Listing just the results intentionally without dates, since the scenario wasn't a race or competition.
Conquest Victory
fluffyflyingpig
Domination Victory
LKendter
Miguelito
BRickAstley
Spaceship Victory
The Reverend Doctor
Alternative Victory
GermanJoey
ljubljana
Whosit
Retired games
LogicalTautology
timmy827
RefSteel
Spaceship Loss
Huinesoron
Well, this was a success, with a dozen players. Of course the genesis of the idea was Sirian's comments about "back to basics" in that thread. What's more basic and classic to RB lore than the Pink Dot. Nice straightforward adventure. The map can promise early excitement to draw players in, which looks to have worked.
Map design: I drew the entire tundra area. The original pangaea coastline was on the row with the cow. Russia started about five tiles north on the original coastline which I moved south. Moscow had to be pre-settled or else players would just walk the initial settler out to a pink dot; I've gotten burned on that in scenario design before. Moscow is carefully designed to look terrible but play fine anyway in the early game: five good tiles (2x deer, 2x plains hills, clams) are plenty to start pushing out settlers, plus two lighthouse lakes would help a bit later. I designed two specific tiles for pink dots: the coastal plains hill towards Zara (cow, rice, gold, floodplains) and the 7-resource plains hill towards Brennus. The rest of the resources (and lots of floodplains) were added in gradually, not tailored for specific spots but just a broad belt of riches. The scout's starting location pointing towards the floodplains and Zara's pink dot was 100% intentional, to get players started.
I didn't really realize that this would turn into an economic-crash game. But of course that follows, with an economically useless capital, first-ring cities at a great distance, and those cities would spend their first 4-5 sizes on resources and get to working cottages very late. But that turned into an interesting curveball anyway, and nicely skill-rewarding for those that do know how to deal with it.
The AIs were just selected randomly. I thought I remembered Kublai, Napoleon, and Brennus all as middling warmongers; didn't bother to look up the actual AI aggressiveness. I didn't change their locations or starts at all. So yes, I didn't really realize how much of an empty backyard Brennus had. It also slipped my mind that Zara is Creative which would offset the player's own Cre trait, would have replaced Zara if I'd caught on to that.
The major topic to discuss is the alternative win conditions. We've seen many times before that players don't bother to play out the second half of a game. Like it or not, that's the reality in today's attention-deficient gaming age. So I tried to identify a winning position by way of thresholds that would pretty much guarantee you wouldn't be losing. 75% power means you won't lose to conquest in the short run; 50% score lead means you won't be losing by military in the long run; 5 techs mean you won't lose by space and can find a military advantage to stop culture if necessary. In other words, I was trying to identify what "domination" really should mean. Two things surprised me.
One, that most of the players played it out to game victory anyway even with the alt conditions present. Some just never managed the tech or score lead over Brennus, but some wanted to play it out anyway.
Two, that there was an enormous spread in time to meet the conditions. Some players managed it just with the land grab in barely 100 turns; some never did. I had expected that you'd grab land, consolidate tech through the middle ages, attack somebody at the usual spot around cuirs/cavs/rifles/cannons to secure a score and power lead. Results turned out more widely than that. Lots of ancient war with horse archers that I wouldn't have expected.
What this all tells me is to keep Adventure scenarios open-ended. Make sure players can go in whatever directions they want. I personally like, and many of my sponsorships run towards, ideas that highlight a narrow game element for focused competition. But railroading players draws narrower interest. Sirian was right that there's a market here for back-to-basics gameplay, and I'll look to find more such ideas.
Thanks to everyone who played!
Conquest Victory
fluffyflyingpig
Domination Victory
LKendter
Miguelito
BRickAstley
Spaceship Victory
The Reverend Doctor
Alternative Victory
GermanJoey
ljubljana
Whosit
Retired games
LogicalTautology
timmy827
RefSteel
Spaceship Loss
Huinesoron
Well, this was a success, with a dozen players. Of course the genesis of the idea was Sirian's comments about "back to basics" in that thread. What's more basic and classic to RB lore than the Pink Dot. Nice straightforward adventure. The map can promise early excitement to draw players in, which looks to have worked.
Map design: I drew the entire tundra area. The original pangaea coastline was on the row with the cow. Russia started about five tiles north on the original coastline which I moved south. Moscow had to be pre-settled or else players would just walk the initial settler out to a pink dot; I've gotten burned on that in scenario design before. Moscow is carefully designed to look terrible but play fine anyway in the early game: five good tiles (2x deer, 2x plains hills, clams) are plenty to start pushing out settlers, plus two lighthouse lakes would help a bit later. I designed two specific tiles for pink dots: the coastal plains hill towards Zara (cow, rice, gold, floodplains) and the 7-resource plains hill towards Brennus. The rest of the resources (and lots of floodplains) were added in gradually, not tailored for specific spots but just a broad belt of riches. The scout's starting location pointing towards the floodplains and Zara's pink dot was 100% intentional, to get players started.
I didn't really realize that this would turn into an economic-crash game. But of course that follows, with an economically useless capital, first-ring cities at a great distance, and those cities would spend their first 4-5 sizes on resources and get to working cottages very late. But that turned into an interesting curveball anyway, and nicely skill-rewarding for those that do know how to deal with it.
The AIs were just selected randomly. I thought I remembered Kublai, Napoleon, and Brennus all as middling warmongers; didn't bother to look up the actual AI aggressiveness. I didn't change their locations or starts at all. So yes, I didn't really realize how much of an empty backyard Brennus had. It also slipped my mind that Zara is Creative which would offset the player's own Cre trait, would have replaced Zara if I'd caught on to that.
The major topic to discuss is the alternative win conditions. We've seen many times before that players don't bother to play out the second half of a game. Like it or not, that's the reality in today's attention-deficient gaming age. So I tried to identify a winning position by way of thresholds that would pretty much guarantee you wouldn't be losing. 75% power means you won't lose to conquest in the short run; 50% score lead means you won't be losing by military in the long run; 5 techs mean you won't lose by space and can find a military advantage to stop culture if necessary. In other words, I was trying to identify what "domination" really should mean. Two things surprised me.
One, that most of the players played it out to game victory anyway even with the alt conditions present. Some just never managed the tech or score lead over Brennus, but some wanted to play it out anyway.
Two, that there was an enormous spread in time to meet the conditions. Some players managed it just with the land grab in barely 100 turns; some never did. I had expected that you'd grab land, consolidate tech through the middle ages, attack somebody at the usual spot around cuirs/cavs/rifles/cannons to secure a score and power lead. Results turned out more widely than that. Lots of ancient war with horse archers that I wouldn't have expected.
What this all tells me is to keep Adventure scenarios open-ended. Make sure players can go in whatever directions they want. I personally like, and many of my sponsorships run towards, ideas that highlight a narrow game element for focused competition. But railroading players draws narrower interest. Sirian was right that there's a market here for back-to-basics gameplay, and I'll look to find more such ideas.
Thanks to everyone who played!
