Originally Posted by
phonicsmonkey
EDIT: AND, as GM I almost always go with the majority, so if there's a strong feeling about any of the rules they are up for change. For example we could allow reloads and create a level playing field that way.
Editors note: At some point this post turns into one of my classic rants, aimed at no one in particular, and I'm not sure where... Apologies in advance when I start to ramble.
This is an interesting theory, the problem is you'd essentially have what I had when I was attempting to create new Blitzmaster records, which is virtually zero chance that certain actions would fail against the AI.
During those record-attempting missions, I could freely reload until I got the result I needed, if the result I needed were possible. Example: I needed a spy to capture Constantinople quickly, before reinforcements drove me away or defeated my meager, divided, turn 2(ish) Turkish forces. Without the spy, I could only capture the province south of Constantinople that turn, and seige Constantinople. And that's just with one spy, and a couple (ten, tops) reloads. Fortunately or unfortunately, on Jihad (which was necessary) I would outrun my own spy, rendering it completely useless, along with seige equipment for the most part, because it moved too slow. Reloading couldn't conjure up a spy or a piece of artillery, so I ended up having to do things the hard way anyway.
Here, you'd have every single player spamming spies, and thus the larger nations have an inherent advantage because they can have more spies. In my opinion, the way to balance that is to make capturing a settlement via spies opening the gates ILLEGAL. Which is a pretty realistic rule, I'd say. Being able to open the most secure aspect of a big city, the gate, with one or even a handful of spies, when there are guards and indeed, and ARMY ready to react, is unrealistic. For one-turn captures of cities, bring artillery. It slows you down and takes up valuable space in your army that could be used instead for spear militia spam.
Other advantages to reloading mean auto-resolving battles over and over until you win by reload. However, in my experience, if you're trying to win a battle via auto-resolve that you couldn't win on your own, then.....
To defeat the AI all you need is a general's bodyguard unit of fairly decent size. Failing that, two units of light cavalry should do it. I once posted a battle replay thread where I defeated (by defeated, I mean wiped completely out GONE) an entire full stack garrison of Holy Roman Empire all-infantry (light, heavy, spear, crossbow) forces with two units of light cavalry.
If you're reloading to get some percentage chance that auto-resolve will help you, you're doing it wrong. Honestly if you need to do that, then this smiley face is appropriate: 
No, reloading has exactly one viable purpose: To re-fight a battle yourself, only slightly differently. You know, for those siege battles where some jerk-ash with artillery accidentally one-shot one-kills your general at the beginning of a battle, leaving your infantry helpless and stupefied when it comes to defeating the infinite morale spearmen spam the AI left at the city center. Or perhaps you thought you could do a cavalry charge with your general into a spearman stack, and they were actually formed up correctly and bracing, which is rare as heck, and your formed charge doesn't go well. Your general flips his mustang and ends up sprawled on the ground in the center of a spear mass, looking up at a lot of faceless, homogenized enemy uniforms with a whole lot of pointy. And the dude was your 10 command, 9 experience, 10 dread master of warfare. I'd weep for you, as it seems the master jedi will be slain by Ewoks, and that is the low point of anybody's day. Re-loading in frustration, ah, that is tempting. But the solution there is even simpler: Since you're not going for a Blitzy McBlitzmaster award, why not not charge into a mass of braced spears with your master jedi warrior unless you're willing to see him turn into a pincushion, or impaled like a marshmallow and cooked over an open flame.
MMMMmmmm S'mores.
I generally run around with big fat huge armies that means it's basically impossible to lose to the AI (face it, if you don't even need the big huge armies, just a couple horsemen, to win any battle besides a heavy cavalry battle, then large armies are almost overkill), so the weakness is when I'm being attacked and my armies are commanded by the AI. That's what levels the playing field. It should be a pretty rare instance you'd ever find yourself in a battle so close you'd need to reload it to win it. If that's the case then you've been out-generalled on the campaign map, to find yourself fighting a losing battle. So that leaves those critical siege battles where one huge army faces another huge army, and I just don't have the patience to fight that one over and over when it takes like 45 minutes to finally kill all those bloody spear men in the city center, even with archers. Reloading after losing that battle is such a pain in my butt that I sometimes just plain lose interest in a campaign altogether because I've been sitting at my computer all day already, and now I've just wasted an hour trying to take a settlement that I can't take merely because I sent 90% of my army in other directions to capture as much as possible at once, and apparently I miscalculated; I needed more than 10 militia spearmen and a general's bodyguard unit for this battle. Reloading is just a pain at that point.
So.... of the 5 possible "I need to reload" situations:
- Spies: Can be banned by rule and easily enforced. You'll know if you lost a city to spies.
- Assassins: It takes so freaking long to even create these things starting from scratch unless you're blessed with a big city right from the beginning. And their success rate is so low anyway, and can be countered with spies as it is. Waste of money until your empire is massive, IMO.
- Artillery: Tough. They're slow, you should have seen it coming. Artillery-heavy armies are sitting ducks out in the field. My only use for them out there is bridge battles, and I'd still rather have archers, they cause more death.
- Auto-resolve to win a battle you can't otherwise win: Wimp! Wimp! WIMP!!!
- Close epic battle: Do you really want to reload that hour-long battle and fight it AGAIN??
Only the close epic battle even really qualifies, IMO. And then you have to deal with RL and the hotseat time limit. Those should be rare situations and while you can't really police it, if you're not reloading for all the other stuff, why are you doing it here? Just play by the rules. If you can't beat the AI because it's a very close battle that you are having trouble forcing a win out of, then maybe you miscalculated on the campaign map, and let's face it, you deserve to lose this fight.
Ultimately, like I said, if someone needed to cheat to influence a friendly hotseat game that no one is watching, it's almost like those same situations I faced down at Pizza Hut. Unethical customer repeatedly abuses the "complain and your pizza is free" rule that upper management has imposed on my store, never pays for a pizza? It's kind of really obvious that they are doing that. Their name goes on a list.... doesn't even need to be on a list actually, because it is so small. There were only one or two butt-munchers who actually tried this stuff, and they got away with it for a while, until I pointed out to the managers what they were doing. And wanna know why? Because those butt pirates wouldn't tip, either.
That's pretty sad when someone can't even tip the driver who delivers them the free pizza. Then they also pretend to be angry and belligerent at the door, like there was ever anything wrong with the pizza, ever, to try to fool me? Dude, I just delivered the last 10 free pizzas you've ordered, and we know ALL ABOUT YOU, and now, the MANAGER of the store makes your pizza personally and knows it is done to perfection. You're not fooling anyone. So when you call and complain like we're idiots, I hand the phone to the manager who explains to you that he personally made the pizza, and quality checked it before it went out the door, and then calls you out on your last 10 pizzas were free scam, because I kept detailed records all about you.... name, number, address, dates you've cheated us.
You'll never be served any pizza again. You'll go on the do not deliver list.
It's kind of a metaphor for cheating in hotseats. No, we can't police it.... but we will know. It's obvious, really. If someone is losing all of their dudes to level 3 assassins, we'll know. If every settlement has been breached by spies, and none of the spies have died except a freak spy here or there, we'll know. If you never lose a big battle and your turns take freaking forever to finish, something is up. If you're cheating to capture merchants and their pathetic 300 florin gain, I mean how shriveled are your gonads at that point? You can quote me on that. So, like the pizza, you might get away with cheating.... for a while. But we'll know you're doing it. And once the GM finds out (amazing, it's the same abbreviation for game moderator and general manager of the store!) you won't be getting your free pizza, or any pizza, anymore. Likewise, no one will want to play hotseats with you anymore.
I remember one guy was caught cheating trying to take a buttload of settlements in one turn when it was basically impossible. Everyone who saw it happen was like.... really? It's not even plausible that it could happen with reload-cheating. He was doing something else, I don't even recall what. But the end result was this:
"If you do not leave this hotseat, phonicsmonkey will come and attack you here. And when you retreat from all this cheating the shame and reproach will be very great."
- Gerard of Ridefort, letter written to King Guy about your cheating ***
...I seem to have lost my train of thought, so I'm just going to bail on this post. It has s'mores, deadbeat pizza scammers, and a King Guy reference. It's done.
Re: New hotseat game - Glorious Achievements
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