We need to define “unbalanced.” Does 2+ 60A’s “unbalance” the game, or cause the game to play faster? Does 3 MT’s at setup unbalance the game, or cause it to play faster?
Jason Mele
Lots of interesting comments.
Frankly, the FP lost FA 145 not because of agents, but because of lack of recruiting. Sounds like you had a bum set of teammates (I mean who the hell signs up for a playtest and then refuses to talk?). But I bet if we counted troops you’d find that the DS as a team turned out 2x the number of troops the FP did. I bet we also sent 2x the number of emails to eachother.
But I will say you have an interesting point about human tendencies amongst the FP to not run agent nations. When signing up as a FP in FA I nearly always build in some agent focus for exactly that reason – I can’t count on my FP teammates to play an agent game. It’s actually pretty frustrating. As a adendum to that tendency, I’ve seen several FP nations that went overboard on emmys or mages and got themselves killed because of it.
Opening up 60 point skill ranks bonuses to all races and allegiances would solve this by spreading out agent, emmy, mage, and emmy power. I’m not sure why in FA the DS should be agent focused anyway. This is an artifact left over from 1650.
I once wrote a nation design guide for FA – can’t remember which Bree it ran in. And I planned a follow-up article on how to avoid becoming FA road-kill. Fortunately Clint and co addressed some of those issues by upping the starting fortifications, but I still think a beginners guide with set-up and early play advice also has a certain place in the game.
I mean really Dave, they way you setup and played your nation you were agent bait and wide open to military attack from the get-go. 30 mages and emmies sitting around the capital? veterans leading armies? everything in the plains? Jeeze.
I think someone else made a point about covering the basics. Despite all the changes in the new FA rules, the basics still hold: start in the mountains for the best defense, expect early military and agent attack, plan to build a strong economy. In those regards nothing has changed really.
But I’ll save it for the FASUp list.
cheers,
Adam
Hi Thomas,
looks like a lot of the FP team dropped this turn. Only 4 or 5 FP processed turns – not sure if your allies informed you of their drops.
Are you guys ready to call this a wrap, or do you intend to fight it out?
Remember, this is a playtest afterall so I’m not sure what more there is to learn by gutting it out 5 against 13.
cheers,
Adam
There were only 4 processed the turn before and only 3 this time. I personally would prefer to battle it out but if those left on my side wish to stop then I will too. Mind you we have almost crossed the 4:1 scenario which wasn’t in the set-up but probably could be used as a reason to end it. It was actually quite a good turn for me. Hired well over 1,000 troops, another 3 pop centres gained and no one assassinated… No one assassinated yet actually… No either you haven’t tried or my guards are doing well…
Thomas
Well I think I may have outrecruited most of your side <grin>. I have Cavalry all over the place. The only thing slowing me down was a lack of leather.
I have over 7000HC in the field 
SK
Guys
Played Tuatha De Dannon in this game - my SNAs was name A40s, stealth more likely & +20 to recon/scout. Had decent agents in my start up (needed time to get them up to kill level), so not true to say the Free were devoid of agent nations, however … found myself next door to Stoneking and so decided very quickly to focus on military power and don’t think I did a bad job.
Needed a few more turns and I would have had a very decent set of agents. The frees defeat was down to the following factors
a) Complete lack of communication, no-one willing to think outside their neck of the woods with the exception of an early plan of taking the Black Ogre out which brings me very neatly to the next point.
b) Complete lack of recruiting, nations in hot spots such as Lorien did not name 2/3 commanders in their 4 opening slots that should have happened and only had 3/4 commander type characters in their startup. The plan to take out Black Ogre failed due to no second wave, no second wave because nobody recruited. The nation around 2421 failed completely to send troops up towards either Mirkwood or Lorien.
c) Some players adopted the stance that this was a play test and therefore winning was not the point but testing things. Now this might be acceptable to some players but personally if you play ME you play to win, one player went on record stating that he only ever envisaged playing till turn 16.
d) Neutral dialogue was non-existent with the exception of the Steel Hammers (who was easily the most communicative guy on our team).
e) DS planning was far superior the coordinated assault on stacia was the case in point.
f) Nation SNA selection left a lot to be desired. Locating a nation around 3017 without having the SNA hire armies leaves something to be desired. At least two other locations that were always going to be “hot” locations had SNAs that were not helpful.
g) Missed turns – need I say more?
So for me coming to the conclusion that SNAs this and SNAs that caused the loss in the game, is tripe
We the free played cr@p the DS at least from my vantage point seemed to be far more coordinated. My experience in ME is the team that talks and plans wins 90% of the time the team that doesn’t loses - simple as that
Personally I believe removing curses from the game is a mistake a curse squad keeps the agents honest its like taking the option rock away from rock, paper and scissors it makes the scissors a lot more powerful
Jerry
You haven’t received any attention. Yet.
Without a doubt. I’d make that 100% actually. The game is only a contest with either both sides play as a team, or neither does.
So it appears we are 13 to 3 - the whole DS side plus SK + Nadir versus the Babylon Project, Haradrian Elves, and the Wayfarers. The Nadir hasn’t officially declared, so we are technically 12:3 atm. Does that hit any 4:1 criteria, or was this not part of the initial planning / setup?
Scions of Erech #16
Hmm… Some of my Agents have reported some enemy agents lurking around when guarding… and have had gold stolen… So I have received some obviously…
Thomas
Babylone Project
You and I clearly have different concepts of ‘attention’. What you call attention, I would call training. I’ve experienced a bit of that myself. Dave Holt, maybe you could clarify the term for Thomas? I believe you experienced some attention in 145.
Fair critique. I accept all the barbs thrown my way regarding my nation design given the current set of rules. However, i did learn what I was wanting to learn:
a. war machines are not underpriced (something I was concerned about)
b. the “agent advantage” is real
Regarding critique of my game play -
a. I was recruiting every turn with every commander (that wasn’t assassinated).
b. My main army did have a backup CA.
c. The fact that a veteran ended up leading an army was an act of desparation because of the loss of the C40s. That CA should have been a backup commander.
d. you agent guys seem to think that non-agent nations that keep characters in their capital are stupid. Well, think about how many capital orders might be needed each turn and just who is supposed to issue them???
e. I did send as much “2nd wave” against black ogres as hadn’t been assassinated out of existance.
So, while I’m sure that in hindsight there could have been better “gameplay”, I don’t think it was horrible. I do think that the DS did a fine job of focusing on the position and whacking it. A much better job than the freeps did of focusing on Adam and whacking him. But that gets to the last critique:
Critique of lack of FP teamwork - this is entirely justified. There was no team leader. Noone signed up for the job. Every team needs someone who sticks their neck out and spends lots of personal energy looking at the big picture and coordinating people. noone did that for FP in 145. Plus we had some very non-communicative nations. And we had people focused on things like artifact hunts, etc…
Keeping mages and emmys at your capital is usually risky. If you know you are an agent target, it is stupid. Unless that emmy is good enough to double, and you know you are going to get agent names somehow, and you think you will get lucky enough to double the right one …
I agree it is necessary to do capital orders, especially for military nations. But;
-
40 cmdrs, in charge of an army, at the capital, are not agent bait. They are hard to kill. If we managed to kill any of these, it was pure luck.
-
30 agents will require a double scout to be targets. If spotted, they are still bait, but at least they will be killed, not kidnapped.
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You clearly didn’t have team support, but the team play thing to do would be for others to supply the nation under siege (which you were) with gold and product. Then you don’t necessarily need capital orders.
My previous comments were not aimed at your play in general, but at the statements that one ‘needs three 40 agents’ or ‘needs to design their nation to defend against agents’.
If players did more to account for agents being powerful in the game, they would be less powerful. Agents don’t unbalance the game, lazy and foolish play does (not a comment on your play in 145).
Hi Dave,
the recruiting barb is mostly thrown at the Kaladrim, Lankala, and Falcon Lord. If any of those three had really pressed me I would have fallen. But none of them entered the fight in a meaningful way. Lankala and Kaladrim even marched armies past me at one point when I was about to collapse. A half way decent 2nd wave would have slaughtered me.
Leaving 16 war machines at my capital though as the 1st wave peetered out was a mistake – if your allies had marched in I never would have captured them. We used them on your capital and other MT. And I agree – WM are essential for a military nation that wants to deliver knock out blows early on, and appropriately priced.
BTW, I received tons of support from my teammates – about 100k gold. Might surprise you to know I don’t have hire for free – my allies funded it, which was the right thing to do since I was smack in the middle of the board. But that just gets back to teamwork – it was worth alot to the team to keep the black ogre position viable and fighting in mirkwood.
I also had zero characters killed, but constant thefts – up to 5 a turn. You guys really should have dropped a high challenge character into my capital to disrupt things even if you couldn’t assassinate yet.
As for capital characters, those 30 point agents are perfect for issuing capital orders. If a nation has only army commanders, and agents at the capital it’s a pretty tough nut to crack. Especially if the loyalty is high. If you’re being targeted by agents, you have to assume a defensive posture or you’re going to lose big time – there’s no other way around it.
BTW, you had agents from 4 nations on you – we poured almost all our agent resources into whacking the position. As of turn 11 about half the FP nations haven’t lost a single character yet.
Also, my conclusion from the playtest is to put my capital in the mountains just the same as before. It’s still the best and cheapest defensive measure you can take.
Lastly I’d just like to comment how utterly selfish and lame players are who sign up for a playtest and then fail to communicate. The playtest isn’t just for their personal amusement. It’s to inform the design group on the success of the rule changes and give feedback for future changes so the game can be improved for the benefit of all players. By failing to communicate with their teammates they unbalanced the playtest wasting everyone’s time and money. By hobbling the FP team, and causing the game to collapse by turn 10, those selfish players have prevented us from finding out what happens as the game moves to its middle phase. Why players who have no intention of talking sign up for a playtest is beyond me – frankly they should have their staves broken and be frogmarched thrice around the village square covered in dung.
Or at leat thats what we do in Black Ogre territory. 
cheers,
Adam
Now you have received agent attention.
I am curious, if you care to share, what Valen’s skill ranks were (including stealth). In exchange, I will tell you the rank of the assassin was 73 (counting SNAs and artifacts). After the game ends, I would be willing to share complete details if you want.
I would also suggest that this game is over, if you few remaining freeps would like to end it, please let us know and save everybody some money.
Feathalion
At the beginning of this Fourth Age game, were their any starting ruins???
If so, were they the 2950 starting ruins??
thanks,
Goldie Wilson.
Okay Thomas,
that had to hurt.
You’ve put up a brave fight – ready to lay down the sword and put this play test to bed?
Adam
Valens ranks were Command 72, Agent 56, Mage 30 and a Stealth of 10. Not only that but in killing others you got past 50+ agents. Seems that some people on your side got some impressive dice rolls this turn.
Oh well, I am now making a HUGE profit… Time to hide I feel.
Time to hide?
How about time to end this 12 vs 2 game so we can all move onto something more interesting.
You may be having fun still, but bug hunts are bad sportsmanship - the huntee causes the hunters to spend a lot of money and time finalizing a foregone conclusion. We all have busy lives, other commitments and limited resources with which to play MEPBM. Please don’t waste them on a bug hunt.
You’ve fought a good fight. Let’s end this honorably and sensibly.
cheers,
Adam