Public Service Announcement: The Greens have started a public player thread ("Happy new year from the kitties!"). We should all avoid reading this thread as they may post some spoiler info in it. This is particularly likely because they have diplo on and much information will quickly become public knowledge in their game, while we have it off, and some of us may not learn the tiniest things about other of us until the game is over.
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PBEM29 Veterans Tech Thread
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I have some unrelated proposals for rules to add to this game's ruleset:
A) You may not accept a trade proposal which transfers a city if that city has changed ownership or been razed since the deal was proposed. Reason: Civ protects you from being cheated in deals by cancelling proposed deals if they can no longer fully go through. E.g. if you offer someone 300g for something and then spend the gold, if they try to accept the deal, absolutely nothing will happen. (As opposed to them giving up their end yet you not paying them the $300.) Cities are the only thing this does not apply to. This seems to be a bug, though what is and isn't a bug is usually arguable. In any case, adding this restriction will remove the chilling effect that this bug/mechanic has on trade offers that involve cities. B) No diplo wins. In other words you can't propose a diplo victory with the AP or UN. Reason: People feel that these are cheesy, and I believe a game ending in this way would disappoint and possibly anger players and lurkers. Using the UN as a way to concede is not necessary or fair: if all players but one wish to concede they can do so out of game. If just one swing voter wishes to concede I think we should play on. C) You may open a new save, decline all diplo offers, and check out the game situation without making any moves, before deciding which diplo offers to accept. (Then you can reload the save to do that diplo.) Reason: Having to accept diplo offers without being able to see the map at all is crazy. This rule seems pretty obviously good to me, it just hasn't been publicly acknowledged as an exception to the normal guideline of not reloading to change decisions after gaining information. I consider issue A to be an issue that was previously unknown, and we should therefore vote on it and go with what the majority wants. Issue C is similar in that it simply hasn't been discussed one way or the other whether that behavior is acceptable. Issue B would just be a rules change and would require unanimous approval to pass. If you do not wish to reveal your opposition to issue B, feel free to publicly vote for it but PM Commodore to put in an anonymous objection. (I guess we might do this too if novice disagrees with me.)
However, A presupposes C, and pretty much requires it, since I believe the game drops lost cities quietly from the diplo screen.
Also, razing is also problematic. If player 1 in the turn order demands city X from player 3, but player 2 razes the city before player 3 even sees the diplo offer, then player 3 will likely never know the original offer differs from the shown one. kjn Wrote:However, A presupposes C, and pretty much requires it, since I believe the game drops lost cities quietly from the diplo screen. I didn't realize the cities would not show up in the offer. I guess the solution to that would be for players proposing deals with cities to note which cities are involved as text sent along with the offer. I know this is a hassle for something that comes up rarely, but when it does come up it's pretty important.
These last 4 posts (and the events that inspired them) make a huge case for Always War/Always Peace games. Certainly think that it would be a more elegant solution than coming up with rules to legislate this sort of thing.
Regardless, I'm fine with A, find B unnecessary but unobjectionable and had pretty much already planned on doing C (I don't think there's anything wrong with reloading a save if you haven't done anything to change the game state in the interim and don't consider weighing diplo offers against a game state you haven't had the opportunity to review when they pop-up to be changing the game state.) Consider those half-votes until NobleHelium has had the opportunity to weigh in but suspect he'll concur with me since we've discussed the general issues in play in private previously.
I've got some dirt on my shoulder, can you brush it off for me?
Gaspar Wrote:These last 4 posts (and the events that inspired them) make a huge case for Always War/Always Peace games. Certainly think that it would be a more elegant solution than coming up with rules to legislate this sort of thing. Well they do expose how imperfect the diplo mechanics are for PBEM. But I find diplo/trade to be an important and almost indispensible part of civ even while I dislike the inter-game-reputation/Diplomacy-like negotiation/ironclad NAP crap, and I think it's worth enforcing a few extra guidelines to enable it.
Sure, whatever Gaspar wants.
Civilization IV: 21 (Bismarck of Mali), 29 (Mao Zedong of Babylon), 38 (Isabella of China), 45 (Victoria of Sumeria), PB12 (Darius of Sumeria), 56 (Hammurabi of Sumeria), PB16 (Bismarck of Mali), 78 (Augustus of Byzantium), PB56 (Willem of China)
Hearthstone: ArenaDrafts Profile No longer playing Hearthstone. 
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