I like the idea of the "Dedicated" or "Veteran" game, whichever
nomenclature you prefer. It seems a fairly workable solution to one of
the competitive imbalance issues.
The other one, Neutral declarations being too decisive, is a bit
trickier. I'm personal fine with how Neutrals currently operate in
MEPBM. More diplomacy and less belly-aching IMHO would be a better
solution. However, sometimes things don't play out fair, no matter how
much you or your team has tried to recruit a Neutral to your cause.
Why not institute in pre-approved games a mandatory competetive balance?
What I mean by this is that Neutrals would be required to join alliance
in a fair and balanced way. If one Neutral decided to go DS, the next
Neutral MUST go FP. Then no other Neutral would be allowed to Change
Allegiance until a Neutral, any Neutral, had joined the FP to restore a
competetive balance. For example, they Rhudaur player decides on turn 1
they want to go Evil and does so. On turn 2 the Dun player decides that
they also want to go DS. They would not be allowed to sucessfully issue
the Change Allegiance order until one of the other three Neutrals went
FP. If no other Neutral went FP, then all the Neutrals would be unable
to join the DS until one joined the FP. After the 2nd Neutral had joined
the FP, the 3rd Neutral would be required to join the DS. This would
continue until 5th Neutral was the only one left, who would then decide
on their own which side it wished to join.
This would guarantee at worst a 0-1 split or ideally, a 3-2 split.
Dropped Neutral positions wouldn't be that affected because the
remaining Neutrals would still have to follow the competetive balance
rule. If only 4 are left it goes 2-2, if only 3 left, 2-1. Diplomacy
would still be vital to recruiting a Neutral to make sure you'd get the
one you'd want to join, and would possible develop further amongst
Neutrals themselves as they may negotiate who'll join whom. The Neutrals
themselves should be informed on their turn results when a Neutral
joined an alliance, and also possibly make it impossible to do
Downgrades or Upgrades to any nation until the balance is restored.
I feel this to be and entirely fair way to the respective alliances to
keep the playing field even. It may be somewhat unfair and overbearing
to the Neutrals, but a game like this would be set up with the knowledge
that this would be the rules for that game, and individual player would
be given the option to play it or a regular game.
Chris Guerra
···
--
Chris Guerra
leonidas@fastmail.fm
But whats to stop both sides from