PBEM game: King of the Hill (Over)

[Alneyan]

So, Difficult research and Zen Pretenders mod it shall be. The Version used will be 1.81, which can be downloaded from there .

The initial turnaround will be set to 48 hours then, and will switch to 24 hours on the 27h if all players agree. It could then go back to 48 hours later on, if requested.

A Last remark: I intended to put some decoy VPs on the key provinces, but they unfortunately spread Dominion. Would this be fine with you, or is the effect too important? It would be two VPs for the central province in the outer isles, and one VP for all the capitals, and any value for the Hill. Their purpose would be to show where these provinces are, after the changes done to starting positions and one central province. (This information will otherwise be given in a mail, but that would be less convenient)

[Rainbow]

Will the victory points spread dominion if capturing victory points is NOT the game winning objective? Will they be visible?

If the victory points spread dominion, I would prefer not having them.

/Rainbow

[Alneyan]

Now that I checked, the Yarnspinners game has both the VP icons, and no Dominion spread from them. The win condition is not VP in this game, and the VP icons are not due to the .tga (creating a new game with this map does not result in having the icons).

So, I would believe it is possible to have both, and will be meddling with the map to figure out how to do so. Of course, I could be hallucinating once more.

[Alneyan]

Feel free to start sending your Pretenders as soon as you want (you may want to wait for all players to choose their nations).

My main address is alneyan[AT]fastmail.co[DOT]uk, and alneyan[AT]gawab[DOT].com is used as a backup mail, and should always bounce when it fails to deliver a mail. (Replace the [AT] and [DOT] parts by @ and .)

The current player list is as follow:
- Cainehill: No nation picked yet
- PhilD: Man
- Rainbow: No nation picked yet
- RonD: Pythium
- Sedna: Machaka
- The_Tauren13: Ermor

[Rainbow]

Alneyan, can you specify the exact victory conditions? If we only need to hold the hill for a relatively short time, we have to go for a quick pretender SC and take the hill. If we have to hold the hill for a total of 20 turns AND 7 consecutive, there may be a chance to get to some higher level research and allow for some other plays.

Also, what will the indies on the "hill" be like? Normal for the terrain type, or will there be a very hard group of indes with a hero guarding the hill?

/Rainbow

[Alneyan]

The clock for "holding the hill" starts on turn 10, so a *quick* SC would probably not be needed. A SC would likely be needed however. The two conditions were supposed to be a "OR" case, where it was either seven turns in a row (pretty unlikely, but who knows?), or twenty turns in total. The first "in a row" condition could be removed though, leaving the only win condition as "hold the province for twenty turns".

While testing the modified map, I noticed I bLasted *all* the special independents back to the Void (I didn't intend to do it however). In the original game, there are Eternal Knights and a leader or two keeping three provinces leading to the Hill, with the Hill itself having a fairly powerful defence. However, all these three provinces have a fortification, and Independents never, ever, patrol their provinces; there is therefore no need to fight when just travelling through.

Would the players prefer the original setup (where you only have to battle the defenders if you want to take the "full" province), or something more common where all provinces have the regular defenders? The Last option would be to leave the defenders while removing the fortifications, but that would probably put too much focus on flying to avoid these battles (or simply make them "yet another bunch of independents", for powerful SCs).

Lastly, Zen's mod reduces the effectiveness of a few of the most common Pretenders (Ghost King to name but him), so SCs may be a bit weaker than before. And of course, there are five other nations that would love to get you out of the Hill, which should be expected to gather their forces against you.

[Zen]

Just an Idea: Perhaps you could load up the "Hill" with customary anti-SC troops and equipped units. Throwing a magicless Pretender with SC attack equipment (Forcing the Pretender to fight instead of cast until fatigue) with some Mandragoras and some flying resistant units (Bane Lords with equipment might work) to stop the cheese Wrathing of the Hill.

You could also try giving some commanders some Soul Contracts. So as time goes by there is more and more of a force to deal with at the Hill.

[Alneyan]

My concern with making the Hill too heavily defended (for a turn 10 offensive) is that nobody would want to be the first one to go in; waiting for someone else to start clearing the defenders would be safer, and there would be a good chance of having a weaker enemy SC to take down.

Soul Contracts are nice, but again the winner of the battle could have one or two of them (if lucky), or nothing at all, which would be a fairly different situation. I suppose the Soul Contracts do not qualify as being "cursed", and do not have a higher chance of being picked up?

[Zen]

Another Idea could be to put the Chisslick Swamp and Inkpot End in the Hill.

Of course these are just ideas, I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't, but it's always fun to make situations with these type of Take and Hold things.

[Alneyan]

I thought of putting these wonderful sites on the hill, but I was too gentle when making my first post. Now... Well, that could be a lovely idea, though there may be a problem with Ermor (which would not suffer in the least from these sites). Hmm...