Erfgame 3 (CLOSED) - Rules and Discussion

[Kaed]

Not anymore they don't haha. Level 2 takes 5 turns to pop them according to the present rules.

You know. Judging by Faq's growth I'm inclined to accept that. At first I put it at 10 because royal heirs were 60, but now I think it's becoming evident that heirs are astronomically expensive and that's why popping something as an heir is so time sucking. So, okay.

[0beron]

Hey don't look at me, I believe it was Exate's idea as part of his sweeping changes to the pop rates back before we even started, which you already approved silly! The growth of FAQ supports the 5-turn idea though so that's nice.

[Koliup]

Lovely. Swamps. I hope you guys like leeches.
But I'm gonna go ahead and say the pop rate makes sense. Heirs should be a pain to make. And warlords are a necessity that can't be left to take forever to ripen.

Hold up. Boats require a wharf to be made. Yes? But Swamps use only 1.5 move if you are water capable. Does that mean boats can go inland; through swamps? How does a wharf in a swamp work?

[Lord of Monies]

You could have created a special unit that was water capable. Make an amphibious beast/soldier for instance. That's when that would apply, or I suppose you could have ships go onto it if it connects to water at some point. I doubt you could put a wharf there, as you suspect.

My Guhrons shall now also be Heavy. My bad on the mistaken stats. I was going off memory, cba to go back and check as it was late. 5 points, right?

[Kaed]

Woah hold on. We have differing opinions on how swamps work here. And since it was never discussed here - and only Exate has encountered any - we're going to go with my rules. Which are as follows:

-Swamp terrain imposes a -4 penalty when moving in it for ground units. Ergo, it takes 5 move to move one hex. If the unit is swamp capable, the penalty is reduced to -1, and a water capable is reduced to -3. Transport ships can't enter swamp, not enough open water.
-While in a swamp, all adjacent hexes are considered 'flashed'. Meaning the contents of the next hex are not visible until entered. Only swamp capable units and fliers can ignore this.

Swamp terrain basically provides unparalleled but not unsurpassable ground combat bonuses... And I'm debating on it but swamps will probably only be able to build farms or mills (for foresty swamp)

[Koliup]

Oh man. Moving through swamps is punishing.
Though, while I don't speak for everyone, it would be appreciated if all the hex changes(or other changes) you've got in your head were recorded on the rules document. Discrepancies and not knowing things and all that. Especially since that's a 2 -> 5 move change for ground units going through swamps. Probably update worthy.

Anyway, farms/mills seem fair enough for swamps. Get some Crayfish, fry em up Louisiana style.

[0beron]

Yeah Kaed you should prolly PM me with your gmail address if you have one (for those newer to the game, the rules doc is actually under my custody) and let us know when you want to make changes so we look at it

[Kaed]

The problem is I made the rules originally and I tend to make them as I go... sometimes not realizing that others have made rules since. Would you like swamps to be less punishing? We could go with -2, -1, -0 instead of -4, -3, -1

[Kaed]

Also, poor Monies. I test him constantly. I am a merciless titan :v When it amuses me.

Wehehehehe.

[Lord of Monies]

The constant tests offer constant improvement, or at the very least lessons to learn from. It's all just a matter of not crossing the line marked "incredibly stupid". Unfortunately, Pirates of the Carribean has taught me that incredibly stupid and genius thoughts are often confused for one another.

[The Colonel]

Well, I thank the titans that my guys are mostly sane.

[Lord of Monies]

You must not have worked closely with them yet then.

[The Colonel]

.... fine, tolerably insane.

[0beron]

My Courtier still takes the cake. I'm assuming none of you have Command units yet (besides House) so just you wait. Once you get a (theoretically) more intelligent unit, you might be less pleased.

[The Colonel]

That's strange, my Manager(Courtier) is a generally nice guy who avoids the rookie's antics.

[Kaed]

I try to only have a certain level of head-desk per side. For some it is concentrated into one courtier, for others it is an entire unit type and thus more spread out. And some of you get the conflict from events rather than a specific character.

Finally, the last of you has received his Allocated Trouble as an invading super-unit.

[0beron]

Aaaaah, that makes sense.

[0beron]

Now that I look at the rules again, I see our next unresolved issue. I don't see an agreement on the actual numerical benefit of the farm Bonus. (We discussed them giving you a cost reduction on upkeep)

Well, I figured a good place to start is calculating the value of the other 2 types of bonuses from resource points. I just did the math, starting with a Mill. Ignoring upkeep, and asssuming a city spends all Flavor Points on Mills, and builds Mills as well, it can reach level 5 on it's 19th turn. After this point, the bonus aspect of the Mill is no longer used, and over this "lifetime" each Mill has individually provided a savings of 1500 for that city.

As luck would have it, the math also shows that Motherlode chance at a Mine averages to...you guessed it, 1500 in a 19-turn period.

So to make Farms fair, their bonus to upkeep should be comparable in value. 1500/19 comes out to an icky number, so we can round up to 80 or down to 75. This is how much a Farm should save you on upkeep each turn. Thoughts Kaed?

(EDIT: I'm a fan of rounding down now that I think about it. The Mill bonus is worth a fixed amount over the course of a game, and the Mine is a random chance. Farm however would reliably crank out the same bonus value every turn forever)

[Kaed]

Uh. What. Are you sure you did your mathamancy right. The unmodified amount of turns it should take un reach level 5 is 50. If mills are reducing it to 19, I think we need to put a cap on the mill bonus, or substantially reduce it. I don't really think we should think about farms until this has been fixed.

[0beron]

Assuming that you use flavor points and produce only resource point upgrades (again, excluding upkeep, and ignoring the fact that it'd be a bit of a risk to not spend Flavor points on something else) then you could reach level 5 by turn 20 without the Mill bonus. So the Mill only makes 1 turn difference.
This is an unrealistic scenario, since you'll need units. And it'd be unwise to spend ALL your FP on resource points, cus then you'd have a kinda lame Level 5 city when all is said and done. But it's a hypothetical I used to compare the value of the Mine and Mill on equal footing.

Edit: For clarification, you are correct that with only the CITY income, it'd take 50 turns to hit level 5.