Preponderance - Big Team Game! [1-2 subs needed!]

[Evilhomer]

Uhmn, I am happy to team with you coobe (just didnt receive any answers so started to fish for alternatives). But sure, lets team up - Write an pm to me what nations you are interested in.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

I think we may introduce one more things - bonus for choosing combination of nations with less than 10 points total. I'd have to ask llamabeast what bonus is possible [like more design points or gold or gems or some item].

Ooh, that sounds like real fun. I guess a custom mod giving the nations in question some appropriate advantage? Design points would be easy, as would items I believe. What would the Jomon/Marverni dream team be worth?


Oh yeah - I'm definitely in. If anyone wants to team with a somewhat inexperienced player, pm or just post in the thread.

[Omnirizon]

I guess I should voice that I am against Hinnom being in this game at all, and possibly the other new nations.

as is, ONLY jomon could even be paired with Hinnom. This raises an important point:
is there any other combination that could possibly compete with this?

* gold and gems are completely plastic. even the weakest nation paired with Hinnom would just be built to solely support Hinnom by supplying them with gold and gems.

or

* would giving Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath the weakest nations leave any other nations to be paired with the other superpowers that would not lead to other powers being completely overpowered? ie, we give all the weakest nations to H/A/G, whose left to pair with Neif and Lanka and others that would not leave them overpowered?

essentially, the plasticity of gold/gems and the lack of underpowered enough nations combined with quite a few already well overpowered nations means that including the Hinnom et al nations in the mix is just too much power to be absorbed. I think the overall game balance would be preserved by disallowing them.

[Zeldor]

Omnirizon:

I think that with that points both Hinnom and Niefel are almost as banned. I would not recommend anyone pairing with Jomon as a team, just pick smth fair And if you want Jomon you can get some free stuff for spare points. Even letting that 2 nations as a single whole team would be bad [and defying team game idea].

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

I know nothing can be perfect. Bidding system was one suggestions, but rather not good for a game with so many players [as there are just few nations people would really want to bid for]. I think we may introduce one more things - bonus for choosing combination of nations with less than 10 points total. I'd have to ask llamabeast what bonus is possible [like more design points or gold or gems or some item].

Remember - that game will be quite bloody, especially on plains. 150% gold gives you a lot of gold for armies, so you can make a slaughter fest for plains, which are really rich and high pop.

actually, the size of the game is what makes the bidding system preferred. there are three reasons:

1) on assigned point system, many teams may end up picking the same combos and

2) as is, someone has to adjudicate the nation choices, and their are some combos which are just phenomenally better than others, and they will have to give those to someone. lastly

3), related to point 2, with a bidding system it will be VERY costly if not impossible to get preferred combos, because many players will be gunning for certain ones. one nation of that combo will become too costly for it to become paired with the other half, making that combo unattainable. the bidding system will force the mixing up of combos, and making getting a _planned_ combo much more difficult. it will actually create more diverse combos because it confounds the easy getting of very planned combos that many teams might go for. With adjudicators, _someone_ will get that perfect planned combo. with bidding, that combo might become ungettable because other teams will overbid one half of it. Even if you say as adjudicator that you will just disallow the overpowered combos, you can't possibly think through all overpowered combos. each team only has to think of one and then submit it, and it may be a phenomenal combo that you hadn't thought of, and you will give it to them for rather cheap. the bidding system will confound this completely. and it doesn't require an adjudicator's oversighting.

Highly planned combos defeat the purpose of a team game. For example Lanka might just combo with Maverni and have Maverni blood hunt their capital to extinction and give all the slaves to Lanka, when the capital is finished, Lanka just takes it and the other half of the team leaves the game. There is no real team work, just a highly specified and planned combo designed to boost and already superpowered nation that really doesn't benefit from having any particular teammate except to provide them with extra gold and slaves to help boost them in the early game.

If you want to go with your assigned point system and someone overseeing and choosing each teams assignment that's your prerogative, but I had always thought you were anti-communist.

[Omnirizon]

Last thing:

teams should NOT start out next to each other. in fact, using a map like geometry, we should start teams out on OPPOSITE sides. this completely removes the benefit very powerful nations would gain from teaming with very weak ones and just using the weak nation as their *****. with the two teams seperated, other teams would just gang the weak halves very quickly and remove that benefit.

thus, with opposite starting positions, the problem of overpowered not really being harmed by pairing with underpowered is removed.

[Zeldor]

Omnirizon:

And bid with what? If you have interesting solution I could make it as a part [for a situation when multiple people want same nations].

And situation with Lanka/Marverni you described would result in him getting turned AI. There are tactics and there are abuses too. It's a team game, not a single player with other one getting leeched. I will just admin that game so I will be able to check if bad things happen.

We have 24 players and about 50 nations to choose. It should work fine

P.S. to your edit: I surely won't change that, that is my vision of the game, one near caves, one near plains. As I said before - I expect people to play fair and play it like a team game.

[JimMorrison]

I sort of thought that, barring a random distribution, placing the teams adjacent is the fairest way to go about it. Otherwise, there is no incentive to even take a nation that is perceived as weaker, because you neighbors will just rush you, knowing with absolute certainty you will die alone.

As far as my first post, I spoke to my roommate who has decided to finally purchase another copy of the game and he wanted to partner with me - with his first choice as Niefelheim, and as a rather inexperienced MP player.

I sort of thought the dynamics of the point system were already thought through to some extent, as far as that it's obvious that with Hinnom and Nief at 9, they ONLY partner either could get, would be Jomon.


Zeldor - I think in a bidding system, you would just give each team a budget as well (for bidding, something higher like 100 points would make it more dynamic), and then there would be an auction for the most sought after nations, and those who got very powerful first nations, would likely pay so much that they'd have to take "the kid who gets picked last" for their second choice. With 10 the range of bids would be too restricted - you might get f teams bidding 7 on a nation, with none wanting to go up to 8, not sure it would be nice to just random it off. I don't know, it seems this is all getting so much more complicated than the original post.

I had been planning to run a team game at some point in the future. What I had meant to do, was pair nations up beforehand. They wouldn't be random, nor would you choose what nation was paired with what, you would just choose the pairing that you wanted.

Fully random just seems like a horrible way to go. Not only do you deliberately not avoid overpowered combos, but you add in a great risk of people getting badly uncomplimentary combos. Imagine an Eriu/LA Man pair - 2 rather weak nations with access to only a couple of magic paths. They'd be dead before the game even started.


Ultimately, any setup is going to have its flaws. Arguing against a system doesn't do any good, if you can't present a system that is not significantly better. The major flaw with the bidding system, is the effort involved to make it really work. Just doing it as a single blind wouldn't be as exciting, and would be horribly time consuming - but it's not like we'll be able to hold a live auction for them either. (Bear in mind in single-blind bidding, if we had an auction once a day, we'd have to 3 nations each day just to get the game going within 3 weeks from now. The more nations you run at a time, the faster it goes, but the less fair and interesting it becomes.)

[DrPraetorious]

Sounds like fun. I'm not sure why we need CBM if we're also assigning points values to nations - but I'll give it a shot. Am I correct in understanding - the only team-mate allowed for Niefelheim is Jomon?

I'll team with anyone and I'll take the weaker nation in the pair

[Omnirizon]

I had missed the part in the OP where teams would be seperated..

with that done, the point system is much more suffurable, because each player is force to play for their own nation, and building a highly specialized combo becomes much more difficult to pull off.

we still do face the issue of subjective assignment of points and nations though. bidding i must admit isn't perfect here either because one nation may go unbid on and a team may take a chance and bid low on it, and get it real cheap. but blind bidding will make it so the most powerful nations go at appropriate prices, and underpowered nations go cheap. for example, in your current system you have machaka at 5 points? that is WAY overvalued. no one in their right mind will opt for that nation at that price. There is a host of other nations on that list that are cheaper than machaka that are in so many situation equal to if not more powerful than them.

with bidding, a nation's _subjective_ value becomes very important. a nation which you or quantum objectively believe are cheap may become very valuable to a certain team for a specific quality of that nation. In order to secure it, they will bid high on it. not to wax theoretical, but a bidding system is a fusion of objective and subjective; such that one cannot undermine the other. with you and quantum setting objective prices, the subjective value of that nation may be much higher than your objective price, and that nation becomes a steal for some team. the bidding system helps prevent that.

but i guess I'm happy either way, because I think any system is exploitable. I just think the bidding system is a little less so if only because there is no one person deciding on what is worth what and it overall is a little more transparent.