Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I wasn't the only one who had a hand in designing the game. Remember I put out that game concept thread for advice, and I got a lot of help from QM, namad, and I think atul and some others on IRC. My initial version was much more complicated and problematic than the one you guys are playing.

My initial map concept was indeed a grid with overlords lined up and normals on all sides. Unfortunately I couldn't do that with the map you guys are playing on in any way shape or form, as it was hard even finding proper space to put overlords in. TC did have a pretty bad position, I feel bad about man's though, that island above TC could not have been an exciting place to live. In retrospect I should have at least given that island another land connection, hopefully one that did not head straight to TC territories.

Thanks for all your suggestions, I will keep these for later.


I actually like having the Overlords gem incomes vulnerable, although not quite that vulnerable. If there's no reason to take an overlord's lands unless you're taking a fort, that really lowers a lot of the incentive of attacking one. I may consider adding some sort of rule to allow overlords to protect their starting territories more easily, but I don't think I'll be hiding gem incomes from raiding.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

The pretender god, Lingchih has been punished by the great and powerful Emperor Maximillion of Ermor and cast down. Let this be a message to all ye neighbors of Ashdod's lands--strike now and claim what you wish from the giants, for the giants can retaliate but weakly with their god displaced. Know you this, Ashdod, once Machaka's forces have been removed from the Empire, so too shall yours which so wrongfully attacked our outskirts known by the locals as "Bandar Log".

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Then the prophecy has begun, Ashdod has tripped over their own overconfidence. Now their neighbors need but to lay aside their quibbles and strike out against the tyrant! For destiny sees fit to unleash its wrathful vengeance on those who strive to rise beyond their worth.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Lingchih is only temporarily inconvenienced. He will return shortly, and woe be to anyone that has tried to displace us in his absence. And Ashdod is not without defense without our God in mortal form. Perhaps you have seen our Adons, and their mighty Ahimen guards? If not, just come onto Ashdod lands, and you will meet them first hand.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Question, after the Overlord pretender has initiated a war and attacked a lesser nation's provs personally, can the Overlord then attack that nation indiscriminately, regardless of dom in it's provs?

Maybe I interpreted the rules too closely, but right now I am only attacking Ermor provs where I have dom, and it is becoming extremely limiting. Like fighting with both hands tied behind my back.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

No, you are interpreting the rules correctly. It's one of the reasons I think they need changed.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Welcome to my world.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Hehe, and don't forget you can't actually capture Ermor's capital or even siege it. The way the rules are set up it doesn't really make any sense for an overlord to attack anybody but an overlord or a normal who is about to win.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Yeah, the rules for this game need to be changed. Let's just get it over with.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Sure, the rules need to be changed--they are prohibitive. But it is far from impossible for an overlord to win.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

want to trade fire gems for nonfire gems of any type...

willing to also trade astral gems for nonfire gems (I'll trade as many astral gems to a player as fire gems as he also requests... 2:2 ratio)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

So wait, Machaka's sieging my capital. As an overlord, isn't that prohibited?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

D'oh! So it is!

My bad, I misunderstood that rule :(. For some reason I just read that I was not allowed to actually storm his capital, and I've kinda been playing on autopilot since I was killed.

What can be done here? I'm really sorry I haven't been paying close attention for some time. Do we know what the machine will do if I just go AI?

---

Well, I could just send him a bunch of gems and stuff and then call it even? Would that satisfy everyone?

Although I'm still not sure what we'd do if I went CPU and the CPU marches back onto his cap.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Just leave the cap and don't worry about what the AI does. If that's your gatestone army teleporting a few provinces away is probably good enough.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Okay, army is walking away. I will set myself to AI next turn.

Really, though, Overlords should be able to siege the capital of any normal who is sieging their capital :).

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Yeah, that capitol rule is too stupid to be allowed to live.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

wish a normal was sieging my capital...

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

The Overlord rules about cap sieging are just incredibly bad. This game was an experiment, and the experiment has been done, and found lacking. It's probably about time to end it now, and try again with some modified rules. Any winner of this game could not be proud of their win.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Making a completely new game (and map) will definitely take a lot of work. It could be several weeks before a new game started. If everyone agrees that the overlord capitol attacking restrictions are too stupid to be playable (and I agree that it is), you could always play assuming that rule doesn't exist for the rest of the game. The main reason it was implemented anyway was to prevent overlords from killing normals off really quickly at the start of the game. I'm pretty sure that's been accomplished at this point.

If you all would rather just play a new game and try to get the rules right this time, we can end the game and start working on a new map and the revisions now.

By the way, is there anyone reading this that could make a map? I don't have any mapmaking programs right now (unless you count rpgmaker 2000), which would make it difficult for me to come up with a map that would meet the demands that seem to be needed. I can handle all the map commands, I just can't create a usable image. Maybe I should post this in the maps&mods section.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Hmm, I could support a rule change at this point in the game, so that Overlords could now siege normal caps. I think it would keep the game viable and playable, without having to start a whole new game.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Already too late to make a difference to me

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I second that.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

What exactly are you seconding? :P

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Heh, Squirreloid hadn't posted when I started typing. I say we give it a run by relaxing the no-cap rule, particularly if the other option is to shut the game down.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

That makes three? ;)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Adding a 48 hour extension to the turn for you guys to discuss this amongst yourselves.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

The main area in which I find the rules lacking is province control, but to some extent this can be rectified by different play style. I mean allowing overlords to retake their home provinces (where they could have had strong dominion) isn't necessary--it requires them to actively maintain their dominion. Whats more disturbing is that I don't feel threatened by any lone overlord--I can outpace a 1/turn province loss pretty readily. Sure, 1/turn can be castestrophic if they somehow choose all my best provinces, but that'd just be uncanny.

The main advantage with overlords is the early start, what I mean to say is any overlord not capitalizing on this advantage is probably going to flounder and die. As is, its a little difficult to capitalize on this. Your an overlord, you selected Dom10. But now all your provinces spend the first x turns filling with candles before you aggressively push them outward. Realizing this fatal flaw, you start sacrificing your military might to get some temples, that's ok though, you chose order right? So its a few turns later and your finally pushing dominion outward into all those indie provinces, time to leverage that 3:1 advantage! Oh wait, those normals are starting to butt up against you, carrying their dominion with them. Hmm. Not much left to that advantage of yours now is there?

I think simply allowing them to attack independent provinces regardless of dominion is a huge and necessary change in their favor, perhaps oppressively so depending on how much they can press that advantage. Regardless, I think that simple rule change would be a good start in what is likely to be a pendulum of rules changes until something resembling a balanced set of rules and victory criterion is reached.

I can't say much from the normal perspective, I mean I'd have to worry about people popping in to stop victory conditions. But that's pretty minor in comparison and quite possibly something that shouldn't be corrected.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I think it would be a remiss change to suddenly alter the rules that people may have been using for defense without some warning period to allow them to alter their decisions. It's always valuable to include in one's strategies contingencies for possible eventualities that are not necessarily foreseen, but I don't think the eventuality of the rules changing is one that is necessarily fair as a quick change. At the minimum, I think there should be a grace period of some turns before the rule is changed. I'd actually prefer the new game option over changing the rules mid-game, though.

The overlords not being able to siege capitals seemed to have two purposes from the start of the game, only one of which was the protection offered to normals in the early game. The second important concept there was that the overlords needed to work WITH normal nations to fully remove threats. We already noticed a partial lack of friendly diplomacy between normals and overlords (what with normals ganging up on a couple of them) even with this possible incentive to work together. Won't the problem be worse without it?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Except without it the Overlords can actually swat problematic normals, removing an enemy. Being forced to fight on the defensive sucks, a lot.

I mean, in the unlikely event where an overlord manages to take and hold all of a normal's non-capital provinces (likely at 1/trn with their Overlord, which is really painful), they still have to just sit there and try to preach the normal to death, all the while the normal can make suicide attacks at random adjoining provinces to remove temples, with full knowledge that nothing it does will make the capital a weak point to attack.

Once involved in a war with a normal, the overlord has to tie up significant forces (enough to defeat all their provinces plus then defend all provinces adjoining the normal's capital until they can achieve domkill) or be forced to continually defend that border (because Overlords have no advantage in dom-pushing), which means they can't end one threat quickly, no matter how trivial. So then a second front might open up. And a third, and pretty soon whatever advantage you think Overlords have is gone because they can't fight n wars effectively, especially when they only get 1 attack per turn assuming their pretender is positioned somewhere useful or doesn't have anything better to be doing.

I mean, I had to do exactly that. And there was basically a continuous stream of longbows from Man's capital to our border - a situation made worse because I could rarely capitalize on a victory by advancing.

Now, as wars rarely involve starting the siege of the capital absolutely last, obviously cutting off the capital's production and revenues from the normal would permit a war to end (effectively) much faster, and also require a smaller commitment of forces to keep them contained (only have to defend the one province).

An overlord should be able to defeat multiple normals at the same time. This should be what makes them overlords.

Some rules proposals for the next game:
1) Overlords can attack independents regardless of dominion.

2) Create a magic item called Battle Standard. It doesn't have to do much, or even anything, but one must be present in the army for an Overlord to attack a normal outside his dominion.
2a) Make it require 15 gems, and possibly make 7 different ones (one for each magic path other than blood) so that no overlord has problems forging them. This is a significant enough gem expenditure that there are opportunity costs with outfitting another army with a standard. It should probably be a misc item or a hand item.
2b) An Overlord's pretender and prophet automatically count as having a standard without needing to carry one.

3) Normal capitals don't count for Overlord victory conditions, but all starting overlord forts do. (Rethink victory conditions)

4) Normals cannot win on their own. Instead, normals share in a victory by an Overlord. Basically, the Overlord is assembling a team that will win the game.

5) In addition to standard cooperative play, Overlords can take on Vassals. A Vassal is a Normal nation which binds itself closely to the Overlord, but allows the Vassal to win if the Overlord he is a vassal of wins.
5a) To enter vassalage requires agreement of both the normal and the overlord, and probably informing the (non-playing) game admin.
5b) An overlord can only have so many vassals, probably 5.
5c) (i) A Vassal which wants to break its vassalage to a particular Overlord is required to pay an indemnity to the Overlord. (specific amount to be determined, but I'm thinking at least 2000 gold or 1/20 that in gems or any combination thereof - it should not be convenient). (ii) No attacks by one against the other are permitted in the turn in which vassalage is recognized as broken (funds received by Overlord), but thereafter anything is fair game. (iii) An Overlord can never initiate dissolution of a vassalage agreement, once formed.
5d) A Vassal who dies still counts against the Overlord's total allowed vassals.
5e) A Normal may not become a Vassal of more than one Overlord simultaneously.
5f) Overlords should be encouraged to have vassals - possibly by making victory conditions easier for Overlords with 4+ Vassals by 1 fort or so?
5g) The identities of an Overlord's vassals are not required to be publicly disclosed, although we possibly would want to force Overlords to publicly disclose how many vassals they have. An Overlord or a Vassal may choose to disclose the status of any such agreements they may be in, of course. Nations are also permitted to lie about the state of their vassalage agreements.

Ok, that covers:
(1) difficulties in attacking normals
(2) incentives for normals and overlords to work together. In fact, it virtually mandates it

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I'm pretty much fine with any rule change at all... this is my only game and i don't want it to have to be quitted.

relaxing one or even two of the rules holding the overlords back should be fine.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Those rule changes are really well thought out Squirrel, and I like them for the next game. If we want to finish this one though, I think we should look at just making a few changes to the rules in this game. Specifically, allowing the attacking of normal caps at any time (though Pretender has to be present in the attack), and allowing Overlords to take indies at any time, regardless of Dominion in the indie prov.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Okay, so all those in favor of continuing this game with, say, 4 turns before restrictions on attacking normal nation capitols are lifted say aye.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Aye

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Aye: the Rule change to continue this game sounds good.

-- I like the vassal concept to drag this more toward co-op, but think it was ill posed. (i.e. the penalizing bit I dislike, I think a free trade of provinces between vassal and overlord is good, and the vassalage should be for life--so as not to allow ninja-victories). Similarly I don't think all normals should be able to be vassals, i.e. a cap of 2 vassals per overlord or something, further when your vassal dies you cannot replace him.
-- You already have my thoughts on the indie idea
-- I think the other modifications far too much.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I'd be interested to hear atul's thoughts.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

That vassals can actually back out while Overlords cannot eject vassals means its actually more power for the vassal. A vassal should be able to look for a new lord if they're willing to sever their ties. They have to pay for the privilege to make it inconvenient, but that they even have the option is a power for them.

Vassals and Overlords can freely trade provinces - no limitations were laid between the interactions of allies. There's merely a restriction on attacks when a Vassal severs ties with an overlord.

I'd rather give Overlords enough Vassal slots to make some vassals early, and still have slots left for later use. Its a more interesting diplomatic game if the Overlords have more latitude to reward allies. Why do you think 2 is superior to 5?

Why do you think the other changes went to far? Its hard to respond to 'gone too far'. Why are the rules as proposed a bad idea?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

To me I see (0+2)/5 dead&dying overlords and (4+4)/16 dead&dying normals... either way your looking at about half the people are dead or dying and there is no statistical difference between those groups.

Overlords have a unique set of restrictions that requires unique workarounds. Throwing out that concept because it was too difficult for 2 people (who had other factors going against them as well) is kind of absurd.

So yeah, I'm all for tweaking the victory conditions and some screwy restrictions like the capital bit (which I too for some reason read as no storming). I'm definitely for making dom nuetral/indie provinces always viable targets--and this is a huge boon, probably more than they need. I'm not for essentially what would amount to a complete change in concept, i.e those suggested items.

Anyhow, that's why I'm interested to hear from the more successful people in this game and see what the deal was. i.e. did they actually overcome it, was it a gimmick or based on the map, maybe it was the result of some fancy bartering? I don't know.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

No changes are set in stone yet. I do like some of squirrel's ideas, though not necessarily all of them. I am pretty much planning on putting everything up to a vote (when the game is over or nearly there). I am against certain core changes to the concept myself but I will present all suggestions for review.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I'm fine with relaxing the overlords' restrictions after 4 turns. Gives us some time to consider how to counter what might happen then.

The vassal concept is, I think a fine idea for a similar-but-different style of game. Personally, I think it would be fun to have a way to force your way into vassalage as a normal nation (such as by defeating and consuming a vassal someone already has). Of course, this opens the door to a liege lord conspiring with an extra party to remove one of his vassals in favor of a new one, which could be a problem. However, since the new vassal doesn't have to (and *can't*) be declared until the previous one is dead, there's always the possibility that they are going to declare for someone ELSE after having destroyed that nation.

Basically, each overlord is able to have 2 vassals. They cannot take on a new vassal if a previous one is killed off. Except, that the player who kills off a previous vassal has the option to declare HIMSELF the new vassal of the overlord, or to allow that vassal slot to close permanently on the overlord. Of course, there would have to be some way of determining who it was who actually killed the vassal state, in cases where it's not obvious or there were multiple attackers.

Seems like it would open the door for a variety of political maneuvers and decision-making.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

The politicking i was more interested in was the Normal-Overlord interactions. Your system basically can essentially remove the Overlord from the politics of the game, because it removes virtually all interesting political choices the Overlord can choose as an initiator.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

What are the interesting choices that have been lost? Seems like all I proposed was a way for a normal to have some say in the matter of who's going to be a vassal.

Actually, what incentive is there for vassals to be chosen at all? Since each side of the 'deal' only has restricted options once the deal is made, and there are no rules against working together WITHOUT the vassalage (nor should there be), wouldn't it be in the best interest of everyone involved to simply wait until victory conditions can be met and then to pick them at the end, avoiding the punishments and restrictions of the system entirely?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

5 Vassals allows for more vassals than we have normals. It also allows for ~1/4 of the players to win simultaneously? It gives no incentive for an overlord to keep all of his vassals alive, he has a spare slot even. Making it a permanent choice locks in those incentives and removes the ambiguity that they'll have with normal allies. And as I stated, if they have to fulfill win conditions together, being able to opt-out allows for a normal to fulfill normal win conditions as a vassal, opt out and win.

The swallowing a vassal to become a vassal idea is interesting, but not sure I like it--need to consider it more.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

There are no normal win conditions...

The incentives for a normal to become a vassal are so that it can win the game. A normal without a master may be perceived as particularly dangerous because he is ronin.

The incentive for the Overlords is maintaining a large set of vassals allows them to win easier (ie, I suggested reduce number of fortresses needed).

The incentives for both sides to enter a vassalage agreement are guaranteed peace - they become your ally.

And vassal agreements are permanent, even beyond death of the vassal, unless the vassal chooses to end it. (Obviously, a dead vassal can pay no indemnity, and can make no choices). That was included in my first post on the matter.

As to more total vassal slots than normals.
(1) I imagine we'll run with 5 overlords instead of 6 for next time.
(2) We want Overlords to compete for the normal's favor, so we want Overlords to have enough Vassal slots that *vassals* and not slots are in short supply.

Finally, normals should not be able to force themselves into a vassalage position by fiat. Vassal slots are something given to Overlords as a way of having something to give to normals, and an important part of their diplomacy and interaction with normals. The choosing of vassals is not something normals should be able to arrogate for themselves. The choice of vassal is the Overlords, and assuming the intended target accepts, they have to live with that choice.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

so are we making a rule change and continuing? if we don't decide soon people might lose interest and we'll lose the chance to decide for ourselves (time will decide for us)...

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Rule change and continuing, it looks like. Only one person has stated that they dislike the change, but they were also willing to play with it. I think it would be better for the sake of the game to just continue at this point.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

so this turn will have no more delays and will host on saturday? can you rdonj post the rule changes specifically?



also i have an idea for rule changes for future games... how about we keep the overlords dom restricted and just make some insane rule like normals can't take dom score higher than 5-6?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I have no intention of adding any more delays to the current turn. Next turn (37)is the first of the 4 turns until overlords can attack capitols at will. That will be the only change. I can put this in the OP if you like.

That is one of the suggestions I liked, as it would be simple and would do a lot to enhance the offensive capabilites of overlords. So it is a definite possibility for the next game.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I am glad we are lifting the Capital attack (I didn't even realise it was a rule after the first 10 turns!) so we can continue and play this one out.

I agree that changes should be made for the next game. I am not sure of the Vassal idea, it would be a massive change. Especially if there was no way for a normal to win without it. Surely it would mean that the Overlord would cut a deal with a couple of normals and kill off the remainder? This game has suffered from gang ups vs some of the Overlords (but I think the map was partially responsible for that, a wrap around would have made that far less desireable) but at least they were defensively strong. A normal being ganged up on by an Overlord and a couple of neighbouring normals hardly seems a recipe for fun. I like allied victory condition options though. But there is a danger that they spark brief early diplomacy - then we just have fixed adhoc teams for the rest of the game (and those who are not 'in' the teams are simply picked off).

I like the idea that the Overlords get more attack options, especially as the game progresses. Being able to attack neutrals without dominion seems a good change for a start. But the attack standard idea seems too cheap to me. Something else is needed to help the Overlords but I am not sure that is quite it. If the next game restricted the normals Dom strength then it allows a lot more fruitful dom pushing by the Overlords. Coupled with the ability to actually attack capitals and take indies without their dom there would make a big difference.

I think even with the existing rules the next game would play out very differently. I know I have changed my ideas on what I should have done. I certainly saw the Overlords as more of a threat than an opportunity but that was before I saw how the game played out. I don't think we should use these rules again as they are too restrictive on the Overlords. But I don't think the game format needs to be completely changed. Players would adapt their play a lot in a second game.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

@Hoplo -- Well put! If only your diplomatic messages to me were so well formed, I might have taken them seriously. Though it did provide me with a great deal of amusement, so either way, thanks!

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

If Overlord attack options are not expandable by use of resources, I will not play an Overlord again. Lategame wars involve attacking many provinces simultaneously. Making the Overlord pay for the privilege against a normal is fine. Making it so the Overlord cannot even accomplish such a feat is not ok.

There's a reason i proposed giving so many vassal slots to Overlords, so that normals were the thing in short supply, not vassal slots.