As the esteemed Mark Jaede once put it, what makes
MEPBM more fun that "just another war game" is the
strong character aspect of the game. Bill Field also
commented many times that the design of the game was
to make it not just a numbers game. Partly, that
meant not giving out too many details up front,
leaving it for players to discover things on their
own. With internet, much of the discover it on your
own aspect is long gone. Still, strong character
importance leads to this being far more than just a
numbers game. 1000 HI will always defeat 500HI,
unless a strong character in the army kills the
commander prior to combat and sends the larger army
home.
Much in the game doesn't make logical sense nor is it
in keeping with the books. Elrond costs as much as
850 HI? 1000 new recruits with pitchforks can
mutually destruct against 850 well seasoned troops
with steel swords? Galadriel can Influence the
Loyalty of an orc pit and convert it into an elven
city capable of cranking out 1000 HI a month? Dwarven
pony riders are equivalent to Riders of Rohan? Trolls
by the thousand?
Yet, all this is part of game design. If a character
can influence events as much as an army, then it must
cost as much as an army. A PBM game needs to run
within 20-30 turns or so on average, therefore it must
encourage aggressive play, meaning a newly recruited
army needs to be able to stand up to a veteran army.
Further reward for aggressive play comes from allowing
you to recruit from captured cities, even if the old
city was orcs and you�re elven.
So, what does any of this have to do with
assassination? I believe assassination being a means
of disbanding an army is a necessary feature to "make
this more than a war game". Assassination makes
agents very powerful, meaning a team needs mages to
track the agents via artifact locates and possibly
attempt to curse the agents. Without this ability to
drastically effect the game through assassination, the
importance of agents and mages are both depleted
making this little more than a war game.
This isn't much fun to someone that spent 5 turns
recruiting a 2K HC army in steel, but a necessity to
prevent this from being a numbers game where there is
no way to disband that 2K HC army that is marching on
your capital. It is more than a wargame, and the
military nations need to be just as aware of it as the
character nations.
That said, I also think that an effective game design
requires there be the Rock-Paper-Scissors paradigm.
That is, for every offense there needs to be a defense
and for every defense there needs to be an offense.
Rock-Paper-Scissors-NukeBomb, where NukeBomb defeats
EVERY OTHER offense or defense is not such a good
game. I believe that is the fatal flaw of the current
4th age scenario. Agents are NukeBomb.
To a lesser degree, agents are NukeBomb in the 3rd age
scenarios as well. They can kill other characters,
but are very difficult to kill themselves, unless
agents go toe-to-toe. Then, the tie usually goes to
the DS since they can more easily replace their dead.
FP can win 1650, if they're very well organized, very
aggressive, and can devastate the DS before the DS can
bring their superior agent SNA's and the rising
charatcter limit to bear. If the DS can withstand the
early storm and drag the game out, then they can win
by swarming the FP with super agents.
Changes have been made with the goal of reducing the
NukeBomb aspect of agents, but for the most part these
have involved making their orders harder. The double
guard breaks down against an 80+ agent. The
protection of a pop center or fortification breaks
down against an 80+ agent. The protection of an army
breaks down against an 80+ agent.
What this has done is delay the point in the game that
agents become the NukeBomb. Since there is no easy
way to kill enemy agents except other agents (Curse is
good, but can�t kill them as quickly as they are
replaced), eventually one side will win the agent wars
and have a large number of agents over 80 and can kill
anywhere and anytime with little fear of the loss of
their super agents.
Personally, I'd like to see some simple changes that
break the NukeBomb aspect of agents, not by making
their orders harder, but by making it easier for them
to be killed. Currently, they can wonder into an
enemy capital, in company, and have little to fear
other than failing to kill the intended target. If
they're stopped, they may be injured. If they�re
captured, they�ll probably escape. Perhaps, their
company commander gets dead, strandig them for an
enemy counter attack. Still, it is likely a crap
shoot as to whose agents kill whose.
Perhaps something as simple as upping the chance of
death at failing an agent order, however this fails to
address the problem of 80+ agents rarely if ever
failing orders. Perhaps making it harder to escape
once captured, yet this also fails to address 80+
agents rarely if ever getting caught.
Personally, I think the best way to deal with this
would be to prevent an agent from executing an
offensive agent skill order and refusing challenge in
the same turn. I can't imagine the code change for
this would be that difficult. If an agent executes
steal gold, kidnap or assassinate, then check if they
also refused challenge. If they did, throw a message
that you can't refuse and perform offensive agent
actions. You'd still have to know the agent is there,
and win the challenge to kill the agent.
Combine this with a doubled agent failing offensive
orders against ANY nation that the doubler is friendly
with. Again, the code change can't be that difficult.
There must already be a check to see if the character
is doubled to the target nation. Just add another
clause to see if the character is doubled to a nation
that has the target nation at friendly.
The result, I think, will restore character balance.
Mages and commanders become more important as they can
challenge assassins. Emissaries become more important
as double is more effective. Agents don't become the
dominant force in the late game, because it is more
likely they'll be weeded out on they way up to super
agent status, and even a super agent can be killed by
a super commander or mage.
Would this unbalance a game? Perhaps. Then again,
maybe balance could be restored by giving the DS a
couple extra MTs in the Misties and Mirkwood at game
start.
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