Clash of Gods! - RECRUITING!

[Myth]

IC thread.
OOC thread.


The idea is simple but promises a lot of aggression - the players are divided in two equal teams, one consisting of Catholic nations, the other one - of Muslims.

The first side to accumulate 100 points wins! Points are related to the respective side's target cities:

Catholics: Need to hold Alexandria, Tyre, Antioch, Cordoba, Baghdad, Cairo
Muslims: Need to hold Rome, Venice, Madrid, Paris, Hamburg, London.

Jerusalem is a special target city. Both sides need to hold it and have it at 100% of their religion before victory is declared, but it does not grant points!

Points are measured as such:

Capture target city: 10 points.
Hold target city: 5 points every turn.
Convert target city to 50% of your faith: 5 points (only if holding the settlement, awarded once)
Convert target city to 100% of your faith: 15 points (only if holding the settlement, awarded once)

Also, the regions are open to discussion.

We will use SS 6.4 for this game. All battles may be lead or autoresolved based on player preference.

Rules and banned practices:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Do not attack ships in ports.

Armies boarding ships in ports can't stay there for more than one turn.

Don't leave blockaded ports without beating the blockading ships first.

Don't stack merchants in armies or forts to get more than one to stand on the same resource (Merchant Fort)

No surrounding armies or agents to destroy them. (Surround&Destroy)

Don't attack units who were left next to a settlement in order to capture it on the same turn in order to cheat the garrison script. In fact don't cheat the garrison script period.

Don't use repeated offers for bribe to increase your faction leader's dread.

Enable "Unlimited men on battlefield" in order to not abuse when leading battles vs the AI (PM me for instructions)

Armies that are defeated in battle by a player that comes after them in the turn list may not move the following turn. This is to make it fair for people who are defeated by players that come before them in the turn list, and thus lose all their movement points

Armies that are defeated in battle may not be attacked on the following turn, as they are banned from moving, either by the game mechanics or by the rule above. They must be allowed to move first, or must be reinforced. If the defeated army retreats to a settlement or fort, this rule does not apply.

Ballistas can't open anything, catapults can open wooden walls, trebuchets can open stone walls.

Spies cannot open settlements of any kind.

Assassins are allowed to target anyone but the players are limited to one assassination attempt per turn. It must be the first action they do, before they spend money or do anything else. Upon a successful assassination the game admin will load that player's save and attempt the assassination. If the results are different there will be penalties for cheating.

Crusades and Jihads can be joined but the Pope can't be bribed in any way for favor. Crusades/Jihads only versus their respective target cities. (this will be modded in I hope)

ONLY religious buildings can be destroyed upon the conquest of a settlement and ONLY if they are of a religion different than your own.

No trading of provinces to receive free troops.

No deliberate deals that would put you in debt above -10,000 florins.

[slysnake]

Stainless Steel all the way! *cough* only because its the only Kingdoms mod I play *cough* :)

[Myth]

I have two problems with SS 6.4

One is that with real recruitment on everyone plays with spear militia armies for the first 200 years and that is very very boring.

The second one is that Heretics are absurdly strong and they completely mess up AI controlled regions.

[slysnake]

Why not try 6.2? That's a pretty popular release of the Stainless Steel mod which we use for the Dogs of War Hotseat which has been going on for a looooong time now with no such problems like those which you have mentioned ^^

[Myth]

Sure I'm open to what the majority prefers. Still low interest in this game which is strange for me. Perhaps the regulars here are in too many games as it is?

[phonicsmonkey]

You might find some people are at capacity, I know I am and I have a very busy period in RL coming up. Persist, recruit around other forums a bit and you should be able to get this off the ground. I'll help by advertising it in the TWC forum and elsewhere.

slysnake was considering starting a game a while back, he might be willing to admin this for you?

I would suggest two things:

- Maybe limit it to 6 players, 3 on each team? Then you don't have to find so many players.

- We tried VCs a bit like these in the WotK game and they worked ok, but have you considered making this a team deathmatch like WWC? You could just let the game go on until one side is eradicated. Then that takes away the issues of balance around which cities you pick etc.

- I would suggest, if you are considering an AR-only game, that you use KGCM with the hotseat patch for this. The AR results have been rebalanced in that patch to give better results to heavy cavalry which are usually under-rated. This would help out the cavalry-heavy eastern nations which usually suffer in AR games.

[Zim]

I'm interested, but have to admit being pretty close to capacity for games. Still, Norway looks none too healthy in the Teutonic Hotseat, so I could likely join this one.

Sure I'm open to what the majority prefers. Still low interest in this game which is strange for me. Perhaps the regulars here are in too many games as it is?

[Nightbringer]

I have to say I am at capacity with 7 hotseats, a mafia game, and the v&v thing all on my plate, otherwise I would be interested though.

[Myth]

KGCM sounds best then, especially if auto resolve has been rebalanced. I wanted to go with cities rather than a deathmatch for several reasons. One is that historically the crusaders wanted free access to (and later control over) the Holy Lands, they did not seek to actively slaughter every Muslim nation and wipe them out. Similarly then, it makes sense for the game to focus around key settlements and their religious conversion. This will allow Turkey for example to expand to the North and East without fear of molestation by player controlled nations, as they care about the targets down south.

The capture of Rome and the conquest and muslimification of major Western cities is similarly set to simulate the ultimate Muslim goal of bringing Islam to all the countries in the world.

Victory is attained when all targets are secured, the invaders repelled and the enemy religion removed form both your own lands and the target regions. This means that alongside the battle of troops and siege engines, there will be a battle of priests and assassins. There will also be the need to consider who picks what nation. Cordoba is a target for the Western nations - will a player get the Moors and risk being swarmed within 5 turns or will they abandon it to the AI and then do a team assault on Rome in retaliation?

Attack planning, defense planning and key use of Crusades/Jihads will be more important than simply grabbing all your stacks and right clicking until someone has no more provinces left.

Naval warfare will also be important, as well as logistics - England, Scotland, Denmark etc. are all far removed from the action. Dare they tech up to better troops whilst their allies in Central and Southern Europe try to hold their ground?

Do the Muslim factions want to consolidate their own positions and grab land from the AI, and to a slow conversion towards Europe, guaranteeing defensive Jihads on newly conquered territories?

This concept has potential if both teams want to take it as more than "meet here, bring all your troops and we fight to the death"

[Myth]

Reworked the victory conditions and some of the rules. Anyone interested?

[Visor]

Crusades can't be called in kgcm with th hotseat patch, jihads require ten piety.

When I get out of a few, I might join.

[Myth]

I'm asking on the .net on the details of returning the Cruades mechanic to this mod.

[Quirl]

Sure I'm open to what the majority prefers. Still low interest in this game which is strange for me. Perhaps the regulars here are in too many games as it is?

Can't join this hotseat, but I can help you advertise. Click the "Content Manager" hyperlink in my sig if you want to see additional services.

[SilverShield]

im always interested in a good block war

wuuud? Quirl?? u is still alive bro? hows it going man? u still with the Marine girl or was she chopping ur balls already...

[Nightbringer]

I am interested in this game now as my load has decreased somewhat, My only concern is the imbalance between Christian and muslim factions inherent in all versions of the game. Christian factions outnumber muslim ones ~5-1 and generally have superior troops. Their also tend to be many more regions in Christian areas of the map. I would prefer to avoid KGCM as I feel England has been boosted beyond balance due to the number of factions and regions bunched into that zone. This would be a particular issue in a game such as this where there would be little danger of england being attacked by enemy factions. They could easily grab the 28 BI regions and then just spam troops to send across the map.

I don't want to sound too negative as I want to play and it is a fun concept, I would just want to make sure people felt they were on a level playing ground in order to avoid any resentment / bad feelings about the game.

[Quirl]

im always interested in a good block war

wuuud? Quirl?? u is still alive bro? hows it going man? u still with the Marine girl or was she chopping ur balls already...

lol. Hey, man. Her and I are still together. Things are going so-so (although I did have to correct her today on calling me "a woman" in front of the cashier at Orange Leaf. Ooh-rah. ).

I'm playing The Levantine Struggle hotseat here at the throne room, but that's about it. RL's been tough and I don't have much time for anything else... but it's good to be back.

PM me sometime. We'll catch up, man.

[Nightbringer]

I'm sure this isn't what you meant but saying you correct her just makes me think of the shining.

[Quirl]

No. That's exactly what I meant.

[Nightbringer]

*slowly backs up till he gets to the door then breaks into a full run and starts screaming

[Quirl]

Pffft... whatever. You put the fear of death into the 40K universe, Nightbringer. Don't act like I'm the bad guy now just 'cos I had to axe-murder my girlfriend. ;)

EDIT:
At the risk of inadvertently hijacking this thread, maybe we should stop here before we piss off Myth.

[Myth]

Can't join this hotseat, but I can help you advertise. Click the "Content Manager" hyperlink in my sig if you want to see additional services.

I will make use of your services for a banner for this game. I could make it myself however, I have skills in photoshp/flash. Maybe we can collaborate on that?

im always interested in a good block war

Great!

I am interested in this game now as my load has decreased somewhat, My only concern is the imbalance between Christian and muslim factions inherent in all versions of the game. Christian factions outnumber muslim ones ~5-1 and generally have superior troops. Their also tend to be many more regions in Christian areas of the map. I would prefer to avoid KGCM as I feel England has been boosted beyond balance due to the number of factions and regions bunched into that zone. This would be a particular issue in a game such as this where there would be little danger of england being attacked by enemy factions. They could easily grab the 28 BI regions and then just spam troops to send across the map.

I don't want to sound too negative as I want to play and it is a fun concept, I would just want to make sure people felt they were on a level playing ground in order to avoid any resentment / bad feelings about the game.

KGCM at least makes the Eastern factions playable. They also can grab land from the ERE. I'm thinking of making this a 3v3 so faction number should not be a problem. England is hard to invade yes, but so are the inner provinces of the Holy Lands. Why do you feel that England has been made stronger in the KGCM? They lack good cavalry so their autoresolve stats won't be as good.

We can also ban warring with factions of your own faith, so in effect the Catholics can only expand to rebel regions, do you think that will work?

Or, we can allow battles to be fought instead of autoresolved. That will make the HA armies deadly. What does everyone think about this? The GA campaign allows battles to be fought and hasn't collapsed so it's a possibility at least.

Anyway, so far we have:

myself, Zim (possibly), Visorslash (possibly), Slysnake (possibly, if i convince him to install KGCM), Nightbringer, SilverShield

That's 6 right there if the first 3 decide to participate. I'll PM them to ask again, because as Phonicsmonkey has shown me, persistence is the sinews of a good hotseat.

BTW I think I've found a way to allow Crusades and Jihads only for the target cities. I'm not sure how they removed Crusades from the KGCM but if it's with the region resources I can mod them back in.

[Visor]

Hmm. As long as the time limit is 48 hours or larger, I'll join. I suggest we have some discussion of factions for fairness.
England isn't too overpowered in a full man hotseat.

[Myth]

Great! I've updated the rules, If I'm forgetting something please let me know. I'm really hoping that Phonics can admin this for me, or Zim. On factions:

For the Catholics the best factions are England, France, HRE and whatever Italian faction starts with the biggest armies. I haven't played KGCM so I'm not certain on the numbers. Note that in KGCM France and the HRE start very late on the turn order and have fewer starting provinces. Special mention to the Crusader States since they start with Jerusalem which is required to win even if your side gets to 100 points.

For the Muslims the best factions are.. Hmmm. The KGCM seems a bit limited with only Turks, Egyptians and Moors (my info from this screenshot) I know that in SS we get Khawazremians and other Muslim nations. But SS's autoresolve is not balanced. Would it be better then, to play with SS 6.4 (I know how to fix the heretics) with real recruitment off and without autoresolve?

If we stick to KGCM please someone who has played the mod list the Muslim factions and their relative strength. For me the best one would be Turkey simply because one can lead his HA armies and capture Constantinople which is easily the best city at the start of the game.

[Nightbringer]

The only problem I have with England in terms of balance is the 3 other catholic factions they can take out right at the start to grow huge. The main reason I would say to not have them in this despite their historical importance is the huge amount of time it will take for them to cross the map. It will likely take them roughly twice as long as other christian factions which is really just no fun at all for them.
France HRE and probably Venice would be good in my opinion though. All three have ocean access with relative ease which will make getting to the middle east easy, and all three do play historical roles in the crusades.

Crusader states could also work well.

I'm not sure about Muslim factions, I think it is just moors fatimids and seljuks though.

[Myth]

slysnake said he cannot join at the moment due to exams coming up, so we have one more slot open.

[Visor]

Why not 2v2, Turks and Egypt v Jerusalem and Antioch. As a death match idea. But ontopic, I don't like the idea of ai bashing for ages. Maybe you could make everyone really big, so the action starts faster.

[Myth]

That setup implies we just start a Crusades hotseat. I was thinking of using the KGCM to have a longer game with logsitics playing as much part as actual fighting. Long distances and planning your route, securing reinforcements and a launchpad in enemy territory are key. I'm not even sure the KGCM has antioch but without the hotseat patch the HA factions are very disadvantaged in autoresolve.

What do you mean make everyone really big? We could start a KGCM game and skip to turn 50 or so, but no one knows how the AI would behave. You might get a crippled empire. Or we could start in the late period... Hmmm.

[Visor]

No it doesn't. Turks are too weak in crusades for that.

The hotseat patch has Antioch and Jerusalem.

[phonicsmonkey]

Have you thought about using Broken Crescent for this? We've had a number of games in that mod and they've always worked well.

[Visor]

IMO, bc is horribly, horribly balanced.