RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

So now people are saying that we have broken the turn move rules... I'm sorry, I'm just about ready to give up on these impossibly byzantine rules lawyering. I don't see how this is complicated:

* Kathlete was locked into the first half of the turn from his war with slaze.
* We declared war in the second half of the turn. End of story.

No offense, but the rules have gotten ridiculous, and I'm not going to go through every little line before playing. When we read stuff like:

For the purpose of movement, declaring war will count as movement. Once war has been declared, the party declaring war has to finish moving all of their units and end their turn before half of the remaining turn time has elapsed since the declaration of war, or within half an hour, whichever is longer.

We're just rolling our eyes. This isn't a damn court hearing!

And all because Speaker had to go to work last night. Good grief... I suppose the lesson is:

- Never play fair! Always cheese the turn! Run down the timer every turn and always play in the last 10 minutes!
- Never post anything in your spoiler thread! If you play like Dantski and never post anything, no one can ever catch your mistakes!

I don't care if we broke some extreme technicality in the ruleset Krill wrote. We played in good faith and Kathlete still got a "free" opportunity to whip all his cities. If he didn't take it at his island city, that's his own mistake. Backing up at this point with a reload would be a cruel joke. You think it's fair for Kathlete to see where every single one of our units moved, and then re-move this turn with that knowledge?

Bullshit.

[Speaker]

In my opinion, from the lame wartime city gifting to the "mutual protection pact overriding previous agreements" (did anyone notice that Holy Rome didn't actually come to Rome's defense, so basically they just used that announcement to get out of other deals?), to the constant turn timer manipulations by kathlete and company, and now this reload crap, this game has been run with anything but "in good faith" in mind.

If Kathlete is given a reload, and takes advantage of it to 3-pop slave a Jannisary from scratch, I'm done with this game. Sorry but it's just not worth my time and effort if my sound strategy is negated by stupid rules, and even stupid-er reloads.

[darrelljs]

I won't defend the rule (I'm for allowing double moves), but you're still stuck with it. I suggest you graciously accept the reload and take your anger out on the battlefield . I mean seriously, in the long run, do you really see this making a significant difference in the outcome?

Darrell

[MWIN]

There are differing opinions and please remember that you get know only half of the story. At the end of the game after reading other threads you may change your mind....

[Speaker]

I won't defend the rule (I'm for allowing double moves), but you're still stuck with it. I suggest you graciously accept the reload and take your anger out on the battlefield . I mean seriously, in the long run, do you really see this making a significant difference in the outcome?

Darrell

We are not graciously accepting anything, and yes, this will make a significant difference in the outcome on the western islands. If he is allowed to 3-pop slave a Janissary in response to our troop landing, we will not be able to capture the city, and then he can 3-pop slave it another couple times, requiring us to send a lot more troops over there to take it. He screwed up, had just 2 units over there when he ended his turn, and didn't have another unit finishing. We land our troops and then he has the opportunity to fix his mistake? Sorry, but that's bullshit.

[WilliamLP]

Knowing now that the rules are intended to give the first player an opportunity to make non-unit reactions to the attack before the end of the turn, would you have chosen the first part of the turn instead to get this "advantage" yourselves?

Is the point of all this to attempt to reduce last second shenanigans, which you clearly intended to take full advantage of? Is it fair to say that if a ruleset is used at all, it is a reasonable goal to try and take away the aspect of Civ that is about sub-second arcade timing?

[Speaker]

There are differing opinions and please remember that you get know only half of the story. At the end of the game after reading other threads you may change your mind....

Half of what story? Of why kathlete refuses to end his turn, and is the only player in the game who feels the need to post "Turn played" in the IT thread every single turn, but still give himself the opportunity to do whatever it is that he does when he logs back in multiple times? Of how the alliance of 5 manipulated the turn timer so they would have the maximum amount of time to discuss their strategy every turn, back when they were failing to attack us? Or am I missing the part where dying players gifted away their cities to allies so that people attacking them couldn't capture them for themselves? Maybe those cities were promised to the allies many turns previously and it was just a coincidence? In both cases (Jowy and Whosit)?

Maybe I don't care about reading the other threads, and the next lurker who posts this inflammatory remark, which has truly angered us every time it has been used, is going to be asked to kindly leave Sullla and my personal thread that we are nice enough to share with you all?

[Twinkletoes89]

Speaker, Sullla. Just so you know - you do have some support among us lurkers! I have been against all the double move rules that have been implemented and it just seems like we complicate it everytime the already overcomplicated rules are deemed 'insufficient'.

That's why I play PBEM or MP with no double-move rules these days!

Good luck either way!

[Speaker]

Knowing now that the rules are intended to give the first player an opportunity to make non-unit reactions to the attack before the end of the turn, would you have chosen the first part of the turn instead to get this "advantage" yourselves?

Uh no, we would have restructured our day to ensure that we could perform our actions in the last minute of the turn.

Is the point of all this to attempt to reduce last second shenanigans, which you clearly intended to take full advantage of? Is it fair to say that if a ruleset is used at all, it is a reasonable goal to try and take away the aspect of Civ that is about sub-second arcade timing?

Sorry, but you don't understand how "sub-second arcane timing" works in MP, much less in pitboss. There is a *major* difference between a regular MP game and a pitboss game, which cannot be equated. In MP, there is a mechanic that gives the defender a chance to cope with a double move.

Any unit moved in the last 8 seconds of the turn carries a movement freeze at the start of the next turn.

So if you move a stack into enemy territory with 1 second left on the turn timer, you cannot move that stack for 7 seconds. If you move with 7 seconds left in the turn, you cannot move it for 1 second. And so on. This gives the defender a fighting chance to respond.

In Pitboss, that timer still exists, but the mechanic doesn't work on this time scale. As we showed during our invasion of Greece, if there was no double move rule, you could rape multiple cities without giving the defender any chance to defend. Log in the last minute and move your units in, kill undefended cities. Defending in Civ4, especially pre-Engineering, requires you to remain flexible and station units between cities, since you literally cannot move a 1-move unit from one city to another. Double move rules are an unfortunate necessity.

So with the goal in mind to eliminate the ability to double move units, we come to these convoluted rules which have taken over our RB PB games.

If our stated goal is this:

Return the game to Turn-based format at times of war (when turn order matters).
Eliminate double moving of units.

Then the current double move system is horribly flawed.

If you end your turn and publicly say that your turn is ended, why should you then be able to slave/draft your cities, re-micro, change builds, change your tech research or tech rate, upgrade units, change promotions, trade for resources, or do any of the other million things you can do without moving your units? If your turn is over, it's over!

If someone attacks us, giving us the first half of the turn....being in Nationalism, we could see which city they move their units next to on Turn 1, draft the threatened city that same turn. Slave a unit from scratch that same turn as well. Then draft the city again the following turn. So we respond after their unit movement and get 3 units in the city. The population doesn't matter. If we didn't do all that, we'd lose the city anyways. Does that seem fair?

So all of this can be averted by moving all our units in the last minute of every turn. OK, I guess that's what we'll have to do. And hey, it's not even illegal based upon the rules! Too bad for the other 5 players in the game. I guess they'll just have to wait until we play. Yep, surely that's the best solution.

[spacemanmf]

There is no possible way a player defending should have the option to slave his cities after the attacker moves, if the defender is given the first half of the turn. That is completely unfair, and wouldn't be possible if the game were being played as "turn based." If you end your turn, you wait until the next turn to do anything. If you didn't slave a city because you didn't think it was necessary, that's the risk you take, and if the offensive player catches you with your pants down, tough shit.

The only comment I would make about this is that if it was truly turn-based then the sequence would be:

1. Defender does normal builds, etc.
End turn
2. Attacker declares war and invades.
End turn
3. Defender whips (and drafts) in response.
End turn
4. Defensive units appear at the start of turn. Attacker then moves.

The problem with a split turn-timer is that the turn split is not a proper end of turn.

So if, as you say on your latest post, the objective is to make it turn-based, then you should be able to slave but not draft. That's my view anyway.