So, how did the PitBoss work out?

[scooter]

Some others are answering the technical issues with Pitboss really well so I won't even bother on that front. I will say though that the Pitboss feature in general is awesome, and I'd say it single-handedly revived this community. This forum was totally dead for long periods of time, and the Apolyton demogame (Pitboss) as well as Pitboss1 + Pitboss2 made this community explode, and here we are still playing this game over 7 years after release. So overall, it's been an extremely positive thing.

In ffa, a lot of the players start lagging behind and lose interest. Is that somehow not a big problem for your games? How do you handle players who vanish?

We've had a couple issues in the past, but we've found over time that we should guide new players to team up with other more experiened players in their first game. This has alleviated a lot of issues with players disappearing - a new guy showing up and getting stomped is just a bad thing for a lot of reasons.

I also notice a lot of pairs (two people playing one Civ). I assume that just makes the logistics a lot easier?

For me, it's just a fun way to play Civ. I'm in a Pitboss right now with a teammate, and we frequently chat through the turn and bounce ideas. For others it can be a nice way to still participate if they cannot make the time commitment to be around for every turn. It also really helps solve the "player vanishing" problem - one player disappearing off a 2-4 person team doesn't hurt too bad. A 10 player Pitboss with a lot of 2-3 player teams runs much smoother than an 18 player game.

[Sareln]

What's the issue with dogpiling? Do you guys just recognize that it's not a fun thing to do, or does it not actually work? (I would think that if 9 players ganged up on 1, it would be pretty hard for the 1 player to survive, even with a big tech lead... but I could be wrong!)

Everyone wants the dogpile to succeed with them putting in as little effort as possible, so they tend not to work and the runaway carries on as if nothing had changed. The amount of coordinating to get it working is massive. This may also be a function of RB's proclivity for setting the NO_TECH_TRADING option.

[Lewwyn]

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm curious why you guys don't play more team games? I personally found team games to be a lot more fun way to play Civ mp.

In ffa, a lot of the players start lagging behind and lose interest. Is that somehow not a big problem for your games? How do you handle players who vanish?

In a >10 player game, is one player going to end up actually conquering most of the world? From the Doc, it looks like most games end by "Concession"... how does that work?

I also notice a lot of pairs (two people playing one Civ). I assume that just makes the logistics a lot easier?

All of your questions sort of feed into each other so I'll try to address it as cohesively as I can.

First I just want to mention that the RB CIVMP community has really evolved a lot over the course of a lot of PBEMs in particular. These are always smaller games while the pitboss are usually larger games with more people. The community itself is pretty dedicated so we end up with a lot of players who will continue to play from a losing position.

You may notice as you peruse the forums that our community uses spoiler threads and every person who plays in a PBEM or PB usually reports. Often there are teams and there are people who dedlurk or are dedicated lurkers. This means that these are people who do not play the turns usually, though will pick up odd turns when the players can't get to it, and they usually provide feedback and comments. In essence every game is a team game in that respect. If you post and reprt about your game you will get feedback and you will get help.

As a community before joining one of games we usually recommend you get someone to pair up with or dedlurk with. Again this helps with keeping people interested. People don't vanish on games because the community as a whole is pretty mature and has a pretty high standard. And if they do usually they tell people ahead of time and get someone to agree to take over for them. There really has never been too much of an issue. And if someone gets too far ahead concession becomes apparent. No one really likes playing out a foregone conclusion. Now if anyone is still having fun we usually continue the games and everyone is a good sport about it. Sometimes the games lag a bit but mostly they do get to a point where a winner becomes clear.

Pitbosses in particular are usually teams. Also as has been mentioned Pitboss 6 was a 3v3v3v3 game. It ended up having a very exciting finish. The four teams were pretty much okay in terms of sustained group and cohesiveness beyond one team that sortof fell apart due to being formed of people without a team in mind. Eventually we were able to get a competent 2 member team to run those 3 civs. Other pitboss teamers have been thought of doing as well we just haven't done them yet.

I think part of the difficulty in getting one set up so far has just been getting the requisite people involved at the right time.

One note as well the games at RB are usually unmodded. We have an RBmod in development but only 3 games have been played with it so far. 1 was an unsuccessful PBEM and the last two have been Pitboss, PB8 still ongoing. Both pitboss seem to be pretty successful.

[Lewwyn]

What's the issue with dogpiling? Do you guys just recognize that it's not a fun thing to do, or does it not actually work? (I would think that if 9 players ganged up on 1, it would be pretty hard for the 1 player to survive, even with a big tech lead... but I could be wrong!)

Well dogpiling can happen but more often than not that requires diplo and we've played a lot less diplo games recently. Often if someone tries to dogpile someone else it is unsuccessful because one or more teams send a token force and try to take advantage economically of everyone else going to war. So the logistics are much more difficult and it juts doesn't happen successfully very often, or at all.

Also in the community we have a pretty good grasp of people's skill levels so the games usually have a pretty even field.

Additionally many maps discourage dogpiling in different ways.

[Lewwyn]

Some others are answering the technical issues with Pitboss really well so I won't even bother on that front. I will say though that the Pitboss feature in general is awesome, and I'd say it single-handedly revived this community. This forum was totally dead for long periods of time, and the Apolyton demogame (Pitboss) as well as Pitboss1 + Pitboss2 made this community explode, and here we are still playing this game over 7 years after release. So overall, it's been an extremely positive thing.

Totally agree with this. The Pitboss got eveyrone excited and then people started experimenting with PBEMs and it sort of took over from there.

I also notice a lot of pairs (two people playing one Civ). I assume that just makes the logistics a lot easier?

For me, it's just a fun way to play Civ. I'm in a Pitboss right now with a teammate, and we frequently chat through the turn and bounce ideas. For others it can be a nice way to still participate if they cannot make the time commitment to be around for every turn. It also really helps solve the "player vanishing" problem - one player disappearing off a 2-4 person team doesn't hurt too bad. A 10 player Pitboss with a lot of 2-3 player teams runs much smoother than an 18 player game.

Also want to chime in and agree with this. A lot of back and forth and planning in the lurker/reporting threads is very helpful and people do chat outside the forums as well when playing these games.

[Commodore]

One kind of interesting bit of emergent behavior in turn splits has been the more recent games' lack of hard rules, beyond "don't". Players here are very honest. Rather than make a list of turn split rules, which will be lawyered up to the nines, it's mostly just "make a good-faith effort to avoid ever double-moving". It's been successful, although I'm sure hardly perfect.

No idea on the teamer thing. Pitboss 6 was a thrilling game.

[Lewwyn]

Hi guys!
I just posted a question about PitBoss games over at weplayciv as they seem to have an active PB community. I figured I should ask the same questions here as I'm always curious how the RB community tweaks the base game.

BTW I assume that you were directed here after talking to WPC about the current ISDG Pitboss? That game is actually slightly modded by the Spanish Civ community. We didn't want to use their mod but got out voted. The mod itself is only used to artifically force timer splits in the pitboss when war is declared between two teams. It does not allow a team to log in during the time the opposing team is playing. The end result is that the turn timer gets extended but there are no double moves since you can't log in until someone has finished playing. We would prefer to simply self enforce no double move policies as it speeds up the game, though I suppose if the German team ended their turns it wouldn't affect the speed of the game. Are you interested in seeing that game?

[SevenSpirits]

I'm curious why you guys don't play more team games? I personally found team games to be a lot more fun way to play Civ mp.

I think there are a couple of reasons:

1) Like Lewwyn said, we actually often play with multiple players controlling a single civ. So that gets you all of the fun social and teamwork aspects right there.

2) A couple aspects of the game don't work so well (IMO) in zero-sum (2-sided) games: Mostly, early combat with warriors and ancient units is pretty random, and often involves coin flips that have a giant impact on the game. Since 2-team games encourage players to go for early combat I prefer FFAs. This is relevant because...

3) ... Team FFAs (e.g. 2v2v2v2) are fairly impractical. In a sequential game they will take a long time per turn compared to 1v1v1v1s (even with a sequential team turns pitboss, which is ideal for a team game IMO), and in a simultaneous game it's even messier than usual.

4) A couple aspects of the game don't work so well (again IMO) in games with 2+ civs per team: Some wonders are overpowered, and (this is just my personal view, I don't see it discussed much) I think techs are too cheap. (Their cost is only (2+n)/2 times normal value for an n-person team.) I already think the game works better at the higher difficulty settings where hammers are a bit more plentiful compared to tech pace, so increasing tech pace by such a large factor doesn't appeal to me.

[Ellimist]

One note as well the games at RB are usually unmodded.

The exception to this is the Fall From Heaven mod, as well as Erebus in the Balance(a FFH modmod created by Sareln for better balance.) I'm not sure how familiar you are with FFH, but it's basically a fantasy rewrite of the game. We've had a few pbems using other mods as well, such as Planetfall.

There have been 26 pbems(4 ongoing) here at RB that use either FFH or EITB, as well as a pitboss that uses EITB and has 4 teams of 3 civilizations each. That pitboss uses sequential turns, but the civs on each team play simultaneously.


Thanks for creating such an awesome game. In the past ten years, Civ IV was the best 50$ I ever spent.

[Tasunke]

Yes, thank you for making the game Soren ^_^

Speaking of unspoiled players taking over ... I just recently took over as leader of TEAM, a team on the Democracy Game pitboss.

What started out as 10 players has now become a general staff of one

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The demo game is interesting, as the team sub-forums are less visible than most games/ PBEMs ... you have to either sign up as a team or sign up as a global lurker, which I kind of like actually.

That being said, we go by an honor system to where players don't look in other people's spoiler threads.

I'm currently playing in one FFH PBEM, and dedlurking in two other FFH PBEMs