So what settings are we keen on?

[Lord Parkin]

Do we have any preferences?

Options in the first post include:

- Number of civs per team? (I assumed one, but apparently this is a voting option. Probably best to keep it lower rather than higher, so the turn player(s) don't have to go to too much effort. I'd prefer 1 civ per team, but 2 might be okay. 3 would be a stretch, any more would definitely be too much.)

- Starting era? (I much prefer ancient, as I like playing through the full game. Plus good/interesting civ choices are much more limited with a later start.)

- Diplomacy restricted to a single public thread with no private discussions allowed, or private discussions allowed? (Personally I much prefer the public thread option, given how fun and amusing it proved to be in the last game. Plus I don't have the time to commit to the heavily involved diplomacy that otherwise results... though if someone else on the team is keen on doing that then that's fine.)

- Sequential or simultaneous turns? (Sequential is easier from the perspective of not having to worry about bickering over logins and whether double moves took place, but it's pretty slow... probably 2-3 times longer per turn. Then again, if we're going to be having lots of strategy and/or diplomacy discussions then that might be a good thing. I think I'm slightly in favour of sequential if we have only 5 civs playing.)

- Banned wonders? (None, I think. Or possibly just the Pyramids, since that's pretty much viewed as the "one right choice" in most games here.)

- Banned units? (Nukes and maybe Spies, I reckon.)

There's also been talk about doing a "double snake pick". In other words, each team picks their top leader and top civ using the snake pick method, and then we discard those top options and do the real pick with those civs/leaders banned. That seems like a good idea to me.

For anyone unfamiliar with the snake pick, it works like this (requiring Unrestricted Leaders):

Team A - Pick civ OR leader
Team B - Pick civ OR leader
Team C - Pick civ OR leader
Team D - Pick civ OR leader
Team E - Pick civ AND leader
Team D - Pick remaining option
Team C - Pick remaining option
Team B - Pick remaining option
Team A - Pick remaining option

[Sareln]

EDIT: Updated to include other options

Preferences:

• Civs per Team: One / Multiple
  
• Starting Era: Ancient / Non Ancient
  
• Diplomacy: Public / Private / No Diplo
  
• Turn Style: Sequential / Simultaneous
  
• Banned Wonders: no bans
  
• Always War: Yes / No
  
• Barbarians: Raging / Yes / No
  
• Spies: Full / Limited [Civic Switch, Tile Pillage] / None
  
• Corporations: - Yes / No
  
• Blockades: - Yes / Limited [No Trireme/Galley] / No
  
• War Elephants: - Yes / Khmer only / No
  
• Tech Trading: - Yes / Limited / No
  
• Nukes: - Yes / No
  
• Map trading: - Always / After contact / At Paper
  
• Map creation parameters: No preference / All teams on one landmass / All teams contact pre-Optics / Continents
  
• Snake Pick: Double / Single / Don't Use
  

Thoughts:
One civ per team and Ancient start makes the game most portable to the standard game that all of us have a good deal of experience on (and make the lessons from the demogame portable to the most common kind of MP game the rest of us are likely to play). That and we're playing civilization.

Public diplo is hilarious and private diplo is exhausting for me. So I prefer public diplo.

Sequential neatly takes care of the double-move & clock game problems inherent in the Pitboss format. Saves us a bunch of talking around double-move rules, which is almost worth the extra time spent playing the game.

For bans, I don't think there are wonders we should ban. I know forum consensus are that Mid's are the one right move, but I think that has the effect of painting a target on the back of the person who lands them. Given the people involved, I think if we keep CIVs to 1/team, the pyramids would be a self-correcting game issue (tall poppy).

Unit bans, War Elephants & Nukes for the standard RB reasons, but spies on to see what happens with them. Should probably ban the Civic Swap mission though.

Double Snake Pick sounds fun.

[nabaxo]

Here are my preferences:
Civilizations per team: 1 - I like a proper MTDG.

Starting Era: Ancient - We're all used to this.

Pitboss style: Sequential - It will only be slow at the start, but that could be rectified with a blitz.

Diplomacy: Full private - It would be interesting to run a full diplo game on RB.

Always War: No - Would not mesh well with diplo. Open borders for trade-routes, resource trades and so on.
Barbarians: No - For balance.
Spies: Limited - Ban Civic and Religion Swap Missions, otherwise it's fine.
Corporations: No - Well, maybe yes, but free food can be overpowering.
Blockades: Later Eras only - Obvious why galleys should not be able to blockade as many tiles as they do.
War Elephants: Maybe - Only if there's a reasonable chance for everyone to have them
Tech Trading: No - Tech trading breaks diplomacy.

Banned Wonders: Dunno

Pick method: Unrestricted snake-pick - I feel we should be able to have power picks with powerful teams. Why gimp the game?

Map restrictions: Dunno

[HitAnyKey]

The thing with the double snake pick.....if everyone knows the first round picks are going to be removed from the final pick options, then isn't everyone just going to pick things they aren't going to want anyway?

I'm fine with everything else in the first to posts, though I've never played a sequential pitboss game before (that I recall), but if that's the best way to resolve any double-move issues then I'm fine with it. I assume in that type you can log in at any time and look at stuff, take screenshots, etc, but that you just can make any changes or move any units? And then when your turn comes around you'll get an email from civstats that you can log in to move your units?

As for some of the things nabaxo stated:
I'd prefer Barbarians & Tech Trading to be on. I also think most everyone else is expecting for Tech Trading to be on too.

[nabaxo]

You can always log in. You just cannot change things.

[Elkad]

Civs per Team: One
Starting Era: Ancient
Diplomacy: Public
Sequential/Simultaneous: I've never played sequential, but with a low number of civs I'd be fine with it.
Banned Wonders: Pyramids?
Banned Units: Everything is fine with me. I specifically do NOT want spies banned, I like the EP game ( though banning the Change Civics mission would be acceptable).

I like big maps with lots of room. I prefer no tech trading, but trading on is OK (and better than crippled options like no brokering). If trading is on, the difficulty needs to be high, or the pace gets insane.

If it's a 5 civ game, this will be the smallest game I've ever played. I'm used to 12-18 civs.

[kjn]

One civ per team, ancient start is more than fine by me.

If we do full public diplo, then we have the possible issue that we have the in-game diplo channel as well. Not sure it will be a problem with a team hiding a part of their diplo. I'm pretty agnostic here.

Isn't the pitboss format rather a bad fit for sequential turns? On the other hand, we will need a good double-move rule (though I'd probably view "double moves are encouraged" as a good double-move rule).

Haven't the GA wonders been up for banning as well? And the GLH? I'm fine with allowing them.

No real opinion on spies and nukes.

If we do unrestricted snake pick, then we are likely to end up with all-FIN leaders (and perhaps Gandhi or Isabella). Easier to just ban FIN then, if we are to do any banning. Or we can tier the traits into points, and give every team a set number of points to select their leader. Eg:

3 points: FIN
2 points: SPI, EXP, CRE, IND, PHI
1 point: ORG, IMP, CHA
0 points: AGG, PRO

Then every team gets 3 points to select their leader.

[Lord Parkin]

What's our opinion on the following items (for those who haven't voted on them already)?

Always War? - Yes / No
Barbarians? - Raging / Yes / No
Spies? - Full / Limited ( declare options to ban ) / None
Corporations? - Yes / No
Blockades? - Yes / Limited (specify) / No
War Elephants? - Yes / Khmer only / No
Tech Trading? - Yes / Limited / No
Nukes? - Yes / No
Map trading? - Always / After contact / At Paper
Map creation parameters? - e.g. no preference, all teams on one landmass, all teams contact pre-Optics, continents

Personally I'm leaning towards:

Always War? - No
Barbarians? - No
Spies? - Civic/religion swaps banned, otherwise okay
Corporations? - Don't mind
Blockades? - No
War Elephants? - Don't mind
Tech Trading? - No
Nukes? - No
Map trading? - After contact
Map creation parameters? - All teams contact pre-Optics

[Azza]

1 civ per team, ancient, sim/sequential I'm not fussed, unit bans whatever is felt necessary.

With wonder bans, I think they should be determined by the mapmaker, plus Cristo Redentor.

I'd prefer private diplo. Reducing the diplo down to public diplo in a demogame just reduces some of the fun, IMO. I'd probably recommend against me taking a diplomat role though.

[HitAnyKey]

I'd prefer private diplo. Reducing the diplo down to public diplo in a demogame just reduces some of the fun, IMO. I'd probably recommend against me taking a diplomat role though.

I'm actually fine either way, but I also know that I suck at diplo and wouldn't want to do it either. So we should only vote for private diplo if we have someone that wants to step up and take on the bulk of that role. We already know LP, you, and myself don't want it.

As for the tech trading, what is your main reasons for not wanting to allow it? You think no one will trade with us because of our evil captain LP? :neenernee
I remember someone posting something about a way of limiting the amount of tech trade between civs, so maybe some sort of limited tech trading being allowed.

I also think having Barbs and the like really does add to the game. What's the point of a game of Civ without having to worry about the Barbs?

Map trading should only take place when the game allows someone to do so. (ie. after Paper).
Though if we do end up doing public diplo, I guess posting screenshots of stuff would be ok. And if we did public diplo, doing an in-game map trade would have to be disallowed. And that's harder to police. Just like the in-game diplo chats, if it's a public diplo game.

Basically if we can get someone who is good at thinking up and/or writing up good diplo stuffs, I think we should vote for private diplo. Whoever is logging in would have to make sure to post any in-game diplo messages to the forum so we can all discuss before replying.

The public diplo thing also gets messy in this regard as well. Civ A asks Civ B if they are willing to trade their extra Corn for some Cows. Having this stuff be public is just all kinds of wrong. Not to mention that would be one hard-to-follow diplo thread as negotiations go back and forth.