My correspondence with B4ndit. I feel like you deserve a chance to see it.
SevenSpirits Wrote:Hi B4ndit,
I was wondering if I could look at the save you received for the turn you got your city back. The reason is that I'm worried that you might have reloaded the save to find the best order of attack. My sincere apologies for the stress I'm potentially causing if this is not the case. (If you did, now would be a good time to say so, and we can rewind to that turn and say no harm done. )
In any case, I'd appreciate it if you sent me the save from the start of the turn (I think 1000BC, correct me if I'm wrong), and let me know what the password is to open it up. My email address is <redacted>.
Thanks,
Seven
B4ndit Wrote:Hmmm, it may sound stupid but I haven't thought/read that it is prohibited (you might not remember when few months ago I was asking about rules book in the welcoming thread).
Is this general rule applying to all aspects in the game? Like I don't know, closing diplomacy windows to checkout situation and then reloading game to accept/deny it (when diplo window is blocking your view). What about other pop ups? I don't remember if apostolic palace/un nations blocks your actions?
Do I have to always choose unit to attack based on chances of winning? What if someone is not attacking first with his best promoted unit (for example with great general) at ~70% chances? I am guessing it is legit as far it is not a decision based on reloading?
Is there any way to enforce such a rule? Generally speaking I don't like rules which can not be checked/enforced, that's why I haven't thought that it should be prohibited.
But harm was done. I am deeply sorry for disobeying such a rule - it would not happen if I knew about it and it won't happen again.
That all has been said, how should we proceed from this point?
sorry, B4ndit
SevenSpirits Wrote:
B4ndit Wrote:Hmmm, it may sound stupid but I haven't thought/read that it is prohibited (you might not remember when few months ago I was asking about rules book in the welcoming thread).
Is this general rule applying to all aspects in the game? Like I don't know, closing diplomacy windows to checkout situation and then reloading game to accept/deny it (when diplo window is blocking your view). What about other pop ups? I don't remember if apostolic palace/un nations blocks your actions?
From what I've read, I think it's generally acceptable to initially decline all diplo offers so you can see the situation before deciding which ones to accept. That is, people have said they did this and no one complained; I'm not sure if it's ever been discussed. You can see there's a good reason though: the game would work a lot better for everyone if people could see the situation when making these decisions. Personally, I don't remember if I've ever done this; currently, I think I would not, unless it's been explicitly discussed with the other players before.
When it comes to reloading after taking an action like exploring or attacking though, the consensus is clearly and explicitly that that is cheating. We don't want the attacker to have a constant, magical and infallible advantage in combat. Honestly, if you took serious advantage of this, you'd never lose a combat on your own turn, which is just ridiculous, and definitely not how the game is supposed to work.
Quote:Do I have to always choose unit to attack based on chances of winning? What if someone is not attacking first with his best promoted unit (for example with great general) at ~70% chances? I am guessing it is legit as far it is not a decision based on reloading?
No. And, of course, attacking first with the unit that highest win chance isn't always the strategically best move. The important thing is you can't take back any choices.
Quote:Is there any way to enforce such a rule? Generally speaking I don't like rules which can not be checked/enforced, that's why I haven't thought that it should be prohibited.
There's also an implicit rule that you can't read other players' threads. I hope you have been following that! I can understand the distaste for unenforceable rules, but we have no choice but to rely on the honor system here.
Quote:But harm was done. I am deeply sorry for disobeying such a rule - it would not happen if I knew about it and it won't happen again.
That all has been said, how should we proceed from this point?
sorry, B4ndit
I think people can be understanding about it. I'm still not sure exactly what you did so I can't figure out a solution right now. But it sounds like maybe you tried a couple different paths of combat decisions to find the best (or at least a good) one? My suggestion is post what you did in your thread, apologize, and ask for a solution. Maybe a good solution is to go back to your turn where you captured the city and do the attacks in the most obvious order. (If you send me the save I could help with deciding what is "most obvious".) I also want to make sure that other players in this game don't feel unfairly disadvantaged. May I ask if you did anything wrong unwittingly earlier in the game?
Seven
B4ndit (by email) Wrote:Save in the attachment.
password is <redacted>. My initial plan was to attack first with units more to the west, trying to leave more healthy units closer to CH's capital.
SevenSpirits (by email) Wrote:OK, thanks. So, I guess your initial plan was to attack the city with horse archers, but then you lost on the second attack. So you re-tried, but this time you threw in a chariot vs praet combat in between the first two horse archer attacks, and that worked better. Is that correct?
Has this kind of reloading come up in previous combats?
B4ndit Wrote:
SevenSpirits Wrote:There's also an implicit rule that you can't read other players' threads. I hope you have been following that! I can understand the distaste for unenforceable rules, but we have no choice but to rely on the honor system here.
No I haven't, but within first few days on this board I was wondering what that "spoilers" are all about I figured it out after noticing threads like "[PLAYERS DO NOT ENTER] Lurkers thread, where lurkers are making fun of the players". After reading sulla's report on pb2 I briefly thought that every player has some kind of his private sub-board, where other contenders don't have access and after the game those boards are publicly accessible (or something like that). But I figured out this rule before joining any game.
SevenSpirits Wrote:I think people can be understanding about it. I'm still not sure exactly what you did so I can't figure out a solution right now. But it sounds like maybe you tried a couple different paths of combat decisions to find the best (or at least a good) one? My suggestion is post what you did in your thread, apologize, and ask for a solution. Maybe a good solution is to go back to your turn where you captured the city and do the attacks in the most obvious order. (If you send me the save I could help with deciding what is "most obvious".) I also want to make sure that other players in this game don't feel unfairly disadvantaged. May I ask if you did anything wrong unwittingly earlier in the game?
Seven
To be honest I have violated at least one more rule which I am (now) aware of. When meeting <redacted> in the game I have send him the save with "Hello neighbor" message. It was when I didn't exactly understand RB rule "game with/without diplomacy". Initially I have thought that "diplomacy game" means the same thing as on the apolyton board:
Which now I know that it is something completely different
Regarding save reloading. No, I wasn't using it for revealing the map or altering attack orders (few turns ago I have wasted axeman on failed attempt to recapture my city). I even didn't realize before this turn, that you can alter attack results and modifying random seed by attack order. Thought that it is solved by "no random seed option". I have tried out that after mentioned lost of my axeman which hasn't accomplish anything (besides promoting CH's axeman). If I knew that it is prohibited, using it like I did (kamikaze attack in a middle of the turn) would be dumbest way to do that because it is so obvious/easy to be spotted (I hope that will convince you that I didn't have ill intentions).
I have reloaded the game without altering my units' moves couple of times before, for closing diplo windows and once to check how the game mechanic will work after hitting the enter key, like when will be units produced (after or before someone's turn). Once I was taken by surprise that I haven't researched horseback riding in 1 turn and I have reloaded couple of times to checkout why that has happened (I have run out of the gold and my science slider dropped from 100% to 80% or 90%).
Those are all the sins that I remember.
I think you/we should primarily consult it with CH, because this decision will have greatest effect on him.
B4ndit
PS, can I post whole this correspondence (with your messages) in my thread?
B4ndit (by email) Wrote:I have sent you private message. Please chcek it out.
Have to go to work now. I will be available in 11-12hours.
—
Sent from Mailbox for iPhone
SevenSpirits Wrote:Thanks, I think I understand pretty much now what happened. Though if you can confirm my interpretation I sent in email before reading this is correct, I would appreciate it.
I will talk to cheater hater and I think we can figure something out, and things will be pretty much OK.
Thanks for talking this through with me. I can't know for sure if you really don't know what you were doing was wrong. It's possible that other people feel more or less forgiving than me - I don't know. I am pretty sure though that you must feel pretty embarrassed right now and maybe worried about it, and as far as punishment goes, that's enough for me. Just... don't do it again. Ever.
Thanks for pointing out the earlier failed axe attack. It's true, that was really bad for you.
Yes, please post our conversation in your thread, that's a good idea.
About the things like trying to figure out why you didn't finish HBR: It's not nearly as big a thing; it's in a different category. Those are things you could theoretically figure out by asking someone, or by testing it out in a sandbox, or something like that. Those things are knowable and learnable facts that you just happen to not know. The state of the random number generator, on the other hand, is not knowable in a meaningful sense without trying it out in the actual game save itself. It's not meant to be known. Now, as to whether or not those things are therefore acceptable, I'm not going to take a strong position on. If it were up to me I'd allow them, but I know that many others wouldn't, and I never bother asking, so I just always assume it's not kosher. I think you should do the same.
Seven
I hope I've handled this in a way that the players are satisfied with.
I also woke up to a PM from B4ndit; it mainly repeats most of the correspondence you posted, but I'll copy it here just for transparency's sake:
B4ndit Wrote:Hey,
sorry for what has happened. I don't know what SevenSpirit has passed to you from our messages, so I have attached them below. I don't have anything more to add beside that it's good that I have done it in such
obvious way and someone (presumably you) have spotted this early in the game.
Please understand that this was just newbie mistake and at the moment the only things what matters is to coming out clean from this situation :/ Or at least as clean as possible in such circumstances...
I can comply to any decision which will be satisfactory for you and other players.
B4ndit
B4ndit Wrote:
SevenSpirits Wrote:Hi B4ndit,
I was wondering if I could look at the save you received for the turn you got your city back. The reason is that I'm worried that you might have reloaded the save to find the best order of attack. My sincere apologies for the stress I'm potentially causing if this is not the case. (If you did, now would be a good time to say so, and we can rewind to that turn and say no harm done. )
In any case, I'd appreciate it if you sent me the save from the start of the turn (I think 1000BC, correct me if I'm wrong), and let me know what the password is to open it up. My email address is scmccarthy@gmail.com.
Thanks,
Seven
Hmmm, it may sound stupid but I haven't thought/read that it is prohibited (you might not remember when few months ago I was asking about rules book in the welcoming thread).
Is this general rule applying to all aspects in the game? Like I don't know, closing diplomacy windows to checkout situation and then reloading game to accept/deny it (when diplo window is blocking your view). What about other pop ups? I don't remember if apostolic palace/un nations blocks your actions?
Do I have to always choose unit to attack based on chances of winning? What if someone is not attacking first with his best promoted unit (for example with great general) at ~70% chances? I am guessing it is legit as far it is not a decision based on reloading?
Is there any way to enforce such a rule? Generally speaking I don't like rules which can not be checked/enforced, that's why I haven't thought that it should be prohibited.
But harm was done. I am deeply sorry for disobeying such a rule - it would not happen if I knew about it and it won't happen again.
That all has been said, how should we proceed from this point?
sorry, B4ndit
SevenSpirits Wrote:
B4ndit Wrote:Hmmm, it may sound stupid but I haven't thought/read that it is prohibited (you might not remember when few months ago I was asking about rules book in the welcoming thread).
Is this general rule applying to all aspects in the game? Like I don't know, closing diplomacy windows to checkout situation and then reloading game to accept/deny it (when diplo window is blocking your view). What about other pop ups? I don't remember if apostolic palace/un nations blocks your actions?
From what I've read, I think it's generally acceptable to initially decline all diplo offers so you can see the situation before deciding which ones to accept. That is, people have said they did this and no one complained; I'm not sure if it's ever been discussed. You can see there's a good reason though: the game would work a lot better for everyone if people could see the situation when making these decisions. Personally, I don't remember if I've ever done this; currently, I think I would not, unless it's been explicitly discussed with the other players before.
When it comes to reloading after taking an action like exploring or attacking though, the consensus is clearly and explicitly that that is cheating. We don't want the attacker to have a constant, magical and infallible advantage in combat. Honestly, if you took serious advantage of this, you'd never lose a combat on your own turn, which is just ridiculous, and definitely not how the game is supposed to work.
Quote:Do I have to always choose unit to attack based on chances of winning? What if someone is not attacking first with his best promoted unit (for example with great general) at ~70% chances? I am guessing it is legit as far it is not a decision based on reloading?
No. And, of course, attacking first with the unit that highest win chance isn't always the strategically best move. The important thing is you can't take back any choices.
Quote:Is there any way to enforce such a rule? Generally speaking I don't like rules which can not be checked/enforced, that's why I haven't thought that it should be prohibited.
There's also an implicit rule that you can't read other players' threads. I hope you have been following that! I can understand the distaste for unenforceable rules, but we have no choice but to rely on the honor system here.
Quote:But harm was done. I am deeply sorry for disobeying such a rule - it would not happen if I knew about it and it won't happen again.
That all has been said, how should we proceed from this point?
sorry, B4ndit
I think people can be understanding about it. I'm still not sure exactly what you did so I can't figure out a solution right now. But it sounds like maybe you tried a couple different paths of combat decisions to find the best (or at least a good) one? My suggestion is post what you did in your thread, apologize, and ask for a solution. Maybe a good solution is to go back to your turn where you captured the city and do the attacks in the most obvious order. (If you send me the save I could help with deciding what is "most obvious".) I also want to make sure that other players in this game don't feel unfairly disadvantaged. May I ask if you did anything wrong unwittingly earlier in the game?
Seven
SevenSpirits Wrote:Thanks, I think I understand pretty much now what happened. Though if you can confirm my interpretation I sent in email before reading this is correct, I would appreciate it.
I will talk to cheater hater and I think we can figure something out, and things will be pretty much OK.
Thanks for talking this through with me. I can't know for sure if you really don't know what you were doing was wrong. It's possible that other people feel more or less forgiving than me - I don't know. I am pretty sure though that you must feel pretty embarrassed right now and maybe worried about it, and as far as punishment goes, that's enough for me. Just... don't do it again. Ever.
Thanks for pointing out the earlier failed axe attack. It's true, that was really bad for you.
Yes, please post our conversation in your thread, that's a good idea.
About the things like trying to figure out why you didn't finish HBR: It's not nearly as big a thing; it's in a different category. Those are things you could theoretically figure out by asking someone, or by testing it out in a sandbox, or something like that. Those things are knowable and learnable facts that you just happen to not know. The state of the random number generator, on the other hand, is not knowable in a meaningful sense without trying it out in the actual game save itself. It's not meant to be known. Now, as to whether or not those things are therefore acceptable, I'm not going to take a strong position on. If it were up to me I'd allow them, but I know that many others wouldn't, and I never bother asking, so I just always assume it's not kosher. I think you should do the same.
Seven
So, I think the basic solution solution is fine--the fact that I'm assuming I'll still lose Harena Desert next turn (barring me getting lucky on the fixed attack) should make it not too unfair for B4ndit, but I do have a couple questions:
I can see that B4ndit has four unpromoted Horse Archers in range of Harena Desert on three different squares. Does the RNG differentiate between the different Horse Archers (which should all have the same odds, unless having a movement point left changes odds in a way I'm not aware of), or does it not matter?
What determines what a "sensible" order is? I'm guessing it would just be whatever order he originally was going to attack in, but that still has various peaks and valleys--for example, if we assume all the Horse Archers get the same result regardless of the order, he still kills my first Archer nearly flawlessly. And what happens if his chariot's forced "suicide" against my Praet actually wins?
Also in the interest of transparency, I've been treating the game as if anything that doesn't involve RNG (which in a PBEM is only combat, right?) or new information (scouting) is replayable. The most notable example of this was the turn I switched some espionage points around after playing the turn (and taking my pictures), but then didn't rename my cities like I did on the first playthrough. I assumed when the lurkers didn't call me out on it that I didn't do anything wrong--still, I believe that turn (and maybe one other really early turn) is the only turn I've actually replayed after ending turn.
Edit: Assuming B4ndit replays T50, how will I have to replay my T51? I assume my scouting moves will have to be the same, but I'll be able to change my builds/domestic movements to deal with the different situation, right?
(March 11th, 2014, 13:21)Cheater Hater Wrote: I can see that B4ndit has four unpromoted Horse Archers in range of Harena Desert on three different squares. Does the RNG differentiate between the different Horse Archers (which should all have the same odds, unless having a movement point left changes odds in a way I'm not aware of), or does it not matter?
Nope, they are all identical.
Quote:What determines what a "sensible" order is? I'm guessing it would just be whatever order he originally was going to attack in, but that still has various peaks and valleys--for example, if we assume all the Horse Archers get the same result regardless of the order, he still kills my first Archer nearly flawlessly. And what happens if his chariot's forced "suicide" against my Praet actually wins?
I would tell him which order to attack in. It would be the same order he attacked in except with the chariot attack at the end. So all HAs, then axe, then chariot.
I think I prefer to only tell you that he wins the first one (as you know) and loses the next one (as you might guess). The chariot dies.
Quote:Also in the interest of transparency, I've been treating the game as if anything that doesn't involve RNG (which in a PBEM is only combat, right?) or new information (scouting) is replayable. The most notable example of this was the turn I switched some espionage points around after playing the turn (and taking my pictures), but then didn't rename my cities like I did on the first playthrough. I assumed when the lurkers didn't call me out on it that I didn't do anything wrong--still, I believe that turn (and maybe one other really early turn) is the only turn I've actually replayed after ending turn.
You're fine.
Quote:Edit: Assuming B4ndit replays T50, how will I have to replay my T51? I assume my scouting moves will have to be the same, but I'll be able to change my builds/domestic movements to deal with the different situation, right?
Yes, you can absolutely react to the different situation in your domestic choices. If you have a genuine reason to scout differently based on the different outcome, you can do that too (but please explain if so).
You really ought to only be reloading turns for one of three reasons:
* Misclicks which don't reveal new information.
* To agree to a diplomatic offer you initially rejected because you wanted to see the in-game situation. This might be a gray area, since you can't do it in PB games, but it helps prevent situations where two players want to make peace but both are afraid to accept because they want to first look around to make sure the situation won't be unfavorable.
* To consult previous turns to either grab demographic information and/or record events you missed or take screen caps for reports.
you should scout as you did before, but changing builds and such is fine. reloading for mistakes like the EP slider or forgotten civic swaps is a grey area. Personally i have done it in cases where it was a simple turn that could be repeated exactly... but i dont like to and try to avoid that. maybe start a discussion in the general civ forum to get some discussion about it?
Thanks for the clarification--I didn't expect to find out what order it was going to be, as I'm sure I'll find out how the combats turn out once I actually get the save
As for the scouting, I'm pretty sure I won't have a reason to scout differently, since my scouting is just uncovering fog on the complete other side of the map--unless you count my retreat of my axe as scouting
Cross-post edit: One of the things that's annoying is that there's no easy efficient way to switch back and forth between the actual PBEM turn and a sandbox, so sometimes when the turn is still simple (as is the case now, especially when I wasn't battling B4ndit) I can try something (like a whip), then reload if it doesn't work well, and it's much easier than trying to build the whole sandbox--obviously I still need the sandbox for stuff like combat, or for the longer-range stuff I was trying earlier in the game, but if there's a way to do it faster without getting any advantage from gaining information/manipulating RNG, it means I send the turn along faster and everyone's happy. If I was trying to be truly optimal, for example, I'd fix all my messy C&D in the upcoming turn before sending the save along, but I don't think the rest of the players would be happy if I took a week doing that, or a week setting up a perfect sandbox, or anything else that is "optimal" but not practical. This is the reason I like the PB18 setup--I'm not going to even try the same C&D I'm trying to do for this game just based on the casual setup.
(March 11th, 2014, 15:59)NobleHelium Wrote: You can save your PBEM turn. It's trivial to know the outcome of a whip without actually doing it though, you seriously think you need to do that?
If you save your turn half way through be sure to re-load it from the main menu, rather than in-game, as a nasty bug can strike.
And the whip is not always trivial (ie when whipping a knight with a forge for 75 hammers in the demogame it required 3 pop instead of two). Is there a prize for out-Nobleing Noble?
Yeah, I knew there was some possible error with saving a PBEM turn, which is why I've avoided doing so. I'll make sure to do so if there's a turn where it's non-trivial to replay it exactly
Good to know the game's back up and running again--I don't know if B4ndit or eastway are around at this time, but I know I've received saves from AT really late, so hopefully we can get a turn in tonight and get this game back on track
(March 11th, 2014, 15:59)NobleHelium Wrote: You can save your PBEM turn. It's trivial to know the outcome of a whip without actually doing it though, you seriously think you need to do that?
If you save your turn half way through be sure to re-load it from the main menu, rather than in-game, as a nasty bug can strike.
And the whip is not always trivial (ie when whipping a knight with a forge for 75 hammers in the demogame it required 3 pop instead of two). Is there a prize for out-Nobleing Noble?
So you should...read the tooltip...where it says you'd whip for 3 population? The tooltip is never wrong.
)
