Question on game balance in this setup
 

5 players on a random medium map - only 1 sea-nation.

All other things being equal, is this going to be a wildly unbalanced game?

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

With 5 players and 1 water nation you'll want to make sure that around 1/5th or less of the provinces are water provs to keep things balanced. That way everyone can (theoretically) get the same amount of provinces without killing a neighbor.

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

a bit less than 1/5 I'd say: the sea nation shouldn't be able to turtle&research with 1/5 of the provinces.

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

Agree with Aezeal.

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

(A bit) More than 1/5 is not too unbalancing, too.

While the water nation is unlikely to be the first to die, it will also have a hard time winning, once the first two land nations fall and the remaining two have 1/2 of the land mass each.

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

Indeed, turtling doesn't necessarily help if win conditions are <80% conquest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

So that rules out random maps?

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

I disagree with Maraxus.. you can easily take a few land provinces in addition to the seas, usually an awake SC pretender does just that. Then you can NAP... and stop nap once you feel the need to get more involved... the turtling isn't manditory till end game... the sea nation just has more options, will probably choose his opponents (noone would declare on the sea nation just for the 2 land provs it has and then keep your eyes on the sea all the game expecting an attack, you declare on a seanation when you are ready to go into the seas with all your might and kill them). Being in the seas has advantages and you should have less than 1/5 sea provinces.. maybe even as low as 1/10 to FORCE them out of the seas.

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

Seems that you are biased a little bit now Aezeal http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Been aquatic is an advantage but has a price. Armour of aquatic units is usually quite bad, UW recruitable mages are scarce and magic diversity is hard to achieve. Land nations say things like "You are aquatic, going out of land is declaring war" and such.

So 1/5th should be more or less the right number fro 5 players.

Re: Question on game balance in this setup
 

yeah those illitits sure suck on land... can't imagine any worse troops....

and such BAD mages they are too.