03-05-2004 19:42									#61
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

It's a "literary" reference. Pop-culture, but pretty obscure...

	03-05-2004 19:47									#62
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

have you found any 'volunteers' for the "acc.prod-elim-tiny-pbem" yet?

if you can wait until this weekend, i could help out... my preferable playing times are approx. 18:00-24:00 UK-time

	04-05-2004 11:40									#63
	Increase Your PM Length

The 'volunteers' I'm looking for are for a trial AP-Elimination game I'll play in myself. The ones I'd like to start here would be 'official' tournament qualifiers for reserve players who wish to earn priority consideration for replacement situations and have some fun in the process...

	04-05-2004 16:03									#64
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Well, either way I'm glad to participate.

	07-05-2004 19:37									#65
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by Rommel2D I haven't brought up planned absences since the beginning of the March Madness! thread and no one had any comments then. I just posted this in the game D thread: quote: ...the plan is to allow everyone [up to] two weeks worth of time to 'freeze' the game if they know they are going to be gone. Beyond these two weeks, either you have to find yourself a temporary sub (who will become inelligable to replace anyone else later in the game) or I will play the turns, following any instructions you leave me. Does anyone see any potential problems with this?

Good system

Do we arrange this with our fellow players?

	07-05-2004 20:31									#66
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Just post your advance notice in the tracking thread as soon as you know about the absence, and how you would like it handled. If you're freezing the game clock, list a start/stop time and date in GMT. If you'd like me to play your turns, also email me any instructions/strategy you have in mind.

	07-05-2004 21:04									#67
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Rommell, any news on the elim/accel production game?

	08-05-2004 10:39									#68
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Snoopy, you and MFCamillus have been the only ones to express definite interest so far. There should be a new Apolyton news item on the tournament soon announcing the prizes being awarded to the eventual champions, so I'm guessing more people will be checking in here soon. I'll also PM everyone else already in the replacement pool about this sometime tomorrow...

	09-05-2004 00:55									#69
	I can post again! Inflate your Upload Space

Just letting folks know i'm still available & can FINALLY report & add my 2 cents worth again.
Yes, i'd interested also.

Tho i would throw out; that a balance between the 2 would be to have TWO city Elim. 1 city/instant death = SO unreal. There's never been a war in history that doesn't have opportunity to counterattack + has anyone ever heard of a nation that vanished instantly because ONE of it's cities was over run??

PBEM is SUCH a better system than the 2 hours shootouts... as long as the dropout / slow cycle doesn't get out of hand. Life's a tradeoff, ain't it.

	09-05-2004 05:52									#70
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Eh, one city is the same as two city elim to me, maybe not quite the same strat but either way a strat game. Not realistic, of course. After all, how much of Civ really is realistic? But it's fun. Not sure elim with 2 cities is possible (without asking you to retire once you lose 2 cities anyways, which is too complicated and hard to enforce without lots of discussion or asking rommel to pay very close attention), since it's just a check box i think in the victory conditions box ...

	09-05-2004 11:47									#71
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

The fourth post in this thread has been updated with information on the games:

quote: After two weeks of civing, all games are keeping ahead of the turn per day pace. The ratios: Coliseum A is at 2670BC (sorry ricketyclik, I'm not buying your 1275 line...), averaging 1.86 turns per day. Can they break the 2.0 barrier and hold it? Coliseum B is at 3000BC despite restarting with a new player and losing track of the save over the last couple days. With only 12 days since the restart, they are averaging 1.58 turns per day. Coliseum C is at 2950BC and trying real hard to get a scedule together, but apparently spending too much time at the pub. They still have 1.43 turns per day on the record. Coliseum D is only at 3250BC. Probably due to some confusion with richthur subing for Soltz and not having Apolyton access for awhile, the are just ahead of the TPD barrier at 1.14.

If anyone has stats or screenshots from the F8 or F11 screens they want to email me, I'll see what I can do about editing them in there.

	09-05-2004 11:53									#72
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I didn't get a chance to send out PMs about the Elimination games- will do so after some sleep...

	09-05-2004 17:03									#73
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: After two weeks of civing, all games are keeping ahead of the turn per day pace.

When the time limit for each player is 24 hours, the games can get in a turn every 4 days and still be within the limit.

IMO our game (D) will not average much more than 1 turn per day for that reason. We are content waiting 12-24 hours to play our turn after receiving it, and that doesn't have much to do with richthur subbing for Soltz.

	09-05-2004 20:51									#74
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Thank U, Alexman. The sub was NOT any source of slow down, beyond the fact that valid, usable emails were not provided me BEFORE receiving the 1st turn. We had several multiple turn days = fun & fast.

As for posting, that very avoidable (read, FIX or don't bother, Apoyton) situation has obviously been corrected.

IMO, posting after EVERY turn seems a rather time & forum wasting activity. If the game is moving along smoothly, why bother filling this space & EVERYONE's emails with doz's of notices? Why not manage by exception, rather than by the lowest common denominator. Work this like a business, rather than like some mindless, trust-no-one-to-do-their-job, government operation. Point of fact; did the game suffer at all due to my not being able to post? The forums were correctly used to address the exception; that the sub wasn't given valid emails, & got it corrected. Why fill them with what is expected / normal / routine ? Keep them clear for IMPORTANT stuff.

Think about it gents. If these things last as long as U hope / plan, there will be MEGABITS of totally meaningless & useless posts. Page after page of trying to find the IMPORTANT & fun stuff.

	09-05-2004 20:56									#75
	Got spare money?

eh, but posting tells the next person that you've sent them the save -- the random 5% of the time that any of us screw up and send to the wrong person or think we've sent and didn't, it will let them know that something went wrong. More than one of my games has been delayed by *not* posting after a send that didn't actually get sent ... and these posts don't exactly take up much room on the server ...

	09-05-2004 20:58									#76
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Snoopy, FYI
To do an instant 2-city Elim game, one simply sets the # of cities to "2" (or any other # preferred) & the game will do the rest.

	10-05-2004 02:02									#77
	Tracking Threads Got spare money?

My apologies for all the Pulitzer Prize winning literature getting lost due to the S/N ratio in the PBEM forum.

In this tournament, posting turns is required because it allows me to enforce the turn clock, but I've noticed it is a good idea in any game to save time. If you save 12, 24, or however many hours finding out why the turn is stopped, it can add up to a huge amount of time saved by the end of a PBEM game.

Just a few stats pulled from the tournaments:

C3C Tournament:

Game#1: .95TPD- all four players post turns regularly
Game#2: .24TPD- 3 players posting regularly, 1 semi-regularly
Game#3: .68TPD- 2 posting regularly, 1 occasionally
Game#4: .58TPD- 2 posting regularly, 1 occasionally
Game#5: .19TPD- 1 posting occasionally.

Game 2 is slow because GhengisFarb has been mobilized/demobilized for the Army a few times (hope he got all those extra shields :-), and now won't do a dual install to upgrade the game.

If you want a prime example of the point I'm trying to make, look at the Game#5 thread. The game starts out slowly, with occasional posts. Then they decided posting in the tracker thread would be useless and have had 5 turns in as many weeks since then.

By contrast, in Game#1, I must have sent wrong turns or forgot attachements a dozen times before I reorganized my file system, ADG has had various PC problems, and predesad has had RL issues crop up a few times. We kept each other updated in the tracker thread and got the game back on track as soon as possible. Without regualr tracker updates, I'd be surprised if we would have half as many turns done as we do.

Iron Civer Tournament:

ColiseumA: 1.86TPD- 4 players regular
ColiseumB: 1.58TPD- 3 regular, 1 occasional [edit: should be: .42 ]
ColiseumC: 1.43TPD- 4 players regular
ColiseumD: 1.14TPD- 2 regular, 2 occasional

It's hard to determine posting frequencies yet, but so far our games have fit the pattern. I'd say having well arranged goups is the biggest factor, but I think it's hard to deny a correlation between speed of play and diligence in the tracker thread.

Saying we should only post in the tracker threads when the game has stopped, is like saying we shouldn't worry about sprinkler systems in buildings, just find some water if the building ever catches on fire.

Last edited by Rommel2D on 10-05-2004 at 22:01

	10-05-2004 02:45									#78
	Suffering from ads?

quote: Originally posted by alexman When the time limit for each player is 24 hours, the games can get in a turn every 4 days and still be within the limit. IMO our game (D) will not average much more than 1 turn per day for that reason. We are content waiting 12-24 hours to play our turn after receiving it, and that doesn't have much to do with richthur subbing for Soltz.

To strech a turn out to 4 days without exceeding the limit would require a bit of player coordination. I figure the let-it-be average would be more like 2 days per turn, so anything over a turn per day is pretty good.

During the substitution, smellymummy had the turn sent in time, but hadn't noticed the substitution in the thread or posted his sent message so that someone else could catch the mistake. Richthur then had problems because he wasn't familliar with a few Apolyton conventions, and vice-versa. Not to blame anyone for messing up, but you could have had a few more turns done during that time.

	10-05-2004 02:58									#79
	Re: Tracking Threads Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Rommel2D My apologies for all the Pulitzer Prize winning literature getting lost due to the S/N ratio in the PBEM forum.

still better than some threads in "other games" where posts consist of 3 lettres (like the chess games) or just 1 (hangman)

quote: Saying we should only post in the tracker threads when the game has stopped, is like saying we shouldn't worry about sprinkler systems in buildings, just find some water if the building ever catches on fire.

i agree about the mandatory posts. it costs 30seconds more of your life but helps everyone!

	10-05-2004 04:14									#80
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Thanks for the clarification Richtur ... i've never made an elim game before so I didn't know about the #. Still stand by my feeling that 1 city is better than 2 tho

	10-05-2004 05:54									#81
	Support Apolyton

quote: Originally posted by richthur To do an instant 2-city Elim game, one simply sets the # of cities to "2" (or any other # preferred) & the game will do the rest.

Richthur, where are you entering this number? I've set up a few elimination PBEMs now and just looked at the editor. All I see are yes/no options for elimination mode. I kind of like the idea of double or triple elimination, tho.

	10-05-2004 06:02									#82
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Scenario Properties->Victory Point Limits->City Elimination Count.

	10-05-2004 08:43									#83
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

ahh now i feel less dumb, since i never looked in THAT detail.

	13-05-2004 18:49									#84
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

a general question: should we define some "rules of war" in the iron-civer-etiquette?

issues like:
1) having to officially declare war BEFORE entering the culture borders [yes|no]
against the AI it harms your reputation, but with only humans around they'd only be allowed to react by forming alliances which isn't possible before writing AND will take at least 1 full round to get accepted.

2) unprovoked worker snatching/settler bopping allowed? [yes|no]

it's imho to do that fair against a deity/sid AI, but it's a bit nasty against human players.


i don't they have to be both "yes", but it would be could to say if these things are considered unfair or ok.

ps: to my co-players: don't worry, no war planned yet

	15-05-2004 08:02									#85
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I'd think such rules of war are a part of what should be worked out in diplomacy as the game develops. I don't think a delay in forming alliances limits thier effectiveness. [edit: There's nothing to stop you from telling any of the other tribes you've met that you were attacked without provocation and that that player should not be trusted. An embassy/alliance would be required to do something like asking another player to attack on their border the same turn as you plan to.] Unless you can think of an example where war weariness (read: game mechanics) would be warped somehow...

I have limited PC access for a couple weeks. I will probably be a little slower catching deliquent turns and might not be able to update the threads much.

Last edited by Rommel2D on 15-05-2004 at 12:19

	15-05-2004 12:08									#86
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

BTW, I should have enough web/email access to organize the replacement games this weekend. If everyone interested would email me with their edress and passwords for the games, we should have almost enough for 2 four-player AP-Elimination games.

	16-05-2004 12:57									#87
	Elimination Rounds Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

For the AP Elimination replacement games, I have definite replies from:
snoopy369
MFCamillus

Probably interested are:
richthur
Bongo
Krill

Anelos has given a definite maybe, and jshelr said 'one more game', but has since taken a spot in the first tournament's game#1.

If Arnelos or jshelr are interested they would make up an American timezone game along with snoop, MFC, and *thur. If both are interested, one could play with Bongo and Krill for a GMT X-Atlantic game.

So, we could use at least one more European/African timezone player, probably more- especially due to the extra coliseum game in the tournament... Anyone?

	17-05-2004 06:31									#88
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Rom; Just sent U my preferred password via email reply. Listed my "handle" as "Milo", rather than "richthur" as shows here. Didn't want to confuse thee. Got so many damn handles & PW's between gaming sites & work, can bearly keep up with them.

Hopefully U will start a new thread for the use of AP/Elim games/ And send it to us?

Thanks once again for all your hard work & time for all of our enjoyment. Here, here!!

	18-05-2004 11:49									#89
	Put an end to popups!

Arnelos is in for the replacement elimination game. I will set everything up when I next get the chance. We still need players for the GMT regions!

	22-05-2004 08:07									#90
	Increase Your PM Length

Ok, how about:
MFCamillus (pacific)
richthur (pacific)
Arnelos (eastern)
snoopy369 (central)
for the turn order in the replacement elimination mode game?

If no one objects, I'll start up the game and send it out later tonight or sometime tomorrow...