Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)

[rdonj]

Nations are posted. Anyone with an asterisk got one of their picks. Anyone without an asterisk, you may feel free to trade nations amongst yourselves. I will note that many people chose the same first couple of nations. A significant number of lists were along the lines of "van, aby, x" to be precise :P. People who picked vanheim and abysia probably would have been well served sending lists longer than 3 nations. I even had two people send me the exact same list.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by atul

For the record, I want to apologize to rdonj for our constant collective bugging I've been a part of and thank him for all the work he's done thus far to get this thing to this point:

Sorry! Thank you!

Thanks Hopefully all that bugging me will make for a much better game than it would have been otherwise.

[LumenPlacidum]

Thank you very much, rdonj! Time to get to work building a strategy.

[iainuki]

I'd be open to trading MA Oceania for some other nations. If you'd be willing to help me, please get in touch.

[chrispedersen]

Overlords,
Cmon you guys are the experienced ones. Do you really believe this is even remotely an equitable contest?

Put your judges hat on for a moment. Do you believe the victory conditions are such that a normal nation has even close to the same chance of vicotry condition that an overlord does?

Lets reduce this to simplest cases.

Suppose an overlord chose an awake pretender, good dominion, and fairly horrible scales. With 10 provinces and three forts, at the very least he is able to outproduce a normal nation at least 3:1.

Let alone stealth preachers.

Frankly, the overlords can use the gatestone to teleport 2 away from any starting normal nation. They can use this to deny normals expansion. Once there they just walk into an adjacent province.

Even if it doesn't happen turn 1 - it could certainly happen turn 3.

The victory conditions are fairly meaningless. Even if the overlords were required to eliminate all other overlords to win, it would still be that the overlords would attack normal nations. There is no way an overlord is going to attack a roughly equal overlord when they could instead grab independents or crush normals. It is only after the vast majority of normals or indies are gone that there will *really* be significant chance of conflict betweeen normals.

Personally, I believe that even if the overlords were prevented from attacking a normal until attacked that this would *still* inevitably result in an overlord victory.

I would suggest this, instead. No overlord can attack a normal until he has taken at least one other overlords capitol, he is free to attack any normal that attacks his territory. Still not even remotely fair.. but at least a nod in the right direction.

[namad]

nevermind... arguing is not going to benefit anyone.

[rdonj]

As I said in pm, at this point I would really not make any further changes to the rules. This game needs to start eventually, or players will start to bail. If things don't work out this time, hopefully issues can be identified and fixed for any other games in this style should people still find it interesting.

My main goal with this game was just to do something different and have it hopefully be an entertaining deviation from the normal exactly similar starts that you go through in every other game. Not that that isn't fun, but it can be nice to do things differently once in a while. I want everyone to bear in mind that this is an experimental game and I'm not sure anyone can say for sure how it will turn out. Obviously overlords start stronger than everyone else. But is that enough to keep the other overlords at bay? I've seen a crafty idea or two from normal players about what they might do to hurt an overlord. The game is obviously not going to be completely balanced. I hope that will prove to be part of its charm .

[Hoplosternum]

Well we new the conditions before we signed up so there is no point complaining about them now Although I agree they do favour the Overlords a lot.

I am curious about the diplomacy stance. I don't have a problem with a back stabbing diplomacy game. We all know that diplomacy in this game is not binding and that betrayals don't carry over in to other games. So trust between players is not encouraged Yet the whole set up of the game seems to require a great deal of diplomacy to work especially if the normals are to have a chance. So while I don't have a problem with this diplomacy option in games, I am surprised it was selected for this game.

This doesn't mean I want this changed. I signed up with these terms. Just wonder why this was selected. It seems to be aimed at an issue some people have with lazy napping in standard mp games. But this is not a normal mp game....

[atul]

I would think it's partly just from perspective. I as an overlord player see everything that can go wrong for me from turn 2, as well as a normal player sees the game from his point of view. The fact is, we'll have 1 winner and 20+ losers and this can go whatever way. Not being able to step into capital provinces is going to be a HUGE pain.

[Squirrelloid]

Diplomacy should always be machiavellian. Terms get honored as long as it is in both nations best interests to do so. That's what diplomacy *is* in politics and international relations. (Also, non-binding diplomacy stops nations from being compelled into certain courses of action that end up being against their interests).