The Middle Way - Faerun EA [Need Replacement]

[Evilhomer]

Teraswaerto consider how large this map actually is. If the wictory condition is more than half the provinces/60-70% victory points the winning player will have to rule an empire of 250+ lands. I shudder at the thought of making all the scripting/strategic decisions for such an empire, not to mention the 100's of turns getting to that size.

Victory condition should preferably be attainable within a reasonable amount of time.

[Teraswaerto]

It's true that the map is rather huge... That doesn't change the fact though, that with something like 40% of provinces there is no quarantee that the winner is in an utterly dominant position.

In the late stages of the game, on large maps, winning isn't just a matter of skill, but also of endurance. If there are no victory conditions it's not uncommon that the few remaining empires agree to allied victory simply because they balk at the amount of work going to war would be. Is that a bad thing? Don't know really.

If owning more than half of all provinces is too much, then VPs are better, since it's easier to grasp what exactly is needed to win.

[Dedas]

My votes:

CB: No
Worthy Heroes: Yes
Graphs: Yes

[Evilhomer]

Roughly when are you planing on starting this game?

[Amhazair]

Is there any particular reason you want to limit this game to 16 persons? The map is easily big enough to accomodate everyone willing to play imho.

[Hellboy]

Amhazair said:
Is there any particular reason you want to limit this game to 16 persons? The map is easily big enough to accomodate everyone willing to play imho.

Well, at least by the province numbers, this is true. However, I am somewhat concerned about starting positions. In my limited experience on the Faerun map, once I go over 16 players, I always seem to see at least two positions that end up pretty near each other. I think this might be true because (perhaps) there are a lot of nostart provinces, and those nostart provinces are not evenly distributed.

So, I am willing to add another land position (or possibly more), if most players think that is a good idea, but please beware that this will increase the chances that two players end up unreasonably close, or one or more players get screwed in their startup.

I'll have another post shortly where I'll comment on the Faerun map and startup positions, as there may be some partial fixes I can do in editing the map. Bottom line, I think that on the Faerun map you can't look at provinces/player alone, and I suspect the risk of player(s) getting short changed goes up rapidly as we increase above 16.

Edit: Oh yeah, one more thing - I do think it is unwise to add a 3d sea position, the sea players get screwed even when you just look at the # of sea provinces per sea player, in this case.

[Amhazair]

Terrel said:

Well, at least by the province numbers, this is true. However, I am somewhat concerned about starting positions. In my limited experience on the Faerun map, once I go over 16 players, I always seem to see at least two positions that end up pretty near each other. I think this might be true because (perhaps) there are a lot of nostart provinces, and those nostart provinces are not evenly distributed.

Fair enough. I don't mind more people comming in if they want to play, but if you (and/or others) want to keep it at 16 that's equally fine.

[Hellboy]

Evilhomer said:
Roughly when are you planing on starting this game?

Good Question! I honestly didn't expect this game to fill up so fast. Originally I was thinking to start on Friday or Saturday (just based on how long it took big games to fill), but I can move that up to Wednesday evening (PST), perhaps. I still need to spend a significant amount of time editing the Faerun map, and testing the server.

So, this is not a requirement for the game, and I realize it may be impossible with so many players, but I did at least want to put out the idea of doing a short blitz (1-2hrs) on either Saturday or Sunday. I guess that if we did it early afternoon EST (GMT - 5, iirc), I think that would cover a lot of time zones at vaguely reasonable hours. Is this even remotely possible?

If a blitz is not possible, it would still be nice to see if we can't crank through some of these early turns this coming weekend. Blitz or no, it would be lovely to get well into the teens (turn number-wise), by Monday.

Incidentally, I will be out for Feb 13th, 14th and most of 15th, so I will need to set the server to 72hr QH over that period.