MP Game - Zap's New game with House Rules

[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.

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

[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.