Well , no one likes losing and see the country torn apart in front of your eyes .
The thing is that I`m not against losing in the game . I just don`t like losing in an unfair situation . Anyway , I `ve accepted my handicap (not just now , but some time ago) and wanted to stabilize this handicap . Ben knows that I `ve sent him a document this morning . When I sent this thing I was not aware that I was in a ban list , and those things are written in the forum against me . Well Maur is right about our game , but except for the last part (after each and every other country has attacked me) , I think that Maur would except that France was in a good condition against Austria . And after I got 3-4 provinces of Spain , I made a white peace with him (I didn`t know that Spain was supporting Austria economically in anyway) . So may I ask you , would a warmonger make peace if he gets 3-4 provinces with an enemy that has attacked him ??? And having a war exhaustion in Austria like +14 or something , who would guess that he`s supplied by Spain all the time and try to make a peace getting nearly nothing after 10-12 years ?
And last thing Maur ... Don`t you think that being attacked by every other nation at the very same time and suddenly is a bit unlucky situation . Even my allies attacked me !
Anyway .... I `ve written the stuff below for 1 week . But I now think that (and Mowers think the same too) this is useless . And I don`t have the desire to do something anymore , being stubborn and stupid and ill and whatever . All I wanted was having good relations with the human players diplomatically , developing my country and of course not being attacked by 2 major countries . Ok , I developed the country , become the first , couldn`t get any human allies although I tried a lot , and have been attacked by countries and lost . So don`t you all think that this is a vicious circle and I can`t get out of it ? There`re 2 alternatives for me at this moment :
1. Not to chose Spain
2. Not develop dramatically fast and don`t become strong (live happily etc.)
I `ve chosen the first one . The game that was with Maur was unlucky for me as he might also accept , and I accept that he`s a good player , especially diplomatically (the Spain player stuff was very interesting now I can see) . And he`s better in military too . ( I still cannot forgive myself by losing Ballard foolishly) . I might send a game that I played with some other players , that I`m still France and the other players are really good in their behalf and I don`t get this dramatic stuff in that game . I might send it in fact .
So I send the proposal I`ve prepared a week ago , and it`s irrelevant at the moment . But I want you to see that at least I`ve worked on a system that would make things more fair .
And last thing .... I still believe that I`m a reliable and a decent player who likes EU2 a lot and develop its country . I was just bad at losing , I couldn`t admit defeat against strong powers . That`s all ..
Ambiguous
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Brand New Multi Player Grand Campaign and MP Suggestions
I`d like to invite all of you to a multiplayer campaign(s) that would start on early September 2002 .
The point in organising this campaign is to make EU2 Multiplayer more exciting and make the newbies more willing to gain experience in multiplayer games and having games that would really (I mean really) continue till 1820 .
Everyone would accept that the strategic value of EU2 is far beyond any other computer games or video games on the market . But considering the multiplayer value of EU2 , one might conclude that it`s become not too popular as WarCraft 3-like real-time strategy/action games . You must have observed the so.called „ladder“ system of WC3 in multiplayer games and giving people the desire to gain experience thereby creating new challenges among themselves .
EU2 is a wonderful game . It has the historical aspect that adds the game a realistic point of view , and it has a very high playability in terms of you form your own country by your own hands and let it develop , it involves much more creativity and talent than any other games around .
But EU2 has some handicaps in terms of multiplayer games . Maybe you`ve observed it till now , or you haven`t even noticed , or you haven `t played enough multiplayer games on EU2 . First of all , we have to add a stable and scalable meaning to the term „victory“ . Who is successful and experienced in those games and according to what ? One might conclude that he might be playing well due to the VP`s , or the other might say that he can rule a country at its best , or another might say that he can diplomatically succeed or colonize well so that he form a good country that is beyond its realistic picture .
In the end it`s a game , not a reflection to history . You adept the changes to the historical events for a country . To answer those questions and form a meaningful user/experience/success database I would like to start a campaign or many simultaneous campaigns . The first campaign have some player restrictions but it need not be the case in the following campaigns as we`ll see if it would work or not .
We might organise 1-2 simultaneous (with different players) campaign in Europe and USA and let the following campaigns begin afterwards .
I`ll suggest some rules here to make things more clear , scalable and reliable , make EU2 a better MP game besides its offering of fun .
For the first campaign let me write here the restrictions of players as we can only play with 5-6 people at one time and those players have to have some skills . But the newbies are very much appreciated for the following or simultaneous campaigns as well .
Restriction of players for the first campaign
1. Have been involved in at least 2 multi player games , with more than 200 years of experience .
2. Being reliable in terms of time and effort . Able to play at least 3-4 days (at night) during the weekdays and at least 1 day at weekend (of course exceptions might occur) .
3. Having a decent internet connection (at least 128k) and residing in Europe (we might have another campaign for only US players as well)
4. There`ll be an organisator for each campaign (in the first one it`s me) to put the results in forums on daily basis .
Winning conditions
1. VP (Victory Points) is important in the end of the game . Any country can be played , even the smallest countries too . This is due to a rule that I `ll present in the 3rd section here .
2. One player can play more than one country , restricted that he plays a country for at least 100 years . When he changes the country the VP of the left country is taken a note (by the campaign organisator) and is added to the total score for the player in the end .
3. Each country played by humans will have some constant initiated within that would be multiplied by the actual VP to show the player`s performance .
Reason : Most of the people argues that the major countries are stronger than the other ones and they can get high VP`s so that makes the VP list unreliable to show the performance . For example Spain or France or Austria can get higher VP`s than of Venice or Sweden in the end . This doesn`t show that the player of those countries are better than the others but we have to have a meaningful measure to overcome this situation . (Unfortunately we have to do this by ourselves as EU2 doesn`t have such a scale by it`s own , I wish it had) . One of the most experienced users , Ben Mowers share my opinion in this topic . The basic idea why he doesn`t care much about VP`s is that it doesn`t reflect the „real“ situation , and therefore it`s unfair .
Country Constant List – CCL (just a proposal at this moment,will be clarified later) :
According to the several playes me and my friends have participated we`ve had VP scores such that we can have a ratio or a constant among them . This might not reflect %100 facts , it also have some deviation due to the lack of experience but it might give good presentation of the strength of countries . We might change this list according to suggestions and experiences . In the end , after some time , we`ll conclude into something as and we`ll have a much more reliable list . Taking Venice as the most medium level country within the countries that have a high probability to be played with and concerning the even weaker countries we`ve concluded to a list that might be changed over time and with ideas from you . The constants varies from 0.1 to 2.0 only .
(not complete , may be modified)
Country K<country>
------------------------------------ ------
Venice 1.0
Austria 0.6
Sweden 0.8
Ottoman Empire 0.6
France 0.5
England 0.6
Scotland 1.3
Denmark 1.3
Spain 0.4
Hungary 0.9
Poland/Lithuania 0.8
Muscowy 0.6
Portugal 1.0
Netherlands 0.9
Brandenburg 1.1
Eire 1.4
…
The RVP is the Real Victory Point that is calculated in the end of the game or after a player switches to another country . The formula is simple :
RVP = VP * K<country>
Example : In the end of the game the VP`s of 3 countries and the correspondend RVPs occurs like this:
France : VP = 4000 / RVP= VP * K<france> = 4000 * 0.5 = 2000
England : VP = 3500 / RVP = VP * K<england> = 3500 * 0.6 = 2100
Sweden : VP = 2800 / RVP = VP * K<sweden> = 2800 * 0.8 = 2240
Therefore although according to VP`s the first is France , the second is England , the third is Sweden , according to RVPs the first is Sweden , the second is England and the third is France .
Note
A small program might be written (I might write) to get the VP`s of countries from the save file and calculate the RVP`s of countries with the help of the CCL list that would be presented to everyone . After each session , the RVP`s might be posted to the forum as well .
Advantages :
a. Fairness .
b. People would easily chose relatively weaker countries . For example people might be willing to play Venice or Portugal or Denmark more .
c. If you rule the strongest countries , you have to work harder .
On-Action Restrictions
The supporting mechanisms to those rules would make the game even more playable and fair . I proposed a solution to the problem of unfairness in terms of war conditions . In the previous games some countries are being attacked continuously by other major powers , and the underlying reason for these attacks is mainly the fact that the country being attacked is strong or has the far best VP . Those wars might be considered as normal but one should also might think that being attacked for hundreds of years by many countries simultaneously makes the player of that country feel like shit . He might still win the game but he loses a lot of wars (as he can`t stand against all of them) and those depresses his morale .
We`ve established the first solution by RVP stuff , such that the best country in terms of VP`s in fact might not be winning at all in terms of RVP`s . Also , some countries are torn apart in just one war . And the player of the country faces a lot of problems after that and the game is inbalanced afterwards . I appreciate the efforts and restrictions of Ben Mowers in terms of preserving balance but I want to propose some additional restrictions to those rules . Now to make fairness have double effect , here comes the second proposal :
1. In the wars between humans country can get only maximum 3 provinces of another human party . Trade posts and non-city colonizations count as half . Burning trade posts during the war is restricted by 3 .
2.
[ Third Party Involvement Restriction – TPIR ]
Any human played country might be attacked by other human players , as long as the other human parties‘ VP`s doesn`t exceed the 1.25 times of VP of the attacked country .
Example
France is being attacked by England . Portugal wants to join the war in behalf of England . All countries are controlled by human players .
France VP = 2000
1.25 * 2000 = 2500
Portugal VP = 1000
England VP = 1000
Allies Total VP = 2000
As the Allies Total VP is 2000 and is smaller than 1.25 of France`s VP , both countries might attack France simultaneously .
But if France had 1500 VP instead of 2000 :
1.25 * 1500 = 1875 so Portugal and England wouldn`t attack to France simultaneously .
Important Notice
In the calculation of those numbers we have to use the VP ( not RVP) because it reflects the actual power of countries during the game .
Further Important Notice
If a strong human played country choses to attack a weak human played country , the TPIR rule is invalid . In case of our example , should France choses to attack England , in any case , not looking to the VP`s Portugal might get into the war in behalf of England .
3.
A human played country can never be annexed by other human countries . Some countries may NEVER be annexed by human countries such as Portugal , Netherlands , Poland , Muscowy , Venice , Denmark , Sweden etc. but vassalization is propriate .
Advantages
a. Forces the player to have good AI allies instead of powerful human allies .
b. Fairness in wars , therefore in game .
c. Other means of disturbing the strong countries become important such as agreement on an embargo against the strong power by relatively less strong human countries .
d. The vassalization becomes more and more important .
All of those restrictions are proposals to make the EU2 more playable and more scalable , to restore fairness and to prevent mad behaviors , to adept and encourage newbie players become more experienced to achieve nice RVP`s , to point the importance of small countries and diplomatic relations , to prevent the total annihilation of human played countries .
Kindest Regards ,
Ambiguous
