Save Game Thread

[Aqualung71]

Ahem. I have not visited a bar for many a moon. At least 3 days actually! (not counting the 3 Weeds!)



And in any case, nobody from my team trusts me to conduct diplomatic negotiations of any kind. That's why we elected Moonbars

[Paddy]

indeed... like we believe ya old salt

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by Beta


This is when a demo game starts to bog down. Another team will now ask for similar extensions, quoting the precedent established by DR. And the next thing we know - we have a game that comes to a crawl and folks lose interest.

Sorry to be a pain Aqua, I had just hoped this game would be different.

We got the save at 3:11 am Saturday morning. It is going to be at least 6 hours before I wake up. Assuming playing Civ3 is the first thing I do on a saturday morning, which I will admit it often is, I might have been able to play this turn on time. What would have happened if we'd got the turn a few hours earlier, we'd almost have missed the time slot already.

[McMeadows]

Assign a back-up player.... And you're not expected to sleep for 12 hours indeed...

[Moonbars]

that's not the point. the point is that *it's not long enough to make any democratic decisions*

We could easily assign players to process the save at various junctures around the clock, but that would be a normal Single player PBEM not a Demogame. Sometimes, things come up and you have to stop to make group decisions. There are things you don't expect to happen that happen, no amount of order giving or pre-turn discussion can handle those.

[McMeadows]

Which should be able to be solved in 24 hours max... You might not get the opinion of the whole team, but a majority must have had an opportunity to speak up.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by McMeadows
Which should be able to be solved in 24 hours max... You might not get the opinion of the whole team, but a majority must have had an opportunity to speak up.

24 Hours should be sufficient for most any case. Beyond that, I think, should be a very rare exception indeed.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by McMeadows
Which should be able to be solved in 24 hours max... You might not get the opinion of the whole team, but a majority must have had an opportunity to speak up.

Some teams have 10 players, so a majority is 6. 6 opinions within a space of 12 hours, or even 24 hours?

Difficult

[McMeadows]

Not that way...
You wake up, open the save, note your point of discussion, post in private forum and wait untill the end of the day. You can complain about democracy, but you wanna slow down to the commitment of the 50% least committed people in your team. We agreed upon relatively fast play. Maybe sometimes you have to make a decission on your own, or with little input, chief... And then you'll have to explain to the team what kinda mistake you made...

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Aqualung71


Some teams have 10 players, so a majority is 6. 6 opinions within a space of 12 hours, or even 24 hours?

Difficult

But doable for sure...assuming that your players are involved of course. And if not, then certainly a majority of "active" players could be obtained. At 24 hours a team it would take 6 days to play a turn...certainly long enough to plan for most eventualities.

[Beta]

Aqua and Moonbars - you have clearly raised the point in question.

Do we allow the game to slow down every time a team feels it needs to make a democratic decision? (and given the early point we are in this game - you can be guaranteed there will be many more)

OR

Do we set a time limit and teams need to find a way to function within that time limit?

To me this requires about 1 nanosecond of thought.

Each team clearly needs to find some way of empowering its leadership/player to make that decision, or discuss potential scenarios in advance, or establish a guiding set of principles, or as has been suggested, establish a time limit on voting, and whoever signs in and makes the vote within the time period, go with that, or whatever.

If you wait for a majority of players to show up, you will be wasting everyone's time. Unless your team is very unique, I suspect you will find a core of keeners, and folks who fade in and out of the game, and some who lurk. Babylon has already based a number of early decisions on the votes of only 3 players.

Again - not trying to be difficult here, or pick on your team. Just trying to paint the bigger picture - which is the health of the entire game.

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by McMeadows
Not that way...
You wake up, open the save, note your point of discussion, post in private forum and wait untill the end of the day. You can complain about democracy, but you wanna slow down to the commitment of the 50% least committed people in your team. We agreed upon relatively fast play. Maybe sometimes you have to make a decission on your own, or with little input, chief... And then you'll have to explain to the team what kinda mistake you made...

No, that is not true.

You wake up, the first thing you do before going to work, having a shower, etc - you load the save, you note that it's already been 8 hours since the save arrived in your inbox, just after u went to bed.

Now you have 4 hours to post your plan for the next move. But.. you have to play the save right then and their or miss work. Shock-horror - the rest of your team is in a different timezone and is asleep or at work - 12 hours doesn't work.

Nothing to do with commitment, it's just impossible. Unless we are all unemployed or can play at work, or don't sleep.

The Discussion is the FUN part. I can just go and play a normal PBEM if I want a fast game with lots of turns.

We have 6 members. 2 Europeans and at least 2 possibly 3 in the Far East / Pacific timezone. I assume trip is American. It is very possible most of our team will miss a chance to contribute.

I will admit things have been better since beta managed to get my E-Mail address right

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by Beta
Again - not trying to be difficult here, or pick on your team. Just trying to paint the bigger picture - which is the health of the entire game.

The health of the Demo Game is much better when there is some actual DEMO element in it.

[Ljube]

I don't know about your group Moonbars, but I can tell you how these things are arranged in our Horde. We discuss all possibilities in advance, so when the save comes to our inbox we simply play. The minute we send the save discussion about future actions begins.

And we also tend to set long term goals and guidelines so we don't have to debate every turn about every move of our every unit.

[McMeadows]

Like I mentioned before, Snoop takes up the save if I miss it in the evening. He either can play and send the turn or initiate unforseen discussions, which I then can take in account when I play/ finish the turn before work.