FFH2 PBEM XVII Organizing/Tech Thread

[Mardoc]

So, I think we're agreed on settings. Here's what I understand them to be:

Difficulty level? Per mapmaker, somewhere around Prince
Map: Largish, with 3 non-centralized and hence more accessible "hill" cities, relatively easy to kill defenders. Mist is working on this.
Huts, Lairs, Unique Features and Living World. Huts off, everything else on. Wildlands – No
Compact Enforced – Off
Human Takeover for Basium/Hyborem – Yes. Any lurkers know a way to make this easier when the time comes? If Mist adds and kills AI civs, does that help?
Last Days – Off
Orthus – Off
Bans: Elohim, Illians, likely OO (mapmaker request).
Leaders: Restricted
Diplo: Full

Points - any turn you own a 'hill' city, you collect a point. Up to three points/turn if you've got them all. Any time you capture a city belonging to a civ who doesn't currently have a hill, you lose points equal to the population of the city at the time of capture. When the game ends due to a normal victory, the civ with the most points is the victor, regardless of who got the in-game victory. We'll keep track of points in the tech thread; announce when you take a hill, please.

Assuming we're in agreement here, or at least that none of them are gamebreakers, we should move on to civ selection. Send your top 3-5 choices to Mist, and he'll sort us out, with tiebreakers per random.org. Once everyone's picked, Mist can post our results here. Feel free to post your choices in thread if you don't mind people seeing how your mind works.

[Mist]

Human Takeover for Basium/Hyborem – Yes. Any lurkers know a way to make this easier when the time comes? If Mist adds and kills AI civs, does that help?

There's a way to start the game with AI takeover enabled, which then allows to use Pitboss to claim Hybo/Basium. I can do the whole process once it's required.

Bans: Elohim, Illians, likely OO (mapmaker request).

I'm happy if you agree to not use tsunami and no walking on water. There's no reason to remove Hemach, Saverous and Tower of Complacency from the game if it can be avoided.

[DaveV]

Human Takeover for Basium/Hyborem – Yes.

Though the AIs are pretty lame, especially if you're at Prince difficulty, you risk messing up your turn order in a big way if you add two new human players in arbitrary positions.

[Katon]

When the game ends due to a normal victory, the civ with the most points is the victor, regardless of who got the in-game victory. We'll keep track of points in the tech thread; announce when you take a hill, please.

Lurker rules question: how do you see this working if someone gets points with their original civ and then switches to Hyborem? Do the points go with the player, or stay with the civ?

[Mardoc]

There's a way to start the game with AI takeover enabled, which then allows to use Pitboss to claim Hybo/Basium. I can do the whole process once it's required.

Excellent. That's easier than PBEM3 had it, for sure.

I'm happy if you agree to not use tsunami and no walking on water. There's no reason to remove Hemach, Saverous and Tower of Complacency from the game if it can be avoided.

Seems like a reasonable way to handle it. That way the OO culture is still available, too.

Lurker rules question: how do you see this working if someone gets points with their original civ and then switches to Hyborem? Do the points go with the player, or stay with the civ?

I think the only way someone would want to switch is if they keep their points. So points stay per player, not per civ.

Though the AIs are pretty lame, especially if you're at Prince difficulty, you risk messing up your turn order in a big way if you add two new human players in arbitrary positions.

True, but it won't be me who rules there. The vote was pretty overwhelming for humans to be able to swap. Maybe if we get a volunteer for Hyborem now, we can set up the turn order to take them into account too?

Speaking of which: Please post your playing times, everyone. I suspect we're going to end up with something like this:
Jkaen
Commodore/DaveV
GasparCo
Amelia
Ravus Sol

But I'm not sure. I'm especially not sure about Amelia and Ravus, I tend to think of you two as 'over on the other side of the world somewhere' without thinking about the details.

[Amelia]

GMT + 8, Playing time 8 PM to 1.30 AM.

Edit: And i believe points stick to the player if they swap.

[Mardoc]

GMT + 8, Playing time 8 PM to 1.30 AM.

So in GMT that's...1200-1730?

[Ellimist]

+1 point for each turn a prize city is held sounds fun; I assume it's each turn you start holding the city? However, the negative points thing seems like an impractical/unfun way to accomplish the "king of the hill" goal.

What about a rule that no wars can happen unless one of the parties controls a prize city? If you want to go to war with someone, you'll have to either hold one of the prizes or wait until they do. If a war is ongoing and the relevant prize city(s) are lost, the war ends.

This could even make the Svartalfar worldspell relevant for once.

[Cyneheard]

+1 point for each turn a prize city is held sounds fun; I assume it's each turn you start holding the city? However, the negative points thing seems like an impractical/unfun way to accomplish the "king of the hill" goal.

What about a rule that no wars can happen unless one of the parties controls a prize city? If you want to go to war with someone, you'll have to either hold one of the prizes or wait until they do. If a war is ongoing and the relevant prize city(s) are lost, the war ends.

This could even make the Svartalfar worldspell relevant for once.

Lurker suggestions:

What about this, to create a little more risk-reward with capturing hill cities, AND allow for late-game comebacks (After all, making up a 10pt deficit could be really hard if your opponent's hill city is just as impenetrable as yours):

Points are scored as follows:
1 point/hill city/turn
+Pop for cities captured/sacked from players who own hill cities. For one thing, it means that the hill city isn't the only thing you need to defend...

Also, I think there should be some restrictions on wars between two players who don't own hill cities, but preventing any and all war declarations leaves a lot of room for mischief. If, instead, offensive wars were banned, I'd think you'd prevent some of the really screwy actions (i.e., only units in neutral territory could be attacked, or cities cannot be attacked at all unless either the aggressor or defender owns a hill city: one could still pillage and choke, just not sack).

[Mardoc]

+1 point for each turn a prize city is held sounds fun; I assume it's each turn you start holding the city? However, the negative points thing seems like an impractical/unfun way to accomplish the "king of the hill" goal.

What about a rule that no wars can happen unless one of the parties controls a prize city? If you want to go to war with someone, you'll have to either hold one of the prizes or wait until they do. If a war is ongoing and the relevant prize city(s) are lost, the war ends.

This could even make the Svartalfar worldspell relevant for once.

I'm not invested in any particular ruleset. That said, I'm not sure your proposal fixes the problem we had in mind.

What we're trying to do is shut down Jkaen's nightmare scenario of waiting until endgame to worry about the hills, then taking the hills and reducing the opponents to insignificant, followed by a hundred turns of hitting enter to win the game. But that's still quite possible under your ruleset.

What we're looking for here is a way to make it so that once the first hill falls, everyone has to be focused on them. And so that there's no reason to keep playing if the game gets to a boring point.