great no-AI PBEM

[Aggie]

Hey! Do what you want with the colors I will playtest this thing myself indeed.

[Beam]

Spent a couple of hours in the car today (for fun actually believe it or not. Something electronical was fixed and I should have all 220 hp (not hitpoints ) back. Best way to test is go to Germany and see if it reaches topspeed. It didn't because of traffic but 250 km/h [] gave me enough confidence everything was fine again) and did some thinking about the turntracker on the way back.

Turntracker:
Two key-points imo:
- To see the game is moving. Best achieved by posting in the turn tracker, something like "Sav > Arghis"
- To be able to pick up the sav when it isn't moving. A non-player could open the game, click away all messages and go straight to next turn. A solution to pick up the stalled sav is to have a cdz mailbox where every forwarded sav is sent to as Cc. The only practical thing I see is the need for 2 or 3 people with access to both the mailbox and each save. This will be exception rather than rule hopefully.

Before we start asking people, how about this?

Deadline for issue input:
About the rules, imo it is important to discuss a couple of key ones before the game starts (the ISDG set is a good starting point btw), there should be a time limit however until which topics can be put in as an issue. Let's set Saturday 10 July, 21:00 CDZ forum time (20:00 UTC) as target. Don't wait 'til the last minute, it also doesn't mean discussion stop at that time. Sole purpose is to have a finite list of things to be decided by Saturday.

EDIT: great to read you're making progress with the map Aggie.

[Socrates]

What I can say is that we should try to be ready to play our 1st turn by Monday at the latest !! That's really close, so we'd better hurry.

ProPain is currently (sleeping, I suppose, yes, but also : ) studying if he can join the game without much problem. He will reply tomorrow (on Thursday) about it. Should he deny the offer, then Eldakkar is welcome to grab the last and 8th place.

I agree on the turn topic. Will we add a message each turn, or edit the same one over and over ? That topic will be huge and... boring after all. [] But I disagree with Beam about someone "playing" (in fact : not) the turn for a player who is "sleeping". This is the Internet and you never know what can happen at the other end of the Internet cable. I suggest that an external guy (why not Aggie ?) used the admin password to give the save to a replacement player in the worst case (no hearing of the player at all). In not so bad cases, we'll do it in the anarchist way, and ask for the player to play, or send his password to a replacement player, etc... This is just my current PoV BTW. Hopefully it'll be rare. Players should keep the last save they have forwarded at any time.

About "vacations" (when you're away from Civ). I wouldn't mind stopping the game for a little while when someone goes away. Taking replacement players all the time complicates things and may alter the game (diplomacy, way of playing), and would cause some players to lose interest (me for instance). I guess vacations are part of such games, and all in all, it will only lengthen the game by 10 or 20%, which isn't to be upset of. To accelerate things, I'd rather have all the players to play their turns as quick as they can upon receiving. Of course, vacations shouldn't last long, maybe 1 or 2 weeks at worst ? If more, then we'll ask for a replacement player. I count on people to do what they can to play a few turns while being on holiday (just : if you can do it and it doesn't upset you, then go on !). I myself won't go on real holidays for much time, maybe not before Christmas !! But who knows...

Civ colours :
Byzantines : wine red (yeah, want that colour)
Dutch : orange
Incas : pink (? )
Carthaginians : brown
Vikings : purple ?
Hittites : turquoise
Portuguese : purple ?
8th civ : ???
There is no yellow civ, no red one, no blue one... Arghis and Banzai could agree on their colours. And the 8th player, we'll see.

We also need to sort the roster out. Aggie could throw some coins for us. And please, unless indicated by some people, put our exact pseudos in the game (no fucking capital letter in mine lol).

About exact rules, I believe we need to be clear. ISDG rules can be a good start to discuss. I already know I don't want palace jumps nor chaining ships. If we let RoP, then players should respect it and declare war with all their units OUTSIDE the enemy's borders ; I think RoP's can be effective sometimes, and so don't see the need to never set them up ; but please no RoP rape !! For the rest it needs some thinking, but all in all I want players to act as gentlemen and so not to do tricky moves which aren't in the spirit of the game. That being said, we can quickly debate on this or that.

[Aggie]

I have read through this thread and I think that the map I am making fits the request. But it pobably won't we what you expect I playtested it yesterday and got a UN victory on regent at 1100 AD [] The AI settled nicely as well and in the end 8 decent sized empires existed. I will start the final tweaking today.

[ProPain]

Thought about it long and hard and decided I won't join. Work will be really busy the next 3 months at least and I expect that trend to continue. With more players it becomes more important to be able to play asap which might prove difficult for me. I don't wanna be the one holding up the game and ruining it for the rest of you.

Wish you a lot of fun and I'll keep a close eye on this game for sure.

PP

[Eldakkar]

@ Eldakkar : Hello, "welcome back" ! I don't really know ; first are you sure you want to be committed to a game that will last for years ? And BTW, ProPain has already indicated his will to take part in the game (in this topic), so I'm gonna PM now, that's the least I should do. If he doesn't want to play after all, then I may consider your registration.

Thank you, yes I still play civ very regularly in SP mode, so no problem there; the love for the game is still intact. I like to play, but I do not like to discuss a lot about trivialities such as the colors of the players and stuff. I will gladly conform to any rules stated. I hope that is not a problem.

Playing a turn once a week or a couple of times a week, will not be a problem. The pbems I did went very smoothly too.

So yes I'd like to join. Should I pick a tribe already?

[Banzai]

You want me to pick a color?
I prefer White , but Blue will do just fine!

Banzai!

[Arghis]

hi

for the colour, green or red will be ok.

if we can't find an 8th player we can still take one IA :-) that could prove fun in fact.

ok i'm kidding.

[akots]

It is also quite possible to recruit some fast players from CFC. Apparently, somebody like Rubberjello or Dogboy or Loulong would like to join. But it looks like there are 8 players atm ready to go.

[Aggie]

AFAIK you have 8 players with Eldakkar

EDIT: sorry, I misread akots's post.