Realms Beyond PBEM

[Sullla]

Thank you everyone for responding, and I have received PMs with civ/leader choices from most of you. I am going to be away this weekend and can't work on this for a couple of days, but I'll get back to you again on Monday.

[athlete4life10]

Excellent I'm excited for this. Thanks to Sooooo and Sulla for getting this together. I got a quick question about guidelines when playing.

I don't have a lot of mp experience and the PBEM games I play(ed) have been relaxed with close friends, basically gentelmanly. I would expect this game to not have the same understanding between players however I want to make sure that if the opportunity to do something such as worker steal or raze an undefended city early on or some such catastrophic event for an early civ, while it might not necessarily be condoned but is certainly not prohibited.

I have no want to ruin this game for anyone yet I would expect if the opportunity arose for someone to take advantage of my civ, they would and they should. I'm not knowledgeable about any exploits and I wouldn't expect somebody to take advantage of anything like that but simple tactics and strategies that might change the game for better or worse early on (or later) are fair game right?

Sorry in advance as I don't (and hope I didn't) intend this to get overly complicated or anything, I simply don't want my inexperience in mp to ruin the experience. So really somebody and tell me it's ok

[sooooo]

There are no banned tactics - play however you want. However, do remember the diplomatic side to the game .

[Alex]

Curiosity from someone who isn't playing - are you allowed to conduct diplomacy by PM and e-mail with the other players? Or does it all have to be through the in-game menus?

[mostly_harmless]

I am planning to do diplomacy via email and PM.

mh

[Ruff_Hi]

strongly recommend diplo via email / pm. You can agree to something and then do it in-game instead of wasting turns discussing.

[athlete4life10]

I would think e-mail/pm would be the way to go...

[Sullla]

All right, let's get this thing started. After tallying up each person's responses, here are the results of the voting:

Huts
There was an easy victory for the Huts On option, 4-0. Get your scouts out and explore the map!

Barbs
In a closer vote, Normal Barbs won out 4-2 over the Raging Barbs option. (Counting a vote for either normal or raging barbs as a vote for both.)

Events
This was the closest category: Events Off narrowly beat out having them on, by a 3-2 vote.

Tech Trading
There was a clear preference for No Tech Brokering, by a 4-1 vote over No Tech Trading. I think you were all prejudiced here by the Apolyton game.

Difficulty
I had 2 votes for Noble, 3 votes for Prince, and 1 vote for Monarch, so Prince Difficulty it is!

Leader/Civ Choices
I'm pretty sure that these cannot be kept secret in the PBEM format (as you see a list of all the leaders when logging in to enter your password), so without further ado here is whom your opponents have selected for the game:

Ruff: Gandhi/India
sooooo: Pericles/Greece
Dreylin: Mehmed/Ottomans
athlete4life10: Saladin/Arabia
mostly_harmless: Random - Charlemagne/HRE

As far as the map goes, I have a general idea in mind that I'm going to tinker with a bit today. It will be roughly the size of a Small map (which is intended for 5 civs anyway, in a nice coincidence) and I will balance the starting positions. They will not be exactly equal, but everyone should have a fair chance at the game, and I will state here in the setup thread that all players will have easy access to at least one of the two starting metals (copper/iron). In other words, no catastrophic failures along the lines of the Apolyton game.

Hopefully I will have everything ready to start as soon as tomorrow. So... might as well start thinking about your strategy!

[sooooo]

Thanks Sullla

[Ruff_Hi]

thx Sullla - looking forward to it.