From: joltman@cookie-crisp.ai.mit.edu (T. Andy Frakes)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Re: Start islands (was Re: Starting Theories and Empire Flaws)
Date: 6 Jan 93 22:27:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: life.1ifmcjINNgkr
Distribution: world
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
NNTP-Posting-Host: cookie-crisp.ai.mit.edu

In article <38119@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>, kb@thedog.cis.ufl.edu (Ken Bukauski) writes:
|> Personally I favored the idea of start islands at first, but after some
|> forgotten number of games played using start islands I find that my people
|> tend to long for the dog-eat-dog days of crowded continents.  Surrounding
|> those two sector sanctuaries and then later taking them helped to
|> decrease the boredom early in the game--not to mention a provide a host of 
|> other advantages and disadvantages...
|> 
|> The suggestion to restrict sector mobility to a function of population in
|> that sector is a good one. Highways and bridges should be able to reach
|> full mobility independent of population.  Other considerations should be
|> made for other sector-types as well.
|> 
|> For the wish list, it would be nice to see a game where no country could
|> dissolve, no country could transfer anything automatically, the trade and
|> market features are disabled, all unbroken sanctuaries are removed from the
|> game after one update, and where there is no news and no power and report 
|> outputs.  Basically almost complete isolation with the exception of telegrams 
|> and announcements and various hardware that allows a nation to trade with 
|> another nation.
|> 
|> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|>  _Made_in_Redline_   Sectorjacking Specialists (tm) 
|>                      For information call: 1-800-I Lost It
|> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I like the idea of no power/report/news.  I seem to remember a game or two
like this way back when, but I was involved in another game at the time so
I couldn't join.  Of course, there will be lots of independent news agencies
in the form of annos, but you can decide for yourself which is Time and which
is the Nat'l Enquirer.  I love the idea of anonymity in a game.  It lets
you bring in your poker face and pounce on people out of nowhere.  They'll
never see you building up that enormous military or airforce.  You need to
decide for yourself how much offense/defense you need.  Little FODDER countries
can bluff you and pretend to be experienced players (you won't be able to see
them down near the bottom of the power chart) and you can either back down or
rev up the lawn mower.

I also prefer continents (of 3+ countries), but it sucks when one of them doesn't
play (no fun surrounding a sanctuary compared to roto-tilling live FODDER as it
screams for mercy).  I'd probably prefer a game of start islands to a game of
continents if the game of continents was going to have too many people punching
out (more than say, 5%).  I don't like start islands if the start islands are
small and there are lots of big free islands as that brings too much luck into
the game (you might as well have continents with lots of inactive countries).

I just thought of an insane idea.  What if we made cash a commodity (0 mob
cost to move & other appropriate measures)?  Nah, it would never work.  It
would cause too many problems.

By the way, I called your information line and they didn't know anything
about Sectorjacking (tm)!  They said they were something-or-other Industries
of America.  Do you need some special password?  I told 'em "Ken sent me," but
it didn't help (too simple, I guess).

-- 
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=             T. Andy Frakes (joltman@ai.mit.edu)              =
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