mapstat and epic rule

[microbe]

OK I read the old discussion and the epic rule about utilities:

"The use of any bean counter, trainer, or other program designed to give you an advantage or some information not otherwise available in the game is prohibited. This includes utilities such as Mapstat and Apollo."

Now that discussion was held two years ago so I think it's a bit outdated. Maybe some clarifications based on what new features those tools provide today?

I started using mapstat about one month ago. The only features I use are alarms for 1. cities going to riot 2. new trading possibility and 3. pollution. These are not always accurate (sometimes it prompts trading but it's unchanged from last turn).

All of the 3 features do not fall into the definition of the rule, IMO. These are just alarms of what information you can get anyway from the game, and IMO the game itself SHOULD provide those features. It's very tedious to go through all the AIs in the diplo screen just to find who has a tech to trade. For an SG it might not be important, but for Epic, this really makes game play less fun and distracted.

I agree that players using the utility does have advantage. If you consider a 100% ban, please make it very clear in the rule, because these alarms aren't really a bean counter like counting the tiles. But my suggestion is to allow it and I would recommand everyone use it.

BTW I might not be able to finish the current two epics..especially the AW - I could hardly return to the old version again.

[Sir Bugsy]

Well Microbe, I haven't agreed with you on very many things, but this time I think we are of like mind. I just found out that my epic 43 didn't count because I used Mapstat. I don't think I derived any advantage from the utility, it just made the game less tedious. Dianthus has made it a point to exclude any possible spoiler information in the utility.

[Griselda]

There is the rule that if a player doesn't notice that a city is about to go into unrest, they *can't* reload, and must take the turn of anarchy that results. Obviously, players using mapstat won't have that happen in their games. That's a huge advantage, IMO, and that falls squarely into the "designed to give you an advantage" section of the rule.

I certainly agree with you that the "about to riot" information should be available to all players in game, and that trading and pollution are tedious at best. Hopefully this will be a lesson learned when Civ 4 rolls around.

I do understand how you are feeling, and I really don't like invalidating Epics results. But, we also have some players who would *never* use programs like that, for any reason, and to allow them for some players, I think, would be unfair to those who don't feel comfortable using a third-party program. We would no longer have a level playing field.

While I realize that reading rules pages is tedious, I don't think that taking a few minutes to read through the Epics rules before devoting countless hours to a tournament game is too much to ask. If you're ever unsure about a rule, please ask!

While we can have the final say over who gets "listed" on the results page, I hope that we can remember that the final result isn't as important to us here as the journey that we took to get there. While we will choose whether or not to include specific results, I hope that everyone will still find the journey worthwhile. It's not like you can get "famous" playing here anyway, but I do hope that players will be able to have fun.

-Griselda