greed the Babylonians sought not retribution or even compensation as suggested, instead they suggested profit. Even now while under attack from EVERYONE, any attack I make against my deadliest enemy's will be mis-construed into an intollerable act of agression. and with each battle the "PRICE" of peace increases. I offered peace, and was open to a FAIR systm of compensation, but rather than that the other nations sought out a way to increase thier power dramaticly while pigeon holding Assyria into a weak nation.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Zedd
I think the reasoning for that is in MP games the unit is not abailable until next turn automaticly.

In MP game the unit can move automatically. In a MP game with a 6-civ alliance we could send a group of Chariots II in the core of Assyrian territory within one turn . This is why we added the requirement that the unit must not move one turn with the new owner.

I can agree with any rule that would limit rehoming units , but I think rules should be clear and unambiguous. Terms 'natural flow of the game' and 'city in danger' are indefinite for me.

I have an idea:
What about this rule:
You cannot give a unit that is homed in a city that sees enemy units.

(A city sees
units with attack<>0 : 2 squares away
other units : only adjacent squares)

Edit
Maybe the rule should be harder:
You cannot give a unit if you see any enemy unit 3 squares from the home city.



The rule is unambiguos and the attacker knows when the units of the target may be rehomed and when not.

And an additional rule:
You can swap a unit back and forth within one MP session only if the unit was homed in a foreign city. (In other words this technique may be used only to stop units from not to eat a shield of support)

[SlowThinker]

I edited the last post.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Zedd
While it is true Assyria was the one to attack babylon, from Dedanu's accounts it was justifiable.

Such an impudence! Before the Assyrian attack Dedanu never complained there should exist any debts that Babylon isn't paying. Conversely he accepted the information from our Diplomatic System and attacked sneakily in the same moment.

Even now while under attack from EVERYONE, any attack I make against my deadliest enemy's will be mis-construed into an intollerable act of agression.

In our humble opinion now this is a war, we understand you are fighting. But the war itself is an intollerable act of agression that started when Assyria attacked 5 civs.

[Kull]

What I'm trying to avoid here is the necessity for players to have to consult a 50-page set of rules full of "thou shalts" and "shalt nots", all laid out in excruciating detail, before they can take their turn.

In that respect, my rule was TOO complicated - it would suffice to say "Units shall not be exchanged if the sole purpose is to achieve an exploit". So what would an exploit be? Something you do you only - or mostly - to avoid normal in-game mechanics or consequences. Here's an example of each:

1) Mechanics Avoidance: Exchanging units solely to do away with a shield support requirement. This is clearly an exploit because it seeks to avoid the "normal" civ2 requirement that units are homed to a city, and thereby consume shields, Civ2s primitive method for simulating logistics.

2) Consequences Avoidance: Gifting units that are homed to an endangered city is an exploit IF you wouldn't have given them away otherwise. Maybe that seems vague, but really, is it THAT difficult to understand? Here's a simple test. Before you give the unit away, look in the mirror and ask yourself, "would I be doing this if the city wasn't in danger"? If you can justify it to your conscience, then fine, move on.

I'm sure the occaisonal gray area will crop up, but we can always discuss it - as happened in this case.

On a somewhat related matter, I'd like to note for the record that allowing the use of both MP and Civdip to achieve the same result has "exploit" written all over it. I'm by no means an expert on either, but lets look at unit gifting as an example - MP unit exchange involves an automatic rehoming while civdip does not.

In the context of our game, you can see that CivDip is a great way to transfer units to avoid paying shield support, while MP is preferable when rehoming is advantageous (such as when the home city is in danger). Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't sound so great.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Kull
1) Mechanics Avoidance: Exchanging units solely to do away with a shield support requirement.

OK ... a hypothetic example: let us say Babylonians don't have the Bronze weapons and Persians build veteran units for Babs and now Babylon has 30 vet units homed in Persia.
This way the Bab/Persian Alliance may save 20 shields per turn and it is allowed (by Kull's proposed rule). This doesn't sound good.

Another example:
With your 'simple rule' it is possible that two civs exchange caravan on a regular basis. They don't care about revenues very much, possibly they don't know the theory of caravan in detail. By accident they double or triple their revenue, but they don't know about it and therefore it is legal (by Kull's proposed rule).

I know rules are long, but they are well organized. About trading units there is one paragraph only, and it is not so hard to read it.

Gifting units that are homed to an endangered city is an exploit IF you wouldn't have given them away otherwise. ... Before you give the unit away, look in the mirror and ask yourself, "would I be doing this if the city wasn't in danger"? If you can justify it to your conscience, then fine, move on.

I don't see how should I deduce this paragraph from your simple one-sentence rule("Units shall not be exchanged if the sole purpose is to achieve an exploit"). There is nothing about 'endangered city' in your rule.

How shall I know what is an exploit and what is not?
I consider it is natural units get rehomed if passed to another civ, also it is natural I don't want they are destructed.

Imagine a city building a Granary, then the city gets in a danger and I switch the Granary to City Walls. I wouldn't be doing this if the city wasn't in danger. Is it an exploit?

Compare the case of units gifted to another civ and the example with Granary/Walls. Is there any diference?
The game allows to give units without any penalization, and similarly to change production to walls without a penalization. It might be better if there was some penalization, but there isn't.
(What I consider to be questionable is if the gifted unit would be given back, and so the only purpose of the swap would be to rehome the unit to another city.)

I'm by no means an expert on either, but lets look at unit gifting as an example - MP unit exchange involves an automatic rehoming while civdip does not.

I agree.
IMO 2 rules would suffice to deal with it. One to limit the MP gifting, another one to control the CivDip gifting.

[Kull]

I was going to debate you, point-by-point, but it turns out that the "Normal" civ2 method for Single Player unit swapping (i.e. through the foreign minister) automatically turns all gifted units into "None" for support. Which means the game INTENDED that gifted units not be supported. In which case, it's not an exploit that gifted units don't have to pay shield support.

So my simple rule doesn't work.

Go ahead and come up with pages of rules, ST - just don't expect me to remember them all!

I'd still like to have a discussion about whether we should allow both MP and CivDip, since each method provides a different outcome for the same action (to me, this is rife with exploit potential) . I now know about the differences in unit gifting - what are the others?

[SlowThinker]

Kull, I hope the idea of my last post is clear: I wanted to say that the interpretation of "natural flow of the game" will change from one player to another one. Threfore such a simple rule can't work IMHO.

Go ahead and come up with pages of rules, ST - just don't expect me to remember them all!

I think we were always permissive concerning the rules and they are half-official.
And I think if you don't trade unit massively you needn't care about this part of the rules.

the "Normal" civ2 method for Single Player unit swapping (i.e. through the foreign minister) automatically turns all gifted units into "None" for support. Which means the game INTENDED that gifted units not be supported.

IMO that means there is another bug in the game rather that it was intended.
I never used the foreign minister swap because I knew it needn't work. THerefore I didn't know about that.
But I think creating NONE units by foreign minister swap should be forbidden.

[Peaster]

I guess both sides have a point - we'd all like to keep the rules simple, but we don't want excessive exploitation. Maybe ST can write some rules to cover all these cases. Maybe he can include a grace rule - that players who don't gift/trade very often can ignore the other new rules.

IMO the main rule in this game is the 72 hour rule. It is about time to PM our I.N.G.

....Straybow?

[Zedd]

:LOL: what a complicated mess :LOL:

I think ST's intentions are well placed, and like I said all of us are capable of looking at the situation and determining wheather it is an exploit or not. I don't think anyone would intentionaly use something they felt was an exploit. just as ST brought this to our attention rather than devising a new strategy arround gifting units by the hundreds.

If creating a "Rule" will to ambiguous (spell??) then lets make it a rule of conduct between gentlemen gamers. "no IM's in all caps, and don't take advantage of the unit gifting by back-gifting multiple units."

Personally I think its part of the game and not an exploit, but a limit of 1 per city would be acceptable.

[Zedd]

Originally posted by SlowThinker

Such an impudence! Before the Assyrian attack Dedanu never complained there should exist any debts that Babylon isn't paying. Conversely he accepted the information from our Diplomatic System and attacked sneakily in the same moment.

I am mostly ignorant of those preceedings, I accept your account as factual but add also that Dedanu was very upset with the babylonians, for what reasons no one knows. to be honest I need to go back and look at previous saves becouse I can't even remember what citys or units may have been attacked.

In our humble opinion now this is a war, we understand you are fighting. But the war itself is an intollerable act of agression that started when Assyria attacked 5 civs.

Point taken, and despite my tirade at the seemingly impossible odds and unending hatred expressed by our adversaries, I know that there will only be one conclusion to this conflict, someone must loose. Likely assyria will be withered to a shadow of its former self, remotely possible we may convince our enemies to fall back to thier strongholds and concentrate on thier own properity as we wish to do. But we are too proud to conceed what we have worked to gain.

Enough Chit-Chat, lets begin the ending.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Zedd
Personally I think its part of the game and not an exploit, but a limit of 1 per city would be acceptable.

I think Zedd's opinion is most weighty, since he is the main person that should protest against exploits around unit giving.
I would only suggest the 3-squares rule rather than 1 per city.
One reason is that '1-per city' rule is quite soft (a city homes about 3 units and the city is usually in a danger during several turns. So there would be enough of time to give all units out.)

"no IM's in all caps, and don't take advantage of the unit gifting by back-gifting multiple units."

What is IM?

[Straybow]

RL interfered the last few days. I need an answer from some allies who are currently asleep in Europe. Will play and post as soon as possible thereafter.

[Sparrowhawk]

Good to hear it, I just finished doing the "Control N" and was about to post the save......looks like you are just in time

/me