FFH PBEM XIV Organizing/Tech Thread

[Ilios]

Lurkers pick Leader/Civ: 2 votes (Ilios, Ichabod)

Players pick Leader/Civ: 1 vote (Tasunke)

I wonder which leader Tasunke will pick...

[DaveV]

I'd like to do a player pick, using the scheme outlined in Ichabod's post.

To cast it in FfH terms, for clarity:

*** Phase 1:

Player 1: Ethne of Elohim
Player 2: Garrim of Luchuirp
Player 3: Cassiel of Grigori
Player 3: Mahala of Dovielo
Player 2: Decius of Malakim
Player 1: Faeryl of Svartalfar

*** Phase 2:

Player 1 lists his 4 preferred civs, in order:
Cassiel
Garrim
Mahala
Decius of Malakim

Player 2:
Cassiel
Faeryl
Ethne
Mahala

Player 3:
Decius of Malakim
Faeryl
Ethne
Garrim

Player 2 wins the coin flip, gets Cassiel. Player 1 gets Garrim, his 2nd choice. Player 3 gets Decius of Malakim.

Metagame hint: pick two civs you don't want to play, but don't mind playing against.

[Mardoc]

an explanation of how the technical side of things works

It's actually very easy. You'll receive a save from the previous player. Open it up, choose a password, play your turn like normal. When you're done, hit enter, and it will automatically save the turn in your PBEM folder, with a name like RBFFHPBEM14_AD-0030_to_ExampleName.CivBeyondSwordSave. Send this file to ExampleName, and you're done. Don't save the game yourself, that leaves it still on your own turn.

There's only one detail you need to be aware of. Civ4 doesn't handle overwriting files gracefully, at all. Therefore any time that it would be creating a new file with the same name as one that already exists, you need to make sure to move or delete the old file before you start. This most commonly happens on turn 1 (because FFH has T0 and T1, but Civ calls them both T1), and anytime you replay a turn for any reason.

Often, the players will set up an e-mail forwarder/tracker, but you don't need to be involved in the technical side of that. If/when that's working, the only change is that you send the generated save to the tracker address instead of to ExampleName directly.

Enjoy! I'm going to have fun lurking this, I can tell .

[Tasunke]

I'd like to do a player pick, using the scheme outlined in Ichabod's post.

To cast it in FfH terms, for clarity:

Player 1: Ethne of Elohim
Player 2: Garrim of Luchuirp
Player 3: Cassiel of Grigori
Player 3: Mahala of Dovielo
Player 2: Decius of Malakim
Player 1: Faeryl of Svartalfar

Player 1 lists his 4 preferred civs, in order:
Cassiel
Garrim
Mahala
Decius of Malakim

Player 2:
Cassiel
Faeryl
Ethne
Mahala

Player 3:
Decius of Malakim
Faeryl
Ethne
Garrim

Player 2 wins the coin flip, gets Cassiel. Player 1 gets Garrim, his 2nd choice. Player 3 gets Decius of Malakim.

Metagame hint: pick two civs you don't want to play, but don't mind playing against.

This. (if picked by players)

[DaveV]

Just a comment on what I had in mind in terms of city and unit naming: creativity is fine, but no in-game information may be conveyed. For example, naming a unit "Ralph the Obstreperous" would be fine, but calling him "Just Exploring", "Peace now", "Kill Vamps", "Border 2 tiles E", etc., would be against the rules.

[Tasunke]

Oh I see xD (yea, I'm fine with that)

[Bobchillingworth]

Don't save the game yourself, that leaves it still on your own turn.

There's actually nothing wrong with saving the game, as long as you can remember to actually come back to it later to end the turn- I've saved PBEM turns before midway through and then come back to them later (you just load them like any other save file, type in the password and it'll be where you last left off).

[Cyneheard]

As the progenitor of the somewhat-successful PBEM10 setup (I think there we got slammed hard b/c civs were chosen before knowing how much water would be there), it's good to see that it's being put to better use here: I think this is far superior to a "junk civ" set-up, which is (mostly) what happened in PBEM10.

[Ilios]

Lurkers pick Leader/Civ: 2 votes (Ilios, Ichabod)

Players pick Leader/Civ: 2 votes (Tasunke, DaveV)


It's still not clear to me what you guys have in mind if players end up deciding. In BtS PBEM 10, I assumed that the players had decided on a couple of rarely played Leaders/Civ before starting the Snakepick.

But from DaveV's post, I understand we're to simply send our four preferred Leaders/Civs, which is how most of the FFH pbem's were set up.

[Mist]

I'd rather you take an Erebus Continents or Pangea map, and modify it, as opposed to create something handmade from scratch.

Still, I am not opposed to you making a map, although I would appreciate if you kept balance foremost in your decision making, as the priority (instead of creativity). Not to say you can't be creative, but try to not be so creative that it becomes unbalanced (like that PBEM game where Orcs and Illians killed all XD)

Thank you

My prefered map would be similar to FFH PBEM 2. FFH PBEM 1 and 3 were nice too. They were very natural looking and reasonably balanced.

You guys are so not fun PBEM IV came out of as a train wreck partly due to combination of game settings and mostly because nobody on the lurker side thought of combining FtH and Stasis.

I have an idea of a map that fits Standard, Land Based, Balanced and ( after a fashion ) Natural Looking. I'd like to draw that. But if majority of players is set on PBEM2 Tectonic/Lakes style script, I won't go against your wishes.