What is the "Last Turn Advantage Modifier"?
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I thought about that in mean time. Partial solution would be using the order of posting being the order of execution of commands (except for things that take place in earlier phases of the turn, like gathering power and maybe growth of preexisting settlements).
That way: posting earlier would give advantage of commands being executed before commands of those who picked the advantage of being able to react to events... I wonder if those two advantages would balance each other or not...
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If going with some turns taking place simultaneously, I wouldn't give penalty to those posting later (real life, blahblablah), instead setting them as baseline and give bonus to those that acted before.
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You may also think of putting in something in the order of no using miracles in reaction to something done in the same turn? but letting people reserve miracles in case certain things happens.
Stop people from doing things like oh your attacking me? Alright then I miracle away all your armies and roll across your undefended lands.
But then the reserve miracles could be usefull for doing that same sort of thing, I'm worried about all those armies marching into my territory so I'll reserve x power to smite up to x armies if they start maching on me.
More indirect defense like sinking territories into the ocean could just halt movement instead.
Also I agree with Drejk, it's less fun to saddle people with restrictions and penalties, better to just give benefits for earlier posting, helps to give people incentives to post earlier as well.
What is the "Last Turn Advantage Modifier"?
The stuff about getting more power from playing earlier, a penalty for going last.
If going with some turns taking place simultaneously, I wouldn't give penalty to those posting later (real life, blahblablah), instead setting them as baseline and give bonus to those that acted before.
I am not sure I fully understand your idea.
You mean, for instance:
If player 1 attacks player 2, and player 1 acted before playing 2, and player 2 smited those armies, the smite actions would only occur after the attack of player 1?
So, Player 1 attacks O4. Player 2 smites the armies at O3 that attack. However, as he reacted, Player 1's armies still attack O3 before being smited?
What is the "Last Turn Advantage Modifier"?The stuff about getting more power from playing earlier, a penalty for going last.
I am not adverse to contingency miracles, but the problem is that you get GM-heavy branching worldlines at this point.
Given X, do Y.
Given A, do B.
It complicates the game greatly and it encourages a lot of power reservation. I don't like the idea of encouraging more than the spare energy you might reserve in the given course of the game, unless you have a specific tactical reason (such as saving up for a global miracle).
For later turns, a week long turn cycle is not that problematic for the game, says I. The whole "post earlier" isn't so much to speed the game along, but to offset the fact that earlier posts are subject to losing a huge tactical advantage.
As it stands now, we have a reverse chess situation going on, with last play being so much better than first play. The classic way to accomodate this is to institute some form of compensatory method. In Go the Oriental board game, this was instituted as komi, where white suffers up to a 6.5 point deficit to begin with.
Why I prefer the power solution is that it seems to me to take away some options for the attacking player. As every offensive action besides armies (which now can't just bypass other armies) requires power, removing power can mean that you simply can't just smitezilla everyone.
That's basically correct. (EDIT: ninja'd; this was in response to your second post before this, not your third)
I think Drejk also suggested the possibility of reactive actions, too, though I don't know how those would work, exactly, and may be redonkulously hard to recall, unless they're "single turn only" reactions, in which case... I have no idea how they'd be set up.
But mostly it's not just about smiting (which could be handled as "miracles always happen last" (though that comes with its own problems)), but also instead of giving a power bonus, actually having their effects resolved first.
It's a good idea, but I'm not too thrilled, only because that's pretty firmly not my strong suite. :)
What is the "Last Turn Advantage Modifier"?The stuff about getting more power from playing earlier, a penalty for going last.
Sure, but what I mean is, "What does it mean?" i.e. do you only get power on the last turn, or is that every turn you take? How does that suss out over time?
As far as victory conditions, options that I could see are:
- landmass owned (though this could be a "stack the deck" effect in favor of larger populations anyway
- highest cultural power (yep: straight from Civ); this would require a new stat, however, and it would be awkward to make it directly competitive with other (necessary) war stats; it could be simple science, although again, since science is tied to population, the larger population would, inevitably, win
- raw power remaining after the final turn; this is a straight-up measurement of personal power; but, again, it's tied to population
- special materials owned (let's call it "wealth" stat, or something)
- heroics: those who defeat the most random monsters/wild creatures/disastrous things sent by the entity or Vizier
One of the major problems with coming up with alternate victory conditions is that all of the other resources or special benefits - with the mild exception of rare materials and heroics - is based on population. This makes a lot of sense, as population is a limiting factor, but it also means that population wins the game no matter what you do. There's no place for a player to focus on relatively low population.
One possible rule is banking your power; something akin to "faking" higher population by sealing your power away in a "bank" - a certain amount of power so-placed acts as kind of a "fake" population for gaining more readily accessible power.
While so-banked, however, it's not accessible as power; it takes you a full turn to pull it out, and this reduces the amount that you have. It probably costs something to put it in, too, thus charging you twice.
The benefit of banking would be that it not only counts as a fake population, but that it can't be stolen. To that end, I'd recommend that it cost a lot... but then you'd have to have a solid population to start banking... which leads us back to "high pop = good; low pop = bad".
Another problem comes from the rapidly accelerating nature of the game. The rich get richer... quickly. The poor get poorer... equally quickly. Once you're crushed, in general, there's simply no way to genuinely recover.
While higher population increases the cost of increasing population, it's only a local phenomena, meaning it gets substantially easier for those who've gained some traction (and a relatively broad swath of land) to build up their power-base by making large numbers of smaller, "cheap" cities, until cost is effectively no object (basically what happened in our game to the two largest players).
I have no solutions, but I offer these insights as to how this game played out.
Fun! Interesting!
Thanks, Umbral, for the great idea. :)
That's basically correct. (EDIT: ninja'd; this was in response to your second post before this, not your third)
I think Drejk also suggested the possibility of reactive actions, too, though I don't know how those would work, exactly, and may be redonkulously hard to recall, unless they're "single turn only" reactions, in which case... I have no idea how they'd be set up.
But mostly it's not just about smiting (which could be handled as "miracles always happen last" (though that comes with its own problems)), but also instead of giving a power bonus, actually having their effects resolved first.
Miracles always come last seem to neuter any sort of offensive use of miracles.
Though as an idea (not sure I am behind it yet) you could have miracles tabulate at the end of combat.
Consider:
Player 1 attacks with 4 armies v. 4 armies from Player 2.
Player 1 kills player 2's army with 2 remaining, but player 2 cast smite, so the end result is that both enemies annihilate eachother and no territory is exchanged.
The only problem: Armies are so cheap to create that you could end up getting stalemates quickly.
This is why I think the most elegant, simple solution is just to take away power from last turn, give power to first turn. First turn player scan make up for ignorance by being more powerful, and last turn players get the advantage of reactionary action, but with fewer options.
If 10 power is too little at the end (after all, we were having players with 100+ power at their hands in the last turn), the GM can tweak the totals.
I'm thinking of like my last turn as Alosvalophos: Would it have really mattered to me if I had -10 power? No; I'd have just festivaled a bit more, or not done all the actions I did. I do want to avoid the sort of stuff I was able to chain together, as it seems to break the game after a while.
Sure, but what I mean is, "What does it mean?" i.e. do you only get power on the last turn, or is that every turn you take? How does that suss out over time?
Each turn, the player order determines the power you get -on that turn-.
So, if you are the first poster, you can claim in your post "first to go: +15!" Or whatever value that has been determined at.
The "go first!" modifiers would occur when the GM thinks it's time to institute it. The first few turns of this game are just building up and getting your home base settled, so it doesn't make sense to give advantages then. Everyone can post their turn in 10 minutes to start off. It's only later that it gets complicated.
As far as victory conditions, options that I could see are:
- landmass owned (though this could be a "stack the deck" effect in favor of larger populations anyway
Yeah. Also, it seems to reflect the flawed religion model we went with originally, where it was just pure settlements, as opposed to settlement pop that counted. To put it into a RL context: Would we really give Alaska political predominance over NY, because Alaska is tthe biggest state geographically?
- highest cultural power (yep: straight from Civ); this would require a new stat, however, and it would be awkward to make it directly competitive with other (necessary) war stats; it could be simple science, although again, since science is tied to population, the larger population would, inevitably, win
You would definitely need population, but we could make a science stat that has no advantage BUT for end-game victory conditions. We could call it, cheekily, "victory" and make it expensive enough that you have to sacrifice tangible benefits (like weapons or agriculture) to get it.
Nevertheless, we were still seeing the huge population players (Alosvalophos and Lord Yogga) gathering tremendous amounts of science per turn by the end of the game. Is it that much different from pure population benefit?
- raw power remaining after the final turn; this is a straight-up measurement of personal power; but, again, it's tied to population
Yeah, but considering anything useful requires power, reserving some power could be cool.
[qoute]- special materials owned (let's call it "wealth" stat, or something)
Umby suggested to me over Steam that we have a sort of "capture these special squares around the globe" sorta idea. I think that could be a useful variety of this.
- heroics: those who defeat the most random monsters/wild creatures/disastrous things sent by the entity or Vizier
-This- is a cool victory condition modifier. I like this. The creeps were ignored, more or less, by players. This could make them interesting/useful. It also has a cool mythological feel, like the Labours of Hercules.
One of the major problems with coming up with alternate victory conditions is that all of the other resources or special benefits - with... One of the major problems with coming up with alternate victory conditions is that all of the other resources or special benefits - with the mild exception of rare materials and heroics - is based on population. This makes a lot of sense, as population is a limiting factor, but it also means that population wins the game no matter what you do. There's no place for a player to focus on relatively low population.
In a sense, it kinda makes sense that raw population would matter a lot. In the history of the world, the bigger populations are generally more succesful. There's a reason that China is looming mighty in the 21st century, and it is largely due to its massive population. Hell, the quality of life in China is pretty crap for most people.
One possible rule is banking your power; something akin to "faking" higher population by sealing your power away in a "bank" - a certain amount of power so-placed acts as kind of a "fake" population for gaining more readily accessible power.
While so-banked, however, it's not accessible as power; it takes you a full turn to pull it out, and this reduces the amount that you have. It probably costs something to put it in, too, thus charging you twice.
The benefit of banking would be that it not only counts as a fake population, but that it can't be stolen. To that end, I'd recommend that it cost a lot... but then you'd have to have a solid population to start banking... which leads us back to "high pop = good; low pop = bad".
So basically: it'd be super safe from attack. In fact, impervious to attack. That's an interesting idea. You sure like rapturing, huh? The Late, Great Planet TacticsLion.
Another problem comes from the rapidly accelerating nature of the game. The rich get richer... quickly. The poor get poorer... equally quickly. Once you're crushed, in general, there's simply no way to genuinely recover.
If the Red Scaled One had two more turns, he would've made an almost complete recovery.
This first round really did hurt a lot from the player distribution. EVERYONE was in the NW, and Lord Yogga was more or less alone for the entire game. A definite change will be more or less even player distribution over a smaller, non-water focused map.
Consider if you had been on the Southern Continent instead of wedged between The Red Scaled One and Alosvalophos.
Player distribution is going to be something we have to address. Lord Yogga could have gone the entire game without interfering with any other player, whereas Alosvalophos had to kill everything under the sun to win the NW.
While higher population increases the cost of increasing population, it's only a local phenomena, meaning it gets substantially easier for those who've gained some traction (and a relatively broad swath of land) to build up their power-base by making large numbers of smaller, "cheap" cities, until cost is effectively no object (basically what happened in our game to the two largest players).
I have no solutions, but I offer these insights as to how this game played out.
Fun! Interesting!
Thanks, Umbral, for the great idea. :)
Maybe we need to institute a "maintenance cost" mechanic? I am thinking of how Rome became too large to manage.
We could scale the cost of building up settlements too large. Make it a lot more expensive. This would still encourage lateral expansion, but it would limit how big each one could get, and limit religion's effectiveness, too. I mean, if it is stupidly expensive to make one square 10 pop...it'd make no sense to have 10 religion.
There might also be a maintenance cost associated with too many settlements, but the penalty can't be too high as conquest ought to still be a big feature of the game.
So basically: it'd be super safe from attack. In fact, impervious to attack. That's an interesting idea. You sure like rapturing, huh? The Late, Great Planet TacticsLion.
... mostly I just don't like my little men dying.
... I'm... I'm a sucker that way.
So basically: it'd be super safe from attack. In fact, impervious to attack. That's an interesting idea. You sure like rapturing, huh? The Late, Great Planet TacticsLion.... mostly I just don't like my little men dying.
... I'm... I'm a sucker that way.
There, there. We all love our people.
Thinking about the maintenance cost, that does actually make sense. A lot of civ games have a mechanic to discourage spreading too thin until you're ready to support a larger empire.
How about this?
You may support a number of settlements up to 3 + your Imperialism Advancement at no cost. When gaining Power, you must immediately pay X Power per settlement you control beyond this number. Your stockpiled Power cannot be reduced below zero by this effect.
I'm thinking the cost should be around 3 or 4, so new settlements don't 'turn a profit' for a few turns.
In effect, this means the imperialism advancement is great if you want to spread wide, while the religion advancement is preferable for a smaller number of high population cities.
Hmm.
Or something like that.
Thinking about the maintenance cost, that does actually make sense. A lot of civ games have a mechanic to discourage spreading too thin until you're ready to support a larger empire.
How about this?
You may support a number of settlements up to 3 + your Imperialism Advancement at no cost. When gaining Power, you must immediately pay X Power per settlement you control beyond this number. Your stockpiled Power cannot be reduced below zero by this effect.
I'm thinking the cost should be around 3 or 4, so new settlements don't 'turn a profit' for a few turns.
In effect, this means the imperialism advancement is great if you want to spread wide, while the religion advancement is preferable for a smaller number of high population cities.
Hmm.
Or something like that.
You'd probably need to have religion to accomodate imperialism to begin with, no? Because of the power cost.
I think you could avoid another advancement if the cost of growth began to spike after 5 pop or something.
Make it a rather steep upsweep: Up to and including 5 population, the cost of increasing population is equivalent to the amount of population present on the square. Starting at 6, that price is double. At 8, triple.
So the cost of growth to pop 5-6 is 10, 6-7 is 12, 8-9 is 24. 9-10 is 27.
Terrain Types Matter
Though a good objection to this idea was raised re: home terrain making it somewhat odd that every terrain would work the same for every creature, I think that it makes more sense to turn "home terrain" into a survival statistic, while having terrain themselves feature fixed-statistical bonuses.
All bonuses are only good in that square.
Water: None.
Wetlands: Defenders get the equivalent bonus of armour +1 and +1 weapons in this square.
Jungle: Magic shields cost -1 power to create.
Forests: +3 agriculture.
Scrubland: You can create 1 extra army than you usually can from the population in the square.
Barren: +1 religion.
Craters: Settlers cost 1/2 of normal.
Volcanoes: +3 points of science per turn.
If terrain is MOUNTAINOUS: Defenders gain +1 armour.
If terrain is HILLY: Each army costs -1 power.
If terrain is FLAT: Agriculture +1.
New Domains
Wizardry: Miracle distance is counted from the nearest force or nearest settlement, whichever is closest.
Militarism: Military miracles are half cost.
New Miracle
Army Shield (military domain): 10 power to protect an army from 1 smite.
Uh, any comments on these things? Or does it sound all good?
I'll begin to get the next game started for anyone interested if so.
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Well I did give my piece about the different terrain bonuses before. I will say that doing something like any terrain 1 wetter than ideal gives +to agriculture and any terrain 1 drier than ideal would be a good way to handle it in regards to each different races ideal biome. You could also give half credit to anyone who selects one of the extremes, choose volcano and get half the normal production bonus in all volcanos, same for wetlands with agriculture.
I do however also very much like the idea of separate effects for settlements and armies in each different terrain. things like mountains make you defensive but slow you down, maybe you need to use 2 inspires to move out of a mountain you entered on the same turn, or if you're in a flat land and you move into a flat land you can have a bonus move from the flat terrain. Along with the different weapons and armor bonuses for each terrain. especially if you differentiate them by attacking and defending army, although maybe that's too complicated. things like attacking a volcano gives you -1 armor while defending a mountain gives you +1 armor and such.then letting people negate the penaltys if they have enough survival.
The reason I am going down the route of each biome has its own bonus, is that I think it encourages strategic terraformation. The survival mechanic in game, I think, should remain more or less the same purpose as before: For calculating travel rolls and difficulties of building/fighting on various terrain.
I am going to tinker with some stuff and get this started.
The second game is open to recruitment! Please join if interested.
The rules are updated over there. If you'd still like to tweak some, we can go over them, but in thinking of what I thought the game would work out best/easiest for all those involved (espeically me as GM) I like what I have.
Of course, I might like what you have, too. So please, feel free to make suggestions and other such comments.
I will be busy for some time in near future. I might join later or just lurk and watch. Have fun!