Change some Standard WOK rules? - continued

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Change some Standard WOK rules? - continued

Post by Saladin » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:01 pm

trewqh wrote:You're welcome to read through the agruments already mentioned and comment on them in this thread:
http://www.kaomaris.com/phpNuke/modules ... pic&t=1393
Yeah i already had read that thread, but it doesn't make much sense to me. A player can just as easily be ripped on turn three or turn four. So why not protect them till then?

This is being over protective. One turn of no headhunting is plenty. If a player will normally get ripped on that second turn than an extra turn will most likely not help him either.

My main problem with this rule change is not that it would take a turn longer to rip a player, but more that you create an unnecessary 'block' by not making an home province accessible.

Protecting a home province on the first turn has a powerful reason as otherwise players would not be 'free' to go after neutrals but would have to fear their home province being taken on the first turn. So allowing headhunting on the first turn would have a detrimental effect on the first round as it would get a lot more defensive.

But there's no reason to ban attacking a home province on the second turn. On the second turn there's no need for it as a home province might just as easily be just another province as players will have had the and opportunity to move their resources around.

Plus seeing as most players will have their armies and such in other border provinces ready to attack more neutrals or another player defeating those armies makes an extra turn of protection for the home province pretty useless, because without the armies to defend it, it will be taken the turn after. Actually the only thing this rules does is give defensive players that put all their armies and wok on their home province to level up another free round...hmm...maybe i shouldn't be complaining here...it actually seems to be advantaging me. :)

So i would like to ask if the 'standard' setting for the headhunting rules can either set to 1 or better yet an empty field so the gm actually has to make a conscious decision about it.

What do you think Korexus?

/moved that discussion to prevent anyone from thinking it concerned Center Island - trewqh/
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Post by Saladin » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:20 pm

God i love serious discussions. :)

Come on Trewqh reply...otherwise i'll actually will have to start spending time on work. :)
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Re: Change some Standard WOK rules? - continued

Post by trewqh » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:07 pm

Saladin wrote:Yeah i already had read that thread, but it doesn't make much sense to me. A player can just as easily be ripped on turn three or turn four. So why not protect them till then?
The difference is that in 25% of cases 1 of 2 players opposing eachother has a better OoP (player A) then his opponent (player B) on BOTH turns. Consequently making it possible to eliminate the player B in two turns before player B can do anything.

Example, A goes after B on turn 1, taking all of the neutrals that B took and leaving B with his home province only. B makes all of his POP transformations in his home province, which, obviously, has less than 144 POP leaving him with less than 36 fresh armies. In the mean time, A after fighting only once and taking two empty provinces adds 36 more armies to what he had left. On turn 2 player A is before B in the OoP and RIPs B before he can do anything.
Saladin wrote:This is being over protective. One turn of no headhunting is plenty. If a player will normally get ripped on that second turn than an extra turn will most likely not help him either.
It will help. AND make the game more complex an interesting in my opinion.

With 2 turns of protection, even with such an unlucky OoP as in the above example, player A cannot simply use his initiative to eliminate B. Player A has to think which way B will decide to go and B gets a chance to retaliate regardless of the OoP not to mention that he's able to fire missiles on turn 3 if he decided to order his workers to produce MIS on turn 1.
Saladin wrote:Protecting a home province on the first turn has a powerful reason as otherwise players would not be 'free' to go after neutrals but would have to fear their home province being taken on the first turn. So allowing headhunting on the first turn would have a detrimental effect on the first round as it would get a lot more defensive.

But there's no reason to ban attacking a home province on the second turn. On the second turn there's no need for it as a home province might just as easily be just another province as players will have had the and opportunity to move their resources around.

Plus seeing as most players will have their armies and such in other border provinces ready to attack more neutrals or another player defeating those armies makes an extra turn of protection for the home province pretty useless, because without the armies to defend it, it will be taken the turn after. Actually the only thing this rules does is give defensive players that put all their armies and wok on their home province to level up another free round...hmm...maybe i shouldn't be complaining here...it actually seems to be advantaging me. :)
You're arguing from the position of a player with a lucky OoP. A player with a bad OoP, thanks to 2 turns of protection gets a chance to apply a different tactic and survive
Saladin wrote:So i would like to ask if the 'standard' setting for the headhunting rules can either set to 1 or better yet an empty field so the gm actually has to make a conscious decision about it.
This is one of the most important matters. What we are discussing is a GM house rule, not a rule of the game as such. Making 2 turns of protection default ensures that a GM not willing to make a conscious decision doesn't spoil the game for new players who could get eliminated on turn 1 (which could happen if we do as you suggest.)

Gotta run. :)

Will be back in a couple of hours to continue if need be. :)

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Post by korexus » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:16 pm

Headhunting was originally banned so that a player couldn't be eliminated before having an order processed. Evidently this would turn people off the game.

24 new armies in a home province have a 98% chance of holding 36 attackers, so the player with the unlucky OOP would have to be pretty stupid or incredibly unlucky to die (Either make no armies at home or not get some allies in or lose on a 2% (or less) chance after the 1 in 4 probability for the OOP.

I'm happy with the idea of having 'turns of safety' as GM option. - it could change strategies a lot, I'm not happy with leaving the default blank as this would result in GMs accidently allowing headhunting quite often (just think how many games get entered as 'gamename' at first because the GM - often me! - forgets to change the field...)


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Post by trewqh » Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:47 pm

korexus wrote:(...)so the player with the unlucky OOP would have to be pretty stupid or incredibly unlucky
Being inexperienced is enough :!:

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Post by korexus » Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:22 pm

Being inxperienced is enough to mean a player only makes one attack order per turn, not realising that they can attack onwards. Maybe we should limit all players to one attack on turn one to balance this out...
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Post by trewqh » Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:38 pm

:)

No, I think letting them survive for at least two turns and learn by observing other players doing their best is enough. :P

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Post by Saladin » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:49 pm

Well i have to agree with Korexus. I don't mind giving a gm the option to set his own number of 'rounds of safety', but i strongly dislike the idea of setting this to 2 turns as a standard option. Just leave it at 1 as it's been for all these years and has worked well for all these years. I have still not heard a single decent reason to change this.

If you want to protect new players there are better ways to do this. The most important thing is to give them all the information and advise they might need. That way they will learn from a more experienced player the do's and don'ts of playing wok.

And once we get a nice flow of new players coming in we can start up some beginner games again. And with these beginner games it could be handy to not only set the no headhunting to two turns, but why not simply ban any player to player combat on the first two turns? Just protecting the home province has very little use after the first turn. It just rewards the defensive players who like to stick everything in to their home province.

So my advise would be to just keep the standard at 1 round but make it a GM option to change it (which i think it already is).
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Post by Calidus » Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:17 pm

I think, while a two turn on attacking the home province sounds like a good idea, it really isn't, or shouldn't be needed. A player should be making the effort at diplomacy to keep his home territory from being taken on turn 2. Sometimes, it happens. In my very first WOK game WWWWAAAAAYYYYYYY back, I lasted a whopping 4 turns. That's when my "friend" Underpants came crashing down a killed me in one fell swoop.

Besides, if I know someone is out to get me, and I have poor OoP, I will just sit tight and plan a counter attack. Odds of them taking your home province, after you have done nothing but build troops and DEF, is pretty slim, unless they gang up on you......then you're pretty much SOL anyways.

I say leave the one turn no headhunting as a default, and then give the option for more/less turns as the GM sees fit.

(just my 2 cents, for what it's worth)

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Post by Donut » Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:42 pm

I agree with Calidus on Headhunting.

I thought I'd throw out this idea. What if we moved the Tech point check to the beginning of the turn rather than after the bombing phase?

Missiles can easily kill a very large # of tech points, taking you from 7 attacks to 3 in no time. Would there be an advantage to making it your # of tech points at the start of the turn that determines # of attacks.
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Post by trewqh » Sun Feb 11, 2007 9:38 pm

Donut wrote:I thought I'd throw out this idea. What if we moved the Tech point check to the beginning of the turn rather than after the bombing phase?

Missiles can easily kill a very large # of tech points, taking you from 7 attacks to 3 in no time. Would there be an advantage to making it your # of tech points at the start of the turn that determines # of attacks.
That would make bombing IN ORDER TO slow down your enemy obsolete, I wouldn't like that since that is one of the features that makes defending against stronger players possible. One can outsmart a player who has more and stronger armies by: taking away his TECH, predicting where his armies will end up after 3 attacks and placing MIS next to that province.

I think that in the long run your idea would make sleeping even more effective than it is now, which I wouldn't want to see as I think sleeping makes the game boring.

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Post by Calidus » Sun Feb 11, 2007 9:55 pm

How about a game where you have to conquer at least one province every turn.......

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Post by trewqh » Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:03 pm

Sounds bloody great! :)

But I guess neighbouring players would form pairs taking provinces from each other.

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Post by Donut » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:10 am

lmao... my recent games have proven that I'm good at that. Except for the first turn where I miss them consistently.
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Post by Underdog » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:49 am

Calidus wrote:I think, while a two turn on attacking the home province sounds like a good idea, it really isn't, or shouldn't be needed. A player should be making the effort at diplomacy to keep his home territory from being taken on turn 2. Sometimes, it happens. In my very first WOK game WWWWAAAAAYYYYYYY back, I lasted a whopping 4 turns. That's when my "friend" Underpants came crashing down a killed me in one fell swoop.

Besides, if I know someone is out to get me, and I have poor OoP, I will just sit tight and plan a counter attack. Odds of them taking your home province, after you have done nothing but build troops and DEF, is pretty slim, unless they gang up on you......then you're pretty much SOL anyways.

I say leave the one turn no headhunting as a default, and then give the option for more/less turns as the GM sees fit.

(just my 2 cents, for what it's worth)
OK who let Cali"dunce" back in here? I thought we got rid of him a LONGGGGG time ago. :twisted:
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Post by Calidus » Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:25 am

Underdog wrote:
OK who let Cali"dunce" back in here? I thought we got rid of him a LONGGGGG time ago. :twisted:

Brother, I am like that smell coming from your sneekers. Just when you think you've gotten rid of it, it comes back smelling worse than ever!!!

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Post by Underdog » Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:46 am

for some reason I knew that bad penny would come back sometime.

Nice to see you again it has been awhile.
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Post by Hannibal » Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:54 pm

Donut wrote:
I thought I'd throw out this idea. What if we moved the Tech point check to the beginning of the turn rather than after the bombing phase?

Missiles can easily kill a very large # of tech points, taking you from 7 attacks to 3 in no time. Would there be an advantage to making it your # of tech points at the start of the turn that determines # of attacks.
I agree with Donut. A clever idea. Your number of attacks should depend on your TECH at the START of your turn, not unpredictably your TECH after the bombing phase ... moves the game just a tad further towards skill/planning rather than luck?

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Post by Saladin » Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:36 pm

I strongly disagree here. Missiles are not just there to kill armies, but they are also very important in destroying tech points from another player. The reason it's calculated after the missiles is for the exact reason Korexus gave. I find it actually adds strategy to the game.

The whole luck part of course is in the missiles. Now taking out the missiles completely...now that would be a good improvement against all this unnecessary LUCK.

*Feel free to jump in here Dameon!*

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Post by Underdog » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:50 pm

Saladin wrote:
The whole luck part of course is in the missiles. Now taking out the missiles completely...now that would be a good improvement against all this unnecessary LUCK.

*Feel free to jump in here Dameon!*

:D
Thats not really what he wanted he just wanted aimable missiles kinda like GCAs. he did not like using 50 missile to kill 2000 tech points and not hit an army.
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