PBEM #4's World War (History Post, On Hold - Sullla is publishing an overview of PBEM4 on his website)

During the game, this post was used to maintain an account of all my alliances, DOFs, etc. In the post game, I want am turning it into a brief history of the global conflict that came to define the conclusion of this game. I think this conflict is really noteworthy in how back and forth it ended up being, and in how widespread it eventually became - consuming every independent polity on the board. I will attempt to be as non-partisan and objective as I can in this review, but this post will necessarily be colored by my own experiences of the game. I welcome critiques from other participants and observers, and additional tidbits of information, insights.

Without further ado.

The Pre-World War Era, 86-124

There is an argument to be made that the World War era really began on Turn 86. This was the turn the OIAS Rocinante discovered the German invasion force and the Dave's OIA declared war on Singaboy's Germany. This war dec kicked off Germany's conquest of Norway, an event of earth shattering proportions that transformed the game from six games of solitaire into one global struggle. Indeed, when examining the game as a whole, this is the moment when the game radically changed. Up to this point, there had been fighting, but it had been lightning razings and raiding, with no concerted effort to destroy an opposing civilization. Singaboy's invasion of Germany changed all that.

I am not rigorously examining this period in this history for two salient reasons:

1. It's too much to cover well. 
2. While it informs the period that follows, its fundamentally different. The wars fought before the World War era were relatively more limited affairs, and each one was significantly more lopsided than the World War. 

With this in mind, I'm going to sum up the history of the game between turns 86 and 124 in a paragraph.

Singaboy declared war on Norway, taking advantage of his Great General and Japper007's focus on expansion to rapidly expand through conquest. His attack was wildly successful, taking all seven Norwegian cities and the city-state of Toronto at the cost of only three units. The Norwegians were aided economically by the OIA and Dave sent a small expeditionary force in addition to naval elements, but these were wholly insufficient to stop Norway's fall. Dave and Singaboy would continue to skirmish in western Norway and eastern Saturn until around t125. 28 turns later, on t114, Singaboy completed his conquest of Norway. However, his sudden ascendancy prompted Woden, Dave and Archduke to align together into an alliance versus Germany. During this period, Archduke had been quietly accumulating Great Admirals, building Quadriemes, and snapping up his city-state neighbors. Once he hit Square Rigging, and his NAP with Singaboy ran out, he attacked Germany. The results were brutal, not only did Archduke destroy the German navy, but he captured all four of Germany's coastal cities. Facing annihilation and irrelevance, Singaboy offered Archduke a grand bargain: All of Norway for the return of all of Germany.

It is here that we pick up our story.


The World War Era, t125-t175


Prelude to War - The Alliance Breaks Down


The deal caused considerable consternation in Ganymede. After many turns of planning and being able to do much more than skirmish with Singaboy, Dave was on the cusp of completing the Venetian Arsenal, a wonder that he hoped would keep him competitive in the end game. Ships had been pre-built in every city, and a grand campaign had been planned to take western Norway and conquer Spain. Additionally, there was another concern. The next Great Scientist, who Dave was set to get, was Charles Darwin. Darwin activated for 500 science per adjacent natural wonder, and with a 3 tile wonder outside the former Viking city of Jotunheim/Teeplantage, the small Norwegian hamlet had suddenly acquired great strategic importance. 

The city, quite a bit earlier after its conquest by the Germans.



Dave prevailed upon Archduke to share the spoils of the German campaign, prompting the following diplomatic exchange:

(October 4th, 2017, 23:00)oledavy Wrote: @Archduke

At this point, after fighting Singaboy for the last 40 turns, I have a vested interest in some of the Norwegian cities, I would like to have something to show for the war. Indeed, over the last few turns I have finally established provisional naval superiority in the region and am currently moving forces to take Toronto and Teeplantage. However, there is no way I can take them before you make peace with Singaboy and he cedes them to you. I am not happy at the prospect of having these cities change hands out from under me like this. 

I will not deny you your conquests. But Teeplantage is a sticking point for me, especially considering it strategic location on the coastline. Indeed, half of my rationale for war with Singaboy was to deny a hostile power potential ports on my local sea. I will cede any claim or interest in Toronto, the bay area to the east of Saturn is yours to claim. I'm willing to negotiate on precise terms, but I would like Teeplantage. It's only a size 4 city, and it would mean a lot to me.

@Singaboy. If you are ceding Norway and making peace with the British, we no longer have any quibble. I am willing to make white peace pending resolution of the status of Teeplantage.

(October 5th, 2017, 06:18)TheArchduke Wrote: @ Singaboy thanks for keeping the norwegian possessions intact, I have stopped advancing or bombarding.

@ Oledavy The GS and the Natural Wonder combined with the Venetian Arsenal is a bit too much, apologies.

(October 5th, 2017, 08:30)oledavy Wrote:

(October 5th, 2017, 06:18)TheArchduke Wrote: @ Oledavy The GS and the Natural Wonder combined with the Venetian Arsenal is a bit too much, apologies.

Says the player who just doubled his city count?

At any rate, I won't annoy you with meaningless platitudes or fake shock, we both know what we have to do from here on out. 

For what its worth, I've sincerely enjoyed our partnership while it's lasted. Best of luck making your push to win, if anyone has earned it over the course of PBEM1, PBEM2, and PBEM4 for their improvement as a player, it's you.

(October 5th, 2017, 09:38)oledavy Wrote: @Woden, I would like to extend the offer of a defensive pact between our two civs until t158 inclusive. We don't have any competing interests at present, and I see no reason not to shore each other up. 

If you are interested, I would also like to sign a DoF with you and sign an alliance. I believe we both have Civil Service.

Quote:Woden Turns 132

If you look at the above screenshot, you can see someone has come offering a deal. I was expecting some resource deal or maybe Germany asking for friendship to secure his rebuilding effort but...




Nope, England wants an alliance. I can help and feel a little deja vu here. Last time I rejected a friendship from a major power in order to be on the wrong side of a war, my civilization quickly vanished.  I have to give it to TheArchduke, props here for putting me in this situation. I don't know if he thought about this angle but it puts me in a pickle. On one hand, I could reject his offer and become his next target. If I accept, it is going to piss oledavy off to no end and I am pretty sure he will say this is the reason he loses if he loses. What to do, what to do?  England is going to start pulling ahead and needs to be stopped or slowed down at least. I am fairly close to his core and would make a nice target. I don't think Japan would be much help if England did attack. For reasons more strategic then past performance. He will have a big front with England in the east and I could see him using the oppotunity to attack the Viking cities, not come defend me. Japan would probably gain the most from a war between TheArchduke and me. 

After about 10 minutes of think about it, I decide to accept his offer. Better to survive a little longer and piss oledavy off then sign my own death warrant. I don't feel good about this decision (screwing oledavy) but I am not playing to help him win. I am playing to see if I can win. There are a few good things to come from this. I now know most of the map and the time my alliances end, I should have or be close to Nationalism. I think I can use this time to expand a little. I will need to if I am going to keep up. I will have to reassess my current strategy. The best option now might be to kick out 3 or 4 settlers before working on ant Wonders. I will need to think about that. Well, at least there should be some good posts to read in the near future. I wonder how long it will take oledavy to notice that I have an alliance with TheArchduke. I expect a nasty post in the diplo thread soon.

Quote:Singaboy

@oledavy, not sure how you see the Global situation, but the alliance I see isn't one that would make you happy...

You might want to think over your strategic partners

Quote:oledavy

Woden allied with Archduke. 

Quote:Japper007

I love how evil Archduke played these negotiations, he has effectively gotten an entire core's worth of cities in trade for cities that he's just going to recapture when the peace deal runs out anyways! (just look at the last post in his thread, he's seen this as well) I don't think Singaboy is going to be able to rebuild enough to be able to stop Archduke from just bringing the same ships back over again, I think he would have actually been better of without this "peace" entirely

Quote:oledavy

Turn 136

The knife has been plunged. 

Quote:Woden

No reason for your ships to be over that way, oledavy. If you are doing what I think you are doing, then it might be time to play Axis and Allies!

Quote:Woden

Turn 116

One of my Caravel could reach Spain's injured horseman and I have a Quadrireme sitting next to Jerusalem, so...

Quote:oledavy

Turn 130

First things first: 

Quote:

This turn I kicked things off around La Venta, and declared war on the city-state. 

Quote:oledavy

Further east, I concluded the siege of De Soto, and sank CFCJesterfool's caravel. 

Quote:oledavy

Turn 137

In the south, I added Hong Kong to the imperial fold. 

Quote:oledavy

Took Cordoba and renamed it Nereid. 

So...for this PBEM, I have been given three choices:

Germany, Greece (the worse version as Pericles or Arabia). I do not really fancy Pericles' Greece. However, I have experienced Germany plenty of times to know they are really powerful due to the extra district and incredible Hansa bonus as well as the extra policy slot. I read that Arabia is pretty powerful too (some people rate it top for the standard Civs). I am currently playing around in a test game to figure their strengths.

It will be a tough choice between Germany and Arabia. Luckily I still have some time to decide.

Welcome to my spoiler thread for PBEM4! I get to choose from Brazil, Aztecs, and Kongo. I just wanted to get a thread going and will post some thoughts about my choices soon. I will say, I want to play someone who hasn't be seen in a PBEM yet, so probably will not choose the Aztecs. 

Lurkers welcome!

As for the tile of this thread, I will change it after I select my civilization.

INTRODUCTION

Recently I've been playing around with some openings as the Mrrshans on medium maps on impossible and I've found that rushing tier 2 weapons tech early on (within first 50 turns) is a viable and maybe even necessary strategy. 

The typical opening strategy is to focus on getting range and planetology techs for early expansion, and also focusing on factories and colony ships to execute this expansion.  This will typically, on a medium map with average luck, land a player with about 5 planets by about 2350, albeit with most of them still at the beginning stage of being built-up and without hardly any techs researched other than the bare-minimum of expansion techs. At about this time the AI starts to arm its colony ships and send armed escorts out, and it will start to probe whatever frontier worlds are within range with some small and medium laser fighters, or the occasional large cruiser. Anticipating this and dealing with it while also industrializing and getting research going is always my biggest problem with the Mrrshans.  I end up getting spread too thin, and I end up losing some of my frontier worlds, meaning that I would have been better off not even trying to colonize these frontier planets in the first place and spent the production on something else.  This is always really frustrating!

The typical expansionist opening strategy works better with races that have some sort of early eco or diplo bonus.  For example, with a race like the Klackons, you can have your frontier planets set up and defended a few turns earlier, which is often key.  I understand why players tend to perceive the Mrrshans as a subpar race.  The Mrrshan diplo penalties are particularly bad for the early expansionist strategy.  If you expand too quickly in pop early on as the Mrrshans, it is easy to get dogpiled, which can set you back in a practical sense or even cause you to outright lose the game due to bad luck with an early council vote.  

But what if we play to the Mrrshans' strengths?  So what if the Mrrshans don't get along with other races!  If you keep your population low enough, you won't be eligible for a council nomination in the first place!  But surely you cannot hope to go toe-to-toe with early AI fleets on impossible!  Well, sure, not if you play the typical expansion-oriented strategy!  But if you make it a priority, I think it can be done.  

THE STRATEGY

Making early warfare a priority means that you will have to redirect some resources from colony ship building to teching and building combat ships, which means, first of all, being more selective about which planets you try to colonize.  If you have safe backline worlds that don't require hardly any tech detour to obtain, then sure, go for it.  But when it comes to worlds on the frontier—that is any world between your initial two planets and where the AI is likely to be—the idea is to let the AI colonize them first and then POUNCE with your kitty paws and take it from them, saving you the cost of building a colony ship yourself.  After all, if you are going to have to fight the AI anyways (as is often the case with the Mrrshans), you might as well get something out of it.  

Note that this doesn't mean you have to go to war with every AI neighbor you meet.  Even if you don't plan on being in the running for the council vote, it's still probably best to limit these attacks of opportunity to one or two foes while trying to keep the peace with the others for as long as possible.  But I would say, when it doubt, fight it out.  If there is a particularly juicy frontier world that an AI has just claimed—a world right next to your homeworld that would normally be in your "1st expansion ring" if following a typical expansionist start—don't be afraid to POUNCE!   

This POUNCING strategy should ideally take place in two phases, with each phase taking advantage of two different ideal windows of opportunity for pouncing on a newly-colonized AI world:  
Phase 1.  right at the time of AI colonization, or 
Phase 2.  after factories and pop have been built up, but just before missile bases start accumulating.  

Phase 1:  the goal for this phase of aggressive expansion is to keep these planets depopulated so that it can be taken over by a small invasion force. If you are unlucky enough to not have any safe backline worlds, and if you are following the POUNCING strategy for expansion, then you absolutely need to take some planets in this manner in Phase 1 because two planets cannot reliably generate enough population to do a full-scale ground invasion of an AI world in Phase 2 (see below).  

The ideal execution for a Phase 1 POUNCING is to have ships that are already finished or close to being finished that can reach the new AI colony and gain air superiority before the enemy's population transports can reach it.  The AI will start to arm its colony ships and escort them to your frontier areas sometime between 2340 and 2350, so ideally you ought to aim to have a small fleet ready by then.  The idea is to shoot down the incoming reinforcements and keep the planet at 2 or 3 population for easy pickings from a small ground invasion that will follow immediately after.  (I got this idea from the AI, who has done this to me more times than I care to admit!)  Boom! Just like that you have yourself a new colony, except now you'll be able to defend it since the resources that you would have spent on a colony ship went into techs and combat ships.  Note that, if AI troop reinforcements do manage to scoot in before you can get your interdiction fleet there, it's not the end of the world.  Just bomb down some of that new population for a few turns until it is more manageable for a small invasion. There won't be any factories at this point anyways, so you are not wasting anything by doing this.  

Phase 2:  the goal for this phase of aggressive expansion is to capture the planet with many factories intact.  To do this, you'll need to already have 4 or 5 full-pop worlds, to have a realistic shot at pulling this off (so, your starting 2, plus a few others either settled in the backlines or acquired during phase 1).  And if you are surrounded by the Burathis, then skip this idea.  


The best time to execute this phase of aggressive expansion is right before the planet starts stockpiling missile bases.  You can keep an eye on an enemy planet's progress towards this and have at least a rough idea of how close they are to this by sending frequent scouting sorties to the planet. Once the enemy planet is about halfway industrialized, you have limited time.  For this phase, you should bring along some nuke bombers as well—enough to safely destroy 1 or 2 missile bases, in case those pop up at the last second en route.  Depending on how recently the AI has colonized some of the planets on your frontier, you should plan on being ready to roll with this force by about 2360 or 2370 at the latest. 

Note that this method will also require a full-scale ground invasion in addition to your air superiority fleet, meaning that you will have to pretty much empty your initial planets of pop to make this work—and that's assuming you have at least 4 planets from which to send the ground invasion. Any less than that, and it is probably not going to be feasible.  If worst comes to worst and you doubt your ability to win the ground invasion, you can always bomb down the enemy population and factories and revert to a belated Phase 1-type invasion.  It's better than nothing.  


THE EXECUTION OF THIS STRATEGY

So, if we are talking about being ready to execute Phase 1 aggressive expansions by about 2350 and Phase 2 aggressive expansions by about 2370, what techs can the Mrrshans realistically have researched by then?  Another question is, what techs are worth researching by then?  Consider that, if you are careful about taking advantage of the research interest mechanic, you should only have to pay about half of the listed price for each tech. (The theoretical maximum would be one third, but the discount will inevitably be diminished slightly by the need to seed the tech at the beginning and the need to go slightly over 100% into the percentages). 

First, I think shields II is worth investing in because the vast majority of what your ship will be facing early on is laser fighters, and shields II drops the expected damage of each hit from 2.5 to 0.75, which is a 70% reduction!  Compared to shields I, it is 1.5 vs. 0.75, or still a 50% damage reduction! You will be taking half the damage from most ships, which means twice the survivability. Shields II will cost 800 RP, or about 400 actual production if you research efficiently.  That will buy about half a cruiser.  I think having one cruiser that has twice the survivability, plus having shields II researched, is better than having one and a half cruisers without level 2 shields.  

Second, I think it is imperative to obtain a better beam weapon than either lasers or gatling lasers.  Those go obsolete so quickly on impossible. You've already seen the math on how bad they do against even class II shields.  Class III and IV shields, which will really nullify lasers completely, do not take that much longer for the AI to reach on impossible.  Plus, having to resort to heavy lasers is so inefficient.  So, I think it's imperative to speed through the first tier of weapons (hand lasers is best.  God help you if all you get is gatling lasers) and see if you have access to either neutron pellet guns or ion cannons in the second tier.  

In addition, you'll of course want waste cleanup tech as soon as possible (ideally seeding research for that on turn 1), and you'll need some sort of range tech.  Deep space scanners is also fabulous to have if you plan on having to war early.  Ships move so slow at warp 1 that a few more turns of early warning make all the difference!

So, by 2350, in addition to having the first two planets fully industrialized, I would shoot for having the following:

• Deep Space Scanner (if available.  Otherwise, if not available, get ECM 1 since it is so dirt-cheap, or just ignore computer tech).  Don't research beyond this. 
  
• II9 or Reduced waste 80% (Either one will help industrialization if obtained early, and it will help with space on ships).  It might be tempting to try to research beyond this if Duralloy is available in tier 2, but I really don't think that there is enough time to reach it by the time you'll need to be building ships. 
  
• Class II deflectors.  Don't research beyond this.  
  
• Terraforming +10 and/or Improved Eco Restoration (and/or controlled environment techs up through tier 2 if relevant.  Otherwise, don't research beyond this.)
  
• Range 4 or 5.  Also, if you plan on executing any Phase 2 invasions, try to get either nuclear engines or inertial stabilizer by 2365 to give your nuke bombers 2 moves.  Maybe keep a trickle of research into this field regardless.  If you can get some fast fighters (with, for example, fusion drives) with NPGs or ion cannons, the Mrrshan +4 attack bonus will help them stay relevant for a LONG TIME.  The AI tends to pack wimpy battle computers until the mid-2400s, so these fast fighters will have free reign of the skies and be nigh indestructible for a good chunk of the middle-game—even without having to invest in additional computer, construction, or shield tech!
  
• A tier-1 weapon tech (preferably hand lasers) AND neutron pellet guns or ion cannon (hope that you have a choice of 1 of these two...otherwise, heavy lasers it will have to be (ugh!)).  Also keep a trickle going into this for the long run to exploit the Mrrshan tech bonus in this field.  
  

• Large Hull
  
• Battle computer 1
  
• Shields II
  
• Retro engines, maneuver 1
  
• 15-20 neutron pellet guns OR 12-15 ion cannons OR 6-8 heavy lasers (you see how important getting something better than lasers is!)
  
• Battle scanner 
  

I hate this start! What can you do? SIP with one 4 food/prod tile and everything else is a 3. You can't improve the cotton for a long time and the low housing start is annoying. At the moment I'm aiming for the  marsh to found (though I might move one more west so that I don't invalidate the tiles to the south west of the cotton. 3 turns of movement though hurts. Ahh well.

Singaboy and I have been talking about starting a new Civ6 game, and I have been wanting to try out a different map concept. 

TL;DR: I would like to see some of the naval civs in Civ6 get some love and a chance to explore naval combat. EDIT: We're using an island plates map instead of continents.

We're looking for 6 players with a reasonably high PYDT rating (doubly important because of the number of players in this PBEM).

Settings: 
Island Plates
Small World Size
Low Sea Level 
New World Age
Wet Climate
Abundant Resources
Barbs On
No Huts
Prince Difficulty

This game will feature a public diplomacy thread.
No images will be allowed in this public diplomacy thread. 

Sullla has graciously volunteered once again to be our mapmaker. He's going to toll 20-25 maps and take the best fit to the following criteria in descending order of importance: 

1. Starts are reasonably balanced/everyone has access to at least 1 city-state 

Civs will be divided into 3 categories, with a civ from each constituting each 6 groups of 3 civs each. Players will get to choose from among these. Civ categorization method listed later in the thread.

House rules (city cession, DoFs, etc.) TBD

Players: 
1. OleDavey: 14:00 - 16:00 GMT, 02:00 - 05:00 GMT, U.S.
2. Singaboy: 21:00 - 22:00 GMT, 11:00 - 14:00 GMT, Singapore
3. Woden: 11:00 - 14:00 GMT, 0:00 - 4:00 GMT, U.S.
4. TheArchduke: 5:00-7:00, 16:00-20:00 GMT, Austria
5. CFCJesterFool: 11:00-11:30, 21:00-02:30 GMT, U.S.
6. Japper007: 14:00-4:00 GMT, Netherlands

Tentative Turn Order:

CFC Jesterfool (11:00 - 11:30 GMT)
Singaboy (11:00 - 14:00 GMT)
Woden (11:00 - 14:00 GMT)
Japper007 (14:00 - 4:00 GMT)
OleDavey (14:00 - 16:00 GMT)
The Archduke (16:00 - 20:00 GMT)

CFC Jesterfool (21:00 - 02:30 GMT)
Singaboy (21:00-02:30 GMT)
Woden (00:00 - 04:00 GMT)
Japper007 (14:00 - 4:00 GMT)
OleDavey (02:00 - 05:00 GMT)
The Archduke (05:00 - 07:00 GMT)

Player one can be picked randomly, but should probably be one of the four of us who has messed with PYDT before.

SMAC didn't get a lot of interest, so...

Players:
Commodore
Alhazard
Ipecac
AdrienInr
Yuri


Speed: Quick?
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: ???
Barbs: On
Units at start: scout and settler
No: Statue of Zeus, war elephants, blockades, active espionage, nukes, Great Lighthouse, Apostolic Palace diplo victory, tribal villages, events, tech trading
Diplo: AI diplo
Picks: Unrestricted combos rolled/winowed by lurkers the picked by players?
Map description: Tiny islands???

EDIT: Original opening post in spoiler:

I might have made some progress towards starting a game with a custom World Builder map (or at least an edited randomly generated map) ... not quite there but I'll post what I did and maybe someone can figure out the rest.

I read online somewhere that the 6 Arm Snowflake map option is not in fact a map script but a pre-made map. This gave me the idea of locating the pre-made map within the game files and substituting it with a map created in World Builder, then starting a game using the 6-Armed Snowflake map option. This worked perfectly except for the city states. Game started fine, no issues playing through 20 or so turns on a hot seat ... except that I never found any city states. Debug "reveal all" confirmed that city states were not generated.

Description of the steps I took:
1. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Maps\BalanceMaps and rename Balanced6.Civ6Map to some other name to preserve the file [this is the pre-made 6-Armed Snowflake map file]
2. Open World Builder in Civ6 through Additional Content. Generate random map with desired settings
3. Edit map as desired. I tested a few of the map editing tools but didn't by any means get in-depth. I added a couple continent designations, changed terrain, adding resources & rainforest. I did not turn any water into land tiles or vice versa. 
4. Save map. I don't think the name at this step is important. I was able to start games with randomly named maps.
5. Navigate to C:\Users\Joshua Peterson\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Saves\WorldBuilder and copy the new map file that was saved in Step 4. Paste the map to the location in Step 1, and rename the file to Balanced6.Civ6Map
6. In Civ6 begin a game. Choose Map Type: 6-Armed Snowflake. I ignored the other settings (I didn't test the No Barbarians or No Tribal Villages checkboxes)

NOTE! The map generated in step 2 has pre-placed player starting locations. It is important to click on each starting location and change the designation from "Player" to "Random Player", otherwise starting a game in step 7 often stacked 2 civs at the same starting location for some reason. With designation set to "Random Player" I never experienced stacked starts. Also It apparently doen't matter which civs are selected when generating the map in Step 2. I just left those at Random and started the game in Step 7 with all civs Random and there was no correlation between the civs actually selected in the World Builder file versus the ones generated in the game.

Regarding city states, the 6-Armed Snowflake does not allow to change the number of city states. It is hard coded to 9. I tried placing 9 "Random City State" start location, no good. City states were not placed on the map. I tried no designating any city state start location, no good. There was one time it did work and I got a hotseat game to start with city states, but I was running on battery without my charger, it was my last desperate attempt, it worked but my computer went into hibernate automatically at 2% battery before I had a chance to make note of what I did  I saved the game when I finally got my computer charged again so I have the save game file but try as I would I just could not get another game to start again with city states.

I copied the original Balanced6.Civ6Map into the WorldBuilder folder from step 5 and opened the map in World Builder. That map has 9 "Random City State" start locations designated. No idea why it wasn't working for me when I added the city state start locations to a custom map.

I'm wondering now if maybe the settings from step 7 need to match the settings in step 2?? I don't see how that would affect placement of city states, I'm at work now so can't test and my evenings are pretty busy this week.

Screenshot below from a hotseat game with terrain, resource, and continent edits. All land tiles around the start location were changed to grass hill + jungle + banana, and I added another continent to see if that worked properly and it apparently does:

What is Secret Hitler?
Secret Hitler is a hidden roles game, like Werewolf but with much more structure, particularly in the information you receive. It's set in 1930s Germany, where the hidden fascist team must manoeuvre to pass fascist policies and elect Hitler as Chancellor. Meanwhile the liberals are trying to work out who the fascists are so they can vote them out of power.

Full rules: http://www.secrethitler.com/assets/Secre..._Rules.pdf



Isn't this in rather bad taste?
I don't personally think so. It's very tongue-in-cheek (the fascists are represented as reptiles) and abstract. Also, it's a good reminder of history and how easily fascism can gain power if not prevented.

I've not been personally affected by the Nazis though, so if anyone is offended please say so and it can be rebranded. There's even an official Secret Trump rebranding available.

Who is interested in playing?
Only you can answer this question. We need 5-10 players, the more the better. I'm hoping it will take about 2-3 weeks; it might be much shorter depending on activity and whether the game finishes early. Minimum time commitment is participating in one vote a day, but it will probably be advantageous to post some thoughts from time to time too.

Sign ups and questions, please.

Thinking about buff costs a bit more in depth. I think in general, rares should be equally cost effective as others - normally I'd say they should be better, but they provide higher benefits and buffs often have increasing returns - paying 100 for 4 armor is a better deal if 50 grants 2.

Commons
These generally provide a +3 stat increase in one category, or something equivalent to that.  As a common summoned creature costs roughly the same and usually has stats in the 3-4 range, the buffs and the creatures are about equally strong and have the same cost, so this category is good.

Uncommons
Lank Link - cost and effect similar to a common, with slightly better effect/cost ratio.
True Sight - Counters a few specific types of effects (illusion, invisibility). 75 is fair and matches Wraith Form (which provides less useful immunities but additional movement type)
Flight - Similar to True Sight but counters something much more frequent - walking melee units. It also improves movement both in combat and overland. 125 is fair. It would be interesting at 100, as that would allow Magicians to cast it, but not sure if that's a good idea.
Spell Lock - Prevent losing hunderds of mana crystals by protecting the unit or its buffs. Worth the price. (falls into the same group as true sight - situational protection. Cost is similar too.)
Chaos Channels - costs and effect as a common buff, except for flight. 1/3 chance to get something that's worth more than the cost makes it worth the uncommon slot.
Immolation - Free "Fireball" every time the unit fights in melee. Worth 60.
Planar Travel - cheap, no problem
Blood Lust - cost 50, cheap enough. Real "cost" is the unit turning undead. A bit on the overpwered side as is, but that's intended, as it counters normal units specifically.

Rares
Elemental Armor - Like true sight, 75 is fair for near immunity against one type of attack.
Iron Skin - 2.5 times as powerful as Holy Armor, but costs 4 times as much. Overpriced? Considering 120 (still more than 2.5* Holy Armor) to simulate the huge "increasing benefits" effect on armor.
Invisibility - Like Flight and True Sight, this provides protection for the unit. Effective against ranged attacks (all of them), but also reduces melee damage and makes the unit harder to target and find on the overland map. I'd say benefits exceed even "Flight", making this spell worth ~150, so the current cost (175) is not very far off.
Wind Walking - A unique spell. It pretty much does the same as "Flight" or "Wraith Form" on a ship, except this can be used on any unit. That makes it look overpriced, but considering that "any unit" can potentially have several times the movement speed of a ship, I think it's not that far off - maybe 200 would be better?
Magic Immunity - Similar to invisibility, this is still a situational protection that works against a lot of things - in particular all magic ranged attacks (this is weaker than invisibility!) and all combat spells (this is stronger) and gaze/touch attacks (also weaker than Invisibility). Overall it's about as powerful as Invisibility, but costs significantly more. Overpriced? Considering "magic" in general is the theme of the game and immunity to it is a big deal, 25 more than Invisibility is suggested even though the benefit is roughly equal - so a cost of 175.
Invulnerability - Effect is worth roughly as much as 6 armor, but is slightly better (added weapon immunity and not reduced by pierce/illusion), so based on Iron Skin, 150 sounds fair.
Lionheart - Benefits roughly equal to Heroism (on a level 0 unit), but 2.66 times the price. It does have the advantage of being cumulative with unit levels instead of replacing that feature, and it is also better for single figure units (due to the health bonus). Still, seems far overpriced. Problem here is the combat price, which should remain at 40 (as it heals 8 instantly), but the overland price doesn't feel right, especially if it exceeds 150. Even that might be a bit too high.

Very Rares
Regeneration - health/turn is worth as much as a cheaper common buff (is granted by a global, like holy weapon or chaos channels). Reviving the unit is worth the unit's cost times the number it revives. This is hard to even guess but as the most expensive units had their cost cut in half, it would make sense to make this cheaper. Considering 180.