Middle Provincial Era GROGPUBLIC game thread

Started by JasonPratt, September 17, 2018, 05:04:17 PM

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JasonPratt

#180
Quote from: Ethel the Frog on October 05, 2018, 05:49:06 PM
1) I will keep the same faction leader.
2) Fulvius will spend 2 talents to try and get a Knight.
3) Appius will spend 2 talents to make that a 9, unless others decide to spend me down.  I assume that, if people decide to pay to lower my chances, then that is money they can't spend to raise their own chances later in the turn if I fail.

Ehhh.... not exactly. Counter-bribes get paid by other Factions from their Faction Treasuries; Bribes for Persuasion are paid from a senator's Personal Treasury. So their senators would still have whatever cash available to try (that they don't spend elsewhere, on minion attempts for example.)

However, if they do try counterbribing you, they will have either made it that much harder for anyone including themselves to Persuade Acilius afterward, or they will have basically given you their cash if you win.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
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JasonPratt

This, by the way, leads to the question of whether there's any way to speed up the counter-bribe process any.

I've taken one step by house ruling that, for asynch play, Factions get only one chance to counter-bribe against a Persuasion attempt. (There are Faction card which prevent counter-bribe attempts outright, typically by sex.  ^-^ i.e. "Marriage" and "Seduction" Intrigue cards.) In board play, if the Persuader adds Talents after the counter-bribes, everyone gets another shot at counter-bribing again, until there are no more bids.

I think it's important for balancing purpose that there be at least one round of counter-bribing, but if there's a unanimous vote by the Players to sacrifice this for the game, I'd accept that.  O:-)

Another way of speeding things up a little, would be for Players to declare in advance, during the preceding Revenue Phase, how much of their remaining Faction Treasury they'd devote to counter-bribes automatically, perhaps under what circumstances. For example, the Frog might declare he's setting aside 2 Talents from the Faction Treasury to counter-bribe attempts on picking up Maximinius specifically, but he'd ignore attempts on Acilius. Those "devoted" Talents wouldn't pay out unless the conditions triggered, and then after the Forum Phase they'd be available again (or if the Player specifically used them 'manually' for something else of course. A few Event emergencies can hit particular officers, and their Faction might need to help bail them out.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Meanwhile, let's see if Fulvius gets his first minion!

Normally a 6 on a 1d6, but sacrificing 2 Talents lowers that to 4 or greater, 50/50 chance. 3 or less, failure.

[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 2, total 2[/blockquote]
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#183
 #:-) Sorry, no go for the minion this Turn. It was a reasonable try.

Edited to add: I'll check in occasionally through the night, but I'll give at least 14 hours for players to weigh yea or nay on the counter-bribe. So sometime after 8am tomorrow morning I'll proceed with the roll. (Appius is already spending all his Talents, so he'd have nothing more to offset any counter-bribes, so no need to wait for the Frog after that.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Erax

The Progressive faction treasury is empty and therefore they do not counter-bribe.

malize

#185
The populists have no interest in impeding others attempts to obtain Acilius this turn.

Ooc: before things get too much further on jp, maybe consider a "history thread" that chronicles chronologically the high points of our campaign?


JasonPratt

I was thinking about a video AAR.  ^-^
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Tripoli

Quote from: JasonPratt on October 05, 2018, 02:14:32 PM


{goes next to the internet to find a WH40K "prepare thyselves" meme}{the internet somehow fails me!}{faith in internet decreases  #:-) }
How about this?:
"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" -Abraham Lincoln

JasonPratt

Agh, too close to real life!!  :timeout: :wow:

....


.......

>:D :bd:
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Erax

Are we allowed to check how many cards are left in the Forum Deck?

JasonPratt

#190
Quote from: Erax on October 06, 2018, 07:15:24 AM
Are we allowed to check how many cards are left in the Forum Deck?

Yes, although I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, so I'll be detailed.  ^-^

(You yourself may know most or all of this already, but many players here are learning RepubRome for the first time, so this is for tutorial benefit.)

So, to be specific: there is one overarching "Scenario Deck", running from the start to the end of the game (or however far the Senate gets before the end).

This Scenario Deck features two types of cards, broadly speaking: red-text "Faction" cards, which get given to Players when they're drawn, and black-text "Forum" cards, which get played immediately to the board, openly and publicly. All wars, for example, are black-text cards from the Scenario deck -- thus "Forum" cards which get played to the Forum. (On the board, the "Forum" area is the map of the Mediterranean world with a grid over it, but the map is just there to look nice and give players a visual reference of how the provinces relate to each other and to Italy.)

These "Faction" and "Forum" cards (and there are varieties of each kind) get shuffled together semi-randomly to form the Scenario Deck.

But the Scenario Deck itself gets sorted, during the shuffle process, into rough historical periods called Eras. So those become sub-decks. The three main "eras" of the game are Early, Middle, and Late. The fan-made expansions add Latin, Italian before Early, and Civil War after Late.

I'll zoom in to where I parked the Era decks in TTS:



Each Era has a border color around its cards, which I tried to match with text colors in TTS (but black doesn't show up very well for the Civil War Era, which I sometimes call Final Crisis.) Right now we're playing with Yellow/Latin cards, and also some White/Early cards.

You can see on the snapshot that I've turned on the deck-counter in TTS, which is showing that 13 Scenario cards remain in the Latin Era. Some are red Faction cards, some are black Forum cards.

Now, this much is all public knowledge, so I don't try to hide it in overall snapshots, and I can report it on request.

What I can't tell you, is how many remain of red or black cards, or specific cards within those groups, in any Era.

Except, if we were at a table at a conference, you'd see me picking up the Latin deck (in effect) and pulling out a few Faction cards and a few family Senators for new players after we started the game: new players get the first available such cards remaining in the decks.

And so you'd see that I'm already going into the Italian Era to pick up family Senators for Erax! That means, by deduction, there are no more family Senators in the Latin Era deck.

So again by deduction, Acilius up there is the last family Senator which Players who are already in the game will have a chance of picking up for a while!

For how long? -- and this gets to Erax's question, I think. There are 13 Scenario cards left in the Latin Deck. As many as 6 of those will be dealt-or-played out each Turn, because we have 6 players now -- but we started this Phase with 14, and the Plutocrats rolled to pull a Scenario card and burned one of the two Plebian Secession historical Events out of the Deck. Which isn't useful, except that it isn't a War!  O0 And it would have created a Drought effect which would have caused Unrest, except that y'all dealt with that early by a majority vote to pass the first Land Bill.

Five Players remain, so you could get as many as five more cards dealt out, leaving 8 next turn.

This means that, even if two more players join next week (for the maximum 8 slots), the earliest you're going to see the Italian Era deck is Turn Four. But, because there's a random chance of rolling a random Event instead of pulling a Scenario card, that schedule isn't certain. It might be Turn Five instead (though it isn't likely to be later).

If you're curious about the other decks, there are 22 Italian Era scenarios; 33 Early Provincial; 46 Middle Provincial; 49 Late Provincial; and 14 Civil War scenarios. However, in the CW Era, the game-ending card has been shuffled somewhere into the final 6 cards, so it won't necessarily be all 14.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Okay, I haven't heard from I.I. or AzTank yet, and we're coming up on noon my time, and I'm done with morning chores (but I need to go eat soon), so I'll move the clock along.

As a reminder, for the Frog and for later players (if the Frog fails): to persuade a senator to join you, you need to roll lower than the target number. Sometimes this means it's simply impossible to pick up a senator regardless of what you do (which was most players last turn).

However! -- for balance sake, the rules are set up so that while it's possible to certainly get a knight, if you spend enough cash, it is NOT possible to spend enough money to certainly pick up a senator! This keeps rich players later in the game from paying to automatically steal senators out from other Players. (Which is also part of the reason for having counter-bribe ability.)

So, on a 2d6 roll, if you roll a natural total of 10, 11, or 12, you will automatically fail to persuade the senator (from trying too hard, so to speak.) Doesn't matter what any other factors are, those numbers will definitely fail. And any cash he was bribed or counter-bribed with, that senator gets to keep for himself in his personal treasury.

So, the first thing I do is transfer 2 Talents from Appius (the Plutocrats' best persuasion chance) to Acilius.

Here he is, hanging around in the "Forum" part of the gameboard, by the way:



You can see potential Legions in the Force Pool off to the upper right in that shot, in case you're wondering what those chips are. (Some of those Legions were recently destroyed fighting the 1st Latin War under Cincinnatus, which is why although he earned 1 Influence for beating that particular War, he lost a point of Influence for the costly victory.)

Next, as a reminder, I calculate the target sum, which equals Appius' Oratory 5 + his Influence 9 - Acilius' Loyalty 7 = +7 (If the number was negative, or zero, or even 1, it would be impossible to roll equal or less to it!)

That isn't bad, on a 2d6 roll, that's 50 percent or better for success.

Appius is adding all of his 2 Talents from his Personal Treasury to the attempt. That bumps the target total up to +9. Which, notice, is necessarily the maximum chance of winning this roll, because rolling a 10, 11, or 12, is an automatic fail!

So, 10, 11, or 12, always a fail, including this case.

But for this roll, 9 or less will win.

I'll roll it publicly here:

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6 : 3, 4, total 7[/blockquote]
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Erax

Thanks for the detailed explanation JP, that's what I wanted to know. So, the Latin Era deck has 13 cards left with up to 5 being drawn this turn. Without giving away too much, the best case scenario is that we get some bad cards to deal with now and some next turn, with some good events to help us along. The worst case scenario is that we get a lot of bad cards (and some bad events) all at once.

JasonPratt

Appius wins with a 7! -- he didn't even need to spend his cash!

So, Acilius joins the Plutocrats, leaving the "Forum" part of the board.

Senators never gain anything from making a successful persuasion attempt -- Acilius isn't Appius' minion now for example. In fact, Appius has lost the 2 Talents he donated to Acilius! But the Frog may decide to adjust that at the Revenue Phase for the next Turn anyway.

Acilius, as you may be able to see from the prior screenshot, has an Influence of 3 and an Oratory of 2 (along with other stats), so the Plutocrats' normal vote tally goes up to 11: Appius' Ora 5 + Fulvius' Ora 2 + Acilius' Ora 2, + 2 knights.

And the Plutocrats' total Influence goes up to 17.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Quote from: Erax on October 06, 2018, 11:55:08 AM
Thanks for the detailed explanation JP, that's what I wanted to know. So, the Latin Era deck has 13 cards left with up to 5 being drawn this turn. Without giving away too much, the best case scenario is that we get some bad cards to deal with now and some next turn, with some good events to help us along. The worst case scenario is that we get a lot of bad cards (and some bad events) all at once.

Exactly. Most historical Events are bad for the Republic, especially this early. In other words, the deck is trying to beat you all! -- and to tempt each of you into trying to win by yourself to save yourself. The random Events are 50/50 good or bad.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!