LK142, The colonial Portuguese

[LKendter]

Originally Posted by pigswill

Another important consideration is that at 1000ad with 12 cities (just before two formed our first colony) we were on 8% land.

It is clear my first plan went too far. My goal was to force a lot of colonies, but I went too far as victory is impossible. Would the below work to allow a win, but still require a decent number of colonies?

Our number of natural cities is 10, plus 1/2 city per colonial city. Our empire should be relatively continuous.

IIRC our 3 colonies each have two cities, so our new limit is 13 cities. We can keep expanding provided we keep expanding our colonies. I think this should be good enough to win via domination, especially if we make sure to keep cities on the larger land areas and give one tile islands such as three crabs by Mansa away.

The second sentence is to prevent us from claiming a polar city as a city. I want our empire expansion to come from lands such as England whom is next to us, or at most one civ between us.

Does the team feel this will allow for domination via colonies?

[Jabah]

It doesn't make sense 'spirit' wise to decide now that we can colonize AND keep a large island at the other side of the world.

If we decide to higher our city limit, It would be better to fix a proximity rule Typically, we should consider keeping for ourself all the english islands when we declare on them, unfortunatly, declaring on England seems to be a very stupid idea right now if we are not ready to go after Monte just after (or at least be able to defend ourself - which even with a strong navy might be difficult as Azteca and England might be too close to intercept everyboat).

Another option is that we forget the domination victory and decide that a UN victory with our vassals counting for more than 50% (or any level) is a acceptable victory.

Jabah

PS even with the 1-2 rules, I am not sure we could reach domination before eradicating (or turning into vassal every other AI)

[pigswill]

Another option would be for instance keep a 10 city limit, our cities can be anywhere in the world (maybe gifting our 1 tile specks to colonies) and win by conquest.

[LKendter]

Originally Posted by pigswill

Another option would be for instance keep a 10 city limit, our cities can be anywhere in the world (maybe gifting our 1 tile specks to colonies) and win by conquest.

Originally Posted by Jabah

Another option is that we forget the domination victory and decide that a UN victory with our vassals counting for more than 50% (or any level) is an acceptable victory.

I do want to keep the domination goal, so I am not interested in that option.

Originally Posted by Jabah

It doesn't make sense 'spirit' wise to decide now that we can colonize AND keep a large island at the other side of the world.

Our empire should be relatively continuous.
That was what I was trying to accomplish with that line. Did I word it wrong?

Originally Posted by Jabah

PS even with the 1-2 rules, I am not sure we could reach domination before eradicating (or turning into vassal every other AI)

Can you propose an alternative that would keep us in colony mode, but allow for domination?
It seems the variant idea was neat, but it is being a pain to make work.

[pigswill]

Maybe the 1/2 city idea could work if we kept cities with more land tiles while our colonies had the specks. We'd probably need to take out our western neighbours (Monte, Tok) and keep their better cities.

I'll have a look at the save today and come up with more concrete proposals.

[LKendter]

IIRC the domination percentage is up to 67%. I suspect we do need to increase the city limit even more.

[LKendter]

I would like to get this game back on track. I can't come up with any number of cities rule that avoids the % of land issue.

What about the following idea for deciding about colonies.
Our empire must be contiguous. No other AI (including our colonies) may separate our empire.
If this rule was in place from turn 1 Washington's lands would have been valid. Mali IIRC would still be a colony, as I think another civ was between. We could take England and / or Egypt (IIRC) to the NE as valid war targets.

[pigswill]

It may be that the number of civilisations affects the domination % required. In that case every colony we create makes our job harder!

I won't play tonight (bit tired) but I'd like to know if we're clear enough on our variant rules for me to play tomorrow.

[Immaculate]

Ultimately, to me, what matters most is the spirit of the variant. If we end up having to win by conquest or if we just call it a win when we have propped up 6-7 healthy vassals to the point where they are competitive with the likes of Cyrus et al., then that would be enough for me.
Having said that, I know that LK and others would like to get a domination victory, mostly from vassals, so I will adhere to the group’s wishes.
I just thought that since I hadn’t added to this discussion yet, I should voice my opinion.

[LKendter]

Are we finally back on track?

I am hitting the point that I don't know what else to do, as the variant design issues seem to be killing this game. Even has the host it is getting hard to stay interested in this game due to all of the delays.
The 10 city limit was a blatant failure, as we really should have claimed Washington's territory as our own.

[Shadzy19]

It will be very hard to get a domination win with this variant , domination on this kind of map is pretty hard already cause of all the water tiles that are wasted that you caint claim.
Add in that you only get 50% of the land of vassals just increases this problem.
To bad we didnt realize this beforehand.

Maybe we should just forego on domination and perhaps change the variant a bit
For example we must have at least 10 vassals or something and must win by anything besides space or diplo victory?
Is domination really set in stone cause it seems very unlike we can reach 67% even if we vassalige all of the AI's and settle all the remaining islands.

[pigswill]

Maybe something like we can have no more than 40% of land as a contiguous empire and must win by domination or conquest (whichever comes first).

[Immaculate]

Or... how about we have our vassals do the fighting for us? Our goal is to use our vassals and colonies to do our fighting. We can gift them galleons full of troops, but we can't fight our enemies unless they come into our or our vassal's borders. We win when our vassals kill Monty and Japan or something in that nature....

???

[LKendter]

So far I can't figure out any acceptable solution for this one.
So far my starting point is that allowing a diplomatic or space win is unacceptable. I would rather terminate the game then accept these choices.

I guess after all this time of running games it was inevitable that I would fail in a variant design.

[pigswill]

Given the problem with vassals andgetting land fordomination are we going to change the vaiant, abandon the game or maybe both (and start a fresh Joao game with new variant)?

[Immaculate]

why don't we just make our own victory conditions and then we can photoshop in a "LK142 wins a Monty is dead by vassal combined arms" victory screen?

[LKendter]

1) We needed to own the extra land from Washington and Pascal to get domination. Is this version of colonial domination variant broke beyond repair? Should the game be terminated in this form?
LKendter (yes)
Jabah
Immaculate
Pigswill
Shadzy19

2) Could the variant be restarted and work with the continuous land rule?
LKendter (yes)
Jabah
Immaculate
Pigswill
Shadzy19

Depending on the votes for #1 and #2 I will try to come up with alternatives.

[Shadzy19]

I really doubt we would be able to get enough lands for domination counting in Washingtons and Pacal's lands unless we vassalige every other AI , look how much land Monty has and even he only has 11% .
If we vassalige him and make a new colony we get a measly 5% from his lands.
So to the answers :
1) yes
2) no

I would still prefer to finish the game and adjust the variant a bit then to terminate the game.

[LKendter]

This game is dead in the water at the moment. Every day without a turn makes the game worse.

The variant design was a failure. The continuous borders idea may have worked from turn 1, but I came up with it to late. This rule would have let us own all of Washington and Pascal's land. With that plan domination may have been possible.

Let's start some votes:

1A) We needed to own the extra land from Washington and Pascal to get domination. Is this version of colonial domination variant broke beyond repair?
LKendter (yes)
Jabah
Immaculate
Pigswill
Shadzy19 (yes)


1B) Should the game be terminated in this form?
LKendter (yes)
Jabah
Immaculate
Pigswill
Shadzy19 (no)


2) Could the variant be restarted and work with the continuous land rule?
LKendter (yes)
Jabah
Immaculate
Pigswill
Shadzy19 (no)

Depending on the votes for #1A, #1B and #2 I will try to come up with alternatives.
With Shadzy19 response I am forced to breakout #1 into two questions.

[pigswill]

Had another look at the save. The only problem with the variant is deciding how much land we're allowed to have ourselves. Like I posted a while ago we need at least 40% of land tiles ourselves or the variant is essentially impossible on any map.
Continuous land is not an issue: we can occupy england, japan, egypt, persia, the ottoman empire and ethiopia without overlapping or intertwining our vassals' territories.
It would certainly involve a lot of warfare but its theoretically quite possible.