There is nothing to clarify Brad. Go back and reread the OBN ruling from 12-10-06; it is quite clear. It very specifically bans shipment etc. of gold to go over 80,000 gold, but conversely, very specifically allows single nation hoarding of gold. Clint: "I intend to take no action about using high tax rates or market buy-outs to affect the market prices. " It is ridiculous of you to say your side thought having over 100,000 gold in treasury was not allowed due to “house rule.” Where did you come up with that one?? It is your team’s fault if you couldn’t understand that plain language going in.
Question *
You boys are old hacks like me. Once games get out beyond turn 26+ the market goes ballistic unless you as the free work constantly to contain it. This OBN concept is a team effort to skew the market at the outset. I think you are seeing a flaw that was always there with new eyes. Also it sounds like some sour grapes. Just consider it a tactic to be used or defended against and move on. If you have a neutral say Harad or Corsairs do nothing but nation build and develop their economy the can have 100k+ in 10-12 turns easy.
You guys are great players and we are all dedicated to this game and have loved it for years. Don’t get all work up to where you are all bent and do not want to play anymore. Mike said it. GunBoat is for you Brad. Although you can still work your economy to aquire great wealth ASAP. Just try and remember we do this to have fun and test our mettle against friends in a fantasy battle.
Qudos to US (The Twisted)
This player is strongly opposed to any further “rulings” on the OBN situation. Your original ruling covers the matter adequately. I can’t envision some sort of “economic police” keeping a nation from growing its treasury over 80,000 or 100,000 or whatever arbitrary number you choose. Please do not put too much attention on the sour grapes of a single losing side in a single game! If they were sports, they would immediately want to switch and rematch with the exact same rule set as the first game…
No Drew, the point of the “ruling” was to prevent people abusing the broken code. The ruling does not do that, it simply disallows certain orders under certain circumstances. As I said before, people get away, literally with murder, due to these kinds of “technicalities”.
So if we’re stuck with a bad hand-mod until actual programming can take place, how about we consider the possiblity of a better hand-mod that takes the INTENT more into account.
It seems some people are always looking for the edge. Hackers are always ahead of the anti-virus software folks, aren’t they? Try to program every IF-THEN-ELSE and you’re doomed to an infitinty of exceptions. A Clear Statement is different than Case Statement (for the programmers out there…) and can be acted upon.
You and Scholtzie miss the point of my argument. Either:
- specific actions are banned
or
- this is broken and we want to prevent the abuse of it
Choose.
Brad
This was agreed upon before we even started this game – but guess there won’t be a rematch now !!
Mike
We apologize for being naive twits. I recall a game where one of Drew’s allies screwed up. We let them off the hook, when there was no rule or rhyme or reason for us to have taken such a moral high ground. Even after taking the moral high ground, we were disparaged and slandered and accused of all sorts of bad things.
It seems that people get to pick and choose whether they want “right and wrong” or whatever happens to be good for me “right now”. Nice to see who falls on what side.
If asking for Opinions – if can’t get a fix on the Code as you suggested that you might have , then I think the rules you have are good enough already and the OBN or a limit can be discussed at the begining of any Grudge game
my 2c worth
Mike
OK, I see you are switching gears now. Your statement before was, hey, we thought there was some house rule out there that prevented you DS from keeping too much gold. The OBN ruling is very clear. There is no limitation on a nation building up its own economy without any help from allies. Specific actions are banned. In your case, nothing was abused, as no prohibited actions were undertaken (I know the team that beat you, in fact declined an invitation to pick up a drop a couple of turns ago, so I know how it went down). If you don’t want your opponents using legal gold accumulation to increase mkt prices, make a specific agreement before the game starts. If that’s what you thought the OBN ruling did, you were sadly mistaken. No more “rulings” are needed. If it bothers you so much (and it only bothered you in defeat I add) then simply make your own agreement with your opposition beforehand.
Some people try to play by the rules and win. Some people want to change the rules when they lose.
Moral high ground my ass! You, Brad, gave up any claim to moral high ground when you, personally, forwarded those orders, sent in error to the wrong yahoogroup (you know, the one where you and my ally were allies), to the other group. With friends like you, who needs enemies? The true moral high ground would have been for you, Brad, to have immediately deleted the emails you received in error, and NOT sent them on to your other team. Yeah maybe your “team” took the high road, but it was only put in that position having to choose because of your own personal “rotten judgement” to betray an ally in one game for gain in another.
Your “moral” posturing makes me laugh. Face it, you obviously didn’t understand the OBN ruling going in; either that, or you did and after losing, you decided to blame your defeat on the nefarious play of your opponents breaking the “spirit” of the rule.
Drew
Man I find it funny that you want to blame him for somthing you did Drew and that your still so upset over what was your own mistake. And Brad that should teach you, the next time someone sends you their orders by way of email. Dont say a word about it becasue if you do, your called dishonest and you cant say another word about anyone else ever.
Your personal dislikes of Fax aside the issue remains:
I think the matter is: If ONB is allowed in this maner and everyone knows how to do it. Is the game broke? I think I could win next to game ONBing a DS team. I think this is the norm of most good players. Solo ONBing, is still ONB its just a slower way to do it. Doing it in a grudge game where Neutrals are already split up is not right.
I can see it now, every good DS team dose somthing like this: LR dumps all his armies turn 1 or kills them turn 2. Then he names 4 emys and solo ONB’s for the rest of the game. Thats all he has to do; alone he will drive up the market and support his whole team. By spending no gold and max selling every turn, hold nothing town wise to be stole from. Why not just emy away a few low loy. allie camps to with a lot of pruduct that you can sell every few turns while your at it. This will put every game, in a turn 15 or so econ where DS nations can live off 1 MT and 4 camps or just Sum. Mounts with a few mages to net his 30k a turn sells. Therefor all the DS have to do is live until about turn 10 then its game over. Two 50 point mages sum. 500 mounts a turn. 500 mounts at 50 gold each is 25000 gold a turn in sells. Gold held by the DS team keeps going up and up and up. Now the DS never have to worry about gold and the FPs can’t econ attack them. Why at that point the FPs should not even bother with armies they cant take all the DS MTs fast enough to knock nations out of play. Its next to an unstoppable DS victory plan.
How is this any less ONBing by players? Is this not the samething?
It was clear to me that intent to ONB was outlawed, though its clear that many feel this is not so. How many others feel that the rule was to STOP ONB and intent to let it happen? No one nation should be holding gold with intent to drive up the market to allow the DS to win the game. Its an unfair and next to unstopable way to play.
Reguardless, I think new rules on ONB must to be made. Its clear this is just another game exploit. Not letting Clint fix this would be silly. It means that players are cheating the rule by solo ONBing. Drew I’m guesing you fit this bill. Otherwise why not fix the market as Clint puts forth. Also why dose a nation really need more then 100k in their bank? If your whole team has lots of gold just move it.
JL
The reason i spoke out so loudly against OBN is simple… the fact one nation holds over 100K in reserves nullifies natsells… My expierence I sold 34k of food @ 1 and saw food go up to 2 on the same turn… Someone tell me how that makes sense in true market conditions…
Next the advantages of the DS is clear… the most powerful characters in the game with THE nation with +20 assasinations/kidnaps… The game designers intentional gave the DS huge gold reserves and high deficits to counter this… FP have huge economic base… DS great defensive positioning to trap and kill FP com’s and thier armies… IE game balance!
Now OBN nation allows market prices to skyrocket pushing up the natsell limit and increasing the price at the same time… Whether the cuase was from natsells or gold transfers whatever the how’s IT UNBALANCES THE GAME IN THE DS TEAM FAVOR! no Fp would ever use the ILLEGAL effect becuase they would lose!
So beat your chests and say it’s ok… But I was not in this game and I never want to play on a team using it becuase It’s no challenge to win a game where you can write in the end any order you want with no sacrifice… I have friends on boths sides of this game… Guys Let’s make this game about who plays best with effects that makes no sense or there is No Counter for!
Agreed, can’t understand how people can justify doing it, just because it’s one nation alone that does it.
That nation is not hoarding gold to prepare for a major invasion, he’s doing it to becomse OBN, and thus he’s exploiting a flaw in the game-design.
My take here is the one I brought up before. Where a game mechanism, that wasn’t in the design has been broken then it needs to be addressed. Although I have run a few hundred tests now, I don’t feel safe implementing the code change at present as the market is a subtle thing and will have some unintended consequences. (Eg DS are used to having higher levels of gold so that will impact on the game, amongst others).
Now the OBN original ruling doesn’t seem to quite address the problems of the original OBN situation. I would like to address that with the following addition to the rule:
New ruling I would like to implement
i) No nation can send gold or product to another nation to bring it’s reserves to over 80k gold. (Ammendment to the orignal ruling).
ii) If a nation has over 80k reserves then it must lower its reserves. That can be by buying product, sending out gold. So that will cap the high end of the gold reserves I suspect.
I would ask that players with OBN treasuries apply rule ii).
Clint
What do player thinks?
Orignal ruling for reference
One Banker Nation in more detail
Why is this a Bug? and not mid-game change of rules. I chatted to the game designer about this and it’s unintended. It is an error of coding. They come up so rarely in Middle Earth, I’m very glad to say, that action has to be taken now to stop its impact. Due to the enormous impact it has on the game we feel that steps need to be taken now. In most cases it removes the entire need for a strategic economic element to the game and therefore benefits the DS majorly. There is a direct correlation between gold in the One Banker nation (the nation with the highest level of gold) and the market prices and natsell limits. (See below for example Leather @23 sell price employing this strategy).
Has everyone been contacted? Yes - note if you want to see some of the discussion check out the forum (it’s the sticky thread called One Banker Nation Ruling) and the list.
For now we’ll do that by hand (and I’ll implement a code change as soon as we can get something sorted and tested):
It’s simple to moderate - if players feel that the market has been bumped unfairly get in touch and we’ll check the orders. If we find that it has occurred, we’ll remove all the gold received from that banker nation and we will consider further measures. (Note sending gold to nations is still fine for other reasons - it’s easy to moderate).
This is the simplest short term solution and workable, especially if players abide by this ruling. Players are generally very ethical, so a hand moderated ruling will work well. We do something very similar in Gunboat and find it works fine.
We will not make any changes to the market prices in current games, even if the banker nation tactic has been used. However, from Monday we will enforce this new ruling.
I intend to take no action about using high tax rates or market buy-outs to affect the market prices. They are tactical choices, with both positives and negatives, and there are strategies which opposing teams can employ to counter them. (Eg Emmissaries for low loyalty PCs, ease of Threatening for high tax nations, and selling product and keeping a low gold level for reducing the impact of Buy-outs). We might look at keeping gold levels below 200k in future for other nations in the game as we appreciate that some Neutrals will look at increasing their own gold values appropriately.
I’ll soon look at implementing code changes. These will aim to emulate the present market, with removal of the One Banker nation strategy. No doubt this will have minor changes to the market code, but I feel that something needs to be done here.
** Thanks to everyone for bringing this to my attention; it is very, very much appreciated. **
Hey look friend, I only countered with the facts about G57 because Brad brought it up in the first place trying to claim some sort of weird moral high ground in this debate. And you are incorrect; I made no mistake. I applaud your team for telling ours once you had the CL orders; but why did you have them in the first place? Yes, a player made a mistake posting to the wrong group, but he didn’t send to your group. It was Brad who forwarded them on to your group, where he got them supposedly being allies with said CL. And don’t put words in my mouth like “dishonest” as I’ve never accused Brad or anyone on that team of dishonesty. My words can be plainly read by all to see without your characterizations, thank you very much.
And I don’t appreciate you saying you assume I am “cheating the rule.” Like Brad, you obviously don’t understand the OBN ruling. If you would be bothered to reread it, I think you would find that a team can’t “just move it” as any gold shipment resulting on over 80,000 gold with the intent of manipulating mkt prices is prohibited.
Some other points:
Note as an aside I think the FPs could still well have won game 85 as other than economy they were doing very well.
I’m taking this action not due to individual players’ complaints but because I feel it is the right action to take. The OBN ruling, now that it has been tested, needs to be updated.
Be nice to each other guys, I know tempers and frustrations are high but the best way to find a solution is to work through this… I think I have a solution and would like to implement it but would like feedback before committing to it.
Clint
Clint, an 80k number is too low for this part of it. I don’t quibble with the 80k number for gold shipments, as I agree (I know some on this forum will be shocked <g>) that creating an OBN on T1 via 948s is destabilizing to the game. But a nation growing their own gold reserves does so at some other cost somewhere else, and only happens over time. I would strongly argue for this number to be no less than 100k, and something more like 120k would be better. Even if this number is 120k or 100k, you could still prohibit gold shipments with the intent of increasing mkt prices via the previous 80k rule.
It is very possible for DS nations to have in the neighborhood of 80k end of turn 1 or 2, but have a deficit in the -15k to -20k range. As long as they received no shipments to get to their number, they shouldn’t be forced to send out gold, knowing they will need some within a turn or two themselves.
At the very least, please wait to make any new ruling until the G85 DS team can present its own findings to you. Just from the little I’ve already heard on the down-low, I assure you, it will be of interest to you in this decision!
Drew
No nation needs to have more than 80k in the bank… that’s 2-3 turns of orders. Any amount over this is known to have a destabilising effect on the market so it is to be avoided. I have played against the ONB and it cannot be countered. It is a known fault and anyone trying to take advantage of it is in my opinion, not playing in the spirit of the game. It is a huge advantage to the DS and unbalances the game. Any Freep player on the recieving end of it, however it occurs will be a very frustrated person. Just my 2 cents worth.
Regards Herman
Once more, Clint, you engage in ‘logrolling’, something I have complained about in the past. A mere 15 hours after Brad complains, you anxiously seek to please him. The postal players had no inpit, persons visiting their grandparents last night had no input. People who do not hover around the MEPBM forum constantly and read every entry had not input. Your mind is made up after only 4/5 players have commented. Have I mentioned, this could be considered a weakness in your GM skills?
Well I think you had your mind made up over this as you came out with this ruling way to fast !! I would keep all the original rules and if do decide on how high gold reserves can go – I would use 100k as the cap !
Question I have is – does this apply to all games or just grudge games – if applies to all games I don’t think this is fair as in say in a gunboat like type game where there are no message – what would happen if I got over 100k – I am certainly not sending gold to an ally I don’t even know if he is around anymore or if he owns say his capital !!
But if now deciding to put a Cap on Gold reserves , I would think the difference be split and 100k would be a limit !! As wouldn’t take the other side but a few steals to lower this and have never seen a nation not running a deficiet !!
But then again what happens if game becomes a long one like I have been in a couple times and you get to sell 100k in a turn – is this then allowed !!
I really didn’t see a problem with what is already in place as you can counter the OBN , by stealing from them – the freeps in game 85 couldn’t figure out who it was as everyone on the evil side lost something – so they where stealing gold from wrong nation !!