Where are the Turn 0 examples for all kingdoms?

[Wookie Panz]

Thanks People,

We have an amazing, if small community.  Everyone is helpful, and sometimes it might be despite of me.

Right now the really good news is Strylian is going supersonic with his social media stuff.  He can tell you I am mainly trying to stay out of the way.  It's part of the beauty but also the problem that to have YouTube Alamaze tutorials, its like 60 different five minute videos.  So, now you can explain to your wife why you are not quite normal.  Its not me, its that guy who has that game and is always doing stuff.   

Then we have Mike, who without, we wouldn't have Alamaze.  That's about as plain as I can make it.  You remember Alamaze from the submitting paper or Excel forms days.  Look at what Mike has done.

Here we are now in 2019 Thanksgiving Weekend.  Alamaze was a dream in 1985.  How many computer games from the '80's are around today?

Believe me, I take a lot of pride in what we have done, and of course I wish thousands more had found us.  Its never been about the money, though.  Of course I would like Mike to have what he deserves, and Nick may help us make that happen. 

Meanwhile, have you played in Zamora yet?  Or as the Black Dragons, or Halflings?  Have you worked both for and against Alamaze Champions?  More plainly, have you found a better game?

I have played the Halflings, in Zamora, against the Black Dragon!

What do I win?

And against my LI at the same time, darn you.  You get hugs. sammmwiches and 4th breakfast!

[Ry Vor]

Thanks People,

We have an amazing, if small community.  Everyone is helpful, and sometimes it might be despite of me.

Right now the really good news is Strylian is going supersonic with his social media stuff.  He can tell you I am mainly trying to stay out of the way.  It's part of the beauty but also the problem that to have YouTube Alamaze tutorials, its like 60 different five minute videos.  So, now you can explain to your wife why you are not quite normal.  Its not me, its that guy who has that game and is always doing stuff.   

Then we have Mike, who without, we wouldn't have Alamaze.  That's about as plain as I can make it.  You remember Alamaze from the submitting paper or Excel forms days.  Look at what Mike has done.

Here we are now in 2019 Thanksgiving Weekend.  Alamaze was a dream in 1985.  How many computer games from the '80's are around today?

Believe me, I take a lot of pride in what we have done, and of course I wish thousands more had found us.  Its never been about the money, though.  Of course I would like Mike to have what he deserves, and Nick may help us make that happen. 

Meanwhile, have you played in Zamora yet?  Or as the Black Dragons, or Halflings?  Have you worked both for and against Alamaze Champions?  More plainly, have you found a better game?

I have played the Halflings, in Zamora, against the Black Dragon!

What do I win?

Respect.  And making those choices is outstanding.  This is a big part of enjoying Alamaze: stepping out of the comfort zone of taking always the same kind of kingdom, or what is perceived as a safe region.  (I'm not sure which those are.)

To try to be more clear, we do have tons of stuff all in the same location, in the easiest place to put them I know - right before logging in from the log in page, or from within the order entry site, so anytime you need to know what Ogres add, you can get it in seconds if you are thinking of recruiting them. 

Turn 0 stuff might have been good for The Choosing, but not for Maelstrom, as now any kingdom can be in any region.  So Kingdom Dossiers are useful, and I don't mind those being easily accessible.  But since Maelstrom, you can't really have a straight forward strategy article for a kingdom, like you could in The Choosing, writing about The High Elves in Oakendell.  

It is personal, in that maybe some think of this as some sort of conglomerate with hundreds of professionals each with their own little bit.  No.  Its mostly one to sometimes two guys doing everything.  Could we do more?  I suppose.  Sometimes  I think maybe I should spend 40 hours doing an update of the General Rules, but then I think, nah.    

Alamaze strength is its weakness, as you all know.  It is complicated.  To document everything would be paralyzing.  As Mike knows, I do like to have at least a bit of mystery in an adventure game like this, not really wanting to reduce everything to formulas.  Does anyone really want that?

Play the Amazons.  They are fun, and fast!  Play The Red Dragons and scare your friends.  Play the Halflings in a full diplomacy game and see how in demand you are.  Play from Triumvia, not just The Diamond Coast.  Make an early play for Stormgate and see how fast things go.

You, the players, are Alamaze.  There will never be everything clearly in print, especially when we are constantly updating the game to keep things fresh.  Yes, some may long for the nostalgia of 2nd Cycle, where the Giants ruled, and we knew the Witchlord had a capital in the Sea of Terror.  We have gone past that though.  

Hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving weekend.  I have.  And once again, yes, I hear you, I just don't know that adding another 100 pages of documentation is the way to go.  I think we already scare off most people that are accustomed to just start clicking and things start exploding.

[RELLGAR]

I get it on the turn zero's, but not at all on having the rules updated that is associated  to the links on top of the webpage.

[RELLGAR]

Alamaze strength is its weakness, as you all know.  It is complicated.  To document everything would be paralyzing.  As Mike knows, I do like to have at least a bit of mystery in an adventure game like this, not really wanting to reduce everything to formulas.  Does anyone really want that?

Yes I do want that and many others do. The mystery is still there with all the hundreds  of combinations of kingdoms and regions and then again in your kingdom  strategies.  

[Strylian]

I think you also have to put yourself in the mind of a brand new player. They are trying to learn a complicated game while fighting others who know the game well. Documentation is for them in order to curb the learning curve. If they feel lost and overmatched in their first game then they are less likely to stick around.

However, it is not really fair to ask the good players to dumb down their games either since some of the fun is trying a different tactic or trying to be aggressive early. So documentation easily available let’s thoughts who want to use it to dig into the game and learn the mechanics do so. Those who don’t and just want to play can do so also.

A friend of mine who was a psychology professor at NYU used to say that one of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that others think the way they do. So some of you may think no we don’t need documents we want an ere of mystery.

While other players are very thorough and want to learn everything. As long as each person is paying their fees they have the right to play it as they like, but as a business it is important to have information on the rules, kingdoms, spells, artifacts, and etc.. easily available.

[Ashgar75]

This game is more than a spell list, and more than a Kingdom Turn 0 Setup! If you think that this game boils down to something as simple as that, then you really don't know this game at all.

For a new player, those two items are huge!!!!!!!! They help you feel like you are making a choice based on information instead of going in blind. You at least feel like you are planning based on understanding a little bit about how a kingdom starts, as well as choosing that Kingdom based on the spells available to you. Even with that information, you are clueless about going in. Even with that information you have so much to learn. I don't believe anyone is asking for the formulas or the break downs on how battles are calculated or anything. Trying to equate this simple request for the basic information to at least help a new player feel like they can make a decision with at least some knowledge to the actual calculations that determine success etc is both deceitful and insincere.

I don't understand the resistance to having this information readily available. You have a group of players where the majority are saying this is a huge road block to getting new players and then you have a limited few who are resisting thinking it somehow takes the magic and mystery out of the game. This is not my game and not my decision to make, but if you want more players, I would suggest listening to your die-hard current fan base. To fail to take their thoughts into consideration will lead to a continued stagnation and flatline in growth.

Just my point-blank, blunt view. Take it for what it is worth!

Ashgar

[Pine Needle]

This game is more than a spell list, and more than a Kingdom Turn 0 Setup!  If you think that this game boils down to something as simple as that, then you really don't know this game at all.  

For a new player, those two items are huge!!!!!!!!  They help you feel like you are making a choice based on information instead of going in blind.  You at least feel like you are planning based on understanding a little bit about how a kingdom starts, as well as choosing that Kingdom based on the spells available to you.  Even with that information, you are clueless about going in.  Even with that information you have so much to learn.  I don't believe anyone is asking for the formulas or the break downs on how battles are calculated or anything.  Trying to equate this simple request for the basic information to at least help a new player feel like they can make a decision with at least some knowledge to the actual calculations that determine success etc is both deceitful and insincere.  

I don't understand the resistance to having this information readily available.  You have a group of players where the majority are saying this is a huge road block to getting new players and then you have a limited few who are resisting thinking it somehow takes the magic and mystery out of the game.  This is not my game and not my decision to make, but if you want more players, I would suggest listening to your die-hard current fan base.  To fail to take their thoughts into consideration will lead to a continued stagnation and flatline in growth.  

Just my point-blank, blunt view.  Take it for what it is worth!

Ashgar

No worries! I have them, but now I have to read them

[Ry Vor]

Right now there are more than 200 pages of documentation organized into 20 files all located in two convenient places on the order entry website (not the forum), right where you log in, or where you issue orders.  That is considering some Excel files where in a page or 2 of spreadsheet, it would take many pages in written text to convey the same information.

From that, one section, for example, The Commands (Orders) is only 43 pages in an effort to not make it overwhelming.  If even that section tried to explain how every order actually resolves and all the possibilities and factors that influence success and failure, it alone would likely be 200 pages.  I don't think top players would dispute that.  Just to explain how group to group battles resolve takes more than 20 pages when I convey it to the developer, but in The Commands that is reduced to "Attack Group" (Order 110) and Defend Against Group (Order 120) to a paragraph or so each.  

Obviously all this exists in one written form or another in order to get it into code.  It's just everyone, including every developer (I think I have had five over the years) has underestimated the depth and sophistication of Alamaze.  When I had Phil take over for me, unfortunately he was talked into reprogramming Alamaze from Symphony into something called Clipper.  The guy who talked him into it had actually commented to me before that transition, and I remember this precisely, "If you cared about your customers, you would take two weeks and reprogram the game."  I was a bit stunned.  "Two weeks"?  It took me two years of my prime years, working long hours every night, admittedly in part because I was having to learn how to do things in Symphony that the support people at Lotus 1-2-3 said could not be done with their software.  Phil went with this guy's suggestion.  Six MONTHS later (not two weeks), this guy had only been able to document the existing code I had written.  In other words, after six months of whatever time he spent looking into what the heck Alamaze was, he had just now come to understand it and be able to communicate it adequately.  This was to be able to then finally start converting the code.  By the time it was put into the obscure Clipper, Phil had lost half the customers: from 1000 positions when he took it over to 500.  And the new code really did nothing.  The things that I had not fixed like transferring the Ring of Power were not fixed, instead just duplicated in the new language.  It was a disaster.  And I had to deal with that mistake when I took Alamaze back in 2014.  Even the Rules were not compatible in Word, so essentially had to be re-written.  Yes, and if you have had an experience of writing lengthy technical documentation, or for that matter written anything approaching 200 pages, you likely would not suggest this is a simple matter that only laziness explains not undertaking its enthusiastic redeux.  

There could never be enough documentation in Alamaze to satisfy every question without killing the players that wanted to play a deep strategy game.  You don't need to know how compression ratios in an internal combustion engine are designed in order to drive that car fast.  In battle, your commanding officer can't explain everything that might happen or why those that did happen, happened.  

Heck, I don't care (meaning I don't mind) if Nick wants to publish some kind of list of spells and artifacts, if that's what players actually want.  I just don't want that to generate 100 other questions to answer, or outrage when kingdom X now gets spell Y at level Z instead of W.  Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.  I could tell my wife all the things I think she should do, but that probably wouldn't be wise. 

On the idea that new players get killed in their first couple games: yes, they do.  If you won your first chess game against a master, what would that say about chess?  Should the rules of chess have included explaining the Sicilian Defense or the English Opening?  How discovered check and pinning works?  These are important things in chess, but aren't really a matter of rules.  More of experience.


OK, I think that's it from me on this topic at this time.  If someone wants to put out whatever additional info they want, they can: spells, artifacts, combat resolution, political result calculators.  Just don't hold me accountable as to that being official, any more than using the Queen's Pawn Gambit is recommended chess strategy.  The Queen's Gambit might work, it might not.  It's not a rule.  It's something to try, like an early move for Stormgate.

[Acererak]

Which game site is it I should reference that has more posted material or online support than Alamaze?

Well said Rick. I’m with you here but also agree we should make all turn 0 and setups available. Pegasusprod.com had all of them and when one day over 10 years ago I found it that pushed me over the edge to play again.