Concepts of Creation: Ironhawk Suddenly Wins!

[calmon]

And why do you like games which ends before they are decided?

I know that i could setup my own games. I just want to know the positive effects of <=40% victory points.

[Folket]

They are decided as soon as someone wins.

I like fast pace and aggression.

Look at my last game I created, it will never last 50 turns. There will be violence from turn one.

[calmon]

Sure fast games are ok, if you like it.

But 40% VP with so much players is not fast, its a long game. And for a long game there should be a true winner which dominates all others. But to make sure that this happen the winner should need somewhat around 60% VP.

[Folket]

Well, I think any victory conditionas are fine. It is just about geting there before your opponent.

[Ironhawk]

Sheap said:
Especially early in the game, your home province is a huge portion of your economy, so if someone is sieging your capital, you will lose most of your income.

Indeed! Case in point: This turn the Jade Emperor, Viridus Pontifex was dismayed to learn of not one, but TWO bands of brigands operating in the very capital of the Pythium Empire. Needless to say, he believes that this can be the work of none other than the scourge Bogus. Any information leading to his capture or death will be well rewarded.

[GwyrgynBlood]

Yeah I'm not sure what the heck happened to my income. I don't think my unrest was up at all. I noticed one turn that my net income was only +40 or so, and that my capital was only producing 100 income. Later, it jumped back to normal.

And yeah, every province near me is Waste and/or Mountains. Oops! I should have pushed towards the sea more early on to boost my income. Oh well, live and learn.

I wish I had figured out some better strats for Arco by now. I don't like using Bless strats because they only get the one blessable unit which is VERY slow. Even with Quickness, they can only move 1 province at a time, which is annoying. Maybe I should play more research centric (researching pretender with lots of mages)? Arco seems to get some pretty heavy artillery with Astral Fires, but that takes a LONG time to research.

[Sheap]

Not all nations have good blessable troops. But in a long term game, blesses don't matter as much. You hear more about them because they are so important in blitz, and the nature of the beast is that a lot more blitzes have been completed than long-term games. In a long-term game, a bless is useful for expanding your territory rapidly so that by the time your troops start to suck, it doesn't matter. And, CB tries to make bless a little weaker in general. So your lack of bless is not really your problem. Your lack of income is.

Movement speed doesn't matter much for initial expansion, but it matters a lot if you need to fight another player. Arco is definitely a nation that wins or loses based on research and gem income, rather than blesses.

Victory points accelerate the game by encouraging war without artificially disrupting the game strategy. Normally, the top nation has little incentive to get involved in a war, because they are already winning. All they have to do is keep building up and eventually they will be unstoppable. Victory points remove "victory through inevitability" and require players to fight sooner rather than later. This saves everybody lots of time, especially the top players, who have to struggle under the burden of managing their enormous empires.

In the other game I am in, without VPs, one of the two strongest nations is just sitting around building strength (the other one keeps getting attacked by everybody). If VPs were enabled, these two nations would be at war already as each would be within striking distance of the required 40%.

60% is too high, at 60%, the outcome is already decided. In fact, 40% is toward the high end of useful victory point settings. The only reason I set it as high as I did is to prevent a nation with a bless-rush and a lucky spawn from claiming both triple-VP provinces and a couple others and winning before the game really gets going. With 40% you need 12 VPs, too much to get with an early game rush for most plausible initial setups.

[GwyrgynBlood]

I just haven't found a good 'master plan' yet for Arco. I don't really know what all spells to shoot for, what order to do them in, what I should do with my pretender, all of those things.

I like having an SC pretender, but using him as a fighter means very poor research as he goes around clobbering things.

[Folket]

Try a cheap pretender, since your mages cower most paths. Then you may have fair scales and ok expansion.

[Morkilus]

40% is way more than enough VP to make sure a game is decided. Most games I've played are decided far before then if you know the true situation.