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[Lord Parkin]

nice to have you included LP.

Thanks, glad to be here.

No AI takeover doesn't mean the game option. It means that game won't continue with AI in the game.

Okay. So am I to understand then that, in the event that someone happens to resign, the game is paused until a replacement human player is found (so that no civ is left as AI)? Or is the civ obliterated from the map if no replacement can be found? (Is that even possible? Let alone potential balance issues...) I think perhaps I'm getting confused somewhere!

Spies - Spies are not big issue for me personally, but in most of the games started here this rule has been used.

Okay, no issues with that, was just curious. I hardly use them in most of my games anyway, so this suits me fine.

snake pick - normal snake pick means unrestricted leaders. Ick order is randomized. Everyone picks either civ or leader during 1st round and then supplements the pick on the reversed 2nd round. However therehas been lengthy discussion in this thread to try something new.

Ah, I see. Well, whatever gets decided, it'll be interesting to play an Unrestricted Leaders pitboss. Don't do it that often. Not sure about how it'll work out with picking civs and leaders at different times though... I guess as long as I'm picking the leader before the civ, I won't mind too much.

[Jowy]

Am I getting confused, or does this mean that any civs which are reverted to AI stay as AI forever? If so, what's the purpose of this option? What happens if someone, for instance, wishes to change their password mid-game (perhaps for a sub)? The usual practice of retiring then logging back in wouldn't work, right? Or perhaps I'm just getting hopelessly confused.

It means that if someone drops out of the game, we'll find a replacement player instead of putting the civ on AI. That's so that nobody can take advantage of the weak AI. Sometimes it takes long to find a replacement, could take even a month since most people are already spoiled. EDIT: Yeah, the game is paused until a replacement is found.

Okay, fair enough. Is this a "flavour" thing or is it to prevent certain exploits? If the latter, then out of curiousity, could someone reference an example where these things have been (presumably) abused to the extent that they are now prohibited? I'm just interested. I'm aware of civic and religion switching missions being a pain and too cheap, as well as issues with pillaging resources, but I didn't think they were that game-breaking - just annoying (at least in my experiences so far). Perhaps I've been blissfully unaware of how bad things can get with espionage and spies.

IIRC there are some game-breaking stuff, but in general most of us just don't like espionage.

I'm a little confused by this... can you elaborate?

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you.

First we put the players in order by random.
For example:
A
B
C
If there's just three players. First A pick either a civ or a leader, his choice. Then B does the same. Then C picks both a civ and a leader. Then B picks whichever he didn't last time around, and then A does the same thing.

[Lord Parkin]

It means that if someone drops out of the game, we'll find a replacement player instead of putting the civ on AI. That's so that nobody can take advantage of the weak AI. Sometimes it takes long to find a replacement, could take even a month since most people are already spoiled.

Uh... potentially a month's delay? I hope you're not serious. Wouldn't that kill any game far faster than an imbalanced acting AI would? We had a few players pull out to AI over the course of the game I'm presently still playing, and it's remained pretty well balanced. (Civstats - it's a 3 vs 5 situation at the end of the tech tree and remarkably still exceptionally closely fought.) The key is to reach some sort of mutual agreement to not take complete advantage of having one (or multiple) AI neighbours. We basically ignore them for the most part in our game.

Anyway, my point is that I hope month (or even week) long delays aren't a particularly common occurrence in these games. I assume it's fairly irregular that someone pulls out without a sub, let alone that it takes that long to replace them. I hope so anyway.

IIRC there are some game-breaking stuff, but in general most of us just don't like espionage.

Fair enough, I'm pretty much in that camp with you. I don't mind the passive benefits, but I think the active missions aren't hugely well implemented/balanced.

First we put the players in order by random.
For example:
A
B
C
If there's just three players. First A pick either a civ or a leader, his choice. Then B does the same. Then C picks both a civ and a leader. Then B picks whichever he didn't last time around, and then A does the same thing.

Right, I've got it. Seems fair enough to me.

[Sullla]

Espionage is not balanced for Multiplayer. At all. You can pay a pittance in espionage points and continuously revolt another player into Anarchy by forcing them to change civics constantly. It also makes attacking extremely difficult, as each player can put invisible, unkillable sentries inside enemy territory.

Just because most people aren't aware that you can do these things doesn't make them balanced. Glad to have you here, Lord Parkin.

[Lord Parkin]

Espionage is not balanced for Multiplayer. At all. You can pay a pittance in espionage points and continuously revolt another player into Anarchy by forcing them to change civics constantly.

I'm aware of the civic-switching issue. However, the only time it occurred to a significant extent in a game I was playing (used against me), it was already so ridiculously far won that it didn't make a difference. (Civstats and forum for the last few weeks of that particular game, if anyone's interested.)

It also makes attacking extremely difficult, as each player can put invisible, unkillable sentries inside enemy territory.

I've never really had that problem, but I can see how it might be an issue.

Just because most people aren't aware that you can do these things doesn't make them balanced.

Of course.

Glad to have you here, Lord Parkin.

Thanks!

[Ruff_Hi]

It also makes attacking extremely difficult, as each player can put invisible, unkillable sentries inside enemy territory.

Isn't this a little bit backwards? Normally when you attack you are in their territory so them having spies in your territory won't provide much benefit. Further, applying this thinking further, we should also be banning aircraft as they provide exactly the same sort of information.

City visibility is a great benefit when fighting someone else, but if you are fighting someone that has visibility into your cities, then you can use that against them by feeding them false or misleading information.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Having information that an attack is coming because you can see all the troop build-up and where they are heading is indeed a broken exploit I think, when there is no way to counter it by the opposition. At least with a sentry net, you know you are being sentried and could always kill those units.

I had set sign-ups to end by today. It seems we still have an influx of people coming by to check out this thread, and we haven't completely finalized the drafting method yet, so I am willing to keep sign-ups open until the 24th unless someone has a major objection to that.

I also need to hear from the fence-sitters like Rego and sunrise. Looks like nearly all of what sunrise wants in a set of features is going to be covered. I am not going to force anyone to have a teammate, but a significant number already do, and there are 3 people who have volunteered as Dedlurkers, so we should be in good shape if someone drops out.

LordParkin, the month long delay is very unlikely because most teams are going to have a teammate or a dedlurker who can fill-in to avoid delays. Were you looking to play solo or join up with someone?

EDIT: Sign-ups updated.

[Shoot the Moon]

LordParkin, the month long delay is very unlikely because most teams are going to have a teammate or a dedlurker who can fill-in to avoid delays. Were you looking to play solo or join up with someone?

Agreed, it shouldn't take nearly as long as a month. PBEM 8 and 10 just found replacements in one day, for example.

In regards to spies: I seem to remember PBEM 1 had some issues with espionage being enabled (specifically civics and religion revolts to the point where the game was no longer enjoyable to play), although it was so long ago I might remember it as being more of an issue than it truly was. In general though, spies make a sneak attack next to impossible, making any attack between two civs at tech and production parity nearly impossible.

[Lord Parkin]

Having information that an attack is coming because you can see all the troop build-up and where they are heading is indeed a broken exploit I think, when there is no way to counter it by the opposition. At least with a sentry net, you know you are being sentried and could always kill those units.

Right, although having a large enough net of Spies would cost quite a few hammers in the early game, and personally I think most people would be better off investing those hammers into military. Either way though, it's a moot point if we're banning them outright, which I'm fine with.

LordParkin, the month long delay is very unlikely because most teams are going to have a teammate or a dedlurker who can fill-in to avoid delays. Were you looking to play solo or join up with someone?

Okay, that's good to know. Personally I was intending on playing solo if that's ok (bit of a obsessive freak here ) - though if it's necessary to have a teammate I can find one. I'm very rarely away myself, and if I am I'll arrange a sub in advance.

[sunrise089]

Uh... potentially a month's delay? I hope you're not serious. Wouldn't that kill any game far faster than an imbalanced acting AI would? We had a few players pull out to AI over the course of the game I'm presently still playing, and it's remained pretty well balanced.

Glad to have you as well. The above though I don't think is representative of our RB MP series' for two reasons. First, on the positive side we've been pretty resilient and long delays have generally been overcome. On the negative side, but as a testament to the level of skill in these games, I think adding in an AI would be game-breaking for balance terms.