EitB v12 Mastery PBEM?

[Qgqqqqq]

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Exams finish in a couple of weeks, and I've a hankering for another game. Does anyone want to play a Mastery Era PBEM?

Couple of stipulations:
- EitB v12
- Mastery Era
- Land/Sea map. Neither should be dominant, and can win with the loss of the other, but there should be advantages to winning the sea
- Large-ish map. This is necessary for the insane late-game mobility - remember, your starting scout can be 4-move on t5 with a lucky win.
- Hyborem deleted unless a player sends him in as a pick, in which case he's placed where their civ would go, starting with the usual (?). (Basium can also be picked?)
- Something something religions. Probably bidded on as part of leader selection.

Other than that, I'm open to pretty much anything. We can ban if necessary, but I think plenty of civs are OP enough for at least one game to be interesting without them.

[Dreylin]

I could be interested ... although I'd need to go back and read the notes I took from our duel.

[Tasunke]

Yea, I like the idea of 'bidding' on Religions. (for holy city purposes)

other than that however, perhaps everyone should start with 1 disciple from each religion? It wouldn't "Guarantee" that you'd get 7 religions due to spread chances, and you can't get Order/AV in the same city .... so I think it would be fair. Use your favorite disciple first to make sure it gets the spread, etc.

For agnostic nations, you could give equivalent units, or something.

[Bobchillingworth]

Not a sign-up.



If you want players to have access to every religion, start them off with T3 Priests; the "Found Temple" ability will always succeed in spreading the faith. Doesn't solve the issue of Holy Cities, but does mean that everyone isn't locked out of like 75% of the religions.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I suppose that's not a bad idea. 6 priests + a night watch. Even agnostic nations could make use of the units. With a large map it would make rushes less possible. I assume we are starting with two or three settlers?

[Dreylin]

Standard Mastery start is 2 Settlers.

I like the idea of using the T2 Priests, but I'd suggest offering everyone a more limited selection of the Priests - maybe 3? - instead of the whole suite; that would add a second round of choice after civ selection and you'd be able to judge who might be competing against whom. After all, you're unlikely to use more than a couple of religions, so the remainder would end up being troops.

I also think that it would be easier to balance if Holy Cities were taken out of the equation - set them all in a Barb city and then raze it on the first turn.

From our Duel, I'd also recommend banning Undercouncil & Overcouncil as potentially distorting.

[Tasunke]

3 priest idea is good, a non-competitive, free-choice of which 3 to get.

You could place the holy cities in barbarian cities ... and 'not' raze them ....

And I think Under/Over councils would be hard to ban. Would we really want to ban them?

---> Typical 'Mastery' starting units + 3 priests seems fair ... maybe an extra Settler or an extra Worker just to get things rolling.

[Dreylin]

I don't see there's any difficulty with the ban; you just say in the game rules "Under/Overcouncil civics may not be adopted".

I'm not familiar with the resolution lists (perhaps someone can post the in the Strategery thread), but my concern is that the two don't have nearly equivalent power levels - does Overcouncil have anything like a free Great Sage? If that's the case then it adds a penalty for Good civs (that don't want to adopt OO or Veil).

As for leaving the Holy cities available from the Barbs - again you run into the problem of who starts nearest to each, since you can't have all of them equidistant from all players in separate cities, and leaving them all in a single city would just be too distorting IMO.

[Miguelito]

Isn't the holy city issue a nice opportunity to hold a snakepick in an ffh game for once?

[Qgqqqqq]

@Miguelto: Yup

I really don't see a reason for civs to start with access to every religion, personally. I think it would be better if you start with a disciple of one religion, and the 'founding' techs for all the others unresearched - that way, you can branch out, but it requires a bit of investment.

I'd like to keep to 'standard' Mastery rules as much as possible - partially to test them/see what needs improving, partially because it lends focus to the game - but I'm happy to divert on things like settlers if there's enough consensus.