[PBEM game] Entwined Destiny (Over)

[Alneyan]

The vote will be over by Thursday late afternoon/early evening, GMT (approximatively 48 hours from now).

On a side note, if hoarding items are the problem rather than the size of the map, it should be possible to remove them from the game altogether; setting clams and fetishes to require Earth 5/Death 5 should do the trick. You would be allowed to use them here, but if you have that many gems to throw away, the game is likely already won for you.

Alternatively, a houserule banning clams/fetishes can be set, and the lurking host would inspect turns searching for equipped clams/fetishes. Woe to the player found with such items equipped. I would rather avoid a limiting figure here though, as it would be harder to check by both the players and myself.

An allowance may be needed for Bloodstones; one or two such items could be equipped for their blood bonus, or something of the like. I do not expect a ban on hoarding items to have much support, but who knows.

[WraithLord]

- Map: Any small to medium. not TOW. Inland, Ringworld, IO, tyrnade are cool.
- Victory conditions: Yes.
- Diplomacy: On. agree with alexti. Hard to enforce and this will give an advantage to those who'll insist on hidden diplomacy.
- In the case of Theater: don't mind.

Anyhting that helps towards a fast paced game with little end game micro is good by me.

[YellowCactus]

Map: Abstain

Diplomacy: I want to be able to have diplomacy. It's a valuable part of the game. (Besides, we have no way to enforce this 'gentleman's rule'. That alone makes it a bad rule.) I remember Norfleet.

Victory: Total Annialation! (however you spell it)

[Yvelina]

As it is it is more then inept for hoarding especially since you could look up the starting province numbers in the mapfile and then you would know the enemy capitols without scouting and can try a shoot out of the blue with 5 flames or so . Chances for being successful are quite high since most players leave most of their forgers in their capitol .

You know, I understand you are trying to get your hoardfest, but please do not insult my intelligence. Only a fool keeps her clamholders, forgers, or any mages of note in her capital. Or together, for that matter. Speaking for myself, I use black servants, not scouts, I keep four separate labs with no other mages in them, so that they appear empty, and I keep domes over all of my mages. By the time people are ready to blow a hundred fire gems per turn on artillery spells, I also have a hundred gems invested in domes, hundreds of wolves patrolling the province to elliminate assassins and soak up some of the fire.

And if you doubt this, I can give up the last turnfile of one of my last games. You will see that exact set-up: turn 80 or so, 150+ clams and fetishes, 80+ blood stones, most on black servants, in provinces that look exactly like 30 others. By the time everyone else surrendered, they had given up on using artillery spells, because only one of about 20 actually got through and killed one smith and 20 wolves. A few of the enemy mages met a fiery death, so I think I came better off, all together.

[EDIT] I attached a screenshot of the last turn. The red arrow points to my capital. The Black arrows point to the two provinces where my generator items are held... I am, of course, Vanheim.

Anyway. Our team's votes:

Maps: Inland (no VC) Most fun
ToW (80% of the central isle) Best fighting
Ringworld (no VC) Instant warfare, just add players

Diplomacy: We are willing to trust players to keep all the diplomacy (trash talk, in our case) to this thread.

Castles: We do not care - both ways are fine with us.


Oh, and Petar is to be talking for us from now on. I'm into finals week, and he's the one who enjoys arguments like this one.

[Boron]

Yvelina you may believe it or not i don't want to get my hoardfest . I was more argumenting just with Panther and the other anti-clamhoarders that hoarding is a winning strat and a no-brainer and so on .

After the game started you will see that Aku + me didn't plan a classic hoard approach in the game .
We just want no constricting rules but most possible freedom for all participants .

Both rules on clams and easy to achieve victory conditions are in our option unfair and constricting .

[The Panther]

Boron said:
[They are not underpriced at all .
20 turns without a dwarfen hammer , 14 with a dwarfen hammer until they reach break even point .

Your math is terrible. The actual break even point for a clam is 7 turns without a hammer and 5 turns with a hammer. This is because 7 pearls is worth approximately 10 water gems, imho. Pearls are vastly more useful that water gems, which is why I think this.

And converting 20 pearls back to 10 water just to make another clam is really dumb. The pearls are far better used to make items for your SCs, like resistance and luck and shrouds (if you have a decent bless effect) and skullcaps. Or for archastic record. Or used to empower towards wish if your pretender can't do it. Or building up to arcane nexus. Or any other useful things for pearls besides wasting them on converting to water.

A 5 turn payback (with hammer investment) for making a clam is just plain bad. That is why most good players make lots of pearls as they are able, whether or not they are turtling or hoarding or fighting for territory or defending their own territory. Just about every decent player does this. I know you do.

Besides, by the time someone starts targeting your scouts with lucky artillery spells, you have held your clams for such a long time that it does not hurt that much if you lose a few. I agree with Yvelina on this one, if you have 80 scouts in your capitol all with clams and no domes, then you deserve what you get.

If clams were to cost something closer to their true value, like 3WS1 as suggested by my son, then you WOULD have to consider doing something else with your water gems besides the no-brainer decision to make clams and clams and more clams. It was Norfleet who first pointed out the immense value of a cheap clam. Maybe he was cheating, but he was certainly a darn good player who understood the game even when not cheating.

[Boron]

The Panther said:

Your math is terrible. The actual break even point for a clam is 7 turns without a hammer and 5 turns with a hammer. This is because 7 pearls is worth approximately 10 water gems, imho. Pearls are vastly more useful that water gems, which is why I think this.

What you say is your subjective feeling . In order to make an objective comparison you have to chose a bench mark and that are water gems .

The Panther said:
Besides, by the time someone starts targeting your scouts with lucky artillery spells, you have held your clams for such a long time that it does not hurt that much if you lose a few. I agree with Yvelina on this one, if you have 80 scouts in your capitol all with clams and no domes, then you deserve what you get.

I mean a completely different situation :

If you really hoarded and the game reaches about turn 80-100 then there will be a point where you exceed 500 hoarditem carriers . Unless you are an underwater nation you can't protect them properly .

I experienced this myself in back to the fray , once Thufir gets active again on the board he will confirm it .
Though he spreaded his approximately 300-400 hoarders Edi and Odd enuf managed to give him severe trouble and kill about 50% of them by artillery spells in a few turns .

Unless you are an underwater nation there is no problem at all with clams . And before the clamhoarder reaches a critical mass of >300 clams and 3 wishcasters the clamhoarder hasn't such a big edge .

The average province is worth about 40 gold and 3 gems income .
Normally the turtling hoarder doesn't go for provinces so if you conquer instead you have e.g. 120 provinces while the hoarder has 30 provinces .
You get about 4800 gold and 360 gems from those provinces , the hoarder gets 1200 gold and 90 gems from his provinces and 300 gems from clams .
So you are of about equal power . Normally you attack the hoarder first and you should be able to do some damage to his hoarders with flames or preventive strike province capturing .

If a player choses to hoard and turtle before turn 70 he is very vulnerable and only after turn 90 he has quickly growing chances of winning .

[Boron]

We could make a poll on the normal board about hoard items how ppl think about them .
I wonder how many % would say they are fine as they are and how many % would want them changed .

If i had to guess about 60% would vote for nerfing and 40% would say they are fine .

[TheBirthdayParty]

I've been trying out the theatre of war map and I can't seem to figure out how to move from the outlying circle of the map where you start to the main land. The map description says you need to own a capital? I own all the provinces in the circle...

[The Panther]

One of your provinces has a connection into the middle.

Go into map filters and click on the box labeled neighbors. Then look at each of your provinces until you find the one that shows a connection.