The Worlds of Kaomaris

I have come up with an idea, that I think would be very exciting to play. It's just a 10-player game as usual. Every players starts in a home province. These home provinces will prove to be very, very useful. While the locations of the home provinces will still be random, those 10 home provinces will be the thing that adds the X-element to it.

At the end of every turn, each home province will generate an extra 50 Population. This means that when you own 2 home provinces, you will get an extra 100 Population each turn. This makes the importance of holding on to your home province, and obtaining others, very important.

What do the rest of you think about this game? Would you play in a game like this? Do you think the 50 Population is a good bonus, or would you rather have something else? Discuss.

First...did you lose your knife?

I like the idea, i would add some extra defences to the home provinces so they are easier to defend. But adding 50 pop every turn makes sure that there will be pop around throughout the game and that the home provinces will be a hard fought for commodity. It could be a very good game!

This gnome is even uglier than the last, nearly there now!

As for the idea - AWESOME! Respect. Count me in.

We had already discussed this, Yon, but since you encouraged a discussion, I thought I'd share my similar idea with the rest.

I've been thinking of ways to make Standard WoK more action filled for quite some time and one of my ideas was to give each player 5 POP for each province he owns at the end of a turn. This POP would go wherever the player would like it to appear. You have 10 provinces, then you get 50 POP. You need 14 more POP to have 48 in some province and you want the rest somewhere else, no problem.

While Yon's idea is about controlling key provinces (which is great fun), my idea emphasizes defending your whole territory.

What do you think?

These ideas could be combined. For example you get 24 POP for a home province and 4 for a regular province. And you can distribute the bonus among the home provinces you own.

Sorry for stealing the thread, Yon, I'll shut up now.

I like Yon's idea for a great x-game.

I like Trewqh's idea as a new standard for wok 4!

Saladin wrote:I like Trewqh's idea as a new standard for wok 4!

The problem is it's fit only for an X-game as it requires additional work from a GM. I can't see making this automatic anytime soon.

good to see that you're all enthousiastic
So what about the 50 pop, do you think it's a good bonus?

Why i like it to be standard is because it would solve the problem of empty provinces being useless to a player. It doesn't really make sense that land would only be a drain on a player and add nothing useful to his economy.

I also think that this would be a decent way to make sleeping a less attractive option. As sleepers usually only have a couple of provinces and aggressive player tend to have more. And with this because of the extra provinces the attacking player can get some of his lost armies back.

A very good idea Trewqh!

There would be a foreseeable problem of course. Get two players in the end stages of a long game and each holds 5 home provinces. At 50 per home per turn you get 250 POP per turn. You could only convert 144 per turn maximum to ARM. The additional excess POP then breed and the following turn things are worse still. Lowering the amount to 4 per province per turn irrispective of home status or existing POP would make every province of value and as a blanket thing I should have thought programming it in wouldn't be a problem. This would mean a player with 6 provinces gets 24 pop per turn ie 6 Armies. The two players 30 provinces each get 120 per turn which can all be totally converted each turn.

Post above almost same as Trewqh's so ignore it all okay. Good plan. Had tea and lost plot.

I don't know if I like this as an idea for standard WOK. One of the important facets of early to mid game is having enough armies to win fights, having enough workers to keep you supplied, but also building up a good supply of pop. If you get pop back every turn, you don't have to worry about protecting your pop, don't have to worry about protecting your workers, you don't have to worry about defending.

If you're at the end game and you don't have any pop, that means you didn't manage it well enough in the early and mid game. This kind of free extra pop flow will also extend games quite a bit, since when players have 20+ provinces, they're going to be generating 20+ armies every single turn, along with probably maxing out several provinces on workers. I'm not saying there shouldn't be some reward for having 20 provinces, 15 of which are empty. I just don't know if generating pop out of nowhere is a good way to do it. Maybe every province should have 8 or 12 or 16 workers permanently attached to that province. And instead of 1 or 2 missiles or spies or whatever showing up in that province, the produced material automatically ends up in the nearest home province, or the nearest populated province, or the nearest province with workers. This could simulate a distribution system. Or each prov could produce 5 or 10 tech points, simulating food production that allows armies to be more active.

This thread needs to be turned into a General discussion thread. This seems to be a very active month for discussing core game rules.

hey tbert

iv bein a member for less time than you and iv sent about the same amount of texts as you.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dragonette, that's because Tbert waits until he has something to say before he posts.

Tbert, many people would say it's not worth managing your POP to that level and just to convert it away from the beginning, but I know you manage to pull it off so it obviously can be done.

I think generating TEC would be the fairest of the options you mentioned. Producing missiles or spies in each province would either be insanely powerful or impossible to use because everything was so sattered around.

Dammit, I've managed to argue with pretty much everyone today. Why did you have to turn up and make intelligent, reasonable points?


korexus.

Personally when i've got still pop after turn 6 i've made a mistake somewhere.

I feel thatpop doesn't bring me anything. I find that if i keep pop around (which can be stolen) and wait with converting them that means that those new armies will not have been leveling up as long as if i had converted them before. And any new workers have missed several turns in which they could also have produced something.

I do understand that keeping pop around means that you get more pop each turn, but i'm in doubt as to wether or not that extra pop you can convert will outweigh the lower level of your armies or the missed production of your wok.

Hmm...i might try it next game just to see if my assumptions are right or not. Though i think this style works better for Tbert as he plays more aggressively and therefore doesn't sleep/level up as much. So he's not missing out on any leveling up with those unbuild armies.

Sal, have you ever fought somebody to a standstill and suddenly realized... you don't have any more armies? There is a max rate to how fast you can level, but no reason why you can't have 2 armies leveling at the same time.

In a long game like Risk World, I've gone through 3 or 4 main 'armies', all the while leveling one or two new 'armies' for use once that's gone. If I had converted all my pop in the beginning, I'd be long dead due to simply running out of forces while fighting Calidus or UD or Vortan or Lardmaster.

Nope never ran out of armies. If i did i was ripped.

Fighting with multiple army groups mean that you're more likely to lose fights and giving your opponent the level bonusses instead of having your one massive army group get those bonusses all the time.

Of course if you plan on attacking right from the start you won't have all your armies ready at the start as you can only create 36 each time. So then you would be splitting up your army groups. But leveling up in two different provinces i prefer not to as i find it wasteful.

Just as wasteful as attacking neutrals with level 1.000 armies. I seldom do that, i always level up for a turn or two before i start taking out neutrals.

It's not just wok in which i play this way. I'm very protective of my assets in all games. You should see me play Age of Empires. I always try to save all my fighters and heal them constantly. That's why when i play such games online i usually get wasted as i spend too much time and resources on protecting and keeping all my units alive. Instead of just churning out tons of new ones.

That's why i liked Battle of Middle Earth 1 so much...you can build up your armies and keep them throughout the campaign and even name them...that's so me.

korexus wrote:Tbert, many people would say it's not worth managing your POP to that level and just to convert it away from the beginning, but I know you manage to pull it off so it obviously can be done.

Was any game of Tbert's already published? :the-head-scratching-smilie-we-don't-seem-to-have-yet:

Btw, please, let's keep this an idea for X-games for now as: 1) We have a lot of other ideas going 2) This one cannot be dealt with by changing the defaults.

trewqh wrote:Was any game of Tbert's already published?

I'm actually quite excited to publish Risk World so Saladin and I can debate the finer points of having pop or not having pop. Not so excited about all my super-secret stragerey (I greatly exaggerate the stragerey actually involved) but I was peer-pressured into joining Homelands, so that's out the window.

TBert does not want to go to work. But TBert must go to work.

Tbert must find a way to WoK at work.