Didn't you get gunpowder from Commodore in the first place?
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Merovech Wrote:Didn't you get gunpowder from Commodore in the first place?
Yeahhh... That's why he's probably pretty pissed . As he should be. This is also probably why he promptly jumped in and pushed the agenda of banning brokerage.
NobleHelium Wrote:Clearly a master plan to get someone else to suggest banning brokerage.
This is funny but there's a ring of truth to this. I didn't really want to bring it up because the brokerage thing pretty clearly hurts the guy who's a significant tech leader the most. I don't know, it felt awkward to bring it up as it seemed a pretty transparent "I want to change a rule to increase my chances of winning." If someone else with no chance of winning (Commodore) does it, it's much more likely to pass.
So I guess I proved why it needed to be done? Bleh. I just saw the window from Cyneheard and just hit accept and then realized the ramifications. Meh, whatever, not going to worry about it much.
Since I said I'll stop whining in the IT thread I'm doing it here .
Ok I'll make it brief. I'll just say, I can't imagine why the people who benefit most from it are the ones against banning brokering.
Sigh, really bummed out about this oversight. Nakor and Regoarrar promptly swapped techs of some sort a few minutes ago. I don't know if it was brokering related or not because I haven't looked it up, but yeah, I'm definitely not interested in tech trading again, RB mod or no. There's a reason we banned this thing in the first place. Even with brokering properly banned it would be messy, but this is craziness. Anyways, if we're going to go with full stop stupid, then I'll do my best to play the setting properly, which means after Rifling and maybe Astronomy I'll mostly stop teching and just run gold all the time. Why tech? There's literally no benefit in doing so, especially with the drastically increased known tech bonuses. I won't be teching anymore.
FWIW, I do get the "don't change rules midgame" thing so that's why I'm not putting up much of a fight about this. But this is a pretty big one, so yeah, I make exceptions on things that fundamentally skew the game.
scooter Wrote:Ok I'll make it brief. I'll just say, I can't imagine why the people who benefit most from it are the ones against banning brokering.
And obviously you're for banning it, having the most to gain. You can't expect people to discuss this impartially mid-game - which is why rules are discussed before the game starts. Having the issue be gamebreaking only exacerbates the problem, cf. AP victories etc.
novice Wrote:And obviously you're for banning it, having the most to gain. You can't expect people to discuss this impartially mid-game - which is why rules are discussed before the game starts. Having the issue be gamebreaking only exacerbates the problem, cf. AP victories etc.
So yeah, a very unfortunate oversight.
Oh I'm not saying otherwise - I'm severely biased too. I don't disagree with anything you said. However, I would point out that I'd be on board for No brokering at T0 in any game like this because I recognize the problems. So while both sides are biased, I do strongly believe that in an unbiased world the other side would agree with me .
The other issue here is that discussion got completely shot down, mostly by people who don't really have much of a stake in the game. I mean, Yuris is so checked out of the game that until 2 turns ago he wasn't even whipping to defend against Regoarrar (like, seriously??. Nevermind the fact that I also tried to trade him Gunpowder for a bag of skittles so that he could defend properly and he rejected it which is so confusing to me. He also posts this:
yuris125 Wrote:As far as I remember, brokering was on in PBEM20, and didn't have major effect
Which shows he doesn't even understand the issues with brokering. So I do think it's fair to say that a guy who is A) totally checked out of the game and B) not understanding the problem with the rule probably shouldn't get as much of a vote as me. No offense intended to Yuris at all, but I don't think that's an unreasonable statement to make. The only people with a real stake in this game right now is myself, Krill, Regopin, and Nakor, and the last one is debatable as I'm not sure how in tune Nakor is with the game. Well, Commodore is definitely putting in effort despite his hopeless position judging by login times, diplo dealings, wars and all that, so I suppose he gets a nod here too. I'm tempted to jump on Krill's question of the discussion and try to push for people to at least think about it, seeing as people put the kibosh on discussion for reasons I don't quite understand.
One silver lining here is if we stick with brokering on, Krill understands all the ramifications. That means he'll be able to recognize that I'm not nearly as big a threat anymore, and Regoarrarr steamrolling the equivalent of an AI with Yuris mailing it in means he is now Krill's biggest threat to win by far. Regoarrarr is going to have a TON of land now. Krill would be wise to try to boot him off the eastern continent. I just don't know if he will try it or not.
The silver lining for the lurkers is this might very well devolve into world war because again, there's very little incentive to tech anything. I would stop now if it weren't for the gains I could make with Rifles. I'm better off spending on EPs to get Krill/Nakor graphs back than I am to bother teching anything. So yeah. I think what we may see is Regopin steamrolling the western continent (surely Commodore will fight harder than Yuris though) and Krill mopping up Azza and eventually taking it to Nakor, while I try to mop up the islands and build up a navy signficant enough to make invasion difficult. We'll see what happens. There'll be some teching for sure, but you'll see more and more gold funneled to other purposes as time goes on.
Well, now that seems we're soldiering on with brokering, it's about time to do some state of the world type things. The main reason for this is that the win percentages in this game is no longer the Krill 70% scooter 25% others 5% like it was just fifteen or so turns ago. It's pretty drastically different. Yuris electing to go with the "not trying very much" defense and regopin correctly identifying that Yuris was the easiest target of their aggression, combined with the ramifications of brokering means the landscape here is drastically different. I'd like to do some sort of state of the world with a focus on opponent play and future possibilities. I'm not sure what format to take though, as I'm not used to playing in a game with so many players. Any requests on format and/or any particular information you'd like?
. As he should be. This is also probably why he promptly jumped in and pushed the agenda of banning brokerage.
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