Changing how the turns should be played

[Sharpe]

Given the discussion in the "Who will play the next turn?" thread, I think that we should consider setting some new rules for how the turn is played.

1) We should try to get nearly everyone access to the gamesave BEFORE the turn is played - either by posting it in the Chronicle thread (and having the download work ) or get the gamesave file sent to all of the players by email.

2) Wait a reasonable period (at least 10-12 hours) before playing the turn to allow everyone to see the file to allow them to view the file and/or comment on the gamesave.

3) Play the turn before our 24 hours are up or by noon in Europe or North America as long as 12 hours have passed (i.e. if we receive the file at 8pm EST we should wait until the afternoon in Europe before playing it and vice versa).

I am saying that we should do this to give more of an equal access to the gamesave before the turn is played. In the most recent turn (260AD) I had only 20 minutes to view the gamesave before Vondrack was playing the turn - those west of me probably didn't have any chance to view the game before it was sent off.

[vondrack]

Ummm... this would be a major change to the philosophy of the team organization, right? Remember the times when it was normal and desirable to play the save within 4 hours of getting it?

I have no problem sitting on the save as long as there's something unexpected found in the save that calls for the team input. There were turns like that (like after finishing our FP, first turn under Republic, or spotting the ND scout) and the savegame WAS held for longer. But for regular turns, I see no reason to hold the save for 12 hours just to allow everybody to have a look at it and say 'yeah, the plans are fine, let's play it." I am personally ok to have ZargonX or Kloreep play the turn ASAP, without me having the chance to look at it, as long as it is played according to the plan posted, or with minor fine tunes only.

The turn plans are not posted just to keep me entertained. They're posted to discuss our next turn in advance, so that we're ready to play the save ASAP, when it arrives. So far, the plans were usually sufficiently accurate, missing a worker here or there, but generally, only very little gets changed on the spot, while playing the turn - usually only minor labourer reassignments. I don't believe I've ever made a sudden change that was not "obvious". Plus, with the current pace of the game, the turn plan is usually available for a couple of days before the save arrives, so everybody can have his/her say.

The teams that have to respond to unexpected or difficult to plan for situations delay the game enough as it is. I see no need to delay it even further on our part. Once we get into a war or something, then by all means, slow down - things will not be easy to plan the way we can do it now. But that's not the case ATM.

In short: I do not support your proposal.

But this seems to be a perfect issue for a poll. Let's hear everybody, have some discussion, and then poll about it.

BTW... one more time: what would you play differently if having a chance to speak up before the last turn was played (almost exactly according to the plan posted FOUR DAYS AGO)?

[Tiberius]

I see no reason why would we hold the save 10+ hours when nothing unexpected has happened.

I have had very rarely the chance to look at the save, exactly because we have the turn plans in advance and rarely happens something extraordinary. Usually by the time I get home, Radek or Zargon plays the turn and I only can watch the Chronicle updates. I never had a problem with that and I won't have in the future either.

Dealing with difficult/unexpected situations naturally requires a proper delay in playing the turn, to allow discussions between us; however, this never was an issue.

[redstar1]

I think its fair to say that we are unaffected in many ways by whats going on elsewhere in the game. Our workers do what they are told etc. There is a good discussion about what to do although I rarely if ever contribute to the turn by turn management. Its not that I don't care, I just realise you guys are probably better players than me and I agree with pretty much everything that goes on.

I also think the game is going slow enough without us adding more to it though if anyone wants a turn delayed so they can examine the save game then I see no reason why we couldn't accomodate it.

[lmtoops]

Posting the save in advance would allow everyone (who cares) to play the turn "unofficially" before the official turn play. I don't know if this is illegal, but it does seem to be unrealistic and unfair.
Of course we are all fair minded and would never do this....wrong. In fact this would be the only reason to post the sent turn in advance.

At time, I have felt that I would like to play the save rather than just reading about it. Then it occured to me that I can....it I ran for president, VP or any of the other positions that get the save in advance. So far, I haven't had the guts to run....so I have to be satisfied with reading about the turns.

So in the end, I would not support changing our system.

[redstar1]

I don't think its about playing the turn for ourselves, its about being able to have a look and see if there is anything unexpected, or anything we could do better than we have already planned. Its not an unreasonable request by Sharpe and all debate on our team actions is welcome. I'd say we have a poll about it seeing as there is some disagreement. I've stated my pov being that its a fair enough request, but perhaps it should be made on a 'request' basis rather than a delay to every turn.

[Sharpe]

I agree that playing the turn in advance of the real turn is probably not fair play especially when it could affect the actions in the real turn.

As redstar has stated, my primary reason for seeing the save before the turn is played is to see what the world situation is and anything unexpected and to be able to better give advice to the turn player if they are in the chat room at the time.

So if we have to make a pledge not to play the save prior to the official turn play, I am all for signing one now.

In times of war we will have to get used to letting all of us have access to the gamesave as the planned moves will frequently be out of date when the turn arrives due to unexpected enemy movements, our loss of units and other things.

It might be good to start doing it now rather than getting used to that sort of change then. (You have to admit that not being at war for this long is very unusual, especially in a MP game).

[ZargonX]

But Sharpe, you forget that when we finally go to war, we'll get to hold the save for days at a time just like everyone else

[Sharpe]

But Sharpe, you forget that when we finally go to war, we'll get to hold the save for days at a time just like everyone else

True, GoW has completely mastered that strategy - even RP is taking a full 24 hours even with their small number of cities and units ....

[vondrack]

Being one of the primary players, I would like to know one thing... all this talk about using the delay period to suggest improvements to the turn player - do you, guys (Steve, David, whoever else supports or does not mind the proposed change), feel we/I (often) miss things that could have been played better? Is the potential improvement worth the extra hours spent sitting on the save?

Would you be able to go through, say, last ten or twenty turns and point out what was played in a less than optimal way? Would you be able to point out "unplanned for" circumstances that made the plans posted in advance obsolete, leading to inferior on the spot decisions?? I am not talking about obvious oversights like forgetting to start the gunpowder research - such things will likely happen in the future, because they are what they are - oversights, not a matter of consciously playing something wrong.

I am asking because it sounds as if there were people thinking we are not responding properly to whatever little unexpected happens to us in this game. And as I am responsible for many or maybe even most on the spot decisions, I would like to know.

If the answer is yes (as in we miss things) - be so kind and point out the faults, I would like to know where I made mistakes. If for nothing else, then to learn from them.

If the answer is no (as in no, we do not miss things, at least not often enough to justify a 12 hour delay every turn) - what is the reason for the whole discussion then? Using the "we better start now than only when it is really needed" reasoning, we could have been doing this since turn 1. Is this the sort of a thing one has to "get accustomed" to?

I do not get it.

If everybody strictly adheres to "no unofficial playing ahead ever", I have no problem with the save being sent to more people, that's not the issue for me. The issue for me is the delay, which I believe is not needed, nor necessary.

See, it's not that we can set 12 hours from the receipt as the time when the save gets played. It will be at least 12 hours. The RL does not permit playing the save at any time - it must be that one of the players has some spare time to play it. That alone is a limiting factor enough - add these extra 12 hours and we will usually end up around 15 hours at best.

Why? What is the benefit?

There are generally three kinds of "unexpected" events:

1) omissions (mostly workers not being included in the plan) - if we are not lazy and check the plan thoroughly instead of conveniently waiting for the real save, then these should be minimized or eliminated. Just spend some time with the plan.

2) workforce finetuning - this is something I believe we almost never screw. Especially after the FP completion, with steady levels of corruption, we have very little "unexpected" changes to the city output figures.

3) things like the ND scout - these automatically pause the turn play, as all the turn players are reasonable people that understand what kind of an event calls for a delay and discussion.

Let's stop talking generally, please. Let's start talking examples. Take last twenty turns and point out things that would benefit from a slow(er) turnaround time, please. If you can find examples, I may agree that a change could be in order. But until then, I am lost as to what the benefit of the proposed change should be...

[Sharpe]

My problem isn't so much the time as is the need to allow all of us to see the gamesave before it is played - and if we need a "don't play ahead" pact to do that - fine, no problem.

And as we are a Senate driven state now, we are obligated to give more information to the individual players - and for many the term "a picture is worth a thousand words" is appropriate - they might not want or would prefer to discuss what to do on a turn when they actually have it in front of them rather than trying to project it based on the previous turn.

The "time" was a problem this time (no pun intended) as personally, I felt that we could afford to wait - and that people asked to wait and to discuss and perhaps answer the questions below.

I view Civ as having stages which start with new strategic resources being uncovered and I always like to look around and see where they are and think about what changes in my strategy might result from it. In this case, we figured out that GS doesn't have any saltpeter.

Questions that arose for me were: Do we go ahead with the trading of gunpowder to GoW and ND immediately or stall for a turn? Will GS's lack of saltpeter make a Bob invasion of Stormia more likely? Do we try to negotiate a trade agreement with GS for extra saltpeter or not? - if so, now or later on? Do we decide to prepare for an assault against GS because of their lack of saltpeter? What would have we done if we hadn't had any saltpeter?

I know that these questions wouldn't necessarily have to be made immediately, but discussing it while the saltpeter is new and fresh in our minds wouldn't be a bad idea either. But then again, maybe that is just how
I play civ in doing this and nobody else does this...

I do suspect that we would be stalling on the turn if we found out that we didn't have any saltpeter for instance...

Examples of things in the past that were noticed during the gamesave: hidden landmasses such as Little Bob, the landbridge area that led to Legos Minor, etc.

One possible compromise to this situation might be for a person to announce that they are going to play the save "at such and such a time" (for example in an hour) and then head to the chatroom at that time and whoever is online and is interested can join them - and get the save from them and participate in the playing of the turn. We have on occasion done this in the past and it seemed to work okay - though admittedly sometimes there were only 1 or 2 people there, but if it was announced then the rest of the team would have had fair warning posted.

[Kloreep]

I'm okay with the pace this particular turn was played at, but that's because I agree with the decision not to make any changes to the plan. I agree with Sharpe that we could have used some extra time to debate saltpeter hookups and strategy in general.

I agree the save should be posted ASAP after Vox sends it; for the save receivers, that should be a higher priority than either reviewing it personally or playing the turn.

I don't agree with setting a general minimum time to hold the save. There usually isn't a reason to do so (and considering war would be the likely reason, I hope we don't have to for a long while ). What we do need is better communication about this in the future; setting a minimum time to hold the save for this particular Gunpowder turn I would have supported, and is probably what we should do in future to avoid these disagreements.

[lmtoops]

I don't think this is about makeing mistakes in the past. So please don't take it that way.

I am being swayed by the arguments. What would it hurt to post the sent save? Nothing. Then we can wait ~6 hours and play the turn. I don't see the harm.

As long as no one plays the turn in advance, there is no harm. Of course there is no way to police this, as there is no way to police pre-playing in our current method. We must be honorable and do the right thing.

I have posted a poll on this issue. I tried to make it simple; hopefully I have covered all views. We can move discussions to the new poll thread.

[redstar1]

Radek: I don't think I stated I was in favour of the proposed change, although I do think Steve has a valid point to make and of course he has the right to make such requests.

My position is that I am happy with the pace the turns are played at, I'm not entirely sure I would make use of having the save game available every turn, but I agree it might be nice once in a while to be able to request a turn delay, by anyone, for whatever reason.

How about this..... I can set up an email address which receives the save game. I can also then set up an email rule with runs when that email arrives to copy the save game into a folder, for which I can supply ftp/web access. This means everyone has access to the save at the same time, if they want to. This doesn't give Steve what he is asking for expressly but its something we can do.

[vondrack]

Alright, perhaps what we are in fact talking about is that more people want to receive the save immediately - which I have no problem with. Then, let's solve it in the easiest possible way. Let's tell Voxes to send the save to everybody who would like to have a chance to look at it (if he happens to have spare time when the save arrives).

Currently, it's me, Zargon, and Kloreep getting it. So, raise your hand (and post your email addy) who wants to be added to the list (no playing ahead allowed, only looking the save over and city labour shuffling ok - only designated turn players authorized to play and forward the save).

I assume Steve wants to be added. Anyone else? Leo? David? Tibi? Let's put the addresses together and ask Voxes to update their PtWDG address book for Lego.

That should be more than enough to give people a fair chance to have a look at the save before it gets played every other or every third turn, because if you check the "Saved Game" thread in the public forum, it is not often that our saves are played faster than some five or six hours (and that's what I believe we should stick to).

As long as this is what makes everyone happy, let's go for it, no problem at all. If the problem is actually to make the save available ASAP to everyone interested, then there is no problem at all. My only problem is with setting any artifical time limit delaying the game with no real benefit - and "letting everybody to have a look at the save before it gets played" is IMHO a major overkill (unless there is something that calls for it, of course).