Re: Olympia g2 comments

From: mneme@dorsai.org (Joshua Kronengold)

Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000

In article <58l6hb$oa@halley.eng.pyramid.com>,
Keith Hearn <khearn@pyramid.com> wrote:
>
>Here are my comments on the proposed changes for OLYII g2:
<sigh>  Well, I haven't played OLY for years, but I never let that
stop me from kibitzing before:)

>> Combat
>> 	Repeat, alternating sides until the smaller side has had
>> 	as many chances to hit as it has attackers.
>> 	The larger side gets N hits in a row, where N is the difference
>> 	between the number of attackers in the larger side and the
>> 	smaller side.
>
>>     Archery, swordplay and defense now grant an increase of
>> 	3-5 point each use when the noble's rating is less than
>> 	100, and 1-3 points thereafter.  5% of the time the noble
>> 	will have an exceptionally good study period and will gain
>> 	10 points.
>
>This is better, although I still don't know if it'll make these skills
>  very useful. One noble doesn't have a major effect in most fights,
>  because the odds are that he won't be picked very often, at least
>  not if the forces are more than a couple dozen men/beasts. Still,
>  this is better than the skill was.
>
Mabye skill in combat should cause a noble to count for more "men",
and to have a greater chance to be picked as well?

Actually, it might be good to set a "bravery" attribute for your
nobles -- the higher it was, the greater the chance of the noble being
picked (possibly combined with the above), but also the higher the
chance of a given foe chosing to attack the noble rather than one of
his/her men (you'd probably want to combine this with skill, since no
matter how brave the weakling is, they just aren't likely to attract
attackers, while the hero dominationg the battle will get quite a few
challenges).  Likewise, you could set your bravery very low to
represent your noble hiding behind his men, and otherwise not being
involved in the combat as much as possible.
	This would allow highly skilled nobles to have a vast effect
on the combat, but only if they were willing to accept the
accompanying danger.

>This is good, another way to make some cash. If the noble has troops
>  with him, shouldn't he get paid more? Then again, maybe not.
>  Wouldn't want this to be a loophole that can be used to stockpile
>  massive armies at no cost.
Best way to do this is probbly to model a limited source of funding
for the city guards.  Nobles get payed first (in order of skill), then
alternate giving each of the nobles one gold for each man they have,
until they've been given one gold per man, or the city runs out of
gold.  So the city becomes a useful resource, but not an incredibly
exploitable one.
>I like this. It should encourage people to specialize more at the
>  start. Not everyone will want to spend the time required to learn
>  shipbuilding or weaponsmithing, so hopefully this will result in
>  more inter-player trading.
More specialization is good.  More inter-player trading is DEFINATELY
good.

>Some have objected to this, but it sounds good to me, at least in
>  general. Larger forces move more slowly. A half dozen men can cover
>  much more ground than an army, unless that army is very well
>  disciplined. Maybe higher quality troops should count less in the
>  count of figures in a stack?
I like this. I like this a lot; it provides a reason for even the rich
to use reasonable size stacks, not go around trade routes with a
bleed'n army.

>> 	No 25 gold is paid for PRESS or RUMOR submissions.
>> 	However, all players receive 25 CLAIM gold per turn
>> 	automatically.
>
>Oh golly. No more worthless rumors just for the gold. But will people
>  still bother writing meaningful stuff? I  know I quite often wrote

I'd probably make it 15 +10 if you wrote a rumor, but mabye too many
rumors is a BAD thing?
--
mneme@dorsai.org	Josh Kronengold			|\      _,,,--,,_  ,)
  ^  	"Unix is easy.  Just like a cross between"	/,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
 /\\ 	"English and Welsh.  Except that you have to"  |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\	"take out all the vowels"  -- Me	      '---''(_/--' (_/-'

References

Olympia g2 comments
khearn@pyramid.com (Keith Hearn)
Tue, 10 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000