In the name of balance and equal opportunity

[Aladar]

FAL and Daniel let' continue here, but also summerise a little of what we are talking about.

Here are a few of the posts that led to this post:

Juv:
Considering this is an experimental campaign where we are to find out the balance and imbalance of the scenario this feels unfortunate. I do appreciate Lurkens wish to remain in a more or less "doomed" Poland but I feel that I must question the efforts to replace Portugal, (no recruitment in this thread?) as a player nation considering how fast it was diploannexed, preventing all future attempts to do this. As a GM playing Spain, prefering to fill Poland over Portugal, I find questionable considering the effects of the game clearly visible to all experienced players of the game. I can't help wondering how I would have felt if I had played Russia in this game. I can't say I totally agree with the motivation for this behaviour, being that "one can't force a player to move if they don't want to". I do think Lurken would have moved if heavily encouraged or forced to do so while Portugal was in good shape which makes this unfortunate business even more suspicious.

Aladar
Well i believe that this campaign is a good example, that something should indeed be changed for future campaigns.
Spain is far to powerfull, which ofc. came from the missing Portugal, and therefore Spain could take all the gold in Americas long before anyone else found it. Way to little competition.
BB and Russia seems a bit hampered by a Poland, which has given them all problems to expand, which could had raised them to the level of most other countries. But that should have been obvious from the start with so many countries placed next to each other.
Venice has the usual problem which is no histroric leaders that can match either Austria, France, OE or Spain, who all have abundand leaders.

Aladar
Another option i'm considering for my next game (Chill 5) is simply to delete all historical leaders and only give random leaders/explores to all nation.
While some nations still have demographic advantages, exploring would be a lot more spread out, as each would all of a sudden persue different exploring strategies which the new maps allowes for, especially one with few pagans.
And instead of waiting for the right leaders, wars would be fought more often i think, as you won't have to fear some uber leader with 10k cav that can beat you 200.000 infantry army with your random general.

FAL
Historical leaders are balanced, that's why.

Aladar
Are they? Then why are people always waiting for them to attack, or don't attack when others have them.
England, Austria and France atleast have way better leaders and many more too, than a lot of nations like Denmark, Sweden and Venice.

FAL
...which is the balance. The game balances itself because everyone knows the leader file and knows when to confront strong nations before they become even more uber when they get a super leader.

Aladar
I see that as an argument to delete the histrocal leaders, since everyone knows the old ones.

FAL
With random leaders only, how exactly are you going to prevent a country with a string of luck from dominating the game? Picture France getting a couple of 5/5/5 or better leaders and Austria nothing and no one knows it before it's too late.

Aladar
Well isn't that the fun part, NOT knowning what might happen?
And yes - we might all have a string of luck in the leadergenerator, but over 320 years that should be even.

FAL
Now everyone knows that France will get Turenne and that they need to prepare for the onslaught. That's the balance I meant.

Aladar
Yeah it's balance between France and Austria. But if they turn on Denmark, Sweden, Venice, Poland or whoever doesn't have an uberleader when these 2 does, the other nation is doomed.
And it doesn't go the other way around. Venice/Denmark and others doesn't get any of these uberleaders, so they are never in a position to make the onslaught.

FAL
Not knowing things create unbalance.

I am not saying it can't be fun to play with random leaders only and I am not saying I would not play with random leaders only myself, I am only saying that the *reason* to play with historical ones as opposed to random leaders only, is to create a *balanced historical* game.
IE, Spain is then strong at start, weak at the end etc. Portugal not having leaders and staying a relative weak country in this field is part of that balance. And so on. Everyone knows the historical balanced role of the various countries and keeps it more or less intact. Part of the reason why France constantly fights Austria and Spain helps Austria in game.
You, from your part, don't really argue that random leaders are *balanced*, but that's it is more *fun* to play with them, which is an entirely different topic and not one I want to oppose at all

Daniel
I agree Aladar. What FAL talks about is not balance, what he talks about is the predictabilty that is created if you have only historical and no random leaders. And the more predictable things are the easier it is for the players to balance out the unbalanced things that exist, if they want to that is.
I agree 100% with you that random leaders add much more to the balance than does historic leaders. But historic leaders are quite fun, especially when it is you yourself that gets them. Less so when your hostile neighbour gets them.
The easiest way to understand that randomness leades to better balance is to imagine that all things that are different in the game would be edited out. Monarchs, leaders, number of starting provinces etc, and then assume they all were redistributed randomly (but still quite fair as the random generator in the long run will get the distribution more and more fair - the law of big numbers or whatever it is called in English).
If we did like this for example Venice and France would in average be quite close in strength. In fact all nations would be quite close in strength from start, Sweden, France, Spain, Venice, the Navaho, etc. That would be a balanced game (from start).

Daniel
You are mixing two different concepts here, "balance" and "historicity".

FAL
IE, Spain is then strong at start, weak at the end etc. Portugal not having leaders and staying a relative weak country in this field is part of that balance.

Daniel
Not it is not. It is just an unbalanced and historical feature. The only true balance is when all player's are equally strong from start (as I wrote in an earlier post).
In Chill4 we made some kind of (failed) attempt to have a balanced game. With all nations at least a little similar to eachother in strength from start. Unfortunately we failed to realise the amount of inbuilt differences between our nations in that scenario so it did not turn out that balanced at all. But I would love to play such a game one day. I have some ideas about how to accomplish it.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

FAL and Aladar,

How about one of you making your next campaign truly balanced from start. A few ideas I have

Say we play 1419-1819, 400 years.


1. Monarchs.

Each nation gets 10 monarchs that live for 40 years each. Each monarch has a unique setup, e.g. one has 1-1-1, one has 2-2-2 and so on until 10-10-10. Then each player can choose when they want his monarchs to start reigning. Someone will perhaps start with the 10-10-10 and someone else with the 1-1-1. Thus the values of the monarchs will will be exactly the same for all nations (and thus fair) but there will also be a element of skill involved because you choose when you want the monarchs.


2. Leaders

All historic leaders are edited out.
Instead we have random leaders with caps on 4 and average on 3.

All random events for conqs and explorers are edited out.

Instead each nation can choose before a session (secretly) that this session he wants to have one or more of a certain setup of explorers/conqs that he has the right to.
Say you have three of each with a (predetermined stats, just as the monarchs) life span of say 12 years (i.e. the normal life span for random explorers/conqs).

The reason why it should be secret is that it is adantageous for another nation to DOW a nation that has an explorer/conq because a war is highly detrimental to the skill with which you guide him. And yes, someone must do the edits just before the session starts, so we won't get total secrecy.


3. All start with all sliders at 5.

Then all can make a certain free moves from start. E.g. two or three. You can have a locked land slider if you want, optional.


4. We choose some minor nations as starting nations. Like in Chill4 or the Saturday game you and me and Temu etc started a few weeks ago. They should have similar starting values and there realtive position to COTs and gold provinces should be similar. Of course also tech group and religion the same.


5. We edit out all historic events for the nations we choose (if they have any events at all ).

6. If we want we could make even more deletions in the random event file. Like removing political crisis and deflation but that is not necessary IMO. A little randomness is exciting.

7. Then we make an auction for the nations we want. For each nation we can make a bid. An inflation bid. The nation whose lowest bid is the highest is first to be given to a player. The player making the highest bid for tnat specific nation gets it. An example. Say we have 3 nations, FRA, ENG and SPA, and 3 players, A, B and C.

          A   B      C    
     FRA  2   1.18   3
     SPA  1   1.5    2
     ENG  0.5 0.5  0.5

The lowest bid for FRA is 1.18, the lowest for SPA is 1 and the lowest for ENG is 0.5. Thus FRA is considered the most attractive nation in the chosen setup we have decided upon (their lowest bid is the highest). Since C has offered to play FRA for the highest starting inflation he gets FRA and will start with an inflation of 3%. Next comes SPA and since B offered to play them for 1.5 he gets them for that while A only offered 1% it goes to B. That leaves A playing ENG for 0.5% inflation.

This auction is just a method to try and avoid any unbalanced things that still remains after all the edits described above. If all believe that items 1-6 is enough to create a satisifactory balance we do not need to do anything more.

And yes FAL, we do not need to fight about the spanish bankruptcy event either.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

I will give a few suggestions for what nations to start with.

All should be in Europe I guess because if put somewhere else the opposition is weaker.

Coming to think of it, perhaps some nations have an advantage because of the reformation or that all nations around are of similar religion etc. If so the auction will take care of that.

Say we start with nation 3-4 provinces large.
Remember: all nations will be set to catholic and latin tech from start.

1. A scandinavian nation: like a small Norway
2. A Russian nation: like a Novgorod (without the COT)
3. An Eastern Europe nation: like a small Lithuania
4. An Italian nation: like Naples
5. An Iberian nation: like Portugal.
6. An Anglian nation: like Scotland
7. An Eastern Germany nation: like Bohemia
8. A northern German nation: like Brandenburg
9. A french nation: like Brittany
10. A central Europan nation: like Switzerland

Of course, this resembles Chill4 quite a lot. But it is only a suggestion to give you all an idea. We could of course make whatever edits we want.

The important thing is for player that join such a campaing is to understand that such a game has nothing to do with experiencing the specific history as we know it happened, this is much more focussed on gaining a rewarding gaming experince in a historical environment. It is for gamers, not for historicity aficionados.

 

[Lurken]

I like it!

 

[arcorelli]

The whole idea of 'making balance making every nation equal at start' (that reminds me how Ryo made his 'balanced scenarios') do not work IMHO. Because -even if you make leaders, kings and the like the same- there is still a difference: Geography.

There are countries easier to defend (any in the british isles), there will be countries that large opportunities to expand against the AI (any 'russian' player), countries will soon will crash with humans (anyone in central europe).

IMHO, the normal setup *is* actually quite balanced. All countries got advantages and disadvantages. Any good player can be successful with any country, I had seen all countries played very well and being almost destroyed.

I had seen Spain overpowerful, dominating form day 1 until the last, I had seen Spain absolutely decayed, almost irrelevant in Europe. Only Poland is usually doomed, but still there had been examples of polish good play.

 

[Aladar]

Sounds interesting, thou i don't think we have to be quite so drastical in the setup. I still prefer normal nations and many of the historical events.

But the leader/monarch thing i like.

I have a version of the 1492 AoD where there are new random events. An even number of bad and good ones. Not sure where i got this, but i can post more of it later (not doing not work today , thou still at work).

The auction part also sounds like a funny setup.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Arco,

I specifically added the inflation auction to take care of this. I explicitly explained that this was the reason I added that.

Besides, before you finish off the nation setup you can make amendments of the starting nations. If you believe Scotland is an easy start then perhaps lower their tax values a little.

----------

To describe the standard campaigns as "quite balanced" is simply not true. Small nations like Portugal and Holland only survive because their big neighbours are kind. If we cmpare sizes we can also conclude that there is a huge difference between e.g. FRA and Sweden at the start of a 1490 campaign.

Of course all nations in a standard scenario can be well played and all can reach the top levels. We are not discusssing what can happen, we are trying to create a framwork where all nations have about equal chance to do it. That is not so in a standard campaign.

 

[arcorelli]

To describe the standard campaigns as "quite balanced" is simply not true. Small nations like Portugal and Holland only survive because their big neighbours are kind. If we cmpare sizes we can also conclude that there is a huge difference between e.g. FRA and Sweden at the start of a 1490 campaign.

Of course all nations in a standard scenario can be well played and all can reach the top levels. We are not discusssing what can happen, we are trying to create a framwork where all nations have about equal chance to do it. That is not so in a standard campaign.

Er, size is a very, very, very bad measure of success. For a lot of countries is better to remain quite well (I prefer a 40 provinces Portugal to a 100 provinces Spain after all).

Portugal and NL survive because it is to the advantage to their neighbours that are strong. France got a better chance to be the uber-country with a friendly NL (the single most powerful France I had seen was allied with a very strong NL). Portugal+Spain is most powerful than Spain alone (a well played Portugal+Spain got more income, cover more colonial land than Spain could do alone).

 

[unmerged(6147)]

I simply do not understand what you aim at Arco.

I am suggesting how we could try and create a "balanced" framework where all have a similar chance to success. What is it you do not agree with in the suggested layout?

If you are uncertain about what "success" means it means power in wealth and war.

If you define it radically different then you are on the wrong track.

 

[arcorelli]

I simply do not understand what you aim at Arco.

I am suggesting how we could try and create a "balanced" framework where all have a similar chance to success. What is it you do not agree with in the suggested layout?

If you are uncertain about what "success" means it means power in wealth and war.

If you define it radically different then you are on the wrong track.

Yep, that is why I said size is very bad measure of success and that a Portugal+Spain is more powerful than Spain alone (easier to crush enemies in war, a wealthier combo) or that France+NL can be extremely strong.

What I do not agree with the suggested layout is that I don't see the advantage with standard setup.

Let say that you don't change tax values or goods. Then any 'France' will crush any 'Iberian': french provinces are way better. In normal games 'iberians' can survive that due to very good early leaders and their explorer advantage.

Let say that you change tax values or goods (so they are equal). Then any 'Iberian' will be in a easier situation (why? easier to defend, only one neighbour to worry about).

Or, in the standard you proposed, there is no power in the easter med. So any country able to go there quick they will be a lot of advantages. Now Naples can do it, Scandinavia no. So you got a difference in the scenario from day 1.

Actually, the only change of that setup regarding normal setup is having Switzerland instead of an OE. No matter what 'russian' nation you chose, they will end being Russia. Scandinavia will be the usual Sweden. The anglian will be UK. And the like.

And the auction, er, Daniel auctions don't work that well I tried in EGA5 after all

 

[DSYoungEsq]

Don't argue with Daniel; his assertions are based upon his gameplay style, which is significantly different in philosophy from yours, Arco.

Personally, I think a really good MP player could "win" with a one province minor, assuming it wasn't bordered by three other human players. So the issue of "balance" isn't that the usual suspect countries are unbalanced, but, rather, that some players are better than others. This would become much more obvious if we played ladders with people's position dependent upon surviving a game; you'd see a lot more eliminations of people than you currently do. You'd see that also if more people played with Daniel's assumptions about how a game should be played.

Still, that doesn't mean that Daniel's suggestion isn't a good one for a game. After all, we're just marking time for the next 12 months anyway, so let's have some fun with it!

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Arco,

A similar discussion occured a few years ago and I got similar responses (was not you one of them responding?).

Anyhow, your statements about the consequences of any inborn inequalities is wrong because of two reasons.

1. If say these french provinces are much better, would that not mean they are more attractive for other nations as well? Even if wrong culture the capture of some would at least deprive the "french" nation from them. It would be in the interest of the other nations to keep up the balance. If you were in the game no doubt you would be the first to point out the necessity of it. I believe your view is based on your experience mostly. The struggle for balance exists in all MP games, the difference between the current one and the standard ones is only that they start at an equal position.

-------------

2. But all of this is irrelevant really. Because as I stated in my first post

"This auction is just a method to try and avoid any unbalanced things that still remains after all the edits described above. If all believe that items 1-6 is enough to create a satisifactory balance we do not need to do anything more."

You then responded

"The whole idea of 'making balance making every nation equal at start' (that reminds me how Ryo made his 'balanced scenarios') do not work IMHO. Because -even if you make leaders, kings and the like the same- there is still a difference: Geography."

I was slightly surprised you had missed what I said about the auction, so I started my next post by saying

"I specifically added the inflation auction to take care of this. I explicitly explained that this was the reason I added that."

To my utter consternation you now write:

"Let say that you don't change tax values or goods. Then any 'France' will crush any 'Iberian': french provinces are way better. In normal games 'iberians' can survive that due to very good early leaders and their explorer advantage."

It is if what I say just passes through thin air out into the space, never entering your mind. It reminds me of the discussion in the other thread. I will now explain and repeat one final time. Please read what I write so that we do not need to spill time on irrelevant stuff. Now it comes:

"This auction is just a method to try and avoid any unbalanced things that still remains after all the edits described above. "

So, if you want FRA because it is so good, well the chance is that other players make the same estimate and then you will have to pay quite some inflation to get it. In an ideal world the inflation you need to pay would be exactly as much as to make all the nations exactly equal in a longer time frame than just the starting position. Of course any exact equality will not happen but any such discrepancies as you describe, with one nation just crushing another because of favourble MP/tax or whatever, will not happen early in the game, because the nations will be very equal in strength thanks to the inflation penalty.

What happens later in the game no one knows. Any differences will probably mostly stem from the diplomatic achievements, as usual.

 

[unmerged(18425)]

I kinda missed a huge discussion here!

 

[arcorelli]

1. If say these french provinces are much better, would that not mean they are more attractive for other nations as well? Even if wrong culture the capture of some would at least deprive the "french" nation from them. It would be in the interest of the other nations to keep up the balance. If you were in the game no doubt you would be the first to point out the necessity of it. I believe your view is based on your experience mostly. The struggle for balance exists in all MP games, the difference between the current one and the standard ones is only that they start at an equal position..

The french provinces are way better than spanish ones in any game now. But they are under french rule in almost all games. Prolly because is very easy to defend them as France (or any french nation) and difficult to take them as other power? (The reason why, usually -apart of EGA5- games with Venice tend to end in venetian Italy when games without Venice end with everyone and his dog fighting for Italy?

"I specifically added the inflation auction to take care of this. I explicitly explained that this was the reason I added that."..

And that was why, at the end of last post, I said auctions do not work. But well. The ideal world in where people put inflation to equalize any difference is prolly, as all ideal worlds, quite likely not to happen. I tend not to worry or gave importance to things that will not happen anyway.

(BTW, there is a reason I never answered your point in the other thread -basically the 'why' is irrelevant when the 'how' shows that there is no difference to the usual situations, where 'why' is not asked)

 

[unmerged(27214)]

For the record, here's the difference between randomized games and non-randomized games in a nutshell, from someone who has played a good few: Nothing. Some are strong, some are weak. The inteliigent/lucky weak are protected by the strong, the unintelligent/unlucky weak are devoured by the strong.

The point is, it all comes down to how skillful the players are, whether randomized or not randomized. On the other hand, deleting events makes for a more chaotic, less strategic game because essentially you're just playing RISK + economics. It's the difference between a boxing match and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots.

 

[unmerged(18425)]

Daniel,

I see where you are coming from. I believe it is possible to create a balanced scenario, but not with the current tax, culture and manpower distribution and AI nations. Simply because geography in itself gives then advantages (as Arco said).

If you want a true balanced start up, then you need to play a fantasy game with each player starting as a minor and with the whole map existing out of same tax, same culture, same manpower provinces.
There is simply no point in denying this. If some areas give better opportunities than others, the player with better access to those has an advantage over the rest.

However, such an ultra balanced game would probably be quite dull. But I believe there's a good compromise mod handy that is close to this setup, still quite balanced, but more fun than a fantasy game.
The Throne of Heaven 2 mod.

It has all human played nations in the mediterrean, with roughly equal resources, no historical events and leaders and it has the rest of the world free to conquer. (with a few AI nations here and there). It also has random events to change a culture to your culture etc.
Back then we used it to roleplay an ancient world with Gods and such, but I believe it can be perfectly used for a balanced non-RPG game too.
The good thing of a mediterrean setup is that each country has access to the sea (and thus to exploration) and each country also has access to inland colonization, be that in Asia, Europe or Africa. Also, all humans are close to each other and become neighbours within two sessions, allowing for a lot of interesting plotting and warfare.
A very interesting concept added to this, is that you get random events giving you victory points, but those come with a penalty (like a revolt somewhere). You can then transfer those victory point in something after session. In the RPG game we used it for spells, but in a normal game you could for example buy with the victory points a leader or an explorer. This way you could even give a penalty to buying leaders and make these also more balanced. Works better than just randomising those leaders I think.
Of course, taking missions should be strictly banned to make this work.

Anyway. Please give it a look. It's here

If you want to do a balanced game, I would do it like this.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

And that was why, at the end of last post, I said auctions do not work. But well. The ideal world in where people put inflation to equalize any difference is prolly, as all ideal worlds, quite likely not to happen. I tend not to worry or gave importance to things that will not happen anyway.

In EGA5 you tried and did an auction on slots in COTs. I bought several shares and was pleased. For me it was a success and when you stopped making the auctions it was a failure. But I do not claim that any conclusions can be drawn from this regarding the possibility to perform an aution of the kind I suggest in this thread. I fail to see the connection. What I do know is that it is no problem conducting an auction of the kind I propose. You just ask people to make their bids and they make them and you rank them. Done. We may need tiebraking rules. And if we want we can let the auction go on one more time, with players allowed to raise their bids and so on. But these are mere details. It is a piece of cake as you can see. There exists no indications that it will not be a success. And what is more important: you do not present any such indication (the one you try and present is dealt with a few paragraphs down, it has been found void of logical contents).

When you first wrote this about the auctions "not working" I must confess I thought it was a joke. Both because the lack of presentation of any facts to base such a conclusion on, but as well the lack of the logical conclusion itself.

No you appear to be sincere and you substantiate your claim by writing

"to equalize any difference is prolly, as all ideal worlds, "quite likely not to happen. I tend not to worry or gave importance to things that will not happen anyway."

Thus, you say that the bids will quite likely not be so skillfully made that they equalise the setup and thus you entirely disregard them.... So if they only equalise to an extent of 99% you still disregard them????

Assume the the setup we make reaches an equality of say 70% and then the auction brings it to say 95%. You will igonore the equalising effect of the auction because it does not reach 100%????

We can give a number of examples with different numbers and you, if you stand by your generalised statement, will in each case where the sum does not reach 100% be forced to claim that you can ignore the equalising impact of the auction.

What is clear is that unlogical posts like the one you just made can safely be ignored. They do not add anything to the debate. They merely take up our time.

How well the bids in the auction turn out to be will be a matter of skill and thus part of the game. A new intriguing feature. But it should not be that much wrong since all nations will be sold by bids, so if for example people underestimate the importance of inflation it will be underestimated for all nations and so on.

(BTW, there is a reason I never answered your point in the other thread -basically the 'why' is irrelevant when the 'how' shows that there is no difference to the usual situations, where 'why' is not asked)

Well, thanks for finally admitting you never responded. Do tell it to the other three who commended you on your last post.

Regarding the factual contents of this statement of yours I simply do not understand it. What I do understand is that the following type of conversation

A: why do you do like that?
B: we do it like this
A: I asked "why" you do it like that, not how you do it
B: we do it like this
A: I asked why, not how
B: we do it like this

leaves something to be desired on the part of person B. In all circles I spend my time it is considered to be polite to answer to the question made and not to another one, especially when the person making the question insists that the one he makes is the question he wants to have answered.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Daniel,

I see where you are coming from. I believe it is possible to create a balanced scenario, but not with the current tax, culture and manpower distribution and AI nations. Simply because geography in itself gives then advantages (as Arco said).

If you want a true balanced start up, then you need to play a fantasy game with each player starting as a minor and with the whole map existing out of same tax, same culture, same manpower provinces.
There is simply no point in denying this. If some areas give better opportunities than others, the player with better access to those has an advantage over the rest.

That you can write this after I just told Arco 2-3 times in a row that we had an auction to counter any still existing deficiencies is mindboggling. And even if you just read my first two posts I still mentioned the auction and the purpose of it in one of them.

If you want to argue that Geography (as we can call it when we discuss tax, MP etc) makes it impossible to create an equalised scenario you must face the auction argument, else your conclusions are meaningless.


WHAT WE AIM AT

And yes, we are of not expecting to create a 100% equal scenario, that is of course in practice impossible. But we aim at creating a scenario were all contestants at start will believe that they have just about an equal chance as anyone else to become the mightiest nation on the map. Something not yet experienced in any MP campaign as far as I know (I guess the Throne for Heaven is closest so far). Something new and exciting I hope. And thanks to Aladar and myself that can be true in just a few months. For you and Arco it appears as pie in the sky. For us it does not.

BTW, I have already gotten two players voluntarily wanting to play a game like this. Even though I have not asked for their applications. I am quite happy about this.


CULTURES

Regarding cultures I have the idea that perhaps all nations should have all Europan cultures. The alternative to give all provinces in Europe the same culture is worse IMO since it forces a MOD. What I have proposed so far can be edited in the starting save only. Well apart from the events. But they only force us to install a complementary event file, like in Chill4. Much more easy than a complete MOD.

This would make it more advantageous for nations to disregard the standard frontiers.


HUMAN NATIONS

The starting setup I suggested in the first post is of course not anything set in stone. Who knows, perhaps there will be 13 players, then we need 13 and not 10 slots. Or perhaps it is just 6 players. Or perhaps it will be 10 and we decide on 10 other starting nations than the one I suggested. This is the one feature that is the least decided and there is no hurry. It is probably the one that will be dicsussed the most.

 

[Gaius Marius I]

Aladar
Another option i'm considering for my next game (Chill 5) is simply to delete all historical leaders and only give random leaders/explores to all nation.
While some nations still have demographic advantages, exploring would be a lot more spread out, as each would all of a sudden persue different exploring strategies which the new maps allowes for, especially one with few pagans.
And instead of waiting for the right leaders, wars would be fought more often i think, as you won't have to fear some uber leader with 10k cav that can beat you 200.000 infantry army with your random general.

I like your style of thinking sir :thumbsup:

(shame i have no time for such a game...)

 

[unmerged(6147)]

A very interesting concept added to this, is that you get random events giving you victory points, but those come with a penalty (like a revolt somewhere). You can then transfer those victory point in something after session.

Huh, Aladar also talks about more random events .

I want less randomness and more skill. That is one of the basic ideas of this concept, to get rid of inequality built into the game. The outcome should much more stem from the choices made by the players, rather than the initial setup or the machinations by the RNG during the game. I could well play this game entirely without any events at all (historic and random) but perhaps players would think that is dull.