Pitboss 18 IT and Tech Issues Thread

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Uhh... wasn't it... find a lurker to see if there are instructions, or pause for 6 hours? I don't think we ever came to a clear agreement that everyone signed off on.

Q is eager to get a permanent replacement for his civ but no one has taken him up on his offer yet. How about some unspoiled soul just sweep in and claim that civ so Q and the rest of us can get a move on with this thing? In the meantime, maybe we can see if his thread has any indication of what to do for the current turn?

[novice]

Paused for Q with 12 minutes left on the timer.

[Whosit]

I wonder how many unspoiled people are even left? How about someone like me who's probably just gonna die no matter how spoiled I am? :P Just kidding, of course. I don't think I'd want to run two civs even if that was somehow acceptable to everyone.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Paused for Q with 12 minutes left on the timer.

...word words words...I'm leaning towards unpausing it now. But I also don't want to be the evil bastard that made him miss his turn, unless at least a couple other people give me the nod to go ahead and do so.

Or in six hours.

[WilliamLP]

I think I've come around on the issue. It's a serious competitive balance problem if some people get neighbors who are disconnected from the game and don't care about missing turns very much, while others get obsessive micro managers who update their thread several times per day. But... it's a 33 player free for all, luck and things beyond our control will influence the game a lot, news at 11, right?

So I think it's pretty reasonable to say that if anyone's concerned about missing a turn, leave the password in the thread and someone (even spoiled) either follows the plan or makes semi-reasonable AI moves with workers, city builds and such that don't use spoiled info.

Just my opinion here, but at this point I vote for anything that gives us a turn pace faster than 1 turn per 48 hours.

[Krill]

I think I've come around on the issue. It's a serious competitive balance problem if some people get neighbors who are disconnected from the game and don't care about missing turns very much, while others get obsessive micro managers who update their thread several times per day. But... it's a 33 player free for all, luck and things beyond our control will influence the game a lot, news at 11, right?

So I think it's pretty reasonable to say that if anyone's concerned about missing a turn, leave the password in the thread and someone (even spoiled) either follows the plan or makes semi-reasonable AI moves with workers, city builds and such that don't use spoiled info.

Just my opinion here, but at this point I vote for anything that gives us a turn pace faster than 1 turn per 48 hours.

My opinion is pretty much worthless (whatever novice says overrides what I think) but yeah, this works. Also lower the damned turn timer.

[novice]

In general I value turn pace over balance. I half expect to finish this game with a third of the civs controlled by the AI. I'm in this for the epic 33-civ experience.

That said I'm not sure what William is proposing - do you want us to start playing each others' turns? Better to let people miss turns then, IMO. Two missed turns and you're kicked to AI, and given a -10 on your RB reputation.

Also, we should settle on a target turn roll time. How does 10am UTC work? The americans need to play before they go to bed, the euros can sneak in a turn in the morning if necessary, and the aussies have time to play in the evening after the turn rolls in their afternoon.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Here's an idea. This game is unusual because of the number of civs involved. I only know the civs in my own immediate neighborhood, not thirty tiles away in any given direction. The same is probably true for all of us to a lesser or greater degree at this point. What happens across the map is largely irrelevant to my civ, except for wonder chases and other one-off/first-to things in game. So, to use the lurker civ as an example as though it were actually a competitive team in this game, if Lurkerdom is holding up the turn and I know that this civ is not in my "corner" of the map, however that is determined by anyone who would be qualified to know (lurkers perhaps), if I as a competitor were to play the turn for Lurkerdom, I don't think that would be the worst thing ever. Don't change builds, tech path, or remicro cities, don't do anything that appears radically different from what was already being done. Do make reasonable worker movements, continue scouting units in the general direction they appear to have been traveling already (you can tell by the direction the unit is facing), etc.

I know that I would not be keen to have another player logging in to play my civ, so I'd make sure to have my turns covered if I was going to be away. But I think that having a player from relatively far across the map make moves for a player is better than relegating the civ to AI to do God knows what before the situation can be recovered. Lurkers can probably draw the map into quadrants and then tell each player (without specificity) which opposing civs that player is empowered to log into to push the turn along at the end of the timer. Not perfect, but this is better IMO than having this same discussion every two turns and the game dying from poor turn pace.

Better still than all of the above is if a lurker can just log in and play the turn in a reasonably impassive way. This does not really apply, however, to civs in conflict so we'll have to sort out something different for war turns, probably just convert the tardy civ to AI.

Really, I think the easiest and best resolution, especially at this stage of the game, is just to empower our lurkers to keep things going for now. Once all the land has been settled and conflicts are more likely to arise, we can think more seriously about converting to AI because an impartial, spoiled lurker may be more difficult to find.

Thoughts? Also, can a lurker log in to Q's civ and see if things are obvious enough to make moves and swing the turn around? Q wants to get rid of the civ and probably wouldn't mind. Q, if you do mind, just wander across the map in the future and 'phract me.

Edit: novice, I support your suggested turn roll target.

[WilliamLP]

That said I'm not sure what William is proposing - do you want us to start playing each others' turns?

I guess, just accepting the idea that there could be some heavily spoiled dedicated full time subs, who would take it upon themselves to log in when someone is overdue and doesn't say anything about it, and play in a reasonable way without taking initiatives based on spoiler info, which would probably mean neutral passive builder and defensive play. What this accomplishes is that if missing a turn is legit, then their civ isn't really set back much the way missing all your worker turns or having unqueued city builds would be.

This is, if there isn't a specific plan to follow, just to keep the game moving in way less unbalancing than retiring to AI might be. Most of us will never need this but maybe it's also incentive to PYFT for possessive people who don't want other fingers on their civs.

[plako]

That turn roll target time thingie won't work. Too many variables e.g. pauses, when everyone has ended their turn and the variation of the turn length based on e.g. how many logins/turn. I'm pretty certain Caledorn doesn't won't to be tuning the turn timer every turn to keep it on target.