2v2v2v2 team pitboss anyone?

[scooter]

Basically, the team that picks first can end up being able to pick from a pool of around 5 leaders by the time they get their second pick, if you consider PRO (and other traits about as effective as PRO on these settings) as unpickable.

This is just not true. (Kind of an odd thing to say actually, so I'm wondering if we're not clear on what the two proposed restrictions mean.) I'm not going to get spoilery and go into details, but I'd suggest you do your own "mock draft" of how you would pick for each team, and see what options you have left for the last team to pick their 2nd leader. There's a lot of really solid choices.

[scooter]

One thing to float: Map should probably be set to Huge. This buffs tech costs while making distance maintence a little less punitive.

Huge is far too big for 8 civs, especially considering it's a lake map that's high on land.

You can set the map "size" to be whatever you want. You can have a 4,000 tile "Duel" sized map, which in maintenance will act like a duel sized map rather than a 4,000 tile map. I think this is what Commodore is referring to - artificially setting the size to read as something different in order to get the desired maintenance.

Correction, huge makes distance maintenance MORE punitive. For the record when I voted for immortal /deity I was assuming the map "size" would be typical for 8 players so either standard or large.

Can you elaborate? Maintenance on a new city on standard size costs more to your empire than a new city on huge size.

[Commodore]

Correction, huge makes distance maintenance MORE punitive. For the record when I voted for immortal /deity I was assuming the map "size" would be typical for 8 players so either standard or large.

Can you elaborate? Maintenance on a new city on standard size costs more to your empire than a new city on huge size.

Ah, right. Distance maintenance is higher on "Huge", but lower on maps that are huge in dimensions. However, I feel like #cities maintenance is much lower, leading to overall lower maintenance costs.

[plako]

Large feels about right for 8 players and the size of the map. Huge or Standard will work too.

[TheHumanHydra]

Correction, huge makes distance maintenance MORE punitive. For the record when I voted for immortal /deity I was assuming the map "size" would be typical for 8 players so either standard or large.

Can you elaborate? Maintenance on a new city on standard size costs more to your empire than a new city on huge size.

Ah, right. Distance maintenance is higher on "Huge", but lower on maps that are huge in dimensions. However, I feel like #cities maintenance is much lower, leading to overall lower maintenance costs.

I'm very confused by this train of thought. I was under the impression that the larger the map size, the lower the distance maintenance cost for a city the same number of tiles from your capital. Likewise for the number of cities maintenance cost. Is this incorrect, or am I misunderstanding what is being said?

[SevenSpirits]

Can strike (not if it's avoidable with partner's help) (With a side vote of "I need an adult!")

What do you mean by this?

[SevenSpirits]

I'm very confused by this train of thought. I was under the impression that the larger the map size, the lower the distance maintenance cost for a city the same number of tiles from your capital. Likewise for the number of cities maintenance cost. Is this incorrect, or am I misunderstanding what is being said?

Larger map size means lower distance maintenance for equally-spaced cities, because it's based on the ratio of the distance from your capital to the city in question, divided by the maximum distance between two tiles on the map.

"Larger" map "size" (i.e. Large instead of Standard, or Huge instead of Large) means higher distance maintenance (presumably to approximately cancel out the above effect), lower #cities maintenance (because they assume people will have bigger empires), and higher tech costs (again because they assume bigger empires, with higher total output).

[SevenSpirits]

Looks like we have some ties to resolve. Here are all the votes - plako's summary of 3 teams plus the final vote added in CAPS:

Current votes in the order Smack, 4H, RMOG2

GENERAL SETTINGS
Always War (Yes/No)? Yes, Yes, Yes, YES
Handicap level (Deity/Immortal/Other)? Deity if cylinder, Immortal if Toroid, Immortal, Immortal, DEITY
Game Speed (Quick/Normal)? Quick, Quick, Quick, NORMAL
Banned Wonders (Specify if any)? Weak vote for Statue of Zeus, strong vote for no other bans, TGLighthouse, SoZ, Cristo Redentor, MoM; MOM CR AND SOL
Banned Other (1st post suggested War Elephants, Spy missions, and Nukes only)? Just those three, WE, switch civic/religion, nukes, just those 3, WE SPIES AND NUKES
Barbarians (Off/On/Raging)? Off, Off, Off, ON

MAP INSTRUCTIONS
Approx. Map Type (Lakes/Other)? Lakes, Lakes, -, LAKEISH WITH SOME PB6ISH ISLANDS PLEASE
Circumnavigation available* (Yes/No)? No, No, -, YES
Map wrap (None/Cylinder/Toroid/Up to Plako)? Cylinder or Toroid: up to Plako, Cylinder, -, CYLINDER
Natural vs Only good land? Natural, Natural, -, NATURAL
Mirrored (Completely/With minor differences/Capitals only/No)? No, No, -, CAPS ONLY
If not mirrored, Fair vs Random**? Fair, Fair, -, FAIR

TEAM GAME ABUSE PREVENTION CENTER
City gifting (None/First turn only/Other)? First turn only, None, 1st turn only, FIRST TURN ONLY
Can accept trades or cancel them when one partner has ended turn and the other one hasn't (no/not if includes resources or gpt/not if includes gpt/yes)***? not if includes resources or gpt, No, yes, NO
Can trade GPT (gold per turn) (yes/no)****? yes, No, No, YES
Can strike (yes/only if not currently gifting gpt to partner/not if it's avoidable with partner's help)? only if not currently gifting gpt to partner, No, Yes, MUST ATTEMPT NOT TO?

LEADER/CIV ASSIGNMENT
Some sort of snake pick i.e. no leader/civ can exist more than once in the game (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, Yes, YES
See starts before pick (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, No, YES
Allow a team to have 2 copies of a trait (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, No, NO
Tie snake pick order to reverse turn order (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, No, -
Snake pick order (4321123443211234, 4321123443214321, 4321432143214321, other)? 4321432143214321, 4321123443211234, 4321123443211234, 4321123443211234
Bans (any or all of: India, Inca, Pacal, Willem, other)? Those four, Big Four, The Big Four, INDIA INCA AND WILLEM

PITBOSS STUFF
Allow reload requests for bad mistakes? No formal process, just common courtesy, No, No, -
Time limit? Don't care, 24 hours, 18-24h per team, NO
New random seed on reload, right? Yes, No, No, YES

ALSO
Starting unit(s)? Scout only, for all teams, -, One scout, SCOUT

[SevenSpirits]

Item by item, the result. If there's a tie I will defer to the more "default" setting if there's one available. This looks like it will happen a lot so I hope you consider this to be a reasonable stance.

Always War (Yes/No)? Yes, Yes, Yes, YES

Always War

Handicap level (Deity/Immortal/Other)? Deity if cylinder, Immortal if Toroid, Immortal, Immortal, DEITY

Since it's a cylinder, TIE between IMMORTAL and DEITY. Anyone want to change their vote in light of other things? If we can't resolve the tie I think we do immortal since it's closer to usual settings; does that seem fair?

Game Speed (Quick/Normal)? Quick, Quick, Quick, NORMAL

Quick.

Banned Wonders (Specify if any)? Weak vote for Statue of Zeus, strong vote for no other bans, TGLighthouse, SoZ, Cristo Redentor, MoM; MOM CR AND SOL

2 Votes for SoZ, 1 for TGLH, 2 for CR, 2 for MoM, 1 for SoL. I think we need a majority to ban a wonder (since equal votes to allow the wonder should take precedence) so none get banned.

Banned Other (1st post suggested War Elephants, Spy missions, and Nukes only)? Just those three, WE, switch civic/religion, nukes, just those 3, WE SPIES AND NUKES

WE are banned 4-0.
Nukes are banned 4-0.
1 vote to ban spies completely, 2 to ban all spy missions, 1 to only ban a couple of missions. I think the "spy missions" vote is in the middle of the other two so clearly the correct resolution.

Barbarians (Off/On/Raging)? Off, Off, Off, ON

Barbs OFF.

Approx. Map Type (Lakes/Other)? Lakes, Lakes, -, LAKEISH WITH SOME PB6ISH ISLANDS PLEASE

No disagreement here. Lakes (and we like islands to at least some extent).

Circumnavigation available* (Yes/No)? No, No, -, YES

No circumnav available wins by 2-1, though I believe the "-" is actually a vote for plako to decide, so he could potentially challenge this.

Map wrap (None/Cylinder/Toroid/Up to Plako)? Cylinder or Toroid: up to Plako, Cylinder, -, CYLINDER

Cylinder.

Natural vs Only good land? Natural, Natural, -, NATURAL

Natural.

Mirrored (Completely/With minor differences/Capitals only/No)? No, No, -, CAPS ONLY

No mirroring beats caps only 2-1. Plako can contest this and maybe mirror the caps, per the fourth vote.

If not mirrored, Fair vs Random**? Fair, Fair, -, FAIR

Fair.

City gifting (None/First turn only/Other)? First turn only, None, 1st turn only, FIRST TURN ONLY

First turn only.

Can accept trades or cancel them when one partner has ended turn and the other one hasn't (no/not if includes resources or gpt/not if includes gpt/yes)***? not if includes resources or gpt, No, yes, NO

2 votes for NO
1 vote for conditional NO
1 vote for YES

Smackdown are willing to change their vote to NO to simplify things, if we are stuck here, as it's unclear which option should win the tie IMO. (I would go just to the "more default" side of the tie, namely the conditional NO, but only 1 team voted for that and it's not clear that any other team is actually happy with that option.)

Can trade GPT (gold per turn) (yes/no)****? yes, No, No, YES

2 votes for YES, 2 votes for NO. Default is you can trade GPT so we are going with YES unless someone changes their mind.

Can strike (yes/only if not currently gifting gpt to partner/not if it's avoidable with partner's help)? only if not currently gifting gpt to partner, No, Yes, MUST ATTEMPT NOT TO?

1 YES
1 "if not gifting gold to partner"
1 "partner must bail you out of strike if possible"
1 NO

If no one changes their vote we are going for the more moderate of the permissive positions, which is "if not gifting gold to partner". But please, if someone would change their vote this would be easier. I am especially looking at "partner must bail you out of strike if possible". I have to admit I wasn't thinking too straight when I put that in as one of the suggested options to vote, since it's incredibly unclear to what lengths your partner has to go to bail you out. In fact unless you guys can explain what that means I think you have to change your vote, because that rule isn't viable as written.

Some sort of snake pick i.e. no leader/civ can exist more than once in the game (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, Yes, YES

Yes - a snake pick.

See starts before pick (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, No, YES

Yes.

Allow a team to have 2 copies of a trait (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, No, NO

2 YES, 2 NO. YES will win if no one changes their vote.

Tie snake pick order to reverse turn order (yes/no)? Yes, Yes, No, -

Yes.

Snake pick order (4321123443211234, 4321123443214321, 4321432143214321, other)? 4321432143214321, 4321123443211234, 4321123443211234, 4321123443211234

4321123443211234 wins 3-1. (OH PLEASE CAN I BE FIRST IN TURN ORDER.)

Bans (any or all of: India, Inca, Pacal, Willem, other)? Those four, Big Four, The Big Four, INDIA INCA AND WILLEM

India, Inca and Willem are out 4-0. Pacal is out 3-1.

Allow reload requests for bad mistakes? No formal process, just common courtesy, No, No, -

I'm actually not quite sure what the "no" votes mean. Do they mean that no one gets guaranteed reloads (which is what we meant by "No formal process...", or that and also that reloads are not allowed at all? However I think we can say that "No" is the winner.

Time limit? Don't care, 24 hours, 18-24h per team, NO

24h timer seems like the middle option to me. Does that seem reasonable to everyone?

New random seed on reload, right? Yes, No, No, YES

OK, we have a tie here and I don't know what to count as "default". When I put the question there it's because I don't have much pitboss experience but I thought this option was pretty much always chosen. Is this not true? What's the reason for not having it on?

Starting unit(s)? Scout only, for all teams, -, One scout, SCOUT

Scout.

[Commodore]

I was on the fence, and Lewwyn needed an adult, so let's go with "only if not gifting gpt to partner".