Diplomat- you will be a captain the day I die...

So if, in the future, someone asks you "Who died and made you captain?" you'll have an answer.

Yeah! I think we should vote for captains (though I won't win it would be fair :-) )

What makes you think that "random" would be unfair?

It wouldn't exclusively, unless it is the hated Pseudorandom. Then it would be bad.

How about we all list on here our bids assuming we get each of Napoli, Stato and Venezia, sharing 60 between the other factions with a minimum of 1 each... then select randomly and base the teams on the pre-game choices of whoever randomly gets those factions, with factions going to the highest bidder or (if there's a tie) letting them choose?

For example I would bid...

If Napoli:
Turkey-20, France-1; Ferrara-2, Siena-1, Pisa-2, Savoia-4, Genova-15, Milano-5, and Firenze-10

If Stato:
Turkey-10, France-1; Ferrara-5, Siena-1, Pisa-4, Savoia-4, Genova-15, Milano-5, and Firenze-15

If Venezia
Turkey-5, France-5; Ferrara-5, Siena-1, Pisa-1, Savoia-7, Genova-20, Milano-7, and Firenze-9

So then, if I got one of those factions, my vote would be there already and someone could quickly work out the teams without undue delay.

That won't work Alcuin, because as the bidding goes on, bids change. How would you feel if you were napoli, and I was Venice, and I bid 21 on Turkey, 16 on genova, 11 on firenze, 2 on France, 3 on ferrara and Pisa, 2 on siena, and 1 on milano and savoia. You'd be stuck with at best milano and savoia, and that's not even taking into consideration the third captain! Theoretically, you could be leftnwith zero allies.

No, that strategy won't work.

"undue delay"? The REAL Auction-phase is the beauty of butterhead's idea!
I can discuss whether 12 hours may be too many, but since everyone has to sleep, it couln't be less than 8. I want you all to notice that even with 12hrs I'm sure that there wil be from 6 to 10 bids a day. Auction can't last more than a week. Then the exciting phase will be over, and a quite regular team game will start.
If one team and his captain will have been good enough at bidding, the game could be rather short. Otherwise, if the outcome of the Auction will be balanced both in material (SCs) and human (players' worth) strenght, the game will be balanced and long.

That's the variant I understood. If you all want to minimize the auction phase, why don't you pre-set the countries of each team and play a regular team game? It's fast & fair.
(of course, in this and in similar cases, I won't join. The title of the thread said "Team game BIDDING". So if you want to play a regular TeamGame, perhaps with a short quasi-auction phase, I believe you are in the wrong thread, not me)

Theoretically possible yes... but it's no worse than being France. We just need a way of making the bids secret... although If Venice bid as you have suggested then along comes a Stato Player who decides to bid pretty evenly in the hope of getting whatever others don't want... france 6, Turkey 7, Ferrara 7, Siena 6, Pisa 6, Savoia 7, Genova 7, Milano 7 and Firenze 7. Napoli is on his own... and so forced to ally with somebody, probably somebody who doesn't have Turkey, and you'd be facing Stato with France, Ferrara, Siena, Pisa, Savoia and Milano and with Napoli as an ally. If the votes are known beforehand and we vote, not knowing who is who, your voting strategy would also be a loser and we'd both be in trouble.

Yes Guaroz... but this way everybody gets to bid, not just the three captains.

I don't care who bids or who doesn't. It's Diplomacy. You have to speak if you want things going your way. And speaking requres time. Please consider this as if it was a regular game, in which 9 phases, one for each country to be bidded, are added before the game. Nobody just watches. There will be a lot of diplomacy during biddings. If someone thinks he has to be silent and just watch what the captain are doing, he's already defeated.

*captainS are doing

Eh that's not necessarily true guaroz. That silent player might be picked and get lucky and be on the best team. True their chances are hurt, but they're by no means defeated.

Oh, sure. It's a choice. Sometime you choose to not speak to one neighbour, no? But if I was a captain, between 2 players I don't know, I'd consider ALSO their talkativeness before bidding. And whether they're making smart speeches. We're not going to play a gunboat. If a captain picks too many silent players his team will lose. And "too many" may be "one". It's a team game.
Hey! But you are Drano! Drano my friend. Why do you think we won, as a team, our last 2 EAvGT games? Maybe was it because we started with more SCs than them? Or perhaps was it because we were more communicative than them?
Auction is important. If we make it just drawing lots because we're hurry, then it makes no sense.

I like the idea of doing pick your countries and then having captains vote on nations and fill the nation with a leader of their choice, but i think instead of just first come first serve or random, the captain should also have rounds of bidding on the players maybe. Except for players i'd say it would be best to have it be a silent auction, where the captain gets say 100 and then sends a private message (Either to butter or to a disinterested third party) saying how many points they bid on each player.

Then if any players don't get bid on (I doubt that'll happen but maybe someone is really not liked) or if there is a tie where two or even all three of the captains bid the same amount on a player, that/those player(s) are wildcards and are not a part of any of the teams, but get to pick their countries before the captains bid on the remaining nations(Although they can't pick any of the captain countries) Admittedly this only works if there aren't that many wildcard players, but i think it could keep things interesting once the bidding is over and the game began, since otherwise the diplomacy can get a little dull when everyone knows the teams and knows there will be no stabbing.

Once the wildcards choose their countries, the captains have an auction on the remaining countries, one country at a time like butter described on the first post (i think it was the first at least) then the game proceeds. Does that work?


Hmm, just realized that if one of the captains wins an unfair share of players, he could get more players on his team than countries. not sure how to work around that.

Also, just thought of a good way to decide who gets the captain slots and have the bidding fairly with diplomacy easily going on in the background yet still have pick your country for the game. What if we started a game, and whoever gets the captain countries are the captains, and then does their bidding in global and their diplomacy in private. Once we are done with all the bidding (and the players are divided up however we decide they should be) we can cancel and restart the game with each player joining as their appropriate nation. That way the captains could even bid on which country they are. (So they get say 100 still, but now can also bid on which of the captain countries they will be in the real game)

As an outsider, who designed and ran the first two of these games, I propose this:
AncientMemories, ashleygirl and Neil have the three highest point totals of your list. While an imperfect measure, I'd say they should be the team captains. I repeat my proposal that the game should be (password protected and) pick your power. They start with a total and begin by bidding for Venice, Naples and Stato....the last one obviously goes for 1 point or zero. Then they begin bidding on the other powers one by one with a circular nominating process. Conveniently, they are in the same order alphabetically and by point total, so AM picks the fourth country up for auction, ag the fifth and NL the sixth. The winner of the fourth power at auction gets the privilege of assigning a player to that power and then the process repeats.

The biggest problem I had was the timing and pace of the auction. So I'd suggest having drano handle the running of the auction process and I think his geeky, engineer soul is probably organized enough to make the trains run on time.

Hey gopher, measure total points not just currently non invested ones.

I said that it was an imperfect measure. Y'all aren't worth the time investment to take the list and check players one by one on username search.

Hahahaha, if someone really has their heart set on being captain they can be, i'd like to be but i'm not picky. I'd rather everyone go into this willing to have a good time and not sulking. Also, gopher, do you think we could have a pregame for the auction diplomacy so that we can avoid a ton of private messages and make things go faster or do you think that would be a problem?

Then we could have it so if no one posts a higher bid in say, 12 hours from whenever the previous bid is posted, the auction sells that country to whoever made the bid and the next nation goes onto the block. The other way for the auction to progress is for the other two captains to pass, in which case the next nation would go up for sale immediately (Or well, immediately whenever it is decided which nation will be for sale next)

I still think we should do it the original way I was talking about... if someone misses there bid phase(I.E the second player misses it, the third player gets a shot to bid)...

Butter - that's not how bidding works. Its not a set order with only 12happens person able to bid at a time. Typically anyonencan bud at any time.

Anyways, I'd lime to thank gopherfor volunteering me for more work...ass. ;)

No really though, I'd be happy to run the auction. If asked to do so, I'd like to know who the 3 captains are asap, as I'd like to organize with them.

It would run something like this: at an appointed time (set by my conversations with the captains), the bidding would open at 1 point by whichever captain licked the player to bethe auctioned. At that point, its open bidding. If no bid is received for x hours (x to be determined) bidding ends and we prep for the next bid. I would probably give a little time in between rounds for teams to talk andnplayers to diplome. At any point during bidding, captains should PM me if they are not interested in bidding further. This way, if I get 2 captains who say they're done bidding, I can end it early and move on.

My only requirement for running this is that the 3 captains agree to try to be on as much as possible during the auction so that sewer don't end up with 8 bids on onenplayer that are all 12 hours apart and 4I days go by with only one selection.

Thoughts?

I fully understand that drano was probably typing with a phone, and therefore all typos are forgiven, but one in particular amused me.

"whichever captain licked the player"

If I'd known it was gonna be THAT kind of auction...

Wait, this isn't the "adult" bidding game? Oh man I'm in the wrong forum ;)

Hey, I have no issues with that auction idea. Just sayin.

That sounds about like I thought the bidding would be. I just wanted to start a game to do the bidding in so it would be easier to talk to people rather than having to do PMs

How about we bid for the captains' countries, with the amount of the winning bid taken off the amount available to that captain?