Re: alternative goals

From: "Enno Rehling" <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de>

Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 22:51:59 +0000

> I agree that "wargamers" can make it tough for those who wish to follow more
> peaceful pursuits. One answer is alliances.
> 3 or 4 peaceful gamers banded together can pool resources to encourage the
> wargamer to look elsewhere.

But the waramers are even better at forming alliances, how is that going to help
at all?

> One thing I've noticed in Olympia II, the truly wargamer alliances are
folding,
> while the more peaceful ones are able to gather members to fill vacancies.

It's something all longterm games see. People get to know each other better, and
the ones that play it for the other players rather than "winning" stay. The
others need a new games once they've achieved everything they can see in the
game. Take EQ - it's become one giant chatroom. Every major mud, too.

> In Olympia II, your first point is true, but the the second is absolutely not.
> Gold is the only supply line for OLY II armies, and trade is the best means of
> gaining gold.

That is something I'd change with a restart: Make armies really expensive.
However, if the powermoner can have both an army _and_ a bunch of traders, he'll
still win. If you limit the number of units he can have (as OLY does), he'll
join forces with another player who does the trade. But in the end, their common
goal will once agian be the same: maximize military power.

> If set up correctly, and utilized properly, my trade route yields enough gold
> to maintain a HUGE army. 4k gold per turn, and I only have 5 of my 13 nobles
> dedicated to trade, and 3 of those are NPCs.

There we go. Once again, trade is only a side goal, something that's necessary
for the _real_ goal, military power. Just like mining and shipbuilding and all
the other skills, trade simply suports the one ultimate goal: war.

> A few players have tried to establish quests, a race around the main continent
> for instance, but the response has been near nil. Even for sizable cash
prizes.

We're offering to make special items for quest designers. We've just had a
tournament, and the winner got a sort of banner declaring him the winner, with
the added (yet so far unimplemented) bonus that in every region he travels
through, there'll be a little message along the lines of "The peasants in the
area's inns talk about the victorious trolls of trogul". Stuff like that, once
your engine supports making it, can add some flair. But it's like a drop in the
ocean.
But the original statement, that quests are hard to make in a weely turnbased
game, still holds. We'd have to change the frequency drastically.

Enno.

References

alternative goals
"Enno Rehling" <schick.mir.spam@gmx.de>
Sat, 03 Mar 2001 03:15:30 +0000
Re: alternative goals
phen376022@aol.com (PHen376022)
Sat, 03 Mar 2001 22:08:23 +0000