News From the Beta: Optional Rules (Full Version)

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Ralegh -> News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 2:42:38 PM)

Currently in the beta, the only truly optional rules (ie you can choose at the start of the game to play them or not to play them) are:
- guard commitment
- changed winter land movement
(There are also some PBEM settings and per-user display type things.)

The following rules are currently implemented as mandatory:
a) artillery
b) economic manipulation
c) ship building locations
d) some new political combinations
e) cavalry superiority
f) detaching and absorbing minor free state factors (ie. allowing it outside the minor)
g) leader casulties

h) In addition, I suppose the EIH rules like privateers/privateering and light/heavy ships

Bearing in mind that making any of these truly optional would require both alternative coding and increased complexity of the code, as well as coding the AI to know what to do both with and without various rule combinations, which (if any) of these do you think should be truly optional? Please give some idea of the degree of your feeling, so Marshall can weigh up the strength of feeling.



j-s -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 3:30:31 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh
- changed winter land movement

What the hell is this? Is this some EiH thing?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh
The following rules are currently implemented as mandatory:
a) artillery
b) economic manipulation
c) ship building locations
d) some new political combinations
e) cavalry superiority
f) detaching and absorbing minor free state factors (ie. allowing it outside the minor)
g) leader casulties

All others are used almost any game, but economic manipulation should be a optional rule! It's a huge difference if it is used or not. Sometimes it's fun to play with it and sometimes it might be a good to left out. So this should be a optional (as it is on original EiA).


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh
h) In addition, I suppose the EIH rules like privateers/privateering and light/heavy ships

This can be left out. This is a EiH thing, not EiA. So please leave these out and put at least original EiA rules with errata in to the game. It makes a programing a lot of easier. But if this is included (a different game after that) it must be a optional!



Hoplosternum -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 4:04:08 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

Currently in the beta, the only truly optional rules (ie you can choose at the start of the game to play them or not to play them) are:
- guard commitment
- changed winter land movement
(There are also some PBEM settings and per-user display type things.)

The following rules are currently implemented as mandatory:
a) artillery
b) economic manipulation
c) ship building locations
d) some new political combinations
e) cavalry superiority
f) detaching and absorbing minor free state factors (ie. allowing it outside the minor)
g) leader casulties

h) In addition, I suppose the EIH rules like privateers/privateering and light/heavy ships

Bearing in mind that making any of these truly optional would require both alternative coding and increased complexity of the code, as well as coding the AI to know what to do both with and without various rule combinations, which (if any) of these do you think should be truly optional? Please give some idea of the degree of your feeling, so Marshall can weigh up the strength of feeling.


Oh dear [;)]

I hate to moan, [8|] wait what am I saying? I love to moan [:'(]

But considering some of the rules which have been left out (Force March etc.) why have some of these been put in? Not just as options but as mandatory rules [X(]

Ship Building locations adds absolutely nothing except extra complications. People rarely build ships (except England) unless England losses fleets early. They are expensive and take ages to arrive. Then you lose them because you have no fleet counter in that port. Great [>:]

Leader loss is even worse, it's a potentially game killer for certain powers. Prussia without Blucher or Austria without Charles makes either in to basket cases. Who wants such trivial luck to decide a game that lasts as long and is as involved as this? It's a rule that works badly enough in your average American Civil War game where there are at least dozens of altenative leaders, EiA has far fewer.

It's tough enough playing Prussia - surrounded by more powerful countries and having a weak economy. Never mind if your best leader is Hohenlohe [X(] Most EiA strategies for Prussia revolve around begging almost anyone to send you a different leader for that difficult 1805 year. Imagine that for the whole game? No thanks!



Ralegh -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 4:46:53 PM)

quote:

But considering some of the rules which have been left out (Force March etc.)


Aha! - If you check my recent contribution to the deviations thread, you will see that forced march is now IN.



Ralegh -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 4:49:38 PM)

quote:

Then you lose them because you have no fleet counter in that port.

Nah - the ships can sit in the port until a counter comes along for them. I take your point about difficulty though - I presume the devs at that point just felt it was easier to build in some of the rules they always play!



Nordiska -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 8:33:46 PM)

Economic manipulation, cavalry superiority and guard commitment are three optional rules that my group always played with. Glad to see they are in, Thanks for all the recent updates (restoring my faith in this game coming out[:D])


Question: Will the optional rule of allowing Sweden(from the General) as an 8th major power be implemented eventually?



AdmiralN -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/27/2005 10:54:21 PM)

Whatever comes I'll appreciate it, but if I'm asked I'd leave out the Leader Casualty option (the combat itself is already enough random...[:@]) and the EiH rules.

Btw the Winter Movement you're reffering to is the +2 to forage roll rule?[&:]



Hoplosternum -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 12:02:23 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

quote:

But considering some of the rules which have been left out (Force March etc.)


Aha! - If you check my recent contribution to the deviations thread, you will see that forced march is now IN.


Great [:)]



Hoplosternum -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 12:04:02 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

quote:

Then you lose them because you have no fleet counter in that port.

Nah - the ships can sit in the port until a counter comes along for them. I take your point about difficulty though - I presume the devs at that point just felt it was easier to build in some of the rules they always play!


Aha, that doesn't sound too bad [;)] Don't worry about me I'm sure I'll buy [:D]



YohanTM2 -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 12:10:31 AM)

As mentioned above please take out leader casulties if you cannot make it optional. It sucks for everyone but France. (and even then it hurts)



NeverMan -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 2:38:12 AM)

Leader Casualty doesn't bother me, at least it wasn't an EiH optional rule, man I wish that dude had left EiA alone, what a twit! And on top of that, now we are getting some EiH thing passed off as EiA...

The "privateers/light/heavy" or whatever the hell can definitely be left out or at least make them optional, I can't stand when some dude tries to make a great complex game like EiA and hybrid it with Risk or A&A, it's just silly.

Let me put it this way, if you aren't getting paid for this Marshall (doing EiA like some guy said in another thread) than you are a FREAKING SAINT. If you are getting paid, then you should really be complaining to your managers or vice-versa because this thing is way out of hand.



John Umber -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 9:01:01 AM)

Leader casualties
This should be optional, losing Napoleon early in the game sort of kills the fun to be french. It makes you protect your best generals instead of using them to the limit. The chance to lose a general is very high considering the game has no backup.
True many generals were killed, but the number available were lots and lots...

Please make this an optional rule. It is very important to me at least.



Daniel Jax -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 12:20:03 PM)

Have always played with all of those optional rules implemented. In fact wouldn't consider playing without most of them. The only one I've been flexible on (ie. gone along with majority vote) is leader casualties. And even then I've always voted for its use.
Maybe reduce the odds of leader death if people are really worried (I assume that isn't too hard to change? know nothing about programming). Or maybe remove the death result and leave it at 6 month recouperation.
Someone said economic manipulation was a terrible thing: disagree in the strongest terms. Without going into long drawn-out explanations: it gives a winning nation the OPTION of toning down the military output and losing nations the option to crank it up. More flexibility is GOOD.
Considering that these are already programmed and there's no point in making more work for Marshall: Go with them (I admit I'd want them anyway).



Pippin -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 1:05:16 PM)

quote:

Someone said economic manipulation was a terrible thing: disagree in the strongest terms.


I am also curious on why economic manipulation is so terrible. I find it gives the game a lot more variance, and alows nations to have a bit more control on where they want to gear towards. It certainly doesn't seem to be any sort of game-breaker.




Barbu -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 7:25:10 PM)

Leader casualties should really be optional, for reasons outlined above.

Apart from that, everything is fine.




Marnutt -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 9:51:56 PM)

Hello Marshall
Well I have been away for 2 years and came back to a more completed project than it was when I first saw this game advertized to come out. I am glad to see that you are in the stages of game testing now and are listening to those that you ask for feed back from.
For those of you who were not here 2 years ago Marshall was very busy learning how others felt about this game and how other play styles had evolved. For example some of the more experienced players (those that I played against face to face or PBEM or maybe myself now) have in the past been able to play France and successfully invade England in the first 2 years of the game. Mind you it did cost me about 75% of the French fleet to do this and some of Denmarks fleet as well. The whole thing is as Marshall stated to me when he saw it was; when people play all the nations then the game takes on a flavour that many of us have enjoyed. Thing is will the AI be challangeing enough for those of us should we play it with less than a full 7 player game. Another thing was how should the AI think what guildlines should it follow etc.
For a few days now I have been reading the forums on this game to catch up as to what has happened. This project has come along ways since that time of 2 years ago with many of the things Marshall and I and many others talked about being done. So Marshall keep up the good work and just keep the standards you set for yourself and the game you invisioned to create as the goal. In the long run you will be proud of your work when it is completed and many will thank you for a job well done.

Thank you



Marnutt -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/28/2005 10:17:32 PM)

Sorry everyone I put that reply in the wrong thread (me bad)

As for the topic here I feel that the only rules that should be optional are the following;
1. Economic Manipulation
2. Leader Casulties (modified as per below)
3. Light/Heavy ships

Economic Manipulation was optional in the board game and can both effect and affect the flavour of a game. In my opinion it should be kept in.
Leader Casulties -- The arguements made by both sides of debate are very true. Those that both protect their leaders if its in the game and those that go "gung ho" if its not in the game. I personally have never really had an issue with this because we as a home group decided to modify the "Death" result to a 1 year recouperation period. We found it to work well.
Light/Heavy ships -- I have read the rules on them and have yet to fully test them out so I cannot really say but the idea of it does interest me.

Again sorry to all here in this thread for the whoops of the previous entry.



Grand_Armee -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/29/2005 8:53:00 AM)

I've been watching this game for a long time, and have recently been playing the heck outta COG.

When we played EIA face to face, we always played with leader casualties. Honestly, I only ever saw one leader killed...I believe it was poor old Bennigsen. War is hell, and leaders get killed.

Perhaps a happy medium would be replacement leaders. Leaders whose ratings could be bumped up to control larger forces. This would be the equivalent of, say, getting Gneisenau as a chief of staff. For Prussia, Yorck von Wartenburg and Bulow both showed themselves capable of independent action. They were never needed to command an entire army, though...this doesn't mean they couldn't. For the Austrians, Schwarzenburg may not have been as able as Charles, but he still could get a sizeable number of men into combat.

Kutuzov died early in 1813 of natural causes brought on by an *cough* un-Spartan lifestyle....yet he always survived our games until the end. Still, Barclay de Tolly stepped up to the plate. Bagration had long been gone.

As far as privateers go, I'm finding them a nuisance in COG. EVery nation builds tons of them, and they arrive in no time at all. Light and heavy ships...why bother? Britain will build heavy ships because the player knows that every0one else will build heavy ships....and vice versa.

Economic manipulation? Heck yeah! I'm finding half the fun of COG is manipulating my economy.



Hoplosternum -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/29/2005 2:51:06 PM)

Hello Grande_Armee,

It's easy to house rule the Leader casualties in FtF to add the chrome of chance / bonus of bagging a leader without the hugely negative concequences of a Blucher or Charles dying. As has been mentioned you can have them injured for a while or allow all none Dominant powers either an imortal leader or a second life. You could charge them VPs / PPs to recover leaders etc. etc. But in the Computer game when they are dead they are dead.

You don't really want a long game like this to hose a player through no fault of his own by a dice role. Losing an army or a war is one thing. Diplomacy and the self balancing that should occur in a multiplayer game can recover most situations. But losing a key leader, especially for the weaker powers, just further reduces the enjoyment / options for those Countries. It's hard enough to keep all players interested over the long term anyway.

The loss of Nelson, Napoleon or one of the decent Russians does not have too much affect (except VP wise). All these nations can lose a good leader and be OK. Quite frankly by the Napoleonic Wars most ARMY leaders were not leading from the front. Bargration was killed (well mortally wounded he lasted for several days IIRC) when fighting as a Corps commander under Kutzov. French Marshalls like Ney and Lannes may have been in harms way but that was usually when Nappy was in charge of the battle and they were trying to rally their forces. The only EiA leaders who I can think of who died leading an Army were Brunswick and Moore both of which were very expendable.

So while Leader Casualties are not a game killer for me I would never vote to play with them and really wish they had not been added as a none optional rule. They will harm rather than add to the game.

I have always played with Economic Manipulation but never been really satisfied with it. It helps to keep powers high up on the PP track, but it does not help them to recover from a beating. I know that you can sacrifice PPs for extra money and manpower but you get such a trivial amount extra that I have never seen anyone use it for that.

I think this is a shame because EiA suffers from a lack of Comeback potential. It would be nice if you could rebuild lost armies far more quickly if you were prepared to pay a lot of PPs for them. Economic Manipulation seems to offer this but in reality does not. Likewise I would have liked to see some option to go back to war earlier if they paid a VP or PP penalty.

In short some options to save a game once France or another power has got the upper hand and a good split on his enemies. Once that happens it's usually game over because he can fight his enemies one at a time with overwhelming force and there is a fairly rapid downward spiral from there. Still we all have our ideas of how to improve the game and I suspect that enough of those have already been added to upset a good proportion of the rest of us as it is [:D]



Naomi -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/29/2005 10:29:23 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

Currently in the beta, the only truly optional rules (ie you can choose at the start of the game to play them or not to play them) are:
- guard commitment
- changed winter land movement
(There are also some PBEM settings and per-user display type things.)

The following rules are currently implemented as mandatory:
a) artillery
b) economic manipulation
c) ship building locations
d) some new political combinations
e) cavalry superiority
f) detaching and absorbing minor free state factors (ie. allowing it outside the minor)
g) leader casulties

h) In addition, I suppose the EIH rules like privateers/privateering and light/heavy ships

Bearing in mind that making any of these truly optional would require both alternative coding and increased complexity of the code, as well as coding the AI to know what to do both with and without various rule combinations, which (if any) of these do you think should be truly optional? Please give some idea of the degree of your feeling, so Marshall can weigh up the strength of feeling.

I am glad to see the testing effort is getting ever more focused as such. Having read all of the instrumental threads as above, I would love to elaborate a bit on the debatable issues you guys made efforts to highlight. It seems that most of us are concerned about leaders casualties, followed by non-EIA add-ons - with naval-force variety topping the roll.

First, the notion of leader casualties is fine with me, as this was exactly in the EIA designers' minds and through so many years of testing and playing has proved far from the make-or-break issue that may put players off the game. I am not opposed to its inclusion. For those less so, that it has to take 216 battles to finish a leader's career may be a comfortable thought. Even so, if too many would-be customers do not take it to their liking, the devs had better simply leave it out (and will then have one thing less to bother with [:'(] - a win-win case - rather than trying to tweak the odds since the modified probability may yet be open to argument).

Second, I haven't played with any ex-EIA rules. But if chances presented, I will not refuse to take on such new things as an expanded variety of vessels, and who knows they may not be an improvement on the game playability? (Or in fact someone knows it [:'(].) However, if such features adds to the complexibility (and bug-proneness) of the game design and thus impede the product in the pipeline, I recommend minding them less and leaving them to expansion packages, unless the devs have more than EIA in their heads.

In short, I hope the devs will always put the core issues (I assume EIA's set of rules and regulations, both mandatory and optional) first beforing paying heed elsewhere. @(~,~)@



jamo262 -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (9/30/2005 9:53:27 AM)

I was looking at the EiH rules the other day and noticed that they did have this wintermovement rule.

In effect I think it doubled the terrain cost to enter a province during winter months. Or was that during mud and mountains were doubled during snow. In EiH the depot placement was counted as for the movement of corp so they have to be one space apart in mountains and mud.

On another note, has anyone out there played with any other alternate rules for EiAthat are not part of EiH? Sweden as a seventh power, different historical aspiration VP's or especially one I like the look of but never used- Monte Bohna's offering at the link below


http://users.telerama.com/~mbohna/Bellegarde.html



Ralegh -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/2/2005 5:43:46 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: jamo262
.... especially one I like the look of but never used- Monte Bohna's offering at the link below
http://f6.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/YNQ8Q1S3Pid--wJrMSQEzmhKGTMBylFqLlcO0I1ygKPPTPiaatXMiUDWzMU4ikPZPir876tolHqRANVhKxdQ9BDfspnb/MLB%20Rules.doc


Jamo, I get a 404 at that link - can you check the URL?



jamo262 -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/2/2005 9:38:34 AM)

If you are a member of "Empire in Arms Groups" at Yahoo the rules can be found in the files section-

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/empiresinarms/

Otherwise try this link and look under "My Empires in arms optional rules".

http://users.telerama.com/~mbohna/Bellegarde.html




gazfun -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/3/2005 6:16:10 AM)

Trouble is mate they are a very clicky crew, havent been able to get a game online at all , and Ive been a member for 2 years lol



Pippin -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/3/2005 6:20:52 AM)

The great thing about that group, is you can quickly learn how many inconsistencies there are in the manuals. :P





JavaJoe -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/4/2005 12:39:17 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: gazfun

Trouble is mate they are a very clicky crew, havent been able to get a game online at all , and Ive been a member for 2 years lol


I've been in 3 games, currently in a game since 2003.

Just post a desire to play and I'm sure you'll receive several replies.



NeverMan -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/4/2005 2:05:34 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: gazfun

Trouble is mate they are a very clicky crew, havent been able to get a game online at all , and Ive been a member for 2 years lol


Never had that problem.... I was a member for awhile and in mass emails was offered to join in on several PBEM games, maybe it was just bad timing or something. Sorry to hear it.



Pippin -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/4/2005 2:04:05 PM)

quote:

I have always played with Economic Manipulation but never been really satisfied with it. It helps to keep powers high up on the PP track, but it does not help them to recover from a beating. I know that you can sacrifice PPs for extra money and manpower but you get such a trivial amount extra that I have never seen anyone use it for that.


If I am Britain I will trade in VPs for extra manpower about one out of every four games that I play. I will keep the manipulation stuck there, and about one third of everything left will be also subtracted because I will also subtract that from another player.

I have also noticed newer players tend to be conservative and want to shift towards the left while trying to stay out of battles, while many experienced players will tend to shift to the right and often plan to get bloody. When ever I hear people complain how it's unfair that rich nations can sit on +2 point ecc for the whole game, the first thing I think about is that player's inexperience.

I will do the +2 manipulation all game once in a while too. I don't like to play the exact same style every time, otherwise everyone else will know what to expect, and even set-up their forces ahead of time to put you at a disadvantage before the first battle.





Pippin -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/4/2005 2:14:44 PM)

quote:

Ship Building locations adds absolutely nothing except extra complications.


I am curious on what these extra complications are. Usualy when a new feature is introduced to EiA it causes more problems than it fixes, however so far I am a big favourite of ship building locations. It seems far more realistic than without, and that is a good thing, isnt it? If a player is foolish enough to build his fleets in a location that is highly vulnerable to the enemy, well then it is his fault if those ships become captured, isn't it? I think this adds more to the strategy, than it does to hurt it.

I have yet to see everything in this game happen, so perhaps there are a few issues I have over-looked.



Pippin -> RE: News From the Beta: Optional Rules (10/4/2005 2:22:13 PM)

quote:

When we played EIA face to face, we always played with leader casualties. Honestly, I only ever saw one leader killed...I believe it was poor old Bennigsen. War is hell, and leaders get killed.


Back in the days of EiH version 4, naval battles used chit selections as well. One option was meele which IIRC was very deadly and could do mad damage. The reason why the British player did not chose this one so much was due to the fact it gave high odds for Nelson to be killed. Sailors on ships who got involed in grape-shot battles didn't have a long life expectancy, for obvious reaons.

Thinking back now, wouldn't we have had a lot of risk-free fun if not having to worry about leader casualities in that situation.






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