I'm happy with the attributes text except for 2-3 things


1.


Don't get confused. Please do not change anything on the both the quickchart and rulebook, as these two are explanations and talk about the holder and what happens in general

The cards themselves speak directly to the user, and therefore should contain 'you' and 'your' I should not be that messy to keep those two apart. Whenever the attributes text is def, it's only one time change, and after that nothing has to change anymore.

So we try to get a final version to put in the rulebook and quickchart.
When we are all happy, all we have to do is change it for putting on the cards only and keeping the rulebook and quickchart 'holder'. Only at that stage.

2.


You gotta point about being overly specific, but the option one is just not right and could only be explained by players that allready played a game of civ. It's not like "military' where you can wait for moving untill all players moved ALL of their tokens. The way it's stated in option 1 could be interpreted that way.

3.



You mean the point about 'and this process stops' ?

In fact it could be:

During the Special Abilities Phase, you may ask up to three players not holding Trade Empire or Wonder of the World for a single named commodity card. From only the first player holding the named card, you collect this one card.

1)

I agree with Flo in the discussion of "holder" vs "you". In my opinion too, there is no problem having two different text versions for 1) the rulebook and the quickchart and 2) the Civ Advance cards. I do understand that it is easier having only one version, but probably the text in the rulebook will be a little more extended anyway.


2)

If we read the word 'conflict' in the text of Metalworking as each single area where a conflict occurs (rather than the conflict phase in general), I think it should be clear that it is about each area and each round of 'token removal' in that area. By definition, in conflict "Players remove one token at a time alternately.", so there should be no confusion about that.

What about:

METALWORKING
In each conflict, you may remove your token(s) after all players that don't hold Metalworking.


3)

I agree with Flo's suggestion for TRADE EMPIRE. Perhaps a small improvement can be made by stating that you have to name the three players in order, in order to avoid confusion about who is the first player to have the card...


4)

One more thing: I noticed that the text of ENGINEERING has one line that starts with "EARTHQUAKE", while the next line starts with "VOLCANIC ERUPTION OR EARTHQUAKE". Since "EARTHQUAKE" is not a calamity on its own, I suggest changing that line to:

VOLCANIC ERUPTION OR EARTHQUAKE: In case of an earthquake, holder's city is reduced rather than destroyed.

Well, it was messy when the Advances back and the Quick Chart was the same, but rulebook and advances front was different. I had hoped to remove that mess entirely, and not just replace it with a slightly less messy alternative.



Yea right. We have had definite versions of the advances before. Didn't stop us from changing things anyway. You might notice that there only was 39 of them at the time...


I'm mostly happy with the quick charts and the rulebook as is, but lets continue with your other points.


You gotta point about being overly specific, but the option one is just not right and could only be explained by players that allready played a game of civ. It's not like "military' where you can wait for moving untill all players moved ALL of their tokens. The way it's stated in option 1 could be interpreted that way.[/quote]
I agree.
I recently rewrote the normative part in the rulebook to be clearer. Could perhaps use that. Modified for the quick chart it becomes:




You mean the point about 'and this process stops' ?

In fact it could be:

During the Special Abilities Phase, you may ask up to three players not holding Trade Empire or Wonder of the World for a single named commodity card. From only the first player holding the named card, you collect this one card.[/quote]
Iterative means "do X, then go back and do the same thing until condition Y is true".
Your last version is linguistically much simpler, but it does not describe the card accurately, as it states that you always asks up to three players first, then each of them answer, and then you get one card.

After some thinking I came up with this sentence.

The first sentence by itself is ambiguous (ask one-by-one or all at once), but taken together with the second sentence I think it clearly describes what how it's supposed to work.
Still not optimal, but much better than what we have today...

Actually §30 in the rulebook (the list of advances) is no more extended than the quick charts. The normative rules (§13-§29) is ofcourse more extended, but that is another matter.
And maintaining two versions is ofcourse not impossible (after all, 2.09 had 3 versions), but I'd still like to avoid it...


Well, the problem is that some people think that metalworking trumps the "Players remove one token at a time alternately" rule.


First, it's not may, it's must. Secondly the token(s) isn't very clear, and can easily be read as all tokens you are to remove (so no improvement).


Well, naming them in order don't solve all problems with that version (see above), as that still implies they all have to answer.


NO, there is problem enough with people thinking that it works for Volcanoes too. That line must NOT contain the words "volcano" or "volcanic eruption"...

Jonno, can you upload the most recent version of the quickchart to the archive?

Gerart

Done.

Fair enough. Unfortunately, at the moment I don't have a suggestion that brings us further than we are right now...


Once again, fair enough, although I'm afraid it will be difficult making a satisfactory text without either the 'iterational part', or having to ask three players at once.


OK.

Furthermore, a couple of (very) small things came to my eye while reading through the quick chart one more time:

- In ARCHITECTURE the texts states 'the costs of constructing a city', while LIBRARY states 'the cost of any one Civilization Advance'. I don't know when the plural of 'cost' should be used, but I just wanted to mention this.

- In ENGINEERING, the first line states that any attacking player 'needs' one additional token, while the holder 'requires' one less token in the second line. It is not really consistent, although I don't really care myself.

- The first two lines in TRADE EMPIRE should change places, since Cyclone is the non-tradable calamity #6, and Epidemic is the tradable one from the same stack.

- I recommend to add another line to PHILOSOPHY, stating that the effect with regard to Civil War is "regardless of any other civilization cards held by the primary victim" (quote from the rulebook), in order to prevent confusion.

1.


I mean, not any slight change, but a great change like all the cards. Once that is done, the problem is solved .

When we are happy about the attributes, you put them in the quickchart and rulebook, all we have to do is 'translate' holder in you and create the cards.

Whenever something changes, you gotta change that single card anyway, which is something else than find/replace.

It's just NOT, that I copy/past the text from rulebook to cards. Beacuse you have to deal with the layout, it's just handwork anyway.

'Holder' on the cards looks as strange to me as does 'you' in the rulebook. These are just two different things. The rulebook speak about 'any player' holding the card, where the card speak to the user itself.

2.
For Metalworking:

Jonno's option 'In a conflict,' is equal to my 'for each area, in conflict', so I'm happy with Jonno's option. It's shorter and tells all.

We could also put it this way:

In a conflict, all players not holding Metalworking must start in token-removal.

Because in fact, it does not give you a right, it orders other players to do something. The metalworker does not step back in loss, it just steps forward and deal the first hit, or "first strike", or "I HIT FIRST, SO YOU GOT THE LOSS"

3.



For me, I'd rather use the iterational part, than stating you could ask three players at once, because that's NOT true. (or you should state that people shouldn't have to answer if you got the card allready. That's off I guess.)

Actually, it's the "just changing one card" that is messy, as we do lots of them, and it's easy to miss or make an error one when "transferring" the change from one place to another.


Thing is that "you" is second person while and "holder" is third person, meaning that some texts will change more than just search-and-replace.
So once the quick chart is done and we have done a first search-and-replace there is some more work left to do. And then we'll most likely have some great ideas for the cards that has to be reverse engineered for the quick chart.


Actually, doing the old card backside was just copy-past and then redoing the newlines manually. The fronts however, was looking at the backside text, seeing if the front text still was a good abbreviation, or else re-abbreviate the back for the front. Your proposal will be similar, but from quick chart to card (instead of from back to front), and all changes to quick chart will always require a change to card.


Sigh, I guess you are right, I've just gotten so used to "holder" on the cards that I don't think it odd any longer.




Well, I had one, and as Flo seams to like it (see below), I'll use it (unless someone come up with an even better one):



OK, will use.


While I agree on your interpretation on how it works, your proposal is somewhat harder to read, and does not have the consistency with the rulebook that my proposal have.




Changing the card to ask three, but only receive one is not an alternative, that is why I disqualified your latest suggestion.
That said, an iterative algorith is acceptable, but only as a last resort. Thus I ask again what you think of my proposal:



Cost should be singular in both cases. Changed.


Changed to requires.


Fixed.


That is what "always" is there for, but I assume a clarification can't hurt. Added ", regardless of any other civilization cards." to the end of the sentence.

Well, since hairsplitting (in Dutch 'mierenneuken', or directly translated 'ant fucking') is one of my hobbies, I'm fine with that :-)



This feels like the best text (so far) that should be written down in the rulebook, since it is short, straightforward and clear. However, I have a little problem with 'non-holders' in the text on the card itself. I'd rather change that back to 'all players that don't hold Metalworking', which would be in line with the text of MILITARY, a card with a similar effect. To be even more in line, I suggest to change the 'holders' from the first part back to the singular.

In a conflict, holder removes his first token from the area after all players that don't hold Metalworking have removed their first token.

in comparison with:

Holder constructs and maintains ships, and moves after all players that don't hold Military.



I suggest to add the words 'in turn', in order to make clear that you ask three consecutive players, rather than three at one time:

During the Special Abilities Phase, you may ask up to three players not holding Trade Empire or Wonder of the World in turn for a single named commodity card. If the player you ask holds the named card, he must give it to you and you may not ask anyone else for it this turn.

Lol.
To spice up the conversation some more, I might add that the appropriate Swedish term is "ordbajseri" (literally "word pooing" (en-GB) or "word shiting" (en-US)). And I'm quite good at it myself


Good points, I've updated the quick chart.


Well, as written your are referring to players (not) holding something in turn. As holding a card in turn don't make sense, I moved the addition to after "ask":

This line is very fine to me.

when we are hairsplitting anyway, which I bought a special knife for:

During the Special Abilities Phase, you may ask, in turn, up to three players not holding Trade Empire or Wonder of the World for a single named commodity card. If the player you ask holds the named card, he must give it to you. You can only collect one card (this way) each turn.



Does this mean, we now use 'holder' for quick and rules, and 'you' the cards.
I know Gerart very well, and I'm sure he's best in translating the rules to the cards. Gerart?



I'm fine with this line:

In a conflict, holder removes his first token from the area after all players that don't hold Metalworking have removed their first token.

Well, that implies that you can still ask (and receive answers of) all three, that's no good. Of course, to reach that conclusion you got to have some imagination and do some hair splitting. (Un)fortunately there are quite a few civ players (current speaker included) who is very good at reading the rules to their advantage when they want to...




It means I might not like it when you are right, but that don't stop you from being right. Yes, we'll use "you" on the cards (and on the cards only).


I've taken that for granted all the time
I don't doubt I'll have some comments when he is done, but then I'd have comments even if it was I who did it in the first place

woohoo!

I was talking about the cards only in the first place, never to change the rules.



Ok, you're right. it's this way for my part.



That's a very good habit. When Gerart and I work together, we always correct eachothers findings. To avoid tunnelvision.

Ok, let's toast to this breakthrough...

Jonno, if you would be so kind to upload the last version of the quickchart to the archive once again, I will make a list with the card-versions, and we can shoot at each others texts once again :-)

Let's rock!