Do you have used OBN or not?
Looking on the things I’ve read, you have!
It’s really stupid that the ME-prog allows a “dynamic” like this!
Okay, you can answer we’re playing a fantasy-war-game and it isn’t based on logic.
… but the results of this OBN they aren’t explainable!
… or will you do that for me?
Have Fun!
Gixxx
Howdy All,
Whether OBN or OMN should be allowed or prevented can be answered by a simple question.
Who wants to play the FP against DS that employ this option (OMN) ? My brother Tim thinks that he can still win as the FP against such a team. I am NOT of that opinion. If the DS can employ a OMN strategy, I’m NOT SURE that I can win as a FP! Is there ANY instance of the DS employing an OBN or OMN strategy where that team ended up losing? That being said, I’m not adverse to a least playing one game as a FP grudge team vice a OMN DS team to see if I/FP can be successful.
I have a ton of respect for Kevin having been a team mate with him for the past couple of years. 99 times out of 100 he comes up with the best, well reasoned strategy and approach for dealing with game situations. I’m still savoring that ONE time I was right 
In this one aspect of the game, I’m not sure that I agree with you Kevin in that a FP team can “thwart” a OMN strategy. I don’t think the FP can develop enough good agents to “steal gold of significance” by turn 10, let alone identify “the” OMN nation. Knowing that it is possible, and trying to devise a strategy to defeat it as a FP team…would pretty much dictate the entire FP team strategy IMO, because if you don’t thwart it, then your team will lose to the “better character advantage” in the end. And what do the DS have to do to employ such a strategy…simply allow OMN raise his treasury. This is VERY EASY for the DS to employ, and very difficult for the FP to counter. For that reason alone I feel it challenges the game balance.
I agree that knowing the possibility exists for an OMN means that someone can devise a good defense for the long haul. But it certainly can NOT be prevented from occurring in the first place, giving the DS uncounted turns of market benefits at the most critical stage of the game (turns 6-11).
I feel like one of the key strategies a well run FP team can employ to defeat the DS is via ecomomics. By dropping FP economies and forcing the DS to try and market manip to fund their nations…This can be directly thwarted. Keeping reserves low also makes it difficult for DS to name additional characters, fund armies to fend off the inevitable FP assault, etc., one of the keys to slowing DS character progress is to make it difficult for them to fund/name new characters.
One of the keys to winning the game on either side is to eliminate enemy nations. Doing so financially is probably the most effective tool. This can impact the FP as well as the DS, in that a FP running a low treasury can get an unexpected seige/challenge to his ability to nat sell and get eliminated in that fashion, just as the FP are trying to do the same with the DS. A OBN/OMN game makes this tool much more difficult to employ.
Clint…all in all, I’m not in favor of artificially enforcing bank accounts below a certain value. I think the only solution is a code change. This will prevent teams from “wondering” if the market is artificially high and that something slipped past the GM. And I concur that having to have characters perform “actions” to prevent “penalties” that are not game related detracts from the enjoyment of playing this game.
I for one wouldn’t mind playing in a game with the new coding…as I’ll be looking for unintended side effects / consequences.
well nuff said by me
Tony Huiatt
The Freps are able to use the OBN too, it’s not a DS-specific institution!
… but It doesn’t make any sense.
… and I hate things that doesn’t make sense (excluding my orders).
Game dynamic, Hmmm really questionable!
Have Fun!
Gixxx
Not to overcomplicate matters but maybe an inflation measure could be built into the game. If prices go up then wages go up. Inflation could be measured by the relative change in maximum nation sell. So if the market limit is 40k and we start with 20k on t0 then inflation runs at 2 and this gets applied to maintenance costs, build costs, character costs etc. Would lead to an interesting dynamic. Inflation gets set every round and reflected in your expected revenues for next turn. Everything stays relative and players can hoard as much gold as they like which is part and parcel of life and game objectives
Naturally I’m over simplifying things and can see how this might be difficult to apply to the game but it would definetly be interesting!
For the record I like the game as it currently run and played but I thought I’d bring an idea to the table…
I think this ruins the specialties of many nations by asking them to do something others will not have to do. For example, Harad has greath wealth, but now he must delegate orders to move his wealth because he is not allowed to save it. This is supposed to be one of his strengths and bargaining tools. Or how about the CL, his agents steal 20k in gold for successive turns and now he is being asked to transfer his gold because he has stolen too much. The issue is more about strategy, than OBN. If you look closer at game 85, you’ll see certain strategic decision by both sides that ultimately impacts the market. Decisions unrelated to gold.
In game 85 not a single 948 order was sent to the nation with the most gold. The nation in question did what every other nation did during the course of the game, sell product. The only reason this nation has so much gold is because our opponents ignored him, but he did not ignore them. To date, not a single piece of gold was stolen. NOT ONE! Guys, this is a stratigic decision of the opposition. But what kind of strategy would allow a nation to amass that kind of gold? A losing one! 
All this crying going on because one side has choosen to ignore a nation and then watched the prices go up, well that’s the penalty for ignoring any nation while concentrating on other nations. Sort of a strategic decision, is it not?
I like the elimination the 948 order at 80k is good and the eliminating of all other 948 orders that would enhance the nations gold reserves. But if a nation is just selling what little product he has and stealing the oppositions gold and saving his wealth, then that’s just good gaming. Shame should be focused on the decision of the opposition to not perform any 690 orders.
Every game has a different market and game 85 ballooned because of the strategic decisions by our opponents, not by us to enhance a single nation. ANY NATION would have great wealth if they were ignored and any market would react accordingly.
I’m in other games where this great wealth is common, but the only reason is because both sides have ignored certain nations. Once again, it’s about strategy. Let’s not simplify it to gold reserves impacting the market.
Dan
game 85 part-timer
Wouldn’t it be cool if someone figured-out how to counter this???
For the record, my brother, Tony Huiatt is wrong. But that is nothing new.
Tim Huiatt
True, but then you would be GAINING and order, Mike. You could adjust and skip a 948…
Guys, (and Gals)
I’m saddened by the undercurrents here. Blame. Accusations. Denial. Hostility.
Losing a game for reasons you feel were uncontrovertably forbidden is frustrating. I see where you are coming from.
Winning a game for the same reasons is frustrating.
But losing gamer-friends (some of us have been together for years) and threatening to pull away from an endeavor we all apparently love to do, is just sad, and in my very humble opinion, bordering on the tragic.
As Ben says, this is Clint’s game. He should fix it as he sees fit. And he should code it. Letting players police themselves makes for too much room to wonder.
I wonder, would the 85 FP rematch the DS in a hard-cap game? Would the 85 FP rematch as DS with no rule changes?
Clint is in the game of customer service. He is tending to his business. I urge him to look over the turns of game 85 extensively. We have the luxury of having seen how to defeat our own nations, the FP did not.
I hate to be the voice of reason, but let’s temper this all with a little compassion all around. Isn’t the world a ****ty place enough? Isn’t that why we’re all here?
Ok, peace-chant over.
Jason Vafiades
WHOA There!!! If a nation can get its gold reserves up over 100K, let them go for it…its part of the game. The Free enjoy a tremendous advantage in military and economy…they have better characters too to start.
If we limit the gold, let’s go ahead and limit dragons too…
And let’s make all the characters on both sides the same in starting values…
And let’s make sure all the SNAs on both sides are the same…
In fact, while we are at it…let’s make the game boring as hell!!!
The OBN has been fixed with the current ruling. PLEASE don’t make a change to coding or force a nation to give up gold or to never be allowed to get over 100K.
I think doing so is a knee jerk reaction to someone’s complaint. Not all squeaky wheels need grease. Some just need to be replaced.
Rollin
I have to disagree with you most adamently. It is not up to a player to determine the “reason” for another player to have a high gold reserve. It is the second player’s choice, his right, to do as he desires.
Are you then going to determine the “reason” why a player is increasing the size of a certain PC when it doesn’t meet the team’s desires, or yours, or Clints or whoever’s? Where do we stop?
I think the current rules are fine…we don’t need more impediments. Just play and play hard.
Rollin
All the FP have to do at that point is use those lovely Palantirs, find the MTs and away they go as the FP emmies do their thing. Now the DS have spent all that gold and orders building a MT that the FP get to enjoy…
My point here is that there are counters to everything, every strategy.
Attack, counter attack, counter-counter attack…etc.
Rollin
If players are generally very ethical, then why the rule in the first place? Come on…It seems to me that a few people,and it seems a very few, want to stack the deck so that they insure their own victory.
It seems to me that a study was done some time back on which side usually wins…wasn’t it the Free with the most wins? I could be wrong, but that was my recollection as I thought most assumed the DS won the most.
Please, please, don’t start implementing further restrictions, codes, or dictating to players that they “must” issue certain orders in their game.
It seems more like socialism…big brother stepping in to appease a few. Let’s make sure everyone is happy…sure hate to see someone go about unhappy in the game.
Guys/gals…this is big boy rules as far as I’m concerned. Grow a pair of, whatevers, and get after it! Stop the crying and whining. Sheesh…you’d think you were at the democratic national convention in the middle of their blame game.
Rollin
Horse hockey! That’s what I think. I can not agree in any measure to ME limiting a nation to how much gold it can gather. I can not agree in any measure to ME forcing a nation to execute orders to buy product or send out gold. I think THAT is unfair…the player in question is spending his/her own money to play the game and is entitled to do as he/she wishes with his/her nation.
Folks, it’s just not a good idea. If later on, a handful of players decide that the Free also ought to have +20K/A SNA, are we going to support that?
If in a FA game, both Kingdoms and a majority of the neutrals jump to oneside unbalancing the game…are going to make it a ruling that only one Kingdom per side? So if SK goes DS, does that mean that the NK player now must execute orders to go Free?
Do you not see where this is going? Where do we draw the line? I’m drawing mine right here, right now…and I don’t usually get vocal about this stuff. But this has got my ire.
If this goes through…I’d like to recommend a new SNA…+20 KMA!
Rollin
I continue to disagree with this whole heartedly.
Rollin
Clint, making people buy product will indeed top off reserves, but it’ll inflate the prices of those products so other nations on the same team can sell at a higher profit. In turn, that team benefits almost exactly the same way as (in my experience) it does now: the nations with “lesser” economies, who (in theory) would be more prone economic difficulty, can still fairly easily sell for the market limit each turn.
My point: the conclusion “So that will cap the high end of the gold reserves I suspect” is not a slam-dunk.
Where to then?
b
Are you suggesting that those of us who don’t want to see a further reaction to (what I’ll refer for the sake of simplicity as) the OBN dynamic are “a very few, [who] want to stack the deck so they insure [sic] their own victory” ???
I am arguing here for several reasons:
The code is NOT “BROKEN.” It is as it alyways has been.
Making rules that have to be artificially enforced is bad policy (hard to consistently implement, no matter what anyone thinks, or how “ethical” players are) and bad precedent.
The dynamic can be countered. Like everything else in MEPBM.
The dynamic is at is always has been. Many, many games have been affected by it. Just because we can now better identify it doesn’t invalidate all of the games that have already passed. [Or does it? shall we erase all reference to past games to appease the OBN-sensitive?]
Can those who have not yet voiced an opinion please do so? I would be loathe to see further changes unless a massive majority wants to see it.*** How many people in the greater MEPBM community feel they either have been, or are likely to be in the future, truly aggrieved by the issue at hand?
Let’s go folks.
b
*** Regardless of how “the majority feel” I still feel compelled to point out that democracy is genereally over-rated. There’s a reason that functional western societies are Representative Republics rather than Democracies - mob-rule doesn’t work very well.
[QUOTE=bshushan;58511]Are you suggesting that those of us who don’t want to see a further reaction to (what I’ll refer for the sake of simplicity as) the OBN dynamic are “a very few, [who] want to stack the deck so they insure [sic] their own victory” ???[QUOTE]
No…I am arguing pretty much what you are saying in your 3 points.
I think the game needs to be left alone.
R2
Aye – but I wouldn’t be , being told that I have to issue an order – that is my whole Point – by not being told what to do with my nation but at least i would now if I went over the cap in gold it would automatically be given to an ally
Both side in game 85 agreed to a rematch switching sides before the game even started – so of course the DS in game 85 where gonna take the freeps on with all the rules that where in effect at the begining of game 85 !!