M2TW Players wanted, petition for a new subforum

[Askthepizzaguy]

Greetings lords and ladies of the Citadel;

This being the largest forum for M2TW players, I feel it's an appropriate place to announce my intentions to start a subforum for One Versus One hotseat "duels" involving M2TW, or conceivably other Total War games.

We already have a number of interested parties (7 players at last count) who have agreed to duel, but I'm certain with a little bit of prompting we can find more interested players.

If you would like to sign up to duel against other players, one on one, then here is the signup thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=103841

If you would like to sign a petition seeking the creation of a subforum in the Throne room for 1v1 style games, please do so. That way we have a place to call our own, where we can properly organize and assemble together for the purposes of duelling, talking about duelling, and sharing AARs and stories about duels.

If you've never played a hotseat game before, but are interested, contact me at my email address (click my name). PM box gets full often, so I'd prefer email. Also, consider this thread part of the petition, and make note of your interest here.

Thanks for your interest, now go back to destroying the AI. Nothing more to see here.

[FactionHeir]

As the petition is for a subforum in the Throne Room, this is the appropriate place to put it.
You at least have a redirect from the Citadel to this thread now

[Askthepizzaguy]

Thank you FactionHeir.

I was hoping not to have to resort to Mafia-style advertising all over the forums, but when you want your baby to take flight, it seems to be one of the ways of accomplishing that. I'm limiting my requests to Throne room and Citadel members only at this time, so there wont be any clogging up the other forums.

[Byblos]

What about the forgotten moderator? SerCleign?

[Askthepizzaguy]

who is that, byblos?

[Ferret]

Ser Clegane is the other administrator, though he seems a lot less active in changing the site and moderating than Toser.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Bump....

Still need a few more signatories. I'm wondering if all the people who have agreed to the tournament wouldn't mind popping in this thread and simply giving their "aye" to the Jousting Guild.

[rossahh]

Aye, I think it is actually a good idea.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Aye,

altough I can mostly play on weekends ~:S

[Ramses II CP]

So you just want people to post their aye here? Naturally you have mine.

Aye.

[Askthepizzaguy]

No, no, thats perfectly all right Ramses. I don't actually swing that way. I am flattered though that I've caught your aye.

[00jebus]

I'll sign, hell I'll even throw my organisational idea's in.

one season, based on english football style..

one big league where everyone plays everyone (only once though) (4 pts for win by destroying the other faction, 3 pts per win on the rankings, 2 for a draw, 1 for a loss and 0 if you either stop playing or miss your battle completely)
"goal difference" becomes "battle difference", so if two players are even on points then the one with the highest battle difference gets the highest spot.
no missing the sign ups for this one or your not in the league.

one big all knock out cup

another big cup, starting sorta mid-season, where anyone who made the season only joins in the third round (encourages new players) and before then its all non league players

other than that, "friendly" games can be played all year

and maybe a not-in-the-league paint trophy towards the end.

plus, if we can get whoever has the happy power of who gets in the hall of fame to agree, hall of fame membership for cup/league winners.

lets say a one month time limit on match's, say, 24 hours too play your turn once the other person posts it, otherwise whoever is moderator has to hit end turn on the save and you miss that turn, miss 3 in a row and your counted as stopped playing the match.

In between players, they choose between them what game or mod and battle rules will be played.




This all presumes that a tournament will work well and people will want more. of course, opinions/critique on what I think would make good general rules is most welcome.

[TinCow]

I've gotta say, I'm not seeing the need for a completely separate forum just yet. IMO, subforums should only be used when they are going to contain a lot of threads that would otherwise clutter up the main forum. So far, there has only been one thread made for duel games. While the Hotseat Tournament will require more, it won't be an excessive number. One thread per game, with a general organizational and discussion thread to keep it all together. Given that at most we're looking at 8 simultaneous games per round, and a round could last a month and likely a lot longer, that's not exactly a lot of threads to keep track of.

I would much prefer to see the games continue in the Throne Room until it becomes obvious that they are getting in everyone else's way. It is very easy to make a subforum if these games become so common that they clutter up the Throne Room and need a space of their own. Better to wait and see if a subforum is actually needed, rather than to make one right now before anything has started and then have it turn out to be an an empty and inactive place.

Summary: Get the games going first. If they clutter up the Throne Room too much, I will put in a request for a subforum.

[CavalryCmdr]

I would like to play but sadly do not have the time, however I've seen some rule sugestions and belive my advice here may be usefull.

First, attacker should have control of the battle, any battle invoving a defensible position (ie fort, setlement or bridge) should NOT be autocalced. Simply put autocalc is severly messed up in those situations almost to the point I am starting to think the attacker gets the advantage, even the AI dose better defending then autocalc.

Second there should be a limit to the number of battles a player can initiate against his human opponant in a given turn. I can destroy the mongol invasion with 6 groups of 6 border horse, with an unlimited attacks I could easily eliminate Askthepizzaguy's entire attacking force at no cost to myself. On the other hand Askthepizzaguy could easily take out all 10 of my well defended settlments, in both cases due only to the AI's stupidity, this would make for some very unsatisfied players. I think limiting the number of attacks per turn to say 5 would create more strategy and much less "I only lost because of the stupid AI" arguments.

I dont belive there is need for an expansion requirement, only a fool would not expand quickly, to a point at least, and said fool deserves the loss they will recive. Instead there should be a "first contact" requirement say by turn 30 any human controled faction should be ready to attack/defend another human controled faction (in other words it should never take that long for anyone) If the human factions have not engaged by then the larger faction wins by default. This would create the need to expand without saying 'you need x number of setlements by x turn.'

[Askthepizzaguy]

One might point out that the fantastic situation where someone could wipe out ten cities in a single turn could only happen as a result of some very severe turtling or player incompetence on the part of the defender.

I'd have to mass at least 8 stacks of troops or so, and move them all into position unmolested, and by that time the opponent would have to have built at least one spy recruiting facility. I think "AI incompetence" in that situation would be rather dwarfed by the player on that one!



The Mongol situation doesn't happen much in real hotseats, because any player of any reasonable skill level will have a chance to defeat me or prepare some kind of defenses long before a massive simultaneous strike involving insane amounts of troops is even possible.

If you let the game proceed that long, it smacks of perhaps... I won't say cowardice, but severe hesitation, for sure.

Thusfar I haven't had a game go past 30 turns, and several have been pretty much decided by turn 20. If someone can mass 10 stacks by turn 20, they have attained blitz mastery and should be paired against another blitzer in order to have an effective showdown.

I can destroy the mongol invasion with 6 groups of 6 border horse, with an unlimited attacks I could easily eliminate Askthepizzaguy's entire attacking force at no cost to myself.

While epic assaults against the AI are possible, human opponents can use forts and spies to defend. This makes those kind of attacks impossible, and counterattacks and sallying possible, and puts the attacker in a very difficult position.

All the games I've played so far have involved a fair amount of attack and defense, and it's never been lopsided in the way you describe. One might have the ability to mass a huge standing army, but it takes many turns to do that, and your opponent has the same opportunities that you do, give or take faction-specific and geography-specific advantages and weaknesses.

Hence why choosing your faction is so important. I love the input though, cavalrycmdr.

As for Auto-calc, I tend to reserve that for the initial expansion where I utterly surround worthless settlements with almost no garrisons, as a time saver. Any battles which could determine the outcome of the game almost have to be fought personally, because the calculator is utterly stupid about walls, archers, horse archers, artillery, and any other tactical detail.

I can take Baghdad defended by a full garrison and 3 stacks of reinforcements, but I'd need to fight it myself. In any critical situation, fighting the battles yourself is a must, and in any "assaulting rebels to expand" situation, autocalc is just a way of keeping the game moving.

Since by now everyone knows the advantages and disadvantages of autocalc, and because human opponents can use it against you or fight battles themselves, the game is even for both sides. If someone wants to risk autocalcing themselves against my main armies, let it be so. They are only cheating themselves, backing away from a fight, and letting the most thrilling part of the game, the epic battle you can't afford to lose, your main armies against Pizzaguy's main forces... letting all that go to waste so that both sides can lose 300 men and one side will retreat, in the span of one second.

I agree with your assessment that perhaps there should be no expansion requirement, because it's self-evident and self-enforced that not expanding loses, much like it's self-evident and self-enforced that people need to defend themselves with spies and forts and fight some battles themselves, and not play the game in such a way that leaves their empire open to losing 10 cities in a turn.

Lets face it, if you ever ALLOW yourself to be in the situation where you could lose 10 cities in a turn, you deserve to lose them.