PBEM - From the Ashes of the Mediterranean

[unmerged(6618)]

Ok peeps, I propose the game as follows. I'd prefer that we start soon, so the less discussion, and the more tyrannical impulses of Ludovico, the better:

Scenario - Age of Exploration (1492)
V. 1.05
Turn Length - 5 years
Difficulty - Hard
Agression - Normal

Alliance #1

A - Spain
B - Austria
C - Russia

Alliance #2

a - France
b - Sweden
c - Ottoman Empire

Turn Order

AaBbCc
BaAbCc
AcCaBb
CbBcAa
BaCbAc

Repeat

How should we decide who gets what country? And what alliance each team gets?

I suggest arbitrarily -

Europeans - Boehm, Natt och dag, Wyvern
vs
The Remnants of the British Empire (excluding UK herself) - Ludovico, Storey, Gezeder

Each alliance can divy up the countries, based on whatever.


Victory conditions/Goals

We can work out something like I did before with points being alloted for certain provinces, religions, etc - if so, please give me the go ahead, and I'll work out some rules. Or make some rules and propose them.

Otherwise (and I'd prefer this less formal way of doing things):

France and allies must break Hapsburg hegemony. Ottoman Empire should threaten Vienna and Russia and significantly unite the Moslem lands. Sweden should dominate the Baltic.

Spain should posses South and Central America and hold the Iberian peninsula, Austria should be a continental force, and Russia should conquer Poland and colonize Siberia.

A draw assumes these conditions are met on both sides. If an alliance succeeds in overfulfilling its countries expectations (or conversely, succeeds in not allowing the other alliance to fulfill its expectations), this alliance is victorious.

If it is hard to tell, call it a draw But we should reasonably know which alliance is doing better (I think we all knew Boehm won the last game without checking the VP points).

Similarly, each country should be able to prove itself against the yardsticks I provided. I think they are generally what "should" happen, all things being equal.

 

[unmerged(9863)]

I'm a absolute newbie with PBEM games, but that sounds very interesting. If you need a player to your game just contact me.

Thank you

 

[Storey]

Originally posted by Atte
I'm a absolute newbie with PBEM games, but that sounds very interesting. If you need a player to your game just contact me.

Thank you

Okay Atte. Thanks for droping by. If someone drops out we'll contact you.

Joe

 

[Wyvern]

Eastern Europe sounds fine, though you might want to consider East Asia as another alternative.

The minor Orthodox or muslim countries in eastern europe are:

 [font=courier new]
Country             Provs    Notes

Suzdal                1      Can become Russia
Tver                  1      Can become Russia
Ryazan                1      Can become Russia
Pskov                 1      Can become Russia
Georgia               2
Dukadir               1
Karaman               3
Teke                  1
Serbia                2
Wallachia             1
Moldavia              2
Ak Koyunlu            3
Qara Koyunlu          3
The Kaliphate         2
Nubia                 4
Aden                  3
Trebizond             1      Can become Byzantium
Byzantium             2      Has lots of core shields

[/font]

The ones I've added notes for are perhaps not a good idea as allowable minors.

There are more possibilities if we allow choices further east.

 

[Storey]

1. What countries can we play?
2. An auction to determine country choice/turn order? What are the starting conditions?
3. Same "cheat" rules as last game? New suggestions? I like the "no breaking a truce that you made on your turn (although breaking a truce the AI made is ok"
4. Is this standard 1.05? Or are there any good scenarios out there to try? 1492? 1419?
5. Turn length - 7 years? 6? 5? 9? I vote for 6 year turns. 7 years is a lot of time [/B][/QUOTE]

I'll start with number 5. I would like to go to 6 year turns instead of 7. I had that 56 year wait between turns and it was a killer. If we have 5 players 6 years would be better. It’s still plenty of time to accomplish a lot.
I agree with number 3. You can't DOW a human player's AI and then reach a peace agreement just to turn around and immediately DOW him again. Once per turn is the rule.

 

[Storey]

Originally posted by Wyvern
Eastern Europe sounds fine, though you might want to consider East Asia as another alternative.

The minor Orthodox or muslim countries in eastern europe are:

 [font=courier new]
Country             Provs    Notes

Suzdal                1      Can become Russia
Tver                  1      Can become Russia
Ryazan                1      Can become Russia
Pskov                 1      Can become Russia
Georgia               2
Dukadir               1
Karaman               3
Teke                  1
Serbia                2
Wallachia             1
Moldavia              2
Ak Koyunlu            3
Qara Koyunlu          3
The Kaliphate         2
Nubia                 4
Aden                  3
Trebizond             1      Can become Byzantium
Byzantium             2      Has lots of core shields

[/font]

The ones I've added notes for are perhaps not a good idea as allowable minors.

There are more possibilities if we allow choices further east.

A good start. If we are going to play minors the Byzantium, Trebizond,Suzdal,
Tver,Ryazan and Pskov probably aren't a good idea for the reason you noted.

Joe

 

[boehm]

most of these countries wont have a chance to interact for a looong time...

we could also try a different approach...allowing the playing of majors but then play on VeryHard instead of just Hard...ofcause this will probably mean that will all face bb wars even with ai editing but we allowed each nation to lower its bb by up to eg. 5 points per turn at the cost of eg. 1 stabilitypoint & 200d...(not meant to be a huge cost since we will probably all need to do this because of the ai even when set at aggresiveness=0 has a tendence to do DoWs without CBs) ....this way we will hopefully be able to avoid bbwars IF we make sure to not just grab as much as fast as we can...(like I usually do!)...

a while ago I was thinking about playing with the above rules eg in a baltic campaign...with Moscowy, Sweeden, Denmark, Poland and all the other minor/majors in that region as selectables...perhaps including some north sea nations like Scotland, Bremen, Gelre etc. (but NOT England or France)

I kind of like the idea behind our MED pbem game that we all had to be situated next to a "common" sea enabling all to reach all...

 

[Storey]

I like this idea Boehm! I agree with the very hard setting. I'll have to think about what the cost should be for lowering your BB count. I liked being close together because of the interaction it produced. Now if I can talk Rob into not annexing me I'll be happy. I'll look at the Baltic region tonight and get back to you. What do the rest of you think?

Joe

 

[unmerged(6618)]

We *could* get technical and simply count the bb points of the human players turns. It really isn't that hard to edit, with EUReader. All we'd have to do is note the bboy at the beginning of the turn and the end of the turn... and keep adding it up as it goes... subtracting one point per turn.

Is that too complicated?

BBoy at end of turn - bboy at beginning of turn - 1 = bboy total to be put in for your next round

The reason I suggest that is that I played another pbem on very hard, and it was bloody insane! The AI has a really bad habit of doing really really bad stuff... but this way we don't have to worry about the ai, and we can still play on very hard rules...

being able to buy down your bb can also solve the problem, but it gives the ai more power in screwing your nation to hell if we play this way, perhaps we can have a free deduction of set 20 bboy points, to be used whenever one wishes? on top of the buying back of bboy points of course...

 

[unmerged(6618)]

Another note - I played an Asian game a while back, and there was a similar problem - being able to play countries that interact well...

We had "lose all your country via event viyananagar", mighty malacca (myself), the new world is ours china, and rebelling Nippon. It really never got going very well... although we had some player troubles as well.

What about a Middle East game? Or a Khanate game? OOhhh, that is an idea! Struggle of the Khanates! Sibir, Uzbeks, Nogai, etc (can't remember which are the Khanates)... it has the advantage of being able to struggle against eachother all game

 

[Gezeder]

Although I'm not involved in the game, I agree with the only count BB points the player commits - after all, the AI doesn't seem to consider BB at all,

In the LLL PBEM, I noticed for the first 4 turns or so that the AI was racking up a LOT more BB than I was...... So I just ended up throwing caution to the wind and ignoring BB, what else could I do when the AI was going to make me dispicable anyway!

I think it would make for a better AAR when the players have a real chance to remain the AI's friend if they don't act aggresivly in their turns.....

Of course, feel free to ignore me since I'm not playing!

(looking foward to another good match )

Gezeder

 

[Wyvern]

Everyone playing majors sounds fine, but I really think we should still play on just Hard difficulty level so we don't have to play about with adjusting BB. That sounds just a little too fiddly to me.

 

[boehm]

Originally posted by Ludovico
We *could* get technical and simply count the bb points of the human players turns. It really isn't that hard to edit, with EUReader. All we'd have to do is note the bboy at the beginning of the turn and the end of the turn... and keep adding it up as it goes... subtracting one point per turn.

Is that too complicated?

BBoy at end of turn - bboy at beginning of turn - 1 = bboy total to be put in for your next round

...

I like this idea...lets try it out!

...although I guess I then have to come up with a different strategy this time than he one used by Savoy....in the end I had a bb of about 266 or something....

 

[Storey]

Originally posted by Ludovico
We *could* get technical and simply count the bb points of the human players turns. It really isn't that hard to edit, with EUReader. All we'd have to do is note the bboy at the beginning of the turn and the end of the turn... and keep adding it up as it goes... subtracting one point per turn.

Is that too complicated?

At first glance maybe. If I have a BB of 25 at the start of the turn and have 35 at the end of a 6 year turn do I then change my BB to 29? And do I do it at the end of my turn or the beginning of the next turn? I also don't have EUReader.

Joe

 

[boehm]

Originally posted by Storey


At first glance maybe. If I have a BB of 25 at the start of the turn and have 35 at the end of a 6 year turn do I then change my BB to 29? And do I do it at the end of my turn or the beginning of the next turn? I also don't have EUReader.

Joe

its fairly easy to read bb directly out of the save game file...and I presume that what we do is simply that at the beginning of our first turn we reset our bb to 0 and then simply record our bb at the end of our turn....then when beginning our next turn we reset our bb to what ever we had recorded it to be at the end of our last turn....and remembering to subtract 1 as per the formula

"bb primo - bb ultimo - 1"

extremely simple to administrate and implement even witout EuReader....just open the savegame file in wordpad and search for eg. ai = "boehmsavoy.ai" (this was my aifilename in my last pbem game!) ...This will give u a unique hit so u automatically find your country data...unlike if u search for eg. tag = sav which would have given u a hit on all meantions of savoy...which is a lot!

 

[Storey]

Originally posted by boehm


its fairly easy to read bb directly out of the save game file...and I presume that what we do is simply that at the beginning of our first turn we reset our bb to 0 and then simply record our bb at the end of our turn....then when beginning our next turn we reset our bb to what ever we had recorded it to be at the end of our last turn....and remembering to subtract 1 as per the formula

"bb primo - bb ultimo - 1"

extremely simple to administrate and implement even witout EuReader....just open the savegame file in wordpad and search for eg. ai = "boehmsavoy.ai" (this was my aifilename in my last pbem game!) ...This will give u a unique hit so u automatically find your country data...unlike if u search for eg. tag = sav which would have given u a hit on all meantions of savoy...which is a lot!

But doesn't this defeat the reason for playing on very hard? Could you accomplish the same thing by setting your AI to a low value for aggressiveness? I ask because I didn't edit my AI in the last game. I have the sneaky suspicion that you guys are trying to turn me into a programmer. Sorry but I'm a hardware tech and distrust anything that I can't touch.

Joe

 

[boehm]

low aggressivenes hmmm I was actually just about to say "no" because my ai Savoy which had an aggressiveness setting of 0...did make lots of DoWs...but now that I think about it they were mostly against pagan countries or countries against which I might have had a temporary CB ...I dont know if this was a coincidence or not?? ...but one thing is for certain and that is that the ai, no matter the aggressivenes which I think only apply when calculation whether or not to DoW,...will do its very best to re-annex any revolters...and thereby gain quite a lot of BB...

Besides I think that we should remember that in a pbem game its much much harder to expand without gaining BB than it is in a normal Single Player game since we only play 5-7 year turns and thus probably wont really be able to just wait for the random CB or hope that a warning will pay off by giving us a CB sometime.....these things just doesnt work since u must act during your own turn....which will probably force us to do at least a few DoWs without CB...and additionally force vassalization-Dipplo annex probably wont work so good either since it will be our ai which will decide when and where to honor alliances etc.
The above is the same for all of us...but what can be a bit "unfair" is that this will IMO make colonization relatively much more attractive ...and expansion by conquest less attractive....ei. this will give a big advantage to the strong navel, explorer, christian nations....like eg. in the baltic...Denmark and Sweeden as opposed to Poland, Brandenburg, and to some degree Moscowy

ofcause only counting your own bb points will have some interesting consequences ...eg. it will be quite attractive to get your ai to be more aggressive...and expand and incur bb in its own turn....which just makes the whole ai.editing more interesting as compared to our recent game where almost all just set aggresiveness to 0 and deleted the prefered target list

 

[unmerged(9081)]

I'm in no matter the rules, I just need some help with fixing the BB points, if we are to do that.

And where will we play? maybe the Khanates and Hordes?

A Middle East scenario, I think, can be difficult as the Mamelukes own almost the entire middle east, then we have two or three minors. And the hedjaz, aden, oman what else?
Cyprus? The Knights?

 

[Storey]

Okay I know I'm beating a dead horse but I want to make sure I'm following you. If I start out my turn with a BB of 10 and at the end of my 6 year turn my BB has grown to 10. I then wait till my next turn and find my AI has caused my BB to rise to 30. Is this when I edit my BB and what do I edit it to? Would it be 14? Once we get pass this we can pick what part of the world we are going to play.

Joe

 

[boehm]

Originally posted by Storey
Okay I know I'm beating a dead horse but I want to make sure I'm following you. If I start out my turn with a BB of 10 and at the end of my 6 year turn my BB has grown to 10. I then wait till my next turn and find my AI has caused my BB to rise to 30. Is this when I edit my BB and what do I edit it to? Would it be 14? Once we get pass this we can pick what part of the world we are going to play.

Joe

well if it was 10 when u started your turn...and it is 10 when u finish your turn...then at the start of your next turn it should be 10-1 = 9