Can I get some cheese with that...

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
It used to be a standard statement that everyone gangs up on Ermor first because they are so hard to beat later. Now I guess it will be standard game to gang up on Norfleet first, then play.

I agree... it sounds like people are playing these games with very little diplomacy. Players should be sending Messages(from within the game) to other players for trading, setting up alliances and secret attacks... same as we've seen in history. Perhaps Norfleet is the only one using diplomacy to influence gamers.

[Tuidjy]

Exactly how much are you going to lower the cost
of PD defense? I take capitals with my
standard raiding party (herse + 8 Vans) and no
losses. That without a high blessing (a6w4s4d4b4)
Except for Ulm and Jorunheim, PD is useless. And
frankly if PD, costing less than a castle, were
able to stop one of my late game raiding parties
(Drott + 5 Herse), PD would be a problem.

BTW, I have taken down 51 points of Jotunheim PD
with (High Seraph + 5 Seraphs + Couatl)

And frankly, what is the problem with castling
and VQs? In one of my games right now, I am
rolling up my opponent's castles. Maybe I should
write a journal about what is happenening (he has
a VQ, I do not) And no, it is not boring to play
catch with the queen. It is actually quite
entertaining.

Especially in flux-dominion.

[Kel]

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kel:
For either side to dismiss arguments based on anything other than actual, valid points, on the subject itself, demonstrates both a lack of respect and a losing argument, imo.

I believe that there is a burden to provide evidence if you are proposing changes, and that burden should fall on the "whiners" and not on those who are more or less happy with the game as it is.

(And, by the way, I have never used any of these tactics myself.)

---

That's the whole problem. People often provide evidence which is then dismissed based on these illegitimate tactics. You can't say they didn't provide a 'burden of evidence' if you can't refute it, logically.

- Kel

Originally posted by Kel:
That's the whole problem. People often provide evidence which is then dismissed based on these illegitimate tactics. You can't say they didn't provide a 'burden of evidence' if you can't refute it, logically.

- Kel

No, you have yet to prove it. Lets see some hard #'s, that don't rely on any combination of events and strategies that any one single aspect of whatever evidence you are bringing.

Long ago I did a breakdown of Clam's and later Peter (may he rest in peace with many women and large tracts of land) gave another breakdown. With the #'s presented it was shown that you can abuse it, but only in specific circumstances with a specific gameset and only really viable for a very slim selection of circumstance.

I have seen no instance of this for castling and the only time for VQ's in beta testing. Apparently the proof is 'sounds like to me' or 'what I've seen' or 'from the games I've played with 1 person' not conclusive facts. Fear a Justice system where proof and evidence is presented by gamers who either don't have the time or willing to back up their arguments with any sort of reasonable statements.

[ May 27, 2004, 16:45: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Master Shake]

My own sugestion us that the movement rules be tweaked such that it is possible to intercept an enemy army in the space that it starts the turn in, even if it has orders to move somewhere else. In other words, make it possible to catch raiders.

You CAN intercept raiders as the game is now. If a raiding army is moving to another one of your provinces, you move in before he moves out if you army is faster or smaller. In addition, you can cast distant summons (ghost riders, call of the winds, etc.) that attack before movement.

I take capitals with my standard raiding party (herse + 8 Vans)...... my late game raiding parties (Drott + 5 Herse)

I think people are referring to raiding parties costing 800 - 1500 gold (if I can calculate the above listed rading parties based soley on memory). Of course an army costing that much should wipe out PD. Imagine a rading party costing 1200 gold attacking your empire. They wipe out 5 temples, but on the seventh try you catch them with a large army and kill them. Then it's a wash. You lost 1000 gold in temples, plus some province income each turn for 5 turns, they lost a 1200 gold army.

I find that building too many castles is often a stupid idea for any living race. There is no way to defend so many castles, so you are guaranteed to give up some to your enemy. Then, your enemy has a new supply center, a fortified position, and a place to recruit and summon new units inside your empire. If someone wants to spend 300 gold on a castle in every province, that's fine. I'd rather spend that money on armies to seige and claim those castles for my own.

[Reverend Zombie]

Originally posted by Kel:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:
I believe that there is a burden to provide evidence if you are proposing changes, and that burden should fall on the "whiners" and not on those who are more or less happy with the game as it is.

That's the whole problem. People often provide evidence which is then dismissed based on these illegitimate tactics. You can't say they didn't provide a 'burden of evidence' if you can't refute it, logically.

- Kel

---

How are these tactics illegitimate, and what is the evidence?

It's hard to refute opinions, and other than reports of "I hate playing against a castlespamming VQ clam-hoarder" I have not seen much evidence put forth that any of these are in any way illegitmate.

I will grant that VQs appear to be underpriced compared to some other Pretenders, or rather, some of the 125 pt. Pretenders are probably overpriced.

But...how can buidling castles be illegitimate? Where does that particular line of thinking stop? Should we limit the number of temples a player can build? Number of labs? Number of uber summons? Number of mages? Number of provinces to take a turn? Why not, and how is it different for the reasons given for outlawing castlespamming?

[Vynd]

Originally posted by Master Shake:
You CAN intercept raiders as the game is now. If a raiding army is moving to another one of your provinces, you move in before he moves out if you army is faster or smaller. In addition, you can cast distant summons (ghost riders, call of the winds, etc.) that attack before movement.

Heh, is that so? You know, I think I've heard so many complaints about how impossible it is to catch raiders before they move on, that I never actually tried this. Or if I did, it didn't work under those particular circumstances.

[Scott Hebert]

An interesting discussion, as always.

First, a suggestion for improvement based on reducing micromanagement, to help Mosehansen.

Is it possible to enable a switch, on a commander-level, to stop the pooling of gems from them? The 'large-scale' issue is one of blood sacrifices, but it would also help to avoid the pooling of gems from someone you don't want, which might increase the possibility that gem-requiring battle magic is used (I don't use it in my games primarily for this reason.)

I envision something of a toggle on the Commander orders box, or a toggle box on the Commander's information screen. I don't know how hard this would be to implement, but I just wanted to make a suggestion.

To reduce castling is actually very simple: increase the cost of all castles. I would think that doubling the cost would be about the right amount. With that, I doubt anyone could put a Castle in every province and hope to defend them.

Now, how to avoid the raiding issue? Well, I think the fair way would be to have Move orders processed based on the relative Supply values for each player in the Province being moved to. That is, the closer you are to your supply base, the earlier you would move. Therefore, the deeper you raid into Enemy Territory, the easier you are to catch (theoretically). As a side effect, that would encourage two other historically accurate points. First, castles would be built on borders, both to reduce the enemy's ability to raid and enhance yours. Second, expansion would involve more 'circular' motion. That is, it would be better, from a defense standpoint, to expand in all directions, rather than in a line fashion. This is already strengthened by other game factors, so it shouldn't be a problem.

If this were to happen, raiding would be, essentially, in-and-out. You would raid 'borders', basically. Those nations that are built to raid (e.g., Caelum) don't lose those advantages under this system.

Another minor point is that this would strengthen those castles with better Supply values that have other trade-offs (Fortified City and Wizard's Tower), as they would support more in-depth raiding. It would also boost the Growth scale, which currently is not nearly as useful as certain other scales.

OTOH, Nature magic would _not_ benefit raiding, as Supply bonuses from Nature Magic/items subtract from Supply Used, not add to Supply. Thus, this idea makes the most use of already in-place mechanics.

Anyway, feel free to comment. I'm sure I missed a lot of problems with this idea.

Scott Hebert
Newbie

[Vynd]

Originally posted by Tris:
That's a really good point Vynd. You could argue that the unbalanced strategy is raiding, and castling is just the best way to defeat that.

There are actually two ways to see this:

Raiding is the problem [...]

Castling is the problem, because it does let you build lots of temples. This means the only way to fight the dominion of a castler is to have lots of temples yourself (because you can't destroy his easily). Raiding is needed when people build temples too close to borders, or too many temples. People shouldn't be able to build temples in every province and guard them. It's part of the game to intelligently choose where to invest in your 200gp worth of temple.

I hadn't really thought about it from this second angle, Tris, but it seems to me that you're right. One could call raiding the "solution" to the "problem" of too many temples, and thus see castling as a "problem" because it allows people to maintain too many temples too easily, despite raiding. However, I still think that raiding is a big part of what makes castling attractive, so if castling is a problem then raiding is part of it.

Also, it is a mistake to fixate on how raiding makes temples vulnerable, as if all raiders did was destroy 200 gold temples. For one thing, temples represent more than 200 gold, they also represent the time and effort involved in getting a priest over there and having him spend a turn building the temple. This, as Cainehill pointed out, is in contrast to the free, no action required, destruction of the temple. Furthermore, raiders do a lot more than destroy temples. They deprive you of income and gems, gain them for their owners, spread unrest in "your" territory, wipe out PD and/or isolated units, and require you to track them down with superior forces and destroy them if you want them to stop.

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
Now, how to avoid the raiding issue? Well, I think the fair way would be to have Move orders processed based on the relative Supply values for each player in the Province being moved to. That is, the closer you are to your supply base, the earlier you would move. Therefore, the deeper you raid into Enemy Territory, the easier you are to catch (theoretically). As a side effect, that would encourage two other historically accurate points. First, castles would be built on borders, both to reduce the enemy's ability to raid and enhance yours. Second, expansion would involve more 'circular' motion. That is, it would be better, from a defense standpoint, to expand in all directions, rather than in a line fashion. This is already strengthened by other game factors, so it shouldn't be a problem.

If this were to happen, raiding would be, essentially, in-and-out. You would raid 'borders', basically. Those nations that are built to raid (e.g., Caelum) don't lose those advantages under this system.

Another minor point is that this would strengthen those castles with better Supply values that have other trade-offs (Fortified City and Wizard's Tower), as they would support more in-depth raiding. It would also boost the Growth scale, which currently is not nearly as useful as certain other scales.

OTOH, Nature magic would _not_ benefit raiding, as Supply bonuses from Nature Magic/items subtract from Supply Used, not add to Supply. Thus, this idea makes the most use of already in-place mechanics.

Anyway, feel free to comment. I'm sure I missed a lot of problems with this idea.

Scott Hebert
Newbie

See, this is an excellent suggestion that addresses a number of issues. It is also historically and thematically pertinant and visible.

It not only makes protecting territory less of a hassle, but adds another element of randomness (especially if you blank out the Supply factor from other players visibity (except maybe spies) and add in a random roll to it).

Now I don't know how easy it would be to code, or if it's even viable with code constraints. But a very good suggestion and well thought out.

Kudos to Scott.

Edit: This will still not affect the CT/Teleport/flying raiding SC's, but for the amount of gems that are used to create them for that purpose, they should have an advantage of mobility.

[ May 27, 2004, 18:07: Message edited by: Zen ]