General House Rules for MP EU2 games...

[BiB]

Originally posted by ulver


I certainly don’t think it is an exploit. I rather think it is a rule deliberately designed to allow Spain to conquer the Indians without pissing European nations of.

Quite realistic in my opinion. I any case Spain can still conquer the ToT areay without paying BB. Just reduce the Pagans to one province. Force convert then and make then your vassals with political means. If you want you can the diplo-annex them for one BB or not as the case may be. The ToT helps Spain in many ways but the BB effect is rather minor. In any case given that she has nothing else to incurre BB for in the first century she will often still have a BB of zero after conquering half the world.

It's in no way realistic or working as designed. It's a wel crafted human exploit Yes, u could go the forceconvert, vassalise, diploannex route but IMO taking the 5BB is easily more valuable (30 extra years of possession of Zacatecas and Cuzco; if u forcevassalize, BB for the DOW, if u diplovassalise the trouble with vassals not leaving alliances soon and so on).

 

[Mowers]

So how many BB points. What about privateers and what about potential penalties? How about a check everytime the session finishes having crossed a decade mark. 1500 being the start to make it easier to remember. How about minus 3 stability for being over the number?

Dont worry too muchthe Spain/ France MGC3 occurance. I dont think that its likely to happen in other games. Its a mixture of things that have made it occur. In neither of my other games did it happen. There is no doubt that Spain does become unhistorically powerful in every game and a decline in the sliver/ gold output would be a good addition to the overall game but we have to play with what we have got. Alternatively a way to deal with it would be to not to have a Spanish player post 1700 except during times of war, replacing Spain with a German player could have its advantages. Thinking a little out of the box here but I cant think of any particular reasons as to why this would be a really bad idea. Another idea would be to randomise its domestic sliders mid game to weaken it.

 

[Mowers]

Got a call half way trough that last one so my previous post is somewhat out of date.

35 sounds good then. If you go over the release of a vassal would make sense.

Still troubled by privateers as they make blockading a realistic option and should be allowed without the large penalities that they currently have.

 

[unmerged(3571)]

1BB per privateer group isn't too bad. That limits privateers to being options for only smaller/less aggressive nations, which isn't so bad.

I think there should be some way to exceed your badboy threshold, but penalized. There is a saying that I can't remember very well (so I will horribly mangle) something like "don't prohibit, discourage", applying to things like games. Basicly you should try to make it attractive to not go over the BB theshold rather than saying you can't.

Maybe if you just released one vassal per decade that you are over the limit?

I still see nothing wrong with Spain and France working together if/when it is in both their interests - the trick is to make it obvious to the players when it isn't.

I will try to give some though to a bidding system. I started thinking about it once before and a lot of people seemed to think it wasn't necessary. I remember that Empires In Arms used to use a similar system (or at least we did when we played it) to balance the obviously unequal countries.

As for ToT and natives - it most certainly is an exploit, though quite a good one

 

[unmerged(7147)]

Originally posted by Derek Pullem
The advantage of the maximum BB rule is that it makes ahistorical annexations a big deal. You still have the problem of diploannexations but it makes forced annexations (e.g. of one province HRE minors) prohibitively expensive. Better to spend those BB points on a three province Lenape or one of the Meso Americans than fight over Hannover.

Ideally, shouldn't players just gang up on other nations over ahistorical annexations and try to preserve the BoP rather than having a BB rule to try to limit these?

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Slayer


Ideally, shouldn't players just gang up on other nations over ahistorical annexations and try to preserve the BoP rather than having a BB rule to try to limit these?

Ideally yes. Sadly no. But with BB being broken then I do feel that a simple rule such as this might assist- although my concern is that privateers cant be used effectively with this rule

 

[BiB]

Originally posted by Mowers


Ideally yes. Sadly no. But with BB being broken then I do feel that a simple rule such as this might assist- although my concern is that privateers cant be used effectively with this rule

IMO privateers are a smal price to pay for this excellent houserule ... U could always ask Johan to remove the BB hit

 

[BiB]

Originally posted by satan
I still see nothing wrong with Spain and France working together if/when it is in both their interests - the trick is to make it obvious to the players when it isn't.

Nah, I think it's perfectly possible to start a Spanish-French-Ottoman alliance in 1492 and never have it break up. That's the kind of thing that should be avoided.

 

[PJL]

I agree wholeheartedly on the BB rule being applied at the same level for MP as for SP - indeed I proposed as much in the MG3 AAR thread. Certainly if someone wasn't willing to release a vassal once they passed the 35 mark, then everyone (except allies) shoud give them an ultimatum that they would be war with them with immediate effect or soon afterwards.

The only modification could be one based on vp and bb, such as the following:

if ((vp * bb) / y) > 500, then the country has to release vassal, or else all out war (or whatever)

where vp is victory points, bb is badboy, and y is years of game that have elapsed.

Such a formula could only be worked out every session, but would then be applied to the next session.

Applying the fornula to the current MG3 would mean that most countries would have to give up some sort of territories as vassals, (especially the Netherlands lol). The extremes are Spain and Sweden - Spain would have to give up something to reduce her score to under 500, even though her BB is only 29, Sweden wouldn't, despite a BB of 60.

Of course this is purely arbitary, but could be used as a starting point.

BTW. I appreciate that this is perhaps overly complicated to impliment, and that a simple BB system may be more workable in game.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Originally posted by BiB


Nah, I think it's perfectly possible to start a Spanish-French-Ottoman alliance in 1492 and never have it break up. That's the kind of thing that should be avoided.

Difficult to avoid - I've played alot of PBM / PBEM games and you wouldn't believe the lengths to which some saddos go to to "win" a game. There's a game called Austerlitz which suffered from teams of three deliberately stitching up a game in turn to let them win. Also people taking on more than one position in a game (which thankfully is impossible with MP although you could get your kid brother to do it for you). Guess you have to start the game and drop it if its obvious there a team playing.

 

[unmerged(3571)]

I've played many multi-player board games that feature a lot of diplomacy (Empires in Arms, Diplomacy, Pax Britannica etc), and they work quite well as long as people want to win. You have to make it pretty clear there are no points for second place, and that countries objectives will bring them into conflict. If you do that, France will attack Spain, as she should. Spain's lead is hardly insurmountable, but it is if you leave her alone.

That and try to avoid long term deals. Deals like "we gang up and bring so-and-so down" are good, deals like "you watch my back and I'll watch yours" are bad. Too many people are either too tightly bound by their word (that's me), or too treacherous. If you make short term deals you can keep your word and advance your own cause.

 

[unmerged(3571)]

Also I think your vassalization rule should have little to do with VPs. You shouldn't be punishing a player for doing well, but for being overly aggressive.

Half of the motivation for the rule is to shore up the broken badboy system in multi-player.

 

[BiB]

Originally posted by satan
I've played many multi-player board games that feature a lot of diplomacy (Empires in Arms, Diplomacy, Pax Britannica etc), and they work quite well as long as people want to win. You have to make it pretty clear there are no points for second place, and that countries objectives will bring them into conflict. If you do that, France will attack Spain, as she should. Spain's lead is hardly insurmountable, but it is if you leave her alone.

That and try to avoid long term deals. Deals like "we gang up and bring so-and-so down" are good, deals like "you watch my back and I'll watch yours" are bad. Too many people are either too tightly bound by their word (that's me), or too treacherous. If you make short term deals you can keep your word and advance your own cause.

The problem is there is no clearcut winner table guideline for EU2 MP ...

 

[unmerged(3571)]

Originally posted by BiB


The problem is there is no clearcut winner table guideline for EU2 MP ...

Yeah, true. That's why we should figure out some way to fix VPs. For that matter there is no way to determine if you won in SP since pretty much anybody will either die early or be the biggest nation by the end.

I see two possibilities: Someone posted here a while ago asking people to record their VP totals at the end of games for different major nations. He was going to use that to create a handicap system.

The other way is to create some sort of bidding system where you handicap yourself. This is my favourite since which countries have the advantage is rather subjective. Personally I think that France is probably the most powerful nation and there is no excuse (other than lack of aggression) for France not to be ahead of Spain by the end. Other people disagree and favour Spain, so it is best to let players assign their own value to whichever nation they want.

Initially I was thinking something along the lines of every player ranks their countries in order, and a VP bid for that country in multiples of say 500 vps (maybe 1000?) If they rank that country the highest, they get it, with that vp penalty. If they rank it the same as someone else then the person who bid the highest VPs gets it.

You could use various tie breaking mechanisms like a random decision, or looking at the second and third ranked countries (for instance the person who gets their next highest pick could lose).

Any thoughts? Hopefully this would be self-balancing.

Edit - this wouldn't fix some abuses like pirate killing, but I think those aren't that significant, and maybe we could get that fixed in a patch if VPs become useful.

 

[Mowers]

This is a good idea. But no one really knows what to bid as games are so often not properly finished for a number of reasons.

I would suggest that you pick a point- such as 1600, 1650 or 1700. After that the game engine goes a little messy.

It would also have to be decided what countries would be available before hand as that would obviously effect your bid.

Collecting data for a proper VP multiplyer would be nice but remains exceedinly difficult to do.

 

[unmerged(3571)]

Originally posted by Mowers
This is a good idea. But no one really knows what to bid as games are so often not properly finished for a number of reasons.

I would suggest that you pick a point- such as 1600, 1650 or 1700. After that the game engine goes a little messy.

It would also have to be decided what countries would be available before hand as that would obviously effect your bid.

Collecting data for a proper VP multiplyer would be nice but remains exceedinly difficult to do.

True, this would be somewhat trial and error while people get used to it, particularly as the games become more competitive.

It might be easy to coast to a high score as Spain in a relatively peaceful game, but having a French player on your boarder who knows that the one way he/she can win is to decisively defeat you in a war or two might change things. That is half the fun though! You only have yourself to blame if you bid too much, and you should put some thought into long term strategies, strengths and weaknesses beforehand.

Certainly this would require pre-selected countries. I was originally thinking about just the majors when I came up with this, but I suppose it could work with minors.

Not sure what you meant by picking a point? Did you mean an early end-point?

I guess you could do that, but I am kind of hoping (probably a bit optimisticly) that many of the other problems with the engine would work themselves out with the bidding system.

If countries are more often at war with other majors, hopefully there will be less money to throw around at the game distorting things later. Manufacturies can burn, forts are reduced by siege etc. Conscription centers can be a problem once they come around, but hopefully that will be delayed a bit, and even if France and Russia suddenly become vastly more powerful, Spain will have been leading much of the game so the question will be can they then catch her?

Since VPs are acrued over time the unbalancing act later on isn't as important.

 

[juv95hrn]

point system

A point system is an excellent idea! If anyone ever manages to put one together I hope they will post about it here!