Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

( Damn, a man can't edit his posts anymore :rolleyes: )

:doh:

Calahan, Thanks for the correction re. YARG & CBM :)

Edit, that makes the observation re. non-tart endgame even stronger. It stands to reason that it's directly tied to the hard research settings.

I guess we could trim the nation list a bit. The problem with this approach is where you draw the line. If you remove EA Aga. then later ppl will complain about XYZ and later about this nation and later about that. I'm not sure I want to go that path.

And if my count is right we have:
Hard research: 4
Normal research: 1

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

No other nation is in the ballpark of badness that is (EA/MA) Agartha except maybe MA Ulm. And I have to stress maybe.

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

Your analysis of Agartha contains some good points for improvement for CBM. Did you try to give such suggestions to QM?
Two notable improvements:
- Since Agas troops suck make their mages, including Oracle, cheaper. For the oracle an alternative would be to keep the price but give him more picks in D/S/E.
- Give access to national variant of darkness spell lower in the research tree
- Give them low level summon spell for a beefy cannon fodder.

Your build is reasonable but I wonder whether you'd have been better served with an awake naked dom10 Wyrm with solid scales. Then all your income goes to castles and mages.

BTW, I had the bad luck to get EA Aga. in Pasha RAND and then MA Machaka in the sequel. Getting a lousy nation in a RAND game sucks alright but I'm still reluctant to ban nations. I do hope CBM would give some love to EA Agartha and MA Machacka b/c both sure need that. MA Machaka actually got worse as CBM progressed :(

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

I must say that I have liked the slow research speeds in the yarg games. Although what I would like even more is slower end game research. Say that you start with normal research cost(40) and then progresses as
c(n) = c(n-1) * 2
instead of
c(n) = c(n-1) + c(n-2)
as it is in standard dominion. I am no modder though so I have no idea if this is possible to implement.

Edit: Well doubling might be a bit to much ending up with a l9 cost of 10240, using something like 1.9 instead one would end up on about 6800 for l9.

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

:up: hard research
:down: trimming out 'weaker' nations...it's part of the fun!

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

Ditto.

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

Unless you're stuck with one of the "weaker" nations, that is.

I would suggest, instead of trimming the 3-4 'worst' nations, have some way of selecting the top 12 or so 'good' nations. The list doesn't have to be accurate (whatever that means in something so subjective as a list of 'top' nations), but should at least contain no outright stinkers.

It would mean a smaller YARG3, but if it filled up quickly, just start another game (YARG3A and YARG3B).

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

I did better than that, I made my own balance mod (which I will theoretically get back to once i figure out how to merge it with CBM 1.7 effectively). As far as I know, QM did not really use it for ideas.

I improved Oracles and their national troops (although the troops are still probably bad, they just might actually be playable). The Oracle improvement made casting darkness easier, among other things.

A dom10 wyrm would have been no more than a speedbump for Mictlan, and i'd have been much less advanced in research (no cheap skull mentors) and would have crumbled much quicker. I don't think even a pile more national recruit anywhere mages would have made up the difference (a skull mentor is worth ~2 non-cap mages for agartha even with Mg1, and you have to pay upkeep on the mages).

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

Hard research: 7
Normal research: 1

I think we will keep all the nations for next YARG, which would be MA ( we already had LA and EA). I share the sentiment that it's part of the fun. It's like lottery and you don't know what you'll get and that's part of the excitment. If you happen to get the worst nation, well that sucks but you do the best you can with it, experiment if you like, and hope to have better luck in the next game :)

It happened to me twice already and it didn't change my opinion re. the fun factor of having a full nation roster. As I see that quite a number of players feel the same way I currently plan to have a full nation roster for next YARG.

Squirrelloid, Wyrn would give you awesome expansion and income for lots of armies. indie, or merc. if you like. then other nations would think twice before attacking you. Or so one would hope...

Re: YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [11/24 players left]
 

If I was Mictlan, a Wyrm wouldn't do much to deter me. Jags just eat it. And i'm not sure it would have improved my expansion all that much since i had constrained paths to travel down, and at least know Mictlan's capital wasn't *that* far from where my southern border reached after initial expansion. I imagine Arco and Niefl's capitals were also vaguely proximal to my original post-expansion borders.

Really, Mictlan isn't going to look at provinces or income, its going to look at unit roster (or at least it should). If jags eat your unit roster, expect mictlan to attack you.