Global War (upgraded to 3.20)

[Kheldron]

Let's see how the game plays out before deciding it's over and things are unbalanced please. AFAIK goods are still around, even if in bad shape, and neutrals fare fairly well so...

IMO the main problem with goods and evils is they are fundamentaly at an advantage at different stage of the game.
Goods should have a growing advantage as time passes due to synergies increasing while evils should have an advantage at start by sheer numbers and postponing of secret enemies wars.
And that's exactly what we get.
Besides, neutrals are supposed to balance out things in middle...well, we're just entering mid-game, I don't see how we can judge anything at this point.

[Hoplosternum]

I know I am complaining But I don't mean any criticism by it. This was an experiment. It is hard to balance these type of games. When we were planning the game it was not clear to me at least that it would be so uneven.

And as with all team games it's been fun and interesting discussing strategy and tactics within the team. Even though it has been clear for some time that we would lose quickly.

But this game clearly isn't very balanced. It doesn't seem to be that much fun for all the Evils either as some of them are complaining too!

I am definitely up for another themed team game after this. But I think having everyone in teams and allowing diplomacy between teams would have been better.

[Kheldron]

you know, in real life, when you've got a war ( cold or not) going on between two nations, if they still want to communicate they use intermediaries.
In this game you can also use them, and guess what, they're called Neutrals...

[Fal]

Kheldron said:
IMO the main problem with goods and evils is they are fundamentaly at an advantage at different stage of the game.
Goods should have a growing advantage as time passes due to synergies increasing while evils should have an advantage at start by sheer numbers and postponing of secret enemies wars.
And that's exactly what we get.

very true, good nation will gain advantage later on in the game. That's why i chose Lanka, which is naturally good at rushing, knowing that time is not on evil's side, I played rather aggressively this time. some good nations have been quite incompetent in the initial expansion phase, but they made their own mistakes, can't blame the game balance.

I personally don't think this game can be balanced. If the game is to start over however, IMO the good nations don't need to be next to each other, which might be better for them. and maybe have less evil players - they are going to be allied anyways, maybe ban double 9 blessing as well. And I still think secret enemy is a stupid idea and isn't going to change anything, say if we were to use secret enemy this time, my two enemies is located no where near me and even if they were I would still rush the good nations out before I attack them.

[IndyPendant]

Heh. Another thing to consider too: we have spent posts and posts making much on how evil gets the early game advantage, but good will gain a huge advantage late game, when their synergies start to truly pay off.

Now. If you were playing evil, and heard that, what would *you* do? I don't know about you, but I would be thinking "Right. Top priority? Get good out of the game before they grow too powerful."

What good needs to do in a game like this is strategize for beating off the hordes of enemies early game so they can survive to end game. Perhaps with an SC pretender, or maybe a double-bless of their own.

I am curious though; I started too far away from most goods to see. What were these 'horrible mistakes' everyone seems to agree good made?

[CUnknown]

I agree with Fal.. I don't think the game itself was unbalanced for sure.. (although maybe the map set-up was) and that Good made some mistakes. We could have done a much better job, even given the map and everything.

I don't think we should ban the double-9 blessing, Fal. You are doing everything you are supposed to be doing, it's just that we should have defended better. We should have had a plan for when Lanka and Ermor appeared on our borders in serious numbers on turn 9. We didn't.

Kheldron - we will be continuing to play this game. I will keep fighting until the end!! But, given some of the events unfolding in recent turns, that end is approaching for Good.

We might be able to survive with maybe half our number (2 or 3 players) alive out of the original 5. The problem is, no matter what the Neutrals do at that point, I'm still pretty sure the Evils will press and finish us off. But, we'll have to see how it goes.

If anything, for next game (if we do another one) we should play on a slightly larger map or with slightly fewer players. Good would have done much, much better had we had maybe even 2-3 more turns before meeting the enemy.

[Randvek]

I wonder that, too, IndyPendant. I must be on the wrong side of the map, cause I don't see any horrible mistakes on good's part.

[Fal]

I haven't seen any fatal mistakes either, but I've seen good being very slow in expansion. I assume the expansion phase must have been a chaos and not coordinated between players, many rich provinces were left unattended, despite the fact they are very lightly guarded (I almost tempted to attack some provinces with my scout!). defense in choke points was not established timely; to my surprise the nations bordering evil seems doing a lot of early research/site searching instead of harassing their enemies. Pythium was very 'timely' attacked by a bunch of barbarians (HAHAHA) but he also made a number of tactical blunders.

Other than these I don't know what other disasters have struck the good. But they could recover, the war is far from over yet.

[CUnknown]

Yeah.. maybe we Goods should bite our tongues and just play the game! This past turn didn't go so badly for us.

Our morale is just very poor for some reason. Things could be worse. Our position is probably salvageable at this point.

Good warriors, don't lose faith! We will smash the evil-doers and save the planet! Yeah!!!!!

[DonCorazon]

TNN is fine. We had some bad luck when so-called Indie 3 settings handed us some lemons in the form of an elephant rich, then a heavy cavalry rich province – not at all what our test games told us to expect. But otherwise, we continue to fight the good fight. Spirits are high, despite the whining that we have learned to tune out. It is all about having fun, even in the face of doom.

And leaving Sauro’s hydras stranded on their way to lift the Arcos siege alone will make this game worth having played.