Iron Civer II

[Rommel2D]

Embassy

Welcome to the second installment of the Iron Civer Tournament. The first tournament started a year ago, and the second round championship game has just reached the point where conflict is starting heat up.

I do not compete in any of the games. Instead I monitor the pace of play and step in to skip any player that misses an entire day, playing the turn for them so as to not cause much harm. I also step in to play 'rules god' when the warriors' petty squabbles disrupt the game.

If you would like a good, steadily fast game, and the chance to eventually win a sizable tract of ApolytonPlus territory (not to mention all the glory and babes), look over the first few posts in this thread and submit the information requested at the bottom of this post if you can make the commitment. Players who frequently miss their turn without giving advanced warning will be replaced.


Please note the distinction between rules and exploits/ettiquette:
Everything listed under Tournament Laws is here to keep the whole tournament together and running smoothly. These will receive active attention from the moderator.

Everything in the Warrior Code is there for the convenience of the players. It is meant to be a starting point for them to refer to when deciding on 'house rules' for each game, and these items are not being actively enforced by a moderator. However, if a dispute arises that is not settled by the individuals in the game, the moderator's resolution will be based on the Code and agreements stated in the game's tracking thread.

Final Tournament structure and rules will depend on the level of interest expressed, but there will be an actively enforced 24(36)-hour clock. Tribes will be picked by players with identically ranked ones being ignored for the involved players. Circumstances permitting, I'll organize the prelim games so that there are as few rematches from the last Tournament as possible. Anyone interested PM or email me the following information:
Your Email for turns:
Password:
Top 5 tribes desired (in order):
Do you wish to use Iron Civer Warrior Code diplomacy options #1-2a) and b)? (Y to both or N to both):
Combat Reporting Level [#4-2 in Warrior Code] Preference (0-3.5):
Primary Availability Times (in actual GMT):

I can be contacted via email at jwala at fastmail daht fm.

[Rommel2D]

Settings

Preliminary round of 4(or 5)-player games:
Double (2-city) elimination
Tiny pangaea, 70% water [Note: changed to 60% to accomodate 5 players]
Monarch level
Climate/Temperature/Age Random
Roaming Barbarians
Y-Wrapping on
Cultural conversions on
Scientific Great Leaders off
No culturally linked start
Last player must set NoAIPatrol to 0 in their .ini file
The map will be previewed to make sure there are no island starts. All seafaring tribes will be assured of a coastal start


Games will be played with a new Iron Civer Scenario:
(v1.2)
1> SGLs will be turned off. Copernicus’ Observatory is a Scientific Wonder.
2> Basic barbarians are archers. Advanced barbarians are Mounted Warriors.
3> Democracy has free unit support equal to that of the Republic (1/3/4). Corruption for Feudalism reduced to minimal. Secret Police HQ are available to Fascism insead of Communism and becomes available with Industrialization.
4> Artillery, Radar Artillery, Tank, Mechanized Infantry, Modern Armor, and Panzer have wheeled property.
5> Ivory is a strategic resource, with appearance ratio of 160 (the same as Iron and Horses), disappearance ratio of 400 (same as alluminum). Tobacco is a luxury resource.
6> Colosseums can be a Tourist Attraction. [Note: This really isn't as important as the rest of the mods here- its more of an 'indigo' mod. A laurel wreath goes to any master of arcane trivia that can explain what that means...]
7> Espionage is an optional Ancient Era tech requiring only Writing will require Map Making, with a 30 base cost. 'Cursus Publicus' is a new small wonder identical in function to the Intelligence Agency, costing 200 shields, giving 1 culture, available with Espionage and made obsolete by Nationalism. Industrialisation is now the prerequisite for the IA. Steal World Map missions have a base cost of 10 instead of 1.

[Rommel2D]

Warrior Code v2.0


[ Recently revised content in orange text ]
Regular and bold words give the basic exploit information and rules to prevent them. Red, underlined words are the specific exploits covered. Royalblue, italicized words are etiquette points mostly, meant to add to the game if agreed to, but not necessary to avoid the most damaging exploits.


Preamble
It is understood that everyone participating is doing so to enhance their enjoyment of the game and share this enjoyment with others. These rules are not designed to prohibit someone who does not play with the spirit of sportsmanship from gaining undue advantage, only the vigilance of the community can hope to accomplish this. The aim of these rules are to present a common ground from which a fair challnge is presented to all, subject to the intended random elements of the game.

Reloading
Reloading of the turn in an effort to gain better RNG results or reposition units according to newly aquired information is the most heinous abuse of the PBEM system. However, reloading a turn to correct manual errors is Ok, as long as no unexplored or fog-of-war tiles are revealed and no combat has taken place. Any instance of reloading should be reported in the tracker thread.


Definitions
'game turn'= sequence begun when first player in order starts turn and ended when last player clicks 'save & exit'

'production phase'= part of the individual's turn immediately after loading, lasting until player is free to select and move units. In the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" department, any time the map is blacked out, it is still the production phase. :-)

'Trade' = applies to tradeable resources only

1 Intertribal cooperation

1-1 Players shall not conspire to use irregularities of the game engine's turn sequence to gain extra use from units or resources. They shall not declare frivilous wars. Deals shall not be canceled on the same game turn as they are made unless due to a legitimate war. Resources intentionally removed from a trade network cannot be reconnected to that network on the same game turn. Players shall not make deals that include money they will not pay for.

1-1.1 Getting double-duty out of artillery and Workers
1-1.2 Sharing a Luxury or Strategic resource
1-1.3 Generating Leaders and Golden Ages by sacrificing cheap units
1-1.4 Declaring war for happiness
1-1.5 Inflation bug
2-0.2 Accepting a Peace Treaty from a civ then immediately declaring war


1-2 Players shall not exchange in-game information until they are represented on each other's foreign advisor's screen. They shall not exchange graphic map information before both have knowledge of Navigation. Players shall not coordinate military action unless an alliance is formally declared in the foreign advisor's screen. Players shall not make Mutual Protection Pacts or Trade Embargoes unless they are declared in the foreign advisor's screen.
a) In diplomacy without an embassy between the Tribes, a player may only offer technology already known by their Tribe. They may not offer or ask for unknown techs.
b) Players shall not make reference to specific distances or directions until both have knowledge of Map Making.

1-2.1 Exchanging map/minimap information before Navigation.


2. Intertribal conflicts

2-1 Players shall not rename units or cities to disguise the content of unit stacks or diplomatic offers.


2-2 Cities may be offered diplomatically only as part of a peace treaty.

2-2.1 Teleporting units by abandoning or gifting cities


3. The individual turn

3-1 Players may only use drop-down menus to make changes during the 'production phase'. They should not zoom to cities or advisor screens from the pop-up boxes.

3-1.1 Using F1 to change production during the 'production phase'
3-1.2 Using city screen's arrow keys to change production during the 'production phase'


3-2 Last player in turn sequence shall not use the GoTo command.

3-2.1 Using GoTo to get extra movement


4. Combat Reports

There are 4 basic levels of combat reporting;

Level 0> Absent
No reporting whatsoever, unless the attacker feels like gloating/commiserating.

Level 1> Passive
(The default level to be used unless there is a consensus to use one of the other levels.)
A summary of combat results is required to be sent to the defender if, and only if, they make a relevant inquiry soon afterward.
['soon' should allow for a few turns to realize a unit is missing, but could only be one turn cycle for simplicity if the attacker insists.]

Level 2> Active
A player making any attack must indicate to the defender that it has taken place and provide a brief summary of units involved, along with damage taken.

Level 2.5>
Same as level 2, except any unit moving into and out of another player's fog of war on the same turn must be reported.

Level 3> Intensive
A player making any attack must indicate to the defender that it has taken palce and provide a detailed account of each unit's location and resulting damage status.

Level 3.5>
Same as level 3, except any unit moving into and out of another player's fog of war on the same turn must be reported.

All information need only pass between the affected parties. Post it in the turn thread only if you wish and are allowed to broadcast results to the world

[Rommel2D]

Tournament Laws

Second Tournament Rules, final draft

1) All players, except the first tournament's champion, must win a preliminary round to advance to final match.
2) Preliminary round ends at noon Nov 1st 2005, or when the final of the first tournament is complete, whichever is later.
3) Preliminary round winners will face first IC champion in final.
4) Survivors of the first round choose tribes in order of first round completion. If more than one game ends by score at deadline, the winner from the game with the most advanced date chooses first, and so on. Reigning IC champion picks last.
5) Participants in first tournament's final allowed to play in preliminary round. The eventual champion's position will be taken over by moderator if conflict arises.
6) Games started by referee, first turn skipped.
7) Maps will be previewed and roughly balanced- no restarts.
8) Replacements are allowed while game is still BC.
9) Replacements will eventually be assigned according to speed and/or number of victories in ICR games, but until the first replacement round reaches completion, they will be chosen as best meets the situation
10) 36 hour 'play clock', actively enforced, with warning at 24 hours.
11) All players expected to make simple 'sent' post in tracking thread each turn, preferably listing year played, except when technical problems interfere.
12) All turns to be played with version 1.22. Last player in each game must have "NoAIPatrol=0" added to .ini file
13) All players are allowed a total of 2 weeks worth of time for the preliminary round to miss their turn without having it played for them. Advance warning must be given to the moderator.

[Rommel2D]

Barracks

Participants:

[1]Platypus Rex/ Scandanavia
[2]ricketyclik/ Japanese
[3]tommynt/ Iroquios
[4]Sir Ralph/ Rome
[5]Ljube/ China

[6]MFCamillus/ Maya
[7]Andydog/ Japan
[8]Beta/ Aztec
[9]Swissy/ Egypt
[10]Masuro/ Korea

[11]Ormuzd
[12]McMeadows
[13]unOrthOdOx
[14]jshelr
[15]Wittlich

[16]snoopy369
[17]sir_stenz
[18]Krill
[19]Paddy the Scot
[20]Theseus

[21]Aqualung71

Entry will be closed at 25 participants.

[Rommel2D]

PBEM Quickstart Tutorial

If you are an experienced Civ3 player, but haven't played much PBEM, there are a few important tricks unique to Multiplayer you should be made aware of to compete fairly with the seasoned veterans:

Leave or Declare War
In single player games, if an enemy unit is within your cultural borders, you can demand that the opponent either declare war on the spot or have the unit(s) removed outside your borders. Having the invader declare war in this fashion assures the defender receives the 'War Happiness' bonus, essentially a free luxury for the duration of hostilities.

This demand cannot be made in PBEM. An agressor intent on starting a conflict can take advantage of this by moving his forces up to a target city while still at peace. The defending Civ must now choose between defending their land and gaining the Happiness bonus. If they attack to defend their borders, not only do they lose the bonus- the attacker now recieves it, wheras in SP they would get both the bonus and chance to defend at the cultural border.

There is no simple solution to this situation that doesn't give an comparable unintended advantage to the defender. The only sure way to deal with this problem (short of some sort of a players' agreement in the tracker thread beforehand) is to play a more aggressive game with a focus on a greater standing army. This leads to a quicker and, in my opinion, lower quality game, but that's Civ3 PBEM...

Worker Actions
Worker actions occur at a different time in the turn in PBEM than they do in SP. If you interrupt a worker's task in PBEM, they cannot be moved until the following turn.

Combat Reports
The attacker in any PBEM combat is the only one that sees the action happen. The Warrior Code provides for options to compensate for this shortcoming. Not only does this make strategic planning more similar to SP possible, but it also reduces the doubts and ill will that surrounds well devised sneak attacks.

The last player in the turn order also has an advantage in being the only one able to see barbarians move and attack. This seems insignificant enough that I have not tried to make any compensatory rule for it.

Ship Chaining
While not unique to PBEM, some consider spacing out ships and transfering units between them many times on one turn to be an exploit. Most feel that this requires so much planning, is a fragile arrangement, and at worst provides a naval equivalent to infinite railroad movement, that it really isn't an exploit. There is no prohibition on this for the tournament.

And...
Can anyone else think of any other minor exploits/features unique to PBEM not yet mentioned in this thread?

[snoopy369]

Bump?

[Rommel2D]

The final media push will be coming the next few days...

[Rommel2D]

Beta test...

[tommynt]

Some1 steps in if some1 dont play his turn in a day - sounds nice - count me in

tommynt

[Rommel2D]

tommy- send me the information requested in the first post via PM or email.

Everyone- sorry about the slow start. I have a news item pending but I think Dan and Mark are busy right now with server upgrade issues. In the meantime, I'll post some manual adverts over the next few days...

We currently have 14 entrants- enough for the requisite three four-player games. I'll see what kind of response I get next weekend and hopefully start up the following week sometime.

[Ljube]

Can I join still?

[ricketyclik]

I'm not sure someone with an avatar like that ought to be allowed to even exist

[Rommel2D]

We now have 16 contestants.

I still need the entry information (listed at the end of the first post) from Trip, Beta, and Ljube.

[Wittlich]

I would like to join in on this endevour....but be aware: From 10 June - 25 June I will be out of town attending my Father's retirement celebrations. If this is fine with the powers that be, then I will throw my hat into the ring.