Contemplating a return to the Throne.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Some of you more ancient players might remember Askthepizzaguy, back before he sold his soul to become a Made Man. Back when blitzcraft was still a thing that made men gasp.

Askthepizzaguy was thinking about returning to multiplayer campaigning. But, some things still hold this faction leader back. There would have to be some ground rules.

I'd been thinking about discussing a set of house rules which would make a game interesting enough to me to pull me out of mothballs and start the aggravating process of finding download links and patches and all that scary nonsense which takes hours, on the long shot chance I might have a good time with one of these things again.

One of the things that might make me contemplate it more seriously would be feedback on this idea. Who is still interested in Medieval 2 total war, preferably of the Stainless Steel or Broken Crescent varieties? Who thinks they'd like to try another campaign? Who has experience and isn't known for just dropping out and forgetting to do their turn?

And most importantly, who is willing to discuss some house rules? Please post here if you'd be interested in such.

[Mithridate]

I am, i was not around when you where active but i play a lot over on the TWC where im hotseating Game Staff and are pretty active here i daresay.

Currently im quite busy with work and the other life, but id very much like to be part of this.

[Myth]

Welcome back ATP!

I'm up for either mod, up for discussing rules and so long as you don't insist on weekends I can play regularly.

[Visor]

I don't mind discussing rules. Don't have a copy of the game at hand (which is probably good for time management) but I know a few things about the mods and rules.

[Nightbringer]

I'm up for all them there things. In fact, there is such a discussion happening here, which would maybe be of interest. If not, please feel free to start up a thread with whatever ideas you may have! :)

[Askthepizzaguy]

Ok I have some ideas, which I will share now. These ideas can be discussed piecemeal, and may not all be used at the same time.

Questions will be boldgreen, suggestions I'd like comments on will be boldblue.

1) The usual anti-exploit/cheat rules,

I'm sure there's a standard set that can be cut and pasted here. What do you guys currently use?

What I'd like to see on the agender if they aren't there already:

No spies may be used for the purpose of opening either settlement gates, or forts, ever. Under any circumstances. All siege battles must contain a screenshot which shows there is siege equipment being used, either catapults or better, or constructed battering rams/ladders/towers.

Fort spam is not allowed. A maximum of one occupied Fort per province. You may build a new one if you abandon the previous one completely, no spies/agents or anything inside the fort. The abandoned fort either disappears, or can be captured by an enemy force. Anyone at war with you may capture this fort, anyone not at war with you may not capture this fort.

Why these two rules: The game becomes all about amassing spies and reloading to make certain your spies gain experience fast, and then putting a mass of spies in any settlement you want to capture, and then abusing the ever living daisy out of the AI where a gigantic garrison of armored troops may be goaded into leaving the province, running around until they are exhausted, and killing their commander, then mass routing them. This is entirely unrealistic, blatant abuse of the AI, to create scenarios where the game is unplayable unless every single player uses this tactic. And that destroys all roleplaying and fun that can be had.

Fort spam is when you cause severe delays to an attacking force merely by abusing zone of control and forcing every battle to be a stupid siege battle again and again, because you build 8 forts in a mountain pass and now it's impossible to plow through even though IRL you'd be able to just move around a lone fort with basically no garrison. This is abuse of the zone of control system. My massive army will not be stopped by a wooden palisade containing a single archer, it doesn't matter if he's ROBIN HOOD. He cannot stop my advance.

You get one whole fort per province to block off your border as best you can. But with proper siege equipment, you know I'm going to blow through it, so you'd better garrison it if you want it to delay me. And for your benefit, I cannot blow through it with spies, I need to use catapults or better, so there's some actual fighting involved, no matter how cheesy.

What happens if these two rules are in effect?

This means you will need actual armies to attack or defend things. You can't protect an entire border of your empire with a couple generals and some fort and spy spam, and defeat invasion armies with AI abuse. This means wars will have a shred of realism involved, not the same one tactic over and over.





2) Being a good sport guidelines.

No sending nasty OOC private messages, and renaming your provinces into insults, that sort of thing. I think this one is pretty obvious, but you'd be surprised.

Frankly, I think it should be illegal to ever destroy any of your infrastructure by selling it. This means any provinces about to be captured are usually rendered worthless by the owner, and it takes forever to rebuild it. Infrastructure can be destroyed by means of capturing the province and sacking it/extermination, and then the computer randomly pops some things destroyed, like ports. But no selling of structures, ever. If something is built in the province, it is now a prize which can be taken if captured by the enemy.

I don't think we'll ever stop the reloading thing. Some players won't reload, some will, those that do will have an edge. Therefore I think it should be frowned on, but not a boot-able offense.




3) Roleplay objectives.

Okay, now that I've talked about the non-fun stuff, I actually had ideas about how to enhance the experience.

Sometimes we get so bogged down in playing against the game and the other human players, that we forget we're supposed to immerse ourselves.

Suppose we are given some objectives, at the start of the game, Risk-style. You know, when you play the version of Risk which is not total domination, but like... capture these two continents, or capture all enemy capitals, etc?

We could do that sort of thing here. For example, the Byzantine Empire could be given a hidden, mod-determined objective which, if met, causes him to be declared the game winner.

The objective could be-

• Hold Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Constantinople, and Palermo, and eliminate at least one faction from the game.

And, just to keep things from blowing up in our faces,

The objective being met only counts after turn number 35, let's say, to prevent the strong-early factions from simply blitzing their objectives. If they do that, they'd have to hold all those provinces as well until turn 35.

Or it could be as simple as:

• The Holy Roman Empire must conquer the last of the Byzantine Empire. (Non-neighbor, near-equal strength faction).

All that matters here is that the Byzantine Empire loses its final family member in battle against the HRE, or the HRE captures the last province. As long as it is the HRE finishing off the last of the Byzantines, the HRE wins the game.




Or, if we're feeling particularly ambitious:


4) "Hidden alliance Versus The World".

A mafia-like game where three factions (out of perhaps nine total players) are selected by an impartial moderator to be allied from the start of the game to the end, and their objective is to either defeat all the other factions in battle, or force the surrender of all other factions, or hold more total provinces than all the remaining human factions.

The other factions are like townies in a mafia game, suspicious of the motives of all the other factions, but forced to work together against the hidden enemy surrounding them.

This hidden alliance can be technically at war with one another, even capture each other's provinces, but the combined whole only wins the game if they meet their alliance win condition. The factions cannot ever form an actual in-game alliance, where their armies will appear on the field of battle on the same side.

The non-allied factions would also have a win condition of needing to hold at least X number of provinces, so they would need to behave at least somewhat aggressively, otherwise it's a simple matter to just dogpile any aggressive faction. The "townies" would need to expand or lose, as well. So it will be difficult to tell the Hidden Alliance factions from the others.

One rule that would be necessary for such a game to work, would be the rule that provinces cannot be traded via diplomacy.



We could also try:


5) "The 500 pound Gorilla"

A game setup where the moderator assigns one somewhat distant faction a large territory right from the start of the game, and all the others have a normal-sized territory.

The objectives are otherwise normal, but if the small factions fight among themselves, the 500 pound Gorilla will pick them apart. At the same time, the small factions cannot win unless they defeat all the other factions too, so they have to gain an edge in power even if they fight on the same side as the other factions.

The small factions would have a common enemy of needing to stop the hugest threat, but cannot completely trust one another either.

That's the idea. Instead of the usual cookiecutter game, we could really spice things up by adding some curve balls.



And for any of these, I think Stainless Steel or BC would work best. Large map, and a large number of territories per faction, which means early eliminations could be difficult.

That's just off of the top of my head. What do you guys think?