ATLANTISv2 atl-design-digest #10

From: csd@microplex.com (Christian Daudt)

Date: Wed, 08 Feb 1995 21:19:34 +0000

This file was automatically generated by csd@microplex.com
If you notice anything unusual, please e-tell me.
You better not kill Faction 9 or this service may be discontinued.:-)
Contributions in Silver will be gladly accepted.
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 95 09:41:21 EST
From: lam@eng.tridom.com (Larry Morris)
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

> At 8:40 PM 2/1/95, Geoff Dunbar wrote:
> >In Atlantis 1.1, I have never been involved in a battle
> >involving a building. Have any of you? I'm guessing that
> >they don't have that great of an effect as is, though
> >they are something of a help.
> >
> I definitely have not--my faction still is too busy just establishing
> itself. Still, I recall reading in the Times about the war with the
> Northern Wind alliance vs. Diamante and Emperor Shaddam; I specifically
> remember Vox sneering at his opponents for wasting their time building big
> castles. Is one of the participants from that war on the list and
> interested in commenting on the effectiveness of buildings?
>
Lord Vox here, forced from pride to defend my sneer.

Actually, my well-rehearsed sneer was for foolish nobles who choose
to build giant structures on *mountaintops*, apparently for the view.
Mountains in A1.1 are not terribly defensible places due to the lack
of tax income, peasant population, and low wages.

We ourselves in the NW have several *fine* structures, built of
carved granite and mortared with the blood of our rivals; but we
build them in the plains near mountains. I would comment further on
the defensibility in practice, but no victim has yet been foolish
enough to attack one ;-{}

VOX
----------------------------------------------------------
From: vjg@cbcosmos.att.com
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 95 09:51:11 EST
Original-From: cbcosmos!vjg
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

Diamante here! (Vox is out there somewhere, too - be afraid.)

Really, we didn't have enough buildings to even guess as to their
effect. Also, at that time I made the mistake of putting BEHIND
units in the building, instead of non-behind units.

I think if you can get your entire front line into a building,
that would give you an advantage. It depends on whether the money
you spent on building the buildings could be better spent on other
things that would make you stronger.

Being inclined to be a defensive rather than an offensive player,
I still view buildings as desirable, even if they have minimal
effect (they have SOME effect, and every little bit helps!).
They're also a role-playing mechanism; how can you claim to rule
a region if you don't build a castle?

-Vince Guinto
 vjg@cbcosmos.att.com
----------------------------------------------------------
From: tim.hruby@his.com (Tim Hruby)
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 1995 10:36:16
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

Josh sez:
 > At 12:18 PM 2/1/95, Mark Hesidence wrote:
  >> Tim Hruby writes:
  >>> and will cause a extra shift in the balance towards
  >>> the defense in wars of territorial conquest, which will tend to
  >>> discourage such wars.  I don't know how this affects your vision of what
  >>> you want to encourage and discourage in the game.
  >>
  >>Its suppose to be easier to defend.
  >>
 > I don't want to get into the main argument of this question of the
 > reasonableness of building and defense, I think Mark and Tim are doing
 > very nicely. :^) Still, I find that last comment needs some
 > modification. Defense in reality is supposed to be easier, but, Mark,
 > you have already agreed with Geoff that reality matters less than game
 > balance. Thus the important question, which Tim suggests, is how will
 > this tactic of leaving your archers outside the fort affect game
 > balance. Geoff said earlier that he wanted to make taxing easy but
 > holding land hard. If this tactic makes it really easy for War
 > factions to hold land, then Geoff's purpose is defeated. Therefore, I
 > don't find Tim's concern as unwarranted as you suggest.

Thanks, Josh.  You neatly summarized one of the two points I was actually
trying to make, before I got distracted by the lure of the technical tangent.
(The other point was the realism point, but nobody seems to be contesting
that.)

I could go on with Mark with the counter-example of more reasonable forts of
size fifty, which would dramatically increase the firepower he'd need before
he can get to the archers, etc. and then he could come back with
counter-tactics of how to take down the bigger fort, ad nausuem.  Of course
for every defensive tactic there is a counter-tactic.

The real point is that, in any situation, this tactic strengthens the defense
by allowing their front line to survive longer than it realistically should,
given the real world need to shelter "behind" units within the walls of a
fortress.  As I said, personally, my game preferences favor a strong defense,
just not an unrealistic and unbalancing one.  Subconciously, I knew that there
was a disconnect here, and you made the connection I was looking for:  Geoff's
statement about wanting to encourage territorial wars between war factions.

> Still, if Geoff does not want to do a major overhaul of this system for the
 > playtest, we should just do our jobs and try our darnedest to break
 > the game! If we succeed, then maybe Geoff will decide to change it
 > according to Tim's idea of cheapening building materials but requiring
 > all forces to be inside. Josh Mosher

As a playtester, I share this attitude.  It's my duty to make what I consider
a design flaw public.  If the GM declares it a flaw on his first analysis,
nobody should exploit it while steps are being taken to change the code.  If
the GM says play on, and the playtester still thinks it's a flaw, he should
continue to argue for it (until told to stop) and should try to exploit it
enough to break the system and convince the GM with more evidence.  If he
doesn't convince the GM, well, then he's just exploiting the rules as any good
player should.

Tim
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 10:17:56 +0500
From: roy@acasun.eckerd.edu (Jonathan Roy)
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

My two cents worth is that, the 'best' units that are set to BEHIND
get the building first, any other next, and non-BEHIND last. Clearly,
if the whole front line is in the building, how in the world can they
protect the bowmen which are stading around outside the tower?

Also kind of makes the idea of a Citadel worthless, if there isn't a
significant reasont o keep your whole army in theere... Imagine
1250 Orc warriors in the Citadel, and 5 mages standing around in the
countryside. Which would you go after first in hand-to-hand combat?

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 12:17:46 -0500
From: mosherj@minerva.cis.yale.edu (Joshua Mosher)
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

At 10:17 AM 2/3/95, Jonathan Roy wrote:
>My two cents worth is that, the 'best' units that are set to BEHIND
>get the building first, any other next, and non-BEHIND last. Clearly,
>if the whole front line is in the building, how in the world can they
>protect the bowmen which are stading around outside the tower?
>
>Also kind of makes the idea of a Citadel worthless, if there isn't a
>significant reasont o keep your whole army in theere... Imagine
>1250 Orc warriors in the Citadel, and 5 mages standing around in the
>countryside. Which would you go after first in hand-to-hand combat?

Ah, but you can't just attack those 5 mages, the orcs will defend them
anyway! And I think that it would be very nice to have an army of 1250 orcs
defending my mages from a citadel. Tim's model of the Tower defended by 10
knights is only the tip of the iceberg--you could make defense
progressively more powerful with each larger building.

Josh Mosher

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 23:21:01 +0500
From: roy@acasun.eckerd.edu (Jonathan Roy)
Subject: Turn checker

I'm slowly working on a turn checker. :) (ok, well, I started 2 days
ago and it'll ccept a legal turn sheet now! :) )

ANyways, if one or two people would be interested in helping,
I'd apprecaite it if someone could write up a long turn sheet
(maybe just two units) but trying out most every command the game
has, and with comments on some lines. I'd like to give it a really
big/complex turn sheet to test on. :)

I want to try to add some advanced user-friendly error reporting
before releasing it, but it shouldn't be too long.

thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------
From: vjg@cbcosmos.att.com
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 95 13:56:25 EST
Original-From: cbcosmos!vjg
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

So what's the goal of this discussion about buildings? It appears to be
that you want to fix the game so that it is not a good idea to put the
front troops inside a building while the BEHIND troops are outside.
That sounds good to me.

roy@acasun.eckerd.edu (Jonathan Roy) writes:
> My two cents worth is that, the 'best' units that are set to BEHIND
> get the building first, any other next, and non-BEHIND last. Clearly,
> if the whole front line is in the building, how in the world can they
> protect the bowmen which are stading around outside the tower?

The game program isn't likely to know what you consider the "best"
units, vs. the "regular" BEHIND units. You'd need to keep the units
sorted yourself by entering and leaving, and using PROMOTE (I assume that
the building owner is guaranteed first shot at being in the building).

A possible change would be to set it so non-BEHIND units in a building
cannot defend BEHIND units that are not in a building. If you leave a
pack of BEHIND archers outside the building, they will effectively become
front-line troops, won't use their bows, and will get massacred with their
-2 penalty. So in order to take full advantage of the building's
protection, you'd have to put all the units in a building.

Or, a building could be considered a third and fourth rank of troops.
Units would be attacked in the following order:

1) non-BEHIND troops outside the building
	2) BEHIND troops outside the building
	3) non-BEHIND troops inside the building
	4) BEHIND troops inside the building

As for who can fight back, I'd say that while there are troops alive
outside the building, rank #1 would fight hand-to-hand, while ranks
#2 and #4 could fire bows/use magic; rank #3 cannot do anything, since
they can't reach the enemy 50 yards away with their swords without
leaving the building and losing its protection. When rank #1 falls,
rank #2 is stuck fighting hand-to-hand. Rank #3 doesn't enter combat
until ranks #1 and #2 are both wiped out, when the enemy finally
reaches the castle walls. Rank #4 can fire away until all three
other ranks are wiped out. (In effect, they drop their bows to try
to repel attackers trying to scale the walls.)

So, do troops in one building protect troops in another building, or not?
Realistically, if I had two forts in a region, with archers in one and
swordsmen in the other, the swordsmen would be unable to protect the
archers. However, for the sake of keeping the game simple, I'd suggest
that all buildings simply get lumped together.

From my reading in historical/fantasy literature, the purpose of a castle
or citadel is to allow a relatively small number of troops hold out
against a larger army until reinforcements can arrive from elsewhere.
I think the way buildings work in Atlantis supports this about as well
as possible, by making the people in the building harder to kill.

A thought: Why not block the ENTER order if the unit moving in won't fit
entirely? That way the player will have full control of exactly which
units get the protection of the building, and there won't be any grounds
for questioning what happens.

-Vince Guinto
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 1995 17:42:35 +0500
From: roy@acasun.eckerd.edu (Jonathan Roy)
Subject: Re: Atlantis: combat Q and probable BUG.

I really like the idea of the 4 ranks for behind and non-behind
you mentioned. Lumping all buildings together seems a reasonable
compromise as well. I just don't like the idea of people in the castle
protecting those outside of it, and still getting the inside-building
defense.

Another idea, which I'm sure wouldn't go over well with the war factions,
woul dbe to have non-behind units move out of a building to protect
behind units. :)

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 12:30:26 +0500
From: roy@acasun.eckerd.edu (Jonathan Roy)
Subject: Entertainment $?

Does a level 5 entertainer make $100, or $320?

----------------------------------------------------------
From: tulrich@unlinfo.unl.edu (Tim Ulrich)
Subject: Atlantis Monsters
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 01:10:25 -0600 (CST)

In regard to the traveling monsters that are mentioned in the rules, I
am curious as to how such encounters will take place.  If we attempt
to move into a sector, will we find that our way is blocked?  or will
some monster walk into our sector and start attacking at random?

I'd like to suggest that both of these happen.  It might be nice for a
dragon to suddenly show up in a rather settled sector where he can
take out the "owning" faction's main unit in one fell swoop.  That
could lead to some interesting power struggles during the course of
the game.  Of course, the attack that a monster makes when it moves
into a sector should be totally random, rather than against the
strongest unit (of course, if a unit is on guard and attempts to stop
the ADVANCing monster, then a fight should occur.)

Just some random thoughts as I sit waiting for the next Atlantis
report...
--
Any views I express are probably my own...
Nobody else is willing to let me speak for them!

Timothy Ulrich					tulrich@unlinfo.unl.edu
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 22:41:34 +1300 (NZDT)
From: Peter Fleming <pfleming@eros.otago.ac.nz>
Subject: Vb

Howdy,
    ive got a 50k windows mapper/database for Atlantis, using Visual
Basic v3. I need someone with experience in this language to tell me what
dll and .vbx files to distribute with the .exe.
    I sent out a copy with cmdiag.vbx, grid.vbx and msole2.vbx, to
someone else and it don't run on their machine.
    I apologize if this is slightly off subject, so send your replies to
me personally.

-billy
----------------------------------------------------------
From: Geoff Dunbar <atlantis@rahul.net>
Subject: Atlantis 2.0: atl-design list
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 95 08:21:31 -0800

This is a weekly posting for the atl-design mailing list. This list
is meant for anyone interested in the rules and design of Atlantis
2.0. The moderator of the Atlantis 2.0 game is on this list, so your
ideas could actually become reality! To send a message to everyone
on the list, send email to:

atl-design@tango.rahul.net

To subscribe or un-subscribe to this list, mail to
atlantis@rahul.net. Make sure you specify exactly what you want me
to do, because a lot of mail goes to this address.
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: 8 Feb 1995 11:49:47 -0800
From: "Mike Hughes" <Mike_Hughes@smtp.svl.trw.com>
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0- Possible

Reply to:   RE>>Atlantis 2.0: Possible bug

This started on the player's list, but my inputs seemed more appropriate here:

Geoff wrote:
> Keep in mind the following:
> 1) For units in adjacent regions to move in, they must have
> enough movement points to move in _and_ back out of the
> region.
> 2) Factions will only become involved in the battle if they
> have some units in the main battle region.

The rules don't list the requirement to be able to move back to the region
where the supporting units started.  Here's what the rules say:

Combat:
(cut)
If a faction has at least one unit involved in the initial region, then any
units in adjacent regions will join the fight, if they could reach the region
and do not have Avoid Combat set.

Example:  A fight starts in region A, in the initial combat phase (before any
movement has occurred).  The defender has a unit of soldiers in adjacent
region B.  They have 2 movement points at this stage.  They will buy horses
later in the turn, so that when they execute their MOVE order they will have 4
movement points, but right now they have 2.  Region A is forest but
fortunately it is summer so the soldiers can join the fight.
(cut)

The example implies that there is not a requirement to be able to move back,
as unmounted troops have only two movement points and would spend both moving
into Region A, having none left to move back after the battle.

Requiring supporting units to move back home makes the possession of horses
_much_ more important.  Only mounted units could support in any terrain.
Unmounted troops could only support from one 1 m.p. terrain (city, town,
plain, desert) to another.  Mounted units could work with any combination of
2-1, 1-2, or 2-2 terrain.  Winter would put an end to all support (at least
until flying units start showing up).

This makes defense much more difficult and adds a great advantage to the
attacking faction(s).  If your objective is to make land hard to hold, this
helps considerably.

Either way works for me, just clear up the confusion so we can plan
appropriately.

Mike Hughes

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 09:31:03 PST
From: "GDUNBAR.US.ORACLE.COM" <GDUNBAR@us.oracle.com>
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0- Possible

--Boundary-8472798-0-0

Hmm, looks like a case where the rules and the source are in
disagreement. I'm inclined to stick with the way it is in the
source (units must be able to move in and out), but if you
have suggestions, now is the time.

Actually, I'm beginning to wonder whether the "neighbors join
in" rule is a good one. It has some bad side effects:
1) It allows factions to hide the number of troops they have
guarding a border, by putting them behind the front line.
2) It doesn't fit with the policy of units only interacting
with units in the same region.
3) Defenders can be drawn out of buildings by attacking in an
adjacent region.

To be fair, here are some pluses:
1) Makes synchronizing an attack from multiple regions possible.
2) Eliminates some "guess where the enemy is" situations.

I think the main reason that rule was instituted was to eliminate
the "jumping armies" scenario, but that is remedied by DECLARE
HOSTILE and auto-attacking after movement.

Opinions are welcome.

Geoff

--Boundary-8472798-0-0
X-Orcl-Content-Type: message/rfc822

Received: 08 Feb 1995 08:54:42                    Sent: 08 Feb 1995 08:54:18
From:"Mike Hughes" <owner-atl-design@tango.rahul.net>
To: atl-design@tango.rahul.net,atlantis@rahul.net
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0- Possible
Reply-to: owner-atl-design@tango.rahul.net
X-Orcl-Application: X-Mailer:  Mail*Link SMTP-QM 3.0.2

Reply to:   RE>>Atlantis 2.0: Possible bug

This started on the player's list, but my inputs seemed more appropriate here:

The rules don't list the requirement to be able to move back to the region
where the supporting units started.  Here's what the rules say:

This makes defense much more difficult and adds a great advantage to the
attacking faction(s).  If your objective is to make land hard to hold, this
helps considerably.

Either way works for me, just clear up the confusion so we can plan
appropriately.

Mike Hughes

--Boundary-8472798-0-0--
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 13:48:06 EST
From: lam@eng.tridom.com (Larry Morris)
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0- Possible

Larry here, (Crimson Robes)
Regarding the neighbor-combat controversy:

> 1) It allows factions to hide the number of troops they have
> guarding a border, by putting them behind the front line.

I don't see this as a big problem, just means invaders have to
scout better.

> 2) It doesn't fit with the policy of units only interacting
> with units in the same region.

True...but war breaks lots of peacetime rules.

> 3) Defenders can be drawn out of buildings by attacking in an
> adjacent region.

This seems like the biggest problem. Suggestion: any unit on GUARD
status will not leave the region. Thus castle troops can be placed
on guard and won't be distracted; mounted support troops simply
don't GUARD and are ready to be drawn into battles.
>
> To be fair, here are some pluses:
> 1) Makes synchronizing an attack from multiple regions possible.
> 2) Eliminates some "guess where the enemy is" situations.
>
It also helps make up for Atlantis having no "repulse" combat rule,
where an unsuccessful invader is forced back to his original hex.

I think the "there&back" rule does increase the importance of horses
(even for troops with no official riding skill) and weaken defense
a bit; but this balances increased benefits of buildings and "hidden
defense" that strengthen the defense. I think we should see how this
really plays before changing it.

But see if you like the GUARD==no move suggestion.

Crimson Robes.