Contest: Arena of Kings

[Myth]

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 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!

[Myth]

And here is the badge for the winner:

[Nigel]

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.

[phonicsmonkey]

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?

[Cecil XIX]

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: 

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.

[Nigel]

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.