Re: Olympia

From: Chris Conley <quixote>

Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000

wbruvold@weber.ucsd.edu (William Bruvold) wrote:
>>I'd also like to throw my support to Oleg's suggestion that we make faerie
>>bigger, although I admit that to do this at this stage of the game will
>>ruffle many feathers (those poor dudes who already mapped out
>>faerie--well......).
>
>
> Make Faery Bigger??????!!!!!?????????
>
>Well that totally confuses me as Feary is dominated by a big faction
>right now.  Why woudl expanding its size (especially if lairs were
>part of the expansion) do anything to improve game balance.?

The idea behind this is that in a large Faery, hills are spread out by
a considerable distance, making it much slower to use Faery as a rapid
transport mechanism.  It's also conceivable that a larger Faery would
have had room for several factions (if, indeed, buildings were allowed -
see below).  I don't think that that's a viable option right now, though.

>>faction which, it seems to me, could conceivably take over Olympia & make
>>this open-ended game look rather closed.
>
>The ability of any faction to "take over" olympia is greaty
>exagerated.  As many people have suggested, there are vast tracks of
>land that are a) unexplored (i.e. lairs) b) Very far from Faery
>hills c) ready to be exploited by enterprising factions.
>
>Remember for every 4 provinces a large army moves over land (and
>remember, one faery hill for most continents) 5 nobles
>could produce roughly, 30 pikes and 15 xbows.

Well, the current stacks are mostly mounted/beasts, so I think this is
a bit off.  1 pikeman represents 4 days of work (not including the wood),
and one xbowman 3, so a 16-day (4-province) run provides time to build
12 pikemen and 11 crossbowmen.  Even a cross-country trek of 10 provinces
only allows time for the training of 60 soldiers, which is not likely
to be much of a defense against a horde of giant spiders or giant birds
(to say nothing of dragons...)

>IMHO, the "closed" nature of Olympia can be attributed to three
>things
>
>a)  The failure of CO to fall like it should of, both because of a
>bug in the battle program and the failure of factions to come
>together to defeat the constructors during the early turns.
>Combined with Rich's decision to continue to put newbies into Imp.
>City and the ability to kill new nolbes and get their NPs puts the
>owner of CO at a huge advantage.  But this flaw has nothing to do
>with meta-game design and everything to do with good game play by a
>faction and poor game play by others in combination with poor start
>up conditions.

Well, newbie-killing is a game design issue, and certainly was a major
factor in the growth of the AOO.  The durability of CO is not, however.
(I'll claim innocence, as I was on a boat by turn 2...)

>	some solutions
>	i) Building restrictions enforced at least four provinces
>	   from starting city.
>	ii)  No mountain next to starting city
>       iii) Multiple starting cities making it difficult and less
>	    advantagous for previous gaming communities to use existing
>           relationships as basis of meta-alliance.
>
>any of these individually or in combination solves a big chunk of
>current problems.

Agreed, though I think #3 should still allow factions to choose their
starting point (forcing allies to split up isn't a good move, IMHO; then
again, I strongly dislike alliances based on previous games, preferring
to choose my friends as the current game progresses).

>b)  Faery - discussed to death.  My preferred solution is to make it
>dangerous as heck and to enforce building restriction in it.  Armies
>should still get to move through it (a la the "ways" in Robert
>Jordan's Wheel of Time) but it should be a risk.

Sounds like a quite fitting analogy.  Actually, I'd like to see a link
established between Faery and Gatecraft; this would make Faery require
magical effort to use (though at a much lower cost than Gates) and
would give Gatecraft a better rep to boot.  I'm not sure that there need
to be any additional risks aside from the infamous Hunt, but I'd like to
see some kind of cost for entry - Aura for a spell-based entry, perhaps
Health for the use of an elfstone.

>c) Beastmastery-- the worst part of the game IMHO.  Game balance
>highly skewed toward this skill.  smart factions got their "vacuum
>cleaners" running through lairs to gobble up monsters ASAP and left
>the others to complain.  In combination with breed beasts has
>allowed the creation of very powerful beast stacks.  Led by a noble
>with AAB, suggests that the next phase in Olympia battles will
>involve Dragon lords battling for control of Provinia.  Not a pretty
>picture for younger factions (who really are pretty irrelevent in a
>game in which 5/6 dragons can be breed a month using proper
>techniques).

Yes, I realized this a while ago, and I'm currently back in the den-
raiding phase to find some better beasties to breed.  Breeding giant
spiders nets me a 150/100/0 warrior who can "run" with my horses and
doesn't charge maintenance in 6 days; makes my corps of archers seem
rather silly by comparison, and even the spiders will be wimps if I
ever find a nice bunch of dragons...

>Some solutions would be to require maintanence of beast stacks
>necessary or to make it impossible to have more than one/two kinds
>of monsters in the same stack.  THat would at least have slowed down
>the "vacuum cleaner" strategy.

I'm really not sure how to handle this.  Lengthening the time required
to Breed might help (it's rather impressive that a beastmaster can
produce a full-grown Dragon in 6 days!).  Adding a cash maintenance
seems somewhat silly; what about having a fixed %age of the beasts
"escape" each month?  Reducing the capture rate might help as well.

I'm looking forward to seeing what g2 will look like; I ain't giving
up hope just yet in g1, but I defintely wouldn't mind starting up
again as well...

- Chris

References

Re: Olympia
morrow@gandalf.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Fri, 14 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia
dave806459@aol.com (Dave806459)
Sat, 15 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia
wbruvold@weber.ucsd.edu (William Bruvold)
Sun, 16 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Olympia
morrow@gandalf.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Fri, 14 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia
dave806459@aol.com (Dave806459)
Sat, 15 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia
wbruvold@weber.ucsd.edu (William Bruvold)
Sun, 16 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000