Pink Dot IT Office - Email and technical issues thread - All welcome, all the time

[Imhotep]

Imhotep. How about "your 9 hours starts when you click end-turn, and you can't login again until that 9hours has expired?". That's at least obvious from civstats. It's not a solution I like, but I don't like the idea of logging in every hour to check my enemies movements either (and making notes which units moved when, etc)

Without an order, or at least a rule you move all your units at once (basically one login per turn), it's impossible to even police the 9hr rule.

For example - Other than trust, there is no evidence that dsplaisted's city-capturing unit even waited 9 hours. For all any of us can tell, he attacked with the other units, the attack failed, so in the span of a couple minutes he loaded up some reinforcements, moved them across the water, clicked end-turn, and attacked.

Incidentally, what other rules are there besides the 9hr one?

Any rule that prevents unit movement changes the game and shifts it drastically in favor of the defender. Take this scenario:

I have a stack of HA in your land, threatening two cities. You can hit the stack, but not without losing a city because if you move out of it it's toast. Now if any move order kicks in, I can just watch my stack getting annihilated because I'm not allowed to move. With a civ-wide move delay it's just the same.

There are other scenarios where a move order or civ-wide move delay is drastically in favour of the defender, but there is no one where it would be to the facvor of the attacker (because if you lose a city because of a move order, you played it wrong anyway).

I also do not agree that time windows make battle more fair. It just makes battle more random, depending to whose favor the move order turns out (and it will be almost always the defender anyway).

Once again: If you didn't want real-time battle, why did you want to play PitBoss with simultaneous turns anyway?

You can call me a quitter (I have not quitted in close to 230 ladder games and close to 30 SGs though), or a bad sport, or someone who just wants to get out of a lousy game in a cheap way. But I will not play this game any longer if we settle on anything like a move order or something that totally vaporizes the MP nature of the game.

Imhotep

[Swiss Pauli]

Once again: If you didn't want real-time battle, why did you want to play PitBoss with simultaneous turns anyway?

You can call me a quitter (I have not quitted in close to 230 ladder games and close to 30 SGs though), or a bad sport, or someone who just wants to get out of a lousy game in a cheap way. But I will not play this game any longer if we settle on anything like a move order or something that totally vaporizes the MP nature of the game.

Imhotep

I think this argument is flawed: turn order isn't needed in MP because the combatants are online simultaneously. That is not necessarily this case in this sort of Pitboss game (which is much more like a Demogame than regular MP). Allowing double moves (and this whole concept implies the existence of a turn order) can give one player a free swing at another when that party is literally, and quite reasonably, sleeping.

As I see it (as a non-player) the combatants should be able to agree how the combat will work for any given war: either a turn order shall apply, or MP style at a mutually agreed time during each turn.

[mostly_harmless]

As much as it pains me to say, but I want to quote that Apolyton player (was it conmcb or something?)
"Don't try to find a rule preventing the double move, just plan for it to happen."

Has there ever been a Pitboss game (simul turns), which did not end up in a discussion about a double move???

mh

[Krill]

Er...I'm probably going to get flamed for saying this...but changing the rules in the middle of a game is not a wise move.

And mh, go back even further and you'll end up paraphrasing what I originally said at the start of the game: double move rules don't work.

[Yazilliclick]

Well a double move rule will work exactly like it's worded as long as there is no 'good faith' portions. Relying on good faith doesn't work because it can't be fined, is different to everybody and two people on different sides of an issue will see it very differently.

Of course if you mean working as in 'not under any circumstances allowing a player to gain any advantage based on when they move their units' then no probably not, if you want that might as well make it a turn based game because it's the only way you'll get close.

In our case though it doesn't seem to at all be about the rule we have, it's about wanting to change it to not allow something that happened and then undo a turn because of it since the rule everybody agreed to allowed for what happened.

[Elkad]

I don't have 230 MP games, but I've got a couple dozen. Every single one of them Pitboss with double-turn rules. The only game I can think of that had more than one reload for doubling had someone who didn't understand the rule. Once he did, we played out the rest of the game just fine. Most reloads in other games are either accidental, or invisible race conditions (settlers in fog, etc)

Your HA example makes sense I guess if both players are logged in at the same time. And if you want to negotiate a time when both players in a war login and play gamespy style, that would be fine. When people often have to go to work for longer than the duration of the 9hr delay, it just results in the attacker having double-movement on his units. You'd have that same fork option, but covering twice as much area.

[sunrise089]

I have reloaded to the 275AD autosave, at the very start of the turn. Please let me know if you need me to load something different.

[Broker33]

I have an issue. I was redoing my moves and made a misclick that I didnt do the first time through. I uncovered a couple workers that are next to a barb and was wondering if it could be reloaded after Yaz's save?

[Yazilliclick]

I'm ok with it as long as it can be done quick given the current circumstances.

[Kodii]

Please do it quickly. I just played my turn for the second time, and have to renegotiate some trades that were wiped from the first reload. A third time is just about all I can handle.