13-06-2003 08:36									#1
	The Time Clock Put an end to popups!

As mentioned in another thread...

Firaxis has caused a couple of major delays on week ends. They are not the only ones to cause delays, but they were unlucky enough to do it twice in two weeks. A discussion has begun on what to do about teams that run down to 0 on the clock. That discussion can be found here:
http://civ3dg.1bigcommunity.com/com...A48%3A00+PM&iG=

To summarise: the leaders of a few teams are very upset, and want serious sanctions levied against any team that goes to 0 on the clock. The discussion has focused on forcing that team to skip a turn or more. It gets sort of complicated at points, so I advise all to review the linked thread.

We need to come to a consensus as to what our position on this issue will be. We have some time, as formal proposals are just starting to take shape. Please review that thread and make your views known in this thread.

What should Apolyton support as action against a team who hits 0 on the clock?

	13-06-2003 08:45									#2
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I can think of several reasons not to agree to the sanctions as they are being discussed.

1. The sanctioned team would become easier pickings for a dishonourable neighbour. That may not matter too much now, but later on, when a team could conceivably take another team entirely out if the target could not respond on a given turn (after RR and Cavalry) this could destroy the balance of the game. Thus the sanction would hurt all teams, save the dishonourable team.

2. It could disrupt trades with partners of the sanctioned team. They would not be able to renew trades, or make new ones while sanctioned. They would not be there to pick a new tech when an old one is finished. It could cost the allies of the sanctioned team a wonder race, and much gold (if the slider had to be used in the absence of luxuries). Hense, again it could hurt teams other than the team who hit 0 on the clock.

3. The clock is being kept by one of the militants for the idea of sanctions. There have been problems in the past where a given team lost time because of the negligence of the time keeper. There is no way that I can see that we should agree to a clock with sanctions if it is not kept by a neutral party. That then brings up the question of who would actually keep the clock, and keep doing it?

I don't like the idea as it stands. I agree that some of the delays have been annoying. However, I do not think that any team should be sanctioned in game unless the situation is much more severe than it has been.

	13-06-2003 12:53									#3
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Agreed with nye completely. So far, I have noticed no "outrageous" delays that would call for an action as severe as what is being proposed now. I do not think any teams would be delaying the game on purpose or because of neglecting it. They simply have RL to take care of... and as we know very well from PtWDG, even ingame events can eat up 100 banked hours in just few turns.

This is a game. It is supposed to be fun. If people have to wait few days for the turn to come back to them, I do not consider it as much "non-fun" as if a team is forced to skip turns. All carefully planned builds and such would be thrown away... possibly hundreds of hours would be wasted just because someone had to meet a deadline in the RL.

Nope, I am strongly against agreeing on sanctions. The counter should remain just informative.

	13-06-2003 15:16									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I am tore on the issue.

One one hand, there's nothing that makes another Civ play in a timely manner. Granted that all teams, except Firaxis were born out of websites that are pretty much dedicated to the Civ community.

I suspect that Firaxis will be the one problem team as far as haing weekend players, backup players and more RL difficulties because of their unique situation, I wouldn't imagine there being more than a handful of players on that team.

Maybe we should come up with a plan to help Firaxis with the save instead of threatening them with punishment. How fun is that for the creators of the game? I'm sure they are harassed enough about bugs, expansions, additions and what not that should allow them a small break from recieving complaints from the fans of the game they built.

Do they need more players?
Do they need a phone call to let them know their save has arrived?

Let's try to help them instead of pushing them away from enjoying the game.

As far as the other teams, I think the love the game as much as we do and RL gets to them as much as it gets to us, but it really depends on how many active member's a team has and how many of those can actually play the save for that team. Maybe we need tomake a rule taht each team designate at least 3 player's who will recieve the save and can play the save when they get it. We could also stipulate that these 3 member's should be from differing time zones to account for differing arival times. I think this alone would speed the game up.

	13-06-2003 15:59									#5
	Got spare money?

Offering Firaxis whatever help they might use is a very good idea. We should keep in mind that it's them who made this whole ISDG thing possible in the first place...

	13-06-2003 20:49									#6
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Hum, I think the idea of a time clock is just to put pressure on teams that are slow and not in-game sanctions.

I sugest that if a team gets down to 18 hours or less remaining following their turn that everybody get 100 hours added to the time clock to prevent a negative situation.

	13-06-2003 21:59									#7
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by vondrack Agreed with nye completely. So far, I have noticed no "outrageous" delays that would call for an action as severe as what is being proposed now. I do not think any teams would be delaying the game on purpose or because of neglecting it. They simply have RL to take care of... and as we know very well from PtWDG, even ingame events can eat up 100 banked hours in just few turns. This is a game. It is supposed to be fun. If people have to wait few days for the turn to come back to them, I do not consider it as much "non-fun" as if a team is forced to skip turns. All carefully planned builds and such would be thrown away... possibly hundreds of hours would be wasted just because someone had to meet a deadline in the RL. Nope, I am strongly against agreeing on sanctions. The counter should remain just informative.

(bold emphasis mine, as this is a VERY important point that we need to make sure everyone at the UN understands).


I totally agree with this. That fact that miccofl and others are "outraged" over lost time is just preposterous. We all have real lives, and no one is being required to play this game. We are all doing it for our own enjoyment.

Frankly, if the waiting between turns is unbearable for some, I think you lead a rather boring life If these same teams think it is taking forever to play turns, they are in for a huge surprise when the world gets more complex.

I think we definitely need to cut Firaxis a little bit more slack. The gaming industry is NOTORIOUS for it's hellish hours, and I'm sure the last thing that Soren and anyone else over there want to do after working 18 hours towards a deadline, is open up another game of civilization.

In anycase, these "unreasonable delays" are something that we are just going to have to live with. If a team doesn't like it... well declare war and get rid of the other team, problem solved

	14-06-2003 04:51									#8
	Inflate your Upload Space

Definitely agree, WB. It seems strange that we seem to be the only team defending Firaxis.

Also, I hope you don't mind that I quoted your above post and put it with some comments at 1BC.

	14-06-2003 05:56									#9
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by civman2000 Definitely agree, WB. It seems strange that we seem to be the only team defending Firaxis. Also, I hope you don't mind that I quoted your above post and put it with some comments at 1BC.

Ah nice! It's perfectly fine.

	14-06-2003 08:10									#10
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Quote this:

"Quit your whining, and go out and see a movie. Those guys are probably spending time making your next game to enjoy. If they want to take some time off on the weekends and unplug from the computer, leave them in peace. Just because YOU have all the time in the world to hose a board doesn't mean they do. THEY may even have wives, kids, families, and more important things than a GAME to deal with."

Let's look for a way to FIX the problem, rather than a penalty to punish the problem. Just because a couple of college students with lots of spare time (saying tha tbecause I just transitioned out of that life and I remember it well) are too inconsiderate to understand that the real world occasionally keeps one away from GAMES, doesn't mean Firaxis should be hammered.

No, when we sack and burn Sid's capital city, I want it to be entirely legitimate.

	14-06-2003 11:11									#11
	The Vote is in the watter Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

posted by Mongoose at 1bc

quote: Greetings ISDG participants, What follows will be a poll to determine the ratification of a new set of rules regarding the time limits of gameplay. The rules will all be voted on together, as I don't believe that any of the rules are adequate enough to stand alone if they are passed and the others are not. voting rules: Each team will be allowed one vote. The preferred vote would be from the known team leader. However, in the case that the team leader cannot vote, an elected official or appointed emissary from a nation may vote in the leaders stead. If this is the case the person must list in their post what their position is within their nation. Votes should/must be a simple yes/no or yea/nay....there should be no doubt about your vote. A nation may abstain if they wish. In order to pass, the vote must contain at least 2/3rds of the vote, or in this case 6 yes/yea's. Abstains would effectively in this case count as a negative vote. _____________ The rules additions below do not nullify the current time counter rules regarding usage/hours unless specifically noted. Rules Addition in Question - Any team that is going to be absent or unable to play their turn must post regarding their inablility in the UN forum. If the team already has the save file, time will be deducted from the counter until the announcement is made, then no time will be deducted afterward. - A team whose counter clock drops below 0 hours and either does not appeal or whose appeal has been denied by a majority vote of the teams or by the ruling admin would be subject to a penalty of loss of 1 turn. - Loss of turn would be defined as the ruling admin opening the file, skipping to the end of the turn with no changes to the game, ending the turn, and sending to the next team. - On each subsequent offense, the number of turns penalized would increase by 1. - The turn counter clock for the team in question would be immediately reset to 48 hours and resume counting down as normal upon receipt of the game on their next turn. - At the beginning of each age/era for a team, the team will be granted an additional hour per turn to make their gameplay decisions. To recieve the additional hour, the team must post about their age advancement in the UN forum or contact the current keeper of the counter. This does not have to be done until the team is ready for the rest of the world to know of their advancement. - Teams may trade counter time to another team for in game resources, gold, technology, etc. Whenever a trade is conducted, the keeper of the counter must be notified by both teams of the hour exchange so that the keeper can determine the best way to move the hours accordingly. - Any teams counter that is below 48 at the conclusion of this poll will be reset to 48 hours. So, teams, put your heads together and figure it out...this poll will run until it is decided either way. Please, no discussion in this thread, discussion can take place in the original thread for this proposal. Thanks

OK. Let's have at least 24 hour discussion of this, and then we can proceed to a 72 hour poll in this forum to determine how Apolyton will vote. At the conclusion of that poll, I will place our vote, unless someone else wants to do it.

	14-06-2003 17:14									#12
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I strongly urge us to vote "NO" to this proposal, simply because I don't want to see the guys at Firaxis so "F- you then!" and throw up their hands and quit. That's not an open-minded and fair proposal, that's targeted legislation at one team. This is the kind of thing you levy at the beginning or not at all, not after things have started just because you think one team isn't moving fast enough to suit your pace.

In another tact, we could potentially introduce all kinds of other proposals about the speed of the mailing, who it should be mailed to, penalities for improper subject headings when mailed, penalties for improper formatting of the email, and a penalty for anything else we can think of- with the general message of "relax and get off yer high friggin horse."

	14-06-2003 17:38									#13
	Re: The Vote is in the watter Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by notyoueither posted by Mongoose at 1bc OK. Let's have at least 24 hour discussion of this, and then we can proceed to a 72 hour poll in this forum to determine how Apolyton will vote. At the conclusion of that poll, I will place our vote, unless someone else wants to do it.

Sorry nye, I didn't see this post of yours until I posted a poll on the subject myself.

	14-06-2003 19:20									#14
	Full PM-box? Change here!

As I know from the various PBEM's that I am in, e-mails DO get lost. There should be some way that we can have to insure that the game is played in a timely manner without having to resort to this kind of penalty. I urge everyone to post about this and try to come up with alterantives.

One thing that I was thinking was to make sure that the team sending the save to Fraxis had their players persononal e-mail addresses.

Also. we could have an "impartial person", like Mongoose, have access to each of the teams forums (or whatever the case may be) and if he is forced to play a turn, he would have whatever orders are present to work from.

These are 2 suggestions and there are likely others. We need to attempt to fix the problem and not to make things worst. What will happen when the holidays roll around? who will be playing at that time, not many people from my past experiance from the SPDG.

E_T

	14-06-2003 19:39									#15
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

No. I don't like this.

Most teams will try to get the save moving ASAP, unless they can't. Firaxis is one of those teams that (on weekends esp.) can't. There should be no in-game penalties for it.

	14-06-2003 22:47									#16
	Re: Re: The Vote is in the watter Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by BigFree Sorry nye, I didn't see this post of yours until I posted a poll on the subject myself.

No problem, BigFree. One less thing for me to have to tend to.

Our feelings seem to be running rather strongly in one direction anyway.

	15-06-2003 00:23									#17
	Support Apolyton

Perhaps part of the reason that Apolyton is so strongly against the penalty is that, by and large, we don't mind a long-running game. We know Apolyton will be around awhile; perhaps some of these other websites are less certain of their lifespans and want to see the game finished.

	15-06-2003 01:31									#18
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon Perhaps part of the reason that Apolyton is so strongly against the penalty is that, by and large, we don't mind a long-running game. We know Apolyton will be around awhile; perhaps some of these other websites are less certain of their lifespans and want to see the game finished.

hi ,

with the exception of CFC that indeeds seems to be the case , .....

btw , it has come up ones or twice in chat , should the time clock be trown out , ....

have a nice day