EpikBattel - Started

[Gregstrom]

There's an interesting idea... Everyone gets the biggest army they can together and attacks the isle simultaneously. Whoever is left holding the Isle at the start of the following turn can win.

[Zeldor]

Gregstorm:

That would be like lottery. At least to some degree. But attacks would be rather random, so you may get screwed if you have 2nd battle and you lost all gems and some fresh guy attacks you with a lot of gems. But beside from that, assuming everyone gets sucked from gems then the one with most SCs wins. That limits competition a bit. At least we would see really lots of tartarians in action

Oh, as we didn't decide anything yet I have requested a postpone till Friday. I am going on a trip in the mourning [10PM here now] here : Huashan

[Agema]

I've a better idea.

Let's take the top 8* players, and have a Quarter - Semi - Final competition at the central island.

Give everyone points equal to their rank on army size and research graphs (as they're the only thing that really count for power purposes) with other stats as a decider in case of ties. Then pit 8v1 (a), 7v2(b), 6v3(c), 5v4(d).

Then winner of (a) plays winner of (d), and (b) versus (c). Then those two winners fight it out.

That will take 7 turns, plus 6 1-turn gaps for the winner of the round to be clear off the central isle**, that will wrap everything up in not too many turns once we're in position. It also 'benefits' the top players, and I think that's fair. Players are allowed to reinforce their armies between rounds as much as they can.

* Particularly as 3 players are miles ahead of the rest, we could just cut the competition down to the top 4 players, save time.

** We can also think of carrying out the heats on other ground where possible to save time if feasible, if the armies can get to the target/central isle for the next round.

[Zeldor]

Agema:

So you do not consider yourself in top4 then? From your score graphs it would be Mictlan, Pythium, Machaka, Marignon.

[Gregstrom]

Well, I could go for that.

[Zeldor]

You also forget about big difference between attacking and defending. Also there are things like remote spells that can devastate every army. Also it would probably take around 10-20 turns for every player to move their armies to provinces neighbouring isle [and some gateway would have to be shared]. I don't think that whole thing would be possible to do in less than 20-30 turns total. And that would weaken Machaka, as they are not astral nation and they wouldn't be able to teleport additionally recruited troops in that time.

[Agema]

I didn't check whether I was in the top 4 and it isn't of vast interest to me. From my point of view, I'm not doing much more in this game than filling in the numbers and the time until someone else wins it, and I suspect that's how everyone who isn't Mictlan, Machaka and Pythium feels. If I had to spend lots of time on my turns, I'd have long since let a sub take over permanently or gone AI.

I would propose remote spells not be used - purely battlefield fighting only. When the two nations fight their round, they both move into the central isle at the same time, thereby making the defender fairly random I think.And in terms of Machaka, last time I fought them they didn't have a shortage of astral mages Indy astral maybe, but astral nonetheless.

Alternatively, other neutral ground - in fact ground with the Dom of none of the participants would be ideal.

[Zeldor]

So any conclusions? I got back, going to restaurant soon though. Exhausting trip

If anyone wants some photos PM me an e-mail.

[Gregstrom]

Whatever closes this game in the idiest fashion is fine with me. A few big battles in provinces where everyone can watch sounds pretty good.

[Zeldor]

There are few problems with that:

1. Whoever gets in the province gets to defend. It may decide about everything.
2. How can you do the elimination? I can lost like 60% troops and win semi-final to face someone that lost for example 5%.
3. What about dominion in target province? Magic and temperature scales matter.
4. We didn't hear comments from Machaka and Marignon, 2 nations that would make top4.
5. There is still that issue of gathering national forces to fight. Is there any preparation allowed or just forces near the island or other solution.
6. All other players would need to stale during the fight so there are no accusations about anonymous spells.