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(07-03-2017, 04:13 PM)Mad Hatter Wrote: Has there ever been discussion about having military groups or an emmy being able to invoke 'martial law' in a kingdom controlled pc? Where I'm going with this is, say the SO puts a Duke in a HA town. The HA dispatches an Army to the town and declares martial law or the HA's emmy could call it (because every pc has some level of 'police' forces in it).
Either the SO emmy is captured or simply ran out of town (sent back to its cap).
Just a thought. After all, if I really controlled my home town (oh, the changes I would make!!!), anyway, and someone came in and started mouthing off about how bad I am or how great he/she is and the citizens started getting unruly (possibly rioting), I'd bring in the forces and shut it down. I'd scoop up the trouble maker and either jail him or send him back where he came from (more likely jail him).
Sort of like using your military groups as a Maintain Status Quo force (amped up dependent on size). I like it! Good idea.
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Could have a risk of loosing reaction level or moral within the group.
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If we're going to have kingdoms with random regional placement, how do people feel about having a random season to start the game? I mentioned this back in 2nd Cycle days (along with random cities) but it didn't gain traction. Starting with a random season will allow all kingdoms/regions to have a fair chance of competing in the game.
For example, the southern kingdoms in 2nd/3rd Cycle have an unfair advantage in the game. Winter (turns 5-7) hits the northern kingdoms hard while the southern kingdoms enjoy a long extension of full production values. The south only has to deal with one turn's worth of half production (summer) then they'll pull ahead of the north. I would rather take a turn 1 hit when I don't have that many pc's under control than half production during turns 5-7 which is the prime time of when militaries need to be built to invade other regions and wizards achieve their decent spell levels.
So starting games with a random season will balance all of this out for every kingdom in every region. This is especially true for Maelstrom which will have kingdoms in random regions.
BTW, I could enable a random season option for 2nd/3rd Cycle games if we want. The code has been in place for years, I just need to add the option in the Game Queue and it's good to go for The Choosing. We already have random cities that players like due to the need to explore the map (which makes the game more exciting when you find a city early on), and people are already comfortable with random kingdom placement for Maelstrom, so how about adding random seasons when starting a game?
We can have random seasons now for The Choosing or in the future for Maelstrom. If now, I can add that option at the same time I add the Ice Age option (c.f. http://www.kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/s...1#pid47031).
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07-10-2017, 03:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-10-2017, 03:44 PM by JonDoe.)
I am not a fan of full random. starting in winter/summer turns 1-3 or 3-5 could give the other side a much bigger advantage than the current system. I would rather see the game start as it currently does with only turn 1 at winter/summer, but the effect be random weather it starts as winter or summer. So you would not know until the game starts if the north or south has winter effect.
Another idea would be to have winter/summer kind of roll across the land. So for example (resurgence map) winter would start in the north R1-3, then turn 2 would effect R1-6 and R9, then T3 would be effect the whole map, T4 effect R4-10, T5 effect R7-8 and 10. 1 turns no season, T7 summer starts rolling across the land. I think this type of winter/summer could start at any phase and be relatively balanced. Except everyone now would have 6 months good production 6 months bad. Maybe have 4 turns no effect between winter and summer.
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I think I've mentioned this before: Alamaze is not about "random". No random maps, no random kingdom placements, no random season start. All these things are very carefully thought out. Its a big part of why Alamaze, and hardly any other game, has been around for 30 years.
Random maps is like playing a coin-op video game. Spent some quarters, beer and pretzels, on to the next thing.
Random seasons could be awful: how screwed am I this time? There is a balance here. Almost any other arrangement is going to screw up half the kingdoms at any time. Look at the Valhalla kingdom rankings as of today: http://fallofromegame.com/alamazeorders/valhalla.html Of the top 7 kingdoms, 3 are dispersed, 3 are in the north, 1 in the south. There is no disadvantage of being in the north. Players learn Alamaze and how to adjust to their kingdom, their position, their opponents. Random ruins everything. Its not "fun" to start with three turns of winter in a region completely unsuited to your kingdom. Alamaze is not a sandbox game. As has been discussed for decades, a major attraction of Alamaze is how different the kingdoms play but all have a shot. How do you adapt to your neighboring kingdoms and personalities on the world you know?
There is no random kingdom positioning in The Maelstrom. Any kingdom can be in any region, but it is selected by the player, it's not assigned by the computer. With this change, we have moved from a single setup in Resurgent, to about 2000 possible kingdom combinations in a 12 player game of The Choosing, to soon something over 100,000 in The Maelstrom. We don't need more combinations and permutations for, say, 100 years. And we're not adding kingdoms just for the sake of adding kingdoms. If we are missing an attractive option, we'll consider that. The ones I originally considered adding were mainly dispersed kingdoms, and we with a bright new Maelstrom map now will have 12 regions instead of 10 so no dispersed kingdoms. I'm still considering a couple like The Lycans or Kindred, and the Night King, but they may come in after The Maelstrom is released like a mini-expansion.
Approaching the advent of The Maelstrom, I'm not looking for lots more formats and options to start a game. I want the games to start quickly and for players to know what they are getting into. We have maybe 10 formats with variants off those. We don't need more. I don't think "the competition" offers more than a couple, if that. These games are deep strategy that require study, acquired knowledge, skill, assessment of opponents and daring. The map and its implications are fundamental to the game and the ensuing strategy, its not just plopping down random terrain. We don't want to damage the near perfection of this strategy offering by making things random.
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Well, having players choose a region for Maelstrom is a random assortment of kingdoms from game to game. So if you allow the concept of any-kingdom-any-region then you will be adding an element of randomness to the game. That's obvious.
Regarding seasons, if you don't have the concept of starting with a random season then certain parts of the map will always be favorable compared to others which isn't good for the game. To resolve your issue of some games having turns 1-3 in winter or summer, you could always have the entire map experience the same season rather than have an unfair split of the map. Then all kingdoms would experience the same seasonal effect together rather than splitting the map up where certain kingdoms have a distinct advantage over the others.
The any-kingdom-any-region concept actually will need a random seasonal start or people will always choose a certain area of the map all the time. Why would players do anything else? Why would they start the game knowing that their region of the map will be in winter/summer? That doesn't make sense nor is it any good. So if you want to allow the any-kingdom-any-region concept then you will also need to have the random season concept as well to go along with the random kingdom placement.
About Valhalla, those stats are not a good measure of determining the proper balance of the map. If anyone disagrees, I take them on in a game where I'll play a southern kingdom like the Illusionist and they may select a northern kingdom like the Druid. We'll post our kingdom stats on the forum every 5 turns and let everyone decide which of us has the advantage throughout the game with the only factor being the season. You'll see that the south has an enormous advantage over the north.
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As you might tell, I do not really dictate to Mike what to do. I encourage him and he has his ideas that are not always consistent with mine. When I send him design stuff, it's not necessarily beautiful, explicit, unequivocal, or detailed. Usually, I convey the idea but it is up to Mike to interpret how to implement it and put his own touches on it. And he's done great with that. He has made it with all the wonderful advancement in the GUI in particular a partnership, rather than "my" game.
I just kind of know what makes Alamaze successful, to the extent an extremely niche strategy game can be. I mean, I know what I am doing. I am not short on ideas, I am short on eliminating my ideas.
Again, randomness does not make for a lasting strategy game. Design does.
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Has there been discussion on the Sea Patrol issue? I really don't care for the idea of someone having sea patrol and it automatically attacks neutral ships. If I'm not a declared enemy, why would I be bothered? This is especially disconcerting when having a Merchant Trading Vessel, that can only travel 5 squares (yet the Sea patrol does the entire Sea). What would be the point having to create the highest quality vessels and the max number just to utilize the trading benefit? The cost for that would be ridiculous, although the long term benefits are good...but the possible cost getting to that point if having to fight sea battles with someone who isn't a declared enemy is outrageous.
Personally, I think that unless I declared someone an enemy, or vice-versa, ships should be able to move freely, commerce should not be impaired....(hearkens back to one of the causes of the War of 1812)
But hey....if this has already been discussed, then please point me to it.
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(07-11-2017, 02:31 AM)Ry Vor Wrote: ... Again, randomness does not make for a lasting strategy game. Design does.
Ok lets skip the word random for now. How is the point that I brought up going to be addressed?
If the entire map doesn't experience the same season and the map is split up as how 2nd/3rd Cycle games were, why would anyone select a region knowing that they will receive half production for turns 5-7? The other regions may receive half production for turn 1, which isn't a big deal because of the low number of pc's under control, but mid-game of turns 5-7 is an entirely different matter due to regional control.
So if you don't have the entire map experience the same season (or start the game with a random season to be fair), why would anyone select a region that's going to have depressed production values fairly soon after they gain control? Say it was a special game that has a reward of $100 or such, would you select a region like that which allows other kingdoms 9 turns of full production?
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