New Pitboss Ruleset Proposal

[SevenSpirits]

I like Cyneheard's ruleset.

Sullla, I think your gifting section needs to be more concrete. It's bad enough to have rules that are vague (like, what's the boundary between a city I can gift or not if I'm at war with someone else) but if you just say "good faith" people are going to have widely varying definitions.

(As far as I can tell, gifting a city in "bad faith" would be, hm, tricking someone into accepting the gift and then saying "HAHA! It didn't have any buildings in it, it was whipped dry, and now it's costing you maintenance. Muahahahahahahaha.")

[SevenSpirits]

Cyneheard: I noticed that changing city builds was not listed in things you can do out of turn. Was that intentional?

Also, to be horrendously nitpicky: you can only whip units out of turn? or should you also be able to whip and cash rush any kind of city build?

[Cyneheard]

Cyneheard: I noticed that changing city builds was not listed in things you can do out of turn. Was that intentional?

Also, to be horrendously nitpicky: you can only whip units out of turn? or should you also be able to whip and cash rush any kind of city build?

No, that was not intentional on city builds. And it should be "Gold, tech, and resources". You're right, cash-rushing should be identical to whipping. The idea is "anything that changes the game immediately" should be banned, but anything that takes effect at the end of the turn is OK. With very few exceptions, tech trades do very little during that turn. Even more rarely anything that necessitates a response from the side you're at war with.
The one exception to that distinction is repairing sabotaged/bombed resources; PB1 was very concerned about that late-game, and it really did imbalance a proper turn split. At least one player refused to go 1st in a war for that very reason; I don't remember how that got resolved.

I do wish my version didn't require a pause on the turn of declaration for 2nd-half wars, but it discourages nearly all clock games as far as I can tell. And if we have a ruleset that only costs us 12 hours every time war's declared, that's a huge improvement over right now.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to tweak the India/Sumeria situation of both teams being logged in simultaneously? I really don't want to have a reload be a standard practice, but I don't think this is a type of reload that affects more than those two players. In this case, of course, the reload would not require the defender to make the same moves as before.

[novice]

I'm wearing my black thinking hat today so here's another problem with Sullla's proposed ruleset: Banning changing tile assignments outside your half of the turn sounds innocuous, but consider this: If enemy units block the defender's tiles, he's able to reassign them to complete critical builds, research projects, etc. If enemy units block the attacker's tiles, he's not allowed to correct the governor's silly mistakes. This cost Athlete a Caravel in PB2, when India landed units outside their island city with seconds left on the turn timer. (Athlete was granted a reload as this move by India infringed on other clauses in Krill's ruleset.) IIRC Exploit also got Assembly Line delayed by one turn in PB1 for similar reasons.

Okay, and donning the green thinking hat: Is it possible to switch a pitboss to and from sequential turns mid-game? If so, the simplest solution seems to be to switch to sequential pitboss whenever a war is declared. That avoids all the end of turn-related turn split problems.

[Cyneheard]

No, sequential pitboss would not work. What happens to the 10 teams not in a war?

[novice]

No, sequential pitboss would not work. What happens to the 10 teams not in a war?

The ideal situation would be to have the attacking teams in one sequence, the defending teams in another, and the peaceful teams in a sequence overlapping the defenders' and attackers' sequences. If that doesn't work, lumping the peaceful teams with either the attackers or defenders might work.

I have no idea how sequential pitboss mechanics work however. That was what I was looking for clarification on.

[plako]

I don't seem to get much support for my ideas, but that doesn't prevent me trying .

Cyneheard's ruleset sounds pretty complex to me. Especially the concept of reaction time is not worth the hassle in my opinion. I'm ready to accept that when using simultaneus turns you sometimes have a minor disadvantage because of the turn order. I value fluent progress of the game way more than the goal of making simultaneus turns totally working like sequential ones.

[Cyneheard]

Hm. It is complex, particularly Rule 4. Sadly, elegant solutions tend to have holes poked in them fairly quickly. Let's try this for Rule 4:

Rule 4: If war is declared in the second half of the turn, then the declarer must end turn within one hour of declaring war. Upon finishing his moves, the defender may choose to move units in response. If the defender does so, then the declarer will have the first half of the turn in future turns.

Note: This does take away "attacker's choice" in declaring which half of the turn he/she gets. Can't have everything. I definitely don't want to prevent a player from being able to move units upon getting declared on at 11:59 in the turn. That will force players to log in and play within 12 hours...and that's not always possible. If a player can only log in during the last hour of the turn, then bad things may happen, though. However, that means anyone can freely log in during 23 out of 24 hours of a turn, which should fit people's schedules.

Rule 1's actually unnecessary. So we can delete it. Replace Rule 1 with "The turn will be split during wartime. Unless otherwise agreed, this will be 12 hours for each side involved in a war. No limitations on combined stack usage during wartime"

Rule 2: This makes it very difficult to have more than two partitions of a turn.

Rule 3: This is basically what we've had in PB3. Possible better India/Sumeria exception:
If both the declarer and defender are online simultaneously, then when the declarer declares war, the defender stops moving, and the game falls under Rule 4.

Rule 5, more simply stated:
Allowed actions outside of one's turn:
Anything on the city screen, except drafting.
Diplomacy except for gifting cities.
Repairing sabotaged/bombed resources.
Changing tech and slider settings (most games have had separate anti-espionage gaming clauses that would still apply).

[sooooo]

@Sullla: I wouldn't get too disheartened about people picking holes in your ruleset. I still think your original rules are fairly good, probably better than the others we have. With some small tweeks they can become candidates for official rules.

[Swiss Pauli]

I think Cyneheard's latest rules (http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....stcount=38) are better thought out than Sullla's, but that may be because I can't see the possible exploits whereas others have already pointed out the weakness in Sullla's proposals (clock-running, too much advantage to the defender, permanent war, etc.).

That said, Rule 4 does need a minor re-write to make it more clear:

'Rule 4: If war is declared in the second half of the turn, then the declarer must end turn within one hour of declaring war. After the declarer has ended turn, the defender may choose to move units in response. If the defender does so, then the declarer will have the first half of the turn in future turns.'

I think it's fair to say that the turn-based nature of the CIV makes if difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a perfect set of rules. The best we can hope for is a rule-set that avoids too many exploits, imbalances, and grey areas.