New Way to Commit Alamaze Suicide: Unusual Sightings

[Lord Diamond]

Has anyone else noticed that Unusual Sightings seem to have been turned into a huge meat grinder to throw your leaders and wizards into?

[Airborne Ranger]

Has anyone else noticed that Unusual Sightings seem to have been turned into a huge meat grinder to throw your leaders and wizards into?

Absolutely. You better have 3 very good leaders and at least 3 P3 or higher wizards on hard or extremely hard just to have a chance.

[HeadHoncho]

They're definitely tougher, and I kind of like that, although it feels like a mixed bag, sometimes.

Separate question, does a P3+ receive the benefits of the Presence spell, in addition to Guarded Attack?

[Ry Vor]

I feel like we've posted general guidelines on this several times.

The inimitable Frost Lord is once again stirring his cauldron to create yet another player tool, this one on Unusual Encounters, which should be complete shortly.

Your patrol gets values for the men (even dragons do now, although not as much as most to all other kingdoms), for leaders, for wizards, for weapon artifacts, and for the Rod of Fire or Wand of Lightning.  Sorcerer wizards are worth 10 per power level if using #139, half that if using Guarded Attack.  Dwarven wizards get 6 per power level.  the value of the men range from 8 to about 20, depending on kingdom.

The Guardian caliber is matched to that of the artifact within.  So a fine encounter is easier than an excellent encounter which is easier than a superior encounter.  The Guardians have a range of possible values (I hate reducing Alamaze to numbers as I am now typing), not a fixed number.  This is determined at the time of the encounter.  So a Fine Guardian might have a value of from 20 - 40, Excellent a higher range, starting above the strongest Fine Guardian.

While a Captain and the men might have a chance in a Fine encounter against an average strength Fine Guardian, more likely is they are dead.  They have virtually no chance in an Excellent encounter.

For a Fine encounter, against the toughest fine Guardian, to be safe you'll want 40+ points in the patrol. 

The chance of leader promotion, leader death, and new leader emergence depends on kingdom and whether the encounter is successful or not.

Frost Lord has a fine (I should say Superior, in our encounter vernacular) tool forthcoming, which has taken quite a lot of work, as he says there are maybe 20 moving parts in the calculations.

[Rogal]

So are wraiths worth using on encounters.  For the WI I could see one being used for encounters, but is it worth it for other races due to the high cost to get there as well as level loss?  This is more of a player point of view question and not a game designer question.   In theory one could just keep hitting an encounter with just a wraitn over and over with no real loss of life (unlife) correct?  

[Hawk_]

So are wraiths worth using on encounters.  For the WI I could see one being used for encounters, but is it worth it for other races due to the high cost to get there as well as level loss?  This is more of a player point of view question and not a game designer question.   In theory one could just keep hitting an encounter with just a wraitn over and over with no real loss of life (unlife) correct?  

If you can pick up some easy-med weapon artifacts it makes a huge difference later.

Some of the harder artifacts need to wait until you have the right patrol.   Some kingdoms will have a tougher road such as the UN.

[Sinestro]

Curious, who writes the unusual encounter investigation and battle reports? And will they be different in the Choosing?

[twhitewolf10]

I always wonder that too (who writes the US write ups)

[Lord Diamond]

Rick wrote all the orginals. By all reports, it was the most tedious part about creating the original code. I got a glimpse of it when we were working on Kingdoms of Arcania and it wasn't pretty.

BTW, in case you were wonderring, it looks like a lot of the design for KoA will make it into The Choosing.

[Ry Vor]

Thanks LD,

Yes, its true, not just the unusual sighting battle text, but the code for all the sightings and what each artifact did to alter the rules was a major pain in the butt, and one I thought would be under appreciated by the players, even back in 1986 while I toiled away doing it, cursing under my breath.  Doing the artifact model in total was way disproportionate in development time consumption to its role in the game.  Said another way, every player was going to have many #110's in every game, but only one player in a game might have a particular US, if any, and some might never see it in any game. 

And sorry to moan, but the syntax suffered in the conversion to Clipper.  I cringe at some of the sentences as they stand, but I have never heard a player complain, but to me I can't stand the stuff that can easily be fixed that sort of lowers the experience like telling the stories.  But its down on the priorities. That said, still no one else seems yet today to do interactive story telling like Alamaze pretty much invented way back when.   

So we often have players ask for an elaborate rule for a single kingdom, and its always a question of priority.  We could do that, or we could spend time on something that might affect all players multiple times every turn in every game.  Everything has to be coded, of course.  I do enjoy that we sometimes achieve that verisimilitude objective, where players don't think about the code, its just the adventure.  Its the way I would like it, although we seem to be spending lots of time spelling out formulas lately.  And to be fair, we have needed to do that with the conversion to java and some hiccups along the way. 

Just will add, I appreciate all Alamaze Lords sticking it out while we have opened this new horizon of java.  Now its back on the designer to take the next step, and I am hoping if each player can bring in one friend, we can go on forever.

Rick