RBP2 (Realms Beyond Pitboss) Planning Thread

[Zeviz]

We'd be happy for you to join us, Zeviz. I'll set up our team e-mail and let you know the details.

Thank you.

My Yahoo email is zeviz1.

[sunrise089]

Agreed. Both "influence civic" and "influence religion" missions have fixed costs, independent of civilization's size. I understand you want to ban them both.

Personally, I'd rather have all missions banned or none. Otherwise it becomes a game of "who thinks their gameplan will be hurt by what mission the most." For example, I personally think "Incite city revolt" is very powerful, but others may not.

@LiPing - The issue with Spies in general is that they can be used defensively to keep tabs on an enemy army. In the Apolyton game, think of how vital it was for RB to know the location of the big Imperio stack. We didn't need spies because they kept their borders open, but you can imagine if they hadn't done so how helpful it would have been for us to have spy visibility on that stack. Some players, like the ladder MP community, bans spies because they think having spy visibility on an enemy stack effectively makes offesive warring impossible.

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EDIT: Speaking as admin, the "trade spots in the snake pick" issue voted down. We currently have 3 votes for No Restrictions on Espionage, and several votes for banning specific spy missions.

[athlete4life10]

Personally, I'd rather have all missions banned or none. Otherwise it becomes a game of "who thinks their gameplan will be hurt by what mission the most."

I'd agree with sunrise on this...which as my vote has previously stated, is none.

[Speaker]

Pretty much all aspects of Espionage are broken and/or unfun. I tried to make those points known in beta testing of BtS, but since it was to be one of the major "additions" to the game, my voice fell on deaf ears. They at least did remove a mission where you could actually buy an enemy's city using espionage points, which was stupidly powerful when combined with X city-elimination in multiplayer (lose X number of cities, usually 2, and your whole civilization dies). One prominent Single Player/Modder did not appreciate it when I destroyed his civilization after several hours of development, by purchasing two recently-founded cities. But there's no better way to prove something is broken than by abusing the crap out of it in the most emotional way possible!

[plako]

Espionage is integral part of the BtS and allowing only passive effects changes the balance of various things and might make catching up runaway civ harder. E.g. Great Wall becomes a bad wonder generating useless Great Spy points and Organized is a bit less appealing because Courthouses Espionage points are not that useful. I think it would be better to just turn off espionage, if we don't want active missions.

Another alternative is to just hand pick least broken missions and only allow them. I don't remember all the active mission or their official names, but I think we could at minimum allow these:
* Steal gold
* Steal tech
* Counter Espionage

I'm also sometimes using these:
* Support city revolt
* Destroy improvement

and maybe these could be also allowed, although the 1st could be considered quite broken.

[LiPing]

But then, we end up with weird culture effects...

[Kodii]

Griselda has made a subforum for Pitboss 2, thanks!!

[LiPing]

Yeah, I think I stupidly jumped the gun over there trying to set up ahead of time without realizing I couldn't change the title with edit

Uh... is it possible for anyone to delete the result of my over-enthusiasm off?

[Mortius]

I think it would be better to just turn off espionage, if we don't want active missions.

If you turn off espionage completely you have to gather double culture in a city to pop it's borders. This means you need 20 culture in a city to reach the full fat cross
This isn't funny

[Jabah]

As a lurker, I think some espionage is making the game more interesting.

- Having a spy in ennemy territory to act as a warning when a big SoD is forming and later coming is IMHO really part of the multiplayer game and banning it seems to be quite harsh.

- Stealing techs is fun from the lurker point of view and doesn't seems to be too game breaking (you really need to focus on that, and I guess a human player will adapt much better against it than an AI - to start with focus all EP against the spying guy, run conter-spying mission, build a few spy and of course military actions ... )

- Destroying improvement (like road in a certain PBEM...) has some strategic value but I can not tell if the price is right.

- forcing revolt (civic - religion) seems overpowered and surely could be banned.

(some) lurkers are voting Yes for moderate espionage