Major Game Changes - Need Your Vote

[Tacticus]

On a computer or laptop I know that trick but on my iPad or iPhone I can't do that unfortunately ((

[unclemike]

On a computer or laptop I know that trick but on my iPad or iPhone I can't do that unfortunately ((

Isn't there a keyboard emulator for that? Never used this but here's some info from Apple support...

Try AssistiveTouch on your iPad

https://support.apple.com/en-us/111794
https://support.apple.com/en-us/111775

[Tacticus]

Keyboard not showing up at scroll down menu.

[Olorin]

This is going to be long and no TLDR

Some background to help with my perspective, I'm sure a couple of you will know me before my signature.

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in 1979, then Traveller, Call of Cthulu, Top Secret, Gamma World, Champions, etc
A lot of Avalon Hill boxed/bookshelf games played, Axis and Allies, Diplomacy (the best game ever created), Titan, Kings and Things, Melee, Ogre, and had a member of our gaming group move on to work for Steve Jackson Games in Texas, lots of discussions about what made good games, balance, genre, and so on.

Play by Mail with Illuminati, because that was a fun little card game, and while I didn't make it into the first Alamaze playtest, I was in the second or third public game.

Before I was out of high school, I constantly had at least one Alamaze game going and really enjoyed seeing the big white envelope arrive in the mail.
I struck up a friendship with Phil McDowell; we played a lot of Alamaze together. He would later let me know that his brothers, Russ and Rick, frequently chided him for taking advantage of a poor teenager. But we trusted each other and, like he did with so many other Alamaze players, we had plenty of good conversations. This continued while I was in college and he was kind enough to put me up for a night on my road trip back home at the end of my junior year, I think I missed Russell's visit by a couple weeks that time. I'd make another visit to Waynesville, play some racquetball, golf and talk Alamaze and gaming with Phil and his son Patrick.  I had a pair of tickets to a Masters practice round one year and my dad was recovering from eye surgery, so I invited Phil. He came down and met my wife and infant son. Found out later that was one of his bucket list items, I think he took hundreds of photos of the course in Augusta. I would later score some World Series tickets, another bucket list item of his, but by then he was too sick to accept.  One day I got a call from his number and when Polly (his wife) was on the other end, I was speechless. She assured me that Phil was OK, but you know, I have no idea what was in the rest of that conversation. When Phil did pass, I was touched to be invited, but couldn't bring myself to go to the funeral, which was of course a mistake.

Back when I was 12, a little after the D&D thing started, I took a summer computer programming course/camp at LSU (put those together and you get N-E-R-D btw). The next summer it was BASIC rather than Fortran and a Pascal AP comp sci class in high school. An intro class in college to fulfill a core requirement was then end of programming for me - I was a business a major and didn't want to write code.

Towards the end of Alamaze under Phil's watch, he lamented having problems finding help with changes he wanted to make to the game. I found a book on eBay about that ancient Clipper language and got to work to help out. A while after Phil was gone, Rick reached out to see what might have survived, and I had the code and some rudimentary capabilities to make updates, so Alamaze was resuscitated. Things benefited with the addition of an actual skilled programmer and the rest as they say is history.

Alamaze, for me, is more than a game. Any individual matchup/game# isn't a big deal, but I have a strong emotional connection to "the game", I expect you've figured that out with all the words above. I've recently retired (maybe a mini, we'll see), and after having played in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, I wanted to see what's become of it.  I'm currently in eight games in this, my fifth decade with the game. Play balance, multiple approaches that can be successful, freshness, expansion, monetization, efficiency, and more were all constant topics of conversation over the years.
So far 65 turns across 8 kingdoms in 30 days. Pretty early for an assessment, but one game in particular and some notes from a couple others seem to be coalescing into an opinion.

Monty Hall was the host of Let's Make a Deal, the old gameshow on TV back in the day.  His name (or Monty Haul) became synonymous with dungeon masters that would shower their players with rewards and end up with campaigns filled with level 20+ characters and godlike capabilities and more loot than you could ever functional use.

Alamaze is now a Monty Haul game. Gone is the spine of the contest - where do you put limited resources to increase your chance of success? It seems you don't have to do that now, it's just a race. On turn 10 in one game, I have eight artifacts. On turn 15 in another, I have seven, but two of them are Quest (Gem/Staff) - and that's after losing my top 3 leaders on the SECOND sighting.
I sent a note to support early on when it looked like gold wasn't being accurately subtracted.  My mistake, those old costs for political resources don't exist. And it doesn't say the do anywhere, and the input routine doesn't show any charges.  I didn't fully grasp the consequences of this change, made to allow kingdoms to keep fighting and not be wiped out by a quick strike I was told.

In an Anonymous game, my hidden capital was landed on by an opponent - a non-wizarding kingdom opponent.
Took me a couple turns to figure out what would have allowed that. Revelation must have been cast. A power 6 spell, cast the turn before so that the groups could arrive and be seen on my turn results.  These were 3 Army+ sized groups, four power-4 wizards among them and after the following turn's combat results - 15 kingdom brigades, 13 high level companion brigades and 6 level 4 summoned brigades. A tour through my capital relocation towns cemented the Revelation theory.

Wow, what a well developed position. My region being attacked was the third this kingdom conquered. So, not just building and then unleashing, but expanding, unleashing and building. From this info, I would have (pre-current Alamaze), expected the game to be turn 16-18, 20 or so?  Nope. Groups arrived on turn 12. Revelation must have been turn 11. With the summons as well, looks like this position had  P6,P4,P4,P4,P4 on turn 10. While having taken two regions by then as well. 
TURN FUCKING TEN. 
This game has 3 kingdoms with power 7 wizards (2 owned by this well developed position) on turn 15. None of them are wizard kingdoms.

Maybe I'm handicapped by my experience.  Have I had plenty of 'get off my lawn' and 'that used to cost a nickel' moments? Hell yes.  
But do I have the self awareness to know it, and be open to embracing change?  Hell yes.
Will I stick around and try some other kingdoms and see how I can adapt to this new world? Probably, at least for a bit.  Those Monty Haul campaigns could be fun once in a while, but the allure never lasted.

My vote on the proposed change implementation?
Seems like re-arranging deck chairs Captain Smith, but who knows?

Thalion
Cipher
LordLittlebutt
David Pitzel

Damn, you just made me feel old. My introduction to coding was on punchcards. My first forays in PBM were chess and Kriegsspiel. I was playing, playtesting and designing wargames in the 60s. Got into RPGs by picking up D&D in 75[?](just when it was coming out) when Gygax talked me into buying it with Chainmail. Did a lot of work on RPGs; D&D, Champions, V&V, Traveller, but my interest was more in the wargames and miniature warfare areas. One of the advantages to historical gaming is you can compare what your outcome is to what really happened and see how close your system comes. I got hired a lot to find bugs in people's systems. After my leg gave out completely I got back into Hyborian Wars just to see if I could still reverse-engineer the system (I had never got around to analyzing the economics for it) and got invited here. I then started reverse-engineering (because I just think that way) and Brekk asked me to help him.

I cannot match you on early Alamaze. You go! I am really impressed that you got it running again. I did playtest the combat system Hyborian Wars uses, back in the 70s, is as close as I come. I played a couple of Alamaze games back then was about it for my involvement, when RSI was running them.

Yes, I remember Monty Haul. Came as word play from 'Mighty Haul' and the game show. Where undeserving folks got a lot of treasure with minimal effort. My group thought most other gamers were 'Monty Haulers', but that may be because they were mostly ex-Nam vets who treated every encounter as a tactical maneuver.

HOWEVER... That is applied more as a one-sided affair than a wargame. If both sides [or all sides] have equal access to resources than Monty has nothing to do with it. Comparing England vs France in the Hundred Years to the Earl of Mumford's defense against a Viking raid and saying one is vastly more funded that the other is pointless. All games need to be balanced against the opposition faced. They removed the costs for political before I joined in this time. I suspect they will have to add some of those back as the economic Kingdoms are having problems. There should be multiple ways to get to a win. Changes you make to fix one problem inevitably lead to new problems, etc., etc. It is a delicate balancing act and mistakes are easy to make.

On to your game: In the last note on changes sent out Revelations got changed. It was restricted til after turn 20, made an 8th level spell and only Supremancy/Mastery Kingdoms were supposed to have it. As of February 2024. the same time the costs for political actions were dropped. So I assume your game was at least that long ago.

Is your experience a handicap? Heck NO. We are trying to balance a game so it is fun to play. Every little bit helps.

The resource we are working with here are the Brigades. One of the fundamental building blocks of a wargame is the units you use to fight it. What we did was try to define them so they are each different. One thing I have learned is that any one person can still make mistakes, regardless of how good they are at something. The more eyes that look at something the more likely you are to get an improvement. Then the question was should we implement them now or wait for other parts to do with brigades to get worked out?

Are there other parts of the game that need work? Sure. And those deeper parts should probably be playtested, and then re-tested, before finalizing. Want to help?

[Mauler]

New forum who dis?

I vote immediate changes across the board.

Hey, is Dusi Harbor still around? Asking for a friend.

LOL! It's nice to see so many old players back on the forum! Hope that you're well Kevin.

Dusi Habor is the gift that keeps on giving!

8  XD  Dusi Harbor            Village        3,730    4,103  11,923    7,565    3,498    NA

[Brekk]

Bump for results, more info on updates coming soon

[Pine Needle]

Bump for results, more info on updates coming soon

I believe I am owed a PC name for services rendered, in case you forgot.

Pine Needle

P.S. maybe thats one of the inaccessible programing things. In that case, I am reasonable. Just tell everyone to refer to Stormgate as "Pine Needle". ktxbye

[davekuyk]

I must admit, Pine Needle is actually a great name for a PC!

[Lord Garth]

Bump for results, more info on updates coming soon

I believe I am owed a PC name for services rendered, in case you forgot.

Pine Needle

P.S. maybe thats one of the inaccessible programing things. In that case, I am reasonable. Just tell everyone to refer to Stormgate as "Pine Needle". ktxbye

Good luck with that, Pine.

I've been lobbying for a PC for years. "Lord Garthburg" "Lord Garth's Landing" "Lord Garthistan"

Bupkis!

I've just about given up on trying to get an artifact renamed. "Lord Garth's Gauntlets" "The Locket of Lord Garth" or "The Legendary Lance of the Legendary Lord Garth (Quest Item) "

It's like they don't WANT to make the game better!

Anyway, I hope you have better luck me.


Lord Garth
Unappreciated in his own time

[Brekk]

Quick question here, has anyone here won a championship and not had a PC named after them?