Current game

[jpatte...@gmail.com]

So... I'm still not convinced of change. Unless I've completely misunderstood the rules, I do not understand where the maths are coming from!

You start with 72 people and need to get to 300 to harvest for city dwellers you need 300 wealth for your first city. All in all the race to 300 is similar, we all explore, lose people, try clever things and hunt.

Nature:

Hurray! We have 300 people and can harvest. Lets do that on all nearby resources... lets assume i have 4 resources and can get wool. so 5 turns of harvesting. 5x5 = 2500 wealth. 0 wealth production from those 300 otherwise so a gain of 1000 vs normal hunting. Why not normally hunt and invest the wealth? Well, those hunting grounds disappear pretty damn quick! Why not fish which last forever? Good question - seems broken. Now what, well, i can do another 5 resources then my area is out of resources (1 resource a sector - so 8 sectors used + wool). so another 2500 wealth. I've made 5000 wealth and invested it in roughly 8-10 turns assuming i invested the 5k in T3 troops rather than T1 dross. Now what - no idea as i can no longer generate any wealth other than wool! hunting grounds have gone. My clan aren't happy, time to move somewhere else and find more resources or fight someone.

If the map continues to grow and isn't fixed in size = broken.

City: We have 300 wealth and can build a city. Praise the mercantile gods! That city now gives me 100 wealth a turn that i can invest or 1 resource that i can trade. I find another city player to trade with, i find wool... i find anything collectable. Worst case, I save my hunting grounds and slow build - 8 turns in I've generated 600 wealth and converted them all to troops. I hit 2 hunting grounds and build another city. I'm now gaining 400 wealth a turn. If i get any tradeable goods this accelerates rapidly and can be done in half the time, i'm then onto city 3,4,5 and cannot be caught by Nature unless they hit me just after city 2 or before.

Even then they will need 3 times the wealth of troops to win and it can't be in T1 troops or they will lose anyway on the numbers killed. They've only had 5000 wealth before in the time span and will have perhaps 1000 Rangers so i need 1000T to hold them off. 2 turns after my 2nd city then. Piece of cake.

At which point the Nature players realise winning will be VERY hard and ask if resources can start to be 'regrow' - at that point GM has to make a call.

If i had a pound every time someone told me a game was broken when in fact it just needed to played or managed better i'd be a King! The only current issues i can see relate to fishing as it is a pool of never ending wealth but it may be needed by nature mid game. The only reason i can see the above is incorrect is if resources last forever - if that's the case then yes, the game is broken but was from day 1 but i think that highly unlikely.

Bottom line - play until someone wins or we collectively say stop! 

[Mike Brines]

On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 12:17:19 AM UTC-7, jpatte...@gmail.com wrote:

So... I'm still not convinced of change. Unless I've completely misunderstood the rules, I do not understand where the maths are coming from!

You start with 72 people and need to get to 300 to harvest for city dwellers you need 300 wealth for your first city. All in all the race to 300 is similar, we all explore, lose people, try clever things and hunt.

Nature:

Hurray! We have 300 people and can harvest. Lets do that on all nearby resources... lets assume i have 4 resources and can get wool. so 5 turns of harvesting. 5x5 = 2500 wealth. 0 wealth production from those 300 otherwise so a gain of 1000 vs normal hunting. Why not normally hunt and invest the wealth? Well, those hunting grounds disappear pretty damn quick! Why not fish which last forever? Good question - seems broken. Now what, well, i can do another 5 resources then my area is out of resources (1 resource a sector - so 8 sectors used + wool). so another 2500 wealth. I've made 5000 wealth and invested it in roughly 8-10 turns assuming i invested the 5k in T3 troops rather than T1 dross. Now what - no idea as i can no longer generate any wealth other than wool! hunting grounds have gone. My clan aren't happy, time to move somewhere else and find more resources or fight someone.

Not really sure what you're doing here. If you can gain a resource for every 300 workers, you get 1 the first turn, then a second. Instead of just cashing them in for 100 each, you trade to get something else and the third turn you now have 3 different resources = 900 even though you only make 1 wool a turn. You get 900 more people. Now you can make 4 resources a turn, wool, maybe something else depending what you found. You take all the duplicates, trade them for something else and next turn you have a 4 resource set for 1600. You make 1600 people and can now ramp up to 9 resources a turn. The only hunting you've done is to get to the original 300 or maybe to clear out a spot to use the resources. If you're Nature you have eight to choose from including timber, probably wool, and maybe gold. At 9 resources a turn, by trading off the duplicates you could possibly get a set of eight (assuming there are no non-Nature players, likely, plus if there are non-nature players they don't have much to trade since they can't afford many cities. You're making 6400 a turn maybe more. They built one city for 300, then had one resource and had to wait around trading and building several turns to make the 900 they need for a second city, then the 1200 for the third. They're way behind you, especially considering they have to PROTECT those cities. You have nothing to protect, and by now have 1600 people and get another 6400 a turn. The Rui guy is just dead meat.

If the map continues to grow and isn't fixed in size = broken.

City: We have 300 wealth and can build a city. Praise the mercantile gods! That city now gives me 100 wealth a turn that i can invest or 1 resource that i can trade. I find another city player to trade with, i find wool... i find anything collectable. Worst case, I save my hunting grounds and slow build - 8 turns in I've generated 600 wealth and converted them all to troops. I hit 2 hunting grounds and build another city. I'm now gaining 400 wealth a turn. If i get any tradeable goods this accelerates rapidly and can be done in half the time, i'm then onto city 3,4,5 and cannot be caught by Nature unless they hit me just after city 2 or before.

So 8 turns later by your calculations he has one city and 600 guys. I've already shown the Nature guy can have almost 8000 men (more than enough to overwhelm the city)  and an income of 6400 a turn, all without touching hunting after those first 300. And all because he can get a resource with only 300 guys while the city boy has to spend increasing sums AND protect his cities. 

Even then they will need 3 times the wealth of troops to win and it can't be in T1 troops or they will lose anyway on the numbers killed. They've only had 5000 wealth before in the time span and will have perhaps 1000 Rangers so i need 1000T to hold them off. 2 turns after my 2nd city then. Piece of cake.

At which point the Nature players realise winning will be VERY hard and ask if resources can start to be 'regrow' - at that point GM has to make a call.

Resources don't deplete. Only hunting does that. Your assumption that they run out makes your analysis flawed.  

If i had a pound every time someone told me a game was broken when in fact it just needed to played or managed better i'd be a King! The only current issues i can see relate to fishing as it is a pool of never ending wealth but it may be needed by nature mid game. The only reason i can see the above is incorrect is if resources last forever - if that's the case then yes, the game is broken but was from day 1 but i think that highly unlikely.

The game's only broken because it's too easy to make resources other than by having cities. When harvesting takes 300 guys and can't be captured, while cities need to be protected AND cost increasing amounts, building cities is the quick route to defeat. A Nature guy who just harvests can't be defeated because even if his guys get driven off a place they're harvesting, he just gained 300 warriors to take it back, or just moves them to a different spot. The attacker gains nothing unless he has 300 guys to make use of it, which, if its one of those magic resources only Nature can harvest and he ain't Nature he can't even do.  

Bottom line - play until someone wins or we collectively say stop! 

Bottom line is, rules need to be fixed. If we don't do that and keep playing--the rules still need to be fixed. The game is broke. You just aren't convinced. I see continued play with broken rules as pointless and counter productive. The rules need fixing. I think it's better to fix them and then either continue under the new fixed rules, or start over. Probably a re-start is better because the fix changes the game in a substantial way. Nature is no longer the only way to go. Harvesting will only get you wealth like hunting and players will probably want to change their Ways. Right now there is no real choice. You take Nature or you lose.

I've demonstrated  mathematically several times that Nature has a MASSIVE economic advantage vs every other position and that becoming civilized and building cities is self-defeating, the opposite of my intent and of reality. New Players are going to read the description of the game, logically assume building cities is the way to go, follow that route and either get destroyed by a barbarian neighbor who just harvests, or else puzzle out for himself that harvesting is WAY cheaper and easier to get the same resources. Either way he's going to shrug and just before he quits say, "This game is stupid."

No, the GM is stupid because the game was fine until just before we started I threw in a last minute change to "give poor Nature a way to pick up some resources because he won't have cities" that broke an otherwise fine game. I did not foresee how it could be used even by other players to avoid having to pay for cities entirely and still get most of their benefits with none of their drawbacks.

[jpatte...@gmail.com]

I didn’t realise resources weren’t depleted. The obvious answer is to deplete resources after 1 use. Then my maths is right. If they don’t depleted then you are absolutely right and nature will win comfortably. 

Sent from my iPhone

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Fantasy Nations" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fantasy-natio...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.