Sorry to get hopes up, just a placeholder. I've barely had time to start it but am hooked enough to do a 'authentic late shadow' (IE I won't peek at the other reports until I finish playing...although for this particular scenario its tempting to waive that practices as we are getting "spoilers by design").

Yeah, sort of a response to this and this. I would argue that it is possible to be 'truly interested' but not have the 20+ hours of free time it takes (me, at least) to play a game through with appropriate level of thought and documentation for an RB report. During this time frame, I was already on one succession game and had to disappear from that for a good chunk.

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

Unexpected travel means I can't get a report up until next weekend. Hope it's still worth reading then.

Bottom line:

Chose a slightly more restrictive variant. Never cashed in any EPs, so no techs stolen. Domination victory in 1320AD.

Are ye' brave enough to sail the seven seas? To come face to face with death and laugh in his face? Well then, me hearty, then Team Pirate is for you! Don't matter if ye be a landlubber or an able seamen, all are welcome aboard for our epic quest to win the first Realms Beyond Team Democracy Game!

To the lurkers out there looking for a team to join, I can't promise we'll win this thing, but we'll have a helluva good time while we're trying. Looking at the people who have thrown their hat in so far, we've got some of the best reporters in the community; so if you're looking for a really active team to follow, this is probably the one.

So, if you're interested joining, just post in here, and take part in what is sure to be an epic event.

[SIZE="5"]Team Pirate[/SIZE]

Oledavy - Captain
Pindicator - First Mate
Shoot the Moon - Helmsman
WarriorKnight - Bosun
Luddite - Able Seaman
Mardoc - Bosun's Mate
Waterbat - Able Seaman
KP - Able Seaman
SleepingMoogle - Able Seaman
Jkaen - Able Seaman
Nakor - Sailing Master
Xanes - Able Seaman
thestick - Able Seaman
Bigger - Able Seaman

If I missed you, just yell at me and I'll fix it.

Password is 'pirates'

Ok, it's early, but some basic settings discussion would be good. To avoid confusion, we'll branch this away from the intro threads. Our team gets 1 vote here, so it'll be the job of all of us to come to some sort of consensus. To start us off, let's look at a few big-picture settings that we'll want opinions on sooner rather than later. The first one is the most important one only because it will be the first we need a vote on.

1) Forums: Open or closed? Open would be PB6-style, closed would be possible for anyone to join whomever they want, but it would require people to create accounts and join to follow.

-Open Benefits: Easiest to lurk, likely increases total eyeballs on the game with no barrier to entry
-Closed Benefits: Potentially increases registered members, likely increases the amount of people registering as team members rather than global lurkers.

2) Diplomacy: Full or Limited? Surely it has to be on, but if you'd like to propose a limitation of some sort, feel free.

3) Tech Trading: Off or Limited? Mackoti proposed a 2 techs recieved per era limitation for example.

4) Leader Choices: All available? Krill's 5/5 snake ban method? Others?

Once we get going, I may create a voting spreadsheet similar to the CFC game if that sounds good with you all.

Victory Type: Diplomacy, Mansa voted for me after engineering war between him and Cyrus (took over Toku and Qin territory)
Date: TURN 319 1898 AD
Did NOT steal any Techs
Erm I did spend less with Toku by accident but used GSpy from communism to rectify this same turn. Does this count?
Analysis to be posted later.

For the moment we are team Gillette, courtesy of the immaculately smooth-faced Kyan. But! This is a team and we'll be making decisions like one. And, I personally don't think the team should be named after the captains (Mackoti SevenSpirits -> Mach 7 -> Sounds like a razor advertisement).

There is absolutely no hurry to discuss this but since it's something we can do while the forums are still open, hey, why not! Any ideas? I want something that's a worthy rival to Team Pirate.

On the assumption that each team gets a joint vote on settings, we may as well get started discussing. I figure there is no need for secrecy on here, it's not likely we'll see the kind of haggling and manipulation that was showcased on CFC.

Topics:

Leader/civ pick mechanism
- Snake pick
- Pre-assigned
- Other
Subforum access
- Open
- Closed, global lurkers allowed
- Closed, dedicated lurkers only
Map
- How much should be left for the mapmaker to decide
- How much info do we want prior to picking civ and leader
Bans
- Barbarians
- Tech trading
- Spies
- Corporations
- Nukes
- War elephants
- Blockades
- Cat themes
Diplomacy
- AW?
- Normal diplo, public diplo or CTON?

I guess we can discuss settings and stuff that we need to vote on as a team in here. Hopefully Sommerswerd won't overrule us.