Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

[elitesix]

edit: See discussions below

Let the scheming begin :).

P.s. Jason, please change the op to reflect this at your convinence.

[JasonPratt]

Jason,
I feel border line cheated when you say you tried to play both Tien Chi and Ulm last turn. As everybody knows now, the game itself has some sort of protection against situations like this. I understand that you were doing minimal administration duties for Tien Chi, but this takes the two-nations-working-together SVA stuff to a different ground. But the most worrying part is that the rest of the players weren't even informed. And if the game didn't create such limitations ¿would we even know by now? The whole thing could've been run behind the curtains. Mind you, I'm not accusing you of cheating (as you say, you were not aware). But as admin, this sort of situations should -as a minimum- be informed in proper time to the player base. Having access to two nations creates a whole new set of advantages for the player involved that the rest of us simply don't have.

True, which is one reason we didn't want to get involved in actively prosecuting any campaigns (I think even Machaka was done by then, where we could reach it anyway) -- it wouldn't be fair to the other players.

Had the attempt actually worked last turn, I would have announced what was happening and what the conditions were; the experiment went the other way, so I announced that instead. The recent discussions did make me wait as long as possible to try playing our turns (thus seeing whether the previous turn even worked), for obvious reasons.

Keep in mind I'm trying to find someone to sub in so I can spend free time playing something other than Dom3; had that worked, they'd be playing Ulm, I'd be temporarily playing TC, and then handing off the reins to KoS when he got back. So I wouldn't have been playing two nations at once after all, even if the coding didn't prevent it. It was no accident I started that right after taking the emergency reins for TC. ;)

[JasonPratt]

Let the scheming begin continue :).

Fixed that for you. ;)

At the risk of sounding blunt, until I see a majority opinion on it I'm not dropping the SVA allowance, and I'm not sure I've seen that yet.

More to the point, even if I saw a majority alliance on dropping alliances (so to speak ;) ), I'm not sure I'd foist that on minority players. Strictly speaking allies ought to decide whether they're stopping alliances; their alliances cannot be dictated stopped by other players by fiat or vote (unless alliances were forbidden from the outset in the original game conditions, which certainly wasn't the case here).

On the other hand, allies might consider whether they're getting signals that they'll be dogpiled (in what amounts to a convenient alliance!) if they maintain their alliance(s), and if so decide whether they might be relatively better off dropping their alliance, or at least being smart enough not to announce it publicly. ;)

(I'm trying to look at this from the perspective of someone having picked up Ulm after all, thus eliminating me from benefiting or not either way, although for all I know there are other alliances that haven't been announced yet for strategic reasons. There are still a bunch of players in the game.)

[Huw the Poo]

Shared victory alliances are specifically allowed for in this game's rules (i.e. Groghammer rules).  Thus, I must reluctantly vote in favour of allowing it this time - to do otherwise wouldn't be fair on any players working toward that goal.

That doesn't change the fact that I don't like them, however. :P

[elitesix]

Let the scheming begin continue :).

Fixed that for you. ;)

At the risk of sounding blunt, until I see a majority opinion on it I'm not dropping the SVA allowance, and I'm not sure I've seen that yet.

More to the point, even if I saw a majority alliance on dropping alliances (so to speak ;) ), I'm not sure I'd foist that on minority players. Strictly speaking allies ought to decide whether they're stopping alliances; their alliances cannot be dictated stopped by other players by fiat or vote (unless alliances were forbidden from the outset in the original game conditions, which certainly wasn't the case here).

On the other hand, allies might consider whether they're getting signals that they'll be dogpiled (in what amounts to a convenient alliance!) if they maintain their alliance(s), and if so decide whether they might be relatively better off dropping their alliance, or at least being smart enough not to announce it publicly. ;)

(I'm trying to look at this from the perspective of someone having picked up Ulm after all, thus eliminating me from benefiting or not either way, although for all I know there are other alliances that haven't been announced yet for strategic reasons. There are still a bunch of players in the game.)

I am somewhat unclear as to what it will take for you to change the vp - but it sounds like you want a consensus of all remaining players? Could you plainly state what it will take before you are willing to change the VP from SVA, or if you are not willing. Either way, I'm not going to die if you say you are not changing the VPs under any conditions. But it is in the best interests of the game that you are transparent with your thinking.


Also, it seems you are confusing the concepts of alliances and SVA. Alliances are always allowed in standard one nation takes all dom3, but only one nation can claim victory. Nothing here is immediately ending your alliance with t'ien chi. It's just that only one nation can claim victory by owning 14 capitals.


I disagree with your Ulm sub commentary. They are subbing in and they have no expectations (unless we mislead them about the state of the game) or vested effort in their position. On desura, we frequently find subs for nations that are about to be defeated. Subs, on a whole, understand they have to deal with whatever other issues that are left to them. So actually having a sub deal with a different vp the moment he subs in is probably one of the most fair ways to deal with it.


That being said, can you at least change the op to reflect SVA must be announced publicly 10 turns prior to claiming victory to make SVA make a little more sense? Secret SVAs claiming victories simply don't make sense. We were all a bit new to the game and didn't realize this when we made this game.  It's ok and understandable to admit we were wrong and change the SVA victory condition as to requiring 10 turns notice for the game to make sense.Or, at the very least, please make it clear what your thoughts on the matter are as to this proposed notice requirement. I'm not the only one who has expressed concern over secret SVAs claiming an anti-climatic victory (indeed, your idea that the game might have already ended emphasized this, and the fact we had to make alliances public to sort it out already introduced the idea into the room), so you should express your thoughts on the matter.


Please Jason, speak your mind, and do so with the utmost clarity. This is essential.

[mkivcs]

Here is the opinions of the people of Ermor as expressed by the supreme representative of the people for what it's worth.
1. We vote in favour of the removal of SVA unless anyone has a really good one we can join and win immediately.
2. As a nation that was almost at war with Ulm and Ti last turn I can't say I'm particularly wildly happy to discover that they could have been the same player without me even knowing. I know that you did this with good intentions as a last minute attempt to fix it a problem and keep things going, but I think it was a wrong call.  I note that you said that if it worked last turn you intended to announce it, but that would have been after we played a full turn with 2 empires controlled by one person. However this is supposed to be a beginner game and maybe we should take this as a learning experiance.
Incidentally I'm quiet happy to look after Jotunheim, Atlantis and anyone else's empire who's away for the next few weeks, who knows if I collect enough holidaying nations I could declare a SVA and win before they got back.  ;D

[JasonPratt]

Okay, I finally get what you're after, E6. You aren't trying to break up SVAs (no more than any other alliance) by exterior vote, you're trying to head off an automatic win by an SVA claiming 14 VPs.

I didn't realize that was what you were after, because from the beginning (or rather from the point we instituted a 14 VP rule, at your request btw) I made provision for that: there is no automatic win by SVA at 14 VPs. The game doesn't (and cannot) force it, and I acknowledged from the beginning that other players might decide to continue.

"Note that as a dominating faction approaches 14 points, the remaining factions may request an extension if by alliance or alliances they still think they have a chance against someone who has probably already taken 2/3 of a very large map."

I assumed that players would normally regard an alliance as having won at 14 points on the same ground that we set an automatic single-player victory at 14 points: anyone getting there would be too strong to feasibly oppose. But if the other players wanted to try their luck and keep going they could, they just needed to announce their intentions to do so, and sooner the better (thus ideally before reaching the 14 point total). I'm sure I mentioned that whenever the topic came up.

In that regard, an SVA is to the advantage of the other players, because the game doesn't have to conclude if an SVA gets to 14 VPs, whereas the game must conclude if a single player gets to 14 VP.

That was already set up from before the game started, so there's no need to vote on it.

Obviously an SVA has advantages due to cooperation that other alliances or non-alliances do not, but an SVA cannot force a win except by accepting or eliminating all other opposition. And even then the SVA members may elect to disband (partially or entirely) and continue to fight it out.


The game does not end (under normal circumstances) except in two ways:

1.) A single player holds 14 VPs at the end of the turn (regardless of what alliances he is in or not), at which time the Llamaserver automatically declares that player wins. This is hard coded into the game now along with other details (like the map being used for the game), and cannot be changed once the game starts. (Or if there's an admin button for it I don't know what it is.)

2.) All remaining players agree to a shared victory among themselves (regardless of how many VPs they hold, or of how many VPs one of them holds), and the admin clicks the "declare game over" button (unless for some reason the players want to keep going a little while peacefully for purposes of trying out some spells or whatever.) This is a voluntaristic agreement by all remaining players to end the game. Care must be taken to ensure one player doesn't have 14 VPs, of course, or the server will end the game automatically.

Thus as stated in the groundrules, new emphasis: "A shared victory alliance is also allowed: all remaining factions have agreed to share victory and not continue the game."

An SVA has this end in view from some time earlier, with the goal of eliminating or accepting all opposition, but the SVA cannot declare the game over so long as there is anyone willing to oppose them.

Other related discussion from earlier in the thread: "The flip side of that would be the player who manages to arrange a shared victory alliance with everyone: then he can announce publicly that the game is over, everyone wins, but arguably he wins more because he's the one who arranged the mutual peace!  8) (Notice that this kind of happens anyway when the only remaining players have agreed to a shared victory alliance.)"


Once we added the 14 point automatic victory rule, the question became whether an SVA would automatically win at that point, and that was when I clarified that an SVA could not automatically impose a win on opponents.

Looking back over I see where the confusion came in: "I have just set an instant win if a faction holds 14 victory points, with a vp in each capitol province and no vps added to the map. That's a 2/3 superiority, and the faction has to be holding the vps simultaneously, not cumulatively, so any faction that much larger than any other opponent by late game is probably going to win anyway.

However, if the other final nations decide to ally together against the dominant power, I can remove or bump up the VP requirements (so long as this happens before the 14th vp.)"

I said that because I forgot that the computer could not track VPs held by an alliance, but I was still trying to make provision for no automatic win if anyone outside the alliance wanted to keep at it. (I thought I could change or eliminate the single-player VP rule, which once I started the game I learned I couldn't, but I was making provision to do so in order to protect people outside the dominant SVA from losing.)

Later as the game approached start I wrote a post about what new players should expect, and addressed the little crowns on the map: "In other games, the questions of what the little 'crowns' on the maps meant arose. Those are victory points, which for our other two Groghead games mean nothing at all; but here, you have to take and hold 14 of them to win. (Or to force a final epic allied confrontation or something like that, if the remaining players want to keep trying.)" Again, provision is made from the outset to prevent an automatic SVA win while opponents are still on the board and want to keep trying.

Anyway, I'm sorry the wording in one of my pre-game posts was unclear, because that seems to have been what started the problem, but once the VP auto-win for single player was implemented, I routinely qualified that there was no automatic multi-player VP win.


Relatedly, since an SVA cannot automatically win by claiming 14 VPs, there is no need to change the rules to a 10 round declaration ahead of claiming 14 VPs. (Although I agree that would be entirely fair and reasonable if SVAs could automatically win while opposition remains on the board.)


In short, an SVA cannot win unless all remaining players voluntarily agree the SVA has won.

The simplest example would be where all remaining players on the board decide among themselves they don't want to continue playing and so declare the game over, which would be a shared victory unless they also decide among themselves one of them has won.

That's also the only practical example, but nations may team up before then with that goal in view.

A slightly less simple example would be where all remaining players decide a dominant faction is too dominant to continue opposing, in which case all remaining players agree the faction has won (even if players aren't in the faction at that time). This is a voluntary capitulation. That doesn't have to happen at 14 victory points, although that would be a good time to consider capitulation if not before.


The only version of an automatic server-declared SVA win (in effect) would be if an SVA member accrues 14 VPs by himself and the server thus declares him the winner, in which case anyone SVA'd with him would also logically share the victory. That's really a single-player win now hardcoded into the game since game-start, but he has agreed beforehand to share the single-player victory if he wins.

[elitesix]

Thank you for explaining that Jason!

I see that we can play with sva and not have the game end suddenly and secretly, yay :)

[Ubercat]

I'm glad that's settled! I didn't know which way to vote, and with my time being limited lately, I didn't really have time to study the situation in detail.

Now, should we suspend the game for 2-3 weeks when the vacations start, or should everyone try to find subs, and deal with all that hassle? If I need a sub, I have to ask UCGeek soonish. I know of no other candidates for my sub in this game.

[JasonPratt]

Hrm, so many people are going to be out (though not simultaneously) we might as well postpone the game. I don't think anyone is in dire straits and might forget something crucial...?

(Actually I have almost no idea what's going on in areas outside the far western/southwestern areas of the map. :) We're pretty stable over here at the moment, and will doubtless spend our time plotting whom we should launch attacks against next.)

[elitesix]

I'm ok with waiting till august

[mkivcs]

August is fine with me.

[Huw the Poo]

I can never remember what I'm doing when the turns are only a couple of days apart, so waiting until August won't make much difference to me! :D

[claes]

My vote is for postponing as well.

[JasonPratt]

Okya, due to the number of players on summer vacation over the next few weeks, I have postponed the game until late Monday night August 5th central US time (after the first weekend in August).

If some turns get snuck in before then I'll adjust to keep the official new turn date the 5th. So anyone who wants to play their turns, please feel free to do so. (I fully intend to do so once TC gets back and he's caught up on various situations.)

If between one thing and another we get a few whole turns in, great; if not, don't feel rushed.