Quote:
Originally Posted by Micah
Wrath - Pardon my phrasing, but I'm having trouble with the idea that an experienced player such as yourself can really and truly believe that a third party can reasonably do anything about a well-executed VP gift.
I'll spell it out for you. First turn the gifting player drops any domes on their VP by suiciding the casters. There is no way to know this without witnessing an attack or launching a spell at the province the same turn. The next turn the attacker teleports in with a good-sized force including a few good anti-SC units and drops a crumble at the VP. The turn after that the attacker storms the fort while the gifting nation casts domes with a few units that remained in the VP province, scripted to retreat.
A third party seeing the teleported attack squad now has to throw his army at a wall of domes with no way of properly scripting his forces to account for the units that will be picked off by them. Additionally, the person being gifted with the VPs has the powerful first-turn advantage as they are defending from the third party. Plus, of course, all of this requires that the third party has forces on-hand to respond to an attack immediately, so they have to be equipped and sitting on a lab, ready to go.
I can't fathom how you could begin to say that this is in any way a preventable tactic, and hence the strong phrasing of my position. If you had simply failed to properly consider your position I apologize for my vehemence.
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Yes. I was thinking of VP transfer in a more simplistic manner. You know, nation A sends a scout to empty nation B VP and casts crumble. Next turn it storms the castle. You can replace the scout with an army, or one SC, or army+SC etc. W/O the domes part (which I haven't considered at all) I think it can be countered (I apologize beforehand if I missed yet another angle
).
Now are you 100% sure about the domes?- IIRC casting order is random so there's no guarantee that they'd come up *before* nation C's teleporting SCs coming to bust the transfer.
I agree with you though. Its tough to counter and gives an advantage to nation A that is as inherent to the game as the fact the gem transfer is clandestine and un-counter-able, namely the defender's first turn advantage. The difference is that technically it's possible to try and counter and have a chance of success in case nation C is lucky/strong enough to have the right material to send in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Micah
As to the gem issue, clearly the nation sending the gems must be getting them from somewhere, and sending them means not spending them. It's the same as ganging. A good player can overcome a 2:1 war (which is essentially what gifting gems to one player results in) or being set back a few turns of gem income, and in fact where their superior skill really can shine through.
By contrast, VP gifting is the equivalent of informing them that their nation is now dead because they were outnumbered and removing them from the game, since it happens too fast to be countered and there is not interactivity. Gem gifting is, of course, non-interactive, but it must be turned into interactive units and spells to be of value. Obviously, as with ganging, there is a point at which even the best player cannot hope to compete with enough pressure, but that's a situation that shouldn't arise if people are playing to win, as nations will either want to remain sovereign since they are still contenders, or else will have too few gems to have more of an impact on the outcome than player skill.
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"but that's a situation that shouldn't arise if people are playing to win"
Yes, but that's the thing, the don't always. I have seen it countless times. Not all ppl play to win. Oh, they sure enough join the game with an abstract notion of winning, but then RP or awe of the vets or losing interest in the game causes them to lose that drive to win. Then these players become unexpected and can and do influence the game. Type A players that are also good diplomats are usually deft at recognizing these situations and making the most of them which brings the game to a new level of meta gaming or in other words makes diplomacy king over tactics. Is that good or bad?- I honestly don't know. Depends on the mood
I mean so long as we identify the root cause we have a hope of addressing it in house rules. Whether or not ppl would be interested in playing diplo no KM games is a different matter altogether
BTW, just had an idea, what if instead of prohibiting KM acts players would be expected to announce them in the game thread for all to see. Something like:
"Arco will send 1k S gems to Pyth. this turn"
or
"Ermor plans to give it's VP in xyz to Caelum next turn"
Would that make things better?- If so, better in what sense?