the Choosing Betas: Battles and Military Matters

[The Amber Lord]

Long time player, waiting to come. Looks like the military part of this game( 3rd) is a LONG way from being tenured. By tenured I mean not a complete headache to the players in every conceivable manner. Needing this for that, needing to be bloodied, needing to suffer loses, all for advancements and recruiting privileges, on a turn by turn game with random dice rolls? Seriously when does the fun start?

Good luck, I'll be waiting....

[HeadHoncho]

Agree, this is the biggest hurdle right now as I see it.

Why not just make advancement a percentage, with that percentage being slashed in half if you attack a village, or if your group is two sizes or more larger than the opposing group (army vs. brigade, army group vs. division)? Something simple and easy to understand.

[Jumpingfist]

UM just an FYI

Something to check over the next turn or two as my group fights I have some pretty extremely attrition levels. None that would equal a whole brigade yet but it will within the next battle or two. Can check to see if it is removing the brigades but still keeping the correct combat values and new attrition amounts.

[Thudargh]

For what it's worth, I don't think the Blooded requirement is about needing your fellow soldiers to die around you in order for you to gain experience.  The way I see it, attrition is being used as a proxy for battle experience - if your fellow soldiers are dying around you, there's a very high likelihood that you are in the think of the battle as opposed to sitting in the reserves and never having a chance to see the enemy.  Is it a perfect proxy?  Certainly not - but the alternative would be to create a separate trait called Battle Experience and a new set of mechanics by which it works.  May or may not be worth the extra efforts since it may end up highly correlated to attrition.  Just a thought before I head to a meeting.

[Ry Vor]

This just a general comment, not directed at any particular poster.  In general, the more experienced players are more familiar with the depth and nuance that is in Alamaze that you would not necessarily want in a board game where players have to figure all the odds, etc.  Players don't need to concern themselves with what the odds are for leader promotion, brigade elevation, etc, we post as an accommodation to those that thirst for that.  A player can easily enjoy Alamaze and the military / battle aspects without having to calculate leader promotion, wizard survival, etc.

Alamaze is not Risk.  If "fun" is not doing much more than rolling dice, Alamaze is likely not your game.  And all attempts to ask critics to give a comparison to another game that does something, anything, better than Alamaze, I have never gotten a reply in dozens of posts to that affect.  So our designs have had two published games, and as a total outsider to the publisher community that votes on the national awards, both Alamaze and Fall of Rome won for what was called PBM Game of the Year.  As far as I know, no other designer can claim that 100% of their designs win Game of the Year in any category, acknowledging our niche is tiny. 

As I believe most active members of the community know, I am determined that 3rd Cycle Alamaze is our best effort ever.  I honestly don't know of any multi-player strategy game that has more than a small fraction of the strategic options afforded in The Choosing.  Again, dissenting opinions can be posted.  This will take time for the players to adjust to, and meanwhile we of course want to fine tune a design.  This is a beta.  There has been tremendous progress on the interface and design since 2nd Cycle.  Trust me on that.  In comparison, the beta I was in for GSI's "State of War" had at most 8 pages of rules, and was completely messed up.  You could hire three kinds of units: infantry, tanks, or bombers.  In the beta, tanks cost 100x what infantry did, and did 2x the damage.   Many other design abortions in a very simple game.

Reviewing three battles from the battle log in Word to notate, just printing out those 3 battle logs (the calculations and text results) are 50 pages in Word.

Avid readers of the forum (and we wish all players were) know we already have addressed the fine tuning for most aspects of the military side of Alamaze, and Mike has many of these in place.  The rest should be done in the next few days and will be in place before we start what I think will be the final beta for The Choosing. 

We have new tactics, 23 or so new Companion brigade types, several new Summoned brigade types, four instead of one recruitable brigades, all with different tactics, leaders have become far more important, to sometimes rival wizards in their importance in battle, brigades independently track experience, morale and attrition, many traits effect combat, the intercept ranges have increased to allow more combat, also helped by emissary range being reduced to 8, several presentation additions to combat and group reporting will be added, new combat spells, and the dreaded blooded to earn experience at a specific brigade that has been tested. 

Again, in general we are trying to extend the opening game phase, and you'll see other measures to that effect.  So our intention is not that we have lots of Warlords or Elite brigades in place before turn 10.  These will be notable accomplishments normally.  Enough for now.

[Jumpingfist]

well UM can see some high damage output against my NE groups in beta2. they were effectively not effected by magic since he only had a p3 casting presence.
the first battle seemed like even though he was surprised I retreated as if I was the one that was surprised. 2nd battle my 10 brigade army took 70+ percent damage from his surprised group during the archery phase before my mages could even cast spells. so much for winter bonus and surprised attack. will go back to summon death much more predicable and it avoids combat formulas.