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Author Topic: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - The Dark Age Has Ended  (Read 80570 times)

notquitethere

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1065 on: February 26, 2015, 08:12:33 pm »

Horse shit. I've been in a position like that for 2-3 turns now. It's a fundamental flaw in the design of the game, not a failing on the part of my tactics. NQT's army can move 5 squares per turn. It could have popped up anywhere in my country. And here's why this really pisses me off: No real player would make a gambit like NQT is. Why would anyone steer their inferior force to one of my most heavily defended strongholds, completely unaware that my force would be outside its walls the next turn? Unless NQT is cheating, he made a transparently poor choice. The only justification he could have for doing this is because he has nothing to lose. He is steering a manufactured enemy force, designed to be an "interesting threat" rather than having to plan for the long term. I made the correct tactical decision against any sane, non-cheating player.
Actually, I wouldn't say it was a terrible move: I want you to stay up in your city so I can keep control of your other places for longer. To do this, I need only threaten to take Wrexham. It was an added bonus that you decided to move so many troops out of the city. Whether I take Wrexham or not is less important to me than keeping you tied up.

I think the simultaneous-turn thing is fine, it keeps the game moving quickly and it allows for plenty of tactical fake-outs. Games tend to be won with clever planning, calculated risks, reading your opponents and diplomacy. That's all good. The coin flip moments happen fairly often but are a part of the calculated risk aspect: the ideal is to plan in such a way that you can succeed no matter how things go.

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Squeegy

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1066 on: February 26, 2015, 08:19:53 pm »

Horse shit. I've been in a position like that for 2-3 turns now. It's a fundamental flaw in the design of the game, not a failing on the part of my tactics. NQT's army can move 5 squares per turn. It could have popped up anywhere in my country. And here's why this really pisses me off: No real player would make a gambit like NQT is. Why would anyone steer their inferior force to one of my most heavily defended strongholds, completely unaware that my force would be outside its walls the next turn? Unless NQT is cheating, he made a transparently poor choice. The only justification he could have for doing this is because he has nothing to lose. He is steering a manufactured enemy force, designed to be an "interesting threat" rather than having to plan for the long term. I made the correct tactical decision against any sane, non-cheating player.
Actually, I wouldn't say it was a terrible move: I want you to stay up in your city so I can keep control of your other places for longer. To do this, I need only threaten to take Wrexham. It was an added bonus that you decided to move so many troops out of the city. Whether I take Wrexham or not is less important to me than keeping you tied up.
I don't remember the map completely, but unless there's some hills or something around Wrexham, that strikes me as a poor move regardless because I can build up troops and go crush your forces waiting outside my gate, leaving you with no army. But I suppose that's just a difference between us as commanders, which is fine. And it's not like you have any other armies in my land to do anything with. You can use your named troops to raid around my lands, sure; but as I said, on the whole, it strikes me as the move of someone with not much to lose, only trying to be annoying rather than win the game.

I think the simultaneous-turn thing is fine, it keeps the game moving quickly and it allows for plenty of tactical fake-outs. Games tend to be won with clever planning, calculated risks, reading your opponents and diplomacy. That's all good. The coin flip moments happen fairly often but are a part of the calculated risk aspect: the ideal is to plan in such a way that you can succeed no matter how things go.
Simply not an option in most cases, so that's an unrealistic ideal, and that's not really calculated risk. Calculated risk is when you take a chance that could result in failure, but the benefit of succeeding outweighs the cost of failure. If I were the Danes, I wouldn't consider attacking Wrexham a calculated risk. The benefit: You might destroy a huge portion of my army. The downside: You might lose all but 2 units in Wales, dealing almost no damage in return, and making it easy to clean you up. Does the benefit seem like it outweighs the risk? Maybe for someone with not much at stake.

I'm fine with the simultaneous turn thing, for the reasons you said. I just utterly despise the random blind initiative. I really think that little tweak would be the best solution.
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notquitethere

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1067 on: February 26, 2015, 08:32:44 pm »

I don't remember the map completely, but unless there's some hills or something around Wrexham, that strikes me as a poor move regardless because I can build up troops and go crush your forces waiting outside my gate, leaving you with no army. But I suppose that's just a difference between us as commanders, which is fine. And it's not like you have any other armies in my land to do anything with. You can use your named troops to raid around my lands, sure; but as I said, on the whole, it strikes me as the move of someone with not much to lose, only trying to be annoying rather than win the game.
Well, it's more that I need to keep you contained for as long as possible, same with what I was doing with Varee and with the fleet against the Irish: my real fight is in the North and I wanted to keep you guys out of that for as long as possible. Plus, I wanted to take the pressure of Mercia for a bit. (Also, Wrexham is surrounded with mountains and hills, so it wasn't unsafe for me to go up and threaten.

I think the simultaneous-turn thing is fine, it keeps the game moving quickly and it allows for plenty of tactical fake-outs. Games tend to be won with clever planning, calculated risks, reading your opponents and diplomacy. That's all good. The coin flip moments happen fairly often but are a part of the calculated risk aspect: the ideal is to plan in such a way that you can succeed no matter how things go.
Simply not an option in most cases, so that's an unrealistic ideal, and that's not really calculated risk. Calculated risk is when you take a chance that could result in failure, but the benefit of succeeding outweighs the cost of failure. If I were the Danes, I wouldn't consider attacking Wrexham a calculated risk. The benefit: You might destroy a huge portion of my army. The downside: You might lose all but 2 units in Wales, dealing almost no damage in return, and making it easy to clean you up. Does the benefit seem like it outweighs the risk? Maybe for someone with not much at stake.
These are all reasonable thoughts. Why would I attack Wrexham? You don't know my turn, so maybe I'm not attacking Wrexham... you'll have to see.

I'm fine with the simultaneous turn thing, for the reasons you said. I just utterly despise the random blind initiative. I really think that little tweak would be the best solution.
I would try the game with rotating initiative: players would always know the turn order for any given round but they'd still submit simultaneously. The problem there though is you'd often have times when you know there's absolutely no chance of getting out of a situation.
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Squeegy

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1068 on: February 26, 2015, 08:38:11 pm »

I don't remember the map completely, but unless there's some hills or something around Wrexham, that strikes me as a poor move regardless because I can build up troops and go crush your forces waiting outside my gate, leaving you with no army. But I suppose that's just a difference between us as commanders, which is fine. And it's not like you have any other armies in my land to do anything with. You can use your named troops to raid around my lands, sure; but as I said, on the whole, it strikes me as the move of someone with not much to lose, only trying to be annoying rather than win the game.
Well, it's more that I need to keep you contained for as long as possible, same with what I was doing with Varee and with the fleet against the Irish: my real fight is in the North and I wanted to keep you guys out of that for as long as possible. Plus, I wanted to take the pressure of Mercia for a bit. (Also, Wrexham is surrounded with mountains and hills, so it wasn't unsafe for me to go up and threaten.

I think the simultaneous-turn thing is fine, it keeps the game moving quickly and it allows for plenty of tactical fake-outs. Games tend to be won with clever planning, calculated risks, reading your opponents and diplomacy. That's all good. The coin flip moments happen fairly often but are a part of the calculated risk aspect: the ideal is to plan in such a way that you can succeed no matter how things go.
Simply not an option in most cases, so that's an unrealistic ideal, and that's not really calculated risk. Calculated risk is when you take a chance that could result in failure, but the benefit of succeeding outweighs the cost of failure. If I were the Danes, I wouldn't consider attacking Wrexham a calculated risk. The benefit: You might destroy a huge portion of my army. The downside: You might lose all but 2 units in Wales, dealing almost no damage in return, and making it easy to clean you up. Does the benefit seem like it outweighs the risk? Maybe for someone with not much at stake.
These are all reasonable thoughts. Why would I attack Wrexham? You don't know my turn, so maybe I'm not attacking Wrexham... you'll have to see.

I'm fine with the simultaneous turn thing, for the reasons you said. I just utterly despise the random blind initiative. I really think that little tweak would be the best solution.
I would try the game with rotating initiative: players would always know the turn order for any given round but they'd still submit simultaneously. The problem there though is you'd often have times when you know there's absolutely no chance of getting out of a situation.
Yes, the rotating initiative you described is the one I proposed, except random instead of rotating. And honestly, you still wouldn't have any chance of getting out of a situation. You would just know it, and could plan accordingly, instead of being completely unaware that the game had already decided you lost. It might affect people's tactical decisions, yes, but in a positive way, I feel.
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lemon10

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1069 on: February 26, 2015, 08:55:44 pm »

I told you two turns before they landed to put all your cavalry into Lapeter, which would have allowed you to wipe them out as soon as they landed. While the initiative system does have some flaws, your situation is only partially its fault. If your army is spread out all over the place then you are going to get screwed when a single strong army comes in the middle and stops them from merging, which indeed, was why I told you to gather them all in the first place.

As someone with actual programming experience, I disagree. But I've already contacted Vanigo to ask him about it. In short: The game already generates the turn order when you hit "Run turn." The only difference would be adding an extra parameter in the XML that saves the turn order, and generating it for the next turn rather than the current one (as well as when you create a new game). It might be marginally difficult to add some way of presenting this to the players, but it's not strictly necessary in the short term. They can just read it in the XML.
Yeah, there are a few different changes to the initiative system that would be pretty trivial to implement (rotating first players, first player next turn predetermined, bidding system).
Some are significantly harder (nominally ones which change the time that combat takes place), but still not impossible.
But for all of them Vanigo would have to do it, and he hasn't really been interested in working on this game for a very long time.
No, it would take just as much time. The turns are only slow because certain people are slow. Their turns would take just as long. Everyone else's would be much faster.
If it takes the slowest player a week for their turn, and everyone else takes an average of 2 days, that means that a 6 player game would take 17 days, or significantly over two weeks.
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Rolepgeek

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1070 on: February 26, 2015, 09:01:15 pm »

If you're on the defensive, sure, Lemon.

But five armies of five Knights each can be hard to deal with if they're trying to be unpredictable if you're trying to keep all your forces more or less together.
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Rolepgeek

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1071 on: February 26, 2015, 09:02:00 pm »

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Squeegy

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1072 on: February 26, 2015, 09:02:09 pm »

I told you two turns before they landed to put all your cavalry into Lapeter, which would have allowed you to wipe them out as soon as they landed. While the initiative system does have some flaws, your situation is only partially its fault. If your army is spread out all over the place then you are going to get screwed when a single strong army comes in the middle and stops them from merging, which indeed, was why I told you to gather them all in the first place.
That's not really what you told me. This is what you told me:

Quote
Watch out for the South-Western horde. The are in range right now to be able to attack Haverfordwest next turn (or could attack Machynlleth or Aberaeron the turn after). Most of them will probably attack me, but a contingent of them will almost certainly split off and attack you somewhere unexpected.
You may want to gather all your horsemen (besides army 516) together to ensure that if they do come to attack you your troops will already be in a large army. Mercia doesn't seem to be in a position to threaten you at all besides your army in birmingham, and them only if they send nearly all their ground forces against it (which can easily be overcome if you reinforce with some more calvary due to the massive 200% defense bonus it has due to the fortress+hills).

You didn't mention Lampeter at all, only that I should begin consolidating my cavalry, which I did, in Wrexham, so that I could deal with Mercia if it didn't land and Haverfordwest if it did. Don't Monday morning quarterback me, mister. Hindsight is 20/20.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2015, 09:04:40 pm by Squeegy »
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lemon10

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1073 on: February 27, 2015, 05:35:34 pm »

You didn't mention Lampeter at all, only that I should begin consolidating my cavalry, which I did, in Wrexham, so that I could deal with Mercia if it didn't land and Haverfordwest if it did. Don't Monday morning quarterback me, mister. Hindsight is 20/20.
I made a mistake in saying I told you two turns before they landed, I only told you the turn before they landed.
Cathair Donall is perfectly safe. I can take the entire Danish army with my knights, even if they all land at once. Worst case is they split up and do some damage (and by they I mean the entire south-western horde, those 6 knights are no threat at all), but even can be dealt with in a turn or two. They may be able to take one of my cities outside of ireland proper, but I don't think that they will be able to.

Similarly, while they do have a ton of knights, you do as well. It will require you diverting a ton of force from attacking Mercia, but it doesn't seem much of a threat in the medium-long term. It *may* require you to empty birmingham to gather enough forces to wipe their knights out confidently, but you can kill them pretty easily if you manage to catch them.

Suggestions:
Keep all your foot in the south. They can hold it pretty well incase the south-west horde goes south. Also keep them in one army, so the south-west horde can't kill the half they catch off guard.
Move *all* your horse into a single army *this turn*, including all the ones in birmingham. You can always move them back in before they can take (or even move infantry in to) the city
Move *all* your horse into a single army *this turn*, including all the ones in birmingham. You can always move them back in before they can take (or even move infantry in to) the city
I didn't explicitly say that you had to move them into Lampeter, but that is the only town that was reachable with all your cavalry at once. You didn't do what I said (and made sure to emphasize at the end to make sure it was clear), and instead simply moved most of your calvary into a single place. You left the ones in  birmingham and shrewsbury where they were. If you actually consolidated them (even if you had consolidated them in the hills 1 tile north of Lampeter for some bizarre reason, which they also all could have reached), instead of leaving 11 of them out of it to continue fighting mercia that turn, you would have been fine.
If you're on the defensive, sure, Lemon.

But five armies of five Knights each can be hard to deal with if they're trying to be unpredictable if you're trying to keep all your forces more or less together.
Agreed. There are many times that multiple smaller armies is better, but he did need to consolidate his army to be able to instantly deal with the Danes should they land. Once the Danes were no longer an issue he would have been free to split his army to some degree to deal with you as necessary.

Also: Bumping Kash and Varee.
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Varee

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1074 on: February 27, 2015, 07:40:12 pm »

The thin is there not really a goal for me to work toward anymore, so I don't really know what I want to d . ..
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lemon10

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1075 on: February 27, 2015, 08:00:49 pm »

Um... You appear to have three choices:
A) Begin preparations for assaulting Mercia now. Ideally your attack proper would to some degree coincide with my attack to prevent Mercia from focusing their army on you. If you do this you are probably going to get a decent chunk of land, but it all depends on the outcome of Wales battle with the Danes.
B) Join Mercia, the Danes and (possibly Wales) in a force to stop my incoming attack.
C) Hunker down and build up your army and focus on growth for the immediate future, intervening when you see a chance to expand your power base, or preventing someone else from expanding theirs too much. This has the benefit from avoiding any chance at losing your army in the near future, but if you wait too long you may lose your chance to decisively intervene and/or grab land from Mercia. It also allows you to avoid choosing a side in the fight for the immediate future. Its also important to note that you don't have enough wood to really grow your production.

It's really up to you which one you want to pick, but those are pretty much your options.
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Kashyyk

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1076 on: February 27, 2015, 08:32:53 pm »

I, Kyle Mac Fergusa, King of Pictland, do hereby sweear fealty to Cathal(?), King of Ireland. He will henceforth forever more be the sworn lord of my lineage. my throne is his, my sword is his, my life is his.

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Varee

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1077 on: February 28, 2015, 06:26:31 am »

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Varee

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1078 on: February 28, 2015, 06:44:29 am »

Hey can I do the civ boat trick? Like use a city as a bridge for boat to cross land?
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Kashyyk

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Re: The Dark Age - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 74 - Death of Kings and Captains
« Reply #1079 on: February 28, 2015, 08:26:16 am »

So long as you own the city, I believe that is possible yes.
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