My plan was to put as many of your pop centers as I could under siege in one turn: Moria (I had Celeborn at 2514 City/Tower hiring an army and marching west to Moria), Morannon, where maybe Glorfindel could have issued Split Army, leaving Aragorn the infantry at 3119, and then using the road to force march SW, E with fed cavalry. In order to siege Morannon, Glorfindel would have to try and take it with 28 warmachines and 250 hc st/st. Then the 3rd pop center would have been Gwaihir at 3213 (your village/tower). If having those three pop centers attacked/sieged in one turn didn’t bankrupt your nation, I had no other plan to win. I only could have used “conjure mounts” and “conjure food” to go from pop center to pop center, selling to the market at +20% and trying to keep loyalties up. New characters I could get from NPC recruitment, but you would always have more. Legolas would have been able to kill some here and there, but you would have been able to just create more characters. Eventually, even if I had been able to survive another 12 turns, there’s basically no way I could win.
My taxes were at 40% so I don’t think you could bankrupt it. At the point the game was I think like you, it was very difficult to flip it.
Let’s see what the other players think about the curses and how their games end. As I said I have the same feeling about the Spirit Mastery artifacts. Time will tell.
Hey Guys,
I am playing a CME game at the moment as well. It sounds like you guys had a competitive game.
I think it is a bit too early to comment with certainty on the balance of all the character types and artifacts. It’s probably better to wait until we get a few of these games under our belt to see if any patterns persist. I think in game you each played, it sounds like it may have been leaning heavy on the military side. There is nothing wrong with that. If it did not work out, then there could be many different reasons besides curse artys.
There appears to be very many different approaches a player can take to implement their vision. Some approaches will work better than others. I am of the mindset that every approach can be broken and counter punched. This game does allow for adversity and adjustments. We just have to recognize what is happening and then make the corrections.
with only 3 curse artifacts available and if everything went perfect, like researching the curse arty on T1 and nailing it, the soonest any player could get a curse team into action is T10 and that would require 3 perfect 705s. And at the end of such an ambitious goal, is just ONE KILL. No big deal. The more realistic time frame of a curse team is probably around T15, give or take a turn. And that should be plenty of time to figure out if adjustments are required in SNAs or character recruitment or artifact hunting choices, not to mention the spells needed for the intel.
The game is more than spirit mastery and even if a player gains all 3 and develops 3 curse teams, they can only kill 3 characters. So what if you lose all of your champions, they represent less than half of the 30 total characters and the end result is 14 less orders. I think games can still be won with less orders. It is what we choose to do with those other 16 orders that impacts a game.
If I had lost out on all 3 curse artys, I definitely would be looking at other parts of the game that would allow my nation to expand and excel.
All of the character skill sets have something to offer and if players chooses to not develop or enhance them, then that is on them.
Now for my own game, I acquired all 3 curse artys by T9. But I got greedy and I made a mistake. Well, not a mistake, because I did consider the options. And I lost one of the curse artys to Legolas. And since I was still in the cocky stages of the game, Legolas has punished me further by taking out Saruman and Mouth of Sauron and Throkmaw.
Now it sucks losing those characters, but the game is far from over. We are on T20 and both of us have multiple major pc’s and both of us are gonna be dealing each other some damage. Our economies are off the charts really. I could lose every major pc and not be bankrupt and so can my opponent. The game is gonna be won in other ways and I just cannot share all of details. I can only say that this is a great chess game! And I am hoping my adjustments play out before my opponents.
You guys should swap sides and address areas you feel can be played out better.
Dan
with only 3 curse artifacts available and if everything went perfect, like researching the curse arty on T1 and nailing it, the soonest any player could get a curse team into action is T10 and that would require 3 perfect 705s.
Why fixate on Curses? You could get a company with Sickness casters going much faster. Move the company and your best agents to the enemy capital. 330 comes really soon in the sequence of orders. Your opponent’s characters at the capital had better issue 215, after all, those SM artifacts are mage +40, +30, +30 and will boost the challenge ranks of Sauron, Murazor, and Saruman to a considerable extent. So now, if they are champions, the FP characters have two more orders. 325 will probably be one of them. For the last order, do you Move Character? Stick around to try and name new characters? Or maybe Nation Transfer to put materials to sell as a 320 order in another pop center next turn? Should you move any characters into the capital or stay away?
Remember, this is turn 8. So all you need to do to determine if the FP have an agent threat to counter you at Imladris is to cast a Reveal Character (420) on Legolas and Frodo. There are no other agents worth worrying about. Are either near 2209? Then you should probably issue a Guard Character order on Sauron, Saruman, Murazor, whoever has the SM artifacts. No Legolas or Frodo nearby? Then have Gollum assassinate another character at the capital. Now the FP has lost a 2nd character in one turn at their capital. Will the FP be able to issue nation sell orders next turn?
Without nation sells, the massive CME surplus will quickly be eaten up by the massive CME deficits. Dan is certainly right that the economy can be off the charts in CME. But that economy can quickly come down to earth. In our game, on Turn 6 bronze/steel were selling for 18 and my surplus was 125,000. Deficit was -32,000. Three turns later bronze/steel (just to name two) were selling for 8, my surplus was +46k, and the deficit was -40k.
SM isn’t about raw numbers of character deaths. It’s deciding what enemy characters are going to die. Targeting characters at the capital will be a pretty sound move because if you can keep your opponent out of his own capital, he won’t be able to name new characters or issue 325 and 947 orders. The economic ripple effects will be huge. And you’ll be winning the character war because he won’t be able to name new ones, the only option being to recruit NPCs.
Just a reminder: I wasn’t trying to make objective claims about game balance or anything of the sort. I was giving a subjective view that CME without any SM would be more fun for me. Some games are better played with the Jokers removed from the deck.
CME is a great playground to create variants. You and another player can go in agreeing no Spirit Mastery, if you wish. I am planning to try a variant of CME with no armies allowed. If you hire an NPC with an army then you have to retire it the next turn. This is sacrilege to people like @RoadRailer, I’m sure, but I want to try it nonetheless.
Also, entirely unrelated to CME, hey @Movan and @RoadRailer, please join our growing MEPBM Discord community. Click the Chat link on this page in the upper right corner.
Yeah, it doesn’t require any work or adjustments on anyone’s because it’s all self-imposed by players. Years ago I played an MMO where like-minded players started a Permadeath guild. Your character dies in a quest, it’s removed from the guild.
Your variant idea sounds fun too, Raven. I’d give it a shot. I’ll also check out Discord.
So far btw, I’ve had 5 different conversations/emails where each player swears blind that, Strategy U,V,X,W,Z is the way forward. Part of being in at the beginning of is that you get to explore lots of ways of playing. I’ve run around 10 games of it btw so my feeling is that there are mutliple ways to win/be competitive. Some games I went character/Curse/Agent heavy, other’s pcs/economic control, a third army etc. So it’s been an interesting challenge designing the game so that there are multiple routes. In answer to Apu/Movan I thought of at least 2 ways that I would counter that particular strategy but heh that’s my thoughts on it… 
and it does have merit.
I agree a non-curse game might be on the cards, we have LAS/No K/Ass games (mostly in FAS) and we will also look at the characters/routes to victory that players have selected to ensure that it’s not one way to win.
If you look back on the history of the development of the game there have been many changes, keep the feedback coming and we can look at how best to move forward here as well.
I appreciate the fact that many players must try many different strategies before developers and players alike can feel it is balanced. My CME experience was 99% positive, and the other 1% was just dumb accident. If I could play another one, I’d want to go back to the same game and run it again, this time putting the three SM artifacts as numbers 37, 88, and 129. No one is likely to guess those in the first five turns. But once Apu knew, from his turn 1 report, that Tinculin and Maranya were artifacts #3 and #4, his choices for NPCs and general strategy were greatly influenced. Had he not researched those two SM artifacts, he might not have decided to recruit Saruman or Murazor or what have you. Totally different game.
This is what Clint and others are leaving out: it’s not as though Apu thought, “hmmm, on Turn 1 I’m going to find the artifact numbers for Tinculin and Marayna, and then I’m going to…” That wasn’t his “particular strategy”, as Clint says. It was opportunity knocking that dictated his choices.
I suppose I could have been alerted to this possibility earlier by casting Perceive Mission on Sauron. That would have tipped me off and guided some of my choices in response. But other than saying, “Always be casting Perceive Mission on Sauron/Gandalf”, it’s not really helpful to talk about general strategy when no one can expect their opposition to find 2/3 SM artifacts before turn 2.
Though I would LOVE to do it, I don’t have the luxury of playing 10 CME games to find out if my objections have general merit.
I suspect we’ll have a few tweaks balancing the game over the coming year. But it’s all looking good. 12 games so far which is a good start.