Concepts of Creation: Ironhawk Suddenly Wins!

[Sheap]

I suppose Xox has some point although I think Ironhawk managed to easily exceed any plausible VP threshold. I haven't counted exactly but you would have needed a 60-65% threshold to prevent this, of course, if things were that tight he might not have launched the attack. Expecting a player to control more than 40% of the game map before winning is too high, but, apparently, 40% of VP provinces does not correlate to 40% of the map. I assumed when I was laying out the game that VP provinces would be heavily defended and not likely to be at risk from a raid.

What really happened is Ironhawk looked closely at the victory conditions and realized he could satisfy them and no one else did this, either because they were too busy with warfighting to build the necessary raiding parties, or because they lacked resources or magic to build the necessary raiding parties, or because they just didn't see it. Simultaneously no one defended their VP provinces! If just one of the two 3-VP provinces, and a couple of 2-VPs, or both of the 3-VPs, had been castled, the attack would have been thwarted. Yet no one castled these extremely valuable provinces!

I suppose to some degree that was also my fault as the original war between Caelum and Oceania, back on, like, turn 4, was touched off due to a battle over building a castle on one of those 3-VP provinces. The other one - Pangaea's IIRC - wasn't contested and could have easily been castled. For shame.

I intentionally created a handful of multi-VP provinces to encourage combat. Which it did. I would never have attacked Oceania so early in the game over a 1-VP province. And he might not have come out of the water to get it. However this also made it possible for Ironhawk to win by raid.

Of course, one problem in dom3 is that castles cost a king's ransom. No one WANTS to build a castle on a VP province unless it's also a good economic province. I know the southeastern 3VP province was in crappy terrain. I don't remember about the northwestern one.

Cumulative VPs prevent this particular problem, but introduce their own issues.

When I laid out the game I specifically avoided making capitals VP provinces thinking capitals were valuable enough, and not requiring a potential winner to fight a zillion capital sieges would make the game more interesting.

There's also perhaps something of a "tragedy of the commons" going on. It might be possible for some players to realize the world's VPs are underdefended, but no one really wants to sound the alarm because they will be wanting to attack those VPs later.

So, in summary, I only partly agree with Xox. The victory conditions weren't perfect, although I think the flaw is with the nature and geography of the VPs rather than the number of them. However, the actions of the players are really what made this possible. No one defended their VP provinces, and one of the game's economically and magically strongest nations was left in peace to build a force capable of launching this attack.

I'll leave the server up for a day or two with turn generation off.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Or having 3 victory points in one province is too much. If they are spread out more it may be better.

By the way Pangea, I was planning a big attack against you. I was about three turns away. It would have been interesting.

[Folket]

At least I thwarted one of his attacks. But nice gaming everyone. In general I'm not satified with CB and prefer to play vanilla.

[Ironhawk]

Sheap said:
So, in summary, I only partly agree with Xox. The victory conditions weren't perfect, although I think the flaw is with the nature and geography of the VPs rather than the number of them. However, the actions of the players are really what made this possible. No one defended their VP provinces, and one of the game's economically and magically strongest nations was left in peace to build a force capable of launching this attack.

An accurate assessment. Tho, personally I disagree with Xox: 40% of the VPs was more than sufficient for a victory condition based on the assumption of a traditional land-war. As sheap has pointed out, my victory was only possible because the 3vp and 2vp provinces - the most important provinces on the entire map - were left basically undefended against a seriously determined raid. If they were castled, I would have been forced to fight a traditional war and 40% of the VPs would have been quite enough. I completely understand why those provinces were uncastled tho. Even in my own empire, only one of my four VP provinces was castled - it just wasnt economically or militarily feasible to put castles on them all.

[calmon]

Grats Ironhawk,

i wanted to write something about the unprotected VPs but i didn't do it. Mainly because i won't remind players to do it. I just wrote pms to players like oceania to build up a castle to the 3vp province very soon. After the capture of pangaeas 3vp province from a neutral attack together with the ai controlled other 3vp province it was self-evident that someone would try it.

Its like the other game frank trollman won. Its unbelieveable how players let thir VP provinces unprotected. Mabye there should be an auto fortress or something like that. Like i post on the start of the game i didn't want the 40% win chance because i feared exactly this.

Maybe 40% of provinces works better or if VPs than only 1 VP max and all the homeprovinces are auto-vp.

I would also agree to have a feature in the game like holding the thing for some turns before you get the VPs.

However this game was fun, congratulation ironhawk at least you wasn't able to conquer one of my points

[Xox]

The game ended due to raiding forces on turn 43. I think that speaks for itself as to the victory conditions being too easy. I really don't see any arguments to refute what happened in our game and apparantly another game according to Calmon?

I mean one can say one thing or another theoretically., but i think whatever position you take on this we have seen the game itself show us what happens in practice.

How can you argue otherwise? Against what you just saw happen in the game?

None of which takes away from a brilliant and well executed plan Ironhawk.

[Sheap]

Assuming a traditional war, 40% of VPs is plenty. I actually would have set it lower, but was worried about winning by raids. Apparently I was not worried enough. My concept was that, yes, winning by raid would be possible, but only if you were able to build up such a strong raiding force, and the other nations weren't defending. I figured any nation powerful enough to seriously mount such an attempt would either 1) already be in a war, sapping their strength, and encouraging their enemies to defend, or 2) be opposed by a similarly powerful peaceful nation, which is more of an arms race situation. I think that would be fine also. But, everyone left Ironhawk in peace, while all the other strong nations got into wars. This is the most important part, more important than victory point ratios or anything like that. Even a minor war would have been enough to prevent this from happening. He was barely able to mount this operation as it was.

I think it boils down to: No reasonable VP percentage will prevent win-by-raid if the VPs are undefended and a player with the wherewithal is left alone to do it. Ironhawk captured enough VPs to meet a 60% threshold, which would have met even Calmon's high suggestion at game start. The question is only whether the defenses get built in time, because they will have to be built eventually.

I'll go along with calmon on one other point: home province VPs means lower VP threshold needed to win, and vice versa.

[Folket]

I do not agre with Xox, from this game we will learn that VPs can't be left undefended. In next game a raid will be much harder.

[FAJ]

I don't think you should be able to see VP locations unless you have adjacent dominion.

I would also like to see a trial game where VPs were magic sites automatically found on entering a province .

[quantum_mechani]

Folket said:
In general I'm not satified with CB and prefer to play vanilla.

For the record, I was rather unsatisfied with CB version used here as well, and infact some of the changes that were later redone in 1.00 ended up annoying me too.