From: gletty@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Bruce Gletty)
Subject: Re: EiA: Problems
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 19:38:53 GMT

farrell@satcom3.cis.ohio-state.edu (christopher k farrell) writes:

>        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

Yes, the game really is inferior with less than 7 players.

>        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.

Well you could count factors instead of corps. But, seriously, anyone that
puts tiny corps in harms way is just donating points to his enemies. We have
never had this sort of thing happen. People combine corps always. Saves on
maintenance costs too.

>        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.

This isn't so much the fault of the bidding as the fault of Austria. This 
is my major gripe about multi player games. One player can usually (at the
cost of losing themselves) throw the game to someone else. You need players
that try to do the best for their countries at all times. I despise 
players that look around rather early in the game, say I guess I can't win,
then pick someone and do their best to throw the game to them.

-- 
This post is mine, and does not necessarily reflect the views of C.C.S.O.