New EitB PBEM

[BING_XI_LAO]

Thread posted. Forgot I signed up for this but looking forward to it!

[RefSteel]

Brilliant - time to go roll a bunch of dice (or rather random.org; my actual dice aren't with me today) and start posting things! [EDIT: Or maybe not quite yet; see below.]

[RefSteel]

This was accidentally posted to the lurker thread, where fortunately no information was visible without also opening spoiler tags anyway - but I'll hold off posting starts for now to make sure there's consensus on the answer to DaveV's question.

My son used to have a Jimmy Neutron game when he was very young. It was a platform jumper, and it was easy to miss a jump and die. When that happened, Jimmy would say, "Of course, that's not what *really* happened," and the game would automatically reload to a spot before the missed jump. It's easy to fall into that mindset in single player games, where an early barb loss can really mess up your game. After the disastrous end to the last PBEM game, I think we need to establish rules on reloading the save, preferably before the picking stage.

1. Absolute ironman. No reloads, ever, under any circumstances.
2. Reload for egregious misclicks or erroneous movement...
  2a. based on player judgement.
  2b. based on lurker judgement.
3. Reload anything but combat results.

I lean toward number 2a, but that's also the fuzziest rule and carries the danger of rules lawyering. Number 1 is what everyone in a pitboss game accepts as the normal course of the game.

Note that not being able to reload that early 98% loss to a barb means that AGG (and, to a lesser extent, CHA; to an even lesser extent RAI) gain in strength. It also incentivizes putting a priority on early high strength units.

Edit: I turned off my thread blocker and posted this in the wrong thread! someone please move this!

I didn't read anything, thanks for spoilering everything, Ref!

[RefSteel]

Triple-posting, but for what it's worth from a non-player, my default assumption with PbeMs is that reloading for a misclick or a mistake (e.g. oops, when I revolted, I chose the civics I was planning for the SP game I'm playing instead of for this one!) is okay as long as you're not rolling back any combat, nor moves that revealed other new information. If you accidentally misclick your entire army off into the wilderness, it might be okay to reload, select (a) hopefully-expendable unit(s) which would provide equal vision (e.g. if you had a recon unit and a sentry unit with your misclicked stack, you have to use both a recon unit so you don't unfairly benefit from knowing there are no giant spiders and a sentry unit so you can see as far as you did - or a recon unit with sentry if one is in the stack so you can see the (lack of) distant spiders) and move just that to where you misclicked your army, but even that is treading close to the line, because what if you misclick on the reload and end up with more information than you could have gained by playing only once no matter where you clicked? I assume this is the sort of thing that you're wondering about.

Reloading a 98% loss (or any combat) would clearly be cheating though regardless, so I'm not sure it fits with this question. (Possible exception, since random seed is preserved barring certain means of rng manipulation: Replaying exactly the same combats in exactly the same order for exactly the same results could be an extra-lenient version of replaying an informative misclick in a way that still gives you the same accidental information - but that's even more fraught.) Getting permission from lurkers shouldn't be necessary unless you're not sure of the rules, but posting about what happened any time you reload to correct something helps to show good faith.

[coldrain]

I completely agree with RefSteel about reloads. No reloads if you reveal new information with a missclick move or if any combat is done. Picking incorrect civic by mistake or sending a worker to a wrong tile within own borders are fine to reload I think.

And to be absolutely clear, I would follow this principle: No reloading after combat has occurred or new information have been revealed by a unit move or action (like recon spell for example). The only exception I could think of for this rule is if a player is defending their capital in the early game with one unit and they want to check combat odds for attacking an approaching barbarian by holding an attack order on the unit (without wanting to attack), but accidentally click to attack instead of only checking the odds. But this is very ulikely to happen, so is a fringe example?

Players need to be very mindful of unit movement reloads if at war or if risk of war is imminent. Maybe ban movement reloads during war? To show transparency and trust, maybe players should inform reloads of unit movements in their own threads? Lurker advice should be asked in unclear cases. Overall I think it is not necessary to ask permission for reloading minor missclicks if they don't grant new information or involve combat.

[Brian Shanahan]

I completely agree with RefSteel about reloads. No reloads if you reveal new information with a missclick move or if any combat is done. Picking incorrect civic by mistake or sending a worker to a wrong tile within own borders are fine to reload I think.

And to be absolutely clear, I would follow this principle: No reloading after combat has occurred or new information have been revealed by a unit move or action (like recon spell for example). The only exception I could think of for this rule is if a player is defending their capital in the early game with one unit and they want to check combat odds for attacking an approaching barbarian by holding an attack order on the unit (without wanting to attack), but accidentally click to attack instead of only checking the odds. But this is very ulikely to happen, so is a fringe example?

Players need to be very mindful of unit movement reloads if at war or if risk of war is imminent. Maybe ban movement reloads during war? To show transparency and trust, maybe players should inform reloads of unit movements in their own threads? Lurker advice should be asked in unclear cases. Overall I think it is not necessary to ask permission for reloading minor missclicks if they don't grant new information or involve combat.

Agree with all this.

[Aurorarcher]

I think 2a is ideal for being easy and flexible. 2b would stop the game too often. 1 is also okay.

Here’s an idea: Allow reloads on some worker movements and misclicks e.g. starting to build a wrong worker improvment. Or maybe even other movement misclicks or errors as well. General rule with misclicks could be if you gained some information (be that vision or something else) then reload is not allowed but if no new information was found then reload is okay. This would mostly allow reload with misclicks inside your own territory in the early game but not in the wilderness or inside enemy territory.

I can play with 1 or 2a or whatever the consesus is.

Edit: Agreed with all what coldrain said.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I don't have a strong opinion on the rules, but if it were up to me I'd simply assume people won't cheat, and wouldn't restrict reloading outside of wars.

[RefSteel]

That sounds like consensus to me, and if there are any disagreements, I doubt if it should affect player picks or anything, so I'll go ahead and post starts and options now; probably should have done so already instead of waiting, but I did get some helpful additional comments in the meantime! I'll post to the player threads shortly....

[RefSteel]

Okay, all the starts have been posted. I'll add a couple other notes on the map:

1) Like last game, there may be a number of tile improvenents scattered around. Some survive from ancient times, but many were built and tended by roving bands of goblins, who along with their livestock bred from giant rats, tend to make ... uh, creative ... use of the land.

2) I've placed a (very) small number of barbarian units on the map. They aren't high-level units, they won't attack your cities or enter your borders, and even if/when you spot them, you might not know there's anything weird about them unless you know more details about barbarians than most, but I still thought I should at least let you know.

When you've made your civ choices, please post them in your thread; when everyone's done so, I'll post any rerolls for those who ask for them, and when everyone has a final selection, I'll post them all here, update the map with them, and kick the game off!