Changing how the turns should be played

[Sharpe]

Sounds very good to me. (and yes I do want to be added )

I agree with Kloreep et al that most saves will not require a minimum time to play them; however, if more than one person requests a delay in playing the turn, then we should discuss how long we want to delay the turn or have a preset amount of time for delaying the turn.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by 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.

See my previous post - allowing all of us to review the save before the turn is played brings no benefit unless we get into a war or some other situation that involves events we cannot reasonably plan for in advance. It would only delay the game substantially.

BUT - if you actually mean "to make it possible for all of us to review the save as soon as it arrives, possibly before the turn is played, keeping our regular turn playing routine unchanged otherwise", then you have my support.

Originally posted by Sharpe
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.

Umm, we have always been a Senate driven team. But we just abolished the formal position of the President and VP, making them into "designated turnplayers" - which was just a formality. I do not think it was intended to make the Senate "play the turn collectively".

Originally posted by Sharpe
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...

This is clearly why we feel so different about the last turn. While all of your questions are valid and may be worth discussing, I would never even consider doing anything but delivering gunpowder as promised to our allies. And I feel that there is a strong support for this (honourable) approach - as everything else would be very dishonourable (and extremely discrediting).

The only thing that might call for sitting on the save would be to consider betraying our allies, breaking our promise to them - not delivering the tech and/or even trading it to their enemies. Sorry, but that was, is, and never will be an option for me, so I am never going to consider that a reason to hold the save.

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

Why? What good would be to sit on the save if we had no source of it? Would we wait for a saltpeter to emerge somewhere?

Again - the only possible "change" to the turn plan could have been breaking our promise, not delivering gunpowder to ND & GoW. I did not and will never consider that an option. Everything else was trivial enough to be solved by the turnplayer without the need to consult with the rest of the team, because it was obvious that the saltpeter resources would not affect this very turn.

So what we actually differ in is that you believe there was a reason to hold the save (the possibility of failing to abide by the terms of our tech trade), why I did not see any (as I did not consider breaking the agreement a possibility at all).

Originally posted by Sharpe
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.

But Baby Bob was missed not because the turn would have been played too fast, but because everybody missed it - even for many following terms, with the save conveniently available, the fact was being missed (plus, even if we did not miss it on that very turn - it would have not affected the turn, as we had no naval capability).

As for the isthmus to Legos Minor - we did not miss it. There was no way we could have told there was one. We simply assumed it was unlikely for one to be there. We were wrong. Making the save available in advance would only make it possible to find it IF THE SAVE WAS PLAYED "UNOFFICIALLY" AHEAD BY SOMEONE, DIFFERENTLY FROM THE POSTED PLANS. But that would be cheating.

Originally posted by Sharpe
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.

This I have no problem with. Coupled with the save being sent automatically to all the interested members - would this be okay with you, Steve?

[vondrack]

Crossposted.

Originally posted by Sharpe
Sounds very good to me. (and yes I do want to be added )

Email addy? I can't recall it.