Making it fun to be smarter than the AI

[DaveShack]

OK, I get the "senseless slaughter" point against the previous proposal regarding Article C. It is a valid point, and to be completely honest I don't want to raze cities that flip to us, or that we are powerful enough to demand in peace, either.

I do hope however that at least some of the people here understand that part of the fun of the game is being able to outmanouver the AI's. Take a good look at what we have for a game structure right now.

1. We're not allowed to expand any more.
2. We gain nothing from going head to head on culture.
3. Instead of being able to safely end wars early and keep some of the spoils, we are forced to prolong wars or stop short of where the strategic goal should be.
4. Instead of adjusting our play to favor keeping more land from the civs with good land and ignore the ones with bad land, we have to take from all equally.

I conceded point 1 long ago.

Point 4 is a style thing really -- do we want to be forced into 4 captured cities on our continent and 3 on the other(s), or have flexibility to choose 2 local and 5 remote, or even all local? Do we want to be able to adjust what we're doing based on resource locations (of new resources primarily), or stick with the first good thing we see?

Point 3 is midway between being important and being insignificant. For Germany, if we took another city and razed it, or if we were allowed to keep cities taken peacefully, it wouldn't make a big difference. On the other hand, take France. If we could capture Paris, destroy Lyons, and then get Besancon in peace and keep it, this would be a very big deal.

Point 2 is the big killer. We work our butts off on local culture to the point that we have a realistic chance of flipping an enemy border town, and we're not allowed to take advantage of that if it does happen. What kind of fun is that?

So, you ask, why is this bozo writing any more on the topic now that we've collectively torn his current proposal to shreds? Because he's always optimistic that there may be some way to restore hope. Hope that we can play at least some of this game in a normal way, instead of doing unnatural things to satisfy our urge to make winning harder.

I won't bother with legal language. Simply put, keep the existing limit on one city per civ captured, but limit that clause to captured in battle, and let us keep any city captured in peace.

My prediction is that this will still go over like a lead balloon because it makes our task too easy, but an optimist has to try.

 

[Strider]

I'll whole-heartedly support this. Anyone who disagree's can have there entrails slowly eaten by a colony of fire ants.

 

[Strider]

Looks like people actually took my threat seriously.

 

[Black_Hole]

I'll whole-heartedly support this. Anyone who disagree's can have there entrails slowly eaten by a colony of fire ants.

I'll step up
This would allow us to get many cities from culture and peace treaties... We shouldn't make this game any easier, as we are already pulling out ahead.

 

[DaveShack]

I'll step up
This would allow us to get many cities from culture and peace treaties... We shouldn't make this game any easier, as we are already pulling out ahead.

Correct of course, but not the point. The objective of this proposal is not to make the game easier, it is to eliminate things which make the game less fun.

 

[TimBentley]

I would think cities acquired in a peace treaty would be considered captured in war.

 

[greekguy]

I would think cities acquired in a peace treaty would be considered captured in war.

I could see a long, painful, controversial Judicial Review over that one...

 

[Black_Hole]

there already has been a JR over it, DaveShack wants to change it so they don't count as taken cities

 

[DaveShack]

The way to avoid judicial reviews is to make the language of the law explicit.

It sure would be nice if some of the influential people who seemed to be in favor of the other amendment (until the vote that is) would say something about this one. Were they really outraged by the idea of accepting and abandoning cities, like their highly inflammatory rhetoric claimed, or were they really motivated by not wanting to weaken the variant, no matter how illogical it is to rebuff rebels who want to join our republic?

 

[Furiey]

I saw the choice of whether we choose to accept and then abandon a city as being seperate from the decision of whether we can according to the law.

The law as it stands stresses the taken by any means, however because of the way other forms of capture work (culture flip, in peace deals) the only way we could capture a city was by conquest.

I finally voted for the last amendment (I was against it initally) as I decided that it corrected the situation to allow us the ability by law to capture cities by other means, but did not weaken the variant significantly as cities we do not want to keep would still have to abandoned by the end of the turn. As I said whether we chosse to accept a flipped city is a seperate decision.

This amendment though does weaken the variant and will allow any number of cities to be held as long as only one from each Civ is taken by Conquest. The variant is pretty much blown out the water which will please those that never wanted to do it in the first place.

 

[Strider]

This amendment though does weaken the variant and will allow any number of cities to be held as long as only one from each Civ is taken by Conquest. The variant is pretty much blown out the water which will please those that never wanted to do it in the first place.

What has this varient done for us?

Tell me this, where is the challenging game we were promised? Where is the roleplay that they claimed would be revived because of this varient?!

Like I said before the game even started, 5BC does nothing for us. Let's drop it and actually have some fun this game.