Society VI: Clouded Visions

[Kassiopeia]

Wait a second. Sparrowhawk has built and/or conquered 10 wonders - shouldn't he win?

[DarkCloud]

DAY 7: Death of A Society

1800 AD

Vlad Antlerkov's Empire of Somewhat Moderately Evilness... perished... 9 Jan 1800 01 hours and 33 minutes and 21 seconds and 16 milliseconds into the day.

The Players

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Vlad Antlerkov-
Dictator of the The Empire of Somewhat Moderately Evilness

MISSING

Spaced Cowboy
Emperor of The Empire of the Dudes

-Houston (K2)
-San Antonio (L2)
-Lubbock (K12)
-Abeline (L12)
-Plano (L5)
-Eagle Pass (K1)
-Brazoria (L1)
-Arlington (L2)
-Irving (L3)
-Richardson (L4)
-Baytown (K2)
-Mesquite (K3)
-Texas City (K4)

Whoha
Dictator of The Most Evil of Empires

-Medial Nukisatan (C2)
-Greater Nukistan (C3)
-Lessser Nukistan (C4)
-Southern Nukistan (D2)
-Deadly Nukistan (D3)
-Nuclear Wastes (B2)
-Nuclear Tower (B3)
-Nuclear Dungeons (B4)
-Nuclear Malaise (D4)
-Nuka-Nukastan (A1)
-Nukitopia (A2)
-Nukhopolis (A3)
-Greater Nuktopolis (B1)
-Lesser Nuktopolis (C1)
-Outer Nuktopolis (D1)

Smiley
President-Emperor of The United States of Canada

-Montréal (J6)
-New York (K6)
-Vancouver (K7)
-San Francisco (L7)
-Denver (K8)
-Juneau (L8)
-Pittsburgh (K9)
-Santa Fe (L9)
-Miami (K10)
-Tampa Bay (L10)
-Boston (K11)
-Los Angeles (L11)
-San Diego (L6)
-Sacramento (A6)
-Chicago (A7)
-Las Vegas (A5)
-Salt Lake City (A4)
-Seattle (J7)
-Philadelphia (I6)
-Portland (H6)
-Cincinnati (G6)
-Cleveland (F6)

Jonny
Emperor-For-Life of The Empire of Enlightenment
EXECUTED

Sparrowhawk
Elector Sparrow of the Republic (Coven) of Hawks

-Falcon (C9)
-Vulture (D9)
-Raven (B9)
-Eagle (A9)
-Cardinal (E9)
-Seagull (A10)
-Wren (E8)
-Swan (B8)
-Crow (B7)
-Osprey (B6)
-Pelican (B5)
-Pigeon (E7)
-Partridge (E6)
-Bluejay (D6)
-Swallow (D5)
-Peacock [Siddhartha] (C6)
-Roadrunner [Gotama] (C5)
-Flamingo [Schopenhauer] (C7)
-Blackbird [Buddah] (D7)
-Mockingbird [Lao-Tzu] (C8)
-Grouse [Nietzsche] (D8)
-Tangier [E5]
-Woodpecker (E4)
-Robin (F4)
-Cockatoo (F7)
-Egret (F8)
-Duck (A8)
-Chicken (A11)
-Goose (A12)

-Dude Ranch (J3)
-Cowtown (I3)
-Cowpatty (J2)
-Dallas (I2)
-Grapevine (K5)
-Highland Park (J5)
-Paris (I5)
-Italy (H5)
-Denton (G5)
-Carrollton (G4)
-Coppell (H1)
-Klondike (H3)
-Commerce (H2)
-Cooper (I1)
-Grand Pairie (J1)
-Austin (J4)
-Waco (J5)
-Abilene (I4)
-Sweetwater (H4)
-College-Station (I12)
-Brownsville (J12)



muxec
Spiritual Leader of The Not So Bad Empire

-Grand Citadel (F2)
-The Maddening (F1)
-Far Maddening (F3)
-muxeciopolis (G1)
-muxecitopia (G2)
-muxeciovania (G3)
-Helmholtztown (H3)

Kassiopeia
Overlord Elector of Imperial Finland

-Helinski (F10)
-Suomithreadii (G10)
-Mänttä (G9)
-Nurmijärvi (G11)
-Tampere (H10)
-Kalevala (H11)
-"Vilppula" (H9)
-"Oulu" (I11)
-"Turku" (I10)
-"Porvoo" (G8)
-"Viipuri" (I9)
-"Sortavala" (F9)
- Kuopio [F12]
- Vaasa [G12]
- Karkkila [H12]
- Mikkeli [F11]
- Pirkkala [E10]
- Rovaniemi [E11] (54)

-The Evil Capital (J9)
-Citadel of Discomfort (J8)
-ChrisTrubyLand (I8)
-Laughs Evilly (H8)
-You Fail It (J10)
-Weapons of Mass Destruction (H7)
-Placeholder 1 (I9)
-Placeholder 2 (J11)
-Placeholder 3 (K10)

[DarkCloud]

ah, yes he does- I see that he is victorious!

[DarkCloud]

...and now we can put this terrible, terrible, terrible game behind us

[Kassiopeia]

Oh well. Congrats to him, ally , now we can start streamlining the system for Society VII.

And the victory game by a paltry margin of 3 coins... had I built GO, Sparrow would have only had 9 wonders and the rest of us could have ganged up on him.

[DarkCloud]

Heck, had Smiley's gold calculations been correct- he would have built GO with 442 gp, but he only had 300 left and I doublechecked the calculations- so he lost- even after I didn't build the cities, or the armies that he wanted.

[Sparrowhawk]

I think I will wait for Spaced and Smiley to check in before thinking this one is over.

I am amazed by the stockpiling of spies (though with the revolutions, I guess there isn't much more to do with spies but stockpile them). I really thought at least one spy would be coming my way to sabotage my Wonder Construction (I even suggested to Kassiopeia in a PM that he post a suggestion that others send a spy to target my Wonder construction...and hopefully not target my Army construction, but I guess I was worried about nothing).

I didn't really want a cultural victory, if Smiley and Spaced check the results and are fine with them, might we not play this out and finish off the game properly?

/me is a Civ 2 Player, not used to this "Cultural Victory" that is a Civ 3 concept isn't it?

[Spaced Cowboy]

According to my calcs, Sparrow only takes 17 of my cities, but the point is moot, he still wins on wonders.

As far as the rules are concerned, blame Skanky....er I mean Smiley for this one.

[:) Smiley]

Even if he had gotten only 9 wonders, Sparrowhawk's victory would be assured.

Well played with Kass and the alliances. Speaking of such, the original rules had not anticipated such wholesale use of alliances the way Kass and Sparrow or me and Spaced did- this game moved so fast as it turned into a tech-and-wonder race. Perhaps the base cost of wonders needs to be upped? Or, make giving technology come with a cost, or limited to one tech per turn (simpler to implement).

[Sparrowhawk]

Thanks to Kassiopeia on a well played game, though we have only had one winner in this in the past, obviously it was with help that I was able to win this one.

Having said that, I agree that Foreign Aid is too powerful a tool (and that is why I have exploited it for the last two games with the help of Jonny and Kassiopeia).

Not sure how to limit it though, I too had thought of upping the cost of Wonders, but they are few people building them now, would this become even more of a problem if the cost were increased? How about limiting the number of Wonders that can be built by one player in one turn to prevent someone from running away with the Wonder Race? (it seems that whatever we come up with means more rules where Darkcloud was asking that we simplify the game further )

Further thoughts in other areas:
- I would like to see the Colleseum and the Tower switched (Colleseum becomes available with tech 1, Tower with tech 2) as the Colleseum seems useless right now, the Tower highly desirable.
- Also I would like to switch the Acropolis with Silk Road, silk road because it expires too soon, Acropolis because the early Republic is key to victory, and switching it to tech 5 would delay this.

- As for Darkclouds request that we eliminate the 1/2 tax in a revolution year, I strongly dislike this idea, I think 1/2 tax helps to balance out the effect of the revolution without hindering it too much (actually when switching from Despotism to Republic 1/2 tax only means that you collect full Despotism taxes for one more turn does it not?). Not sure what it would mean for programming, but most societies are only revolting once anyway, can their tax income be manually calculated for that one turn?

- One more change I would like to see is a combined allied assualt (a la Galactic Overlord). Right now if two societies attack another society, they defender fights first one and then the other. The second attacker gets the benefit of lesser armies if the first wore the defender down. I would like to see the two attackers (assuming they both border the defender) be able to attack in unison, either splitting the defending armies or combining the attacking armies.

I agree that the game does not need wholesale changes, but there are still some areas that need "tweaking".

I would consider GMing the next one if no one else wants to, but the part that I struggle with are the writeups (mine are boring by comparison to other GM's). The math and the rules are not such a huge problem for me (though the game I GM'd had only 5 players, perhaps it would be different with more).

/me

[Kassiopeia]

I didn't mind Sparrowhawk winning, but I did try to one-up him in the wonder race. As it turns out, I lost the game for everyone else by a few gold coins, so it was closer than you'd think.

The friendship pacts (can't really call them outright alliances since foreign aid is its only apparent tool) make the game go way too quickly in my opinion, either we need to further increase costs etc. to slow the game down again or we could just eliminate foreign aid.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Foreign aid is an exploit right now as it stands. I would suggest eliminating it.

[Sparrowhawk]

I think eliminating Foreign Aid all together is too extreme a move. Perhaps as Smiley suggests we can limit Science Foreign Aid to one tech per turn, that would virtually eliminate it as I would be unwilling to wait for my ally to give me one tech most turns, early in teh game one tech is all you can afford, late in teh game you cannot afford to only get one tech per turn. This would probably fix the problem of science foreign aid.

The other areas of foreign aid are also important though (gifting of gold, nukes or armies could be useful, especially if you are constantly getting bombarded by spies and unable to produce). I think we should leave Foreign Aid, just limit the science Foreign Aid.

Another idea I had today was that we could limit trade between two people by making a max of 2/3rds of your caravans with one person. This would mean that if you were at tech 9 you could only send 6 of your caravans to one person the other 3 either don't get sent (which would limit the sender) or get sent to someone else (which would help balance the game and help avoid one player falling behind too far as they would be the recipient of these extra caravans)......but again this is another rule which were trying to avoid.

/me

[DarkCloud]

On Foreign Aid

Not sure how to limit it though, I too had thought of upping the cost of Wonders, but they are few people building them now, would this become even more of a problem if the cost were increased? How about limiting the number of Wonders that can be built by one player in one turn to prevent someone from running away with the Wonder Race? (it seems that whatever we come up with means more rules where Darkcloud was asking that we simplify the game further

The friendship pacts (can't really call them outright alliances since foreign aid is its only apparent tool) make the game go way too quickly in my opinion, either we need to further increase costs etc. to slow the game down again or we could just eliminate foreign aid.

Well, for starters I wouldn't argue with eliminating foreign aid since it can be a valuable tool for alliances and speeding up the game- however we don't want to too heavily penalize those who don't have strong alliances.

Therefore, one simplifier on foreign aid would be if you could only send one type of foreign aid a turn.

And here is a second idea that wouldn't necessarily simplify things, but it would limit the aid's effectiveness. Since people produce things during a turn and it takes time to send things- perhaps Foreign Aid has to be the second step in a turn- Right after trade? This way the excessive tech-jumping won't 'ruin' the game completely for those without strong alliances.

On Trade

Another idea I had today was that we could limit trade between two people by making a max of 2/3rds of your caravans with one person. This would mean that if you were at tech 9 you could only send 6 of your caravans to one person the other 3 either don't get sent (which would limit the sender) or get sent to someone else (which would help balance the game and help avoid one player falling behind too far as they would be the recipient of these extra caravans)......but again this is another rule which were trying to avoid.

Sorry, I think that is way too complicated. I think that trade itself isn't overpowered- people can still trade.

What I noticed that really catapulted people was
1. Foreign Aid
2. Republics

If a soceity can get to republic- they are pretty much unstoppable.

the reasons for this are threefold:

1. Republics get double taxation
2. Republics get double trade income
3. Republics RECEIVE double trade income

Maybe one of the three things should be cut, and maybe it shouldn't- but if you look at the games, you can see that gaining Republic pretty much guarantees success.
-
Another complication with trade that I think we should eliminate is the "1" square away with tech 4 "2" squares away thing- I never checked that and it added unnecessary complications.

I also think that two nations being adjacent for foreign aid could be stripped from the game (although that is much easier to check--> but it's still another strain on the GM and players to realize that.)

More on Governments

As for Darkclouds request that we eliminate the 1/2 tax in a revolution year, I strongly dislike this idea, I think 1/2 tax helps to balance out the effect of the revolution without hindering it too much (actually when switching from Despotism to Republic 1/2 tax only means that you collect full Despotism taxes for one more turn does it not?). Not sure what it would mean for programming, but most societies are only revolting once anyway, can their tax income be manually calculated for that one turn?

Well, as I state below- maybe this was one issue that just needed more clarification- it can be fixed with programming... and I suppose isn't really that terrible a thing to do manually if necessary or to remember, but the question I stated further below is why I was confused about it.

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Simplification and clarification are needed on some issues... some of my troubles could have been clarified by better explanation, but as stated above, simplification is also needed. Thankfully we're making some progress here, I hope. (And when I was GMing I wrote some clarifications to the master rules on the first page)

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Just wondering on a revolution turn, do you collect taxes AS 1/2 the rate for the new Government? Or as 1/2 the rate for the old one?


On wonders

- I would like to see the Colleseum and the Tower switched (Colleseum becomes available with tech 1, Tower with tech 2) as the Colleseum seems useless right now, the Tower highly desirable.
- Also I would like to switch the Acropolis with Silk Road, silk road because it expires too soon, Acropolis because the early Republic is key to victory, and switching it to tech 5 would delay this.

I think I tend to agree with Sparrowhawk's suggestions here.

On War

One more change I would like to see is a combined allied assualt (a la Galactic Overlord). Right now if two societies attack another society, they defender fights first one and then the other. The second attacker gets the benefit of lesser armies if the first wore the defender down. I would like to see the two attackers (assuming they both border the defender) be able to attack in unison, either splitting the defending armies or combining the attacking armies.

Though that may be fair, it's very complicated (at least to program). (And it is also somewhat annoying to calculate manually if people's tech levels and army levels differ- and also it's difficult to figure out the casualties correctly, etc.)

How does everyone else feel about this issue?

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Sparrowhawk

would consider GMing the next one if no one else wants to, but the part that I struggle with are the writeups (mine are boring by comparison to other GM's). The math and the rules are not such a huge problem for me (though the game I GM'd had only 5 players, perhaps it would be different with more).

Well, I must say that I enjoyed your writeups at least more than mine. (I was sort of burned out after calculating things and messing with the program to put my writing skills to good use and went with 'short summaries' and minimal flavour.)

[Whoha]

hmm how about strengthening the other governments by removing the cap on taxable cities?