30% Iron Civer Tournament

[Beta]

Originally posted by alexman
The replacement pool has enough players to form a new group. Some of them are frequent and reliable PBEM players.

Would it be any fun to form a new group, and have five players in the final?

[Beta]

Re: Etiquette and Exploit List

Originally posted by Rommel2D

1-3 Players shall not exchange in-game information until they are represented on each other's diplomacy screen.
a)They shall not make cooperative research, development, or combat plans until an embassy is established between them and an alliance formally declared.
b)They shall not make Mutual Protection Pacts or Trade Embargoes unless an embassy is in place and they have knowledge of Nationalism.

Is this exclusion based on contact, or the building of an embassy. In many games, research and military co-operation has occured after teams have met, but before embassies have been built. That being said, I think I agree with your proposal (ie you have to build the embassy to engage in such negotiations.)

3-1 Players shall dismiss all pop-ups at the beginning of their turn until the production phase is complete.

3-1.1 Hitting F1 to change production
3-1.2 Using city screen's arrow keys to change production

These I was not aware of. Can you explain, please?

And thanks Rommel - I may grab these for use in the topped info thread. I presume that is OK by you.

[richthur]

Beta; I can shed some light in the way of explaination. U can do this/these in any game.
When the game engine gets around to updating your civ, U simply hit `F1' at the first chance. That, as U know, gets into your civ's overall city mgt display.
From there, U clik on a city's name & it takes U to that city's individual mgt window. Make your changes to that city's orders. THEN, instead of closing the city's window, use the arrows at the top of that screen to scroll to any other of your cities' & change things before releasing control back to the game engine to update these remaining cities. Cities which NOW may have altered instructions based on the changes JUST done... instead of what U ordered LAST move before sending off file.

That help?

[McMeadows]

Re: Re: Etiquette and Exploit List

Originally posted by Beta


Is this exclusion based on contact, or the building of an embassy. In many games, research and military co-operation has occured after teams have met, but before embassies have been built. That being said, I think I agree with your proposal (ie you have to build the embassy to engage in such negotiations.)

I enjoy to conduct a certain code of honour in games, but I think we should not make it too difficult and just go with what the game has to offer at some points. As soon contact is established I would say it is ok to negotiate for "tech trade pacts" or "mutual protection pacts". Allready in ancient times pacts were made, and only later people thought of building embassies in one anothers country. It's PBEM, with all human players, equal chances for anyone, less chance for "cheating" if it isn't cheating and, isn't it the juice in the PBEM game to negotiate with real people?

McM

[Rommel2D]

Re: Re: Etiquette and Exploit List

Originally posted by Beta
Is this exclusion based on contact, or the building of an embassy. In many games, research and military co-operation has occured after teams have met, but before embassies have been built. That being said, I think I agree with your proposal (ie you have to build the embassy to engage in such negotiations.)

Rule 1-3 is based on contact only. No communication until contact is pretty standard in games I've seen, so it is the main rule.

1-3 a) and b) are not usually observed. They add some depth to the game since there is little use for embassies otherwise. However, these (along with the other lettered clauses) can be dropped from a game without introducing unbalancing exploits like the other rules are meant to cover.

More important than what rules to play by is that eveyone play by the same rules. I'm suggesting all players in each game explicitly decide whether to use the lettered clauses (in blue text) before starting. I think we need to make everyone more aware of them, since they have been rarely used before.

These I was not aware of. Can you explain, please?

And thanks Rommel - I may grab these for use in the topped info thread. I presume that is OK by you.

The detailed discussion on these exploits is over in the March Madness! thread. Basically, anything at the beginning of the turn that gives you a pop-up (new tech, production, rioting) allows you to either zoom to the city screen and use the arrows, or hit F1 and use the advisor screen to go directly to any city. You can then allocate entertainers to stop rioting before it happens, or reallocate workers to gain extra commerce.

Clicking on the default ok for each pop-up eliminates the chance of the player using this exploit while thinking they are doing legitimate city maintainence. Like the pre-1.20 load bug, this is something newer players will occasionally stumble onto without even realizing it is happening. I speak from personal experience here.

Grab away!

[Rommel2D]

Re: Re: Re: Etiquette and Exploit List

Originally posted by McMeadows
As soon contact is established I would say it is ok to negotiate for "tech trade pacts" or "mutual protection pacts". Allready in ancient times pacts were made, and only later people thought of building embassies in one anothers country. It's PBEM, with all human players, equal chances for anyone, less chance for "cheating" if it isn't cheating and, isn't it the juice in the PBEM game to negotiate with real people?

I don't think embassies have to be seen solely as buildings with permanent staff. In the ancient era, it could represent a single important emissary who makes occasional visits to another chief and stays in their guest room. It simply represents a slight investment to facilitate higher-level communications between tribes. IMO, Following the spirit of Civ's tech development with diplomacy would keep human interaction a bit more interesting and respectable than the realityTV-style alliances that seem to develop...

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing with "tech trade pacts", but the 1-3 a) clause is meant to prevent the "I'll research this tech tree branch, you take that one" sort of deals, not simple trading of technologies already discovered. These deals [edit: coordination of research] would be fine with an embassy, however.

[Conqueror]

3-1.1 Hitting F1 to change production
3-1.2 Using city screen's arrow keys to change production

You could add 'during production phase' in the end of these sentences to clarify them.

(I admit, i used these myself not so many months ago, before i saw the MZO rules and realized these were counted as exploit in general. Havent done that since. But never intended knowingly cheat by using these, mostly changed prebuilds to something that new tech allowed, as i was used to do in GotM.)

[Conqueror]

Rule 1-3 is based on contact only. No communication until contact is pretty standard in games I've seen, so it is the main rule.

This is important rule.

Example : I played a 4 player game in 'other' forum about year ago, and the game was pretty much over for me and 'mr. c', when it started, because 'mr. a' and 'mr. b' had agreed all research paths / development / military cooperation even before the 1st turn.
This pretty much ruined the game, and me & 'mr. c' were not that happy about it.

[Arnelos]

Well, shoot, I missed this. Put me down as a replacement if anyone drops (please PM me! I may or may not be paying very close attention to this thread if I'm not actually IN the tournament ).

[Beta]

Arnelos - I know - I missed it as well until recently. Hopefully another game or two will start up for us extras.

To all above, especially richtur. Thanks! I understand it now. Never knew about that possibility, but as I have always clicked the OK button, I guess I never stumbled across it.

As to contact and embassies. I have always been pretty adamant about the no communication before contact rule. It only makes sense. Conqueror gives an example of the main reason for this. It is the embassy rule that is new to me, and I agree with Rommel, it would be good to find some reason to make them useful in MP.

Thanks aagain - and I will check March Madness. btw - it is now April.

(and they start with 64 teams )

[jshelr]

Replacement Players:

If you email me your addresses I'll start up a game or two to bring everybody into play.

[Rommel2D]

If anyone has special last minute considerations (customized names, titles, etc.), now's the time to speak up. Unless I hear otherwise, I'll use your 'poly nicknames as your leader's.

[Rommel2D]

Replacement players,

I'm sorry everybody couldn't get directly into the tournament. I started the discussion thread over a month ago (hence the 'March' in the title ) and advertised it in this forum and in my .sig. The 4 -> 4 framework was planned for months before that, as part of the original idea for this tournament.

Alexman made another suggestion that I would like to work into the tournament. Instead of rule 9) Replacements for final game will be highest scoring runner-up from first game to finish in first round, how about if the late arrivals played games to determine the primary replacement? They would be with similar rules, except play clock enforcement by me would be passive rather than active, as I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to keep up with more than four games...

[Rommel2D]

The turn tracking threads are out there, the first turns will follow within 24 hours...

[jshelr]

I will have the first replacement game going this morning, btw. (I hope this is regarded as helping rather than interfering.) It looks to me like this group of players might be the nucleus for a decent club!