Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)

[Lingchih]

As a general rule, I think. An Overlord cannot attack a prov without dom in it, without the pretender present in the attack. That should cover both questions.

Life is hard for an Overlord.

[rdonj]

1) No.
2) Voluntary province trades, huh? I would be inclined to say yes, but if any of your fellow overlords object to this lets go with no for this game.

Life is indeed hard for overlords. I am taking suggestions to make the game more fair (and winnable) if I set up another overlords-themed game in the future. If you have any suggestions that you think would be helpful for making the game run more smoothly, feel free to drop me a line. Once this game is winding down I'll put up a list of suggested changes I've been given and see what people like and don't like.

[chrispedersen]

I suggest allowing any regular player that takes over an overlords capital, becomes an overlord, and the previous player is relegated to normal.

[LupusFatalis]

I'd second some sort of advancement to overlord status criteria. Though I think taking an overlord cap is fairly light. And since anyone who is killing an overlord to do so will likely be taking everything else first under those rules--to minimize retaliation--the rule might be more in line with take all of the original starting forts (cap included).

And I'll agree that the mid-late game can be difficult for an overlord. But lets not forget its not without its perks. Two players seem to have capitalized on that head start and really pushed the advantage, the rest I dunno. And with the gate-stones in play a single overlord could quite simply put a halt on a would-be victorious normal. Sure they can only attack one province, but there are only so many provinces satisfying those victory conditions.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'd be interested to see how the game resolves before picking it apart.

[namad]

right now today or tomorrow someone should post a list of every vp



they are ALL WRONG on the map... it's not fair to have victory conditions no one is sure of... someone should compile a list of every capital and every noncapital yet "special" fort

many vp's have no forts and many capitals have no vps


a list like this would certainly make it easier for an overlord to take advantage of the whole stopping a victory by someone else with a gatestone perk...


there should be no punishment for killing an overlord i don't think.... killing an overlord isn't a gift to be balanced with a punishment it's a chore that should be rewarded with all those special gem sites? (plus other overlords know about those gem sites?)


I think that perhaps overlords should be able to use their prophet OR their god... (2 isn't much more than 1 and would help them out a lot especially if their god dies? i think the overlords doing badly are doing so because of a god death???)


I don't really think that overlords should be able to accept provinces in trade and breach the rules... however maybe the rules should be more lax so that it is easier for them to make attacks?? perhaps god, or prophet, or gatestone (that's 3attacks per turn max all with unique irreplaceable risks?) or maybe just god or gatestone? or maybe just god OR gatestone equipped to prophet....


or maybe baalz and atul are doing so well that the overlords should just not have picked tein chi or machaka because tein chi and machaka are awful nations? (machaka is awful tein chi is mediocre....)


wasn't pythium supposed to be the overlord instead of tein chi? what happened there? also DRP admitted to everyone he was picking a bad overlord nation to challenge himself intentionally

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by namad

right now today or tomorrow someone should post a list of every vp



they are ALL WRONG on the map... it's not fair to have victory conditions no one is sure of... someone should compile a list of every capital and every noncapital yet "special" for

many vp's have no forts and many capitals have no vps

Yeah, I don't understand that. I fairly meticulously set all the VPs by hand, checking and double checking as I went that they belonged where I wanted them. Here is the list of where I put them in the map commands:

--VPs
#victorypoints 284 1
#victorypoints 182 1
#victorypoints 38 1
#victorypoints 69 1
#victorypoints 173 1
#victorypoints 192 1
#victorypoints 263 1
#victorypoints 311 1
#victorypoints 222 1
#victorypoints 133 1
#victorypoints 199 1
#victorypoints 88 1
#victorypoints 21 1
#victorypoints 47 1
#victorypoints 316 1
#victorypoints 256 1
#victorypoints 241 1
#victorypoints 113 1
#victorypoints 262 1
#victorypoints 102 1
#victorypoints 10 1
#victorypoints 258 1
#victorypoints 244 1
#victorypoints 122 1
#victorypoints 76 1
#victorypoints 245 1
#victorypoints 232 1
#victorypoints 140 1
#victorypoints 200 1
#victorypoints 23 1
#victorypoints 39 1

I have no idea why there would be VPs anywhere else. If someone could explain to me why, and how to prevent this in the future, I promise if there's another overlords game to stamp out this silliness.

I don't really think that overlords should be able to accept provinces in trade and breach the rules... however maybe the rules should be more lax so that it is easier for them to make attacks?? perhaps god, or prophet, or gatestone (that's 3attacks per turn max all with unique irreplaceable risks?) or maybe just god or gatestone? or maybe just god OR gatestone equipped to prophet....

I'm not going to comment on all of people's suggestions right now. This will wait until the game is close to completion. But if there is an Overlords 2, I'm definitely going to look into ways to relax rules on how hard it is for overlords to attack people. Right now it's more than a bit excessive, and forces them to work a lot harder than they should have to.

or maybe baalz and atul are doing so well that the overlords should just not have picked tein chi or machaka because tein chi and machaka are awful nations? (machaka is awful tein chi is mediocre....)

I'm reasonably aware of squirrel's problems, as of a few turns ago. I don't think being TC was necessarily a deal breaker in and of itself, though possibly it caused other nations not to take him quite as seriously as some of the others. But he was really hamstrung by a few of the rules, among other things. If he wants to talk more about this he can, but I don't want to get even close to giving away state secrets. As for machaka, I have no idea what dr p is doing.

Baalz has convinced me that it was a bad, bad, stupid idea to have water overlords :P. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to allow water nations period if we do overlords part 2, but I could maybe be convinced to take a water nation that wasn't an overlord. It is just too hard to balance them for this format, and early on the other water nations are fairly easy prey.

wasn't pythium supposed to be the overlord instead of tein chi? what happened there? also DRP admitted to everyone he was picking a bad overlord nation to challenge himself intentionally

The player for pythium bowed out, iirc, and I don't remember the exact sequence of events but I think squirrel had already picked tc and just took them into the overlord slot when I asked if someone would move up. This was after I decided that it didn't really matter what nations I thought should be overlords, because whoever ended up playing one could probably make a decent run of it as just about any nation (since I was picking mainly from the most experienced players).

[namad]

squirrelloid just moved to the overlord position... to be fair though he should've been given the right to steal any nation he wanted from any normal player... now squirrelloid never would have done this because he is too nice of a guy but....


machaka and tein chi suck.... and all the other overlords are doing fine... so maybe overlords just need to be nations that are good nations to be overlords?

the reason i don't like the concept of trading provinces being okay is because that COMPLICATES the rule because a player with scouts there will think someone cheated when they really didn't.... if you want it to be easier to attack as an overlord a) less dominion strictness b) more attacks per turn...


i gave a lot of suggestions for b) already some for a) are.... make it so overlords can attack ANY indie (but not indies caused by spells as that's too exploitable?) or make it so overlords can attack any province with enemy dominion ONE or lower (instead of having to have positive dominion?)

[namad]

WTB antimagic amulets in bulk at a reasonable price (i have all types of gems to pay or etc)

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by namad

make it so overlords can attack ANY indie (but not indies caused by spells as that's too exploitable?) or make it so overlords can attack any province with enemy dominion ONE or lower (instead of having to have positive dominion?)

I have gotten multiple suggestions of this nature so something along those lines is a possibility.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Baalz has convinced me that it was a bad, bad, stupid idea to have water overlords :P. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to allow water nations period if we do overlords part 2, but I could maybe be convinced to take a water nation that wasn't an overlord. It is just too hard to balance them for this format, and early on the other water nations are fairly easy prey.

Haha, to be fair though, MA R'yleh is a serious powerhouse under almost any circumstances if played by an expert player. I don't think I'd be in too much of a different position at this point if I had started as a non-overlord (attacking more than one province per turn would make up for the slower start), and would be in a vastly stronger position at this point if I didn't have the overlord restrictions. As I mentioned, the advantage I gained leveraging the gatestone to gain easy territory was balanced by the fact that my territory is quite spread out. I've got temples in about half my territories (probably the most temples of any nation, with a dom score of 10)...and that's roughly how many have friendly dominion. Hopefully not to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but if a non-overlord were to get it together enough to push a decent raid underwater I could conceivably lose half my territories with no recourse at all to reclaim them. This would be rapidly compounded if said raids also destroyed several of my temples. Given the defined restrictions there are some serious drawbacks to being a water overlord just due to how dominion interacts with general water layouts.