First of all, sorry about being unclear about which scenario. I play mainly
Fourth age because it is truly more balanced in general (although certain
games seem to be overbalanced one way or the other due to the synergistic
effects of SNAs and nation location).
Let me rephrase my earlier comment then. 2 things that by improving the
game would be more enjoyable are military and agents.. 
The military aspect of the game generally devolves to recruiting HC and HI
and mass battles. By tweaking how the different troop types work, you could
see different types of military forces. Think Quantrell's Raiders in the US
Civil War(or War of Northern Aggression depending on where you're from).
Light cavalry that struck behind the lines causing disruption in Union
Supply lines. By changing how some of the troop types work, it could make
smaller raiding forces that don't need food more plentiful.
By this change, instead of massive armies being thrown forward, you would
see nations keeping small "raiding repeller" forces in the rear and have to
balance the utility of one massive army to take Major PCs or several smaller
forces to take camps and villages.
Tweaking the combat spells would help as well, giving mages their due in a
battle. As it is, mages generally do mostly information spells and stay at
home. By tweaking this, you would have to decide between sending mages out
to fight, losing the ability to raise their mage ranks, or keeping them at
home for information spells. The C/M would gain more use, much like the C/A
does now.
Agents: Perhaps there needs to be more anti agent capability added to the
game. The ability to double agents is good, but the opportunity rarely
arises. First you have to know the location of the agent, then you have to
have a high ranking emissary in the location, and lastly, the order has to
work. I know a general strategy to defend against this is to move an agent
company into a friendly location and have friendly emmies double all the
agents. Then, when your ally no longer has an agent doubled, you know it's
time to have another agent discover an agent is turned.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but from my experience, it seems that
agents can be overbalancing in games. Take 1650 for example. The Eo and
Nmen get pounded by agents from the beginning. By the time the Free develop
agents of their own, the DS have dragons running amuck. Not that the free
can't win, but the advantage in agent ability seems to go a long way towards
securing DS victory. The Free in 1650 (notice I'm clarifying the scenario
) can count on the Nmen capital being overrun by agents and the Nmen and
Eo unable to do much in their capitals where Din O, Lomelinde and others
hang out.
For most scenarios, I think a more strict penalty to operations in enemy
towns, and against enemy armies would help shave off some fo the advantage
agents have. This would still allow agents to assassinate characters at
normal ability in their and their ally's PCs. Another tweak would be to
have this penalty dropped if, for example, a Free army was in a DS PC, the
penalty for assassinating the army commander would be dropped. This would
reflect recruiting one of the local populace to drug the food etc... This
would serve to make assassins of 60-80 rank more defensive in their
assassination attempts, and only 80+ agents would have a chance of
conducting offensive operations in Enemy territory.
I don't think agents are broken, I just think they could use some tweaking
to make their use more tactical rather than throwing decent (60-80) agents
out into enemy PCs to assassinate at will.
Thanks for your comments, they make me think and organize my thoughts a
little more.
What do you think of the troop type modifications? Do they make sense, and
would they help the game?
···
-----Original Message-----
From: Middle Earth PBM Games
[mailto:me@MiddleEarthGames.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 2:00 PM
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [mepbmlist] Re: ME Second Edition Idea
I think the 2 things that need the most improvement are the
military and
>agent aspect of the game. Military is too weak, and agents
are too strong.
>Assassination should be a rare occurrence, not an every
turn sort of thing.
>Buy putting the -20% modifier to assassination in enemy pop
centers or army
>commanders, you would raise the required rank of the agent.
*** I wouldn't agree - we recently won a massive military
campaign in game
77 (despite massive agent and curse squad superiority), and
I have seen
many teams win this (military) way. I think players get the
wrong idea -
characters are a commodity that is used to win the game. I
have written an
article for Bree as this is one of the most common
"complaints" and one
that I feel is taken out of proportion to the impact they
have on who
actually wins the game. Game 144 sees the FP pushing
forward with massive
military might and we are definitely on the back foot in
that game on turn
5 despite the agent/weakness superiority I think we have.
(Note this
opinion is partially based on games that I see - as agents
develop in the
game they do become stronger).
>This means 60-80 rank agents would still be able to
assassinate in your home
>pop centers (or your allies) but would be ineffective in
enemy pop centers
>or against army commanders. Flavor wise, that would mean
only the best
>agents would be capable of harming enemy characters and
possibly reduce the
>commonness(is that a real word) of turn 2 assassination.
*** This often happens - note FA is different please be
clear here as this
is what you are talking about.
>In one game I am in right now, there are 7 name agent 40s,
6 bonus stealth
>more likely and 5 double scout/recon amongst 9 players.
That could be a
>sign of just how important agents are(or at least are
percieved) to the
>game. Or it could just be random chance...
Is this FA or otherwise. FA has lots of big characters - we
limit agents
in many games due to this sort of game (NKA, LAS and even
the Normal game
only allows one CL agent nation per alignment).
Clint
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