From: fred_s@earwax.pei.com (Fred Scott)
Subject: Re: EiA: Problems
Organization: Nerds On Parade
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 20:20:42 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.163521.11497@cis.ohio-state.edu> farrell@satcom3.cis.ohio-state.edu (christopher k farrell) writes:
>        I'm afraid this game is starting to loose some of it's considerable
>charm....

Congratulations - you've played the game long enough to find its faults.
Hey, nobody said it was a perfect game.  We just said we liked it a lot.
Just about everything you've written I would acknowledge is a know fault in
EiA.

>        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.... And the economic
>rules for UMP's are weird,...

Yes, and I tend to just avoid playing EiA if I can't get seven regular,
dedicated players to do it.  You're right - the UMP rules are just too weird
to bother with.  You're better off trying to make up your own "less than
seven player" rules.  (BTW, this problem has caused me to take long (e.g.
two years) breaks in my play of EiA in the past.)

>And there are other problems, to the effect that we end up consulting the
>rulebook too often.  (Like what happens when...

A lot of games have this problem.   I've played the game for years and I'm
always screwing up a rule or two ever so often.  Eventually, you don't have
to interrupt your game for this so often.  And it helps to have seven players
who all know the rules pretty good to prevent those little study sessions.

>        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....
>...In the end, the PP scale gets mini-maxed and is subject to all sorts of
>gamesmanship which is real drag to my mind....  A couple of (relly) bad
>die rolls in one battle set me back by 6 months to a year.

Simulation is just that - *simulation*.  If you want the real thing, get
yourself seven Empires and some real Napoleanic armies (with real muskets and
cannons and things) and go to it.  (Warning: those palace coups can injurious
to your health.  :-) )  However, if you're going to play games, you're going
to find shortcomings in the simulations somewhere.  Such shortcomings stem
from the fact that you have to cut corners *somewhere* or else you have...
well...reality.

If you're going to criticize *how* they've cut corners (in this case, the PP
system which doesn't always discern terribly well between a large battle
and a much smaller one), perhaps you might suggest a better way to have done
it.  I've got a hunch any such suggestions will have their own faults but
everyone entitled to their own taste in games.  But otherwise, it sounds to
me that you're just grousing that simulations don't mimic reality well enough.

As for luck, yes, that drives me crazy, too - particularly when so much can
ride on one or two die rolls.  I will say this, however - there's a such thing
as not enough luck in a game, too.  It was the decision of the game designers
that - once in a blue moon - a feudal army under Peclivankhan ought to be
able to beat an equal sized British army under Wellington.  Therefore,
the combat system had to permit a certain degree of luck which gives wild
enough swings to permit that possibility.  In short, what set *you* back 6
mouths was some *other* player's hope for his strategy to work.  This is
what makes the game suspenseful and interesting.

>        Finally, the bidding.  The bidding is fantasically important; a bad
>bid can easily loose you the game.

Yes, the bidding is important.  What you're describing sounds like a bunch of
people playing their first game.  Tell me, when a bunch of people get together
for *any* complex game, do things work "normal" or "reasonable" the first time?
They sure don't in any group I've played with.  Why do expect your first "test"
game of EiA to work out perfectly?  Just because it's a long game?

Once players become experienced with the game, the bids will be much more
reasonable.  Usually, I'll just write my first game of something off to
experience, and you probably should, too.

>(description of Austria coniving with France instead of being a loyal ally,
>as they should be)

In my first game, I played Austria and did something like this, too.  I
didn't know any better.  I've seen lots of other games where Austria has, to
some degree or another, sold out or otherwise done something to screw up the
anti-French cause, particularly when controlled by a rookie.  Over time, I've
come to the conclusion that the Austrian position is much more difficult than
it tends to look - to it's controlling player in the first place and to his
opponents later on.  Austrian players tend to think they can attack and defeat
Turkey a lot more often than they really can.  They tend to look on Russia
with some jeolousy - Russia has so much diplomatic flexibility that the
Austrians don't have because Russia has 3 neighbors (and two of them are
Prussia and Turkey) and Austria has 5, including France!  The Austrians often
make the mistake of thinking they can be as willful and stubborn as the
Russians but really, they have to be very careful and diplomatic - they
can't afford to offend *anyone* unnecessarily.  This lesson can be unpleasant
and frequently leads to the scenario you described.

>        The point is, that with the stunningly low bid for France, the game 
>becomes kinda bizarre.

I don't agree, unless the bid is far too large to ever hope to make it.
Experienced and competent opponents could defeat a French bid of one, if
they tried.  But it sounds like you're playing with rookies.

Fred