March Madness!

[alexman]

Some comments on the CFC list:

*Right of Passage Abuse

This applies only against the AI, and since there is no AI in the tournament, it's not relevant to us.

*Free Palace Jump

This is not nearly as powerful in C3C, because of the way the FP now works. In any event, I think the Palace jump is a valid Civ3 strategy, that requires you to think ahead, and usually involves a trade-off, as any improvements in your capital will be lost. I don't think it's necessary to disallow this.

*Island block

I don't like this rule either because it's difficult to define. Will we disallow stationing units on coastal mountains to prevent landings there too? What about just tiles adjacent to cities to prevent slow-movers and bombard units from attacking next turn? What about at a two-tile radius to prevent even fast-movers from reaching the city? Don't forget that you usually have to pay upkeep for all these extra units. The best way to deal with this issue is to give the amphibious ability to a couple of early weak units, but this is not an option since we are playing under stock rules.

*Ship hopping

Again, I don't see anything wrong with ship hopping. It requires planning, and invasions done this way are easy to detect and stop by human opponents. Build a navy of your own, attack a link, and the chain is broken.

*ICS (Infinite City Sprawl)

There is a trade-off involved with ICS. You sacrifice rank corruption for lower distance corruption. I don't think ICS is even considered an exploit in single-player games!

*Scout resource denial

This applies only against the AI. Not relevant here.

*Pop-Rushing

Yes, you can have a city with just one specialist, which never gets unhappiness. You join a worker and immediately pop-rush. I can accept this as an exploit, although I don't think it's too powerful. You just convert 20 food and 10 shields into 20 shields. Big deal!

*Worker dogpile

Unless we expect to see histographic victories, we don't care about score in the tournament, so this is not relevant.

*Gold mine

Yup, this is an exploit, covered in the MZO list.

I'm for the MZO list. It's well thought-out, and it requires no extra work on our part.

[Dominae]

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.

I know what you mean, and feel the same way. However, this is not technically "unfair" play; if one group of players allows friendly GA triggering in their game, they are all on equal footing.

Where the "unfairness" comes in is the level of meta-game cooperation. If Trip really likes alexman he's more likely to side with him to do the friendly GA trigger, giving them an unfair advantage relative to Paddy the Scot who is unpopular (just an example - sorry Paddy). I dealt with this specifically in my "PBEM Etiquette" thread.

Again, if all players within a certain game agree on the list of exploits, there's nothing "unfair" about their game compared to another group with a different list. But I agree that standardization is good, in anticipation of the final showdown game.


Dominae

[alexman]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
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...

If we are going to have you to set up the games, I would much prefer to eliminate the single restart rule. Otherwise, for example, every Agricultural player not starting on a river will demand a restart, which makes the trait too powerful.

But if an administrator generates the map, makes a quick check for fairness, and doesn't assign starting locations to specific players, I think it should work fine.

Using the map generator without any editing at all (just generate another if it doesn't look fair) will remove the element of trying to read the map maker's mind, and even remove most of the blame from him!

[Dominae]

I can check the maps for you guys (no tinkering, I swear!).

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by Trip
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.

I'm not saying there are to be no rules concerning these exploits, I'm saying these should be agreed to by by each group of four before beginning the games. If we can get a consensus from all sixteen players here on what is and isn't an exploit, that'd be great, but I'm skeptical of this happening anytime soon. I feel it is more realistic to expect each group to come to this agreement on their own.

The first tournament went off with barely any mention of exploits, and I have yet to see anyone mentioning even the suspicion of foul play. The problem is that some of the games have lapsed into the weeks-per-turn pace and a final round seems unlikely without drastic intervention into these games' resolution. This is why my primary focus here is to assure the games proceed steadily.

Curbing cheating doesn't seem like a major concern at this point, although I'd certainly like to give the games as much integrity as possible. But your examples don't seem grounded in the realm of likeliness (is this a word?). If a player needs to be explicitly told that obvious cheats aren't allowed, they shouldn't be playing Civ3 PBEM, much less entering this tournament. Looking at the prelimary groupings posted above, which foursome would you suspect might agree "playing another's turn is Ok"?

[Jon Shafer]

Well, I have faith in my group at least.

Let's get started.

[smellymummy]

likeliness is indeed a word

and like trip posted.. let's get started!

[Rommel2D]

Beginning to Start...

Originally posted by alexman
If we are going to have you to set up the games, I would much prefer to eliminate the single restart rule. Otherwise, for example, every Agricultural player not starting on a river will demand a restart, which makes the trait too powerful.

A restart would also mean a randomly reassigned tribe, so it could not be used to assure a river start for agricultural tribes. Not to be argumentative- I simply haven't played Ag enough to have a feel for it- but are you saying you think that starting away from a river with the agricultural trait would make for a sub-par tribe? (So much so that it would be worth risking a landlocked jungle start with Portugal? ;-) BTW- I agree this option shouldn't be used for the championship game, where players will choose their own tribes.

I'd like to try the restart option because it keeps the randomness of generation pure- yet empowers the player to judge for themselves if a start is so far below average it is worth risking another. Having myself or Dominae fill this capacity means one of us will be making this judgement for everyone else. In a sense this would be more fair, but IMO it takes some of the fun away. Some of the players here have expressed a preference for playing random starts as given, it seems to me the single restart is a good compromise. If the consensus is to have human intervention though, I'd suggest Dominae take the task, having the experience to make better judgements.

Either way, i still need passwords from everyone. Sorry, I should've had everyone include them in the confirmation PMs. I need another PM from everyone with their passwords for the first round. Anything else I'm forgetting?

I have yet to receive confirmation that Soltz will be playing. Has anyone seen him post in other threads recently?

[Aqualung71]

I would go so far as to say that random tribes should be assigned even in the championship game, as long as the map and general start locations are. reviewed for fairness by an independent party. That way we find a player who is a great all-rounder, rather than someone who gets to pick the one civ he plays every week and knows every step of his first 50 moves before the game even starts. Just my opinion

Here is Soltz's last post - seems he's been away

[Rommel2D]

Well, I've included picking tribes for the championship as part of the tournament structure. We obviously don't want this to become an all out race to complete turns, but having the first player to finish their game get first choice of tribes seems like a minor incentive to play fast, but not enough of an advantage to put anyone else in a hole. Of course, this relies heavily on the first two points in Dom's ettiquette guide, namely playing to win and leaving baggage behind.

The way I see it, the first round makes sure we have four 'all-rounders', and the championship is where we see their best game- which includes knowing a few tribes very well...

[Flandrien]

I haven't had my word in the discussion yet.
Here is what I think :

- An exploit is an exploit for all games, no list of exploits for each seperate game.
- Maps should be reviewed for fairness before the game starts (by Dominae ?). That way a restart is not necessary.
- If we want to find an allround player, then yes tribes should be random. But then we would need more than just 1 first round game and 1 final game. (Something like 4 first round games and 1 final game.)

[Flandrien]

Hmm, a full tournament (everybody plays a game against all other players) would imply that everybody plays 5 games.


Game 1
ricketyclick
Paddy the Scot
aqua_lung
Masuro


Game 2
Iron Jackson
Conqueror
Flandrien
LzPrst


Game 3
Andydog
sabrewolf
Mickeyj
Moonbars


Game 4
alexman
Trip
smellymummy
Soltz


Game 5
ricketyclick
Iron Jackson
Andydog
alexman


Game 6
Paddy the Scot
Conqueror
sabrewolf
Trip


Game 7
aqua_lung
Flandrien
Mickeyj
smellymummy


Game 8
Masuro
LzPrst
Moonbars
Soltz


Game 9
Paddy the Scot
Iron Jackson
Moonbars
smellymummy


Game 10
aqua_lung
Iron Jackson
sabrewolf
Soltz


Game 11
Masuro
Iron Jackson
Mickeyj
Trip


Game 12
ricketyclick
Conqueror
Mickeyj
Soltz


Game 13
aqua_lung
Conqueror
Moonbars
alexman


Game 14
Masuro
Conqueror
Andydog
smellymummy


Game 15
ricketyclick
Flandrien
Moonbars
Trip


Game 16
Paddy the Scot
Flandrien
Andydog
Soltz


Game 17
Masuro
Flandrien
sabrewolf
alexman


Game 18
ricketyclick
LzPrst
sabrewolf
smellymummy


Game 19
Paddy the Scot
LzPrst
Mickeyj
alexman


Game 20
aqua_lung
LzPrst
Andydog
Trip

[Dominae]

Rommel2D, I was just offering my services as map-checker, seeing as I'm not playing. If you want to do it, please say so.


Dominae

[alexman]

Some random comments:

Flandrien, a full tournament for PBEM, like what you suggest, would probably finish just about when Civ VII comes out!

Dominae, Rommel2D is not playing either. I think one of you at least should play!

I like the idea of randomly assigned tribes. I didn't consider that this was how we would be playing when I posted against restarts.

But what about the luxury scarcity in C3C? Especially the lack of coal, can ruin games among humans. This is something we won't know in advance to request a restart, but a map-checker can easily make it fair for everyone.

[sabrewolf]

we could play all 5 games parallel

oh yeah... micromanaging 5 times as many units and cities in the later game

random tribes can be a big pain, but otoh no two people will fight for their favorite civ (be it mongols, americans, or other gamebreaking civs )