Hi! It's great that the new Standard WOK game set-up allows GM's to vary the parameters, and that you're using the facility and GM'ing a game.
Great.
But, with respect, I think you are mis-remembering the debate about the effectiveness of missiles?
Egbert wrote:
There have been many complaints over the months about .. "Standard WOK." This is because we felt spies and missiles were too powerful, among other things. So, I have made the following modifications:
Long Range missiles now go to 2 provinces away max, instead of 3.
The most number of armies which can be killed by 1 missile is 3, instead of 5.
I rather think that the only complaint was that missile-effect was too
variable rather than too
effective. Dameon was the strongest critic, and the examples he gave, which he says made him give up WOK4/Standard WOK, were of him firing off missiles and killing
no armies, not him complaining of others' missiles being too effective against him. We all remember infuriating cases of our missiles killing far fewer enemy armies than what they should do on average.. (Presumably the opposite must have happened about equally often, but those cases don't stick in the memory as much!).
SO, the issue is
variability/random effect, not the
average level of effectiveness, which is NOT too high.
As a player who always played actively and always faced Long Sleepers, the subject is dear to my heart. It takes a HUGE amount of effort, forward-planning, diplomacy, spying and great guesswork to use missiles as the equalisers they were originally intended to be against passive Long Sleepers. Uphill all the way, I can honestly say. No wonder Long Sleeping is usually the winning strategy, and anyone active is handicapping himself. (I accepted the handicap and found ways through, otherwise I would not have bothered with a sleeping/boring game).
Feel free, of course, to choose your own parameters for any game you are generous enough to moderate. I only put this in for the sake of FUTURE games and for the hobby overall, not to have a go at you, believe me. But you DO realise that lowering the effectiveness of missiles makes it even MORE stupid to be an active player, and even MORE attractive to go for being a Long Sleeper, right?
You yourself, Egbert, have said before that YOU would be happy to win a game by good diplomacy, Long Sleeping, and without having to fight anyone at all!! (Saladin has pipped you - he says he even "achieved" that once - he eventually just circulated his latest Turn Report, showing how many of his armies had grown to what level through his passive sleeping, and all the other, active, players just gave up the game. Impressive. Probably unique. But I do wonder how many of those players who gave up wanted to ever play WOK again ..... Saladin's view on this being a wonderful thing for vets to try to do, just might have changed a tad now that he has laudably taken over the overview of making the game/site attractive to join and stay with .... I bet Sal would NOT want vets to do that to newbies in the next 3 games that will run this year, right, Sal?!! - NOW, finally, you maybe understand my shock at you saying how GOOD that sleeping approach of yours and other vets was - before considered the community needing to keep players, no?).
My focus, if I'm still interested, is on newbies/recruitment/retention/future of the hobby. New Players (I prefer we refer to them as "New Players" rather than the denigrating "newbies") tend to be actve and looking for an active game (just before they go AWOL, right?). Veteran old mates tend to quickly nap with each other rather than with the new guys; the new guys are
expecting a game with activity and fun; they go looking for fun and victories; if they survive long enough, they have 6 weeks of no-action, then 200 heavies from a veteran LongSleeper roll through them on Turn 13; they didn't realise they "should" sleep for 12 turns/6-9 weeks in order to stand a chance; they didn't realise the game was that dull; they tend not to want to play again.....
I, Validon etc. avoided that cos we managed to make Active+Successful work, against all odds! But that's no kind of recipe for retaining most new players ....
So, in summary, it's great you'll mod a game, choose your own parameters. But future mods should perhaps not copy this variant of decreasing the effect of missiles, making boring Long Sleeping even more attractive and turning off most players who want a game that's
more fun, not
less fun.
Sorry, no time to go back and shorten it. Would my detractors pls say which paragraphs they would have omitted?
Hannibabble