Let me highlight in more detail...

Each player is responsible for ensuring he is able to play in the game at the scheduled time. If he is unable to pay any bet, then he shall forfeit the game, and the game shall be played with a Civil Disorder Italy.

This game should be played with a Civil Disorder Italy.

I'm finishing the league out, but I do so under protest. TGM broke his own rule in game 4. League D1 is effectively a screwed up league do to all the CDs and replacements.

No, ThomasB is no longer part of the leagues, because he entered CD. A new player has replaced him, and so that rule is irrelevant. What we have is an issue of player replacement, not a player not having enough points to play the game. The phrase "If he is unable to pay any bet..." means that it is quite clear that it does not apply to this situation, both ThomasB and Farmerboy have over 100 points.

Again I suggest you look at the explanation of what the rules mean. If you want to pay for me to spend time with a lawyer to right rules that are perfectly unambiguous in all situations, do go ahead, but until such a point, you are trying to test the rules beyond what they could ever be expected to achieve. They were written in my not particularly copious spare time in the run up to an exam season. Picking, or indeed in this case, trying to pick them apart is, I feel, exceedingly unreasonable.

I thought we were playing here to have fun. I don't know about others but I am not being paid to play here.

I feel the only way we can move forward with game four in D1 is to draw it or for a mod to force an unpause. I'd prefer the former because the other option will probably just lead to more protests and (heaven forbid) more NMRs/CDs.

Draugnar, have you considered the fact that mising a player disbalances the whole game for all the other 6 players.

What exactly is your problem with adding a replacement? Do you think it would have been better to play with 6 people?

Geez, lets jjust play on. I'm not sure why any credible Diplomacy player would want to play a game with 6 players. Once you get to game 4, there's no good answer. Playing without an Italy disbalances the games. Getting a sub who has a clean slate, without any memory of the previous 3, isn't quite right either, but I think its the better of the 2 choices.

But giving TGM a hard time is just dickish. You're playing under protest? Seriously? You're supposed to be having fun, that's the idea.

You silly man, DJ. I would like every game I play to have six players. Then five, then four . . . :-)

I don't want to be annoying, so forgive me if I am. I am happy to restart all games and I think if others don't unpause they are themselves abusing the pause function. Someone has to decide rules based questions and at the moment that has to be TGM. (Whom, may I say has done a great job setting up the leagues.)

However, in future I think someone else should adjudicate on such matters OR the games should play out in exactly the same way as the rest of the site. This would take pressure off TGM.

I agree 100% that we should all have fun and play the game, but it has to be played with rules that are clearly understood and applied evenly. I do not think any of us would like to play with the inventor of the game if he said we couldn't for example retreat into an SC because it wasn't in accordance with his original spirit of the game.

As stated above, avoiding all problems can be overcome by allowing the games to proceed as every other game does. I accept that this isn't ideal, but we appear to have substituted an imperfect arrangement for another imperfect arrangement and that can lead to arguements and ill feeling.

@Dingle, As I understand it this discussion wasn't about whether or not it is preferable to play with a CD Italy. It was more about how such things should be decided.

as i said in the other thread, if you want to play league games exactly as all other games on the site, when a player CDs, anyone vould join up as the CD country.

Maniac: I will unpause if people don't do so themselves.

The situation ingame four is that moves were made based on that rule. Now, suddenly all plans have to change for Austria as he has to defend against a player who was not there and so didn't move away from Austrian territory and there hasn't been any negotiations with.

I say we play this one out for fun, but have a restart of the official game 4, which is probably the most fair possibility.

I'll support anything but a pause.

Draugnar, Austria has said already that he thought the pause was a good idea. Its up to you guys whether you restart or not though.

I'd rather not restart. As with any normal game, if you start with a CD Italy, someone can join as Italy at any time. And Thomas could have joined, so if Austria or france didn't account for that, it was foolish.

Well, it's up to Austria I guess. The position doesn't really affect me. He is the one at risk.

@TGM, can you just unpause the game please. If you need to give people notice first that's fine, but as so many people have said, we are here to play.

How about we wait until after the Holiday. Get real, everyone else in this fucking league got their holds. Thos eos us in the USofA would like to enjoy our nations birthday for fuck's sake.

I'll give it until tomorrow evening (~24hours from this post)

So we don't get the weekend. Someone else gets nearly an entire Week (Friday to Wednesday) and we have to get on Sunday night. I'm about to sign off and won't be back on until Monday morning when I get to work.

Fair enough, I'll give it twelve hours on top of that, so 10am Monday.

Already unpaused.