Mapmaker looking for players - Indie picks

[SevenSpirits]

Nukes aren't a dealbreaker for me, but I'm curious why people want them?

For me it's because we seem to knee-jerk ban a lot of things to the point where people don't even know what they're missing. I don't think they'll ruin our game, and I want some non-apocryphal information about their strength and effect.

I feel the same about corporations.

War Elephants are things that make knights worse, which doesn't seem terrible to me. Blockades are just not broken at all. I feel like their constant banning is just people who think you should be able to ignore your navy. It's like banning pillaging because people don't think they should have to defend outside their cities at all.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I think the problem with nukes is that their counter is to nuke them first. Corporations I'm more ambivalent about, I like them as otherwise the One Right Civic at the end of the game is State Property, but locking players out because they missed out on a Great Merchant or Great Engineer earlier seems like a problem. I'd prefer a FFH-like system where you could at least set up a weaker version of a corporation without its HQ.

[luddite]

I think the problem with nukes is that their counter is to nuke them first.

pretty much this. How are you supposed to counter someone from dropping a nuke onto your uranium, then nuking all your units and cities into dust? SDI comes waaaaay too late to be effective. Especially because all the techs leading to fission can be bulbed with great scientists.

[Commodore]

Well, looks like the vets game is ready to go at least, I have the ban list in the front page. Does the Lewwyn > Mackoti > Novice/Seven > Gaspar order still work? If so I'll roll for who goes first and post start positions in threads (assuming subforum) while the review team finishes giving feedback.

[SevenSpirits]

pretty much this. How are you supposed to counter someone from dropping a nuke onto your uranium, then nuking all your units and cities into dust? SDI comes waaaaay too late to be effective. Especially because all the techs leading to fission can be bulbed with great scientists.

That's a good argument. I'll change my vote to ban nukes. Not sure if it affects anything.

[Gaspar]

My argument against them is they're just miserably unfun. If someone invades with a giant stack of advanced units, you can still have fun trying to come up with a way to fend them off. Even if your opponent is an era ahead if you play well and get some luck you can be a tenacious opponent.

If someone drops a few nukes on you? GG. I understand why they exist in the game and why they behave as they do, but they have no place in an MP environment. Not to mention in a game pretty clearly balanced as rock/paper/scissors there's no realistic counter. I can't imagine any reason we should allow them.

By the by, if we're going to allow great spy scouting (no idea why) but ban spy units - what's the point of banning infiltration? What are you going to do with all those EP if you can't use them with active spy units anyway? If someone wants to waste a GP on a bunch of EP they can't use in a meaningful way, who cares? I always thought the point of banning infiltration was to stop the unstoppable scouting.

[SevenSpirits]

Infiltrations would confer full city visibility, research visibility, and city viewing too, it's an order of magnitude stronger than just one scouting guy.

[NobleHelium]

Are we using the same definition of infiltration here? Infiltrating just gives you EP, it's the EP that gives you city visibility and investigate city, etc. You can get them by just getting EPs normally, so that's the same thing, no?

[SevenSpirits]

Are we using the same definition of infiltration here? Infiltrating just gives you EP, it's the EP that gives you city visibility and investigate city, etc. You can get them by just getting EPs normally, so that's the same thing, no?

The point is that infiltrations give you an insane amount of EP - if you're going to get both EP and research it's more than twice as efficient to infiltrate and use the research slider as it is to bulb and use the EP slider. Even in single player people think spy infiltration is overpowered (granted, it's for different reasons, but the underlying power is in the quantity of EPs relative to the benefits other great people give).

[Gaspar]

That's all well and good, but what do you need that many EPs on one player for? If you get, say 3000 EP for a spy bomb - what are you doing with the other 2200 after you already have tech and city visibility well into the late game? Maybe I'm missing something - I certainly understand the viability of a spy bomb in SP - but there you have the ability to actually use those EP for something.

I don't care really - its the scouting I don't like. But I know that you like to try stuff for the sake of trying stuff, so its not a dealbreaker for me.