Pitboss etiquette

[Miguelito]

The point is not to give incentive to clock games. If you get an advantage by playing last, people might sit out the clock.
Yes, seeing the other player's production is a unique advantage of playing first, just as playing second has unique (and more significant) advantages. That's simultaneous. If you want it you can always declare first.

I don't see as much of a problem with defender's being able to secure second half. If I know I'm being attacked, shouldn't I be whipping anyways?

About the peace time turn splits, could that maybe be relaxed to just returning to the war time split 2-3 turns before the deal runs out?

[Old Harry]

I woke up early with stupid arguments going around my head. Can we get this sorted so I can get a good nights sleep please?

There are clearly issues - I'm just a few weeks back here and so far we had already issues in 2 PBs and another had at least to be reloaded. And those are just the ones I actually became aware of, I'd assume there are more.

I've asked around and no-one has pointed me to any issues in the last 30 games before PB53.

I think what has happened is that some vets have come back with a different opinion about what constitutes peacetime than the consensus that we've been playing. So we either need to figure out what the actual differences are and get the two camps to agree or we have a new rules question at the start of each pitboss ("Precedence or PYFT"?)

Let's start with this:

While writing about this: Does the rule "don't be a dick" also entail not to declare war when you are actually the defender? Who decides if it does or not?

I think it does, but the question is a straw man: It hasn't happened to me that I can remember (and I reckon I've fought more wars than anyone but Superdeath over the last couple of years).

In pitboss 38 I fought 7ish hot wars, 5 where I was the aggressor and no-one did this.
In 42 I fought 10 hot wars (2 vs Donovan, 2 vs Lewwyn, 4 vs Krill, 1 vs SD, 1 vs Gav) 6 where I was the aggressor and no-one did this.
In 46 I only fought 4 hot wars (TBW, Krill, Elkad, Rusten), 3 as aggressor, and no one did this.
In 52 I fought 2 wars (MJMD) and it didn't happen. In fact MJMD played early a turn or two before our second war forcing me to take the second half which I didn't want because he's a PYFT player. I didn't consider this worth blowing up the game over.

SD - what was the occasion you did this? I don't recall.

Going back a bit I realise I have some issues with Gaspar's original comment:

The inherent problem with these rules, and why there is a conflict over the rules in most games, is that the following statements are all true:

Pitboss games take many months to resolve, and so players are heavily invested in playing optimally.

The second half of the turn is objectively better than the first half of the turn.

This is true if players are in slavery, but I actually prefer to be first in turn order after about t150 because you get to use promotions and you're half a turn ahead of the enemy. In my experience playing second is better, but it's not a big enough deal that it's worth blowing up a game over.

You can make every other rule, but as long as a player has agency in choosing which half of the turn timer they want you are going to have conflict.  Just because nobody has elevated the nonsense to Lord Parkin levels in years doesn't mean there isn't constant conflict over turn splits.

There really hasn't been conflict over turn splits for ages. Or can you give me references? And I don't mean someone grumbling in their thread.

The current rule - attacker chooses sounds great.  But if I recognize my opponent is preparing for war, all I have to do is attack him and I can get the turnsplit I want.  The attacker is a meaningless distinction.  All it means is he who declares war.  Peacetime turn splits happen all the time, a la PB53, but they can't be enforced and then we end up in the tech thread with people quitting and so on and so forth.

What we need to do with a rule is take the agency away from the players in the moment. One easy rule is to say, once two players have been at war, any future war state will have the same turn split. That alleviates some of the issues that have both occurred in PB55 and PB53. But that just kicks the can up the road, and incentivizes early game wardecs to secure superior turn splits. Its still better than games blowing up as they are now, but its not ideal. A second easy rule is to have every game convert to sequential once war has been declared, as has been proposed in some recent games. I think this is a better solution, because Civ4 was designed to be played with sequential turns.

A third potential rule, would be to assign every player a turn order when the game begins, based on their play windows, as in sequential. The mapmaker assigns each player a slot in the order based on this and therefore, in any war between player 3 and player 4, player 3 would go first and player 4 would go second.

So I'm planning to attack you in 7 turns and you're planning to attack me in 5 turns. I see three options:
- We both POFT until the turn you want to declare where you wait for me to play and attack.
- We both try to drop behind the other to make the peace time war split clear, leading to bitterness and recriminations.
- One of us constantly plays after the other, gaining a clear advantage.
- The RNG gave us a turn order at the start of the game/end of last war.

I agree option 4 is better than 2 or 3. But I think option 1 is far better.

I do think that PB53 was a unique issue, caused by coming out of an enforced peace. In the past I've chosen to stay at war rather than give peace when I'm concerned about what happens when the timer is up, which isn't entirely satisfactory either.

We could add a rule along the lines of "At the end of a period of enforced peace the turn order of the last war will apply" but I fear this will encourage someone to war/peace to ensure they can't get on the wrong half of the timer.

I'm not sure any of these are perfect answers, but they're all better answers than taking subjective rules and treating them like they are objective.

I disagree that "PYFT" and "choose turn order on the turn you declare" are subjective.

I don't have a strong opinion on Charriu's mod suggestion - I'd rather not change the game unnecessarily, but reducing the benefit of playing second seems reasonable. We should also disable autopromote (is that possible Charriu?) as this benefits the second player.

[Charriu]

I've asked around and no-one has pointed me to any issues in the last 30 games before PB53.

I think what has happened is that some vets have come back with a different opinion about what constitutes peacetime than the consensus that we've been playing. So we either need to figure out what the actual differences are and get the two camps to agree or we have a new rules question at the start of each pitboss ("Precedence or PYFT"?)

I think this is the main issue we have to work out. As a mod developer and PB admin I can say that I can't remember any kind of these problems from PB38 until PB52. Yes, there were issues, but those were clear cases of somebody not adhering to the rules like double turns, which were quickly addressed. PB53 was the first case in a long time at this scale, which also ended the game.

I also want to say that I do love seeing vets return to the game and hope that we find a solution that works out for everybody. My big hope still lies in the sequential/simultaneous switch from PB57, which could turn out as a good compromise.

I don't have a strong opinion on Charriu's mod suggestion - I'd rather not change the game unnecessarily, but reducing the benefit of playing second seems reasonable. We should also disable autopromote (is that possible Charriu?) as this benefits the second player.

I just want to say that me modding in rules of the pitboss etiquette is not required. I'm only trying to provide options for solutions. To the question at hand. I can't remove the autopromote flag in the main menu, as everything in there is out of reach for me. But I can check where in the code autopromote is checked and disable those for a (simultaneous?) PB.

[The Black Sword]

Forcing a logout at EOT so a player can't see the turn roll is equivalent to saying you can't log in outside your turnsplit. As Harry notes in the OP(rule 5) this is not a generally agreed rule. I think I used to PM people at the start of the turnsplit to mutually agree whether we would play 'Look but don't touch', or strictly staying out of the game outside of our turnsplit. Everyone was happy with 'Look but don't touch' though so I stopped bothering.

Personally, I prefer 'Look but don't touch' and consider it good for the turnpace and general game enjoyment. I like being able to log in to my civ, look at my cities, and make plans. And if I have plans already made when my turnsplit comes around I'll be able to play quicker. But it's not a big deal either way IMO.

If we're changing this setup we should be clear about that, and we also shouldn't get angry at people for breaking a rule that was not agreed upon.

[The Black Sword]

Also, I agree that I don't remember having any significant turn split issues in my games before PB53. That said, I still think Cornflakes suggestion would probably be an improvement:

#1 could be negated by allowing the 1st in turn order an opportunity to log back in, swap build queues to units, and adjust build queues after a DoW, and whip as desired (but not move any units). Turn order between 1st and 2nd mover would be preserved, but 1st in turn order is compensated with that additional round of whip response that is otherwise lost.

I don't think 'attacker's should be rewarded because the game is too defensive' is a good counter-argument. If that's something we think is a problem it should be addressed via mods IMO rather than turnsplits.

[Mjmd]

Also, I agree that I don't remember having any significant turn split issues in my games before PB53. That said, I still think Cornflakes suggestion would probably be an improvement:

#1 could be negated by allowing the 1st in turn order an opportunity to log back in, swap build queues to units, and adjust build queues after a DoW, and whip as desired (but not move any units). Turn order between 1st and 2nd mover would be preserved, but 1st in turn order is compensated with that additional round of whip response that is otherwise lost.

I don't think 'attacker's should be rewarded because the game is too defensive' is a good counter-argument. If that's something we think is a problem it should be addressed via mods IMO rather than turnsplits.

+1 to idea

As far as the game being too defensive, I am a convert to the no score mod. Not being able to see attacker do a bunch of whips pre attack is a huge plus for attacker.

[civac2]

I like that suggestion as well.

[mackoti]

Forcing a logout at EOT so a player can't see the turn roll is equivalent to saying you can't log in outside your turnsplit. As Harry notes in the OP(rule 5) this is not a generally agreed rule. I think I used to PM people at the start of the turnsplit to mutually agree whether we would play 'Look but don't touch', or strictly staying out of the game outside of our turnsplit. Everyone was happy with 'Look but don't touch' though so I stopped bothering.

Personally, I prefer 'Look but don't touch' and consider it good for the turnpace and general game enjoyment. I like being able to log in to my civ, look at my cities, and make plans. And if I have plans already made when my turnsplit comes around I'll be able to play quicker. But it's not a big deal either way IMO.

If we're changing this setup we should be clear about that, and we also shouldn't get angry at people for breaking a rule that was not agreed upon.

I remember in last pitbos playing togheder we had this agreement and is very nice, to bad people build so much distrust our days.

[Charriu]

Forcing a logout at EOT so a player can't see the turn roll is equivalent to saying you can't log in outside your turnsplit. As Harry notes in the OP(rule 5) this is not a generally agreed rule. I think I used to PM people at the start of the turnsplit to mutually agree whether we would play 'Look but don't touch', or strictly staying out of the game outside of our turnsplit. Everyone was happy with 'Look but don't touch' though so I stopped bothering.

Personally, I prefer 'Look but don't touch' and consider it good for the turnpace and general game enjoyment. I like being able to log in to my civ, look at my cities, and make plans. And if I have plans already made when my turnsplit comes around I'll be able to play quicker. But it's not a big deal either way IMO.

If we're changing this setup we should be clear about that, and we also shouldn't get angry at people for breaking a rule that was not agreed upon.

That is a good reason against my fix.

[Cornflakes]

Also, I agree that I don't remember having any significant turn split issues in my games before PB53. That said, I still think Cornflakes suggestion would probably be an improvement:

#1 could be negated by allowing the 1st in turn order an opportunity to log back in, swap build queues to units, and adjust build queues after a DoW, and whip as desired (but not move any units). Turn order between 1st and 2nd mover would be preserved, but 1st in turn order is compensated with that additional round of whip response that is otherwise lost.

Ramk confirmed that it is possible via DLL to implement un-ending a player's turn after DoW in order to prevent turn rolling. This could be combined with setting all units of the DoW target to 0 remaining movement points in order to ensure nothing gets moved on the log-back-in. This would result in:
- T0: A plays first and ends turn
- T0: B declares war 2nd ... All A's units get set to 0 MP and A's turn is un-ended
- T0: A logs back in to whip and/or change units builds
- T1: A plays first (and continues 1st in turn order from then onward)
- T1: B plays 2nd (and continues 2nd in turn order from then onward)

***************************
The other big advantage of moving 2nd is the ability to disconnect resources, and continue pillaging them each turn.

@Charriu, is it possible to tie the resource-check for each player to their "end turn" event rather than the turn roll? In this way, the production can all be processed simultaneously at the turn roll, but players have the ability to actually use resources that are connected when they actually play their turn.