Re: The long-term

Morton M. Charnley (ac217@detroit.freenet.org)
Tue, 27 Sep 1994 18:44:12 -0400

>
>> Atleast for the successful serious empire builder, 50+ NP depending on
>> swearings and such, 40 castles, 300+ garrisoned provinces. When other
>> empires give over nobles as they are leaving for whatever reason, I am
>> willing to bet that there will be players with 100+ NP, even 200+.
>
>The alpha test ran for 112 turns, which is about two years at the
>current rate. It started with a more generous NP allocation policy.
>At the end, one player had 80+ nobles, counting those belonging to
>control artifacts (which we really shouldn't count as NP's). The
>average, however, was still about 10 nobles/faction.
>
>> That game will be Risk, a few really big stacks waiting for the right
>> alignment of stars and alliances to unleash devestation.
>
>Perhaps. But remember that the world is awfully big. Making a killer
>stack is not enough; you have to be able to move it around quickly to
>get all of your enemies.
>
>> Of course, do you think that the game will hold interest and uniqueness to
>> run that long?
>
>It depends on what you want out of the game. Some players read Oleg's
>lore archive and quit, since they have already "collected all the blurbs."
>The main interest in Olympia is provided not by the GM, but by the
>player-player conflicts. I can only come up with so much new stuff,
>but new enemies to hate are always available.
>
>How did BSE stay interesting for that long?
>
>I am starting to think that position growth through nobles and even men
>is probably detrimental to any long term open ended pbm. My thinking for
>future designs is that positions should be fixed somewhere around 3-6
>characters, and that's it. Permitting ownership of buildings and property
>without requiring a noble to be present might allow empire building to
>occur without the world overcrowding that accompanies it in Olympia.

I don't think such an artificial limit is good for a game. I know that any game
I have played that had such caused me to rail against rather quickly. That said
I don't disagree with you to some extent. I think that getting nobles should be
harder than it is after the initial few. Some of the suggestions that I would
make to resolving this would be to make the number of NP needed to form a new
noble grew as you have more nobles working for you. Also getting nobles to
oath to you should get more difficult as you have more. The thing you need
to think about is WHY would nobles swear an oath of allegience to another
noble. I would think that generally it would be to gain a fief. Some thought
about tying the cost and number of nobles to the amount of land which
the 'lord' controls (not including land 'pledged' to him?) might come in to
play as well.

>
>But any limited resource that a position can grow in will eventually
>eat up the world, starve out new players, etc.
>
>--
>Rich Skrenta <skrenta@summit.novell.com>
>
>

--
Chip Charnley
 ac217@detroit.freenet.org
 ccharnle@ef0424.efhd.ford.com
 My opinions are my own and do not represent anyone but myself.

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