V&V OOC/Signup Thread I

[TheFlax]

Just posting to say I'll be able to play the save in a few hours.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Oog.

[Cecil XIX]

I think now would be a good time to solicit opinions from the players on the difficulty of V&V. In previous TW RPGs, the AI has generally been regarded as a non-threat. The question then is whether or not we have the opposite problem now. Thoughts?

Incidentally, I tried fighting the battle before I sent it to TheFlax. I camped out in a forest of course, but I was very impressed with how the AI handled me. They took the initiative immediately, charging my archers with their general. At first I thought it was the old "suicidal general" shtick, but after engaging the town militia the general actually withdrew! This occupied me long enough for the cavalry to surround me on both flanks, and then the AI really let me have it with a three-pronged assault. Even though they were mostly missile cavalry, I confess I made it worse when I became unnerved and broke my formation in a vain attempt to regain the initiative, and they made me pay for it. I tried to help the left flank by having Vaclav charge them from the rear, but then the enemy general charged Vaclav in the rear! It was a complete rout.

[TheFlax]

It was an interesting battle to play. I started in a similar fashion and things ended pretty much the same way, as you'll see in the battle report.

I think right now we are fighting too many factions at once. Inadvertently we might have shifted to the other extreme of the scale, finding ourselves in a somewhat impossible situation. Unlike LotR or KotF we don't have a ton of RGBs to help and we player controlled enemy factions, the AI won't be shuffling around or doing anything too stupid. Then there's the fact that we are against multiple factions. It just seems it could be toned down a bit. Though, I am all for having some losses and setbacks, the times in other games where we had a huge streak of wins with barely any losses felt pretty flat.

[phonicsmonkey]

I think the difficulty of this one is largely our own fault for playing with such reckless abandon. We all (myself included) hared off at the start invading left right and sundry as if we were playing a SP game against the AI. We then did it again when the event was over!

If instead we had taken a more measured approach, making alliances and treaties, building up and defending our borders sufficiently before extending ourselves in adventures I think we would have found it much more manageable. As it is we got stuck in a bit of a downward spiral. Having said that I still think we can turn it around, but only if we seriously buck up our ideas.

If we had played a hotseat game like this against other players we'd be dead by now. You can't just go around attacking your neighbours without diplomacy or strategy, unless you have overwhelming force, which we do not.

However, one thing I would say is that I don't think that most of the players have had enough money at any point to have any options about what to do. The only reason I've been able to keep a decent sized army is that Vienna is so rich and I built a silver mine. Dukes der Bartige, Becker, Premyslid and Hummel never had enough cash to defend their own lands properly. Under this ruleset there's not too much incentive to pool resource - I have been forced to do so recently because I could see the game ending abruptly if I did not, but otherwise I've been quite happy to sit on my treasury in the knowledge that I can use it to further my own character's ambitions at the expense of others.

So one suggestion I have is maybe to inject some cash into some of the less-rich settlements if they are to serve as capitals of a Duchy.

[Zim]

I think the challenge level would be just about right if we didn't go off in all directions as Phonics had said. I also never should have fought that battle, but felt pressured to defend the settlement Becker had so recently liberated and then been granted (so, in other words, fairly releastic motivations I think. ). I think the title of Duke also went to my head a little. I was the Duke of my House, and in my mind that meant I had to defend it (never mind I was in charge of a group of which I was the only member. ).

I believe we all learned our lesson pretty well. I know I'm raring to get another character and get back in, and planning on doing a story or two and maybe posting as an "anonymous elector" in the diet. The only thing I might suggest to the Emperor (although it is his Lordship's business) is maybe to hold off on naming new Dukes for a while. This will pool most of the impending new characters into one or the other of the new Houses, and I think in the current circumstances fewer Houses with more generals will better defend what lands we have, and any new ones we might get (and I fully encourage current players to conquer some land so we start getting adoption offers ).

I wouldn't mess too much with settlement income. Later in the game they'll be making plenty of money, and with our smaller number of Houses people will likely be pooling more resources, expecially after recent losses. I would actually be doing a lot of recruiting in a couple turns if Becker had lived. The money I lost was mostly in my time as a landless noble expected to pay his bodyguard's wages.

Also, I predict within a few months time that we'll be fighting all of our neighbors and complaining how easy it is.

[Ignoramus]

Hummel's sally was rather suicidal, but to be honest, he didn't have much to look forward too. Antwerp was a backwater, and the loss of Saxony really hurt him.

I did think the early expansion was too much, but then again, there wasn't enough conflict to prevent it.