From: farrell@satcom3.cis.ohio-state.edu (christopher k farrell)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: EiA: Problems
Date: 17 Nov 92 16:35:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: cis.1992Nov17.163521.11497
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science


 	Our group has been playing an EiA campaign  for several weeks now and
I thought I'd make some comments ...

        I'm afraid this game is starting to loose some of it's considerable
charm.  And no, to my fellow players, it is *not* because of that really
nasty battle Wellington lost; that was a risk I was willing to take.

        First:  There are too many rules that are either unclear, insufficent,
or both.  For those of us who can't get 7 people (we only have 5), the UMP
rules so drastically change the game as to be bizzare.  In our game, Austria
sold out Prussia (waiting until France had his corps positioned to take Poland
before surrendering) so that he could ally with France to invade Russia.
Spain's navy has been badly hammered and the army has been almost completely 
eliminated in the first year, with controlling major powers running the UMP's
into the ground to save their own hides.  And the economic rules for UMP's
are weird, not allowing trade or the Spanish Gold convoy.  Plus the amgiutity
of the supply rules as discussed here.  And there are other problems, to the
effect that we end up consulting the rulebook too often.  (Like what happens
when Russia is at war with Austria and France, Austria is at war with 
Russia and Prussia, France is at war with Russia, and Prussia is at war with
Austria?  What happens when a stack of French and Austrians run into a 
stack of Russians and Prussians?)

        I guess what really irritates me the most, though, is this political
system.  The only factor in winning the game, of course, is political points.
Now, the PP track works OK most of the time, but then you have bizzare 
anomolies like the fact that the battle in which 5 French I kill off a three 
marauding Russian crops with a total of 1C and 4I counts exactly the same as 28
British I, 8 british C, and 12 Syrian C under Wellington breaking and 
totally destroying the French with 80I and 12C under Davout.  Obviously, this 
is a somewhat contrived situation (the Russians should really have combined two
of those corps), but still we have a lot of little pointless battles between a 
corps, maybe two, which count as much in PP's as larger battles.  In the end, 
the PP scale gets mini-maxed and is subject to all sorts of gamesmanship which
is real drag to my mind.  This and the really corse nature of the combat
resolution system.  A couple of (relly) bad die rolls in one battle set me
back by 6 months to a year.

        Finally, the bidding.  The bidding is fantasically important; a bad
bid can easily loose you the game.  In our game, nobody felt confident enough
to play France except me, even though they were mostly quite capable; 
I got Britain for a high (46) bit, and France went for only 16 (my bid was 
about 35)!  Then Austria found selling their soul to France to spite the Czar 
better than accepting a conditional surrender, so Austria and France are now 
pounding the hell out of Russia, handing France the game on a silver platter
by allowing them to set up the perfect rotation (Prussia, Russia, Austria, 
then Spain if they're bored) with enforced peaces.  Suffice to say that without
Austria, France cannot be stopped; while Turkey, Russia and I were trying to 
work somthing out, we just can't get around Austria; he's in the way.  Since he
has turned into a French lap-dog, we have to invade him; will Turkish feudals,
even backed by Wellington and a bit of British I, be able to stand up to the 
Grand Armee?  Especially after a bloody war with Austria? I don't think so.

        The point is, that with the stunningly low bid for France, the game 
becomes kinda bizarre.  Sure, France would have had a much harder time of it
had Austria bit the bullet and fought and surrendered, but even then, with the
16-point bid, France would have been tough to beat.

        So, why didn't they make the VP requirements more reasonable?  Like,
increasing the number of VP's for France and GB by, like, 20?  So that things
like this, due only to inexperience or lack of logical thought, don't
happen?

        Anyway, I'm far from wanting to resign my position as Great Britain.
*BUT*, I'm starting to have a few reservations about the game which I so
unequicolly praised before.

                                                        Chris


-- 
"Storms have come ... rains wash the Earth away,
     Dark skies fall now ... into another day." - Enya, Storms in Africa
"If every man says all he can, if every man is true
     Do I believe the sky above, is Caribbean Blue ..." - Enya, Carribean Blue
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