A New FFH PBEM

[DaveV]

Detailed turn sequence:

1) You receive an email from the player ahead of you in turn order, with the save attached.
2) Download the attachment. Gmail automatically puts it in the Downloads folder; copy it from there to My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/Saves/pbem.
3) Start up the game (I have a shortcut on my desktop that starts me in the EitB mod). Select "Play by Email", load game, select the file you just downloaded.
4) Play the turn. When you press enter at the end of turn, a popup will appear telling you to email the save to the next player. You must click "OK" on this popup, then your save file is generated automatically. It will appear in a folder under the pbem folder in step 2. The name of that folder is determined by the mapmaker; it will be created automatically after you play your first turn. For a sanity check, make sure it says "to_DaveV" or "to_Tasunke" or some such.
5) Email the save to me (see post 1), with the save attached. Once we have a tracker, send to the tracker email instead of mine.

[Qgqqqqq]

Detailed turn sequence:

1) You receive an email from the player ahead of you in turn order, with the save attached.
2) Download the attachment. Gmail automatically puts it in the Downloads folder; copy it from there to My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/Saves/pbem.
3) Start up the game (I have a shortcut on my desktop that starts me in the EitB mod). Select "Play by Email", load game, select the file you just downloaded.

Alternately, when you download the save you can open it, which should default to the correct mod (personally I just copy the saves to my folders monthly).

[Ellimist]

If you turn on "bare map" and zoom out all the way, all signs(unique features) will be revealed, so be sure to avoid that.

Good point. Can we all agree not to use goto tricks and flying camera scouting to get information we wouldn't have otherwise?

We're voting on whether to ban certain forms of map analysis? Goto-orders and the like? I'm not sure I understand what the point is.

What does that accomplish? I brought up the "sky view" + "bare map" bug because perfect and detailed information can just effortlessly pop into view all across the entire map at any point in the game. I don't think anything is really comparable, or where else we can draw a bright line. There are lots of little tricks players can use to gather map information from the fog. Such as scouting foreign borders & improvements by checking to see if resources show as having been improved, or looking at tile yields to find unrevealed "future tech" resources in enemy territory. There's also GNP scanning to see which technologies get a "known civ" discount, and this list goes on... My point is that there are a lot of techniques people can use to find useful information the game doesn't openly reveal. I really would rather not start going through the game with a comb to ban stuff people have been using for years. Can we just agree to not do anything which gives us an unfair advantage?

[DaveV]

Can we just agree to not do anything which gives us an unfair advantage?

Ah, but that's just the issue, isn't it? One man's unfair is another man's clever play.

A personal story: back in Civ 2, you could click on black (unrevealed) tiles, and it would give you a continent /body of water number. The map tended to have one large ocean, body of water number 1, which let you find all continents and islands other than continent number 1. With enough time and patience, you could explore most of the map. I thought this was a clear exploit, but it was pretty much assumed you were using it in a competitive multiplayer game (which, among other things, led to me giving up on said activity). I could never go back to Civ 2 after playing Civ 3, because, despite its other flaws, it did remove black clicking (not to mention city triangulation).

I think flying camera is a similar problem in Civ 4. It was added to let you make pretty screenshots, not so you could map out shorelines and ridgelines across the whole world. One of my favorite aspects of the Civ series is the exploration of the map. In order to gain map knowledge, you have to invest hammers into units, move them intelligently, and risk having them killed by barbs or other players. Facility with the flying camera controls and too much time on your hands is not a good substitute.

To address your point directly, Ellimist, I see a big difference between gaining extra knowledge from a tile which is previously revealed (by one of your units or a map trade) but currently fogged (your examples), and gaining knowledge about tiles which are completely unexplored.

[Bobchillingworth]

I can see both sides here, although my natural preference is to just not ban anything which isn't overt cheating, because I really don't want to start down a path of picking apart player actions to forbid. Leave that to the BTS people :P


I think this:

I see a big difference between gaining extra knowledge from a tile which is previously revealed (by one of your units or a map trade) but currently fogged (your examples), and gaining knowledge about tiles which are completely unexplored.

Works as an acceptable standard, although again this just isn't something very important to me. I personally don't use the Flying Camera because I am too lazy to enable it

[GreyWolf]

Does anyone plan on doing such tedious stuff in this game, anyway?

[Kredom]

i wont

[DaveV]

For the record, I won't use flying camera for map spying whether or not everyone agrees to it. It offends my programmer's sensibilities. I'm hoping Mardoc will give us the map dimensions and wrap for sandboxing (hint, hint); that's the only time I'd use flying camera.

[Ellimist]

No flying camera is fine.

[GermanJoey]

Why would flying camera offend your "programmer's sensibilities?" What does that even mean?