Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)

[Squirrelloid]

Already too late to make a difference to me

[Baalz]

I second that.

[rdonj]

What exactly are you seconding? :P

[Baalz]

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.

[LupusFatalis]

That makes three?

[rdonj]

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

[LupusFatalis]

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.

[LumenPlacidum]

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?

[Squirrelloid]

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

[namad]

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.