Double-Fun - pitboss game (14)

[YossarianLives]

Also a couple more things (apologies again) but (1) do we want to ban spies from changing civics for other teams?

If there's too much we want to "ban" we can always follow a ruleset already made from the ISDG.

And (2) I think instead of proposing emails here we need another general "technical issues" topic with emails for all teams, or alternatively, we could just ignore it and have teams exchange emails ingame.

(1) We for sure are banning "hostile" civics / religion switching missions. Team Blame Caledorn requested banning "friendly" missions too, for the sake of simplicity, but I think we got outvoted?

(2) We definitely want a Tech Thread once the game gets started, to report technical problems and with the details on how to log into the game in the first post.

Having the team email ready to go can speed up communications a bit (since you don't have to wait for an in-game response to know where to send you message), but I think that can be up to the individual teams, if you don't want to post your email publicly before the game.

[Krill]

I don't agree with Krill that Emperor + Toroid is unplayable. But I do think people have some misconceptions about what "difficulty" means. Playing an Emperor MP game doesn't mean you are playing a harder/higher level game than people playing a game on prince. It means just one thing: techs are more expensive compared to units and buildings, than in the prince game. (This is both due to increased tech costs and increased maintenance costs. Both have the effect of raising the amount of commerce you need to generate to research a given tech.)

Imagine tech costs vs production costs on a sliding scale. At one end, you could play on a tiny flat map on settler difficulty, and techs would cost very little compared to units and buildings. In this game, tech pace is ridiculously fast, and units become obsolete shortly after they become available. You don't have time to build most buildings because you're unlocking everything too fast. At the other end (a huge deity toroid), production is plentiful compared to tech pace. You can build most good buidlings everywhere, there's not much need to prioritize. You can easily afford as many units as you want, in fact you abstain from building as many as you can because the maintenance is significant. Wonders are a bit overpowered because everyone has surplus production. There's a heavy focus on cottages and specialists. ORG and especially FIN are even stronger than normal, and FIN is the best trait by a wide margin. Lots of civs become practically unplayable because starting techs are so expensive so having bad ones is terrible. Having good commerce land at and around your capital becomes really important.

Game difficulty is a tool to adjust the balance of commerce vs production. RB games seem to have settled on approximately prince/toroidal or monarch/cylindrical as favorites, with "standard" size for small games and "large" size for larger games. (Note: Quick speed games sometimes get slightly higher difficulty in order to make warfare a bit more viable by slowing tech pace compared to unit movement rate.)

If you are voting for higher difficulty than that, I see it as deciding you want cottages and FIN to be stronger, not that you are more skilled players or anything like that.

I wouldn't say that it's unplayable by any means, but because of the balance of commerce versus production there are severe limits on viable options in every stage of a game, from the snakepick onwards. Small PBEMs 5-6 players, that can work with some maps. 10 players though?

[Maga_R]

Also a couple more things (apologies again) but (1) do we want to ban spies from changing civics for other teams?

If there's too much we want to "ban" we can always follow a ruleset already made from the ISDG.

And (2) I think instead of proposing emails here we need another general "technical issues" topic with emails for all teams, or alternatively, we could just ignore it and have teams exchange emails ingame.

(1) We for sure are banning "hostile" civics / religion switching missions. Team Blame Caledorn requested banning "friendly" missions too, for the sake of simplicity, but I think we got outvoted?

(2) We definitely want a Tech Thread once the game gets started, to report technical problems and with the details on how to log into the game in the first post.

Having the team email ready to go can speed up communications a bit (since you don't have to wait for an in-game response to know where to send you message), but I think that can be up to the individual teams, if you don't want to post your email publicly before the game.

Yes, you guys got outvoted, the current status is that hostile civic and religion missions are banned, everything else is allowed among consenting adults, I mean, teams .

That is why I would welcome to just go with ISDG setting - not to have to keep track of all these votes - that are multiplying at alarming rate recently .

I will definitely start a tech thread - once we finalize rules. I want to start it with final rule settings so that nobody is confused.

[Maga_R]

My issue with emperor + toroidal + large distances between capitals + full diplo is that it makes it very hard to actually wage war on anyone, and I think that will take some of the fun out of the game. I think we need to address at least one of those components, so that the game doesn't turn into a peaceful build-fest without any real action.

My understanding of higher difficulty is that it makes maintenance higher, so you want fewer cities closer to your capital, compared to lower difficulty where you can incorporate more cities further away (such as those captured in wars).

I am ready to close discussion and move on to the actual game, but Team Blame Caledorn votes "No" on copying the ISDG settings (since we don't want toroidal + emperor)

As many people mentioned (including you, I think ) we hope that with such an experienced player as Plako in charge of map - with SevenSpirits help on the top os everything - we will end up with a reasonable map to play anyway .

And yes, my preference would be for a more peaceful game - as our lurkers know very well we are peace-loving, nice, handsome, charitable and help old ladies cross the streets .

But I also hear you on waiting impatiently to kill your neighbors - and if team names involving "eating your hearts alive" and "cannibals" are any indication, you are not alone . One way to shift the balance here is through difficulty, more direct way maybe by just posts like yours - I am sure Plako is reading them .

[Caledorn]

I suggest that I start the tech thread when we're ready to do so, so I can update the first post there with any changes to the server ip/dns if necessary.

If you agree, Maga_R, you can just tell me what to write in the first post in regards to the settings etc, and I'll put that in too

[Maga_R]

I suggest that I start the tech thread when we're ready to do so, so I can update the first post there with any changes to the server ip/dns if necessary.

If you agree, Maga_R, you can just tell me what to write in the first post in regards to the settings etc, and I'll put that in too

Yeah, sure. I will just wait until the rules are set to make sure that the final rules are in the post from the very beginning. It will be helluva of a long post, though - we can also have separate IT thread an deployer thread?

[Caledorn]

I suggest that I start the tech thread when we're ready to do so, so I can update the first post there with any changes to the server ip/dns if necessary.

If you agree, Maga_R, you can just tell me what to write in the first post in regards to the settings etc, and I'll put that in too

Yeah, sure. I will just wait until the rules are set to make sure that the final rules are in the post from the very beginning. It will be helluva of a long post, though - we can also have separate IT thread an deployer thread?

I just need a tech thread for server/hosting related issues that all the players can subscribe to. Perhaps we can have a Ruleset/Final settings thread in addition to that?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Is everybody ok with me ded-lurking the kurumi/HBR team? I've posted in a couple of threads, but I haven't received any spoiler information.

[Maga_R]

Is everybody ok with me ded-lurking the kurumi/HBR team? I've posted in a couple of threads, but I haven't received any spoiler information.

no problem with me.

[Caledorn]

Is everybody ok with me ded-lurking the kurumi/HBR team? I've posted in a couple of threads, but I haven't received any spoiler information.

I have no problems with this either