The Sinister Six: A Competitive EitB SG

[Bobchillingworth]

Settings:

Mod: EitB, v12.1

* Normal Speed

* Large map with medium or high seas.  Pangaea.  Note- looking for a lurker volunteer to generate!  

* Regular Barbarians

* No Tech Trading

* Deity Difficulty Level

* OCC

* Always War

* Ancient Age Start

* Restricted Leaders; The Sinister Six will be Cardith of the Kuriotates, for Adaptive trait shenanigans, while the allied hapless AI tech mule "Peaceful Villagers" are led by Einon of the Elohim.

* Huts are ON

* Events are ON

* Lairs are ON

* Orthus is OFF

* Acheron is ON

* Permanent Alliances are OFF

* Vassals are OFF

* All Unique Features enabled

* Blessings of Amathan enabled

* Setting whose name I forget which doubles events enabled


Scoring System:

+1 point for every exp on a player's own Heroic Avatar

+2 points for every lair an Avatar clears (as in, removed from the map, not just explored.  These points are in addition to those from exp applied for lair exploration)

+5 points for every non-Barbarian hero an Avatar kills (consult the Civilopedia if unsure if a unit counts as a "hero" or not)

+10 points for each named Barbarian (Four Horsemen, Acheron, etc.) an Avatar kills.  "Barbarian" named units under the influence of Hidden Nationality (such as the Stooges) don't count

+20 points to any Avatar who gets killed by another player ("Honorable Death Consolation Prize")

+30 points to every Avatar who eliminates a civilization

+50 points for any Avatar still alive at victory

-20% of points for every Avatar a player kills off which is not their own.  Fractional scores at the end of the game round down.  

-50% of points for whichever player is in control of the civ if we or the Peaceful Villagers are eliminated.    


Available Avatars:

• Hunter with free Capture Animal promo
  
• Axeman (no bonuses)
  
• Archer with free Dexterous promo
  
• Adept with an additional mana of player's choice
  
• Horseman (no bonuses)
  
• Lightbringer with free Strong, Sinister, and Mobility II promos
  

> All Avatars come with the "Hero" promotion

> Multiples of the various Avatar types between players are allowed, i.e. a team of three Axe Avatars, two Horsemen, and a Hunter is acceptable

> Players pick their own Avatar type


Additional Rules:

* Any player whose Avatar dies is removed from the roster rotation (i.e. booted from the game)

* Elimination of the Peaceful Villagers results in a loss

* If a player has two or more player Avatars in a stack which is about engage in battle, and one of the Avatars is that player's own representative unit, they must always make the first, lowest-odds attack with their personal Avatar (sending in other fodder units before any of the six fight is fine)

* Avatars cannot be deleted

* Avatars can be promoted by the capricious whims of whoever happens to be playing the turn at the time

* Experience earned by summons does not count for scoring purposes, but points from player eliminations and killing special units via summons do

* The owner of an arcane-line Avatar may determine what "free" promotion it receives upon being upgraded to a Mage and Archmage, even if another participant is playing the set

* Players may use spoilers to reveal their plans to lurkers while obscuring them from their fellow SG participants; please mark such spoilers clearly


Players:

* Bob (Archer with Dexterous)

* Miguelito (Horseman)

* Dave V (Lightbringer with Strong, Sinister, and Mobility II)

* Brian Shanahan (Hunter) KIA

* Shallow Thought (Adept with Death sphere and Death 1 promo)

* Auro (Hunter)

All Avatars will include the bonuses listed above, as applicable.  


Score Tracker


Initial game proposal post:

Following up on the success of the most recent SG, I have two ideas for a successor;


Idea One: The Seven Samurai Adventurers

This would be an EitB-flavored reprise of the competitive BTS "Seven Samurai SG" I ran almost a decade ago.  We would need to work out the finer points of the scoring system, but the gist is that each player is assigned a unit to act as their avatar, and players complete to earn the most points, which are awarded for actions such as earning exp, razing cities, and eliminating civs.  Players whose avatar units die are booted from the game; players who get one of their fellows killed suffer a large, percentage-based score penalty.  


Idea Two: Bootstrap Beeri

We play as the Luchirup, with the following restrictions:

* We cannot build any Golems besides Mud Golems

* We act as though we have the Agnostic trait, meaning no adopting a religion, religious units, or religious techs.  


Challenge is winning through pure dwarven brawn, without recourse to automata nor gods. Units obtained via lairs, events, or the various forms of mind control are fair game, however.  


Signups:

* Bob
* Miguelito
* Dave V
* Brian Shanahan
* Shallow Thought
* Auro


Space remaining for one more player, if interested!

[Miguelito]

If skill isn't an entry criterion, I'd be up for the seven adventurers, love that idea!

The other one probably as well if the majority decides for that, but isn't dwarven brawn represented more by the Khazad, thematically?

[DaveV]

The seven adventurers does sound like fun.

Edit: if we start with adventurers, maybe make it a group of five and constrain each person to follow one of the five available promotion paths: archer, adept, recon, melee, mounted. Add a Lightbringer who could follow the disciple path for a sixth player.

[Brian Shanahan]

Super Fun Happy Slide!


...

I mean, New EitB Succession Game!

Count me in, for either variant.

[Bobchillingworth]

If skill isn't an entry criterion,  I'd be up for the seven adventurers,  love that idea!

The other one probably as well if the majority decides for that,  but isn't dwarven brawn represented more by the Khazad, thematically?

Skill is no obstacle!


As for the second variant option, I think it's time for Beeri's Luchiurp to demonstrate that they have some serious muscle too, despite the complete lack of competent attacking units prior to Chariots, zero combat traits, almost no T4 units, no hero, jaundice, vertigo, fainting at the sight of blood, etc.

[shallow_thought]

I'm in. I need to go check out the original Seven game to understand the implications to decide which I'd prefer (I'd try either).

As for the second, I was going to say that it felt very much like "forced mage rush", but on a re-think there are definitely other options.

I'm slightly suprised that Bob has suggested a variant that bans him from summoning Hyborem .

[Bobchillingworth]

Cool- we have enough for the Beeri game, I'll leave this open for a few more days to see if 1-2 more join for the Adventurers.

[shallow_thought]

I read the old Seven Samurai SG. It was quite a fun read even with all the pictures long gone.

How would you see it working in EitB? In BTS you had a bunch of strength 8 units walking around in a world of strength 2 warriors and strength 3 archers. What kind of starting units were you thinking of for this?

Thematically, you could perhaps do it with fewer than seven players - for example, the Fellowship of no Hobbits could have five, falling into the distinct classes as above: a dwarven melee, human ranger, elven archer, human wizard and human horseman (the last is a slight stretch). No idea how balanced that would be though.

If you've got fewer than seven players you could grant them each an additional "sidekick" unit to provide more firepower, and work that into the scoring.

[Bobchillingworth]

I figure we can work out the finer points of rules, scoring, etc. if there's enough players for the Adventurers game, though I think for initial unit upgrades each player can declare whether they want their unit to become a Warrior, Scout, or remain an Adventurer until KotE is researched, and the first player will execute accordingly. I'd prefer to not give players backup units, as the potential for players to get kicked from the game is half the thrill.


Also no reason we couldn't play the Beeri variant and then start up the other as soon as one or two more people join. I don't envision epic games on huge maps.


And yeah, the original Seven Samurai SG was one of my favorite games I've launched here. Ah, for the old days of RB, where I could propose any fool idea for a SG, PBEM, or Adventure, and it'd be off and running in short order. Now it's mostly PBs running some eerie permutation of Krill Mod which I'm too old and deliberately obtuse to comprehend.

[shallow_thought]

I figure we can work out the finer points of rules, scoring, etc. if there's enough players for the Adventurers game, though I think for initial unit upgrades each player can declare whether they want their unit to become a Warrior, Scout, or remain an Adventurer until KotE is researched, and the first player will execute accordingly.  I'd prefer to not give players backup units, as the potential for players to get kicked from the game is half the thrill.  

My thinking was that if we had too few players to give the team enough "super" units to have a chance, then having a slightly less super sidekick might redress the balance. The player still dies if his main uint dies, and it's the main unit that has do any compulsory attacks or similar. The sidekick is just a way of trying to balance the game, if you keep the original "start with a handful of strong units that must attack" idea. If you keep  the original OCC + "peaceful villagers" (Elohim?) idea, then I think that simple adventurers may not be enough, altough you could probably give the city a palace that had iron or something ...

I think the adventurers thing has real potential but needs thinking about to see how it would work. AS you say, we could get on with the Beeri game in the meantime.