Valhalla - Kingdoms of Alamaze

[Lord Diamond]

If anything seems out of whack, perhaps the status points should be tweaked before kingdoms are. There are a lot more artifacts, agents for hire and potential prisoners than there are regions and wizards. A good Underworld player can get points a lot faster than many other kingdoms and still be weak.

[HeadHoncho]

Fully agree with LD, along with the same comment posted earlier in the forums about tweaking the enemy/ally status points to avoid the end-of-game flurry of 440 switching.

[Lord Diamond]

The first post on this thread has an updated file.

[Cloud]

Love it.  Welcome back, Valhalla.

[Ry Vor]

VALHALLA!

Not to diminish the accomplishments of our leaders in Valhalla, but what I care most about are the kingdom rankings, and movement therein.  So I find that listing very interesting.  I had been surprised previously how well the Underworld had done, leading in all three time frames then.  Now it is interesting how well the Warlock is doing, as it seems to be an often not selected kingdom in a 12 kingdom game, and meanwhile the Witchlord is in first place.  I also recall the pronounced gnashing of teeth when sometime in the last  12 months we removed the Diplomacy spell exploit to make it operate more rationally, and several players asked me why I hated magic so much and said that I had ruined the wizard kingdoms and that now they could never win.  But I am looking at the current rankings and the wizard kingdoms are doing better than any other category.  It was said I had thrown the game to the military kingdoms, yet the Stone Giants and Red Dragons are bringing up the rear.  That said, I don't think any of our competition could show points by kingdom like this and not have the difference between the bottom and top point scorers be less than 100% as we have. In fact, the difference between 4th and 11th looks to be less than 15%. Last time I saw a listing by any competitor it was more like 700% between their top and bottom. In my conversations over the decades with Phil, I think he always settled on the balance in possibilities among very different kingdoms as the hallmark of Alamaze design.

We will be bringing Classic changes to a close in the next few days, but of course I would never have wanted any one kingdom to always be at the top, or at the bottom.  And the second guessing on game changes usually get acknowledged by players as the right move, but sometimes it takes months for that.  We are tracking down the last few issues with Classic in Java, and then, finally, we can look forward to what comes next: The Choosing.  Halleluiah!  Some really exciting stuff coming.

  

[HeadHoncho]

I also recall the pronounced gnashing of teeth when sometime in the last  12 months we removed the Diplomacy spell exploit to make it operate more rationally, and several players asked me why I hated magic so much and said that I had ruined the wizard kingdoms and that now they could never win.  

Respectfully, I disagree with your characterization of how the 170/171 change was received here. Here's the thread where you announced it:

http://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/showt...p?tid=9219

I count four people in support of the change, one person opposed, and six people saying some neutral variant of OK, let's wait and see how it plays out.

[Ry Vor]

I also recall the pronounced gnashing of teeth when sometime in the last  12 months we removed the Diplomacy spell exploit to make it operate more rationally, and several players asked me why I hated magic so much and said that I had ruined the wizard kingdoms and that now they could never win.  

Respectfully, I disagree with your characterization of how the 170/171 change was received here.  Here's the thread where you announced it:

http://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/showt...p?tid=9219

I count four people in support of the change, one person opposed, and six people saying some neutral variant of OK, let's wait and see how it plays out.

I was referring to personal emails I received as well as any forum postings.  Also keep in mind forum threads aren't necessarily tight to declared thread subject, so off-topic comments on things like Diplomacy spell are likely scattered across many threads.  My main point here is the wizard kingdoms are doing better than other classifications, both in recent history and overall.  Making the Diplomacy Spell sensible didn't kill the wizard kingdoms.

As I think players would expect, I don't have a desire to have military, or magic, or balanced, or esoteric kingdoms rank in any preconceived hierarchy.  I actually like to see the change in how kingdoms are doing.  I don't want to see a kingdom lingering at the bottom, or dominating at the top, regardless of the main style of that kingdom.

Then the larger point was that we are nearly done with the massive undertaking of moving the code from Clipper to java, so that should please both the players that just want changes to Classic to stop, as well as the players who look forward to our attention focused on The Choosing and beyond.

[HeadHoncho]

Fair enough!

[Lord Diamond]

The first post of this thread was updated with Game 161.

[Lord Diamond]

The first post on this thread was updated with data from Game 159, which we are treating as a Primeval game.