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Kingmaker -> RE: 1792 No frills PBEM (7/24/2009 9:00:46 AM)
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HiHi
Grief! The last thing I wanted was a protracted debate, lets get the game rolling [:D]
As I said, Fraid I'm the odd one out, but obviously I will go along with the majority decision.
Hey all
I read your post, Peter, making the case against house rules, and although I generally agree that house rules is something to be avoided and only taken into use as a last measure to preserve game balance, I will in the following make the case why we do need a house rule against insurrections in another major powers territory, until WCS makes a patch.
1.
Its too easy to succeed an insurrection mission. To be honest (given I may not have been paying proper attention [8|] ) in all the games I have played in ‘Insurrections’ rarely seem to succeed. As I have suggested elsewhere ‘Another PBEM’ is a pre patch game Patched up and continued, it, “may?”, therefore have scrambled codes and as such not be the best game to base Post patch games on.
2.
The penalty for an unsuccessful insurrection mission is near non-existent. Minus 50 influence, any decent diplomat can charm that away in a month. Agreed the penalty is too low, wouldn’t mind some of these super Diplos who get 50+ ‘Charm’ every turn though [:)]
3.
Only counter-measure is other diplomats. Garrisons, National Morale, Glory, Buildings (Art and Courts for example) has no preventive effect. OK, but that effects everybody
4.
Success on the insurrection mission isn't influenced by anything but the "roll" of dice against the diplomat's statistics, the target nation's national morale, glory, empire status, buildings, potential garrisons, or even armies. The story about the 400.000 troops being kicked out of Bavaria, by 7.000 insurrectionists springs to my mind as an extreme example of how this game feature can spin out of control in a multiplayer environment. Not sure about all the details here so apart from the ‘Another PBEM’ patch thing I can’t really comment other than to suggest it may be on a par with the 38,000 strong English army being captured in Gibraltar by a Spanish army of c70,000, ie a random role as was suggested by Matto.
5.
Moreover Pandora's box is now open. Now we all know, and would be fool's not too exploit this, supposing we play the game to win, besides the other aspects of diplomacy and logistics to mention some other great reasons to play PBEM.
6.
WCS acknowledges that there is a problem and talk about "I like the idea of only one insurrection per turn per minor -- it's just a little tricky to figure out which diplomat to allow to have that chance. I suppose we could search all the diplomats in the region and only allow the one with the best stats to have a roll. Remember there is a penalty of -50 attitude with every minor power in the game for a failed insurrection attempt. We've been talking about adding a glory penalty on top of this, and possibly of giving the attempt itself a monetary cost, or perhaps a chance of one. I think there's enough precedent in the period to justify diplomatically-motivated insurrections, though they shouldn't be as common as some people are describing on this thread -- I'd originally had in mind maybe 3 or 4 successful insurrections per game." End quote. Hellfire this Insurrection stuff is just 1 of many problems with PBEM. As I see it CoG is basically designed for Solo play, the PBEM side is an add on and many of the features that work OK in solo simply do not cross over to PBEM. Again as I’ve suggested elsewhere these games we are engaged in are 1st generation “Real play” games, WCS simply do not have the resources or Beta testers in sufficient numbers to test PBEM in depth, therefore to a certain extent we can maybe be seen to be doing that, the Devs can keep an eye on these MBs and correct serious anomalies in future patches.
All in all this feature that works ok'ish in single player mode is overpowered in a multiplayer environment and therefore potentially a gamebreaker. Again, is it? I may be very wrong here (it has been known [:-] ) but we seem to be basing an awful lot around a possibly faulty platform i.e. ‘’Another PBEM’, dunno
My suggestion is that we go with the house rule for now, “If?” there is any validity in my suggestions about ‘Another PBEM then I would suggest that "may" be counter-productive but I have faith in that WCS will address this exploit and once WCS fixes the exploit we return to normal rules and the use of diplomats as the game allows? OK. But one way or another let’s get the game on the road. [:)]
All the Best
Peter
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