Rant Thread!

[NobleHelium]

Five hours to go and most teams have not finished their turn. I guess everyone is relying on the German timer extension.

[mostly_harmless]

The German timer extension is only for the Germans. Every team has 48hours to play. I guess one might still adjust tile assignments and such?
But the game should "end the turn" for everyone in 5 hours.

mh

[NobleHelium]

Ending turn really doesn't mean anything in a simultaneous game unless everyone does it. They are still free to move their units and change their cities. And are you certain that the game actually ends turn for everyone but the Germans on the original timer?

[kjn]

IIRC, we can log in after our turn has ended, but we get a game paused message or so.

I or m_h can try to log in this afternoon and document the behaviour.

[mostly_harmless]

Once the first 48 hours are up, the game ends the turn automatically for all teams that have not done so before. (see Lizzy in civstat).
Now we have 5 hours left for the Germans and they have not logged into the game for more than 3 days. Worrying!

mh

[Ruff_Hi]

plako is doing admin stuff at CFC ... I think now is a good time to suggest him as deputy admin.

[kjn]

I say we wait a little and see how Plako manages to handle this thing - if the other teams accepts his calls here he will already be the de facto assistant admin.

No comment on the pause proposal from him. On the one hand, supporting Plako here would strengthen a claim for him as assistant admin and could help the morale in the German team. On the other hand, the Germans has been lagging in their play for most of the game and got a clear warning from r_rolo, so going with the pause would serve to undercut r_rolo's authority (not necessarily a bad thing, in this situation), but it could also serve to reinforce the current German behaviour.

If the Germans notified us in advance of that their turnplayers would be unable to log in for a while I could be persuaded to pause. But they haven't. Them missing a turn because they failed to communicate could be the clear shot across the bow that they need to shape up.

Thinking deeper about this, I believe the main underlying cause for the poor login performance and poor team dynamics has been the mod. It makes a long timer into a horrendously long timer. It reduces the pool of available turn-players, and makes the threshold higher for people wanting to contribute to a team. Would it be possible to convert the game to an unmodded one?

[Sian]

I certainly buy the latter part of your thinking kjn ... the mod certainly does that i don't feel that my interest is big enough to jump through the loops to go in looking at it 'live'

[mostly_harmless]

You know what really annoys me? That the CFC site shows Jerry Demmings as currently viewing the game thread. But he does not leave a comment on the issue concerning his team? WTF?

I am happy for plako to take matters into his hands. Not because he associated with RB, but because someone actually does it.
As for the pause, I have conflicting views. Denying the Germans the chance to play this turn will be bad for the game as they will likely give up. Being last in score, being attacked by WPC out of the blue, losing a city, apparently not having enough interest in their forum to get going. So in order to keep them in the game, we should be fine with a LIMITED pause.
On the other hand, if no one from their team (however depleted it might be) can be bothered to give an advance warning of the situation and especially since Jerry Demmings was browsing the CFC game thread, then screw them. The Germans out of the game and a hopefully short period to figure out what to do with their civ, might do the game some good.

mh

[kjn]

Well spoken there over at CFC, m_h.