Re: More Arguments. Favourite games.

From: lindahl@pbm.com (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 23:47:54 +0000

In article <9at3o0$f9j$1@eressea.upb.de>,
Enno Rehling <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de> wrote:

>Let's fight over something more PBM-related, shall we? Let's play "My
>game is better than yours!".

OK: Let me start with a petrol bomb. I think that Atlantis (and
descendants) is inferior to Olympia (the modern kind) because it
doesn't have noble points. Noble points are the way that Olympia
limits the number of units you can employ, and limit the power of your
mages -- if you want to have a really kick-ass group of mages, you
have to use all your noble points to build them. They work pretty darn
well. I wish you guys would adopt them...

Some people have disliked the fact that Olympia2 strictly conserves
noble points, so that when you beat up an enemy, he'll end up running
away and rebuilding. Well, the idea of noble points is separate from
strict conservation. So, what do people think of noble points in
general?

>Olympia: Ah... I loved having a skill tree (though you didn't need a lot
>of the skills, I was told), but especially the order stacks. However,
>those were also what gave me the most problems. Planning up to 30 moves
>ahead, with no means of synchronization or error-recovery was a
>nightmare.

Ah, but you CAN synchronize and do error recovery. You just have to
think hard.  I agree that this is hard for novice players. But this is
the jewel that allows experts to beat the crap out of hordes of
novices. My current enemies in Olympia can't manage an amphibious
landing to save their lives.

> As a designer,
> I'm more willing to do small, closed-ended games now, because at some
> point you want a blank slate, and try some new stuff without upsetting
> everyone who doesn't like to have new rules thrown at them every other
> week.

One nice thing that "Olympia: The Age of Gods" has done is take a
previously open-ended engine and turn it into a closed-ended
game. That can have cool effects; if you set it up as a 2-sided
battle, people can get in and immediately fight, and they know what to
expect in advance. I would imagine that the action would start earlier
and be pretty continuous.

-- g

References

More Arguments. Favourite games.
"Enno Rehling" <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de>
Mon, 09 Apr 2001 20:49:16 +0000

Referenced By

More Arguments. Favourite games.
"Enno Rehling" <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de>
Mon, 09 Apr 2001 20:49:16 +0000