Civ 6 PBEM 2 Organizing Thread

[Woden]

Wow, lots of discuss today. I am fine with starting at the beginning of May for Singaboy and oledavy. it will give us a little more time to set this up so it can go smoothly.

 I also agree on the current ban list: paid DLCs (allowing Aztecs), Sumer, and Scythia. I also prefer no duplicate civs

I also like the idea of rolling three civs to chose from, that would bring an interesting twist if you get three you don't normally play and make it so there are not 5 Romes in the game.  I also don't think Rome should be banned, they are very powerful but it is all focused on the early game.

For map building, you can reveal the map in debug mode. It is easy to do but I will say you need to save the map before revealing it because the player will meet all the civs and city-states when it is revealed. 

As for huts and barbs. I would prefer no huts but leave barbs on with a difficult settings not greater than emperor.  I find above emperor the barbs can start sending horsemen way to early. I also find barbs help progress a little bit (with eurekas for Bronze working, archery, and military tradition) and provide a little gold. But I would be fine with no barbs if people think that might have the possibility of skewing the game. 

Are we going to use a program to track and pass the game? I assume it will be the same as PBEM 1. Since some of use are new to this, I would suggest creating a test game to pass around once to make sure it works properly and we all understand how it works before we start the real deal.

For other settings, I assume to use balanced starting positions. What about the others: world age, temperature, rainfall, sea level, water level. I usually play on standard for most, except I use "New" world age. It provides a few more hills and mountains but it might hinder movement a little.

[Singaboy]

I like the idea of a quick test game to see whether the technicality of this would work smoothly.

I support to have barbarians, not so much the huts. Too much of random luck, there is plenty already of it by the city states.

[Alhambram]

Are we going to use a program to track and pass the game? I assume it will be the same as PBEM 1. Since some of use are new to this, I would suggest creating a test game to pass around once to make sure it works properly and we all understand how it works before we start the real deal.

I agree to do some test game to see whether things works smoothly.

Oh, just an idea but if oledavy don't agree with this then never mind, since i wondered why oledavy decided to play with maximum of 5 players.
If you take out all paid DLC civs, Sumeria and Scythia, there should be 18 civilizations left from total of 24.
And with civ pick through choice from random 3 civ pick, it means that it is possible to play with six players.
So maybe there are some latecomers who still want participate this PBEM before we got things sorted out too much, in theory there is room for one more player.

[Sullla]

I'm happy to roll maps and look at them with the revealed map tool, once you decide all of the settings that you want. If I could make one suggestion for a potential house rule for your group to discuss, it would be this:

If two players at war agree to sign peace, then the peace treaty must include cessation of any captured cities.

This would create a means around Civ6's annoying city occupation rules. Under this rule, if you lose one of your cities, you are free to keep fighting and try to capture it back again, but if you agree to peace, you must make a formal cessation of the captured city. The alternative is a situation where any cities captured in war can never grow in size and are effectively useless until the player in question is completely eliminated, which isn't how things have been handled in any previous game in the series. Just a suggestion of course, please feel free to run your game however you like.

[Dreylin]

If you take out all paid DLC civs, Sumeria and Scythia, there should be 18 civilizations left from total of 24.
And with civ pick through choice from random 3 civ pick, it means that it is possible to play with six players.
So maybe there are some latecomers who still want participate this PBEM before we got things sorted out too much, in theory there is room for one more player.

Speculating, but I think oledavy's imposition of a 5-player limit on the game is related to turn progress rather than anything in-game. Experience has shown that /in general/ moving over 5 players corresponds to a significant drop-off in reliability of achieving a one turn per day cycle. Reliability does drop from 4 to 5 players, but not nearly by as much and the gains of the additional player in the game outweigh them.

[oledavy]

Quite a bit to respond to, so if I miss something, please don't hesitate to call me out. 

@Alhambram

I chose to limit sign-ups to five for two reasons: 

1. I've found with Civ PBEM games and free for all board games that this is the minimum number to create an interesting geopolitical game, as 4 player FFAs tend to devolve into 2v2s. 
2. Turn pace, Dreylin very nicely summed up why 4-5 players generally work best on RB for keeping a decent turn pace. 

In fact, I'm already a little worried looking at the turn pace for our group, as including myself, we have at least three people with a similar play window. The saving grace here is that with summer coming, I know I (and I presume Singaboy) will have more flexibility. This will be great for blitzing on the weekends, but could hurt our attempts to maintain a turn per day. 

That being said, if the majority of players favor incorporating a 6th, I would not be opposed, provided the player lives outside the Americas.

I'm going to attempt to write up the settings for this game at present, reflecting my preferences and the preferences so far stated. If I missed you, or you strongly dispute one, please speak up. Bolded ones are ones we have not discussed at all yet. 

Settings/Rules

Player Count: 5
Map Type: Pangaea
Turn Order: ???
Bans: Paid DLC Civs, Scythia, Sumer
Map Selection: As discussed above, chosen by a lurker (thanks Sullla!)
Picking Method: Each player receives a pool of 3 randomly chosen civs to pick between, no duplicates (with the possible exception of Pericles/Gorgo).
Diplomacy - ??? I will admit, I'm slightly tempted to try something besides CTON, but I also don't really want to go back to the days of full diplomacy. A small part of of me wants to have a public diplo thread, but barring someone making a really convincing case for that, I'll say we should just stick with CTON. 
Barbarians: On
Huts: Off
Difficulty: ??? Probably on the lower end since we want barbs on
World Age: New
Balanced Starts Option
Temperature/Sea Level/Rainfall: Defaults

For this game, I also support adopting Sullla's suggested house rule.

I think running a test game would be a fantastic idea. 

@Archduke

Since you've done this before, would you be willing to walk us through getting the software set up and help us get a test game going?

[Woden]

If two players at war agree to sign peace, then the peace treaty must include cessation of any captured cities.

I see your point from PBEM 1 but let's play devil's advocate here, this might give to much power to the conquering civ. Let say A and B are at war and  A has capture 3 cities from B then the war has become a stalemate. If B were to offer cessation to 2 cities and return of 1 city, this might end the war quicker.  B will not want to end the war if they have to give all three away unless another player jumps into the war or A will not want to end the war if no cessation is offered. 

I am new to mutliplayer games so I don't know how well this holds up and this is me just trying to wrap my head around the ramification of such a rule.

[Alhambram]

@Alhambram

I chose to limit sign-ups to five for two reasons: 

1. I've found with Civ PBEM games and free for all board games that this is the minimum number to create an interesting geopolitical game, as 4 player FFAs tend to devolve into 2v2s. 
2. Turn pace, Dreylin very nicely summed up why 4-5 players generally work best on RB for keeping a decent turn pace. 

In fact, I'm already a little worried looking at the turn pace for our group, as including myself, we have at least three people with a similar play window. The saving grace here is that with summer coming, I know I (and I presume Singaboy) will have more flexibility. This will be great for blitzing on the weekends, but could hurt our attempts to maintain a turn per day. 

That being said, if the majority of players favor incorporating a 6th, I would not be opposed, provided the player lives outside the Americas.

With it is clear for me why you chose to limit sign-ups, thanks you and Dreylin for explanations about possible consequences by allowing more players to PBEM.

[chumchu]

I thought it was civ V

[Singaboy]

@oledavy, what is CTON diplomacy?
I prefer not to have overly complicated rules. I would say, there can be peace treaties without conceding all cities. I have played sufficient war games to know the penalties one gets when conquering enemy cities. Yes, you get severe penalties but cities are never revolting, there are no culture flips, the borders and potentially defensive positions are immediately yours. So, to me, it would be up to the players to cede or not.

As for turn order, we should roll a dice for it too.