Concepts of Creation: Ironhawk Suddenly Wins!

[Xox]

Ironhawk, Folket,

Back to the 40% vp condition being in my opinion to easy and perfectly fine in your opinions.

On my side I point to the sudden, sort of trick move, end to our game and others using these low threshold victory conditions.

Your counter argument is that people should have built castles on the vp provinces right away,

The reality is that people don't build the castles on those provinces early on to the detriment of their regular buildup. Ironhawk even mentions the gamemaster should urge players to build early castles on their vps.

Sounds a little gamey doesn't it? The game victory conditions should naturally reflect a victor, someone with the dominant position, without playing to the victory conditions themselves. Hosts should not have to advise players to alter their gameplay to avoid certain victory condition pitfalls.

Folket says "from this game we will learn that VPs can't be left undefended. In next game a raid will be much harder."

Truth there, but you miss the next move down in this logic. If a certain number of players are aware of this tactic they will indeed sacrifice their normal objectives to fortify every vp province in their possesion, which may fall very nicely into the hands of those players who do NOT make the sacrifice and gain an advantage over them. As long as a good number of vp provinces are early fortified, the strategy is foiled, therby benefitting all players including those who do not make that sacrifice.

Another point is we have tried the low threshold victory condition game. It requires, at best, no choice stratagies to accomodate and specific host warnings to players.

Would it kill you to just crank up that threshold just a wee bit and see how that goes?

[Micah]

Xox- The threshold isn't the problem either, I believe someone said that Ironhawk snagged 60% of the VP provinces...changing the threshold to anything reasonable wouldn't have prevented the win there.

How about a province-based victory? Or capital only-VPs, since they come with a free fortress (and are generally fairly well-defended)?

Also, astral nations seem to have way too much of an advantage if raiding VPs is a viable option. I know I couldn't have spared the cash to castle my two VP provs. I was on the ropes from TC attacking me, and the only reason I survived to begin with was because he staled a couple of times and let me pick his army off in chunks...losing 2000 gold worth of troops from my army to build forts wasn't a possibility if I wanted to stay in the game.

I haven't played with a province % victory myself (well, I'm in one now, but it just started), is there a good reason to use VPs instead of provinces? Granted raiding could still push someone the last few % they needed to secure a victory by provinces, and would be harder to stop, but on a large map it's going to be hard to get a huge swing out of it in a single turn...maybe upping the % to 50 or so so you get 40% of real control and then the 10 of raiding to make sure you have a real decisive winner...either way.

Just a thought.

[calmon]

12 VPs was needed to win (40% from 30).

I'm not 100% sure but if i remember right ironhawk conquered 16 Vps.

To achieve 60% he would have need 18.

But as i said before the main problem wasn't the VPs to win. It was the nonexistent protection of the VPs to win.

[Sheap]

If you want to play so that the militarily/economically dominant nation is guaranteed the win, then the best thing to do is to just have no victory condition at all, and simply play until all the players agree that someone is the winner.

I find that these sorts of games often turn into a late game chore and in a big game can go 100+ turns. NewbieNuzzling just shut down after 77 turns without a genuine clear winner because no one wanted to play any more - and this was on a map that in the beginning was commonly derided as being too small. That is why I put VPs in this game: To give people something concrete to fight over. Encourage combat and make a real military route to victory something other than a long, drawn out reduction of all the other nations to rubble. I didn't expect both 3VP provinces and most of the 2VP provinces would still be almost totally undefended 40 turns into the game. But, that's just the way the game worked out.

Ironhawk did this with the cooperation of all the other players in the game, who left the second strongest nation (who was not far behind the strongest) in complete peace for the entire game to prepare for this. Obviously this could have been prevented. Castling the VP provinces is one way, but people, as a group, realizing that the possibility existed and arranging for some way of keeping Ironhawk from building up the strength. Or a community fund to castle the two 3VP provinces, making a raid impractical (arranging THAT is left as an exercise for the players...)

I do feel that it is the responsibility of the players to keep an eye out for what other players might be doing to try to win the game, and to use diplomacy or strength to prevent them from doing that. Calmon is the only player to admit to having even considered the possibility, but obviously he didn't really believe it (or at least, believe it was about to happen) or he would have been raising the alarm rather than sending quiet PMs to one other nation. But, beating an enemy with raids is hardly a new idea. The Germans almost won both world wars that way, and I used it to great effect vs. Ironhawk in a game of Starz!@# once...

Warnings from the host aren't needed. If we played this game over, exactly the same setup, I guarantee the ending would not be the same. Nobody is going to let this happen again. When research is at a level that makes this sort of thing possible, people have to be prepared, and next time they will be.

The specific way this game ended might have been unsatisfying. But I don't think it is a flaw in the game design. If we just wanted to build forces until they become unstoppable and have enemies do the same, we might as well play against the CPU. IMO, what happened in this game is one of the best parts of playing against other humans. I don't like games that devolve into "who can horde clams the most efficiently" or "who can pack the best bless into the fewest points" or whatever other minmax approach is most optimal. Multiple paths to victory is good!

[Xox]

I like Micah's idea of changing the victory conditions to % of provinces rather than % of vp provinces. that sounds like it might work well.

Sheap I was in the newbienuzzling game and you are incorrect in saying it ended with no clear winner. Whollaberg clearly won as Vanheim. All players agreed with no dissension.

We could have gone on, but we decided to call it at that point.

I actually like the late game and am happy to play in those games if others wish to. But you are right in that some people do not like the massive army and complicated magics of the late game. But again, some of us , me included, do like the late game.

I think actually most people like the late game its just it will take an increasing chunk of time and if you are in several games and as pesky real life intrudes, inevitably it becomes to much for some people.

It comes from the game taking about 5 minutes to do a turn to 2 hours a turn as time goes on. Hosts need to properly scale the time limits for the turn as the game progresses. That newbienuzzling game never left a 24 hour host and that just became too much to keep up a still interesting game when it become obvious Whollaberg was probably going to win anyways. Two hours a day is too much for one game, every day. At that point it should have been on a 3 or even 4 day timer.

Just scale out the time limits as each game ages and that particular late game fatigue problem will be solved.

Lets hope we see a few province % victory condition games hosted and see how that works.

[Tyrant]

I've nothing to do with this game, but decided to chime in on the interesting VP discusion.

Anyone tried the cumulative VP option? That sounds promising to me.

One issue that comes up for me sometimes on the regular VP thing is that i hate it when someone who is far away from me wins the game by taking VPs. It's a very unsatisfying game exeperience to suddenly lose a game without being beaten. Sounds like that is what happened here.

One thing i did in DomII that seemed to work was regular VP victory with crap tons of VPs such that one had to control a big chunk of territory to win. It worked well, but i only did it in 3 and 4 player games, and now in Dom3 VP provences have an extra dominion spreading effect that might complicate things.

[Morkilus]

Congrats, Ironhawk. You've become quite the condender: you've won both of the large-scale games that I've played (you did win Artifacts, right?)

I'm up for a new one, if you'll let a hopeless scrub try again. I'm all for VP victory. Know what's important in the game, for it is just a game!

[Ironhawk]

Thanks Morkilus

Technically, no, I did not win Artifacts since the game just kind of went into limbo after Arch quit. But given the direction the game was headed I do think it is safe to say that I would have eventually won.

[Xox]

I would love cumulative vps if the threshold was a total percent. I know that sounds strange, but as an example:

Soneone could win if they got to 40% total cumulative vps.

I am kind of leery of total vps as a flat number winning, unless it was a big number. Maybe 40% of total vps after 100 turns. That might be worth a try.

[Teraswaerto]

Tyrant said:
I've nothing to do with this game, but decided to chime in on the interesting VP discusion.

Anyone tried the cumulative VP option? That sounds promising to me.

We had cumulative VPs in the Dawnstrike game, which Caelum played by Jurri won. Not a fan myself, the problem with someone far away winning with little you can do about it is still there.

Something to consider is also that VPs favor nations with Air or Astral magic. Magical travel is already extremely powerful, and made more so by the use VPs. Without it striking at VPs half the world away is much more difficult.