You are right. Olympia's combat has a very terminal quality;
winner-take-all... The uncertainty that is generally appreciated might
be a bad idea here.
Though I had in mind something that let one be sure of the outcome (as
now), but that the pain of the result might be uncertain....
On Tue, 20 Sep 1994, David desJardins wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 15:01:04 -700 (PDT)
> > From: Patrick McLaughlin <pmcl@cts.com>
> >
> > THere's a difference between a combat system being unpredictable--which
> > one does want--and being uncertain, which people usually want as well.
> > It's nice to be able to forecast the likely results. It's also really
> > nice, from a gaming point of view, to have there be a perceptible risk
> > (not necessarily large) that things will go bad and somethign unpleasant
> > will be the result.
>
> I don't agree that most people want this, at least not if the unpleasant
> outcome is so disastrous as in Olympia. If you send a large stack with
> several nobles and an army that you have spent several turns building up
> against a strong npc position on an island, for example, and there is a
> 1% chance that you get wiped out and your nobles captured and they all
> get sick and die, then 99% of the time that slim chance isn't going to
> matter, and that remaining 1% of the time I guarantee you that the
> player it happens to won't think it is a "nice" feature of the game.
>
> David desJardins
>
>