Pitboss 8

[Catwalk]

How are double moves handled?

It's simple: don't double move

The whole idea is that we're not playing to screw over the other person. Everyone in Pitboss 5 was excellent in doing this, letting people respond to moves even when they had the opportunity to double move to gain an advantage. I don't think this game even gets proposed considering how PB7 ended, but PB5 showed that you could still play respectfully with pauses thrown in when needed.

If that's an issue for anybody then they should either find a teammate that will keep them in check or reconsider signing up. I don't mean to be a jerk about it, but I will probably drop out if this degrades into PB7-type squabbling.

I'm fine with gentleman's rules for it, and I think that could work. However, that does assume that people will always know what's fair. I don't know much about PB (never played it), but I'd imagine there can be situations where you aren't sure if a move is fair or not. Or would it always be black/white? And of course, it should be communicated clearly. The problem with PB/ (if it was a problem) is that people signed up with very different notions about how the game was going to be played. As long as everybody is on the same page here (seems that was the case in PB5), it should work.

[Bigger]

Fractal is the map type I use most often, and 80% of the maps I roll end up being pangea type maps (only more interesting). I assumed there would be a neutral party looking at the map anyway (we'll need that for big and small also for the resource fixing) so he could just reroll the map if someone was stuck alone on an island.

[scooter]

PB5 showed it was pretty simple. Don't be a jerk. If you declare on somebody and you're trying to double-move them, you are being a jerk. Don't do that or I will be angry and wreck your game . The principle we followed was "do not double-move unless you have absolutely no choice ie you will miss your turn if you don't." We also used pauses pretty liberally in the event of war to make sure people had time to finish their turns. We often saw people in past PBs who put effort into leveraging the rules and doing as much as possible within the rules. The only rule here is you must do the opposite. Do as much as possible to be courteous to others in the game without the need for rules. If you can't do that, this game is not for you.

From personal experience, I was in wars with several different people in PB5. I remember more than one time sending Nakor/Brick an email saying I was going to be playing my turn a little late (I was taking first half the turn), but I would pause it for him so he could get his turn in too. We always worked it out, and everyone else did it too.


On maps - I've been rolling a bunch, and I'm really thinking Fractal is probably going to be our best bet. There's no real way to do B&S without 2 people getting screwed, and I'm not really interested in playing that out again. I would say a mapmaker just rolls Fractal until he finds one that looks 1) fun and 2) nobody is stranded in the ocean. Preferably everyone on one continent. Similar guidelines to PB7 actually. Any thoughts on this?

Edit: crosspost with Bigger on the Fractal thing, but yeah, I'd suggest Fractal with some basic mapmaker guidelines similar to PB7

[Catwalk]

That sounds really good scooter, I'd much prefer playing that way.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm fine with gentleman's rules for it, and I think that could work. However, that does assume that people will always know what's fair.

It's not that hard. You wait for your opponent to move their units before moving your own units a second time in a row against them.

[scooter]

Yep, it works well if we're all committed to doing it. This means a couple times you'll sacrifice a small personal advantage in order to keep the game running smoothly. But PB5 managed to have the most wars of any non-AW pitboss and have the least controversies (0!), so I have hope that can be duplicated.

Edit: And no, that is not 0 factorial => 1 controversy for you math nerds.

[Bigger]

catwalk, if you are genuinely unsure about how to handle a situation without "being a jerK" (Scooter's words) just open up the question to lurkers. Sounds like you can even ask for a pause if it is time sensitive and really confusing to you.

[pindicator]

I'm okay with fractal. I just like the added element that settling and exploring islands gives a map, especially if we don't know what's going on. And having multiple landmasses was pretty neat in PB5; a lot more interesting than PB7. It'd be cool to get the eastern + western continents of PB5 with islands to settle + explore. I thought it was very cool that we didn't even get to settle all the land by the time the game was called (235 turns and still unsettled islands!)

How about rolling a large map for 13 starts on a Big & Small and delete the starts that are in Australia?

[Bigger]

I'm okay with fractal. I just like the added element that settling and exploring islands gives a map, especially if we don't know what's going on. And having multiple landmasses was pretty neat in PB5; a lot more interesting than PB7. It'd be cool to get the eastern + western continents of PB5 with islands to settle + explore. I thought it was very cool that we didn't even get to settle all the land by the time the game was called (235 turns and still unsettled islands!)

How about rolling a large map for 13 starts on a Big & Small and delete the starts that are in Australia?

thats an interesting an idea. Although it could give an unfair advantage to the civs that start closer to australia?

[scooter]

Part of the problem was we got a really fluky roll for PB5. We got two big continents connected by galley, which is not the way B&S is supposed to work. B&S very frequently has one big blob on the left and a bunch of scattered islands on the right, and there will be 1-2 civs on those scattered islands. It's going to be pretty hard to recreate something similar to PB5 without some map editing.

Also, it's pretty uncommon for there to be islands all around the continents like there were in PB5 too. Often they're just on one side.