Pink Dot IT Office - Email and technical issues thread - All welcome, all the time

[sunrise089]

The RBPB3 ruleset is just as flawed and ambiguous as the one we're working with. They're going to run into loads of issues in the future as well. I can't believe they haven't tried to use something more thorough. I know we don't want to turn the thing into a legal document but this PB has clearly shown that despite best intentions, a simple rule doesn't work.

I don't think I agree Shady. Most of the recent double-move rule concerns have come from people either reading into it what isn't there (like the current RBP2 issue) or understanding it but not liking it (Exploit's issue).

Now we can argue a rule that the community is widely against isn't a good rule, but I would suggest the community ISN'T widely against the rules since a majority voted for them both times. And of course some of the time an actual violation has occurred and someone needs to make a complaint.

So is the real problem that the rule is ambiguous? Or is it that some players don't want to play along, others make claims based on what they think the rule should say, and yet others just plain break the rule?

[Exploit]

Okay so what's the answer? Can you (or someone) come up with a real ruleset?

Here is my suggestion:

© - A civilization at war that moves after its enemy has ended his turn must wait at least 11 hours (half the turn in game time) from the beginning of the next turn (or until after the enemy has logged in and made his responding moves if that comes first) before they may move again.

The overriding principle is that players should have a reasonable amount of time to notice and respond to an enemy action. The half turn time limit is merely in place to keep the game moving and as a common definition of a reasonable amount of time.

[dsplaisted]

it would have solved both of the times I got screwed by double moves in this game.

In this case, you did not get screwed by a double move. The fact that it was a double move on Imhotep according to your definition is irrelevant in this case, because as far as I know I didn't gain an advantage because of it. I certainly did gain an advantage by attacking first on turn 187. I did this because I wanted to attack before Imhotep had a chance to draft a defender. I didn't even know you were sending reinforcements.

But a double move spans two turns. On turn 186 I did happen to move after Imhotep. But if I had moved before him, it wouldn't have changed any of his actions on that turn. Nor would it have changed any of your actions, as far as I know. So when I moved my troops on turn 186 was entirely irrelevant! There are times when a double-move puts an opponent at a disadvantage because they don't have a chance to respond... this wasn't one of those times! There are other times where it is simply advantageous to move first, which was the case here, which is why I made sure to do so.

Under your proposed rule, I would have had to log in and play my turn at the beginning of turn 186, to get priority over Imhotep for making my moves on turn 187. So the same outcome could have occurred, but the rule would just encourage more races to occur for who can log in and play first. And really, I think according to that rule I would only be able to play first on turn 186 if I had done so on turn 185, and so on back until I wasn't at war with Imhotep and the rule didn't apply to us.

So I think your proposed rule is essentially the same as enforcing a turn order on warring civs. I think all of the civs left in the game will agree to a turn order anyway, so I don't see a need for the rule. And it still doesn't provide a clean way of handling what should happen when civs go to war, and who should go first and second in the turn order. I personally don't think there is a clean way of doing this at all... so I think the rules we have are OK.

To sum up: This wasn't even really a double-move issue, and the rule you have proposed doesn't solve double-move issues anyway.

[Exploit]

The fact that it was a double move on Imhotep according to your definition is irrelevant in this case, because as far as I know I didn't gain an advantage because of it. I certainly did gain an advantage by attacking first on turn 187. I did this because I wanted to attack before Imhotep had a chance to draft a defender.

It doesn't help your argument that you "didn't gain an advantage", when your very next statement is that "I certainly did gain an advantage by attacking first on turn 187."

At least we seem to be agreeing upon your actions being done deliberately to prevent Imhotep from having a chance to defend himself, "I did this because I wanted to attack before Imhotep had a chance to draft a defender."

I guess the only difference is in how such a move is perceived, I see it as exploiting a bad rule to get an underhanded advantage while you see it as a legal move with tactical merit.

[shadyforce]

Imhotep is the one who didn't want to play sequential turns during war, instead he preferred just a 9 or 11 hour rule. So when Daniel plays within those rules, Imhotep can hardly have any complaint. And he didn't complain.

[dsplaisted]

It doesn't help your argument that you "didn't gain an advantage", when your very next statement is that "I certainly did gain an advantage by attacking first on turn 187."

At least we seem to be agreeing upon your actions being done deliberately to prevent Imhotep from having a chance to defend himself, "I did this because I wanted to attack before Imhotep had a chance to draft a defender."

I guess the only difference is in how such a move is perceived, I see it as exploiting a bad rule to get an underhanded advantage while you see it as a legal move with tactical merit.

Arghhh! Are you even trying to follow the logic of my argument?

Obviously if there are rules in place, they need to be followed whether it confers an advantage or not.

Do you seriously think I should have played according to a rule that doesn't exist? Which Imhotep was vehemently against? And if I did play according to the rule, I could have just played earlier on turn 186, and then what happened on turn 187 could have been exactly the same thing, except now it would have been legal according to this rule that doesn't exist that you want me to follow?!?!

There are times when an advantage can be gained by double-moving on an opponent before they have a chance to respond. The rules we have try to minimize this.

There are times when an advantage can be gained by moving after an opponent moves. This is apparently the case in the dispute that is going on in RBP2.

There are times when an advantage can be gained by moving before an opponent moves. This was the case on turn 187 when I attacked Imhotep.

You are casting this as a double-move issue and I am trying to show you that it is entirely irrelevant that it was a double-move according to your definition. The rules that you want would have forced me to modify my behavior on the previous turn, but would have done nothing to affect the outcome on turn 187.

You are complaining that you are getting screwed by the rules and my underhanded playing when there are so many reasons this is not the case. Here's another one: You got screwed because Imhotep didn't agree to a turn order. If he had, I would have been first in the turn order, and I wouldn't have needed to worry about being logged in at the beginning of the turn to attack before he could draft. So I probably wouldn't have logged on right at the beginning of the turn to attack, and you could have logged on before me, moved your units, and gifted them to Imhotep before I attacked. I wonder if you would have considered that to be an underhanded tactic.

[Munro]

Here is my suggestion:

© - A civilization at war that moves after its enemy has ended his turn must wait at least 11 hours (half the turn in game time) from the beginning of the next turn (or until after the enemy has logged in and made his responding moves if that comes first) before they may move again.

The overriding principle is that players should have a reasonable amount of time to notice and respond to an enemy action. The half turn time limit is merely in place to keep the game moving and as a common definition of a reasonable amount of time.

Agree. This is how I generally understand the 'no double moves' / 'sequential turns' rule. It doesn't explicitly cover the case of a three way war where one Civ is 'straddled' by two other civs (one playing before and one after) - generally in that situation you'd make a concerted effort to switch turn orders so that both opponents were playing either both before or both after. Otherwise you could just split the turn timer into thirds, I suppose. (Only really feasible with a longer timer).

The only tweak I'd make to Exploit's definition would be to also include the turn before any declaration of war, to prevent unfair sneak attacks where the attacker moves twice back-to-back in order to declare war and attack before the victim has had a chance to react. CFC pitboss hose "The Oob" summed it up pretty well I think in his original pitboss rules here: http://theoob.googlepages.com/pitbossrules.html

Double turns

It is possible to take a 'double turn' in the game by being the last to finish for one turn and then the first to finish the one after that. This has a positive effect because it speeds the game up, but the downside is that it can be exploited for military advantage by moving twice before your opponent has a chance to react.

So to keep the upside of double turns while eliminating (or at least minimizing) the downside, the rule is that if you are at war with another player (or are about to go to war with them, eg. sneak attacks) then you mustn't take two turns before they've had a chance to take one, or in other words you cannot go after them in one turn and before them in the next.

You can use the civstats log page for the game, or the RSS feeds from the same page, to tell if the other player has taken their turn (ask me about this if you don't know what I'm talking about).

One exception: you may always take your turn when 12 hours have passed on the turn timer (since the timer seems to run slow this will probably be a bit more than 12 real hours), regardless of whether they have taken their turn or not, otherwise it'd risk you not having a chance to take your turn at all. Ideally though, you should talk to your opponent(s) and come to an arrangement about the order you are going to take your turns in.

What I like about the Oob's description is that it also captures the spirit of the rules. It's clear that the intention is to prevent you from getting undue advantage from back-to-back moves and making every effort to discuss with your opponent if there is any need for anything unexpected or controversial.

He also closes with the following:

In a game as complex as Civ there are undoubtedly going to be grey areas which will need to be addressed, so where the letter of the law is unclear, try to play by it's spirit, and if you think another player has broken a rule wait to hear their side of the story before you start throwing accusations around, in case it's simply a misunderstanding. Where there is any dispute, I am the final word on such matters... ideally we would have a non-player observing the game to act as a referee, but this is not football, so you're simply going to have to rely on my objectivity as a host which I keep separate from my aspirations as a player. If that's not good enough for you then find another server.

That said I'm happy to enter into discussion concerning clarifications of the rules and requests for changes.

Out of interest, would anyone still in the game oppose adopting a sequential turn rule along the lines of Exploit's and The Oob's definitions above? Was it just Imhotep holding out for the original 9 hour per-unit delay rule?

[T-hawk]

I feel compelled to note the ambiguity hidden in there: "take your turn" is a nebulous concept, especially with multi-player teams making several logins. In Pitboss #2, there's a controversy over whether moving a single unit and not anything else constitutes as taking your turn for the purpose of adjudicating a double move.

[Munro]

Aren't they using "End Turn" to determine when one team has finished moving its units and making changes, and then the other team gets to play? That seems pretty unambiguous.

[Broker33]

Really this is still going on?

Exploit

You were not at war and the double move rule didnt affect you.

Dsp was following the ruleset that Imho prefered. If Imho prefered turn orders he would have been playing with turn orders. This was left up to the waring parties of which you were not one of.

I do believe everyone else prefers turn order or in effect your style of rule so your argument is really pointless. It will already be played that way.

I may just be tired but this is getting silly.