MP game - "Pantheons" Started

[Pickles]

Mark the Merciful said:
This game books pretty cool, but I think I'm in one too many, already (esp.as large alliances generate a lot of work)

One comment; you might want to think about the balance effect of UlM. It could easily turn into a magic item factory fed by all the gems five allies can send it. Protected by its allies, and allowed to concentrate on alchemy and forging exclusively Ulm could become very gross, and massively boost the side that gets it. I don't think any of tho other races would synergise with alliance play in quite the same way.

Mark

OK there is now a gap in the lineup. I suggest we wait for Yvelina to see if the mysterious tuidjy is in. If not we go 5v5, if he (or she) is then we need one more.

Ulm crossed my mind too. Not just forging - which could be pretty gross though I dont see forge of the ancients staying up long but the Great Alchemist. Ulm could turn an allied Abysias fire gems into 155 gold per turn - or 80 more than Abysia can alone etc.

I had thought of this as an opportunity but it may be too
strong.

We could ban the Alchemist, ban default Ulm, ban both or live with it.

I would be inclined ban the alchemist as that is a problem from turn 1 (well 2) & so most problematic or both (plus I want to try the other themes!)

Anyone else have any ideas?

Pickles

[The Panther]

As for the Ulm thing with forging, I am currently playing base Ulm in one of my MP games. Because base Ulm gets exactly ZERO random schools of magic on the master smith (the ONLY mage it can recruit), then it still has very limited selections of things to build, no matter how many gems it gets. The forge benefit for Ulm is not all that great because you can only forge the same things over and over. No luck pendant even!

Of course, forge of the ancients changes this radically and would therefore be top priority for the enemies to dispel. I could see a team putting over 100 earth gems into that global enchantment and hoping it Lasts for a couple of turns to do mass forging. Still, that is a very high cost for sure and late game only. The other team, which put those gems into powerful golems instead of this enchantment just might have crushed you by then.

Also a rainbow alchemist that never left home would definitely be advantage to Ulm, but it is easy to simply disallow.

And if the team wants to pour mass gems into empowering the Ulm master smith, well then it will take a long time for the forge benefit to break even, especially for only the level 1 skill artifacts. A viable long term strategy, but it will take a while to reap the benefit.

Also, don't forget that ANY earth magic mage from ANY race can build the forge bonus tools, like dwarven hammers, and distribute them to teammates. This actually reduces one major Ulm advantage, the one that it can make a bunch of those things quicker than any other race can. For the team with no Ulm can just pool earth gems into the proper nation and build a bunch of them. You don't have to wait to pile up the gems, only wait for the Construction research. Don't forget that Ulm is a VERY slow researching race because of the high gold cost per base research level (just 5) on its only mage, the master smith. I believe that Ulm is the slowest researching race of them all, everything else being equal.

[alexti]

I thought that looking for pro-Ulm/anti-Ulm strategy could be a fun aspect, but if Ulm is too overpowered, let's ban it. I can't come to conclusion whether it will be too big advanatge for one side or not though...

Also, I'd suggest to leave couple of days between nation assignments to the teams and the start of the game, so that each team can discuss strategies on how to extract the best out of what they got.

[Cheezeninja]

Hmm, i think i tend to agree with using 3 str indeps over high str indeps, as it will allow for quicker and better teamwork. I also favour the idea of randomly pooling all nations between the two sides and allowing people to pick from their teams pool, this will allow people to avoid nations they dont like, hopefully get a nation they do like, and possibly allow team 'themes'.

Quite a bit is possible under teams that might not seem fair otherwise, thats the whole point of teams, acting like a team instead of 5/6 individuals. For instance if your team has multiple air nations you can have 1 team member rush conjuration and then pool gems/items for a truly beefier Air Queen far earlier than otherwise. Quite a few nasty strategies become available.... imagine a whole team of clamhorders, pool gems for wish, wish for gems and distribute the flavours to whoever uses them best. Or you could have mictlan in the back providing a blood economy for EVERYONE... the possibilities for exploitation of teamplay are dependant only on how clever you are.

[Agrajag]

Cheezeninja said:
Hmm, i think i tend to agree with using 3 str indeps over high str indeps, as it will allow for quicker and better teamwork. I also favour the idea of randomly pooling all nations between the two sides and allowing people to pick from their teams pool, this will allow people to avoid nations they dont like, hopefully get a nation they do like, and possibly allow team 'themes'.

Quite a bit is possible under teams that might not seem fair otherwise, thats the whole point of teams, acting like a team instead of 5/6 individuals. For instance if your team has multiple air nations you can have 1 team member rush conjuration and then pool gems/items for a truly beefier Air Queen far earlier than otherwise. Quite a few nasty strategies become available.... imagine a whole team of clamhorders, pool gems for wish, wish for gems and distribute the flavours to whoever uses them best. Or you could have mictlan in the back providing a blood economy for EVERYONE... the possibilities for exploitation of teamplay are dependant only on how clever you are.

Only, its not exploitation, its just smart teamwork!
Alliances are very powerful, but thats the whole idea!

[Pickles]

Ok the votes are in enough to determine so here is the rules set.

Game summary
Rules standard except:-
Indep 5
Site frequency 50
HoF 10
Map – Inland
Score graphs - on
Staling – let your team mates know your password to avoid staling
Nations – No Water nations. No Ermor. No Ulm Master Alchemist .
Each team will chose a short Pantheon name
Your pretender name should include your Pantheon name
(or some other code to show teamness readily – same initial letter etc)

Team A
Pickles
Aku
Boron
The Panther
Tauren13

Perhaps:- AN Other

Team B
Agrajag
Alexti
Cheezeninja
Yvelina
Lex

Perhaps - Tuidjy

Mr Sheap volunteered to host & to pick random nations so please Sheap pick 2 sets of 6 nations & allocate them to team A & team B. You can post them here.

If we have 5 players there will be a spare.
We can then allocate nations to team members.

Once this is done Zen can put them on the inland map in a suitable manner 7 we can start hopefully in the middle of the week.

Thanks again to Zen & Sheap for your offers.

If anyone has strong objections please let me know.
Indeps follow the Panther's very fine suggestion based on the close vote & thus will probably satisfy nooone!

Pickles

[Agrajag]

We need to leave our Emails for easier team communication!
Imagine what would happen after the random teams are "released":
"I claim Abysia!"
"No! You can't!"
"I said so first"
"When two people fight, the thrid gets to keep the prize"
"BLAH BLAH BLAH!!! QRRBIRRBRREL!!!?!!?!!"

So we need to write our Emails down for inter-team communication, see what everyone wants and make a decision (also regarding the pantheon name)

I'll go first guy3pwood (et) hotmail (dot) com.

[The_Tauren13]

perhaps we could get an IRC chatroom or something for easy inter-team communications.

and we still need a 3rd party to randomly allocate nations, so we can go ahead and pick and test them

[alexti]

It's hard to make it work through IRC chatroom unless all the players are in compatible timezones and on compatible schedules. I think that team-group-emailing is the easiest way to communicate.