March Madness!

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by Trip
1.1 Getting double-duty out of artillery and Workers

Two (or more) teams can get double (triple...) use of bombardment units and Workers by using the units on their respective turns, then letting their "enemy" capture and use them in turn. When facing an alliance of two civs with 20 Catapults among them, it's quite disconcerting to have to face 40 rounds of bombardment.

The simple solution is to require alliances and peace treaties to be respected through in-game diplomacy.

sure this makes sense, to stop that kind of abuse, although what if a player actually does want to stab another in the back. what if the player has too? having to be bound to a treaty until it's expiration, and under no circumstance can it be broken otherwise you'd be an exploiting player, seems to much IMO.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Aqualung71
Ok, when do you want to start?

Now?

Tomorrow would be good.

Got a big paper due tomorrow morning that I'm working on now, so I don't really have time. But starting tomorrow afternoon I'll be ready.

You can go ahead and start things and send it to me (don't care what civ, settings, etc.). I'd start things up, but Conquests crashes when I start PBEM games.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by smellymummy
sure this makes sense, to stop that kind of abuse, although what if a player actually does want to stab another in the back. what if the player has too? having to be bound to a treaty until it's expiration, and under no circumstance can it be broken otherwise you'd be an exploiting player, seems to much IMO.

This rule only applies for players that are cooperating. If there is someone launching a legitimate invasion/backstab, then this doesn't apply for those situations.

[Paddy]

umm, is it not proper to wait on Rommel2D

I think so

[Rommel2D]

For comparison, here's CFC's list of Civ3 'cheats':

*Right of Passage Abuse
Make an agreement of Right of Passage, move your units to their main cities and attack them all at once.
*Free Palace Jump
When disbanding your capitol your palace will appear in the biggest other city. Your former capitol can be rebuilt by the settler it created. This way you've moved you capitol for free.
*Island block
If you fill the coast of a certain island with units, even non-military, the AI won't be able to land, thus isn't able to conquer that island, until it has marines.
*Ship hopping
While at sea, you can unload a ship on the same square where there is another ship and that ship can take over the load. This way you can move your units to any location in one turn. But it takes a lot of effort.
*ICS (Infinite City Sprawl)
Build a lot of cities very close next to each other. This way you simply have more cities which are in the beginning just as big as normal.

[DISALLOWED]:
>Scout resource denial
Place a scout on a square where there is a resource and in (future) enemy territory. As long as you have peace with them you can leave him there undisturbed and the other will never be able to build a road to it.
>Pop-Rushing
In despotism and communism it is possible to use cities purely for unit rush building. Workers can be added to such a city and then the city can then use them to rush build units. This is disallowed, so do not create these kind of cities. Pop rushing one or two regular citizens to finish a building or to build a unit is within the rules and the spirit of the game. What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.
>Worker dogpile
Let all your workers join a city with a hospital and continue to build workers and let them join that city. There's no size limit so your city will become huge and you loose only one population per turn. All the workers become specialists and add to your score.
>Gold mine
You can make cities give wealth and production at the same time. First set the cities to produce wealth. At the beginning of the next turn when another city is done building something else you can go to other cities with the arrows above and change the production of the cities that produce wealth to e.g. some unit. That will get production as well.

Although the last four are disallowed for their GotM, the only one I think concerns us is the Gold Mine, which is what alexman has already covered. Also note ship chains aren't disallowed here...

I think we can kill three birds with one stone. Since the map is hidden during the production phase anyway, if everyone clicks 'OK' on the pop-ups for new units and civil disorder, the F1 and arrow key exploits will be bypassed, along with the map blackout bug. [edit: You must simply go back through your cities to make any changes after the production phase is finished.]

[Jon Shafer]

Some of those rules are questionable, especially the adding Workers in order to pop rush units (you do get mad unhappiness from this), Palace jump, ROP-rape and ICS ones. I do like the rule banning the blocking of coasts with units to prevent landings before Marines though.

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
rommel, who will be setting up the games? one group for the other or is there a neutral (not playing) person who'll do it or is it up to the RMG?

RMG -> Random Map Generator?

I'm not playing, but I'll have the first player in each group start the game with an administrative password I send to them.

Alternatively, I could start the games and skip everyone's first turn. I just don't want to send out the games as mods like we did in the first tournament, as I believe there is no way to avoid messing up the trait-influenced starting positions.

[Paddy]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

RMG -> Random Map Generator?

I'm not playing, but I'll have the first player in each group start the game with an administrative password I send to them.

Alternatively, I could start the games and skip everyone's first turn. I just don't want to send out the games as mods like we did in the first tournament, as I believe there is no way to avoid messing up the trait-influenced starting positions.

I like your 2nd option here

sorry, I know it means some work for you

but this is a tournament

so it goes with the terrirtory

[Jon Shafer]

Yes, additionally if you can make sure the maps are fair for each player it would be nice.

There's nothing more upsetting than losing because you got stuck between 2 other civs with 1/3 of each of their land in the middle of a swamp.

[Rommel2D]

I know this thread isn't being woven very tightly, but in a day or two when I have more time and the exploits have been discussed more, I'll start a new one with the relavant information copied over...

Originally posted by Trip
If I advance to the next round, I want to play against opponents who has earned their spots by being good Civ players, not because they and a friend triggered their GAs on each other at an opportune moment to take out a 3rd player, or because someone knew how to chain ships together to land an invasion force 30 tiles from where he should have been able to.

Is that too much to ask?

It is beyond the scope of Civ3 PBEM to enforce most of these exploit-related rules. The only hard-and-fast rules I'm posting for all games are there to assure the games move along relatively fast and four victors are mustered up for the final showdown.

Civ, being loosely based on the real world, has its gray areas of uncertainty, for better or worse. If someone uses questionable means to reach the finals, they will be less prepared to deal with you in the next round when they must play with your explicit limitations. Believe me, no one will be forcing an agreement on you to allow use of a pet exploit to their advantage in the championship game, even if someone here were the type to try, which I doubt.

The maps will not be judged by me. The single restart option is meant to greatly reduce the chances of a demoralizing starting position, but overall balance is ultimately in the merciless 'hands' of the Great RMG. Ya pays yer entry fee, ya takes yer chances...

[Jon Shafer]

And PBEM is also beyond the scope of Civ 3.

When it was designed there was never any thought given to mutual usage of Workers, or collaborative GA triggering, or sharing wonders, or a number of other things. It was hard enough simply getting the game to work in MP, and no time was given to addressing these problems. But here they are.

And when the cat's away the mice will play.

There's a huge repertoire of exploits that can be implimented. I or anyone else could complete assure victory before anyone builds their 2nd city. Are you not even going to place limitations on reloading? Playing another person's turn? Some people feel they have no moral obligation to play fair if there are no rules.

If play delves into that kind of territory then this "tournament" will be a joke.

[Conqueror]

Why not just agree on using the MZO rules Trip pasted here, they seem reasonable.

There is also a good post about PBEM etiquette on the PBEM Info Thread. It includes the same exploit list too.

I think most of us PBEM players agree on both of those anyway, so they could be just 'agreed on' without the need of any enforcement.

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
I'm not playing, but I'll have the first player in each group start the game with an administrative password I send to them.

Alternatively, I could start the games and skip everyone's first turn. I just don't want to send out the games as mods like we did in the first tournament, as I believe there is no way to avoid messing up the trait-influenced starting positions.

The 2nd option seems better as stated already by Paddy, none of the players need to know admin pass.

[sabrewolf]

i second these opinions.
rommel, if you're prepared to set up the games for all teams, then we can get scrap the "request 1 restart"-rule.

it would be up to you decide if the starting positions, terrain, civs, etc. are fair.
or you could create new maps (yes, RMG meant random map generator ) and start in like that... but don't ask me how, all i know is that the conquests-scenarios work in MP...

[Iron Jackson]

I agree with Paddy that the games should be started by Rommel. Makes it easier. It means that we get some delay until everyone has passed his password to Rommel but that´s worth it.