====================================================================== PE-WJ-Diplo [Cartwright]: Dear Bob Almighty Date:Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:21:26 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.powersedge.org/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== So Bold Porcupines lose another region and BoldyGo as well. I think the evil natural disaster machine that causes these regions to be destroyed must have been taken over by the enemy. Well, either that or the machine is having some serious technical difficulties. I can't imagine how slim the odds would be that two nations who control 18 and 16 regions respectively would each be hit instead of at least one of the guys who control 51 or 43 regions. Bob, isn't this kind of working in the exact oppostie way it's supposed to? I've always had the impression that the goal was to allow leaders to join the world long after it was started and have a chance because the large nations would lose regions/units/production to these disasters as the new guys discover independents. The small guys keep getting hit though instead of the two giants. If the machine is malfuctioning then maybe you should take it offline. If it has been taken over by SA please let me know and I'll send some of my best men to help you reclaim it. Thanks, Ben ====================================================================== PE-WJ-Diplo [Acanthopis]: Disasters Date:Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:52:17 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.powersedge.org/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== Ben, I totally understand your frustration with the natural disasters that occur. I think it would be interesting to take a poll and see if anybody thinks that they enhance gameplay. :-). Stil, the world is what it is, and what it is is random. Now, before we get too frustrated with the way things are going, I would say that the only way to see if a randomizer is broken is to take a large sample and do a statistical test. I was very close to griping a while back when SA had a string of weeks where it seemed that nobody but us got hit, and often we'd get multiple regions destroyed. At the time I was aghast because BP was by far the biggest landowner, and it seemed like he avoided all of the damage. Still, he's been hit plenty since then, as have we all. Here's the way to think about it, if I understand the system correctly. "The big guys" (Hermis and I) control 94 regions between us. The rest of the world ("The little guys") control 140 regions. Therefore, disasters should strike little guys about one and a half times as often as they strike big guys. It could be that there is an algorithm that makes big guys more likely to get hit, but even so I don't think it's unlikely that every once in a while you will see turns where they get hit more than we do. If you are really curious, go back over the last 30 moves or so, and count up who gets hit by disasters. I think you'll see that the system is working. Stil, maybe if we all voted to take it offline.... ;-) -- A ====================================================================== PE-WJ-Diplo [Cartwright]: Disaster Report Date:Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:53:12 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.powersedge.org/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== The below list shows the leader that lost a region, the percentage of the total regions that nation controlled before the disaster, and their rank on the "Most Regions" list before the disaster. The percentage after the turn number shows how many regions were controlled by the top 2 nations (always Acanthopis and Hermis). Since the announcement tool can't handle the percent sign I've replaced all of them a lower case p. Turn 267---36.4p Bold Porcupines 7.3p (5) BoldlyGo 6.5p (9) Turn 266---35.9p Acanthopis 19.8p (1) Turn 265---35.8p MacBook Pro 7.8p (5) Turn 264---35.7p Bold Porcupines 8.2p (3) Turn 260---33.1p MacBook Pro 7.4p (4) rstlne30 4.3p (9) Cartwright 7.4p (5) Turn 259---34.0p Independents Acanthopis x3 18.1p (1) Turn 258---35.3p Bold Porcupines 9.6p (3) rstlne30 4.6p (9) Turn 256---33.5p BoldlyGo 6.2p (5) Acanthopis 17.4p (1) Turn 254---33.6p Bold Porcupines 11.7p (3) Turn 253---35.7p Cartwright 6.6p (4) MacBook Pro 5.0p (7) Hermis 17.1p (2) Turn 251---33.1p Professor 6.3p (4) Turn 250---34.3p Professor 5.5p (5) Turn 249---33.3p Acanthopis 17.4p (1) Turn 248---31.5p Acanthopis x3 17.4p (1) rstlne30 4.6p (8) Cartwright 6.2p (5) Turn 247---30.6p Hermis 14.7p (2) I know Acanthopis suggested looking at the last 30 turns but my patience/time has run out after looking at the past 20 turns. To summarize: Acanthopis lost 9 regions which is the most by far but he was in 1st place in the region count every time (losing 3 regions at a time twice does seem excessive though), Bold Porcupines lost 4 regions (3 while in 3rd place and 1 while in 5th place), MacBook Pro lost 3 regions (1 each from 4th, 5th, and 7th place), rstlne30 lost 3 regions (2 from 9th and 1 from 7th place), I lost 3 regions (2 from 5th and 1 from 4th place), Professor lost 2 regions (1 from 4th and 1 from 5th place), BoldlyGo lost 2 regions (1 from 5th and 1 from 9th), and Hermis lost 2 regions both from 2nd place. Of the 29 regions that were destroyed in the last 20 turns 11 of those were from the top 2 nations which works out to 37.9p and on average they controlled 34.1p of the regions on the 15 turns that had crises. This is a fairly small sample set, but with how close those two percentages are I'd have to guess that when it comes time to destroy a region, every region has the same chance as any other region. That means that the nations with more regions have a higher chance of getting hit just because they have more regions. If there is anything in the design of the disaster machine to up the chance of a big nation getting hit any further then there was no evidence of it in the past 20 turns. I guess I was expecting the two giants to get hit a fair bit more than the rest of us, but I guess if we have to deal with regions getting destroyed then this is probably a fair method. I for one have never been a fan of the region destructions though. I know Bob has talked about getting rid of them at least in some worlds but I haven't heard anything about it in a while. If it's an easy thing for him to turn off then I would definitely vote for that. If it's not an easy change then there's no point in messing with it at this point. It looks like SA will soon be ending this world that's been going on for over 2.5 years now. I've been here since the beginning and one change I would definitely like to see for next time around is allowing the alliances to determine when the victory clock starts. My first alliance followed the rules and declared all of our members up front and then we didn't realize that we hit the victory condition and when Bob announced it everyone attacked and destroyed us. We never had a chance. If the rules don't change then the way SA played it would be the smart way to go -- keep 1 or 2 members secret and then when you're ready to make the push for victory have them step forward. Based on the rules of the game they kind of cheated, but I don't hold it against them. I think their method is really the only way an alliance will ever have a good chance of actually winning with the current clock rules. I'll be fighting on until the bitter end so don't think this is a resignation. Things just look rather bleak right now and I'm a realist. Thanks, Ben ====================================================================== PE-WJ-Diplo [Kalvis]: Disasters Date:Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:41:32 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.powersedge.org/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== I am convinced, that as long as disasters do not strike regions belonging to Kaunieciai, the disaster target selection algorithm works just fine! ====================================================================== PE-WJ-Diplo [Acanthopis]: Alliance Rules Date:Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:10:11 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.powersedge.org/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== I agree with Ben that the alliance rule is sticky, and that we may have danced on the wrong side of it by getting Hermis to join at a convenient time. Two comments on that from my perspective. First, if it is any consolation I have to admit to not even thinking about that rule until Bob's announcement a couple of turns ago. Ignorance is certainly no excuse for skirting rules, but there it is. Second, I think that rule is unenforceable, at least until the term "alliance" is defined clearly in the rules. When does something become an alliance? Currently, most of the world is working against SA, just as most of the world previously worked against...oh, what was that alliances name?...it was so long ago. Working together clearly doesn't make something an alliance. Transfering units clearly isn't what it is. Over time I have had several offers out to various nations to join our alliance, most of which percolated for a while before being rejected. We currently have at least one open offer on the table. At one point in the game someone asked me if they could join, I said not right now, but give it some time, and when the time came that person no longer wanted to join, but it took a few turns for them to let us know. So we had an offer and an acceptance, but no formal agreement and the whole thing fell apart. So even that can't be "joining" an alliance, in my mind. Anyway, Bob has all of the private messages, since they were all sent through the website, so I suppose he can go back and determine if we ever stepped across the line that he had in mind. That would be frustrating to me, after such a long time and no discussion of that particular rule when events transpired, but it's just a game so whatever. I think, though, that in the future rules really need to be tied to verifiable, measurable events--preferrably things that other players can check on so that the game can be self-policing. Also, given that these games last for years, and that many people play multiple games (I'm playing in another game myself just now), and that it can be difficult to remember all of the specific rules, perhaps every tenth newspaper can start with a rule list, just to keep them on top of people's minds. Oh, and one other thing. I'd love it if the development team could re-institute a "resend" command so that we can get new copies of our current newspaper. For some reason my newspapers sometimes do weird things with my attachments so that I can't read them. I have to cut and paste the newspaper info into an HTML document to read it, and then use last turn's .pdf file as my map. It would be great if I could just get a new copy instead. Anyway, just wanted to keep this in the forefront of people's minds as a new feature that I would love to see at some point. Oh, and one last thing. Is it possible any more to have your map redrawn? If so, could someone let me know how? I have utterly no idea which of my regions connect to what anymore! -- Acanthopis