Re: Global War (started!)
 

was reading the tread regarding 'what makes a good dominion player' just now and couldn't help but realizing how important diplomacy is...especially when you are located on the borderline between good and evil...

well the evil nations in this game are like deaf school kids who's bullied by a bunch of 'good guys' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif ... and then robbed by another bunch of 'neutral guys'...

Lanka will fight till the end, the monkey rules you all (maybe in the afterlife, but still)!

Re: Global War (started!)
 

Evil nations have definitely been a little gunshy, at least to begin. I wonder if that's because of the no communication, or if we happened to get more aggressive players on Good rather than Evil.

Who's got a theory?

Re: Global War (started!)
 

I think it may be the Secret Enemy thing.. people might not want to attack and risk themselves if they might end up losing the game even if Evil wins, because they never eliminated their Secret Enemy.

Also, Good is sort of forced to attack, given the set-up. From the perspective of Good, the map is a very unfriendly place.

Calling all Good and Neutral nations! We must oppose the Evil threat, or it will dominate this world. The time to act is now! Balance must be acheived, before Good is extinguished.

Re: Global War (started!)
 

We hesitate to say a thing lest We break the non-disclosure state of the game but (REDACTED) your time is now!

Re: Global War (started!)
 

well, it's 99% mostly due to no communication...secret enemy thing is not really a big deal. but no communications? that takes balance out. Actually the map is a very, very friendly place for good nations.

Re: Global War (started!)
 

LOL, well I think just the opposite.

Evil has lots of advantages:

1) Many of the Evil nations are natural rushers/strong early. There are few good nations that could have been and only one is. Most Evils are one v one better than the goods at this stage.
2) Secret Enemy is a disaster for good. Even worse if the secret enemies are not next to each other as I suspect. This means that the Evils are actively discouraged from fighting each other. So they have safe borders and silent allies. There is no evil v evil conflict. So good is heavily outnumbered by on average tougher evil nations.
3) Diplomacy is not that useful here. The goods cannot negotiate with the evils and with the Secret Enemy couldn’t convince them to fight amongst themselves even if they could. So you can’t get your enemies enemy on your side. Because he has none. All the goods can do is chat amongst themselves http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Compare this to a game like the upcoming Megagame. Imagine if your enemy could negotiate with others and you couldn’t! It would be game ending. But here its effects are small.
4) It is really hard to help anyone who is not your immediate neighbour, and with the number of enemies each good has often even helping them is tough. So in military terms we are largely fighting on our own. We can trade items and gold but that doesn’t increase the number of either and being boxed in by a ring of foes means we all need them now. We can’t specialise research much either. Everyone with combat mages needs those multiple paths. Even Construction needs multiple Good nations to research. We can’t leave it all to Ulm (the natural forger) due to his limited paths. So what advantage does this give us over Evil who can trade with Neutral for items anyway? And while we have little to summon due to game restrictions we can’t summon for each other anyway. At least none of us have to waste points on blood http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
5) If we survive in to the mid game the total lack of Thugs will be huge. Either as national commanders or because we cannot summon death or blood leaders. Most nations with national thugs - Agartha, the Giants, ones with decent national summons etc - were not possible picks.

This doesn’t mean that Good has no chance. Pythium and/or Arco have decent mid-end games so if they make it that far they could do well, even sneak a win. The mechanics then will work for them. If a couple of Evils are dead then most Evils don’t want them to die as that means they lose too. Nor will the neutrals be able to abandon them as they to lose if they die at that point. So they have numerous 'allies'. But the 'good' team aspect doesn't help them at all.

But as a Team game the map and mechanics of the game don’t work. Good can’t help each other much and Evil and the Neutrals are not in teams.

If you look at the graphs you will see that most of the goods are doing badly. Some very badly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Three of the five goods net lost provinces last turn.

The good team made a lot of strategic mistakes. Pretender design, nations picked etc. But the deck is massively stacked against us whatever we had done. ‘Team’ good has no chance with this set up, but it is possible when a Good nation will survive a long time due to the game mechanics.

Re: Global War (started!)
 

Yes believe whatever you want, TC, our monkeys will take you out of the picture soon!

Re: Global War (started!)
 

I think Good made a lot of mistakes and had some bad luck.. we could be a lot more competitive right now in different circumstances. I don't think the game concept is necessarily fundamentally flawed.. but it would take more tries at this type of game to see. It's definitely not clear that it is fundamentally balanced, anyway. Evil definitely seems to have an advantage over Good, so far.

Re: Global War (started!)
 

yes I agree, I have sent plenty of scouts around the world this time and I noticed good nations have definitely made some bad mistakes in the initial expansion phase. I don't think the concept is fundamentally flawed, but certain aspects can be tweaked...let's fight on and see.

Re: Global War (started!)
 

I dont know how you can decide that things are unbalanced at this point when no real struggle has begun, with evils looking at each other as cats in a box and neutrals standing in between...at least you don't have to wonder from where shall come the next blow !