Pitboss 4 Signup

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Hmm. Beard scratching.

[Ruff_Hi]

Civ (to me) is all about opportunity cost (I could do that but then I couldn't do this) ... the buying of playing conditions is just an extension of that idea (assuming you can get the price correct ... or, putting it another way, the different items balanced).

Balancing = market pricing.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

While the idea is an interesting one, I think it is better suited for an Adventure/Epic than a Pitboss game.

We'll stick to doing a fantasy auction of some kind, and to keep it simple, we'll auction leaders and civs. The logistics of which I am still trying to process.

[luddite]

All this stuff about auctions and bidding sounds really complicated. How aboue we just assign everyone a completely random civ and leader?

[plako]

Limit to 12 teams. Unlimited player signups so long as people are willing to agree to teammates.

Whatever number of teams we end up with (x teams), myself, with the consultation of some randoms in a separate lurkers only thread, will choose an interesting mix of leaders and civs (x + 2) for the teams to bid upon. I will probably avoid the power combo leaders (those with two of Fin, Cre, Exp), and throw in a mix of middle tier leaders. I will be shooting for a balance of traits. But I will probably choose the power Civs, because I think most people regard the Civs as less valuable than the leaders, so this way, there is incentive to perhaps not all just bid on the 1-2 best leaders.

Things to be decided:
1. Giving enough cash to use for bidding that it actually becomes a decision on whether you want to hold onto the cash or max bid.

2. An auction method. For simplicities sake, since the list of leaders/civs will be limited, I think a blind auction, where each team assigns a dollar value to their choices will be the easiest. But that doesn't necessarily mean it will be the most fun. I think it would be interesting to have a series of 48 hour auction for sets of 20-35% of the leaders and civs. But since the players won't know which civs and leaders will show up on the following day (i.e. one of the better ones, or simply worst ones), they have to decide how much they want to risk what leaders/civs will show up on the following auction days. We would just have a separate auction thread, and people will post their dollar bid for whatever leader they want. We will say auction closes with highest bidder winning in 48 hours, with any bid that isn't topped within a set time period (4, 6, 8, 12 hours or whatever) automatically accepted (or that a subsequent bid must be increased by at least 1-2 gold per hour that the last bid stood open, to prevent sandbagging to the end).

Thoughts?

I'm glad you're taking iniative. I think this is best way to proceed, if we want to get some kind of auction done. You decide based on the discussion here how the auction is done and other settings.

Here is my view on your questions above:
1) The more heterogenous the leader/civ pool is the more money we could give to the players. If all leaders/civs are middle strength, less gold is sufficient. I think something between 100-300 could work depending on the choices available.

2) Auction must be easy to arrange and fun especially for the players and maybe also for the lurkers . Otherwise it isn't worth it. This is best accomplished if it is arranged in the forums and doesn't take too long.

I've yet another idea to accomplish these goals. All the leaders and civs are under auction at the same time. Bidding is done sequentially. After each bid you had to have best offer in exactly 1 leader and nation. If you bid weakest leader in the beginning it is highly likely you won't be able to bid again. However if you try to get popular pick it is quite likely someone overcomes you and next round you can bid again. This is continued until everyone has a separate nation and leader.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

All this stuff about auctions and bidding sounds really complicated. How aboue we just assign everyone a completely random civ and leader?

I mean, that would definitely be easier. And as long as there is some discussion that the leaders are all mostly balanced in strength, then I don't see a huge problem with that. But the auction idea is certainly more fun for the players I think. If this thing gets started 2-3 weeks from now, then it really isn't too much of a delay in the grand scheme for a 6-12 month event. Nevertheless, I have already come up with a balanced list of leaders (IMO) to use if everyone just wants a random assignment to speed up the game's start date.

Until we close sign-ups and have teams, we cannot really vote on this. But I imagine some people would be more or less apt to play depending on whether an auction takes place or not.

I definitely like the idea of having a secret list of leaders/civs and only revealing them 20% or so at a time, so that players have to balance how much they want to bid on a Phil/Org leader, when there might be a Fin/Org leader left to come, or if that might be the best tech leader available in the whole list. The uncertainty would be intriguing. This method would raise the possibility that a leader or civ might go unclaimed in bidding. I think the way to deal with this is to say that anybody who ends the bidding without a leader and civ in the auction process will be assigned one of the unchosen leader/civs at random (dice roll).

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Although, the more I think about it, this is the easiest way (and quickest) to do this logistically:

1. Each player will bid on 2 traits and 1 civ.
2. There will be exactly enough traits and civs for every team. Duplicate leaders are allowed if two people buy the same two traits.
3. Every team will get either 240 or 480 gold (leaning towards latter).
4. The mix of traits and civs up for auction will be known to all players beforehand.
5. At some reasonably agreeable time, I will post the names of all the civs/traits at the turn of an hour.
6. The auction will run for 48 hours.
7. All items will start out costing 480 gold.
8. With 480 gold, every six minutes the cost of a bid for whatever trait/civ will reduce by 1 gold.
9. The first person to post that they want a certain item, will get that item, for whatever price is determined by the time of their post. (i.e. if someone wanted Organized 21h 15m into the auction, they would owe 268 gold).
10. Players get to keep whatever money they don't spend.
11. Any mistakes in posting/calculating will be strictly construed against the mistaken player/team.
12. No editing of posts to change the item that was bid for, and no retraction of bids unless someone is relying on a lurker and they misread the spoiler thread.
13. We might need a rule to say that you cannot bid for a combo that doesn't have a corresponding leader (not sure if it would be a problem to give someone Phil/Ind for instance without a mod).

I think this will be exciting for both players and lurkers, and also be strategic. The extra gold could throw off the early game, but that is a risk each Civ will have to weigh, and the early game is usually pretty slow anyway, so a little extra research might not be a terrible thing.

For those worried that they won't be available to bid when they want on an item, if you have a teammate, obviously that would help. Also, before the auction, we should get the spoiler threads set up. Each player/team can post their list of auction values in their spoiler thread if they are unavailable, and lurkers could help them to place the bid they want (or a specific other person could be named by the player to do this for them). By doing it over 48 hours, instead of 24 hours, we make each minute half as valuable, and therefore less costly if someone is away.

I am open to tweaking the gold amount and the length of time of the auction, but I personally think both the time and gold amount sound about right (unless someone thinks for example choosing a Cha/Pro Mongolia with 477 gold is OBVIOUSLY better than a Fin/Org Korea with no gold). We can shoot off good ideas for weeks, and I get the sense that organizing a group of Realms Beyond players is like herding cats, so consider this my attempt at a lasso before the stampede gets out of control.

[luddite]

wait... duplicates ARE allowed? what's the point of a bid, then- you could just wait until the end and take whatever you want for free. I must be misunderstanding something.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Because if there are say, 10 teams, there will only be 20 traits available.

For the sake of ease, lets say there are:

2 Fin
2 Cre
2 Exp
2 Org
2 Phil
2 Ind
2 Agg
2 Spi
2 Imp
2 Cha

And then 10 pre-selected civs available, all in a list.

You will have to have some combination of 2 of those available traits and one of the pre-selected civs. You have to decide how much you are willing to spend on the traits and civs, how much gold you want to keep, and how long you can hold out before you can no longer snag one of the power traits/civs. And this gets balanced because if you spend all your money in the first hour on Financial, you will likely get stuck with Charismatic for the other trait and one of the worst civs available.

So when I say duplicates are available, what I mean is, if two people end up paying for the same two traits, they will get the same leader. But since there will only be 10 non-duplicate civs, no one will ever have exactly the same combo (and exact duplicate traits are probably unlikely since there will only be a small number of each).

[luddite]

oh ok, that makes sense. so we could have two civs with financial, but not 3. That sounds fun, then.