Strange Steel

[Senior Tactician]

RA is 3rd tier magic, 2nd tier is EL, DA, GN.  These three kingdoms are underperforming, I don't see a reason to eliminate them.

Kingdoms that are already doing well probably will be favored in this game AM, AT, UN.

And I want SA so leave it!

AM is very strong.  AT and UN status points vs winning I think are different things.

GN is also rather strong not sure why others don’t know how to play them.
DA did get neutered a bit now a bottom feeder kingdom
EL actually has some of the very best troops vs PC.   But kinda crappy spell list for a 2nd tier kingdom.

RA and AM strongest kingdoms available in this match up.  Hopefully someone who has not played them actually takes them.

Agree, GN should be easy.  But any kingdom is vulnerable to early troubles, and the GN has only been played 6 out of 12 times in my data, and they have been taken out early several times.  Half their data doesn't even qualify for my analysis.  My guess is its been a situational issue rather than a player or kingdom issue.

And with the AT and UN, its not just status, AT has a win.  UN has 5 podiums out of 8 plays (but no wins).

Also EL will be only kingdom with bounty at 5.

[Brekk]

From experience with AN its very easy to build points to Draugrs point.

[Ry Vor]

My first experience in PBM was playing Earthwood, by GSI.  I was hooked, I never knew there were these kind of games.  But then, I realized Earthwood was more a good idea than a good game.  Completely unbalanced, very few options, very predictable outcomes, lots of errors.  I thought I could do better.  So as a personal challenge to myself, I set about creating Alamaze.  Probably not the best choice of names, doesn't mean anything, like Kingdoms of Arcania would, just named after my college massive AD&D army-oriented campaign.

My AD&D group won the tournament at the University of Florida, as complete outsiders to that club.  This was serious stuff (in so far as such a thing can be), with multiple moderators tightly following a script for probably 30 groups of six.  They couldn't believe that we didn't lose a character, and that we (me actually) solved the final puzzle, which had been the thing to knock the other surviving groups out.   I started playing Avalon Hill games like Tactics II and Gettysburg at nine.  So, it's been in the blood.

First Cycle was actually the version that won the GAMA and Origins Game of the Year, as well, there was no 2nd Cycle yet.  But 2nd Cycle was so much better.  It was still on that classic map, which by the way I engaged Jim Paisley, associated with GSI, to draw.  GSI approached me to either sell or license Alamaze, I mean, it wasn't close between Alamaze and Earthwood, but they were cheap.  RSI was not, and also did not require exclusive, so both RSI (Duelmasters, Hypborian War) and by then Phil, now running Pegasus Productions out of North Carolina ran Alamaze.  Thing was, RSI didn't get design updates, while Phil did.  And of course, Phil was famous for spending hours on the phone talking to players and me about Alamaze.  I never myself played Alamaze until Phil took it over since back then we were manually entering the orders individually.  At the peak, we had six employees, doing all the order entry, filing order entry turn sheets into folders, stuffing turn results, getting the postage, going to the post office to get the mail, even doing payroll.  We had an apartment in my apartment complex - no one living there, just six computers and six printers.  It took two hours for those early PC's to run a game, and two hours to print.  Now, its about ten seconds.  

2nd Cycle was Alamaze for over 20 years.  While Alamaze was still with Phil, I did Fall of Rome in 2003 - 2010 or so, while still working (employed) full time. Phil passed, and I took Alamaze back in 2014.  The first year was very frustrating, because the processing had barely budged in those intervening 20 years.  During the conversion they did, dozens of typos had crept into the turn results, which irritates me more than it probably should.  The rules were not in anything like Word, and almost essentially had to be retyped, just a couple hundred pages in total.   The few changes they had made has to be undone.  You may remember your army drowning, that capitals could be found by the end of turn 2, etc.  Aye, yi, yi. 

So it was great to get Alamaze back and think about advancing it, but it also was about killing me.  No more six employees: me entering orders and processing turns.  Ten hours of tedium daily.  It was a rocky transition when Mike came on and David Pitzel left due to  friction, but Alamaze really came on with Mike and we did 3rd Cycle, The Choosing.   Forever (20 some years) before, the Elves were in Oakendell.  Period.  Dwarves always in the Talking Mountains.  We did do an update to the Classic map, a few changes like Viperhead on the other side of the Sea of Mystery, making the regions less boxy.  Mainly, just getting back in the saddle.

In The Choosing, the breakthrough was now either of two kingdoms could be in a region, player choice.  So Oakendell could still be High Elves, but could also be the new kingdom of the Druid.  This was a new thing, I don't think existed in other PBEM games.  The Choosing also brought in plenty of new commands, spells, artifacts, customization the ESO, new formats.   Ergo, 3rd Cycle.  A big thing was the introduction of Cultural Traits.  Before, every kingdom had its one-offs, now we systematized that.  There are still unique qualities, notably with the Ancient Ones, Demon Princes, Underworld, but mainly now we know the Rangers have the Riders and Military Tradtion trait, etc.

We didn't rest long on our laurels.  Maelstrom was more than a year in design and the first completely new 12 player map (we had done Centuaria, for Duels).  We broke about every rule in Maelstrom.  The great challenge that included major decisions on the map design, was now, any kingdom could be in any region.  So just a single position now could have 24 possible kingdoms in 12 possible regions, so 288 choices per player, if you will, times 12 players.  Alamaze had always been famous for game balance, it was many players favorite topic.  Well, now that had just increased in difficulty by maybe a magnitude of 100.  And its not like we dumbed things down.  New spells, new commands again.  The new economic model, with all the potential PC improvements.

Thanks for enjoying Alamaze, and do try out a new kingdom.

[Draugr]

don't know how many time I have read the history of the game. I always enjoy reading it again with a smile remembering the different challenges each version of the game had. .

[Strongwill]

don't know how many time I have read the history of the game.  I always enjoy reading it again with a smile remembering the different challenges each version of the game had.    .

Yep I like listening to it too

[Agent Orange]

Great post, The good ole days where Phil would chat with you for a couple hours and give you advice that helped you improve your game.

[VballMichael]

1.  Draugr
2.  Vball
3.  Strongwill
4.  
5.  Windstar
6.  Senior Tac 
7.  
8.  
9.  
10. 
11. 
12. 

Back to business...

[HabeusCorpus]

1.  Draugr
2.  Vball
3.  Strongwill
4.  
5.  Windstar
6.  Senior Tac 
7.  
8.  
9.  
10. 
11. 
12. 

Back to business...

I think you missed me ... I had taken position 11 a bit back.

[HabeusCorpus]

Guys do you want to turn this into a mentor/mentee game instead? Appears to be slow uptake. There are what appear to be 5 newbies signed up in a new game queue probably wondering what to do. I am happy to be a mentor (weak one) or a mentee (this will be my third game, and have three duels under my belt).

[Strylian]

Guys do you want to turn this into a mentor/mentee game instead?  Appears to be slow uptake.  There are what appear to be 5 newbies signed up in a new game queue probably wondering what to do.  I am happy to be a mentor (weak one) or a mentee (this will be my third game, and have three duels under my belt).

I just reached out to HijiriKishi. I gave him the link to this game and informed him of how to properly get into games.


I also mentioned he needed to join the duel he created.

That other game in the queue has been up so long. It is broken. It has a 72-minute timer. I think we need to have everyone join it and then quit afterward just to get it down. I know Mike and Rick know about it but I think there is a problem with being able to just delete a game or something.

We should probably do the same for the other one. We do not want people accidentally getting trapped in that one like they did the first one.

Rick is talking about putting a restriction on game creation, allowing only certain players to be able to create nondual games


One thing that is happening with these new players getting trapped is tey are not getting to the tutorial videos. I know because I have the ability to monitor the videos. It should become a habit to send people to the training vault to learn how the game operates. If we can get them there then we will have fewer problems like this. You guys have been great by the way as a community. I really think we are on the verge of having a major breakthrough in growing our player base.

https://www.abanak.com/alamaze_training_vault/