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Author Topic: EoFS Revisited - 50027AD (Year 72) - Closing discussion  (Read 70096 times)

Il Palazzo

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EoFS Revisited - 50027AD (Year 72) - Closing discussion
« on: October 14, 2012, 04:33:52 am »




Emperor of the Fading Suns!

The space-feudal setting, the epic struggle for power, the changing alliances, the machiavellism gone rampant! Also the game-breaking bugs the size of a galaxy, the unfinished features, the micromanagement purgatory!

Who would not instantly fall in love with this game, with this crooked vessel for the most involving diplomatic extravaganza ever released on the PC?

The following five players have known the game for a long time, some were there for its rushed release in 1996.
Three of us, namely Aqizzar, mainiac and yours truly, took part in the first ever EoFS game on this forum, in which emotions ran high, while scheming and backstabbing and dogged determination reached levels previously unheard of.
The alluringly vile aura of that game lured in Kebooo, a veteran player who joined bay12 soon after.
RedKing, whom I need hardly introduce, came out of the closet with his appreciation of Fading Suns only recently, to my knowledge at least.
Having lost RedKing soon after the game commenced, we replaced him Margrave, another veteran enthusiast of EoFS.

So here we are, determined to extract the game's potential for hard-core diplomacy while ignoring the bugs and having boatloads of fun in the process.

Let the struggle for the Emperor's throne begin!



The Setup

Mod:
Nova
House Rules:
Nova house rules
Balanced traits
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Scenario: random galaxy:



Other rules:
- universal warehouse off
- plague on
- rebellion on

Houses:
mainiac of House Li Halan
Enemy in the Church, Decadence, Battlemaster

Lazarus(vel Il Palazzo) of the Hazat
Despotism, Insanity, Enlightened Nobility, Administration, Warrior Ethic, Battlemaster, Advanced Physics Documentation
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gorakhan(vel Kebooo) of House Decados
Decadence, Anti-Trade, Enemy in the Church, Internal Security Apparatus, A Friend in the League, Warrior Ethic
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Aqizzar of House Hawkwood
Noblesse Oblige, Warrior Ethic, Advanced Physics Documentation, Administration, Tyranny, Despotism, Spendthrift, Disdains Trade, Enemy in the Church
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Caliph Saladin Raschid(vel Margrave) of House Al-Malik
Despotism, Decadence, Mercantile Savvy, Enlightened Nobility, A Friend in the League
« Last Edit: June 27, 2013, 08:02:11 pm by Il Palazzo »
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Ghazkull

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2012, 04:49:49 am »

looking forward to watch this.

Only started the other EOFS Thread because i stumbled by chance upon your glorious game from back then and thougth damn I reall need to play this in multiplayer
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Il Palazzo

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2012, 04:52:09 am »

We need to decide on the game settings.

It goes without saying that vanilla is a no-go, and Nova is probably the most balanced. There's also Hyperion to consider, although I'm not too happy with its overcomplicated approach.

Second of all, are we going with "historica" or random galaxy?
I'm in favour of the second, as the historical one lacks the exploration part - we all know, or can easily find out, everything about the planets as they are historically.
We could also try one of the scenarios for Nova, either "Escape from Earth", or "It's war!" - both accessible from the Nova page's link in the OP.

The house rules will default to Nova's, unless some specific points are to be contested.

Finally, the houses. We need a system tho solve the situation where there is more than one player desiring to take the same house. The fist come-first served approach is rather silly, in my opinion. After all, we wouldn't want anybody to be burdened with a house they don't really feel like playing.

looking forward to watch this.

Only started the other EOFS Thread because i stumbled by chance upon your glorious game from back then and thougth damn I reall need to play this in multiplayer
Cheers, Ghazkull.
An it's only due to you staring your game that we even realised that we want to come back to EoFS as well.
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RedKing

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2012, 05:33:37 am »

1. My only problem with the random galaxy is that you lose those crucial bottlenecks like Stigmata. There's no assured balance for each House in terms of expansion, because I've had games where the RNG is all "Oh hai! I putz Symbiots on one side of you and Holy Terra on the other...u mad?"
Unless Nova tweaks the randomizing code to not be so random....I'll admit I've never genned a random with a mod.

2. I'm good with whatever house, especially on a random map. Just for RP purposes I'd probably go al-Malik but I can do any of them.

3. We going to do leave Traits off or use the point system? I like Traits myself, as long as they're balanced.
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Il Palazzo

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2012, 06:16:03 am »

1. My only problem with the random galaxy is that you lose those crucial bottlenecks like Stigmata. There's no assured balance for each House in terms of expansion, because I've had games where the RNG is all "Oh hai! I putz Symbiots on one side of you and Holy Terra on the other...u mad?"
Unless Nova tweaks the randomizing code to not be so random....I'll admit I've never genned a random with a mod.
Right, I was going to add this caveat but it slipped my mind:
Due to the possibility of the galaxy ending up unbalanced after random generation, we'd have to agree on any given random map first. I.e., we generate a map(that is, Li Halan starts the game and posts a screenshot of the galaxy), and only if everyone is ok with it, we continue playing.

Quote
3. We going to do leave Traits off or use the point system? I like Traits myself, as long as they're balanced.
Yes, I believe the point system described on Nova homepage is appropriate. The traits don't change all that much, but they're good for giving houses some extra character.

Re: houses, I think I'd like to take Decados. If not that, then maybe Hazat, then Hawkwood.
Perhaps there won't be any conflicts w/r to house choices after all.
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Kebooo

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2012, 08:09:23 am »

My preference for house is in this order:

al-Malik
Decados
Hazat
Hawkwood
Li Halan

Of course I am open to playing any of them.

I support using Nova's balanced traits.

Also, I think a random galaxy would be great. I love the intrigue of the unknown, having to explore uncharted worlds none of us know about. I've played historical so many times that I know the relative value/worth of every planet and know where most of the resource markers are. Even that Malignatius has hidden gem markers under some of the already constructed buildings (there are a bunch of these, actually). On the historical map there's often this implicit agreement on which planets reside in which house's domain, except perhaps a handful. In a random galaxy I often see more pushing of these boundaries. I would say all five players should agree on the map.

We should make sure Byzantium II is in a "fair" location relative to each house's domain, Stigmata blocks the Symbiot worlds and each house has roughly as many grey/white planets near them. It's tough for Li Halan because they potentially have to keep restarting the game.
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mainiac

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2012, 09:07:01 am »

We should definitely do random.   Like you guys are saying, regen until we get something that doesn't suck.

I think we should do Nova as we are satisfied with it.  However I would suggest that we could consider using Nova but editing the cost of engineers to be higher.  Would this be acceptable?  It would result in a slower game but it would be a more combat focused one.

I request that I not get house al-Malik in this game as well as the other game.

We could also use the map editor to generate maps and make sure the damn interplanetary connections work.  This would require trust not to peek of course.  But it would allow us to have the interplanetary connections be fair and logical which I consider a plus.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2012, 09:12:17 am by mainiac »
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« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
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Il Palazzo

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2012, 09:28:06 am »

However I would suggest that we could consider using Nova but editing the cost of engineers to be higher.  Would this be acceptable?  It would result in a slower game but it would be a more combat focused one.
We had a conversation about it in the closing comments of that old game, iirc.
Kebooo had some objections back then. I don't know if they still stand.

I believe the arguments were:
for/
+less micromanagement
+better focus on careful planning and execution
+less of the endless colonisation, more of city captures by force(i.e. it might be cheaper to launch an invasion than build engineers)
+ministry assets valuable longer
+might lead to more diplomacy and less powermongering
+resource-marked tiles more valuable

against/
-already slow game might end up too slow to ever get anywhere
-people might still follow the same path of colonisation, only it'll take them more time
-no megahuge battles and galaxy-wide invasions
-losing a major battle might mean too hard a blow(i.e.it'd take ages to rebuild) for a player to keep his interest in continuing

Myself, I'm undecided. The idea seems sound, but it might prove to be game breaking, if tried on.
Perhaps a minor change, say to 300metal/food, would be enough? Originally mainiac called for 500 each.
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mainiac

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2012, 09:41:42 am »

Or we could leave the food and metal cost as is and add in costs of advanced resources instead.  That way your cost is limited by the advanced resources you can buy.

One way to get a somewhat random map would be if we randomized the non-player planets on the historical map.  This would also allow us to edit the jump points so all planets connect to adjacent (except for symbiot worlds not connecting around stigmatia).  We could even add a direct connection from the guild to every player's homeworld to make sure resupply is fair.


For instance we can edit the jump routes to something like this:


Then we ask a spectator such as Ghazkull to go through and randomize every planet except for homeworlds, special worlds, vau worlds and symbiot worlds.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2012, 10:06:35 am by mainiac »
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Ancient Babylonian god of RAEG
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« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
mainiac is always a little sarcastic, at least.

Karlito

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2012, 10:21:24 am »

Well this should be fun to watch.
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Il Palazzo

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2012, 10:48:27 am »

I think I'm more in favour of an actual random map, but I'm willing to follow the crowd.
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RedKing

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #11 on: October 14, 2012, 10:59:06 am »

As long as the map isnt crazy unbalanced, I'm good with whatever method. Maybe the Li Halan player could gen the game until they get something that looks reasonably good, then post a screenshot of it, and if we're all good with it too, then off we go?

re: Engineers, I'm in favor of upping the cost as well, but not in favor of requiring advanced materials for two main reasons:
1. Depending on how your starting position gets randomized, it might be a while before you can get your production infrastructure up to where you can make more engineers. You lose that starting engineer, you're pretty screwed (although I suppose you could always buy materials from the Legaue or other players...)

2. If left to basic materials, it means that even if you get beaten back into the Iron Age, you should still be able to rebuild relatively as long as you have a net Food/Metal income.

I dunno...maybe a token amount of mid-tier materials like Electronics would be okay? Say, 200 food/200 metal/5 electronics? That's a non-trivial amount but not so much as to be crippling once you have a mature economy in place. I rather like the idea of making engineers valuable enough to send escorts with and/or send assassins after, but not so much that I tableflip if I lose one.
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mainiac

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #12 on: October 14, 2012, 11:47:03 am »

Thinking it over I don't think it's a good idea to change the cost of engineers without doing a full overhaul and we don't want to do a full overhaul.  Just adding a small cost of electronics for instance would massively favor whichever player starts closest to the league.

A couple of rules points.  I believe that it is typical to do:
Plague Off
U Warehouse Off
Rebellion Off

Is this all correct?
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Ancient Babylonian god of RAEG
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"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value"
« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
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Il Palazzo

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #13 on: October 14, 2012, 12:12:25 pm »

What was the reasoning behind plague and rebellion off, again?
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RedKing

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Re: EoFS Revisited - PBEM with old guard and old geezers.
« Reply #14 on: October 14, 2012, 12:22:30 pm »

Because they're abusable and slightly bugged. For instance, you can purposely deny food to cities and units, potentially causing them to fall into plague, which can spread to enemy troops and do a lot of damage. I'm on the fence as to whether that's an exploit or a shrewd tactic. I think it depends on the situation. Dropping a few militia legons on somebody elses worlds and starving them in the hopes they become walking plague bombs is probably an exploit. Not feeding your city which is besieged by a huge invading force? Shrewd tactic. Becomes in the sieger's best interest to assault and get it over it (the potential for plague from a long siege has ALWAYS been a consideration in war).

I'd leave Plague on (otherwise Pestulator Artillery becomes worthless, as do the anti-plague relics) and just follow the house rule about not deliberately starving your cities and troops.

Maybe ditto for Rebellion, but I'm less sanguine about that one.

Universal Warehouse *definitely* OFF though.
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Quote from: Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Science is like an inoculation against charlatans who would have you believe whatever it is they tell you.
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