All but one player will lose at some point. Unlike AI games, how you choose
to accept defeat is very important, even more so in the Tournament than in
ordinary play-by-email games. How you lose can strongly affect
the tournament results, even if it doesn't affect who wins your particular game.
Prizes will be won or lost based on single cities, or even armies.
Losing gracefully is therefore very important to the success of the tournament.
When you reach the point of despair, visit the
Tournament Guide to Losing Gracefully
for some wisdom and insight. In particular, keep in mind these things:
Please finish any game you start; the loss of a player is devastating to
a game and bad for the tournament. If you abandon honor and ruin a game
by using up all 4 timeouts and missing your turn without announcing an absence,
you become a Lost Player, and the following rules apply:
If a player must leave a game, they are encouraged to announce this
to the other players and the moderator. Players who lose all honor
and not only miss the 2-day turnaround but also run out of timeouts are
automatically dropped from the game. In both cases the player involved
is considered a "Lost Player" and dropped from the tournament. The following
rules apply when there is a Lost Player:
- In all cases, if a player drops out (from missing a move and running
out of timeout days, or for any other reason), he/she is immediately
sent out of the tournament. His/her final standing will reflect
the turn he/she dropped out, and for that game the stats will
record zero cities, armies, gold, etc.
- Any player who drops out during a game will be given
second-class status in future PBEM activities, and placed at
an appropriate disadvantage in recognition of his/her unreliability.
- When a player is lost, contact the moderator immediately,
and forward to him/her the most recent game file. The moderator
will follow the "decision tree" below:
- If human replacements are available, then
- If more than half the remaining cities are still neutral, then
go with an Active Sub to replace the Lost Player.
- If less than half the remaining cities are still neutral, then
Go with a Static Defense
- If human replacements are not available, then
- If more than half the remaining cities are still neutral, then
Resign the lost player
- If less than half the remaining cities are still neutral, then
Go with a Static Defense
Here is what the different options mean:
- Restart the Game
- The Moderator will identify a replacement for the lost player, and
the game will start over as if it had never happened. This is to be
avoided except when a game has just started, since it will delay the
round - the other games will finish first.
- Active Substitute
- The Moderator will identify a human substitute to replace the
lost player and play for him/herself. The game will continue from
its current position.
- Resign the Lost Player
- The Moderator will "Resign" the lost player, thereby razing all
his/her cities (even if razing is turned off in the game),
destroying all his/her armies, and eliminating all
his/her hero's items from the game. This completely denies the
resources of the Lost Player to the other players, and eliminates
the Lost Player's side from the game entirely.
- Static Defense
- In a Static Defense, the Lost Player's units are retreated to
his existing cities, and existing cities build in place, much like
"active neutral" cities do once provoked. The Static Defense will be
set up by a moderator or moderator-designated unbiased neutral player,
who will play a single turn in order to do the following (in order):
- Set all stacks to retreat towards the "nearest" friendly city - the one
which can be reached by that stack using the fewest movement points.
Stacks which can reach more than one city with the same number of
movement points will be sent to optimize the Lost Players' defenses
as the moderator sees fit.
Stacks may not be broken apart or consolidated. Stacks within cities are not
to be moved even if nearby cities are defenseless. All the moderator
will do is click on each stack outside a city, click on the nearest city,
and watch it move.
- Turn off all production vectoring.
- Use available cash to overbuild strong city production
(units taking 2 turns to build) with at least one 1-turn
city-defense unit (preferably heavy infantry, but
light infantry if cash is scarce). The overbuilding
should start with the most expensive units that the
player builds, and proceed downwards. (e.g., overbuild
all pegasi, then all griffins, then elephants, and so on).
Additional strong
production should be overbuilt with cheap peons.
The idea here is to keep enemies from making a killing
by capturing or pillaging strong production capabilities.
(Thanks to Elam Birnbaum for this idea.)
- Use any remaining cash to purchase production to ensure that all
cities can produce at least
one unit, with preference for 1-turn city-defense units
(light infantry, heavy infantry, or spiders, as gold permits)
If all cities already have good defensive builds, then any
remaining cash should be used to purchase peon units that will
raise important cities to 3 production (i.e. defense 2).
The moderator should use judgment to make the Lost Player's
defenses equally challenging to all neighboring players, and
to keep the gold available from sacking as balanced as possible.
By this point virtually all the lost player's cash must be spent;
if extra cash remains, simply overbuild existing production
multiple times (e.g., build Orcish mobs over light infantry, and
then build light infantry over Orcish mobs).
- Set all cities to building the strongest available 1-turn units,
accounting for city terrain bonuses. (i.e., spiders are best,
then heavy infantry, then wolves/dwarves, then light infantry,
orcish mobs, light cavalry, bats.) (Thanks to Bill Irwin here.)
- Turn the "enhance" option on so all future production will provide
extra strong defense. (All units built after "Enhance" is on
have their base strength increased by +2. Thus light infantry
are now strength 4, and heavy
infantry are now strength 6. The strength of the enhanced units
will be visible when you look at the stack, just as blessings
and medals show increased base strength.
After the moderator has set up the Static Defense, the game file will
continue to be sent normally. When it reaches the Lost Player, simply
skip him/her and send it to whoever used to come after the Lost Player.
The person after the Lost Player will do the following each turn:
- Open the game file
- Start the Lost Player's turn
- Redirect any units which are moving to a city that is no longer
controlled by the Lost Player so they go towards the nearest city
controlled by the Lost Player.
- Do a "move all" command to move any units which have not arrived in a city.
- Send out an email message summarizing any non-routine events in this turn.
- End the Lost Player's turn.
- Take his/her own turn normally.
Finally, it is forbidden for players to take items from
a hero who is in Static Defense. The purpose of the Static Defense
is to keep as much of the Lost Player's stuff out of the hands of
his/her neighbors for as long as possible, and to come as close as
possible to the sort of defense one might
have with an actual human sub. The bottom line is that no human
player would intentionally let his hero be killed and give up his
hero's items, and if no human player would want his items to
fall into an enemy's hands, then a Static Defense's items should
also stay out of enemy hands. (Idea from Bill Irwin.)
Thus, the preference is to use an Active Sub or replacement human player
if it's early in the game and a new player would want to join, yet
wouldn't make a big change in the game strategy of the other players.
If it's early in
the game and no replacements are available, the Static Defense will
not be much good, but Resigning the player will not have a big impact,
so that is preferable - at least it keeps some cities from falling
into enemy hands. If it's not early in the game, then doing anything
will be a big disruption to the game, and the preference is to go
with a Static Defense since that will keep things from changing too
quickly, while not requiring a lot of tedious human intervention.
[ This rule is not yet 100% definite; suggestions are welcome.]
Some Static Defense Ideas:
X-Sender: rheeter@mailhost.jet.uk
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 21:31:04 +0100
To: "Elam T. Birnbaum"
From: "Robert F. Heeter"
Subject: Re:WCMod: Static Defense Question
Cc: "Robert F. Heeter" , alex.vickers@utoronto.ca,
aubjf@mail.vtx.ch, bbrook@rna.bio.mq.edu.au, birwin@mail.gte.net,
bill.irwin@gsc.gte.com, dashorst@nicole.sis.nl, demitrius@stuff.liu.se,
Elam Birnbaum , geez@opendoor.com, gsb@compupick.com,
ijb@unb.ca, jpanagos@pacificrim.net, kchang@u.washington.edu,
mas-mgo@merkurius.lu.se, mlanger@texas.net, mleung@uclink.berkeley.edu,
MrZakk@aol.com, MTMGsMax@aol.com
Hi guys -
I really like Elam's suggestion: have the units march along, and
if they don't make it to the nearest friendly city before it gets
overrun, have them turn into towers outside the city gates.
It's simple, and often those city approaches are strategically
valuable, so that the player who took the city has to wipe out
those units anyway. But at least they're always defensive and
not taking up the moderator's scarce time too much.
BTW, Max, I did mean "movement paths" and not "vectored".
I also like Max's ideas, but I think we need to keep things
a bit simpler if possible. But I like Max's idea that if
the player in a Static Defense runs out of cash, all units
outside of cities should be disbanded to allow some additional
production of units *inside* the cities. I don't think that
is too complicated. The trouble is that it forces the moderator
to watch the Static Defense a lot longer, which is a problem.
The essential thing about the Static Defense is that as a
Moderator you can set it up and keep an eye on it for a turn or two,
and then forget about it. I think towering any units that fail
to reach their original destination is the best way to go.
For that matter, I think that if units which are marching towards
a city bump into an obstacle (like an enemy stack), they should
either go around (if they can), start on an alternative path,
or else just tower right where they are.
Is there a consensus on this? If so, I'll update the rules.
BTW, I think it's good that we're getting some practice on dealing
with rules topics like this. We'll need to be on our toes once
the Practice Round starts!
-- Bob
P.S. Jim, thanks for the excellent joke!
At 3:28 pm -0400 6/20/97, Elam T. Birnbaum wrote:
>At 1:27 PM -0400 6/20/97, Robert F. Heeter wrote:
>>Hi all -
>>
>>Suppose that a player has withdrawn from a game and their side has
>>just been put into a Static Defense, with all units vectored back to
>>the cities which they can reach most quickly.
>>
>>Now suppose that one of those cities is taken before the units can
>>arrive. As a Moderator, what do you do with the units now?
>>
>>I can think of two reasonable options:
>>
>>(A) Continue marching them towards a city they no longer own, so that
>>they must attack it when they arrive.
>>
>>(B) Redirect them to march towards the nearest city that they *do* still
>>own.
>>
>>Which of these is better? (Or is there a third option?)
>
>I actually prefer option 3; the troops simply stop moving and turn into
>towers or just stop moving at all and don't defend. I like this because we
>had always been concerned about moderators having to spend a lot of time
>dealing with lost players. We wanted to minimize the work they have to do
>so that in a turn or two they can do all that is needed. Requiring them to
>attack the cities or move somewhere else could require the moderator to get
>involved several turns more, which is undesireable.
>
>Elam
** Robert F. Heeter (Bob) | Email: rheeter@pppl.gov / rheeter@jet.uk **
** PPPL/JET Collaboration | Phone: 609-243-2494 (PPPL Office R301) **
** Fusion Energy Researcher, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory **
** http://FusEdWeb.pppl.gov http://www.princeton.edu/~rfheeter **
From: MTMGsMax@aol.com
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:37:52 -0400 (EDT)
To: Bob.Heeter@jet.uk, alex.vickers@utoronto.ca, aubjf@mail.vtx.ch,
bbrook@rna.bio.mq.edu.au, birwin@mail.gte.net, bill.irwin@gsc.gte.com,
dashorst@nicole.sis.nl, demitrius@stuff.liu.se, elam@madness.net,
geez@opendoor.com, gsb@compupick.com, ijb@unb.ca,
jpanagos@pacificrim.net, kchang@u.washington.edu,
mas-mgo@merkurius.lu.se, mlanger@texas.net, mleung@uclink.berkeley.edu,
Mrzakk@aol.com
Subject: WCMod: Static Defense
Status: O
Mods:
I wasn't intending to throw more "pennies" on this fire, but....
-->have them turn into towers outside the city gates.
I don't like the Tower idea as part of the Static Defense. It doesn't seem
to serve much of a purpose for a "stagnant" country, whose main motivator for
continued existence is cities and the money from them. [Like the
Terminator: "That's what he does. That's ALL he does!"] If the moderator
is NOT going to be taking an aggressive action (Ie., attempting to retake the
city, even if it's a loss) then these Towers don't serve much of a purpose
for the Static country.
-->For that matter, I think that if units which are marching towards a city
bump into an obstacle (like an enemy stack), they should either go around (if
they can), start on an alternative path, or else just tower right where they
are.
I think the armies should either return to a city or disband. Though making
towers is less work, after a few turns, for the moderators, I would think
that the *choice* of where they become Towers, the best location, etc., would
be just too debatable. (And thus, controversial. :( )
Such as, suppose a tower is made on a road between mountains on one border
(where there is another player coming, but who's stack doesn't fly) and
another is made outside a city on another border with another player. So,
for one of the enemies, the Tower poses much more of an obstacle to the
incoming enemy than the other. (And did either player *know* a tower was to
be built? Whereas they Know that the stack is going to return to it's
city.....)
BUT, if we say that ALL armies return to their nearest city, then the
continuing players can better judge what their opposing force will be and
what they'll need to take those cities.
Besides, there's also the fact that a tower made on a bridge may seem like a
decent deterrent. But, if it has a heavy Cav in the stack, it is actually
weaker than if it just was "left" there every turn. This is Also more work
for the moderator, but is certainly better for "Defense", which was the whole
idea.
Thus, I still maintain that armies should return to their cities-- that which
give them life-- or be disbanded if it is more prudent to use the saved money
for building directly into the cities. And maybe the simple factor for this
would be setting the paths, and all armies that can't make it back to one of
their own cities in (say) three turns are disbanded.
[Actually, the Money issue defeats the Turtle defense-- which relies on
keeping massive numbers of pre-made armies, though you can't afford them
anymore. If we wish to allow a "turtle defense" as part of a Static Defense,
then we have to do two things: 1) NOT disband any armies, and 2) always keep
moving whatever remaining armies towards whatever remaining cities. When he
runs out of cities, he's out of the game anyway-- so we might as well keep
whatever armies have been made and try to get them back to cities.]
Now that I think of it, I think this is the fairest approach. Armies will
never be disbanded, and though it's more work for the moderators (they'll
have to reset paths as cities are taken) it'll actually force the players to
take the cities from the static player FAster. Like musical chairs, the
last few cities will end up the most "turtled". So, the other players might
also attack the "returning stacks" *before* they get into a city, etc.
Thoughts on this?
$.02
max
End-of-Game Statistics:
- On Turn 20, play your final move. All fighting and unit
movement ends when the last player makes his move on Turn 20.
- Turn 21 is the "Final Reporting Turn". No fighting or unit
movement is allowed. Using the final gamefile sent in by the
last player on Turn 20, each player should open up Turn 21
and collect the following statistics for their side:
- Number of Cities you control.
- Total Gold at the start of Turn 21.
- Income and Expenses at the start of Turn 21.
Note: to get the Expenses to update and reflect your
armies on Turn 21, you need to start your turn, save the
gamefile immediately, and reopen it.
- Total Base Strength of all your units, including blessings and
hero Battle Items, but no other modifiers or bonuses.
Note: the easiest way to count strengths is to open a backup
copy of the gamefile and scan through your stacks using the
Return key, disbanding each one after you write down its
strength.
- Mail the "Final Statistics Report" to the remailer, and check
each other's results. When all players reach consensus
on the final results, send the "Final Game Statistics" to
the Moderator, who will double-check the results and send them
to the Tournament Statistician for the official tournament record.