Lords Thirty, Turn Three

 

     Greetings! 

     We have many openings, but the game is starting to fill up, especially with the web site up, so pass on word of this campaign to others quickly or you won’t be able to take advantage of the following: 

     For each new paid player that you bring in, you will receive a free turn.  If you bring in three new players over a three month period I will give you five free turns.  It’s hard to keep a viable campaign without enough players, so help me get the word out, and you’ll be helping yourselves while you’re at it.

 

     Merc Pools

Brittania:                             10i, 10w, 10t

West Europe:                      10i, 5c, 5s, 5w, 5t

Central Europe:   8i, 9c, 2s, 2w, 5t

East Europe:                       10i, 15c, 5w, 5t

Middle East:                       11i, 16c, 5w, 5t

North Africa:                      8i, 9w, 10t

West Asia:                          10i, 10c, 5s, 5w, 5t

Central Asia:                       10i, 10c, 5s, 5w, 5t

 

     I need to know from all players which type of word files they can send their turns in on, so if possible we can at some later date move this game to being totally on-line.  Currently my system can handle microsoft works (not word), rtf and pdf files.  Any other file type gets to me in such a disassociated condition as to be totally unusable.  I have received files as long as 700 pages, all electronic gibberish.

 

     Several players have had problems with certain actions, several of these follow:

I have noticed that several players continue to make, what seem to me to be simple errors.  For example, NAT. REV. on the income sheet is the total national revenue for the turn (includes current tax rate, players do not need to apply their tax rate to this figure), but does not include saved gold from the previous turn.  This must be added at this point. 

When converting diplomat to explorers or any other unit conversion, this takes place anywhere within the HBZ of the empire in question, taking 8 APs as per rule 6.2.3.34. 

This also brings up an interesting point.  Minor Leaders are a wierd cross between National Leader and unit.  They are built as units, but require no support, and move as leaders (specify their actions on the back of the turn sheet with national leaders).  Like national leaders they may miss the roles assigned them, and it is in fact easier for that to happen. 

Many players have simply missed the point - Minor Leaders and all the rules that go with them were simply designed to be relatively ineffective.  Why?  With my campaign having a limited information set-up and requiring embassies to be established before trade can begin, their main purpose was to fascilitate that.  That is you will need embassies to open trade, and I felt that a minor leader could handle that role.  This eliminates the one annoying (to me) aspect of the game.  The idea that a middle ages nation would have all the information on nations all over the world.  Remember, at that time, the prevailing opinion was that the world was flat.  Information flow in this game depends on two main factors - how much have you explored the world, and can you use diplomacy to get the information from others.

One last thing (for now) on embassies.  When you are trying to open an embassy with a nation, I will likely contact that player right away, via email, and ask simple questions like:  do you wish to allow them to do so, or would you like to send the diplomats head back in a bucket?  If yes to the first question, how much information do you wish to release?  Also, do you wish to compose a note to send to the player though me.  I will forward this as part of the turn, if possible, otherwise it will be sent via email.  After a period of time (30-70 years likely) of opened diplomatic relations, I will give each player involved the others email address, so you can trade directly any information that you wish.  This happened twice this turn, so processing turns took a couple of days extra, sorry about the delay.

I cannot stress enough the importance of fully exploring regions that you wish to diplomiscize.  Currently I have a player who has a region that he has managed to bring into his empire, to economic ally status.  Yet due to the lack of information on the region, in this case specifically no knowledge of the regions values, he has not received any economic benefits from it yet.  Also, major minuses in diplomacy exist when many things are not known about the region.  Currently, there are two new positions in the game, due to players sending diplomats to unexplored regions.  Why?  Because, those regions have just gone active and declared WAR!  One is currently playing the wait and see game, the other is massing troops for an attack.

 

     One other bit of advice.  Build public works.  They increase your economy directly, increase your NFP rate, and increase your agro (in the case of regional nfp) production as well.

     FYI:  I’ve added a line of info to the income lines, specifically, this is the number in parenthesis after region and public works.  These are the numbers in your home regions.  What some of you may not know is that homeland regions receive 2x income; these are there to remind the GM (me) to add the extra numbers to you production on the turn.  That’s why some of you were informed that you got extra gold this turn due to my error; I had given the homeland bonus to some and not others last turn, it showed up this turn as saved gold.  Also, if you have done a census, the last turn it is good for (and the turn that you will need to do it again) is listed in parenthesis.

     Please, please, please take some time to read the rulebook.  I’ve had a number of different players do odd things, not knowing that the answer to any of their questions are there.  Except for questions on the minor leaders, & the changes on the census, 90% of your answers are there.

    This will likely be the last page of comments that I will send players on this game.  The website is up, and there is a space for turn sheets on it.  I will be sending this to Tom and he will post it.

     As always, if there are any questions or suggestions for changes, feel free to contact me.

     And finally, as always,  the next turn is due at the end of next month, i.e. in this case November 30th.  Try to get it in as early as possible; I expect that the mail service (because of the holidays) will likely be flooded.