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[zakalwe]

Here's another possible way of doing the auction:

Parallel multi-item-but-you-can-only-win-one auction. (I just made up that name, but it's an already existing auction type used in several board games.)

All the things being auctioned off are available at once with min bids of zero. Whenever you do not currently have a winning bid on an item, you may make a bid. The auction ends when everyone is bidding on a different item (and thus will win it).

This would actually be really easy (and fairly quick) to do in a forum, as long as there was some sort of spreadsheet tracking the current high bids. You could do this first for the leaders and then for the civs, or vice versa, or for packages of leader/civ that had been pre-formed.

It may be bad form to quote this AGAIN, but this really seems very workable, and interesting. Obviously it's up to the players to decide how they want to pick leaders, but if your only concern is that an auction would be overly complicated you shouldn't overlook the above suggestion, made by SevenSpirits.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I like that actually. I don't think I understood it at first, but it is pretty doable.

[sunrise089]

Frankly, why would we arbitrarily start with certain traits and leaders decided by a single party?

If we want an auction then don't we want one that is fast, relatively easy, and still creates meaningful choices?

This auction literally takes 30 minutes:

1) Start everyone with 240gold if that number makes sense.
2) Every leader and civ is for sale, at once, at a price of 230gold.
3) When the auction opens everyone is allowed to bit the full 230gold on any one thing. If you're the only bidder you win it and that civ or leader is no longer available. If there are duplicates at the full price (and ideally there won't be - if 10 teams all pick India at max gold then the gold level is too low, there should be an actual meaningful choice between Civ1 vs Civ2 + gold) then we just do "pick a number" between them.
4) If 1 minute passes with no bids we lower the am-mount by 10.
5) Repeat steps 3+4.

If you can't make the auction, which should be scheduled at like noon EST for maximum flexibility, then just have a proxy bidder. If you just rank your civ+leader preferences and add in the most gold you would be willing to pay the proxy should be able to do a pretty fair job.

EDIT: SevenSpirits' system is ok, bit it will probably take longer since none of the good leaders or civs are going to sell for zero or ten gold. AND with the above there is no need to track who has a bid out - any bid automatically wins the item.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I feel like what you are proposing sunrise would need a chat room to really function properly. Forums are inconvenient for that, and you need some way of having all parties up to date on the current bid. Also, not sure how that auction would take only 30 minutes if you are auctioning off 20-30 items. But it certainly would be fun if it could be coordinated.

As for having one person choose a list of civs, I planned on opening up a thread for lurkers to discuss what type of combination of leaders, traits, civs should be up for auction. There would need to be a closed pool of items, otherwise, how do you know what you really want to bid on?

[sunrise089]

I feel like what you are proposing sunrise would need a chat room to really function properly. Forums are inconvenient for that, and you need some way of having all parties up to date on the current bid. Also, not sure how that auction would take only 30 minutes if you are auctioning off 20-30 items. But it certainly would be fun if it could be coordinated.

As for having one person choose a list of civs, I planned on opening up a thread for lurkers to discuss what type of combination of leaders, traits, civs should be up for auction. There would need to be a closed pool of items, otherwise, how do you know what you really want to bid on?

You're right - we'd need to use a free online chatroom like we do for organizing real-time MP games and like we did during the Apolyton Demogame. Fortunately 95%+ of users can connect to such a chatroom with no problems.

As for 30 minutes - remember we're auctioning off every item at once.IMHO that's crucial. The market for civs and leaders isn't like the market for used cars. In the latter example when a Kia and a Ferrari are being auctioned the order doesn't matter. Everyone knows one is worth much more than the other and they don't really need to see the sale price on one to know what the other is worth. In civ we don't have that level of information. So if we auction sequentially, and say Agg is first, how do people know what to bid? It becomes a guessing game. You can either bid high hoping that people are being cautious and in fact will bid even higher in the future, or you can bid low hoping others will over-bid early leaving you to grab a good later trait for cheap. Either way, I don't want such a system since it opens the possibility for Fin to sell for less than Imp if the order of the auction goes a certain way.

Instead each team will only place two bids total, so we've only got ~20 bids. And we need about ~20 minutes to work the prices down to near zero.

Say it's just you and I bidding Gold. I'd like Fin and Cre, and my next choices are Exp and Spi. You'd also like Fin, but then you value Exp, Cre, and Agg. We start the auction, and neither of us is willing to put 240g on Fin. A few minutes pass and you bite on Fin at 150g, as it turns out you value it a bit more than me. Now I'd still like to get something good, so I bid on Cre at 130g. You're happy since you didn't want that trait as much as Exp, so you feel I "overpaid" for it. Now we both prefer Exp as our next preference. In fact, I now really want it, so I bid 110g, knowing you only have 100g left. I'm now set for traits, and have 10g left for a Civ. You have 100g left and need a trait and a civ. In our example you probably "won" because there are only two players and you'll walk away with gold. That won't be the case with 10 team of course.

(Sorry - realized I used Traits as an example. I support using Leaders, but the idea is the same).

Finally, I retract my "one person deciding" criticism then. But in the above system there is no need to restrict the pool. The choice is always a) spend a lot for a top choice, b) spend a little for not the last choice, or c) spend zero once everyone who wants to spend has picked. The problem with limiting the pool is that by removing choice c above you force people into overspending on the second worst choice. So if we had Fin, Ind, and Pro in a three player game, and Fin sells for 240g, Ind may sell for 230g to someone who doesn't want Pro at all. If you have every trait in play holding gold and grabbing a middling trait is a lot more viable.

[sunrise089]

Sorry, replying to self.

One more thing - I was talking with players I greatly respect last night, and they expressed doubt over the "take gold into the game" system. I actually LOVE the idea of taking gold into the game. In the NFL draft no one makes the last team in the first round pay as much cash as the first team in the first round even though they snake pick. In theory picks 1+64 might be equal in value to picks 32+33. In reality they aren't, so the team with 32+33 is compensated with "gold." I think this is directly analogous to our civ MP games. But without even a proxy wage scale, our system can work even better. Think gold is so valuable that it's noob to pay for any leader or civ? Great, don't bid and grab the leftovers for free. Think the opposite? Great, bid the max right away on your favorite. The point isn't that we'll end up with equality of outcome, after all someone will be more right than others when it comes to figuring the values of civs/leaders vs gold. But we will have equality of opportunity. Every team will have a chance to get their preferred leader, civ, or starting gold without relying the RNG of a snake pick order, or without hoping that the ban-list committee has a perfect understanding of the game.

Of course I'd not propose an auction for a 2v2 real-time MP game, as there is a fixed cost to run the auction. That's why clicking "random" has a place too. But in a game that will last months I think we're solidly to the side of additional setup time being worthwhile.

All that said, the same people criticizing an auction with carryover gold made an excellent point - all of this is a learning experience. We've played three pitboss and like 15 PBEM games. That's enough to know SOME things don't work well, like unlimited pauses. It certainly isn't enough games to know what system works best. I'm up on a soapbox for my preferred system, but even my own stubborn views can change. I wish we all had enough time to run 10 pitboss games concurrently so after a few months we'd have a lot more data on what worked and what didn't, but since we don't there is always a degree of guesswork.
___________

Totally separate issue - the final thing I'll reference from my conversation last night was that I got schooled expressing concern that some first-time posters in this thread wanted to join the game. I admit I was nervous about the possibility of people not understanding the time commitment or taking the game seriously and dropping out. It was pointed out to me that several players of past pitboss games were almost first-time posters who stuck around and made great contributions, and we shouldn't create a regime that has a chilling effect on that.

The best compromise, IMHO, is to strongly suggest everyone, but new players especially have some sort of teammate that can also play turns. That way if someone has to drop out or looses availability the teammate can continue playing the game while searching for a new teammate from the pool of unspoiled lurkers. The goal, I think, needs to be avoiding pauses. A change in team leadership isn't insurmountable, particularly in a No Tech Trading game, but a long pause certainly may be. Along the same lines and learning from RBP3, if a team starts with two turnplayers and a dedicated lurker and a month in the lurker is the only one left, it isn't fair to expect them to be the only turnplayer in perpetuity. But they may want to consider trying to repopulate the team as soon as people disappear rather than waiting until the otherwise inevitable pause situation.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Finally, I retract my "one person deciding" criticism then. But in the above system there is no need to restrict the pool. The choice is always a) spend a lot for a top choice, b) spend a little for not the last choice, or c) spend zero once everyone who wants to spend has picked. The problem with limiting the pool is that by removing choice c above you force people into overspending on the second worst choice. So if we had Fin, Ind, and Pro in a three player game, and Fin sells for 240g, Ind may sell for 230g to someone who doesn't want Pro at all. If you have every trait in play holding gold and grabbing a middling trait is a lot more viable.

I'm pretty sure we have the same understanding on this but are using different terms. When I say a limited pool, I just mean that whether traits or complete leaders, there has to be a set list of items that are up for auction. If there are 10 teams, there cannot be 10 Financials available, otherwise, why bid anything? If there are 10 teams, there are 20 trait slots to fill. So if you make 2 of all 11 traits available, then people know what they are bidding on--20 of the 22 traits will be used by teams in some manner in the game, in combination with say 11-12 civs available for 10 teams.

I also think some serious lurker discussion needs to take place with some of the experts around here to determine what a proper amount of gold would be to actually make it a decision whether to bid high amounts on good traits. Because if the amount is say, only 250, would anyone give an Ind/Cha team a chance long term against a Fin/Org team just because they started out with 250 extra gold? I am hardly an expert, but that doesn't seem like much of a choice to me.

[luddite]

The best compromise, IMHO, is to strongly suggest everyone, but new players especially have some sort of teammate that can also play turns. That way if someone has to drop out or looses availability the teammate can continue playing the game while searching for a new teammate from the pool of unspoiled lurkers. The goal, I think, needs to be avoiding pauses. A change in team leadership isn't insurmountable, particularly in a No Tech Trading game, but a long pause certainly may be. Along the same lines and learning from RBP3, if a team starts with two turnplayers and a dedicated lurker and a month in the lurker is the only one left, it isn't fair to expect them to be the only turnplayer in perpetuity. But they may want to consider trying to repopulate the team as soon as people disappear rather than waiting until the otherwise inevitable pause situation.

That makes a lot of sense. My suggestion would be that every team should have a main player, and an alternate/advisor/dedicated lurker. That way you avoid the trap where both players think that the other one will do most of the work, and avoid delays where they have to consult on every minor detail. Just so long as the alternate is willing to become the main player, if necessary.

About the gold- I'm not sure that it's going to be balanced. I'm worried that, depending on the map, a lump of starting gold could either be greatly overpowered or useless. I guess we could try it and see how it goes, but maybe take a vote a little ways in to see if we still want to continue or start over.

[Sciz]

I can be a dedicated lurker for someone, though I won't come with any great advice, I could still help get a discussion going, someone to banter ideas with and whatnot

[Cull]

The time commitment on Pitoboss games really ridiculous IMO if you turnplay, assuming you have regular school/work/day activities you have to attend. The first couple of turns will be okay. Past around t150, you probably will be spending 10-20 minutes assuming you have a perfectly micromanaged premade plan, with nothing "special" coming up +diplo(which is as huge as the game itself, which is a beast of its own imo) + time spent making premade plans, talking with teammates, posting in the thread. All together, if you have any interest in this game, even as a non-playing teammate, you probably need to be able to spend a hour+ per day, more so as the game goes on, with as many players as this. Its really bad if you, as the "main" turnplayer, find you can't, pausing the game, making your "lurkers" tear their hair out, and generally making the game a lot less fun.(A bit hypocritical I know...)

On bidding, I honestly am I bit nervous that we can "assign" values, because, IMHO, different pairings work together, and to literally judge a game as complex as civ by pure base values just seems ridiculous. Honestly, a reverse snake pick sounds best, with no duplicates, and just plain out banning X trait, or X civ if they really are OP. I personally think a reverse snake pick with no restrictions a la Pitboss 2 and 3 would be best.

I'm interested in playing, but only as a dedicated lurker/occasional helper. Anybody want this baddie?