Re: Quest of the Great Jewels

From: desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)

Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 00:00:00 +0000

John Bach <johnb@wotangate.sc.ti.com> writes:
> There are 4 types of races in the game: Azoni, Quntag, Rilris, Slenth.
> Does anyone know how balanced they are as far as achieving victory
> conditions?

Not very.  Slenth players have no chance to win on points.  The only way
they could possibly win is by achieving the "sudden death" victory
conditions, of capturing all 3 Great Jewels.  This is not impossible,
but of course all races have this same opportunity.  I can't see playing
a Slenth if you want to win.  Of course, if you are the only Slenth in
the game, you can benefit by having a bunch of people trade you their
otherwise worthless forest provinces.  But that still doesn't let you
win.

Azoni have by far the most point scoring potential, if they work at it.
I won the game I played as an Azoni, by a significant margin, even
though militarily I and my surviving ally were almost dead at the end,
and clearly were "beaten" by turn 15 or so.  I benefited from a
relatively early end to the game; if the game had gone long enough our
opponents would probably have been able to capture the three Great
Jewels (of which I think we had one, they had one, and one was still in
a Forbidden city) and one of them could have won that way.  I don't
think that they could have caught me on points even given a full 30-turn
game.  One of my opponents was also an Azoni, but he didn't put enough
attention into scoring points right from the beginning.  My Quntag
opponent had a higher score than the Azoni, but couldn't even come close
to keeping up on points despite their two-player alliance controlling
most of the map.

A Quntag or Rilris could certainly win on points if all of the Azoni get
sacked by turn 20 or so (especially with a friendly ally to give you
provinces or cash).  There are also some artifacts which can generate a
LOT of points (again, especially if you have a cooperative ally who is
willing to help you).

One of the main things I didn't like about the game was the fact that in
order to win you basically have to have a strong ally or two who will
let you win rather than trying to win themselves.  If everyone just
looks out for oneself, and defends a modest territory, an Azoni will win
going away.  But in general it seems (overgeneralizing from the one game
I played) that players take sides, and try to help whichever player on
their side has the best chance to win.  I guess having an ally win is
better than having an enemy win, but I'd rather play a game where
everyone has a decent chance to win on one's own.

> Also, do you get a map each turn, and if so, what kind of quality is it?

No map when I played, just a xeroxed map (the same for many/all games)
sent at the beginning of the game, and then a laser-printed or email
text report each turn.  Since I could get turns by email I didn't bother
looking at the printed turn report.  I think I had to pay *extra* to get
the email report, which doesn't seem quite right.

David desJardins
--
Copyright 1995 David desJardins.  Unlimited permission is granted to quote
from this posting for non-commercial use as long as attribution is given.

References

sdw - the dark well space
"thomas.leitgeb" <thomas.leitgeb@kfunigraz.ac.at>
Thu, 27 Apr 1995 00:00:00 +0000