PBEM Tournament announcements and discussion - Page 3

Tau Ceti · April 16, 2000, 19:53

Viriato, Misotu: I agree with both of you

. The idea is to have cooperative victory enabled in the random map/map of Planet games, but not on the tournament map (where there will only be the four human players).

If there are no objections, all games started from now on will have restricted communications.

Tau Ceti · April 24, 2000, 18:43

I am back on larsheg@sensewave.com now. Will check the hotmail address for a few more days, but please send to sensewave from now on. Thanks.

Adam_Smith · April 27, 2000, 19:03

Tau Ceti already knows that I object to co-op victory enablation (new word). Anyway, I want to make it known to everyone. Reason: It's not fair to the third person, assuming that they are not in the co-op. Let's be realistic. I have won in a co-op a few times. Everytime there really was one clear winner, but the fact is that the players didn't want to play out the war. Whenever it was close and all the AIs were eliminated the pact was always ended so that the players could "get it on." To make things interesting I think the players should unit against the hegemon. No co-op.
[This message has been edited by Adam_Smith (edited April 27, 2000).]

Tau Ceti · May 8, 2000, 08:09

A first draft of the new Tournament map can now be downloaded here. I would appreciate any and all comments and suggestions for improvement etc.

Tau Ceti · May 13, 2000, 00:09

No comments at all? Does nobody care anymore?

Viriato · May 13, 2000, 20:06

I just downloaded the map. I'll let you know what I think as soon as I watch it. Too tired now

.

korn469 · May 15, 2000, 00:51

Tau Ceti i got the map

hmmm if you are going to make any changes maybe you could add a little bit more land to the player's starting landmass and take away some of the unity pods but other than that it looks good

Viriato · May 15, 2000, 18:40

I took a look at the map. Other than too many pods (IMHO) I have no objections.
The small island will force the players to find somewhere (or someone

) else to colonize.

Tau Ceti · May 16, 2000, 15:51

It seems there is consensus on too many pods (even though I already removed at least 50 of them - I guess the map generator makes quite a lot!). Does that apply all over the place or are there any specific areas where there are too many (north pole, south pole, high seas, player islands)?

Garth Vader · May 16, 2000, 17:30

If anything player islands are too big. With the large distance between islands momentum players need to be able to expand and fight on the poles which means the home island should be too small to stay on.

Tau Ceti · May 16, 2000, 18:33

You mean they are still too big? They are somewhat smaller than in Zsozso's old map.

Now we have one saying they are too small, one saying they are the right size, and one saying they are too big. Sounds like right size so far...

May 23, 2000, 11:51

the stockpile energy bug gave me a lot of grief lately.
Does anyone know what we are talking about ?
How is this issue adressed in the tournament right now ?

joer · May 23, 2000, 13:00

It would be easy to just disallow putting stockpile energy into the building queue. However, that solves only half of the problem. Would it make any sense to disallow stockpile energy altogether? Or set some minimum number of turns a base has to produce stockpile energy, if it produces it at all? Does anybody who is not exploiting this bug still use stockpile energy?
-joer

Tau Ceti · May 23, 2000, 18:53

There is no official ruling as yet. Personally, I have never used the build queues and do not feel like starting, so for self-serving reasons

I would prefer to leave it as standard procedure, getting Stockpile Energy after building improvements and not after building units. But I do not care so much one way or the other, so I would like more opinions.

joer, I am not sure if I understand your post. Are you advocating banning the use of Stockpile Energy so as to force players to always have something in the build queue when building a facility?

For those who are not sure what we are talking about, check out this thread.

May 24, 2000, 13:19

i agree 100 % with you, Tau.
Lets call it operation "Ostrich". For me its seems the most convenient way to handle this bug. Using no queues after building either improvements or units is the default behavior for most players. So operation Ostrich is the least intrusive method.

The one extreme measure to handle it - build queues in every single base - effectively cancels the bug for humans and slightly benefits the AI. Big minus: micromanagement nightmare. A strong "nay" for this one

The other extreme is to exploit it to the last Joule, by manually inserting "stockpile energy" after units. Diadvantage: in my mind this is gross cheating on the pathetic AIs. + Super annoying. Who likes some random bugs to dictate the only efficient way to play the game ? Nay to this procedure.
Nevertheless, this is the procedure ACOL has adopted for most of the games discussed there. In other words, it is the procedure favored by the "old school" CMNs and the most accomplished players (imho).

Tau Ceti · May 25, 2000, 14:11

It looks like not many people care enough to post their opinion; so, you have 24 hours to come with counterarguments, otherwise operation "Ostrich" becomes official.

Flo, what is the definition of an "old school" CMN?

In other and totally unrelated news, I have decided to extend the seasons to five months. The score-stealing system requires that a certain amount of games be played each season if it is to work as intended, and the games are not progressing too fast - only five games have been completed so far, IIRC. So the end point of season one is now July 31st.

Tau Ceti · May 25, 2000, 14:13

Oh, and there are now so many games going on that I cannot keep track of them all on the forums, so I would appreciate it if the players notified me by email when a game has been stalled for an extended period of time. Thank you.

May 25, 2000, 14:21

CMNs who live at ACOL

(historically, ACOL was born solely as a discussion forum for CMNs. All the good stuff like random chat and the games- service was added a few months later iirc)

Viriato · May 25, 2000, 18:37

Allowing the use of SE in the build queue would be the simplest thing to do because of the impossibility to check if a player is using it. But I agree that it is a pain in the ass.
So if we all can trust each other I vote for operation 'Ostrich'.

One question: what will we do when someone is caught cheating?

Tau Ceti · August 1, 2000, 19:46

Issue a warning to first-time offenders; repeated abuse will lead to disqualification. (Whew. Two months to reply to that.)

In other, not very well-publicized news, season 1 of the tournament ended at midnight, July 31. Check out the results in this thread, and add your comments here. Congratulations to Pagan[CyC], season 1 champion!

Tau Ceti · August 5, 2000, 08:38

In reply to joer's now edited out question in the Rules and Results thread about how to do the scores when players take over somewhat late in the game:

I understand that the situation can be tough in these cases, and am willing to simply not count those games for the takeover players, ie. they will not lose a point or count as defeated if they lose, or gain two points and defeat others if they win. If a takeover player wants this particular course of action, please let me know; the decision should be made as early as possible and a decision to not be counted made two turns before you are conquered by the Spartan hordes will not be accepted.

The most likely candidates (that I remember at a moment's notice) are joer and Misotu in ACT017, Spekter in ACT006, Googlie in AXT007 and Misotu in ACT025; if any of you want these games to not count (for you), let me know as soon as possible.

Misotu · August 5, 2000, 19:47

Nah, that's OK. The position I inherited in ACT017 is nothing to complain about. And despite the fact that joer has a very unfair advantage regarding territory, bases, research rate and pod popping in ACT025, the Peacekeepers are going to rise to the challenge without whining at all

Tau Ceti · August 6, 2000, 20:21

As you wish. I should also mention that season 2 ends with the millennium; on December 31, 2400 EST.

joer · August 7, 2000, 00:40

Sheesh. Very unfair advantage. I earned it all by playing, just like the rest of you.

Seriously...yes, I would like to not count ACT017. Now, this is not just because I lose the VW as UoP (ugh) to the not-whining lady above, but because I did realize from the start that the game is not for me to win...

I deleted the question, because I only read afterwards (and after Mis pointed it out to me) that I was not supposed to post there. Thank you for answering it anyways.

-joer.

TigToad · August 7, 2000, 11:59

Lets be honest Joer..you just don't like the 15 or so rovers I have on the now completed land bridge on the way to your island in act17. Grin

In all fairness I have a huge ammount of thanks to offer both Misotu and Joer for picking up the dead spots in that game as it was one of the few I'm in where I liked my position. (Go Believers, go...)

Misotu · August 7, 2000, 14:15

I'm not surprised. I'm scared to death watching it, and they're not even heading my way yet (grin)

(sudden inspiration)

Um, Tau, if I ask for ACT017 not to be counted *three* turns before I am crushed by the Believer hordes, would that be OK?