(#18 will be in effect... now)

In reply to Sylvia Starhelm (msg # 525):

The d100 was unpredictable, but the +25, +3*skill, +bonuses made it more predictable again.

What's the intention behind mounts and more playable races? Is it colour or a wider range of play styles?

1) - Introduction of Lizardfolk into the standard race pool will have an actually "slow" race that is worthwhile in the mix.

2) Gnomes - to have a Unit that was actually meant for crafting (thus - two crafting means: humans and gnomes)

So- yes, playstyles.

Mounts: - The Mount Slot itself will simplify "where I do put this information".

Mount varieties?  Haven't really decided if it's necessary or not.

---

The d100 was a nightmare in combat, because successive rolls made it too easy (by luck) to get a one-sided fight.  But, the d100 for the "Regular" game world is great - because the unpredictable nature of the game allows for some fun events to appear.

I'm hoping by managing to write quests which have permanent consequences, and have choices - allows for an improved experience, by giving different play styles ways to complete the quests.  Mostly what I have seen so far: if a quest needed actions that were already "in your playstyle" (your Usurpation's capacities), then they are being completed: otherwise, you just try again for another quest later.

Unless you're me, in which case you generally try to do them anyway.
But yeah, there certainly wasn't any time to learn how to do them.
I'd actually prefer quests to have a looser deadline; Right now you usually have one or two weeks to spare, giving you very little chance to do anything but complete it at full speed.
The time invested would be the same either way, so the deadline isn't, I feel, that vital to making quests important.

Anyone seen our fearless leader?

In reply to Talonrel Windrunner (msg # 531):

Not for a week.
Was wondering why there wasn't a new week notice yet.
Hopefully they'll get back, at least long enough to finish a few more weeks - I still think we're getting close to the end, so it won't be too long until a hiatus wouldn't be noticed (well, noticed much - there'd be people waiting for the next round to start, it's just that we might not be too surprised if we were waiting for a while)

Same here, sadly!

Hey folks - sorry for the delays.  Basically the game comes down to when Talonrel puts in a turn.  The game is over unfortunately.  It has been a good game.  Sorry for the delays; I've had some severe real live changes recently.

Also, been trying to support a buddy who has found himself in a tight spot trying to find a place to live and get settled into university once more.

It appears that Talonrel has put in a turn.  So, I will resolve what I can forthwith.

As in TW is winning the game with this turn over or you putting the game on hiatus till RL settles down or your stepping down and never coming back?

Talonrel has legitimately won.  He has such a wide-margin of victory right now, there is simply no way - due to the results of this turn.  That anyone can challenge him.  Once this turn resolves - one player will be eliminated; and then, nothing else will matter as he will just smack-down until he wins.

Congratulations Talonrel, nicely played!

Thank you all for playing.  It has been incredibly fun for me and a wild ride. Sorry for the last month or so has been hit-or-miss on presence.

It's been quite crazy.

I will do a highlights reel here over the next few days I hope.  The results and playstyles were a lot of fun!

In reply to The System (msg # 536):

A shame I did not get to see the 'epilogue' of my own group (or 'Band of Bandits', as I was calling them) - in particular, I was looking forward to my first big fight.
But yeah, I was certainly never going to catch up.

The more you reveal, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
As with last time, I for one don't mind my IC thread (and stat-page) being made public, and hope some of the others don't mind either.
It was amusing to skim through them last time.

But a highlights reel might make finding the interesting bits easier, yes.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:47, Thu 23 June 2016.

I actually got to spy on his forces the turn he hit mine....his forces were scary, but when it comes down to it we were basically running the same strategy. Orc troops with maxed out Warder and defensive equipment. I had a bunch of extra defensive advantages, but he had a LOT of extra offensive advantages on his other troops. It was a totally one sided battle as my Orc defender went down first. I had a backup unit that was only half finished so it went down pretty fast as well.

In reply to Sylvia Starhelm (msg # 540):

Actually, we weren't really using the same strategy, Sylvia.  For most of the game I was using an entirely different type of strategy than you which ended up dovetailing into what you see currently.  What I was going for was the creation of the "sharpest sword."  My elves are what I polished first by putting all their points into offense and strength while entirely neglecting defense.  I actually also spent more time making Powerful class weaponry than the armor.  Having a tank character came as an afterthought when I rolled an orc who had a unique that was partly tanky.  It happened to work well with my need for a construction worker which powered his tank abilities.

So, that is why I seemed to have a great deal of offensive advantages--I was building that way the entire time.  That battle was meant more as a test of the sharpest sword versus the strongest shield, in my opinion.

Well the massive amount of Leadership and Tactics on your side didn't hurt any ;-)

In reply to Sylvia Starhelm (msg # 542):

Unless I'm missing something, I've got almost as much Leadership and Tactics just on my one Leader :P
I can only find 2x6=12 of each for them, and I've got a maxed out 10 in both on Ronja.
I could probably have easily maxed out Birk, the other leader, too on both of them, though it'd be at the expense of other combat skills on the units.

So, I'm pretty sure I'm missing something.

Though, admittedly, double Scholar does give me a skewed idea of what counts as a 'lot' of a skill.

Yes it would ;-)

I did the math and Leadership is literally what screwed me. If we would have had equal Leadership, even with a failed tactics roll on my part, the battle would not have ended the same. Next game, if I go with a military kind of build, Leadership will definitely be one of those skills I work up to the top.

It was truly interesting to see how different players reached each conclusion.

Now, one "piece" that skewed playstyles was the mass change to the way quest rewards worked after month 3.  Thus, questing became a lot more common.

In the future - spell acquisition will be quite a bit easier: as spells were meant to be generally more common than they are right now.

So - it was fascinating watching Sylvia and Talonrel develop from two completely different methods:

Talonrel worked through combat and quests back-to-back in a vigorous manner.

Sylvia acquired 'friends' with the Off Map CPs (which is getting a much better name next game) and thus managed to build-up a cool fighting force with a variety of abilities (including some cool Usurpation-wide ones).

Key distinctions:

1) as Talonrel pointed-out: Talonrel put a lot of effort into crating.  Sylvia did not put in quite as much effort as early-on.

2) Sylvia did a LOT of Diplomacy - and rocked-it.

3) Both, eventually, did roughly the same amount of questing- but, Talonrel's came from explore actions, while Sylvia's came from trying to get CPs to Fanatical.

Some other "humorous" or interesting notes:

1) Alhamandriel ALMOST ended-up with the "best" Unit in the game when he passed-up on converting a second spider.  (if he had done so - he would likely have had an unslayable Unit).

2) Alhamandriel had, hands-down, the coolest Uniques - and made GREAT use of the Prison.

3) Ronja's break-neck speed acquisition of spells was tremendous.  It was only Ronja's trepidation about entering combat that did not see that come to greater fruition.

4) Ronja thoroughly proved that 'double scholar' is scary and should not be allowed in the future.  Ronja and her merry-band of bandits were acquiring skills so early - I thought it was going to be a wipe-out until some of the other players started to find their niches.

5) Everyone benefited from the Workshop this time around - though, in varying degrees.

Some questions:

How DID people feel about the quest rewards?

Were they more fun than the earlier quest rewards?

How did people feel about the difference between the Leader-based (the ones you paid 4 gold to put it onto each Unit) vs the Unit-based (the enhanced ones that could only go onto a single Unit) vs the Usurpation-wide (the ones that affected 'globally')?

Were the Unique Units fun?  Did they enhance the game?

What about the changes to the spells? (esp. adding Armament).

How is everyone feeling about the book-keeping?  Especially towards the end of the game?  Is it getting too much?

Quest rewards feel slightly clunky still, but overall I think we're getting to where we need to be.  You know how I feel about them in the fun department.  Bring back that epic quest I had from last game!  I would love the ability to sacrifice for more in some storyline thing that feels unique to my character like we did last time.  This one felt more streamlined but a bit less involving than the last round did because of that.

Generally, I will never use the leader ones because the unit ones require me to waste no actions to have them.  Plus, they tend to be stronger to adjust for the fact they cannot be spread.  The Usurpation-wide ones are pretty damned cool, though I'm aware they're less powerful because they're not tied to anything.  Still, I loved them.  I'd like if I could pick from a batch to kind of create my own build, but I know that would be potentially unbalancing and remove some randomness.

Unique units are the coolest thing ever!  I still think normal units are good, too, though!  Splicing in good uniques can make an army even better, though!

Soothsayer needs to go or head up to the Magister List we were talking about.  It's just...way too good.  I love it and will be sad to see it go, but the point remains.  However, we may need to take another look at how we track down other players without it since it is probably the best way to get the scout roll high enough.

Book-keeping for me was getting super tedious.  I'm sitting on close to a thousand gold.  With eight plus units all with four or five rows of skills and several special abilities it was getting to be a bit like "Spreadsheet the Game."  Overall, it wasn't too bad, though!  I just think that removing the storyline writing we used to do made it more tedious because it felt like I was just book-keeping rather than playing a game that had some investment and meaning behind it.

I'm sad to see double-scholar go: I was fully intending to go double scholar next time too, and try to do it 'right' this time (there were several points where I looked back and realized I wasted a week or two, or just missed an opportunity)
Assuming I didn't find some other skill that looked more interesting - though even then, I'd still do one scholar.
It's just too much my style; Getting stronger through doing actions is exactly my preferred 'progression' system in games.
Though as a reminder; I got, I believe, two spells from the Tower and two from an Extra :P
My spell-aquisition wasn't that much tied to my Scholar bonuses.

The quest rewards were fine, though I still want it to be easier to get some early Artifacts - they seem the greatest source of uncontrollable 'game changers, meaning some bonus significant enough to encourage people to change their style of play (at least in some small part)
I didn't get a single solid lead on one, though I think I was getting close, and that was with an artifact being one of my goals.

I didn't see a lot of abilities, but generally I felt they were all pretty reasonable.
I think I like 'Global' ones best, as a concept (because of how you're kind of 'forced' to have them; You either play to them, or lose out on the bonus. With the others, you have to play to them and use the unit(s) with the abilities)

I didn't see any Unique Units, I don't think.
Maybe the gnomes were?
The gnomes were cool, and even cooler when combined with Blood Oak (seriously, my Band were doing a lot of weirdly elven things towards the end. Even doing a Pocahontas scene with singing trees and stuff)
I like the idea of Unique Units in general, though, and would actually prefer that literally every single Unit in the game was Unique: Just have the more mundane Units be Unique in fairly boring and mild ways, and scale it up from there for the better ones.
Ideally, while Orcs should be better at fighting, I shouldn't be able to guarantee that a random Orc will start out stronger in a fight than a random Human (because the bonuses might tip the scales)
Heck, maybe give negatives to the particularly low-end units? Or just particularly Unique ones - it's an even tougher decision if they've got useful bonuses, after all.
It'd give low-diplo people a hard choice between accepting the incompetent workers now, or try again next week.

Soothsayer's broken, like they said.
I feel Cornicopia is broken too, but mostly the scaling; Make it take more spells to get more food out. And/or make it be normal food, not HQ.
Midas Touch is going to be broken too if you make getting spells easier; Currently it's right on the line where I'm not sure if I like the balance or not.
Sure, gold's not that important right now, but I'd like that part of the game changed too; If someone is sitting on a thousand gold, or in my case merely a few hundred, something feels like it's wrong.
Either give us more to spend the gold on, or nerf how much gold we get.

I'm fine with the book-keeping, but then I did the thing I did last time too: I didn't hire that many units, I didn't find that many extras, and a lot of my actions were copy-pasted since I send my units in 'Blobs' - usually at least half my entries are someone 'Assist'-ing someone else.
Actually, it was the fluff-writing that took most of my time, even if it got reduced from last round.
On that note: I hope next Round you'll have time and/or energy to consistently write a 'narrative', so to speak.
This game, to me, is most fun when it's combined with an, for lack of a better term, 'emergent story', and isn't as interesting when I'm just moving stats around.
Hopefully you'll be less busy next time - or less burnt out, I forget if it was that you did not have time or did not want to.

EDIT: Oh, regarding quests: I'd love if all quests got a week or three added to their time-limits.
Which I think I've mentioned before.
You're spending the same amount of actions doing them either way, but it'd be nice to have leeway to plan.

2nd EDIT: As a side-note, with two Magister titles in a row, I feel like the next time a Tower of magic appears, it should have some reference to my peoples :P
Heck, I feel like I've started a tradition, by now, of the more 'savage' parts of the world being more connected to magic; First some goblins that lived in moss-covered hovels and lived off what they could steal from nearby farms, and now some bandits in a castle that was falling apart around them.
Might (hint hint ;P ) be time to have some Shamans and such start turning up in wandering-monster groups.
For that matter, if a bunch of goblins living in a swamp can set up the Tower (because I, with no authority, have declared that they were indeed the original founders >:3), then a bunch of double-Scholar geniuses can presumably turn their Fort into an outright Mage College.
I did already have them start gathering together papers on geological studies, and design buildings, and make new-and-improved gear... My Bandits did more research than your average University :P
PS: Not entirely serious. Though it would be cool to see references to previous races, even ones that aren't mine, especially the ones that didn't win.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:53, Fri 24 June 2016.

The Leader ones were changed almost immediately after they were made to not have an action cost...

Oh, didn't realize.  Wasn't super clear, I suppose, with all the changes we were throwing in during the game.  Even I was bound to miss some.  Even then, I think I prefer more powerful abilities on a single unit rather than a teachable ability.  It allows for specialists.  Plus, considering we're drastically reducing gold income in the following rounds from what we discussed, I'm not sure if I'll have the large amounts of gold in the following rounds to warrant being able to spread it around.  I think specialist units worked for me pretty well this round.  That unit that turned into an insane sniper from a combination of two special abilities I have is a good example.