I think you're misinterpreting me. I have not directed any insults toward you. I'm simply incredulous at your reasoning. I really, truly do not understand it. I'm not saying "I don't understand it" in the sense of "I don't approve of it." I genuinely cannot fathom the reasoning behind what makes you declare what I consider fair balance changes to the rules cheating. At the same time, you seem to have no problem with changing the game's rules to favor specific players above the rest (whether you made the comment in passing or not, you were apparently fine with the idea of it), and with accessing information that isn't normally available to players and which I consider to be privileged.
I respect Vanigo, he made a good game that I enjoy playing, but I question some of the decisions he made in balancing it. I don't think initiative should be randomized after people submit their actions, I think that that undermines the player's ability to plan turns. Obviously some kind of solution like that had to be made as to what units should be given priority, but I think that making players blind to the effects of their actions is not good game design, and that's entirely separate from units rolling random attack and defense. It's not the fact that initiative is randomized that's bad, it's the fact that you don't know whether or not you're going to be able to move before your opponents until after it's happened. I don't think changing it so that everyone can freely see the order in which they'll take the next turn unbalances the game in any way. It doesn't change how anything works. I don't understand why you would consider it cheating.
Additionally, I don't like that you can only build improvements in a very limited range around your cities. I think it encourages city clustering, which is bad strategy in this game. I don't see why vast swathes of your country should be locked off from you; ostensibly, the improvements are people going out there and building a self-sustaining village that then create these improvements, so it makes no mechanical sense either. It's a seemingly arbitrary restriction and I don't understand what balance purpose it serves, so I don't like it. I don't understand why you think that allowing everyone to circumvent it would be cheating. Cheating is when you break, circumvent, or change the rules to give yourself an advantage over other players. That doesn't benefit anyone in particular; I'm not even in the game. I can see the logic in it now that you've explained it, but I still feel that the improvement radius is much too small, especially for so large a map, and should increase at a greater rate the larger the city is. As it is, your cities can only be at most 4 tiles away from each other or you won't be able to take full advantage of the tiles you've claimed.
And that is, in my opinion, effectively what you asked for, in passing or otherwise, which is why it upset me. It felt like you were trying to cheat by asking for the rules to be changed in a way that would only benefit your ally, and in turn, you. It was especially egregious to me because you were saying that they weren't effective when they were posing a serious problem for me at that very moment. Additionally, I didn't like the way the Danes had no permanent stake in the game, played outside of its rules, and were really only there to stir up trouble, so I was looking forward to getting rid of them. What definition of cheating or metagaming do you have that it doesn't apply to that situation but it does apply to my proposed rule changes? I mean it, I'd like to hear your definition.
As for the resources thing, the difference is that troop count and location are freely available to you in the Player Interface. If Vanigo wanted people to be able to view the structures in a city, he could easily make that menu accessible the same way you can access the menus of enemy troops. Doing it through the Admin Interface feels to me like circumventing that restriction, which fits my definition of cheating. Same for Resources; if he wanted you to be able to view everyone's resources, why didn't he put the Players menu in the Player Interface instead of just the Admin Interface? Why are you only able to view your own resources in the Player Interface? Taking advantage of people's weaknesses is indeed part of the game, but circumventing restrictions to learn what your opponents' weaknesses are is, in my opinion, cheating. It's true that everyone can circumvent those restrictions, but everyone can also open other people's spoilers. It's frowned upon because that's not information you're supposed to have.
That's all just my opinion, but I'm GM in this game so I do have some say over the rules that aren't hardcoded. If the majority of the players think that you should be allowed to look at other civ's resources and buildings, then I'll allow it. Otherwise, I think it should be prohibited.
To me, 'cheating' is a matter of 'the game as it was meant to be played', in large part. So maybe cheating isn't the right word. I don't actually care, in this case, whether it is or not. With Danes, they were already outside the typical rules, but you're also doing barbarians; since the GM had already originally had them gain money from pillaging (allowing them to be at least somewhat self-sustaining).
I wouldn't consider changing initiative order to be visible cheating. I have never once said that. I do, however, think a non-random initiative would be inherently beneficial to certain parties and thus don't want one. A randomized, but visible initiative would be fine. I like a random initiative that you can't see because it means you have to plan for either scenario, and it gives underdogs a bit more of a chance, as randomness always gives underdogs a better chance. Which in turn makes the game more interesting.
It's a matter of risk vs. reward, or rather, weighing pros vs. cons, in this case(also, I have a very different opinion on what constitutes 'clustered' for cities(which at smaller levels are actually towns, remember), and considering most of the time you only get 1 or 2 population, and start small, I don't really see it as 'vast swathes of your country' being locked off; I have only four cities and only four tiles unimproved; one is a mountain(and I don't need more stone anyway), the other two will be able to improved shortly, and the last is just a labor shortage). Only spend population on cities in important areas, or try and make the most of everything you have? Place a city so you can nab this resource cluster, or so you can reach that valuable resource spot? It adds depth to the game, which would be lost if you could just build improvements wherever you wanted. It's also more realistic, if you think about it for a bit; it's not a matter of 'who's building it'(though considering labor is only produced by cities, and you need it to construct improvements, and it takes 2 turns for most infantry units to even travel 2 tiles without a road...), so much as 'who's getting the materials' and the way medieval economies worked. If you only need to feed yourself, you just sustenance farm and try to manage what you can with traveling goods peddlers. If there's a town/city with people in it to purchase your crop, however, you can focus on farming, sell excess, buy what you need, and have a bit left over to work on improving the farm. Same for a hunting camp, or a lumberjack area. Also consider that construction of things (besides mines, at least) that require wood or stone or what-have-you are all based in cities. The resources the people are collecting have to travel to get to those cities; cities typically protect farmers and wilderness folk in an area around them as part of their job, and the people provide materials to the city. With quarries or mines, it is a rare village that spontaneously decides to start a quarry without there being an edict or a serious backer around to help them do so. Improvements aren't building a self-sustaining village; a mostly self-sustaining village is already present. That's what claiming a tile does. They're able to export a certain amount of material and that's about the limit. With a city nearby, they're more capable of organizing, there's an assured market for large-scale projects, and so on. As well, some tiles just aren't worth improving; if you don't need stone, for example, quarries are just wastes of Labor. Most of the time there isn't a shortage of tiles; once there is, you're usually at the point where that's not what you're concerned with anyway.
Sidenote: Actually, I think it'd be cool if everyone got, say, 1-3 Money for a pillaged tile, and 2-5 if it had an improvement on it(but it would be razed; you could also instruct your troops to slaughter only, not burn, so improvements on important areas could be kept, or if you were near enough to grab it quickly and they wouldn't be able to retake it. I personally enjoyed the Danes, as they aided me in getting out of a situation that I had been forced into by circumstance; I hadn't wanted to go to war with Wessex, and they helped take the heat off me for a bit, and then they helped me actually get back at Pictland and Wessex when they had been pressing in before. I was saying they weren't effective because they weren't. You were in trouble because they had just recently landed a large force. That was all. They couldn't self-sustain. In a few turns, they would be gone, one way or another, because they would never be able to make more troops, and you could. Yeah, sure, they might get into one of your cities, they might wreck some shit if you weren't smart about it(patrol paths, man, they work in this game and it's awesome), but in all honesty, if I wasn't knocking on your door too, they wouldn't have been an issue, given a bit of time. If you looked at everyone else(Pictland started to go downhill, which I had not expected at the time; I thought he'd been winning, actually), Wessex was finishing clearing up, Ireland had never really been in trouble in the first place, and I was allied with them anyway. Plus, it's fluffy, and I do love my fluff. AS for definition, as I said; they had that rule applied to them before. There was prior precedent. No longer getting reinforcements off-map made sense, but no longer getting money for pillaging tiles(maybe not cities anymore, since they had to live in 'em now, but still)? That was just kinda odd, and I had never actually thought they should lose that. It gave them a way of making money that was reliant on being aggressive, since they didn't have cities, making up for some of the disadvantage they started out with(and especially once they started getting so heavily into debt...)
Yeah, he could have, and it would have been more work for him, but from what I know, he had always suggested using the admin interface for that information. But it seems extremely weird to me that I can know exactly how many troops fought what and where on the other side of the map, but I wouldn't be able to tell which of the two cities in front of my troops was the one with the Fortress in it, and which one was the one with the Grand Bazaar. The simplest explanation, as well: the Players interface for the Players Interface(confusing, I know, sorry) is inherently different from that of the Admins interface because of simple streamlining reasons; knowing an enemy's resources isn't as vital as knowing your own for the typical turn, and trying to mess around with the admin's interface of it so that the players couldn't muck about with enemy status settings would be more effort than was actually necessary. Add this to the simple fact that before trade was introduced(and large scale trades aren't exactly easy to keep secret, much like Fortresses), all resources, and still all buildings, would be able to be deduced by the simple expedient of keeping tally each turn, and it becomes convenience, not cheat tool. It means I don't have to try and fuck around in Excel trying to figure out what everything does, just so that I can figure out whether it would be better to attack the guy on the left or the guy on the right; I'm fairly sure one of them's a stupendous industrial power while the other is still in debt and recovering slowly. If I'm not able to find out which is which, you're reintroducing randomness which you hated with the initiative system but on a larger scale. It's not even a matter of 'I don't know what will happen' it's a matter of 'I don't even know what I want to happen' at that point.
Opening people's turn spoilers is expressly forbidden by Vanigo, partially to keep away PM spam. Looking at their resources/troop count/buildings, meanwhile, was expressly encouraged, just like running battle sims.
What fun is there without conflict, in this? Keep your opponents from outgrowing you, gain crucial experience for both the commander(aka you) and your troops through the skirmishing, and make the game more interesting. No real reason not to, actually.
Author
Topic: Fertile Lands - A Vanigo Empire Game - Turn 54 - 2 Players Needed (Read 38400 times)