Blog Comments

When playing with Carthage then I sometimes send some generals to Halicarnassus or to Greece in order to get Cretans and Merc Hoplites. Very useful units for Carthage in the early stages of campaign.

slingers annoy me because of friendly fire.

IIRC Rome Total Realism mod makes your ranged unit more powerful.

EB, not so much. But slinger on their flanks is pretty devastating.
Or three archers and three slinger on the top of the steep hill...

Alternatively, you could up the stats of roman archers to 50 on the missile bit, that might have the effect you like.

i never really liked them. i have a tendency to lose my handlers and they always seem to dfie really fast, i can see the usefulness in city battles though.

best

best

Originally Posted by Ibn-Khaldun

Me too.

That's why I always try to take out as many enemies with archers and slingers.

Funny you should mention these. One of my other pet peeves is elite ranged units. I'll touch on that on the next entry...

Originally Posted by Beefy

I always like the sight of 0 casualty on my side.

Me too.

That's why I always try to take out as many enemies with archers and slingers.

I played EB (Unfortunately uninstalled to install to try out RTR. But will be back soon as Asia Ton Barbarorum comes out). Much as I love the realism of both mods or the fact that EB doesn't have ridiculously over powered cavalry, I do miss some unrealistic aspects of RTW. One of that being the wardogs.

I really found them useful and I adore them. They are useful attacking weak enemies without taking a single casualty.
I always like the sight of 0 casualty on my side.

Hmm, I do tend to mod my game, but unmodded, tend to be put off them due to them taking 2 turns to recruit, plus I always manage to get the men killed (which means the dogs are dead too), they have low upkeep which is useful, but have never found there that efficient, with the speed of medium cavalry yet with no apparent charge bonus, I don't use them much (or at least I didn't when I played it ) .

For those who're more interested in the "pure" mafia games, Earthling is hosting a somewhat regular mafia game at the CFC as well. He's got room for 50 sign-ups, and only has 32 so far, so there's plenty of room if there are interested .orgers fresh for another large mafia game!

I'm still getting used to NotW games over there. And often I have difficulty following the unique story lines like Fall from heavens.
But if its like Dark Radiance game which is fairly standard real lifeish setting, I did enjoy the game a lot.

Role playing certainly added the feel that you are living in the world.

If time allows it, I'll keep playing those NotW. Its really worth it.
iirc, large game Seon is hosting here "inavi" is going to be based on NotW set up.

@Autolycus: That's true. In NotW, people have a role, often (though not always) with a public description (in my M-NotW "Everybody wants to change the world", the roles were mostly named after their magic spheres, per example).

One more aspect that you implied but didn't state was that everyone has a public role in which to play. This makes a large difference. In the LOTR Mafia that recently ended over on CFC, everyone had a role with a fair amount of backstory and personal goals, including cover roles for the mafia, but since roles were not initially public, it was risky for anyone to actually try to play their role. The same thing occurred in MNOTW VI:X-Men.

I would say that perception of balance is more important than balance itself. If a mafia thinks he can win, then he will continue to play, even if it's statistically hopeless. And I agree that there's no room for mistakes in Mini-Mafia Games (See: Red Herring Mafia). That said, the set up for Red Herring Mafia was nice and complex, and it would be fun to do it again some time.

Beskar: I thought of mentioning that Kira had been used in a game, but decided against it. Props for making it work although the game was very role-driven.

You forgot to mention that I had Kira in my game and he wasn't the main bad-guy.

It's nice to see that my game certainly satisfies points 1 and 3. The ability of 2 to manifest itself depends on the willingess of the mafia to research modern Chinese history to find identities they can hide behind.

I'm also attempting to stop it from being pre-ordained through the "incident" system, which will force the players to have an impact on the write ups and circumstances of the game.

And yes, mafia theory discussions are great :D

In response to GeneralHankerchief: I partially agree with you. As you might know, I'm from CFC, a Civilizations forum. There, we have a more story-based series of mafia games (often with several rivalling mafia factions and lots and lots of special characters, items, etc - I'll talk about it in depth in another entry, I promise) usually based on a huge fantasy mod of the game ("Fall From Heaven II"), and that works out really well because you have a set-up universe as framework for games, but there are plenty of possibilities to present interesting situations. Like the game, it has a more "open ending" feel, while establishing a common reference.

As an example, Renata (who is also on this forum) hosted a game that centered on the wars between the woodelves (Ljosalfar) and the darkelves (Svartalfar); the setting was a peace conference located in a far-away, neutral terrain. Told short, the plotline was that the mafia (who were against peace) were part of both factions (and I belive also the neutral observer faction), but split into two parties unaware of each others. Making contact would ally them into a single, brutal force.

But there were also other baddies; Winston Hughes (also a regular here, now) played a solo agent of the Dark Queen Os-Gabella, trying to keep the elves locked in war because, well, she wants the world to end. And then there were two (rather un-canonical, therefore unexpected) Dragon Cult Worshippers, who were trying to call forth a dragon (they needed to prepare a ritual that took a long time and then bring a willing sacrifice - I would've been this sacrifice hadn't the mafia won the day before. And I wasn't even aware of that).

On this forum I am guessing that most people would have at least some kind of reference to the Total War game series and it would be great fun to host a game in such a setting, but it has to provide these openings in terms of possible game roles and outcomes. Shogun would be quite the blast for the various clans to go havoc on each other... I might even host one of these, eventually.

That said, yes, I do agree that universes that are invented for the game [by the Game Host] can be great fun, but it requires a bit more from the players, especially the basic townspeople who have little to no reference in form of their roles. Using a universe known by most of the players in advance can be beneficial - if done right!

One thing I've noticed is that host-created universes from scratch are infinitely more flexible (and fun) for me than universes where the host has borrowed characters from. I feel as if pre-created universes limit roleplaying possibilities. Basically, pre-created universes are pre-ordained to go in a certain direction and you feel helpless to do anything but follow. Conversely, in host-created universes, you shape that universe's history and outcome.

Most of my games are vanilla, but in the few themed games I've done, it's always for this reason why I've tried to create my own universe and characters. Most notable is Pirate Ship Mafia.