[ See also: The Ten Commandments | Rules for Players | The Moderators' Bible ]
This specifically allows players to:
The game file which you send on to the next player should not have any changes to it except from your own turn. That is, players are allowed to do anything Warlords allows to their own turn, and they are allowed to open up copies of the official game to explore other player's turns, but in taking their own official turn players must end the previous player's turn (if necessary), make their own moves, and then send the game on to the next player, without manipulating another player's turn within the official game file. In other words, you can move your own armies and change your own fight order, and you can peek at another's armies and fight order while planning your move, but you can't actually move another player's pieces or change his/her fight order. The spirit of this rule should be obvious and it is the spirit that will be enforced in the tournament. Those considering cheating of this sort should read on and consider that it's easy to detect unauthorized changes of this sort!
This specifically prevents players from:
These sorts of actions can be detected in their effects on the game, and anyone caught cheating will be expelled from all Warlords tournaments and the PBEM players' list for life. [ The moderators will use their discretion in determining the severity of a particular offense, but cheating which is clearly intentional will not be treated lightly. ]
The above rules are to be interpreted liberally; the lists of specific examples are not exhaustive lists of what you can do within the program and can't do from outside the program. The spirit of the rules is to maximize fairness while minimizing required reverting.
For each battle, use an unofficial copy of the game file to preview the fight order and unmodified strengths of the defender's units. Then the battle-odds tool (WarBOT) should be run. Once the correct outcome is known, simply fight the battle so that the results are correct, reverting as many times as necessary. (The tournament battle odds tool (WarBOT) will tell you what units should live and which should die.) All attacking armies that have survival percentages less than or equal to 50% should die. If no attacking army has a percentage greater than 50%, then the attacking stack has been defeated and all defenders with a survival percentage less than 50% should die. Note that ties (50% survival odds exactly) go to the defender. If you win an attack with additional units remaining that should have died, simply disband them.
Note that medals are not allowed, otherwise players would be forced to revert until receiving a medal on a good unit in order to remain competitive. If a medal is awarded the attacker must re-fight the battle until the proper outcome is achieved without a medal.
In order to learn the actual strengths of each army in a defending enemy's stack, you should view the contents of the stack as if you were the defender. Using an alternate/unofficial copy of the game file, start up the defender's turn and view the stack you are about to attack, writing down specific army types and base strengths (including blessings but not counting medals, which are not allowed). The battle odds tool will automatically compute the appropriate individual and stack bonuses for the defender's terrain and unit types. Use the battle tool to determine the proper outcome, restart your turn in the official game file, and enact the battle. In particular, when entering the defender's stack into the battle odds tool, be sure to arrange the units according to the defender's fight order as it appears when you view his stack from inside his own turn. (Usually this is the same as the order of the units when you attack his stack, but not always - Warlords has some bugs in its battle code. The battle odds tool will take care of the problem for you.)
Each battle must be reported to all players and the moderator. Battles should be reported in the order in which they were fought, to avoid confusion about which units were available for which battle. The following information must be included:
Making this information available and requiring the battle to have a specific outcome makes it possible to keep players from cheating by not actually using armies in battles, by mis-entering their strengths, or by simply reverting to get a better outcome than they should.
Example: The Usual Battle Report (quoted text with ">" is the WarBOT battle report)
Turn 13: White attacks Yellow in hills west of Scandinavia Attacker: 3 dwarves, 1 spider, 1 catapult, 1 archer (none blessed) Defender: 5 dwarves (none blessed) >Terrain: Hill > >BONUS Total Fortify non hero -enemy city Cancel >AT 1 1 0 0 0 C >DF 0 0 0 0 0 0 > > Entered Modified >Attack Units Strength Strength Winning % >Archer 4 5 0.67868 >Catapult 4 5 0.55280 >Spider 4 5 0.41395 >Dwarf 4 7 0.27847 >Dwarf 4 7 0.10138 >Dwarf 4 7 0.01556 > >Defense Units: >Dwarf 4 6 0.32132 >Dwarf 4 6 0.17369 >Dwarf 4 6 0.06942 >Dwarf 4 6 0.01708 >Dwarf 4 6 0.00167 > > >Attacker win with 2 units remaining The attacking archer and catapult hold the field.
The report of probabilities may be omitted provided the initial and modified unit strengths are given so that others may easily check the battle themselves. Battle reporting may be further simplified for one-on-one battles where the defender is clearly weaker than the attacker: ("Red dragon crushes Blue scout @ Brie").
[ Philosophy: The idea here is to make it easy for other players to understand what you did so they can verify quickly and painlessly that you didn't cheat, and so that they can quickly identify any errors you might have made so that disputes can be quickly resolved. ]
Example: Attacking neutral cities -
In the tournament scenarios, neutral cities have only one build, a scout of
strength 1. The defensive bonus of a neutral city is half that of a player-owned
city, and it's rounded down. So a city with 3 or 4 builds which normally
has defense +2 has only +1 defense if it's neutral, and a neutral city with 1 or 2
builds has a "1/2" defense bonus, which is rounded down to 0. This means
that scouts in neutral cities are only strength 1 and may be killed by any unit
of strength 2 or more, or a pair of strength 1 units.
It is the defender's responsibility to review the battle results and make sure that they are correct. He has until the end of his turn to protest the results. In most cases, it will be an easily resolved problem that won't require moderator intervention. However, should the moderator be required to settle a dispute, all his decisions are final. If a mistake is made and the error is in favor of the defender, no corrective action will be taken. If the only error is that the attacker has extra armies that shouldn't have survived, and those armies are not vulnerable to attack, they must be disbanded. The idea here is to reduce the number of turns that must be replayed. But where necessary the attacker must retake his turn, with all subsequent players retaking theirs as well.
Each player is allowed to make three reporting mistakes that affect the outcome of a battle per game. Upon the fourth such error, the player must forfeit immediately and his side will be dealt with using the lost-player rules (see the PBEM settings page).
[ Philosophy: This rule is designed to prevent players from claiming "mistaken battle odds" while actually attempting to cheat. Because there will be a practice game for players to get used to the rules before the tournament officially starts, I don't think anyone in the tournament is ever going to overrun their rules-violation limit. You can think of it as sort of like fouling out in basketball - the expectation is that it might happen a couple times, but if it happens too much you conclude the fouls are deliberate and you eject the guy from the game. We haven't come anywhere near that point in playtesting.
The main distinction between a "rules violation" error and "cheating" is whether it was clearly deliberate and required editing of the game file or battle odds information (cheating), or whether it could have been an accidental or unintentional mistake (rules violation). ]
Failure to report one or more battles on a given turn is also considered a single reporting mistake. If there is any concern about how to determine combat strengths, first consult the battle bonuses notes (to be distributed to all players) and then ask the moderator for a ruling if any confusion remains.
Unless cheating is proven no game will be backed up more than 1 full turn to replay a mistaken move.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise at the start of the game, only one living Hero will be allowed per side at any one time. Any other Heroes that offer their services must be declined.
[ Philosophy, and Notes on 2-hero Tournament Games: Because reverting can't be prevented, and because some players will actually revert for hours to get a new hero when and where they want one, multiple heroes can't be allowed because that would place an undue burden on everyone else to revert to get lots of heroes and allies to remain competitive. Furthermore, it's also tedious to replace a lost hero with reverting. (With even 5 cities, the fact that new heros come once per 6 tries, and there are 8 possible allies, means that you have to revert typically 5 * 8 * 6 = 240 times to get what you want where you want it. 240 reverts = ~80 minutes of reverting, which is pretty tedious, so we want to limit the number of times players are forced to get new heroes.
There is a way of having 2 heroes in a game, and that is by having the second hero arrive *only* on Turn 2 in scenarios where (a) there's room for a second hero without giving too much of an advantage to the player going first, and (b) players have at most 2 cities on Turn 2, so that the reverting requirement is minimized. Also it's important for the 2-hero rules to dovetail with the 1-hero rules (below). So the 2-hero rule is that you can get second hero on Turn 2 only (or not at all), and you can only get a replacement when your *last* surviving hero is dead. (In other words, the Turn X rule below about opening a turn without a living hero doesn't change.)
By having a second hero right away and then not letting anyone get a replacement until *both* their heroes are dead, hopefully no one will have to spend hours reverting to get a replacement, except maybe at the very end of the game when they're almost out of cities... ]
Once a player's (last) Hero is killed, disbanded, or otherwise lost, that side will be eligible to receive one new Hero as follows:
If your Gold is Solo Hero / No Ally Hero With 1 Ally ================================================================== less than 300 *need more gold* *need more gold* 300+ Y = X + 3 Y = X + 4 600+ Y = X + 2 Y = X + 3 1200+ Y = X + 1 Y = X + 2 2400+ Y = X + 1
Note: You choose whether to take a lone hero or to wait a turn to get a hero with an ally. You don't need to declare your intentions, simply choose what you want to do at the appropriate time.
[ Philosophy: Players can do whatever they want with their heroes, including getting them killed or disbanding them. The hero-replacement rules allow this implicitly by only considering the situation where a player opens his/her new turn and finds they have no hero. That allows players to ditch a hero but forces them to wait an extra turn before getting a replacement. You are always eligible to receive one ally if you meet the gold requirements, but if you choose to forego the ally, you are eligible one turn sooner. The main purpose of being able to get a solo Hero (without an ally) sooner is to aid those who lose their original (ally-less) Hero and need a quick replacement before they're overrun. That lets them stay in the game longer and makes things more enjoyable for all. It would only be a virgin +1 Hero. Allies are scarce enough and valuable enough that players won't take advantage of the solo Hero rule unless they *really* needed it.
We considered allowing new heroes to arrive immediately on Turn X, but since the gold requirement is set for the *end* of Turn X, a player with 2100 gold and a lot of possible pillaging can't know whether he'll get 2400 gold (and thus a new hero on Turn X) until the end of the turn. Also, it's not fair to the players coming next in the turn order. Suppose that Yellow and Blue are menacing Red since Red is winning and has lots of gold, and Yellow kills Red's hero and steals his items. Red sees that he can get a new hero immediately and use the extra unit (and +1 bonus) to suddenly eliminate the Blue hero on his other border, steal Blue's items (possibly very valuable) and then use his newly-enhanced hero to get revenge on Yellow while Blue (possibly very poor) sits reeling from the loss of his hero. This situation is grossly unfair to Blue and shouldn't be allowed to occur. ]
[ Philosophy: This is the most controversial rule. The spirit of it is to let players replace lost heroes as quickly as possible, while giving credit for foresight (keeping a gold reserve), cleverness and strength (finding ways to pillage additional gold in a hurry), and diplomacy (persuading allies to let you pillage additional gold in a hurry). That is why Turn Y is allowed to decrease if a player gets more gold.
Warlords is most fun when you have a hero to lead your forces, and in the tournament rules, with strong heroes and few allies, the loss of a hero is typically much more devastating to your chances of doing well than it would be in a normal game, so we want to minimize the amount of time when players are suffering without heroes, while still providing *some* penalty for those who are foolish enough to get their heroes killed without planning for it. The sliding gold scale makes it expensive to hold a gold reserve (and thus discourages players from deliberately suiciding their heroes) but allows players in strong positions (good incomes/ability to pillage) to regain a hero fairly quickly.
We also wanted to mimic the traditional Warlords situation where the stronger you are financially, and the more gold you manage to sustain during a game (through ruins, sacking/pillaging, and not letting your army get too big), the more heroes you are likely to get (and keep alive with good protection). This situation is true up to the limit (reached too often in regular PBEM games) where all players have excessive gold and support five killer heroes almost all the time, in which case all that matters is luck in getting new heroes quickly, and talent in winning battles.
The idea for the tournament is that financially stronger players should be more easily able to "replace" a lost hero, simulating the idea that those players would have more heroes to begin with and therefore have an easier time coping with the loss of a hero. However, the circumstances of the game are different so the notion of financial strength must be made flexible. In tournament games gold is primarily used to build new production, and we don't want to force players to maintain huge cash reserves the way they do in regular Warlords. Players who have gold reserves are rewarded, but so are players who have the strength, cunning, and diplomacy to generate cash quickly when needed.
We can't allow more than one or two heroes at a time, but we can "mimic" the multiple heroes of regular Warlords by letting new heroes appear in the crucial location fairly soon after the old hero dies, just as players would normally rearrange their heroes in the event of a death, so that they could bring a new hero to fight in the critical location fairly quickly.
The main reason for not allowing Turn Y to increase if a player loses gold is that typically when you lose your hero you get pummeled financially by losing a lot of cities, much more than you would in a regular Warlords game, and it's not fair that a player with a significant amount of gold at some point should be prevented from getting a replacement *at all* just because in losing his hero he opens up his whole front to bombardment. This simulates the idea that in a regular non-tournament Warlords game the player would have multiple heroes already and wouldn't become so incredibly vulnerable just because one of them got killed.
Another reason for not allowing Turn Y to increase if a player loses gold is that in Tournament games gold is primarily used for buying production and maintaining armies, and therefore it's double-punishment to require a hero-less player to *sustain* a large bank account, when their enemies with killer heroes can spend freely. This situation doesn't occur in regular PBEM games because cities have built-in production and all players generally maintain 1500 gold so they can receive additional heroes as quickly as possible. But as in regular PBEM games, a hero-less player should suffer primarily from the loss of the hero, not from a loss of the ability to produce decent units. Giving them the flexibility of spending their gold after accumulating a decent sum and holding it at the end of one turn is a good compromise.
The spirit of the declaration requirements is that everyone should be aware when to expect your new hero; no surprises. The reason for using the gold at the *end* of the turn is that that's the only gold information that other players have quick access to on their own turns (via the Report / History commands), so it's the only info that's easy to confirm.
There are many other ways to envision this rule but these seem to work.]
Thus, in Gary's nightmare situation, if a player has only 200 gold on Turn X when his hero is killed, then Turn Y is indefinite. But if the player sacks a city and has 750 gold at the end of Turn X+4, then Turn Y is reset to Turn X+3, and the player may get a new hero immediately on his next turn, since Turn Y has now passed.
Meanwhile, in Bob's nightmare situation, if a player has 1100 gold on Turn X, then Turn Y is set to Turn X+3, and even though the player gets knocked down to 700 gold on Turn X+1 and only 290 gold on Turn X+2, the player can still get a new hero, assuming the gods grant a hero to a player with so little cash! (Note that when you have lost your last hero, the replacement is usually very cheap, often only 300 gold or so).
It's important to remember that the only time gold is officially counted is at the *end* of the player's turn, because that's the only value that other players get to see in the Warlords application via the report/history information.
It's also important to remember that if you have less than 300 gold you will probably not be *offered* an ally by Warlords, no matter how many times you revert!
The eligible player is allowed to revert as many times as necessary to receive the Hero in whatever city and with whatever allowed ally he finds most suitable. A new Hero may only come with (at most) 1 ally. Any additional allies must be disbanded immediately. Players are allowed to recruit friends to assist in the reverting business in order to get a gamefile with the hero in the correct place. Editing of gamefiles should be avoided to prevent bugs from cropping up. Because some allies cause imbalances in some scenarios (particularly archons and devils), for a given round of the tournament there may be restrictions on which allies players are allowed to receive with their heroes. These will be announced beforehand.
Example:
Red's hero Ra is killed on Turn 5 in a surprise attack by Yahweh (White).
Red moves after White, so on Turn 5 Red opens his game file and sees that he has
no hero. Thus, Turn X = Turn 5. At the end of Turn 5 Red has 624 gold.
Since this is greater than 600 but less than 1200, Turn Y is set to X + 3.
Since X = 5, Ra becomes eligible to receive a new hero anywhere in his
domain on Turn 8.
Second Example:
Blue makes a suicide attack on Red's flying hero stack over a shore on Turn 4.
Both Red and Blue lose their heroes, with a large pile of items remaining
on the shore. On Red's Turn 5, he declares
Turn X = Turn 5, declares 630 gold, and declares Turn Y = X + 2 = Turn 7
for no ally, or Turn X + 3 = Turn 8 for an ally. Blue declares
X=5, 775 gold, and Y = 7 (no ally) or 8 (with ally). Red is content
that he will be able to retrieve the items since his hero and flying ally
will arrive first.
And on Turn 6, Red's gold is roughly the same, but Blue goes on a pillaging
rampage and ends with 1250 gold. So Blue declares 1250 gold and indicates that
Turn Y is now 6 (no ally) or 7 (with ally). Since it is already the end
of Turn 6, Blue cannot go back and receive a hero without an ally, but
he *may* receive a hero *with* and ally on Turn 7. Surprise! Blue
can now get a hero with ally before Red. Red is then faced
on Turn 7 with the choice of getting a hero immediately - but without an ally -
or waiting until Turn 8 to get a hero with an ally. Blue has outmaneuvered
him and is able to get his hero with a flying ally on Turn 7 and recovers the
items.
Just because the player is eligible to receive a new Hero does not mean he is required to.
Heroes may successfully investigate all ruins/strongholds. Reverting is
allowed to achieve this result. However, allies which offer to join a Hero
are limited to one at a ruin and two at a stronghold. Any additional
units from the ruin/stronghold must be immediately disbanded. [ This is
to minimize the need for reverting and to keep the influence of allies
in balance on the smaller tournament scenarios.]
X-Sender: rheeter@mailhost.jet.uk
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Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 12:49:49 +0100
To: mas-mgo@pop.lu.se, Bob.Heeter, elam@madness.net, geez@opendoor.com,
Bob.Heeter, birwin@mail.gte.net, bill.irwin@gsc.gte.com,
geez@opendoor.com, mleung@uclink.berkeley.edu, jpanagos@pacificrim.net,
kchang@u.washington.edu, Bob.Heeter, dashorst@nicole.sis.nl,
gsb@compupick.com, dlp@armory.com, Bob.Heeter,
alex.vickers@utoronto.ca, aubjf@mail.vtx.ch, bbrook@rna.bio.mq.edu.au,
demitrius@stuff.liu.se, gsb@compupick.com, ijb@unb.ca, MrZakk@aol.com,
MTMGsMax@aol.com
From: "Robert F. Heeter"
All actions concerning Heroes must be reported so that there is no
confusion about strength of stack, ally origination, etc. This includes
emergence of Hero (along with ally type and location) and results from
ruin/stronghold investigation (allies, items, and gold). Hero visits to
temples must also be reported. In all cases players must indicate which
cities/ruins/temples are involved. Failure to report hero actions on a given
turn will be treated as a reporting mistake just as a battle-odds error is.
Players
are also encouraged to report new hero levels, but this isn't mandatory.
There's no need to report blessings of non-hero units except when they fight.
As with battles, all mistakes must be caught before the offending player's
next move; a game will never be backed up more than 1 full turn to resolve errors.
[ Notes on Reporting Philosophy:
The idea of the reporting rules is not to burden everyone with
an incredible amount of work, but just to allow defenders to easily
verify that there wasn't any cheating. You don't need to report city
builds or other stuff that people can trivially verify, just things you did
that people can't see on their own. For instance, it *is* possible to
cheat with ruin gold, so players *must* report how much they actually
received in order to allow players to correctly account for it. Reporting
gold is also important so players can see how much gold is considered
competitive, and revert accordingly until they get a comparable amount.
Or suppose that you didn't report that you went to a temple, but someone
(say Max) could see that you had from the change in your hero strength.
Or suppose that you didn't say which temple it was. If Max doesn't know
which temple you went to, he doesn't know whether or not you can swing
past a nearby temple and get a quick blessing, raise your stack bonus, and
kick his hero into eternity. It becomes a life-or-death issue for
his hero. Now, he could take a few minutes and open up the game file
and try moving your hero to the temple to see if he gets blessed there
or not, but that's a lot of work, and it's much easier for you to take
five seconds and type into your turn message "hero blessed at south temple".
So the first reason for reporting temple blessings is the convenience of
other players. The second reason is that it *is* possible to cheat and
raise your hero's strength by editing the game file, and it would *look*
like a blessing to the outside world. Players need to be able to
check for this, and asking you to spend five seconds reporting a blessing
makes it much easier for them without penalizing you with a lot of work.
(With two heroes each getting two blessings, we're only talking about
maybe 20 seconds worth of work to report four blessings in a game!)
The final reason for the reporting rules is to increase the enjoyment
of PBEM play. By asking players to report certain activities we're
inviting them to
embellish their turn reports with fun little stories and do a bit
of role-playing. That makes the game a lot more fun. You don't have
to get into it on a given move, but we want to encourage it, especially
because the tournament will be very competitive and most players
won't win. So it's important to enjoy the experience of interacting
with other personalities, and the turn reporting makes that happen better. ]
It's each player's responsibility to make sure that the game
file and turn-change message are sent out via the normal
channels (group email and/or Remailer) to all players who want them.
But the internet and Remailer
aren't 100% reliable, so if you don't receive someone else's
game file or turn report, it's presumably not their fault, and
it's *your* responsibility to ask for it again (publicly so
there's a group record that you asked). Then it's the other
player's responsibility to work with you and make sure you get
everything. You have the
right to hold up the game on your own turn (without timeouts
or other penalties) until you receive all the information you
need to confirm other players' moves. But if you didn't
receive something and you fail ask for it before taking your
move, and thus you don't complain about an error until a
whole turn has gone by, the game will simply go on (see above),
although rules-error points may still be assessed.
If it is a bad gamefile (e.g., from another game or from the wrong turn),
then the original sender must send it again and be assessed a timeout if
resent past the original deadline.
If it is a valid gamefile for that turn then it *must* be played.
X-Sender: rheeter@mailhost.jet.uk
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Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 22:59:14 +0100
To: mleung@uclink.berkeley.edu (Michael P. Leung)
From: "Robert F. Heeter"
Assorted comments from Dirk, with responses: