Contest: Arena of Kings

Hello fellow M2TW enthusiasts!

I wish to announce a contest that will allow you to show your creativity and love for the Total War series and the unique gameplay experience they offer us, both for single player and especially for the hotseat mode, which lets us compete amongst one another as the Kings and generals of the Medieval era!

The contest is organized and run by me, with support from our good @phonicsmonkey and one of our administrators, @Andres

Arena of Kings is dubbed so, because the Throne Room here at the .org is a virtual arena and battlefield for us to wage war and diplomacy amongst one another, while at the head of a mighty faction which has made an impact in the era of 1066-1500 in Europe and the Middle East. The contest is aimed to spur innovation and ultimately add to the pleasure and fun of participating in a Throne Room game.

What is required of each participant, is the suggestion of a game scenario, victory conditions, set up and any other interesting details, that will create a unique hotseat experience for the Throne Room warlords. Something like the idea for fixed team battles with target cities like CoG!, or one strong faction versus the rest as in WotK2, or the specific victory conditions like in GA, or the roleplay/victory conditions model like in EI.

I aim to bring out the best in you, so that we have new, unique and interesting ways to play hotseat M2TW. Below, you will find a FAQ and a format to use when submitting:

Q: Who can enter this contest?
A: Any registered user of the .org!

Q: How many entries can a single participant submit?
A: As many as his imagination allows!

Q: If two users have the same idea, who gets credit for it?
A: Whomever posts it first. If there are variations, or the refinement of a concept, they may be viewed as a shared submition or even as separate ones.

Q: When is the cut off date for submissions?
A: I will accept submissions until July 1st, 2012. Afterwards, the polls will be created and voting will commence.

Q: What kind of rewards can we expect?
A: A badge for your profile, similar to the HOF awards badge, first choice of faction for the game as well as a unique bonus that can be used once for any upcoming Throne Room game. The winner may chose out of the following:

- A fullstack of random quality units spawned at a requested location via admin console.
- Double starting gold for a new game OR a 15,000 florin cash injection at any point in the game.
- Two turns of immunity from enemy hostilities for the player's faction.

These bonuses are applied once, upon player request, and cannot be applied to games in progress unless the game's administrator agrees to it.

Q: What kind of game, victory conditions or mods can we suggest?
A: Any combination that you think is unique, interesting and motivating. It could be anything from wars, economy style games, diplomacy style games, RPGs or anything else you can think of. Any mod that we can get and install is fine. If you actually make a mod for this contest and your game idea you will get a bonus!

Q: Who will judge the entries?
A: Myself, Phonicsmonkey and Zim will decide which entries to accept as unique and post for voting. The actual picking of the winning game will be done by you guys via poll.

Q: How many winners can there be?
A: One winner and two runner-ups. The winner gets all the aformentioned prizes. The runner ups will receive honourable mentions and a signature.

Now, here is the format you can use. To get the forum code, quote my message and copy the text below:


Name: Princes, Kings and Emperors
Mod: SS 7.0 Early Era, forwarded for 30 turns + admin intervention
Number of players: 2 - 11
Victory Conditions: Become the first faction to establish it's empire.
Details: The players take on one of the following factions: England, Spain, France, HRE, Sicilly, Venice, ERE, Seljuk Sultanate, Fatamid Caliphate, Moorish Caliphate. Each faction starts as a Princedom - with a few well developed regions but with few armies, low income and with strong rebel provinces around them (created via admin console). The factions start with a different number of provinces and population (though not overly imbalanced), but each one has a different end-game goal to aspire to. Each of these factions can establish an Empire, but for that purpose must obtain specific settlements and reach different objectives. Such as:

England: Must expand to conquer provinces in France, Scotland, Ireland and Spain. Must achieve level 3 Ports and trading docks.
France: Must expand into England, HRE and Spain. Must achieve level 3 stables.
Spain: Must expand into England, Sicilly and Moorish territories. Must have two Cathedrals.
HRE: Must expand into France, Venice, Sicilly, ERE. Must have at least 8 castles with stone walls.
ERE: Must expand into Sicilly, Venice and Seljuk territory. Must have at least two provinces with Highways.

So on and so forth. The details of the actual objectives for each faction in terms of actual cities and buildings required are open for debate. There are three stages for a faction. It starts as a Princedom. When it reaches a set number of it's required territories OR it gets it's target buildings it becomes a Kingdom. This is announced IC, and is a hallmark moment of a faction's history. The transition is marked with a en economical and military boost, but as a counter, all of the "natural enemies" of that faction get a minor economical boost to compete.

The second stage is when a faction becomes an Empire (achieves all it's goals). It is then rewarded with a free full stack of the best quality units it can recruit in the following format:
7 infantry, 6 cavalry, 5 archers, 2 siege weapons.

Everyone else gets a cash injection and a countdown begins. If a faction can retain it's status as an Empire for 5 consecutive turns, it wins the game.

Rules: As per CoG! but Crusades and Jihads are banned.

This is an example but I would actually like us to play it if there are people who like it:laugh4: I made it up now, on the fly, but you can see how easily we can empower innovative thinking especially if we start writing down our ideas.

Good luck to everyone and God save the Throne Room! :horn:

And here is the badge for the winner:

https://img857.imageshack.us/img857/3479/aokthumb.gif

https://img837.imageshack.us/img837/761/aoky.gif

Sounds like a great idea.
I wil sign up for it.

Will need some time, though, to put my thoughts into writing (and am afk for next week, too). But I have some ideas which I can submit.

I urge everyone to get involved in this contest - we'll run the winning game idea here in the throne room!

@Cecil XIX, why not enter one of the games you already designed in that other thread?

@Nightbringer, you must have a few game ideas

@Hurin the steadfast, you are an innovator, what's on your mind?

As phonicsmonkey suggested, here are the more unique ideas that I suggested previously.

Diplomacy (Battleaxe Mod) - In this game, nobody starts with much of an advantage over anybody. For starters, this is the campaign map:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i802.photobucket.com/albums/.../Diplomacy.png

Every player gets one castle, two family members and four each of tier 2 militia and tier 1 archers. The victor is the one who conquers the center castle and holds for ten turns straight while at the same time holding any other settlement. If you want to gain an advantage, odds are it'll have to be by talking to your fellow players! I wouldn't want to do this game without the full eight players, or four if it's the best we can do. Regardless, I think it's necessary to make sure that the players are evenly spread out.

Players vs. Players - Normally, we've only had PvP battles during TW RPGs. But why not have one for it's own sake, without a campaign? Players sign up, and I assign them to a team randomly. Players vote as a whole to choose the mod and how much money each team gets, then teams vote to select their faction and Overall commander. Commander then assigns roles, which will very depending on number of players, and chooses the army and assigns soldiers to his subordinate commanders. Then both teams go at in a unique Org experience! Even number of players preferred, but having a wild card would be interesting as well.

Multi-faction RPG Test (Battleaxe mod) - I've wondered if it would be possible to have an RPG with two different factions, where each one sent in orders that were resolved simultaneously each turn. This would be done in the style of TinCow's Cataclysm during King of the Romans, perhaps the most fun I've ever had on the Org and easily the most unique experience. Six players would be ideal, with more being better but less still being useful. The Battleaxe mod will allow for small campaigns that should be more easily manageable. Since this would be a test game, there would be a review every ten turns or so where we discuss how the game mechanics are working and whether we should end the game.

As promised I have started to put some of my ideas into writing for this thread. I am placing them in separate posts for better clarity and easier reference. Two of them actually include Multi Player battles, which I personally quite enjoy, but I hope they are also of interest to the Throne Room.

Bandits and Mercenaries
The first idea is a RPG with MP battles that I actually tried out many years ago using MTW1/VI. The full thread can be found here.

It is based around the following idea for MP battles: one player, the mercenary, has to protect a group of merchants (a unit of peasants) transporting valuable goods. To win a battle his army has to escort the peasants safely from his side of the map to the border of the opposite side. The other player, the bandit, has to try to kill, route or capture as many of the peasants as possible before they reach the other side.

This can be expanded into a RPG with two groups of players, the bandits and the mercenaries, where each player has his own personal “army” and funds. The game master will issue missions where players can fight each other and gain rewards, i.e. earn more money to build up and improve their war band. The missions can be independent from each other or connected with one mission leading up to the next one. This can offer a lot of opportunity for story telling and role playing, especially if the players also do a write up of their “adventures” after the battles have been fought.

In the end, the score will be determined based on [army value + cash in hand] and there can be the “best mercenary” and the “most infamous bandit” as well as the overall winner of the game.

As mentioned, it has already been done with MTW/VI, but can probably be transferred to MTW2 or e.g. the Stainless Steel mod without too much difficulty.

Napoleons Italian Campaign
This is something I have been thinking of, when NTW came out. It is also an RPG with MP battle based “missions”, set against the background of Napoleons early campaign in Italy against the Austrian troops. Players can choose to either join the French or the Austrian army to develop their military career by completing missions (battles) against each other set by the game master.

Initially, each player will start as a lowly militia sergeant, commanding a single unit only. As he is getting promoted, he will be given command of more and more units of different types. He will also have funds to manage: the regiment’s purse, from which he has to pay the wages for his soldiers, and his private purse for extra rewards from successful missions, which shows his personal wealth and can be used for buying various things either for himself or for his soldiers.

The missions can vary from simple scouting or errand missions (in the early game) to “hold this hill” or skirmish missions, going up to full sized battles in the later game when the players have worked their way up to high ranking generals. They could also involve leading part of an army (commanding a flank), or battles with more than just 2 players (up to 3v3 is possible in NTW).

To build up the story line, there are two possibilities. The game master can make the course of the war follow the outcome of the missions and depending on which side is more successful, let the French or the Austrians win. Or we could say that the story shall always follow the historical events and players pursue their personal careers against that background.

Rivals in the 100 Years War
This is a more hotseat style game like the ones played in the Throne Room and combines elements of RPG with the “traditional” hotseat games (it is actually very similar to the idea Cecil has mentioned above).

The game is played hotseat style with players choosing either the English of French side. The other factions are either AI controlled or skipped by the game master to make sure they don’t get into the way. Each group of players has a king, representing the in-game faction leader. The other players pick one of the generals as their character.

The players can discus what they want to do as they see fit and submit their actions by PM to the game master on, say, a weekly basis. The actual movements on the “board” are then made by the game master. Thus, we dont have to wait for individual players to complete their turns – and players don’t have a stressful 48 hour time window to play their move but can simply send in their instructions whenever they want during the week. The safegames (one for each side) are just uploaded to illustrate where the characters stand and how the game progresses.

The king, of course, has to make the decisions of what the faction will do (and will probably take advice from his family members). However, the gamemaster will always follow the players instructions for his own character first. Thus, a player can decide to be disobedient and act against his kings orders if he wants to. Only if the GM receives no instructions from the player, he will use the kings instructions instead. The king will also provide the instructions for the non-player characters.

In addition to that, the king will also declare a “line of succession”, nominating his immediate successor as well as the next ones in line. Each character is mortal and if a character dies, be it peacefully or otherwise, the player is out of the game (we can decide letting him take on a new character if we want to, but this would mean a start from 0 for this player). The king can also change the line of succession once per turn. Thus it is up to the players to impress their king with their abilities and deeds and try to move up and possibly become the next king.

Each player will also have a foreign assassin at his own private service. The foreign assassins are controlled by the GM and are recruited from a non-playable faction (e.g. HRE, Spain, Aragon,…). Thus, they are not visible to anyone on the map, except when a spy of your own faction spots them. Only the player will know the name and approximate location of his personal assassin. He can use them for whatever he sees fit: eliminating enemy agents, enemy characters or even rivals in his own faction. The king of each faction may be well advised to keep a good spy close to his own person.

In addition to assassinating his rivals, a character can also change sides if that seems more profitable to him. The king of the other side and the player discus, whatever the reward for the desertion shall be. Then the GM uses a diplomat of the receiving side to “bribe” the player over, and then gives the necessary money to the faction using a console command. Non-player characters are bribed in the usual way – the money for those is not reimbursed.

To sum it up: the king of a faction has all the power to make the decisions and can rule as a tyrant if he wants, but the nobles have powerful tools of assassination and desertion if they are unhappy with the rule of their king.

Great ideas @Nigel!

Very good suggestions guys. Keep them coming! Due to popular demand, I will extend the submission deadline until July 1st, 2012. Since it's finals for the students, and a generally busy time around the TR for the older patrons, I feel that a longer deadline may yet bring more people forth. I'm sure there's players here who have great ideas. Share them.

Also, I will properly tag @Húrin the Steadfast because he spelled it correctly so he's a bit hard to tag :yes:

Don't understand why i was tagged? Also i suppose my Europa I hotseat counts as unique too? The style it is played in at least.

I tagged you to bring this thread to your attention on behalf of Phonic's post since he couldn't do it. You're an innovator, try thinking of a new idea. The EI one is a fine example.

Okay but only when i have time. Currently i have exams.

I really like that 100 year war game you came up with @Nigel, and would love to play in that!

Sometihng to that effect is a game I have been wanting to do for a long time. I had thought it would be with the 100 years war mod, but that might be hard to track down now and would eliminate the foreign agents which I really like.

Name: Vikingetid (Age of the Vikings)
Mod: The Last Kingdom
Number of players: 3 or 6 or 9 and so on.
Victory Conditions: Found a new kingdom and become "King of Kings", eliminate all other human players, amass 60,000 gold while nobody else has more than 10,000 or eliminate the enemy human faction and claim allied victory.

Details: The mod in question covers the era of the Dark Ages when Europe was tormented by the raids of the Vikingr - the men of Scandinavia. The Eastern Frankish Empire is a great power on continental Europe, Normandy is a fledgling state with a strong host of determined warriors, and England is divided between it's native Celts and recently settled Anglo-Saxons in what are powerful but separate kingdoms.

The players start with an army of their own choosing, comprised in the battle screen when complying with a set limit of gold. For instance, if we have a 12,000 gold limit, you can go into the custom battle screen and see how many Huscarls you can fit into that budget, or purchase longobwmen, cavalry, or a balanced combination. Money wise the armies will be the same, though the composition will vary as per the player's preference. These units are the player's sworn men, his band of vikings. He is their jarl, and he has full controll over them. Each player gets one ship per four units purchased for free, to make a truly mobile and formidable raiding force.

The players start with different faction allegiance - there are three Scandinavian factions: Hordaland, Vestfold and Denmark. If we have 3 players, each one starts owing allegience to one faction. If we have 6, they will be divided two by two per faction. The actual provinces and armies of the home faction are not to be used, only the band of vikings each player has. The players who start from the same faction are supposedly allied, though this may change as the game progresses. Once everyone has their armies and ships, the game may begin. The other factions are left to the AI. The ways to win are such:

Found a new kingdom and become "King of Kings"

With your band of Vikings, you claim a piece of land far from your homeland shores and carve out a Kingdom via bloody conquest. You dominate the region in such a way that you become a King of Kings there, and all the other landchiefs pay you homage. In game terms, you must own at least 40% of the total regions in either England + Scotland + Ireland OR mainland Europe up until the original Danish border. This way you can win solo without any alliance. Players are not allowed to team up their provinces or gift them for this victory - all regions must be won trough conquest for this victory condition.

Eliminate all other human players

This simply means eliminating all armies and capturing all provinces that belong to other human players. The homeland regions do not count towards this as they do not belong to the players per say. There will be a 5 turn forced non aggression pact between players at the start, to prevent a massacre for those who start later in the turn order. Once everyone's moved out and started on their path, player versus player aggression is allowed.


Amass 60,000 gold while nobody else has more than 10,000

Simply put, when you have 60,000 gold you can claim economic victory. Your kingdom is so prosperous it becomes impossible for your neighbours to compete. Once you make the claim, the admin will check if anyone of the remaining human players has more than 10,000 gold. If not, you win. If they do have more, you are told who these factions are (but not how much gold they have). A thing to note is that if you save up your gold from raids you can amass it quite easily. Though getting this much will mean you are either impossibly efficient or you started conquering and keeping your lands.

Eliminate the enemy human factions and claim allied victory.

Similar to rule two, but this one is for an allied victory and has no territorial requirements. You must simply remove the two other viking factions from the map to become the sole harrier of Europe's shores to win. Naturally, you and your allied Jarl need to wipe out the enemy teams, but more importantly, you must also conquer their homeland regions. The problem with that, is that each homeland region will be garrisoned with elite stacks created by the admin, that cannot move past the faction's borders. Invading the enemy homeland region means you have to face that stack, which the other human team will be allowed to control as a "police" unit within he borders. These stacks will be several times better than the starting player armies, so beating them will take teamwork and also off-sea conquests to improve your own armies or to amass more of the lesser units.

During your conquests, you will be allowed the following interaction with your homeland regions:

- Retraining of units (at your own expense)
- Building of buildings (this is to allow you to retrain higher tier armies or to gain smithy upgrades, also at your own expense)
- Building of forts and watchtowers (at your own expense)

You will NOT be allowed to recruit new units or ships, or move the starting "police" stack outside the borders of your faction. You may not use any of the gold that the starting towns generate in any way. You may not conquer any territories in Scandinavia unless those belong to an opposing human faction.

If you conquer any settlements in Egnland or Europe, you may keep them and develop them as you wish. Your starting stack is free from upkeep. Any gold you make via sacking (this mod gives extra gold simply for conquering a province, in addition to the sacking option. This is a lot - 5-15 thousand per city), or via keeping a settlement, is your own and you may use it as you see fit. The finances will be kept by the administrator, so in-game gold will not be used. You will report your income per turn and all the actions you wish to do which take gold, such as building, recruiting or retraining.

Things to note: There is an AI faction called simply "Vikings" which is not player-lead. It is heavily scripted, similar to the rebels in M2W. It spawns huge stacks out of thin air and constantly raids territories which you as players will also need in order to win. Getting around them is up to each player's discretion. The Admin will not control any AI forces. Ships grant a huge movement point increase compared to walking. Archers in the game are currently too powerful because of the way the defence stat works (to make battles longer). There may be an imposed limit on archer spam.

The actual numbers for the rules are open to tweaking.

Rules: As per CoG! but Crusades and Jihads are banned. So yes, this is a lead battles game.

Well, there go my hopes of winning. :clown:

Reminder: Tomorrow is the last date you may enter submissions! Good luck to all!

I love both the 100 years war and the vikingetid, and would jump on any opportunity to play either of those games.

Oh the euphoria!

Im soooo in xD

Since @Myth is gone for the week, perhaps @phonicsmonkey or @Andres could get the poll started?

I'm back from the beach and will get this organized. Thanks to all the participants! :bow:

I hope my idea is still valid, even though i didnt post it here.

@Húrin the Steadfast which idea do you mean? Want to throw in a link to it?

Or do you mean the EU game, in which case I don't think it would because I believe the intent of this is to create ideas for new games, rather than award existing good ideas. :)

Yeah but it was a new idea, which wasnt done by anybody else before and it is going on in the timeline of this competition.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Húrin the Steadfast

Yeah but it was a new idea, which wasnt done by anybody else before and it is going on in the timeline of this competition.

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True, and I'm fine with including it if others want to, but it could get messy if we start allowing currently running games, and then we wouldn't get a new game out of it.

In any case, @Myth, you are running this thing, what do you say?

I think we should only acknowledge new ideas for games that are yet to start. EI was running for some time before I announced this contest. I can understand Hurin's desire for it to be included as it's a new format and one that started relatively close to the announcement of this contest.

What I would suggest however, is to grant Hurin a special extension in which he can submit a new idea. Would that be satisfactory? I don't want to change the rules too much as that would be disrespectful to the other candidates.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Myth

I think we should only acknowledge new ideas for games that are yet to start. EI was running for some time before I announced this contest. I can understand Hurin's desire for it to be included as it's a new format and one that started relatively close to the announcement of this contest.

What I would suggest however, is to grant Hurin a special extension in which he can submit a new idea. Would that be satisfactory? I don't want to change the rules too much as that would be disrespectful to the other candidates.

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Sounds good to me, that okay by you Hurin?

Well currently i don't have new ideas for new games so i guess that is it for me.