Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

As always thanks for your input. Obviously I disagree about the theme based teams. I think this sort of team role playing can be a great deal of fun. Alot of games feature a common theme, take the many blood only games. You'd have instead of one such choice 4 choices. You can still have some diversity on your team at the same time, as to meet the theme you can do so via nation or pretender choice. I'd obviously prefer players choose both an apporiate nation and an appropriate pretender, though I probably won't make both mandatory. Having different strengths and weakness between teams, reproduces and enlarges what is already built into the game as regards the different nations. In the same way you wouldn't want every nation to be the same and have every path represented, so to with each team. It will hopefully cut down on the duplication in the ranked lists as well, as you can tell from the ordering in the previews.

Not going to give any incentives to betray one's team. I might as you say allow either the advisors or the alternates to handle diplomacy. Advisors should probably do so, but then a need a role for alternates. I suppose both could handle inter-team communications though, working as a diplomatic team with the advisor in overall charge. Again, the question will be, will either group have the time or inclination, since these positions are meant for those who can't/don't necessarily have the time to commit to a full active game.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Glad you got it worked out Gandalf.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Having path-based teams is possible, it just presents certain balance issues. As long as you can get good teams together you'll be fine, but if you get a remarkably unsynergistic team, you will be in for a bit of trouble.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Heh heh, just kidding about the turns. I saw that this thread had 1000 posts and had to stop by and see what was going on. If I was in another game I'd be dying right now, considering that I'm in 500-600 province map, CBM 1.5 (i.e. gem gens), 3 hours minimum per turn late game MM hell in the one game I'm in.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Yeah, that must be awful. ;)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Well of course my goal is always fun/learning rather than an emphasis on the minutae of balance between every single unit. There's a certain amount of redundancy but of course that is pretty much the idea. Player and team skill, experience and synergy of course plays probably the most important roll in any team game.

If you look at the top 4 nation choices (and I might need to reorder the recommendations a bit, I.e for the Arboreans, they can live without Pangaea, but that nation will be more important for the Sanguinarium) with the exception of Pangaea and Mictlan in two instances, there should be very little duplication between teams.

It will also encourage the use and development of indy mages to bring that extra diversity which could give your team an edge.

Anyone care to wager (player skill and experience aside and assuming all players choose appropriately themed pretenders) on which team might have the edge assuming a matchup along these lines:

Arboreans (nature/earth): Man, Eriu, Mictlan, Machaka.
Sanguinarium (blood): Pangaea, Jotunheim, Abysia, Vanheim.
Supplicants of Set (death): Ermor, Shinuyama, C'tis, Ashdod.
Usurpers (astral): Pythium, Bandar Log, R'lyeh, Arco.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I wouldn't want to be an Arborean.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

MA Man + Eriu + Machaka on one team? Wow, that group just loses. It was already a truism that being good at nature wasn't worth much, and those are 3 of the worst nations in the game of *any* era.

My money is on Supplicants of Set. Only C'tis is weak, and the other three are really strong. Especially if you plan to run vanilla, Ashdod can probably kill another team by itself...

I'm going to have to go with Usurpers as runner up. BL would be a great backfield nation, and Rlyeh and Pythium are pretty strong. Arco is reasonably forgettable in MA, but they aren't notably bad. Comparing to the blood team, Jotunheim is the only one with anything really awesome going on.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Of course truisms are only true depending on circumstances.
The other truism is that certain pretenders piled with earth magic are the obvious best choice.

On the other hand, when you look at the actual game results it seems that often the earth gods dont do very well. And that the biggest problem with nature nations is when they are played like earth nations. But I guess that is usually chalked up to the play rather than any kindof disproof of a truism.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Sorry Sept...

I think those teams are just *awful*. As alluded to by others.
While themes can be fun there has to be some mechanism for balance - or the whole concept is not fun.

Even if you gave the green team three extra forts, I do not believe they could win.

the Sanguinarium I would handicap at LEAST a fort.

Finally, the astral team will have some teamwork difficulties, coordinating between land and sea.

Map design for this would be important...