PBEM policies

[SlowThinker]

I posted some questions about PBEM to CivFanatics, but not all were answered:
Although some sentences are declarative, all are meant as questions: comments are expected.

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For example the OCC has exact policies written here . I didn't find similar rules for the PBEM anywhere. Did I miss something?
Or must PBEM players generate their "house rules" fully for every game?

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Reload policy
In my SP games I reload sometimes, if I forget to do something that I planned to do, or if I do a typo when moving. Of course, I have to get the game to the same situation as before (hut outcomes, battle results and injuries of units after battles...).
I don't reload if I have got a new information (new square is revealed, or a square was changed since my last visit {opponent unit, irrigation done by another player, opponent city grew...).
Is there any usual reload policy in PBEM games?

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Diplomacy:
I can imagine there can be two (or three )approaches:
A) Limited: only within Civ2 limitations (the player can use only the means from the diplomacy menus of Civ2: offer the cease fire. set attitude to Neutral...). This can be done via Internet play eventually.
B) Free, but limited to the Civ2 world ("If you will persuade French so that they leaves vincinity of London then I will help you to attack Spanish")
C) Free, connected with the real world ("If you send me 100$ to my bank account nr. 35835754 then I will help you to attack French")

I suppose the B) free approach can omit terms like cease fire, contact etc. Are peace, war and alliance sufficient for the B)? (and should be reported to other players)

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Events to report
Is there a list of events to be reported by the player to others anywhere?
In my opinion the list of reported events should be similar to the events you are informed in the SP games:

Battles:
Every battle should be reported: the type of the attacking unit, the direction where he attacked from(?). If the attacker wins then he should report the color of the injury of his winning unit.

Taking cities:
I mean the moment when a combat unit enters an empty city (not battles before this moment) or city bribing.

Wonders:
The start and the end of wonder building

Diplomacy:
Treaties: peace, war (who attacked whom), alliance in the case of "Free diplomacy", everything in the case of "Limited diplomacy".
knowledge exchange, knowledge gift, knowledge as the plunder (I think civ reports all these events by the message "French acquire Alphabet from Indians"),
declare war against an enemy (I think this is reported using the message "a secret alliance against ...")

Moving units:
I move with my horsemen besides an opponent unit and go back. should I say what happened?

I don't know if Taking cities and Battles should be reported to all the human players or the impacted one only.

Did I forget anything?

[atawa]

Playing in a ZWK PBEM myself now, we only post major events that happen eg the taking of city's or very important battles, and offcourse anything that is really out of the ordinary.
Posting all mentioned above makes it, at least for me, a bit of a drag.
The nice thing about PBEM is that you can load up a save once or twice a week and just play a turn, it shouldnt cost too much time.

[SlowThinker]

I understand.

But what if you won't notice that your fortified unit was killed and you will bank on it 5 turns later? I would vote for a list of killed units, with no additional information.
Also wonders and acquiring techs from another civ (without the means of achievement) seem to be important. And they are not frequent.

[atawa]

You can also take a look at your civ when you open up the save

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by atawa
You can also take a look at your civ when you open up the save

It is tedious, I prefer to save the game and forward it immediately.

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I agree with you if there is a few units. But if you play a scenario, you have 30 cities, are you sure you won't leave one unit out?

And another point: I consider perfectly natural that killed unit has no time to send a report about the battle to the headquarters.
But imagine your pikemen stands besides two enemy's horsemen. Next turn, the pikemen is wounded. And you don't know if both horsemen were killed or one is lurking around. And I think you have the right to know it...

[atawa]

You got a point there but if I have to write everything down I might as well play MP as its going to take up a lot of time doing something I dont really enjoy.

[Chris 62]

Re: PBEM policies

Originally posted by SlowThinker
Reload policy
In my SP games I reload sometimes, if I forget to do something that I planned to do, or if I do a typo when moving. Of course, I have to get the game to the same situation as before (hut outcomes, battle results and injuries of units after battles...).
I don't reload if I have got a new information (new square is revealed, or a square was changed since my last visit {opponent unit, irrigation done by another player, opponent city grew...).
Is there any usual reload policy in PBEM games?

This is optional, usually it is agreed before playing what will be done.
What the people I play against do is "let the chips fall where they may", meaning, like regular MP, you just take whatever result you get for good or bad.

______________________________

Diplomacy:
I can imagine there can be two (or three )approaches:
A) Limited: only within Civ2 limitations (the player can use only the means from the diplomacy menus of Civ2: offer the cease fire. set attitude to Neutral...). This can be done via Internet play eventually.
B) Free, but limited to the Civ2 world ("If you will persuade French so that they leaves vincinity of London then I will help you to attack Spanish")
C) Free, connected with the real world ("If you send me 100$ to my bank account nr. 35835754 then I will help you to attack French")

I suppose the B) free approach can omit terms like cease fire, contact etc. Are peace, war and alliance sufficient for the B)? (and should be reported to other players)

Again, at game start this is agreed upon.
The system usually used is no contact with the AI dip, as that would be considered an act of war.
Treaties and tech trades are done over the net via real time MP with the PBEM save.

______________________________

Events to report
Is there a list of events to be reported by the player to others anywhere?
In my opinion the list of reported events should be similar to the events you are informed in the SP games:

Battles:
Every battle should be reported: the type of the attacking unit, the direction where he attacked from(?). If the attacker wins then he should report the color of the injury of his winning unit.

Taking cities:
I mean the moment when a combat unit enters an empty city (not battles before this moment) or city bribing.

Wonders:
The start and the end of wonder building

Diplomacy:
Treaties: peace, war (who attacked whom), alliance in the case of "Free diplomacy", everything in the case of "Limited diplomacy".
knowledge exchange, knowledge gift, knowledge as the plunder (I think civ reports all these events by the message "French acquire Alphabet from Indians"),
declare war against an enemy (I think this is reported using the message "a secret alliance against ...")

Moving units:
I move with my horsemen besides an opponent unit and go back. should I say what happened?

I don't know if Taking cities and Battles should be reported to all the human players or the impacted one only.

Did I forget anything?

Reports are optional, most don't bother nor care really.
In fact, it hieghtens the "fog of war" aspect of the game by not knowing the combat results or who took what city.
Wonders can be found via the wonders built screen.

Diplomatic stances are the perview of the players to report, but in fact, keeping these hidden add a lot to a game, for they add greatly to the enjoyment of the game.

For example, one game I'm in is set in the 17th century, the age of colonization.
There are four of us, England, France, Spain, and Holland.
Nobody is sure of who is allied to whom in what way, and in 1702 England wanted a limited war with Spain (In our games we have a no "sneak attack" rule, you MUST announce a turn prior the intention to decalre war), so annouced the a war over a colony on the Misquito coast in the new world.
England DIDN'T know that Spain had a defensive alliance with France, stating that if attacked, BOTH powers would be at war.
The end result was that France landed in Britain and siezed Cornwall, as well as taking most of New England in America, all to France!
The war ended by diplomancy, Holland (myself) acted as mediator, England surrendered alternate colonies for the return of Cornwall, France, altough the victor, was forced to cede colonies to Holland and Spain (for taking advantage of a limited war), and that only came about because England signed a treaty with Spain and Holland to limit France!

All of that through secret diplomancey as well as information and DISINFORMATION posted in the game thread.

If the actual diplomatic postions had been known, England would never have attacked, and the game would have been far less interesting.

[SlowThinker]

The system usually used is no contact with the AI dip, as that would be considered an act of war.

Do you want to say it is permitted but implies declaring war? And that it is normal if you are in war?

Treaties and tech trades are done over the net via real time MP with the PBEM save

See PBEM questions (Ctrl-N, SP mode, confidence...), "How do you process the diplomacy?", posted 25-05-2002 18:58.

Wonders can be found via the wonders built screen.

But you dont know who started them. IMHO the wonder race may be more interesting if you know who started building.

Diplomatic stances are the perview of the players to report, but in fact, keeping these hidden add a lot to a game, for they add greatly to the enjoyment of the game.

I understand, so the war, peace and alliance are distinguished, but are private.

...and DISINFORMATION posted in the game thread.

So reports are absolutely free? You can post any lie?

[SlowThinker]

After kind atawa's and Chris' post I will reconsider my notions about war actions reported:
I see that "for of the war" is interesting and undemanding above all.

I see two useful ways of reporting:
A) Nothing must be reported.

B) Only the impacted player is informed: for example:
killed: two phalanx, one trireme
(The reason: I think it is less laborious to write down such a list than check out all the map and search for lost units)
attacked: archer(London) by one horsemen
(The reason: my post here 25-05-2002 12:32
The archer should be unequivocally identified. )

[La Fayette]

I am currently involved in 2 PBEM games (with Carolus, DaveV, Kengel and the SGs). No announcement of any kind is compulsory and it makes those games great fun IMO, since anything really weird can happen at any time (like massive sneak attack by someone you thought was friendly,...and the like).
Diplomatic contacts are via e-mails sent to one or several other players and it works fine.
In one game (Rome scenario with daveV and the SGs) newspapers are published now and then (especially by SG2 who is very clever ). They don't add much to your knowledge of what is happening, but they add very much to the fun.