Defining a full double move ruleset?

[Ruff_Hi]

I completely disagree with this. Why should 2 teams attacking with a combined army be provented from using all units at their disposal in the most efficient manner?

Because it is unfair. If they want to set up one civ as a collateral civ and the other as a killing civ, then think up some other way of doing it.

[shadyforce]

Why is it unfair? I'm sorry, I genuinely don't understand what's wrong with this situation. Please be explicit.

[RefSteel]

In this rule set, I don't see much advantage to having the SWP; I'd much rather have the FWP.

I mostly agree, but taking a cue from something Ruff posted:

Player A, moving last, can send sacrificial chariots (or even warriors closer in) to stand on key tiles in Player B's territory, preventing those tiles from being worked between turns (would this also temporarily cut off a supply of a resource if Player B's only source was that tile?) If Player A were moving first, Player B could slaughter the units with mounted troops and withdraw them to their defensive staging tiles before the turn rolled, so this gambit would not be possible.

Also, tying in with the "race to last" idea: If Player C waits until the last seconds of the turn before moving, Player D is unlikely to be able to respond with whips or changes to tile arrangements, build queues, or research ... at least not in a very well-planned way (and of course not at all if not logged in at the time).

Possible solution to "race to last": Divide the turn timer three ways - the numbers here are pretty arbitrary, but something like:
First 9 hours: FWP may make any and all moves (until 15 hours left on timer).
Second 9 hours: SWP may make any and all moves (until 6 hours left).
Final 6 hours: NO ONE may make in-window-only moves, but all players may make "always allowed" moves. Wars may be declared in this window, but the team that declares war may NOT move units in this window on the turn when they declare war; the declared-upon MAY do so. This does mean issuing a DoW in the last six hours of the turn is illegal if you have also already moved units in those six hours. Note that this does mean the defender can in theory always choose to play last by waiting until the final six hours to move, though I guess the attacker can just wait until the instant before the turn ticks over to alt-click.

Problem I foresee with my proposed solution: You're either giving players a shorter window (9 hours instead of 12) in which to play or lengthening the turn timer (perhaps even to 36 for a 12/12/12) to accomodate all parties in the war.
[EDIT YET AGAIN: Removed my latest bad idea. Instead, what about dividing the 24-hour timer 11.5/11.5/1 or something, with the rule that if you declare with less than 12 hours to go in the turn, or if you are the last SWP in your war to play and all FWPs have ended turn, you must pause the game without ending turn long enough that your opposition will have 12 hours to see the game between your last move (or DoW) and the turn rolling.]

@shady: It's the idea (still/again) of playing a turn-based game - simulating one as much as possible in pitboss - and not giving teams who are able to coordinate their Real Life schedules to the necessary extent yet another in-game advantage (of which they'll have many already) for out-of-game reasons. The two civs could still use "all the units at their disposal in the most efficient manner" if they make IN-GAME arrangements: Civ E could build all the Cats, while Civ F builds only killing units (or all the cats are gifted to one team) for a joint attack on team G, but the level of trust and pre-combat in-game coordination between teams required for that is higher (as opposed to on-the-turn-of-combat out-of-game coordination of schedules) and it doesn't work (or at least takes longer and requires unit gifting) if the two attackers are approaching the target city from different directions (otherwise there won't be enough stack defenders with the cats).

[sunrise089]

Why is it unfair? I'm sorry, I genuinely don't understand what's wrong with this situation. Please be explicit.

I don't know what is wrong either, but I know why it's done. In the demogame, the "this isn't Gamespy MP civ" crowd wanted it very clear that each civ was on a separate side. They could work together, but not as closely as civs officially teamed like in a 3v3 game. So, it was decided that allowing them to coordinate the micro of their attack would violate this goal, and hence it was banned.

Note - you can always gift all of the siege to one party. Problem solved.

[zakalwe]

I think the reason it's unfair is that while attacking teams A, B, and C take their time to carefully interleave their attacks in a particular sequence, the defending team D can do... precisely nothing.

In a true simultaneous turns game, the defending team could attack out in the middle of such a joint attack, for example, which is prohibited in this rule set. So since the defending team is restricted to making all their moves in one go, with no interleaving with enemy moves, it makes sense to impose a similar restriction on attackers.

[Swiss Pauli]

I completely disagree with this. Why should 2 teams attacking with a combined army be provented from using all units at their disposal in the most efficient manner?

I've read posts earlier in this thread asserting it is a good idea but I have absolutely no idea why.

What Krill's rules propose is to simplify the turn breakdown. With a fixed, sequential turn order, in a 2 on 1 war (A&B v C) then each civ should be allocated an 8 hour game clock window to play, making a co-ordinated 'collateral then killing' attack impossible. This rule was fine in the 6 civ (2 landmass) Poly game, but with 17 civs in PB3, for example, sub-dividing the clock becomes impractical, so we need this rule to stop dogpile attacks becoming overpowered as a side effect of a rule - turn split into 'attacking' and 'defending' halves - that is designed to keep the game flowing.

As others have pointed out, the dogpilers can achieve the same effect by gifting units/co-ordinating unit builds, but that advantage requires a trade-off because of the risk the donor takes in gifting the units, or training a highly unbalanced army.

[shadyforce]

Note - you can always gift all of the siege to one party. Problem solved.

Yeah but why should you have to?

I think the reason it's unfair is that while attacking teams A, B, and C take their time to carefully interleave their attacks in a particular sequence, the defending team D can do... precisely nothing.

Yeah, so? That's what happens in a 1v1 war as well. He has to wait for the other dude to do all his moves before he can move. Why should it matter if his opposition forces happpen to have more than person controlling them? He still has to wait his turn.

In a true simultaneous turns game, the defending team could attack out in the middle of such a joint attack, for example, which is prohibited in this rule set. So since the defending team is restricted to making all their moves in one go, with no interleaving with enemy moves, it makes sense to impose a similar restriction on attackers.

If we wanted true simultanious turns, we wouldn't have a double move rule. The attacking team is restricted to making all its moves in their half of the timer just as the defending team is. But the defender isn't forced to burn half his stack before using the other half of his siege. And it's not a similar restriction that the defender has, it's a completely different restriction.

I don't know what is wrong either, but I know why it's done. In the demogame, the "this isn't Gamespy MP civ" crowd wanted it very clear that each civ was on a separate side. They could work together, but not as closely as civs officially teamed like in a 3v3 game. So, it was decided that allowing them to coordinate the micro of their attack would violate this goal, and hence it was banned.

Ok so basically some bunch of people decided that they didn't like people teaming up especially when attacking so they invented some artificial handicap for multiple attacking belligerents?

[shadyforce]

What Krill's rules propose is to simplify the turn breakdown. With a fixed, sequential turn order, in a 2 on 1 war (A&B v C) then each civ should be allocated an 8 hour game clock window to play, making a co-ordinated 'collateral then killing' attack impossible. This rule was fine in the 6 civ (2 landmass) Poly game, but with 17 civs in PB3, for example, sub-dividing the clock becomes impractical, so we need this rule to stop dogpile attacks becoming overpowered as a side effect of a rule - turn split into 'attacking' and 'defending' halves - that is designed to keep the game flowing.

As others have pointed out, the dogpilers can achieve the same effect by gifting units/co-ordinating unit builds, but that advantage requires a trade-off because of the risk the donor takes in gifting the units, or training a highly unbalanced army.

Yeah, I understand that this best simulates the three by eight hour time slots that the demogame had. But that still doesn't justify why Templar and Imperio should be forced to play seperate turn slots there either (not to mention split by RB in the middle - how convenient was that for RB!).

Why should we stop dogpiles from being a powerful tool? Attacking is already bloody hard. And when you''re in a 2 vs 1 situation and you are the one, you're meant to be in a shit situation.

Let me put it this way:
Lets say Team A and B's combined army is the same size as Team C so they team up and try to fight off the large rival. This rule means that their combined army, although the same size as C, cannot be used as effectively and thus they are at a disadvantage. This, combined with the natural difficulty in attacking, means they have to bring in a D, E, F, etc as well.

Oh and since all belligerent attacks have to occur sequntially, and now we're giving them half the turn timer no matter how many of them there are, this further makes things awkward. Say in a 4 vs 1 attack, each attacker only has roughly 1/8th of the turn timer to work in.

[novice]

You have a point, Shadyforce.

It comes down to how you want to balance the advantages of attacking and defending in a war. Some players will want to protect runaway civs from being dogpiled, because they expect to become a runaway civ. Others will want to keep the game balanced as long as possible to keep the outcome uncertain and to maximize their own chances of winning.

I think the "no coordinating attacks" rule should be formulated as an optional clause in the "house rules" that can be voted on on a game by game basis.

[zakalwe]

Yup, you do have a point Shadyforce.

Of course some wars would be many-on-many (3 vs. 4 for example), and in such wars I imagine the rule wouldn't really tip the overall balance much either way, since both sides would benefit/be hindered equally.

But since there is no restriction on having joint stacks of units, I guess it might make sense to allow joint (unrestricted) attacks on such stacks as well.