Ministery of information?

[Arrian]

Well, another team may have prepared better and executed the attack better (more surprise). Once the die was cast, so to speak, yes, there was a limit to how much they could inflict. But 3 cities razed is big-time damage!

What a waste of 2 elite horses, btw!

-Arrian

[Krill]

Sentry nets are an absolute necessity, yeah. We would need an entire ring of FoW around our civ uncovered by sentries, for maximum defence.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Krill
Lego got a free settler as well, remember. I often think that that settler became Jackson, so two teams with 2 free settlers built the pyramids in the free town...

And ironically, both teams could have used the pyramids best.

Something that I learned in PTWDG as well: people will play to what you expect from them. Look at the wonders, except for our own lighthouse, was one of them unexpected if you know the style of the teams involved? Lego going the happy route, GoW agressive, us anything that could add efficiency and leverage our damned territory...

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Krill
Sentry nets are an absolute necessity, yeah. We would need an entire ring of FoW around our civ uncovered by sentries, for maximum defence.

second rings as well, as soon as we can muster them. Information is going to be key...

DeepO

[DeepO]

BTW, I think that with the power and score graphs, we should be able to more or less precisely analyze whenever a team we've met has started on a wonder. Especially early on... Might get interesting

DeepO

[Hot Mustard]

Something RP did at the start of PtWDG might be a good idea here - compose a profile of each team and their highlight players. Sounds like many of you have the goods on these teams/people - but putting it in a cohesive form for both this budding Ministry, and for the benefit of the diplomats, would be valuable.

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by DeepO

ET is part of the team too, right?

Did E_T get Civ4 and a computer to run it on? I remember him commenting pre-release about his situation...

I know he started the PtWDG without PtW and a nameless benefactor bought him a copy and shipped it to him, but if his machine won't run Civ4??

[DeepO]

E_T would be a good MMer without CIV installed... his excel sheets were amazing.

DeepO

[Solomwi]

Dom, I was a Team Merc member in the MZO C3C DG, though not a very active one. The two things I picked up about the team, though, were (a) they are going to see to the homeland defense, regardless (likely realizing that the "dubious" nature of their team makes them more of a target) and (b) their biggest concern is upholding their reputation (in the interest of future business). Giving in to a bit of speculation, I don't think you'd have to worry about UnO and the team crying foul about somebody abusing their concept, though they may have an individual or two decide to. They know they're as fair game as the rest of us. There was a bit of discussion on covering for potential backstabs in the MZO game, too, before we would send out a contract party of any size.

If memory serves, that game saw only one or two teams really take advantage of the Mercs' presence. With the nature of CIV's gold emphasis, a team making extensive use of them early will probably choke their own economy/research in the process. It was easier to do with C3C because of the gold you could amass and keep early. Don't get me wrong, UnO will, if need be, offer creative pricing plans, such as doing a job for workers, but overall, I think the relative early scarcity of pretty much everything in CIV will keep Merc use from being as prevalent as you think, at least for a while. Pricing will be public, so we'll be able to get a gauge of who might be able to afford what.

While, as with every other team, we'll have to keep an eye on them, "managed" properly, we can use their presence to our advantage. I'll put our group against any other when it comes to managing a situation like this properly, particularly with the metagame gurus on our side.

[DeepO]

any idea on pricing, Solomwi? I mean, internal pricing, before margins, so to speak?

Also, would custom jobs be accepted, let's say we need 20 cats but no other units, would that be possible? What I mean is, how far are team Merc willing to go, would they unbalance their own military buildup for custom jobs, building and renting units that can't be used for future wars?

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Solomwi
Dom, I was a Team Merc member in the MZO C3C DG, though not a very active one.

Great, an insider! Thanks for your input.

Pricing will be public, so we'll be able to get a gauge of who might be able to afford what.

Pricing becomes public once the contract is complete, right? What good does that do us in terms of intel? For confidentiality reasons, creative pricing schemes will not be public until after the fact.

For example, if Sarantium offers the Mercs use of their Workers for a military "job", the Mercs cannot really post this "price" publicly until the job is done.

[Solomwi]

Specific pricing, you're right. What I meant was that they'll be open, and even advertise, about how much it's going to take to buy what level of involvement. From that, we'll be able to, at the very least, get a rough gauge of who can buy what.

In that game, we had a well defined price schedule based on number and level of units, to be calculated after the contract was performed. For instance, Team A hires Team Merc to take and raze an enemy city for 10 gold per unit that sees combat, 20 gold per unit lost and 25 gold per ship required. Alternately, Team A hires Team Merc to attack the enemy, for 200 gold per city taken, 100 per city turned over and 10 per improvement pillaged. The numbers are made up off the top of my head just to give you an idea of their pricing philosophy. CIV obviously offers some new avenues for pricing, but there's no reason to believe they'll ditch the idea of having a structure in place. NB: Negotiations did happen, so I don't mean to say these prices were set in stone, just that everybody had a decent idea of what they were. Also, no preference was shown to certain teams on the outset, pricing-wise. Obviously, relationships will be built, even by the Merc team, and as the game progresses teams that use them more often may get a discount of sorts, but they won't give brother-in-law pricing just because they like a certain team better than others. As we try to predict Team Merc's behavior, we should simply look to best business practices.

It's a rough gauge that will require analysis and guesswork on our parts at times, but we'll have on hand the gold equivalent it would take to get a job done. View that through the prism of the Coase Theorem (i.e., we know Merc values the use of these units at X gold from their advertisements... what else might Sarantium be able to offer that they'll value as highly as X?) and I think this august body will come up ith close answers more often than not.

I just checked the MZO team forum for the first time in months, and notice that a particular issue remains thorny. There was an agreement with Team Yargos that Merc wouldn't settle a particular piece of land in exchange for two workers. After many, many rounds of diplomacy, pressure, etc., those workers still haven't been delivered, so UnO and Kloreep may be a little gunshy about that particular creative pricing regime.

One thing we can count on from them is that once they've staked out their empire in the early expansion phase, they won't go out conquering of their own accord. That's one of the team concept's basic tenets.

DeepO, I'll check the MZO forum again this evening, and copy over the basic price advertisement from that game, but obviously specific details will be of limited use. I don't expect the structure to change drastically, though they may be open to lump sum type contracts (Take X enemy cities for Y compensation). They'll adjust the prices based on the game phase, too, but we'll be made aware of any changes. For instance, if the 10-20-25 model I laid out above is in place for the ancient era, the prices may go to 50-100-125 later in the game when cottages have started maturing and customers have more gold.

We didn't really get teams asking for a particular arrangement of units (for the obvious reasons), so I'm speculating on an issue that never, to my knowledge, arose. Contracts were results oriented, whether that be to take a city (and raze, hold or hand over to client), pillage improvements or just attack a city to tie down enemy forces. That said, UnO's comments in the open forum for this game lead me to believe they won't dismiss custom jobs out of hand, but I can guarantee they'll keep an eye on the big picture. If they feel their cities are adequately defended, they'll probably build those 20 cats. If not, they'll probably still build them, but give us a longer timetable for delivery, to allow them to finish garrisoning, as well.