MP Game - Zap's New game with House Rules

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Yvelina:
I have a question. Why is it that most games started on this server seem to have difficult, or very difficult research? This seems to affect the balance in favor of races with good troops, and to make things rather hard for races which rely primarily on their mages.

I think this is something that Cohen started, with his grumping about summonables and SCs, and has started to infect the general populace.

Of course, I don't feel this so much helps the problem as it does to exacerbate it, as it will be that much more difficult to research a countermeasure, and gives that much more of an advantage to the early leader of the arms race, something which I have demonstrated in Cohen's other retarded research games.

Not that I am complaining, having chosen Marignon. :-)

Marignon does have a small edge under these conditions: They start with Holy Pyre, an L4 evocation. It's fairly powerful against light to medium troops, and under retarded research conditions, it'll be awhile before other nations match it.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Well, I hope you have fun finding out how utterly impossible it is to try and defend anything without castles, given that PD is woefully inadequate.

Yeah, sure. It will be almost as utterly impossible as playing the game without 500 points VQ and few hundreds of clams.


Don't let the door hit you on the butt on your way out.

[ May 26, 2004, 00:45: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Yvelina:
I have a question. Why is it that most games started on this server seem to have difficult, or very difficult research?

I can't speak for most games, but I can say that I've recently started doing it because I start large, long games and would like to defer the time at which the leaders max out their research. In retrospect, making difficult research probably doesn't do much in this respect.

The game settings aren't set in stone. On a whim, I may tweak some of them when I create the game. I hope no-one minds that (let me know if you do).

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Well, I hope you have fun finding out how utterly impossible it is to try and defend anything without castles, given that PD is woefully inadequate.

I've never noticed this as an issue before (and most of the opponents I've had don't castle). In any event, everyone is in the same boat, so it's irrelevant.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I've never noticed this as an issue before (and most of the opponents I've had don't castle).

You also admit to not having played very much: From my experience, I've found that if I want to torch a temple in a province lacking a castle, barring a huge army camping out in the open, that temple is torched. No questions: It's impossible to prevent unless you park a huge army over it. With castles, at least the damage level is contained. If you don't believe me, just try it: It's nearly impossible to prevent it from happening: PD available at a cost less than that of a castle will prove woefully inadequate.

In any event, everyone is in the same boat, so it's irrelevant.

Actually, there's a few loopholes there which are a direct side effect of this: Since the castled provinces can't be jacked, you simply jack all of the opposing provinces devoid of castles...and build castles in a third of them. Since the rest are completely undefendable, somebody else will then jack them....and build castles in a third of the ones that are left. Pretty soon your entire castle census will become a giant jumbled mess as you will automatically lose of all of the noncastled provinces because they're completely undefendable.

[ May 26, 2004, 01:10: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
From my experience, I've found that if I want to torch a temple in a province lacking a castle, barring a huge army camping out in the open, that temple is torched.

Yep, which makes the game fluid as provinces are continually won and lost on both sides. Since you've never played anything but your single strategy, you wouldn't have ever seen this dynamic.

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Actually, there's a few loopholes there which are a direct side effect of this: Since the castled provinces can't be jacked, you simply jack all of the opposing provinces devoid of castles...and build castles in a third of them. Since the rest are completely undefendable, somebody else will then jack them....and build castles in a third of the ones that are left. Pretty soon your entire castle census will become a giant jumbled mess as you will automatically lose of all of the noncastled provinces because they're completely undefendable.

I'll let you know if this actually happens after the game. I seriously doubt it, but won't be afraid to admit it if I'm wrong.

[ May 26, 2004, 01:16: Message edited by: Zapmeister ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Yep, which makes the game fluid as provinces are continually won and lost on both sides.

This sounds like an inefficient, wasteful, whack-a-mole. It's very annoying, constantly redoing things you've already done. Better to do things properly and make sure it doesn't happen again, I say. More importantly, sooner or later, you'll annoy somebody into pillaging the province, making it useless. Better to properly lock the place down before you advance. It's like parking your car: You park it, set detonators, lock all the doors, raise the bLast shielding over the windows and tires, and then engage the discharge coils.

The way I play it, one party gains provinces, while the other loses them: We call the former party the "winning side", and the latter party the "losing side". It's nice and orderly.

Since you've never played anything but your single strategy, you wouldn't have ever seen this dynamic.

I've played lots of "strategies", although they do involve securing your property before you bother to take more. Conquering something and then not bothering to secure it for yourself is the same as conquering it for somebody else. I've played enough Tradewars to know better.

[ May 26, 2004, 01:51: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Cainehill]

[quote]Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Yvelina:

[qb]Not that I am complaining, having chosen Marignon. :-)

Marignon does have a small edge under these conditions: They start with Holy Pyre, an L4 evocation. It's fairly powerful against light to medium troops, and under retarded research conditions, it'll be awhile before other nations match it.

---

Abysia of course also having a roughly equal edge via the Flare spell. Horrible aim, but it doesn't matter if they hit their own troops, and Flare does significant damage even to heavily armored troops when it does hit. Almost makes it desirable to take a pretender with high fire magic, and good aim.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Actually, there's a few loopholes there which are a direct side effect of this: Since the castled provinces can't be jacked, you simply jack all of the opposing provinces devoid of castles...and build castles in a third of them. Since the rest are completely undefendable, somebody else will then jack them....and build castles in a third of the ones that are left. Pretty soon your entire castle census will become a giant jumbled mess as you will automatically lose of all of the noncastled provinces because they're completely undefendable.

I'll let you know if this actually happens after the game. I seriously doubt it, but won't be afraid to admit it if I'm wrong.

---

I agree it'll not happen. Norf do not have a good grip on mathematics. Sure, because of territories changing hands the total perecentage of the castles _may_ increase a little. But the rule of 1/3 will always be in place for every new conquerer. There is no way the whole map will be covered by castles with this rule, it's mathematically impossible under any resonable scenario. My guess that max final percentage of the castle to not-castled provinces in our game will be 40-45% to 55-60%. And this is worst case scenario, I suspect it'll be lower than that.


Anyway, there is not much point of arguing about it now. We will see after the game. As Zap, I'll be first to admit if my predictions will be wrong, but I doubt that I'll have to.