Hi all,
curious if there's any upcoming 1.5.8 patch that we should expect. I saw a number of bugs reported in the thread and wondering about that.

Thanks to all that contribute to this amazing game.

It has occurred to me that there might be value in having a sort of default set of house rules for our Civ4 MP games. We have general principles and a general community understanding of what is and isn't OK, but there's less consensus than I would like. It's also extremely common to launch games without discussing these things.


To solve this, I would like to propose a set of house rules that will serve as a default for any new game, but importantly can be overridden by player choice at time of new game launch. The purpose here is not to make a blanket ban on a bunch of things site-wide, but rather to make a default selection that must be intentionally deviated from rather than a vague set of principles that is just sort of in everyone's heads. The following rules are my proposal for what the default should look like, but I'd like to get feedback here. I'm ideally looking to land on something everyone finds generally agreeable and inoffensive. Important detail: when in doubt, this will lean more towards what is most common in RB games and will not always match my personal preference. For example, I'd prefer a stricter reload policy for big games, but maybe the existence of a baseline here will encourage us to think about it explicitly next time.


This is also not meant to be exhaustive. I'm not going to get into the weeds over things like settler races, map trading, etc. Those can be addressed for individual games. Finally, full diplo games are rare here, so these rules are not optimized for that. It would be recommended that a diplo game consider overriding rules as appropriate.


Rule 1: When in doubt, don't be a jerk, and default towards good-faith play. This one is more nebulous, but if there's doubt over interpretations of other rules, this one governs all. If you think you have found a way to exploit a loophole in the rules, you are violating this rule.


Rule 2: Double Moves in Simultaneous games are banned during wartime. The declaring player may choose which half of the turn timer they'd like to have, and the responsibility is on them to not double move the other player. It is also considered good practice to alert the opposing player via PM when it is their turn. Multi-party wars should play in the same order when appropriate to prevent advantages gained via swapping turn order.


Rule 3: Turn timer camping is strongly discouraged. There may be the odd case where it's unavoidable - such as following a potential but not yet declared turn split - but if you find yourself doing it with any sort of frequency, you are violating this rule as well as Rule 1.


Rule 4: Unit, city, and gold gifting are banned. Good-faith deals involving cities and gold are acceptable. An example of a good-faith deal would be gold for gold-per-turn loans, purchasing a city, extorting a city/gold for peace, etc. An example of a bad-faith deal would be giving a city to player X in order to deny it to player Y, or gifting half your cities for peace when only one or two are truly threatened. Unit gifts in a non-diplo game are impossible to negotiate, so they are never allowed.


Rule 5: Reloads are granted for mechanical mistakes but not mental mistakes. If you misclick your stack in the wrong direction or your cat walks on your keyboard, that is a mechanical mistake, and a reload will generally be granted if it is not harmful to other players to do so. If you forget to whip a unit, that is a mental mistake, and this will generally not be reloaded.


Rule 6: Destroying things in your own civ for zero tactical/strategic gain to deny spoils to would-be attackers is not allowed. If the destruction improves your position in the game, this is generally allowed. Examples of acceptable destruction that improve your position include: whipping a unit every single turn possible, replacing cottages with different improvements to improve defensive capacity, etc. Examples of unacceptable destruction are self-pillaging your own tile improvements or whipping a city several times in one turn.


Would love to get some feedback on this. Perhaps there's something important I've missed or some suggested refinements. My general hope is we can refine this and have this in place prior to new games launching. This would have 0 impact on existing games, unless of course players in existing games would like to unanimously adopt these.

I'm interested in starting a new EitB PBEM game. Something like 4-6 players would be good for turn pace?

I understood RefSteel was available to make a map (thanks a lot, previous ones have been great!).

If enough players sign up, I was thinking of just copying the settings from EitB PBEM LVII. This can of course be discussed further.

EDIT: Added game information below.

Confirmed players and play windows:
BING_XI_LAO: 01:00 to 15:00 GMT
xist10: 9:00 to 23:00 GMT
Aurorarcher: 16:00 GMT to 21:00 GMT but can often play earlier
coldrain: 16:00 to 21:00 GMT preferred
Brian Shanahan: 18:30 to 23:00 GMT
DaveV: 23:00 to 2:00 (and/or 11:00 to 13:00)

Map-making guidelines

• Minimum distance between starts: 15 tiles
  
• Land tiles per player: 200-300
  
• Map-script: Map-maker choice
  
• Continent + start distribution: All players on same land mass
  
• Amount of ocean/water: Map-maker choice
  
• Islands (amount and size): Map-maker choice
  
• Lushness: Not totally barren plains or desert hell, otherwise Map-maker choice.
  
• Blessing of Amatheon: Map-maker choice
  
• Unique features: Yes, but balanced
  
• Strategic resources: ensure copper, horses, iron, mithril, reagents, incence, and blasting powder in all starting areas (not necessarily in capital BFC)
  
• Nominal map-size: standard (affects tech costs, amount of Kuriotates mega cities, etc.)
  

• AI diplo
  
• Quick speed
  

• Emperor difficulty
  
• No tech trading
  
• No vassal states
  
• No espionage
  
• No Acheron
  
• No Orthus
  
• Wildlands
  
• Living world
  
• Tribal huts: no
  
• Lairs, barrows, graveyards, etc: yes
  
• Mana nodes: two guaranteed sources in starting area (previous game had one)
  
• Normal settler at start (no bonus vision or movement)
  

• Samhain banned (if Illians in game)
  

I will be on a short vacation from Nov 28-Dec 2. Then I will also be away from Dec 8 - 14. During this time I would need someone to cover turns for PB 81. I will leave directions in my thread for those periods.

I am not sure how feasible subbing is for Civ 6 considering PYDT and if anyone would volunteer. But if so, I will also produce directions.

I promised myself I wouldn't play more than one game at a time, suddenly I find myself involved in four

Three city elimination is a weird, weird format, should be fun.

Password:

Classical start era ... what themes are related to classical? I'm not into classic cars. I enjoy classical music but am by no means a music aficionado. Classical mechanics though, that is a starting point that I can work with to spin off a theme. Physics is fun! Classical mechanics is interesting, but since it was solved a couple hundred years ago, let's go Quantum! Clearly the capital must be Aether.

And I'll start you off with this video ... yes it's 6 years old, yes it's 40 minutes long, yes it's worth watching if you are at all interested in physics, electricity, magnetism, optics:

I finally have a good game-appropriate theme! Theme will be things that come in 3s. I have so many ideas.

An example of a map we'll not be using:

   

After the first was poorly shaped and so couldn't accomodate well-spaced players, the second pangaea I rolled with the settings Cornflakes suggested somehow included the above ... lovely? ... astro island. If you check the minimap, you can also see the mainland that looks something like a dinosaur standing hungrily over this ... delicious? ... land. I somehow felt this wasn't what the players were looking for....

The third map looked lovely, but had two major problems, one of which was again that water would be too important. The fourth looks promising though if the players are sold on these settings and remain with only four. (Or for that matter if they back-pedal and want fewer land tiles per player but get a fifth to join.) I'll post it if it looks like that's what we're going with after all.

Hello everyone!

What are the current best strategies to play against lunatic, with CoM II?

I've been trying a sorcery + nature run (focus magic, flying sprites; aura of majesty; etc). 

I'd like to try a new one with death, or perhaps with fire.

Suggestions are welcome!