From: sigurdt@idt.unit.no (Sigurd Thunem)
Subject: Re: EiA: Problems
Reply-To: sigurdt@idt.unit.no (Sigurd Thunem)
Organization: Div. of CS & Telematics, Norwegian Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 15:01:56 GMT

More forwarded stuff (replies will be forwarded as well):

-----------------Start forwarded message -----------------------

Sigurd! Please forward this.

> In article <1992Nov17.163521.11497@cis.ohio-state.edu>, farrell@satcom3.cis.ohio-state.edu (christopher k farrell) writes:
> |>    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?)
> |>

The bizzare situation you describe may actually happen in a 7 player
game too.....

BUT: EIA is a 7 -SEVEN player game. You do not play it with less than
7 players. Period. Like you do not play Brittania with 3 or 1830 with
5. Every multiplayer game I know has an optimal number of players. To
exceed or go below this, is destroying the game. If you cannot find 7
players find another game.

> |>         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.
> |>

I agree that there are problems with the PP track. The problems are
not however the points lost/won by destruction of single infantery
units in a corps. To run around with insignificant forces in corpses
are bad gaming and you cannot protect against bad gamers. The only
thing you can do is advice and teach them. If they do not learn avoid
them.

Setback? Well my experiences are that if you loose a battle you win
politically. Loose a battle, look weak and make alliances. Even
France may do that if they loose the first war. If you feel that you
are setback 6 months bay loosing a battle you have not used the
diplomacy phase of the game well enough. And IF you suffer a setback
for 6 months, well the game is more than 6 months aint it????

The problems with the PP are the manipulation (if you use them) where
somebody (like Spain) are able to score 8 VP each VP round sitting
back doing nothing. And France can score 10 VP pr round in the
"rigth" situation.

> |>         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?

Bidding is a problem. I agree with that. BUT: Players must adjust to
the situation they are in. If the game is balanced one way- use that
diplomatically.

Two solutions: Avoid bidding entirely. OR: Force a minimum bid for
all nations from all players.

Still I think the basic problem is the PP-track. What if we forgot the
PP trackal together and added together points for winning battles and
wars etc? Why make this transformation where a battle won in some
situation puts your nation at top of the track and earns a lot of
VP and othertimes does not even yield a single VP more????

 AWAY with the track!!!!

The nation with most scored points directly wins. To balance
between the nations you could divide the scored points by a factor.
(France by two, England by 1,5, Spain by 1 etc This is just a
suggestion.)


> |>



> |>         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
> |>

Finally I reckommend to balance the game from the outset. The
problems with Spain, Prussia, Austria, Turkey etc all originates
in the dominant position of France and England. The game centers
around France, and that gets boring in the long run. Use the
Australian version!

Hans Torvatn

Torvatn@oral.unit.no

(No means NORWAY. A small kingdom in Northern Europe.)