I would like to see a game considered over when one of three conditions are met. Keep the individual VP condition and retirement option but add a separate condition when there is coalition victory with combined VPs. A limit on a coalition may need to be enforced; better yet make it a game option when the game is created.
Add an additional victory condition to allow a coalition victory
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this has been brought up before, and it really should be considered. The coalition member limit is a must have, though, because coalition wins would otherwise be aggressively abused. It wouldnt be a bad idea to limit coalitions, anyway. No one likes to be "bandwagoned", and clean players dont like facing the fact that their coalition of more than 3 has some hard choices to make at the end of the game.“I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
―
Genghis Khan -
This issue has been repeatedly raised in the past, but not so much recently. We were assured by one of the moderators last summer that the developers were looking at this, but we have not heard anything since then.
Carlos Spicy-Wiener wrote:
I would like to see a game considered over when one of three conditions are met. Keep the individual VP condition and retirement option but add a separate condition when there is coalition victory with combined VPs. A limit on a coalition may need to be enforced . . . .
I agree completely that a coalition/alliance victory with combined victory points should be added to the existing victory conditions, but there needs to be an explicit limit on the number of eligible members in a winning coalition, tied to the size of the particular map. Otherwise, the condition is subject to obvious abuse, with larger coalitions having an obvious advantage. I believe these were the previously suggested limits:
2-player map: no coalitions eligible
10-player maps: 2-member coalition
22-player map: 3-member coalition
25-player map: 3-member coalition
50-player map: 4-member coalition
100-player map: 5-member coalition
There was also an open-ended question of whether coalition victories should be subject to a higher victory points requirement than individual player victories. -
Well I don't see a good reason for adding a coalition victory in the 2 smallest games, the middle 2 games don't seem to be to good either. If it's a 3-member coalition you might as well just eliminate everybody else in the game and then use the retirement option. But the idea sounds great for a 50-player map and 100-player map, partially. Some of the members in the coalition might be against ending it then and there, so you would have to have every member in the coalition agree that they would like to end the game, and I think the coalition would be required to have conquered all of the land before such is done. So to summarize what I just said, the coalition would have to own all of the land and all of its members would have to agree to end the round just like the retirement option. The numbers you gave for the last 2 are fine though.
MontanaBB wrote:
2-player map: no coalitions eligible
10-player maps: 2-member coalition
22-player map: 3-member coalition
25-player map: 3-member coalition
50-player map: 4-member coalition
100-player map: 5-member coalition
"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster." ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." -
When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
- BIG DADDY. -
I don't like the artificial boundaries that limiting coalition sizes creates. If a 10 player coalition decides to from it should be able too. I think the fact that gold will be split amongst 10 people is good enough at limiting the size.
Even if you did limit the size to 5 on the 100 player map, what's to stop 5 people from joining up to stop the guy in first when he is just about to win? Maybe if your coalition is made up of the last people standing? I dunno -
I think we want to prevent new games starting and everyone joining the same coalition on day #1 to get some completely free gold.When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
- BIG DADDY. -
Exactly right. The developers spend so much time tinkering with the unit types to achieve and maintain "competitive balance," and then individual players want to overlook something as obviously uncompetitive as an alliance of 10 or 15 members beating the crap out of everyone else simply because they are the biggest bully on the block. There is no way, no how we should be encouraging such uncompetitive situations as "super alliance" of unlimited numbers of members by making it easier for them all to share in some paltry amount of gold.
K.Rokossovski wrote:
I think we want to prevent new games starting and everyone joining the same coalition on day #1 to get some completely free gold.
Please explain that to @Chickenus above. Apparently I did not do a very good job of explaining what I thought was a relatively simple point.
By way of anecdote, the most competitive and most entertaining COW round of which I have ever been a participant was a start-when-full game on the 50-player Pacific map, which had a full complement of 50 human players at the outset, and still had 40 or so active players after a week. The 120-day game devolved into a series of coalition wars among five different alliances of three to four countries each, with some losses and additions of alliance members as the game progressed. If that game had consisted of one "super alliance" of 10+ members, it would have been over relatively quickly. -
How many "Super Alliances" have you ever seen? I have played this game for a while, and I never see large coalitions. There is always a few at the start of the 100 player that have 10 or so players, but after 2 days or so they fall apart. I thought your one of those people like wants this game to be supper realistic.
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They tended to be the biggest problem in the largest map games (50 and 100-player).y
Chickenus wrote:
How many "Super Alliances" have you ever seen? I have played this game for a while, and I never see large coalitions.
I generally favor for greater realism in unit design and in the relative combat capabilities of one unit against another (e.g., a high-level submarine squadron should not usually defeat a high-level naval bomber squadron).
Given the need to keep the games competitive, and to give ally playable countries a relatively equal chance to win the game, there has been a roughly equal distribution of provinces, population and resources (as well as equal access to war-fighting technology and industrial capacity) across all countries on most COW maps, which is, of course, completely unrealistic historically. Otherwise, the United States, the British Empire or the Soviet Union would win most games. Germany would have a chance if it expanded quickly early. Equalizing the playable countries is an unavoidable necessity in games where 22, 50 or 100 players all have a realistic shot at winning, but that's clearly NOT historically realistic.
That does not mean that we should add genetically-engineered Nazi super dragon units. -
Never in all my games have I seen this described supper alliance. I would rather risk being backstabbed by teammates then have my coalition size limited
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And you would retain that option: you can be allies with whoever you want, with as many as you want. But the members of your super-size alliance would still not be able to share the game-winning gold automatically at the end -- in that regard things would simply continue as they are now.
Chickenus wrote:
I would rather risk being backstabbed by teammates then have my coalition size limited
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As long as my coalition size is not limited until the end
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I wouldn't worry too much, Mr. C. This was under discussion last summer (2016), and that was the last I heard any mention of it in the Forum. Assuming they remember it at all, Bytro may get around to it some time this decade.
Chickenus wrote:
As long as my coalition size is not limited until the end
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why don't you come play to the PL and , the coalitions are capped at 4, and you always play against active players.
MontanaBB wrote:
Exactly right. The developers spend so much time tinkering with the unit types to achieve and maintain "competitive balance," and then individual players want to overlook something as obviously uncompetitive as an alliance of 10 or 15 members beating the crap out of everyone else simply because they are the biggest bully on the block. There is no way, no how we should be encouraging such uncompetitive situations as "super alliance" of unlimited numbers of members by making it easier for them all to share in some paltry amount of gold.K.Rokossovski wrote:
I think we want to prevent new games starting and everyone joining the same coalition on day #1 to get some completely free gold.
Please explain that to @Chickenus above. Apparently I did not do a very good job of explaining what I thought was a relatively simple point.
By way of anecdote, the most competitive and most entertaining COW round of which I have ever been a participant was a start-when-full game on the 50-player Pacific map, which had a full complement of 50 human players at the outset, and still had 40 or so active players after a week. The 120-day game devolved into a series of coalition wars among five different alliances of three to four countries each, with some losses and additions of alliance members as the game progressed. If that game had consisted of one "super alliance" of 10+ members, it would have been over relatively quickly.
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@MihailMD: I was planning on it. Having recently accepted a new job, I was taking a sabbatical from my COW nocturnal activities -- at least until Peter Mat talked me into joining his casual "blue prints" game. I will probably be ready to give a Players League game the attention it deserves this summer.
MihailMD wrote:
why don't you come play to the PL and , the coalitions are capped at 4, and you always play against active players.
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Just a quick note: PL has settled into 4 person coalitions for the 22 map. The first two months it was at 5, but most everyone thought that was to large, so it was downsized to a max of 4. Most coalitions now seem to be coming in at 3 with an occasional 4th, within PL."A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." - General George S. Patton, Jr.
"Do, or do not. There is no try" - Yoda
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