Pitboss 18 Organizing Thread (RB Mod 34 Civs)

[spacetyrantxenu]

Edit: would it be possible to mod in a "lurker" faction with an invisible kill unit? This would be a unit with unlimited (or virtually so) number of movement points and attacks per turn, and an abusrdly high attack strength so it never loses, etc so we could wipe a civ off the board if its presence became disruptive? This would be the equivalent of a mod kill and the civ would not interact with the map in any other way and would avoid having to retire to AI. This civ would also be able to have unlimited (or again, virtually so) espionage points so that lurkers would have a good overview of the game. Just a thought.

This kind of thing comes up often where I work. Some PHB will ask if I can do this or block that to keep unruly employees from mucking about making a mess where they shouldn't. And when they hear the truth that the nature of their problem is policy based, not technical in origin, they usually don't understand what I'm saying. What they need is a solution to a human resources problem, not a solution to a technical problem. Plainly, we shouldn't have to mod in any kind of barbarian overlord race to handle adjudication of player problems. That's easily enough solved outside the game engine mechanics.

If someone won't follow the game admin's rulings (should we resort to having one or, should someone be fool enough to volunteer for it!) it's a straightforward matter for the game host to take the game offline and go through the password reset process to remove the recalcitrant player's access to the game. That's modkilling, as far as I'm concerned. And it surely won't come to that, but if it did, that would be the method I assume.

Regarding the lurker civ aspect, I chatted with Commodore about that, which he pointed out that we won't really have many lurkers, everyone is supposed to be playing. But as far as that goes, I could see utility in leaving the 34th (or whatever) civ blocked off in an inaccessible corner of the map playing a OCC with complete map and demographic information for the purpose of posting map screen shots or graphs for people in the lurker thread to view. Otherwise it would probably be impossible for anyone to publish a complete set of graphs in a game like this. That wouldn't be hard to set up, I imagine each starting settler in the game could have a great spy belonging to the "lurker civ" placed on top of it for immediate infiltration at the start of the game. That should handle graphs throughout the game I would think. Not sure if all the players would be OK with that or not, since it does give up some flexibility about what they're willing to report or not, but if everyone accepted it I don't think the additional civ contact at the start of the game would matter much with this many civs in the game (i.e., wouldn't dilute tech costs substantially via known contacts, etc). It would be known that the lurker civ is off limits for trades and interaction, etc.