RBP2 Lurker Discussion Thread - No Players!

[Ilios]

I would like to see a Pitboss with no rules. Just play as the game lets you!

In that case, I'd like my starting warrior replaced with Modern Armor in all my future Pitboss games!

[Serdoa]

Thank you Beamup. At least I understand now better what you mean. Like I said English is not my first language and I am thus surely not the best person to be considered for diplomatic explanations.

I'll have to do some work now but if none else does it, I will later try to rephrase my draft. But if anyone feels like doing it please go ahead. Either use my draft or make a new one.

[MWIN]

I still don't understand, whether spullla's breaking the rule changed the outcome or not? Here are somethings to consider
1)I guess there is no rule in stopping Spullla from gifting city. But is there any restriction the game itself? I think somebody posted earlier in the thread about this.
2)What happens if spullla defends the city, with cavalry? Does Nakor have any units to attack it? Even if he doesn’t, there should some reasonably penalty, as spullla does not know it without breaking the rule
3)If Dantki defends, how many units can he bring it in. Remember that for Dantki to move his units in, he should not have attacked with cats.
4)Anything else, to make argument that the outcome might be different….

[Beamup]

I'll just add one further comment.

As I see it, the crucial point is that it must be explained based on citations to the rules why the city gifting would have been illegal. Anything else is doomed (in addition to being profoundly unjust).

[athlete4life10]

The rules as written, however, appear to make same-turn city gifting legal. Therefore, the point that has to be carefully explained in order to make this work is why a large penalty is appropriate when the action against which it is being levied is not directly called out as illegal in the written rules. And in particular, why any reasonable person should have understood that it was illegal.

Why does an action not specifically covered in the ruleset automatically be deemed legal? Just because it is not written does not mean it is against the rules. When a circumstance that isn't specifically covered by the rules either allowing or disallowing it arises, players should really be a bit objective and take a moment to think things through; it really isn't hard. Ask a few questions, do I gain an unfair advantage because of this? What are the consequences of doing this? For me the only question I need to ask myself is:

Am I going to cause a pile of shit by doing this?

Or better yet:

If somebody did this to me, would I stir up a shitstorm?

If the answer is yes to either of these, it's against the spirit of the rule if not the letter and as such I would not deem it appropriate for this game, regardless of the tactical advantage it might give me.

With some people advocating the "use your better judgement" or "play fair" or "within the spirit of the game" when a gray area comes up I really see only 2 options. Involve the game admin in your decision or if you want to make the decision by yourself (or lack a game admin) then consider what out-of-game reactions, your in-game actions are going to cause before deciding on a course of action. If your fellow gamers are going to (reasonably) call you out on the matter then it's probably inappropriate.

Athlete

[darrelljs]

Why does an action not specifically covered in the ruleset automatically be deemed legal?

Yeah! I'm pretty sure its illegal to take the Buddhist holy city when its only guarded by Warriors .

Darrell

[athlete4life10]

Yeah! I'm pretty sure its illegal to take the Buddhist holy city when its only guarded by Warriors .

Darrell

And here I was thinking you were encouraging exactly that all along!

Athlete

[Beamup]

@ Athlete:

The problem is that such considerations are subjective. Both of your questions could credibly be answered in the negative by a reasonable person WRT the same-turn city gifting alternative action in this case. And, as I mentioned, the rules can plausibly be read as expressly allowing same-turn city gifting. Hence, I find it believable that a reasonable person would honestly come to the conclusion that it was permissible. So it must be demonstrated that such a position is NOT in fact tenable, and that any reasonable person would in fact have understood that same-turn city gifting was not permissible. That's the only way to justify the ruling.

[Serdoa]

It seems that there are still some ambiguities about the rule in question, especially what exactly it means and which actions are covered and maybe even more importantly why those have to be covered.

Let's start with the rule itself:

Joint attacks

If two players want to attack a single target i.e. a city belonging to a third party, Civ C, then they must move sequentially. ie Civ A attacks with all of its' units, and then Civ B attacks with all of its' units during the phase of the turn belonging to them. Civ C must wait until the phase of the turn belonging to it before it may counter attack or promote any units etc as proscribed above.

In order to get everyone to the same understanding and hopefully be able to find a solution to this issue let me first start with what it means and which actions are covered:

1) This rule means basically that players move sequentially in war. This is reflected by the turn split rule if two parties are at war which each other (12 hours for both). If now a third party joins one side in the war it also has to move sequentially with the other. To prevent having to split up the turn in up to as many parts as players are in the game (here: 3 turns with each 8 hours) parties on the same side are put into the same 12 hours part. Though still the rule about sequentially turns applies.

2) This rule covers all ingame actions which can be done by the player and do affect war.
For example: moving in a contested city, drafting, gifting gold which is used for upgrades of troops which are actively participating in a war, gifting of cities in a contested zone, ...

The rule itself states only attacks, but the idea behind the rule is the following (posted in the IT-thread on 23rd January, 2010)

Clarification on Joint Attacks and Example 4: In that example, M uses Catapults, then N uses Catapults and captures the city. Would it be legal for M to move their units into the city for Garrison, or does that still count as participating in the attack?

That would still count as participating in the attack.

Basically if it didn't, it would mean Civ M would be able to make use of the altered tactical situation after the city fell, maybe cleaning up units behind the city, capturing workers. The aim there is to subdivide the FWP and SWP into different teams turns, but provide flexibility to keep the game moving. The other option is to do proper mixed stacks and similtaneous warfare but frankly that just causes the game to drag massively as everyone has to be online at the same time to make them work. It's OK in MP, but in pitboss it just doesn't fly.

Now let's move to why this rule is in place. First, if we want to have teams move sequentially, why do we not split up the turn among all involved parties:

- To make warfare flow and keep it going. Otherwise as explained above turns would have to be split for 3 parties in 8 hours each, for 4 into 6 hours each, and so on. That would not keep the flow due to differing time-zones and restrictions when everyone is able to play. Basically we would need many pauses or a 48+hours turn timer.

And why do we not allow interleaving attacks:

- To make sure that neither the attackers nor the defenders do have an advantage solely because of the out-of-game fact that two players work together and are in the same timezone. By banning the interleaving of attacks, it allows anybody to work together and not get screwed over by forcing them to be present at an unreasonable time.

Hopefully it is now clear what this rule covers and why it is in place. If not or if you are unsure about something I wrote, please ask. Though please refrain from starting a discussion about the rule itself. No matter if you like the rule or not, it was (and still is) in place and every team knowed it and could play along it lines and expect anyone else in the game to do the same.

----------------------

Now, Speaker, Sullla, I also hope you can now see why breaking this rule really did affect substantially this part of the war.

First: HRE lost a stack which it would not have lost if the rule would have been followed.

Second: You were informed by a lurker only a short time after you posted that you have broken this rule. You decided to play on and I am really sure that was with no ill intent of you two but because you thought that all what was effected by the rule was one redlined defender and you wanted to keep the game going. Nevertheless this sets a bad example. If a rule is broken it should not be played on, ignoring it, but at least the others should be informed about what happened and it should be clarified with them how to proceed.

This did not happen here and thus led to this mess which we try to clean up now. As nobody wants to reload this has to result in some punishment for the rule breaking. Surely I can understand that you are not happy with it but try to put yourself in HRE's shoes. I hope you understand then that this is not about personal feelings but about being fair to anybody involved.

[dazedroyalty]

I think Beamup's analysis is correct. Extensive rules, despite the best efforts of rule makers, cannot cover every scenario. The rules are then up to interpretation and reasonable people can differ on issues of opinion.

Personally, I'll echo interest in a no rules Pitboss, preferably always war.