A New FFH PBEM

[Bobchillingworth]

Excellent



Okay, ignoring the settings which are obvious (i.e. Quick Speed) here's what we need to decide on:



* FFH or EitB?

* Variant or standard game? If variant, what kind? We've got lots to pick from- No Settlers, Advanced Start, Later Era and Starting Adept come to mind.

* Human takeover allowed for Infernals / Basium?

* Bans?

* Leader-weighted starts (as seen in XXXIII)?

* Difficulty level?

* Barbs- raging or normal?

* Mapmaker or randomly generated?

* What form of diplomacy? (AI, Email, Email w/ restrictions, etc.)


Let me know if I missed anything obvious. I'm not going to vote yet, since I'm okay with pretty much anything. I would favor banning Volana unless we use weighted starts. I do not favor banning the Illian WS.

[Yell0w]

Yeah so for me it's EitB only, I enjoy the new financial, I hate the old one, cause it's Tier 1 followed by Tier 3 and 4, there is no Tier 2 thats how good old financial is imho, so that makes all other leaders not pickable if you try to compete seriously, which is just sad.

No thoughts on No. 2 I'll say my piece when there are some suggestions

Either that or which I'd prefer: Compact Enforced

Volanna, and things the map maker thinks would be unbalanced (eg. Clan, Lanun, OO)

Interesting, please elaborate

Map makers choice, it should be chosen together with world wrap and map size, immortal on big toroidal map is no fun whatsoever

Uhh raging barbs, interesting

Mapmaker

AI but with AI like messages, like: "sheep for wheat?" "no, sheep for fish?". So basically no real diplomacy just resource trades, and no things like "mana loan on to be determined turn for x turns" stuff. Not a strong opinion though.

Things to discuss:
doubled events, lairs, huts, unique features

those depends a little bit on the variant I think. I'm generally speaking against huts, neutral to lairs (ofc not near start positions), doubled events are nice to get to know the game, but I think normal are frequent enough. Unique features should be in the map makers discretion, but generally observe the "less is more" rule - unless we want a wacky map, which totally depends on variants, or better said: is a variant

[Ellimist]

My preferences:

Compact not enforced, but I'm not picky about the rest of the particulars.

No bans except maybe Keelyn.

No weighted starts or purely random maps.

Omniscience required to build the final Tower of Mastery.

Diplomacy/communication to be limited by the turn pace.

Barbs, huts, and random events: More is better

No preferences on the rest. lairs/eitb/variants/difficulty/etc.

[Bobchillingworth]

No thoughts on No. 2 I'll say my piece when there are some suggestions

Okay, here are the variant ideas I have (labelled alphabetically for easy reference). Some of them we've successfully run games with before:

A: Everyone starts with an adept, who has 3 basic spells of their choice. The adept can only be promoted up the Combat line until you upgrade it into a Mage. We may or may not want to ban Meta if we go with this variant, since it's massively better than every other option (which ends up making the variant "Meta + 2 spells".

B: We play with Raging Barbs, Deity difficulty level, No City Razing and No Settlers. Everyone starts with two Settlers and two Archers (surviving the rush of barbs is pretty difficult otherwise). Cities can be obtained only via conquest, either from other players or the Barbs (well, you can get one via an event and Basium spawns with another, but whatever). May or may not want to play with some pre-placed Barbarian cities, but that places a bit of a burden on the mapmaker.

C: Game with the Advanced Start setting.

D: Game with the Last Days setting.

E: Like the Adept variant, except everyone starts with a Mage & a single level 2 spell. Rules are otherwise the same.

F: Later Era start- my preference for this setting is one era in (so everyone starts with the basic worker and civic techs researched; we would probably need to ban the Doviello and Clan).

G: Everyone starts with a Shade, to speed up early research / production / expansion.

H: Name your own variant


I would be happy with any or none of the above.

Interesting, please elaborate

Dave can explain better than I, since it was his idea, but basically most leaders are assigned a food and/or commerce penalty or bonus at their start depending on how good they are. By way of example, in PBEM XXXIII, Charadon got +1 food and +1 commerce at his capital, while Decius of Calabim had -1 for both. It was pretty mild for that game, but could easily be tweaked further to make normally overpowered leaders acceptable.





I totally forgot about huts, lairs, etc. I am in favor of huts, lairs and extra random events.

[Yell0w]

My preferences:

[...] ban [...] Keelyn.

Omniscience required to build the final Tower of Mastery.

Oh yeah I forgot those two

[DaveV]

Sorry not to reply sooner, I had a busy week.

Maybe I'm looking for a different game than the other players. I'm not eager to put dozens or hundreds of hours into a PBEM only to discover that I was screwed from the start because I started with plains cows, fish, and no copper or commerce while someone else got two river corn, three dyes, and the Remnants. Or because I popped mistforms from a lair while someone else got techs and religions.

I am really not a fan of lairs; they cause a tremendously unbalanced game where some people get game-breakingly good results and others get really bad ones. I'm of two minds about huts: they reward exploration and early risk taking, but, again, uneven results.

If we go with a random map, I'd want something like torusworld which is not quite as insanely unfair as scripts like pangaea or whatever was used in 31 . Don't get me started on the Erebus script.

Maybe ban AV? It's been the ultimate "win more" religion lately.

I'd prefer strict AI diplo.

Bob's options:

A: interesting. Maybe combine with B?

B: Interesting, but it's been done. Maybe without the "no settlers" setting? Clan would be completely overpowered.

C: meh.

D: It's been done. A couple times. And, again, AV is OP.

E: Say you start with Death II: you can summon spectres or skeletons. Do you mean that players would be honor bound not to use the level 1 spell, and could just summon skeletons?

F: Speeds up the early game, but completely changes the balance. Somewhat interested.

G: Interested. Maybe combine with B?

[Qgqqqqq]

Torusland was used in 31 (As a sidenote, now that you've seen the whole map I would be curious for your feedback as to the balance.)

Edit: From what I can tell of Bob's intentions. E would only give the single promotion, Death II in this case, to the caster. Thus only spectres could be summoned.

[Bobchillingworth]

Qg is correct.


Let's wait for GreyWolf's input, and then I'll go through everyone's preferences and see what we have a consensus on.


Regarding variants, I'd enjoy playing with one, but I don't want to force something on the game if everyone else is just neutral. So if there's a variant anyone finds particularly interesting, please advocate for it.


We also need a mapmaker plz

[Krill]

Torusworld is maybe the worst map script to use without editing, and is definitely the best with.

[DaveV]

Torusland was used in 31

You mean 33, don't you? If so, the islands and pre-placed barbs were probably my only serious beefs with that one, despite all my grumbling in my spoiler thread. 31, on the other hand (which appears to be an Islands script?) is ridiculously unbalanced. And I don't expect to change my mind on the latter.

Regarding variants, I'd enjoy playing with one, but I don't want to force something on the game if everyone else is just neutral. So if there's a variant anyone finds particularly interesting, please advocate for it.

My favorite variant is the starting adept, combined with raging barbs.