Veta Schola vs The Praetorians

General
#1

Hi,

Well, we have not written any info about this game, as we just want to enjoy the fight. And believe me, its one hell of a fight :slight_smile:

Turn 13 has just processed, and we have just experienced a situation, that gives that kind of chill down your back which outsiders don’t understand, but as the enlighten ones knows…is why we play this game :slight_smile:

Let me just start by clearing out the obvious questions first. My team (The Praetorians) play the DS and all nations in this game are still alive. WiK and Rhudaur finally is about to be kicked out of Angmar, but this is not any surprise to us as we have not done anything to keep them here.

The situation I want to tell you about happened much further south, more exactly at 2730 and actually developed over several turns. The situation reminds how luck and small tactical decissions can have a great effect on the overall game.

Well, turn 11 we caught the main FP agent squad (consisting of Elrohir and friends, with RoI ) at 2730 with some agents of our own, including a very powerful CL agent with two minor agent artifacts. We decided to have the CL agent target Elrohir and Borhan steal off RoI, even though we also thought about having Borhan guard the CL agent. Turn 12 was a total disaster, nearly everything ****ed up. Elrohir of course went first and slew the CL agent even though the CL agents was better skilled, but luckily Borhan stole of RoI, which was not guarded. Meanwhile Erennis (100+ CL agent was stopped by a 30 guard at the Eot capital ??? And to make things even worse we decided in the last minute to change destination for our curze squad, which originally was supposed to have covered 2730. Instead we had moved in a couple of more agents, including a 37 QA agent, but we expected yet another disaster at 2730 turn 13, as we expected a lot of hostile agents here. After much discussion, we decided to have both Borhan with RoI and another powerful CL agent (but without artifacts) target Elrohir, as we expected him to go first again and take out either Borhan or the other main CL agent. A second less skilled CL agent was targeting another of the FP agents in the party, while the QA agent was guarding RoI.

Here is what happened:

  • Elrohir kills the QA agent, apparently thinking that he had stolen RoI, as they didn’t receive the correct rumor !!!
  • The lesser CL agent killed the FP agent
  • Borhan injured two FP guards, but then got thwarted by the friendly Harad militia on Elrohir ???
  • The CL agent then injure and kills the same two guards and nail Elrohir
  • FP steal back RoI with another agent

I was nearly in shock when I read the CL turn, what a beautiful way of killing four FP agents. I don’t even have the imagination to think out such a plot myself :slight_smile:

This situation could have turned out completely different if just a few rolls or decisions had been changed. Anyway this is the way of the game, and 2730 will glow in my memory for a long time, that’s for sure…

KA

#2

All I can say from the Veta Schola side of things…

ouch…that didn’t work as well as we had hoped!

Yeppirs…I must say the DS are having their way with us on the character front…

will see how things turn out in the end…

later

tony huiatt
Cardolan gm 99

#3

Good job Kim & team. Congratulations to the DS.

We’ve concluded that we didn’t do much wrong and you guys didn’t do much wrong. Minor variations on both sides for little slip-ups wouldn’t much change the big picture. Our conclusion: DS have the winning advantage in competent grudge match play in 1650 without changes to the economy code. This is based not only on this game, but our prior games as DS.

Simply put, the FP need to be able to put economic pressure on the DS. As it is now, the DS can easily (within the rules) build their economy such that their character build is unabated and they can field numerous armies & pop center upgrades.

Note that we took down many starting DS capitals all over the map, including IK & DogL and it didn’t stop you guys at all. You upgraded other pops to MTs, transferred and continued hiring armies & naming characters like crazy. The economy and your excellent play allowed you to weather the storm and by now your character asset advantage were going to be increasingly difficult to counter. We could have played a long drawn out game, but it didn’t seem likely that you guys would make huge mistakes and ultimately with competent play on both sides as the game moves into turns late-teens/ early-20s, it’s the DS’ game.

So congratulations. Your team played very well.

all the best,
Dave

#4

Dear Dave,

First thanks for a great game even though it ended this soon. Your FP opening against Mordor was the best opening I have seen so far.

I agree with your overall thoughts. If DS focus and are allowed to influence market economy and succeed in keeping prices high within allowed game mechanics, then they have a huge advantage. Its however still the job of the FP team to prevent this, and that is still possible in my point of view. I would not say that its easy for DS to manipulate the market. It requires a lot of coordination/planning and DS are still dependent on how things develops in the game and the strategic arrangements of the FP team. And just as well as DS have their ways of manipulating the market, FP have their ways to counter this. But for two equally skilled teams, DS would probably have the best chance of manipulating the market. But economy its a very delicate game mechanic, which balances on the edge of a sword. If FP on the other hand manage to keep all prices at one all game, then FP have a huge advantage and should be able to finish off DS economically with two equally skilled teams.

Anyway best of luck to your team in future games, until we may meet again :slight_smile:

BR
Kim Andersen

#5

i don’t know how an FP team can keep prices at one, when the DS team (within the rules) creates a pseudo OBN. we had very low treasuries and it didn’t take prices anywhere near 1… I suspect that you guys used Harad first and others later to drive prices high with high treasuries in lone nations and played very tight and very well coordinated with other nations. If all extra FP characters are agents to go steal, then there are no emmissaries building camps so the DS get huge quantities of dragon camps in the mountains and build their economy that way. Nope, I just don’t think the FP have a good chance against skilled DS with current economic code.

Dave

#6

This is why the OBN is misdefined and abused. One Nation holding high reserves driving prices up is said, by the game developer, to be BROKEN. So what if you don’t 948 to do so… The game is broken and has to be fixed there, simple and fair. Using the fact the rules are broken to “win” isn’t “winning” in my book.

#7

I agree. the code must be fixed.

#8

Give some greeting to Bernd.

Gixxx

#9

So if FP mannage to lower prices to 1 on all products and keep them there while running zerro economy and thereby strangling the DS economicly, thats not a win too in your eyes ? And if DS use buyouts on a single product, which drives prices sky high, then they are “cheating” as well ?

We play by the rules that are defined by the game developer. Every team has any right to exploit those rules to their best own benefit. To have one DS nation build up a 200k gold reserve in a grudge game alone without any gold being transfered or other help from allied, and where many of this nations allied will be extremely dependent on gold transfers to survive, is actually quite difficult. Remember that you can only sell procucts for 20-25k a turn (if you have enough to sell) and that most DS nations run with large deficits and needs to spend a lot of gold initially on new characters. Furthermore DS can expect to lose a lot of centers initially, which will lower their taxbase and the total DS market sales.

This is a completely other business than having all DS send LR 20-30k gold turn one, so that the reserves already will be 200k from turn two. This is a clear step-by-step tactic which anyone can follow and which will drive prices high instantly. And this is why this has been disallowed.

You cannot change the fact that market manipulation is a great part of this game. And any economic tactic thats hasnt too great an impact or which has counter strategies attached should of course be part of the game, as this is all about skill then.
There are not any counter tactics of having all DS send gold to one allied turn one and then raising gold reserves from here, but there are certainly counter tactics of one DS nation to build up a huge reserve by himself over time.

Having said that I of course agree that if prices become too high permanently, this has a huge impact on the game balance in favor of the DS. If any changes should be made to the economic coding at any time, it should be a certain max limit to each of the market sell prices, no matter how much total gold or gold were present at a single nations stores.

#10

Either it’s broken or it’s not. If it’s broken, it’s a cheap and easy cheat. 1-1-1-1 and double/tripling prices from cornering the market (buyouts) have not been described as Broken. The impact of the reserves of a single nation HAS BEEN by one of the Developers of the game.

It’s not in the rules.

It wasn’t meant to be.

There is a very soft rule against abusing this loophole because it’s broken, not in the rules, and never meant to be.

Rationalizations don’t change that, be they popular or otherwise. It has to be fixed.

If you steal and don’t get caught, you’re still a theif. Doctors used to prescribe cigaretttes as diet aids. As human beings, we LEARN things and, as a result, eventually get around to changing both our morality and our behaviour. This is just another example of that. For those of us who’ve adapted our Morality ahead of time, we’re waiting for the program to get around to changing it’s behaviour. Sigh, a long wait it looks like… :frowning: