There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Well, I was thinking one day about the evolution of the megagame. I was pondering the changes that have already been made, such as disallowing LA R'lyeh/Ermor, the choice of victory conditions, size of the map, etc, and I began to wonder about the setting of the game itself. My thought was, that the uniqueness of these games is only partially expressed through the game settings, but equally so by the behaviors of the players within.

Before I brooch my own concept, I'd like to make clear: This thread is meant to touch off discussion, whether you like my own idea or not, say so, and throw yours in the ring as well.


So bear with me, this is a bit unorthodox, but only as unorthodox as a 60 player game. I would call this concept "Wicked Web", and it starts with a simple premise - 1 victor out of 60 people enforces a certain dynamic in the game, and perhaps lends itself to a game where people do not interact enough to justify the size of the game. So I thought "heck, a 20 player game is still big, and has its own winner, what if we had 3?".

This was where my imagination took off..... The idea is that only 3 people will win this game, but that means that you do not have to defeat everyone to be one of those 3 victors when the game is called. But it DOES mean you will almost surely have to make some friends as you go, and cooperate with them if you wish to succeed. Mega-alliances of the "best" players should be largely mitigated by the scope of the map, and the fact that you won't likely succeed without choosing "friends" who share a border. On the other hand, fortune is a fickle mistress, and who can say that if you should slip, that your old buddy won't fall in with a rougher crowd, and you would find yourself on the end of a pike? I'm seeing a vicious and bloodthirsty game where no war is as simple as it seems, because while there is always (okay, ALMOST always) someone larger than you who wants a piece, there are also always people smaller than you, who want to peck at you until you crumble. I'm seeing a game of shifting alliances, and unlikely bedfellows, where say Lanka befriends Bogarus, not because he wants to be the baddest alliance in the world (and get ganged up on for it?), but because if he protects Bogarus, he can trade blood slaves for other gems and forged goods, and will have a very potent ally in the late game (not to mention a very grateful ally, which is not always the case).

I know that we are a ways off from worrying about organizing this game, but I just thought it would be fun to switch things around a bit, and do something that has never been done before. We've had team games, but those are intended to marry you to a teammate, I am thinking of an alliances game, where you must choose every turn who to support, and who to destroy.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Well sure yes, actually why not?

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

From my experience, games where alliances play a big part, like the two megagames, tend to be a bore when you get into late game. To do well, you need to spend hours on diplomacy which takes the fun away after a while.

How about a mega game where diplomacy is minimized? Turns can be played much faster with less agonization. I don't know how rules can be set to minimize diplomacy, perhaps something like:

1. You have to declare war on a nation publicly before you can attack that nation. You can declare war on the same turn as you script to attack.
2. There can never be a ceasefire. War, once declared continues until one of the combatants is dead. When a nation is eliminated, the winner has to declare it publicly. A nation that goes AI still has to be eliminated.
3. You can not declare war on any other nation if you are at war.
4. You can not declare war on a nation that is at war with more than 1 nation. (So a nation can be at war with a maximum of 2 nations only).

A lot of diplomatic energy is geared towards ensuring that you fight only one nation at a time, so the above set of rules would simplify or eliminate diplomacy.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Oh, and NAPS are not allowed, and you can't cast identifiable hostile spells on any nation you are not at war with. (There's no way to police anonymous spells, so those are left out). And then probably a lot of the hostile global spells will have to be modded out.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

The same turn that you -script- to attack? :o So if you can't hang out and wait for a few minutes before hosting, you might have to publicly announce your intentions maybe a day in advance of your armies actually arriving? >.>

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I like that idea of not being teamed on like LoloMo said.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Actually anonymous spells can be policed by the host. Almost anything can be policed by the host if it happens inside the game. Such as, in one game idea it was a necessary item that messages between players can be policed, but of course then messaging can be done by email or irc which is much harder to handle. But if it happens in the game then it will often appear in the game log if that option is turned on by the person running the game.

Gandalf Parker
--
Nothing is impossible. Its a computer.
Impossible is a technical term which translates as "we can do it but its probably more trouble than its worth in most cases".

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Yup, basically the public declaration is just to determine whose declaration has precedence. You can't declare war on a nation that has other people declaring war on it on the same turn. It can be viewed as a sneak attack, since there are no NAPs allowed. This simplifies things also, as there are no warning turns to keep track of.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I think we want few things for new megagame:

- CBM, at least pretenders part
- better map, I think Twan did some early work on a big fair map? or was it Pashadawg?
- some nation balance mod would help [just the one taking care of most obvious problems, especially created by very difficult research]

I must say I like diplomacy. I am probably much better at it than real fighting :)

Lolomos rules wouldn't change much though. In KM I used mostly long-term alliances, not NAPs. NAPs came mostly because of geographical situation on the map - it would be simply very hard to fight wars for me with Lanka or LA Pythium. Wars are also rarely any secret and there was no ganging on each other in the west. 2:1 at most. It woul rather harm east and conquers over there :)

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

"3. You can not declare war on any other nation if you are at war." is a terrible idea. It very much needs to be amended to "you cannot declare war on any other nation if you have declared war on a nation you have not eliminated." Otherwise a player could declare on a nation across the map and prevent them from doing anything until they could teleport a credible threat across the map.

Also, I don't like the idea of having to babysit the thread until the end of a turn for a sneak attack. Might be simplest to force a declare with 1 turn warning just to prevent out-of-game availability and hosting time from being an important factor to the game.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I think in a game that size requiring so much posting about wars will become messy. Also, those rules could cause some problems, such as being unable to eliminate an enemy as his lands aren’t contiguous, and you aren’t allowed to get through someone else’s lands to finish the job. Why not just play it as a normal game, excepting the victory condition?

How would the 3 winners be selected? Last 3 nations? Biggest 3 after a certain number of turns?

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

There is a board game called _Dune_ which has an interesting alliance mechanic. Basically, nations are only allowed to make alliances during times of Confluence, i.e. every 10 turns or so. After a Confluence, alliances are unbreakable until the next Confluence, though the exact degree of support given to your allies is of course up to you. You are considered at war with everyone not in your alliance, and an alliance maxes out at 3 members. I think this might work for the big game. You could have all diplomacy be public during the Confluence turn, and then after that you are only allowed to PM your allies, if any.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I think it would be fun if the next megagame was a RAND game

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Well, I assumed that we would set something arbitrary as maximal endpoint, such as top 3 nations owning 30 capitals in total, or something to that effect. Then the same clause would apply as in this previous game, where if it ends for any reason before that point is reached, we have to look at who had what at the end, and determine victors by some sort of consensus, which would be very easy unless #3 and #4 were tied, but we could credit them both a .5 win in that case, just as ties in other games.

And I agree, the enforced public diplomacy setup would be incredibly hectic with 60 nations. That's one thing I liked about my idea, was that there should be an inordinate amount of backroom dealings, as people struggle towards the top. I think people will behave differently when they know they only need shoot for top 3.

:happy:

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Dune (the board game I know) also requires more capitals to win, if you are allied.

So you need 3/5 if you are single... 4 if you have 1 ally.. all 5 if you have two allies.

Anyway.. I love Zeldors map.
EA... sign me up = )

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I would like it to be RAND with CBM mod and same victory conditions as Kingmaker on a wraparound map with the increased arena prize.

Btw could not La Ermor be used like Ma Man was as the prize doner? Reason being that La Ermor is a banned megagame nation so can not take part anyway but produces the most gems of any nation, 15 d isn't it?

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

No one is going to dispute Zeldor's skill at the game (at least, I'm not), especially considering that diplomacy IS an important skill in any game of this type, and this illustrates how potent that particular tool was in Zeldor's arsenal.

For "There Can Be Only 3", I felt that the very structure of the game would mitigate this precise phenomenon in multiple ways. First, people cannot just pick a favorite to win (and donate their dying gems, etc... how many free gems did LA Agartha actually get?), because no single nation would be able to stand alone. Likewise, if the 3 strongest nations ally, the structure would be in place - since anyone who wanted to impact the game would participate in an alliance - to support the formation of a mega-anti-alliance to take down the trio of ringers who wanted to bring about an early victory. Not only this, but because no nation should be able to stand alone in such an environment, monopolization of the Forge should not create a winner, as it would leaves one's allies without the tools that they needed to support the third nation who owns all of the artifacts.

Beyond that, I would suggest a banning of the Forge altogether anyways, as it seems to have allowed Zeldor to take an advantage, and in a short 2 turns magnify that advantage in a way that would require a mega-alliance to defeat, once those artifacts were all assigned and properly deployed.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I don't think banning Forge would be necessary with CBM [but still worth considering], as it's lvl9, so you'd need a massive research lead to get lvl9 Forge before others can get some artifacts.

And it was probably around 1000 gems from donations, I will count them when I look through turn files for my AAR.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I am quite new on this forum, but I really like the idea about a game with 3 winners. About a month ago I planned to host a game with this exact rule, but somehow it never happened. Now, the megagame with 3 winners is going to be even more interesting. Count me in when it starts :)

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Yay, someone just likes the idea. :D Now I just need to consolidate my powerful position of having 1 fairly inexperienced supporter! :happy:

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Just a random thought - what would the dynamics be like if there were one winner per era? Players would essentially be driven to compete mostly against other nations from their own eras, and would tend to ally with those from different ages.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Regardless of specific victory conditions, as long as the top three players win I imagine some dynamics will change for the worse. As is, you often see two big players going for each other. What if the two biggest guys on the block now say "screw this" and together start gunning for everyone else?

Would perhaps make the game a bit shorter, which is good ;)
But if the most powerful nations never fight each other, is the win really a valid test of player ability/nation power?

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

Because as I was saying, the design of the game also gives more incentive to every other player in the game, to cooperate to take down the front-runners. As it is, one of the biggest hurdles to cooperative strikes of that sort, is the fear that you will use up your own resources, and someone else will make most of the gains. In this scenario, they can remain your ally, and you still have a shot at victory, even though they reaped most of the rewards of one war or other. Also, since ultimately you need capable friends to maximize your chances of victory, they should be more likely to pass some of those lands to you after the fighting anyways - or they may just switch to a stronger ally, at which point the war of attrition begins again, with them on the receiving end this time. :p


Also, see above. With diplomacy being a huge factor in displaying one's "ability" in this arena, we've already shown that an individual with such skills, should be able to secure an uncontested win early on, if they put in the time and effort. Just examining the graphs for this game, you can see that LA Agartha became one of the frontrunners very early on, and because of diplomatic positioning, had the opportunity to push the advantage at several key steps. Part of my point is that under the same circumstances, anyone near Zeldor would have had to say "if I am not in the top 3 now, perhaps I should be looking for ways to topple Agartha, rather than cooperating with them". They were already admitting defeat, essentially, by saying "if either of us wins, it looks like him, and I can't beat him, so GG Zeldor". That is how they played it out. But if there is more than 1 slot for victory, suddenly it doesn't matter if he is just #1, there is a lot of maneuvering that can be done to still become one of the victors.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

this idea made me wonder: what about having 3 different victory conditions? i'm not sure it'd really work for the megagame, though perhaps for some other. like a victory condition for research, dominion, and territory? at a set number of turns? yeah, i can't think of a way this would work well for megagame, but it is an interesting idea.
Zlefin :)

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

3 winner condition will just ensure that whoever is the biggest and the second biggest early on can pick and choose who they fight with. Everyone else who are looking to win will just pick on the third biggest nation, who will in all likelyhood be much smaller than the 2nd biggest nation.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

I'd like to think that it would be made somewhat clear that they are an alliance, against other alliances, and that taking down #3 won't get them a joint win (winners CAN be from separate alliances), and the only reasonable course is to go after the top dogs.

Besides, until the game is declared over, or 3 people manage to become dominant, I doubt it will be clear who is in what exact rank. I mean obviously you can always go by province count, or number of caps, but that is not 100% indicative of true power. The best course of action in this scenario, will always be to hurt the biggest person that you can, who you are not allied with.

Obviously no matter what, there will be players who don't understand the full implications of all of this, but hell, either some of the people who supported LA Agartha in this last game did not understand that they were "kingmaking", or they did so willfully. I fail to see how increasing the potential for victory will make people behave less wisely.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

To be honest it was more often someone offering to be my ally, than the other way. I also never asked anyone to help me win the game, but of course it's how alliances work [but I wouldn't ask them to give me their capitals for VPs]. But looking at KM, TNN would be close to 3rd position, if we'd look at province count [but prov count as victory condition is never good]. There were already agreements between big nations. Niefel and Caelum, biggest eastern powers, have agreed not to fight each other. I also had agreement with Lanka to have war only in the very end, 1:1, to decide who wins, but it proved to be not necessary. I attacked strong Helheim, but his chances for being a contender at that point were already slim.

Re: There can be only....3?! 2009 Megagame Concept
 

There can be only three!

:rolleyes: