Evermore - MegaGame - Winner: AdmiralZhao!

[Baalz]

I was thinking about the amount of water on the map in light of how Perpetually developed. I'm feeling like the next game perhaps needs significantly less water as the two greatly dominating nations are *sharing* the water. Winning would be a certainty (rather than a high probability) if one conquered the other - without ever really having to leave the water. Water nations are at too much of an advantage underwater to be able to win without ever leaving it IMO. If we're going with 15 provinces per player it should be more like 10 water and 5 land for each water player since they really are intended to have to fight their way above water at some point for the win.

[Velusion]

Baalz said:
I was thinking about the amount of water on the map in light of how Perpetually developed. I'm feeling like the next game perhaps needs significantly less water as the two greatly dominating nations are *sharing* the water. Winning would be a certainty (rather than a high probability) if one conquered the other - without ever really having to leave the water. Water nations are at too much of an advantage underwater to be able to win without ever leaving it IMO. If we're going with 15 provinces per player it should be more like 10 water and 5 land for each water player since they really are intended to have to fight their way above water at some point for the win.

There is definitely too much water in Perp - which is my fault and is having a huge effect on the game (though to be fair no one complained about it until we started even though the map was available). The new map will have significantly less. Perp has 1000 provinces which should equate to 16.1 provinces per player. However water nations (7.5) are allocated over 21.2 water provinces per water player while land nations were allocated only 15.4 land provinces per player. Not good.

Personally I'd rather just see the ratio fairly distributed (16-15 for everyone) and see how that works. I think 10 would be way too harsh. After all there are number of land nations that can easily take and hold water provinces.

[Baalz]

Oh things are always clearer in hindsight, no worries on not thinking of everything. Perhaps 10 would be too harsh, I don't really know. My thinking was that water nations are at a significant advantage if they're allowed to stay almost completely in the water and they're (with the possible exception of EA R'yleh) at less of a disadvantage on land than any land nation is in the water so it makes more sense to force them onto land than to force land players to fight them in the water. Since land nations tend to avoid picking fights with the water nations until late game they have the leisure to cherry pick the land fights they want to engage in. The competition on land in Perpetuality seemed to be *much* stronger which I'm sure was in large part due to the province count, but part of it was just that there were more hungry players, more borders to defend, and more scheming. Ah well, I was thinking about trying to snag MA R'yleh this time around anyway, dunno what I'm complaining about. Makes sense to try it with an even count to see how that works out.

[Zaramis]

I agree with Baalz for this one..

[Velusion]

So, assuming there will be a turn limit the gem generators will be increased by the following:

Clam of Pearls will require a path 2 (instead of 1) in Nature Magic (Water will stay the same). This will increase the cost to forge.
Fever Fetishes will require a path 2 (instead of 1) in Fire Magic (Nature will stay the same). This will increase the cost to forge.
(New in v1.1)Blood Stone will require a path 3 (instead of 2) in Earth Magic (Blood will stay the same). This will increase the cost to forge.

[Xox]

It looks like you decided to have a turn limit to the game. How sad.

[Velusion]

Xox said:
It looks like you decided to have a turn limit to the game. How sad.

I thought about putting it up to a vote, but then I realized I don't really want to play in a game that never ends. If I'm not gonna play, I'm not going to bother hosting.

On a side note, no one ever even attempted to seriously address why having a turn limit with an province-average end would significantly change the game which only strengthened my own resolve that an end needed to be enforced.

[Jazzepi]

My biggest problem with turn limits are as follows.

It's difficult to predict when a game is going to end. What if the artificially set turn limit comes just as a bunch of nations are ganging up on the leader? Why then, should a nation that is /going/ to lose, win simply because of the clock. What if, right now, LA R'yleh in Perpetuality was declared the winner simply because he had the most territories. This is especially frustrating for people that are on the other side of a huge map who have no, to little, ability to contribute to the war effort / diplomatic situation.

If this game is going to have an artifical turn limit, I'll just go ahead and withdraw my application to play. I have no interest in one. My suggestion would be to have a tentative turn limit, and then when it comes up, have players vote if they want to stop or continue.

Jazzepi

[Velusion]

Thats an easy answer - since the turn limit is known (and it will be an average of the last 15 or so turns probably - so it probably won't be crystal clear) the nations SHOULD have ganged up on LA R'lyeh earlier in your example. Not doing so was a strategic blunder and they deserved to lose.

If it's obvious that someone has locked in the game 20 or so turns early well then perhaps people should have gotten off thier *** and attacked him a long time ago?

It's not different from a normal game really.
1. Nations put off attacking big power
2. Nations suddenly realize they need to do something about big power
3. Nations come to realize that even all their combined might won't bring that nation down.
4. Nations resign and the big power wins.

The game is the same - you just need to make a judgment call of when "too late" is.

[Jazzepi]

My problem is that this...

4. Nations resign and the big power wins.

Does not happen in turn limit games. I don't need some artificial metric to tell me when to give up. I'm perfectly fine at making that decision on my own.

Jazzepi