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[mkenyon]

I find Tirol is always a great one to release. Small enough to quickly vassalize, and dat gold $. Only way to survive the HRE is to keep the AE down.

 

[Uzzy]

One of the major problem with Venice is that you can never really trust AI Austria no matter what you do. Suddenly they'll pick a mission that'll screw you over whatever your relations has been up until that point

Yeah, exactly. You need to destroy Austria, but you're never really strong enough to do it solo. Ally with Austria instead and you're stuck defending the HRE, including those lovely Northern Italian provinces that you want, and the damn Habsburg's will stab you in the back at a moment's notice.

Funnily enough, Austria did lose a war and release Tirol early on, but promptly reconquered it once the truce had run out. That was a pain.

I was hoping in this game to wait until the religious wars started, and make my move there, perhaps by getting some weak protestant nation onto the throne. But alas, I didn't make it.

 

[fanboi]

Any takers for the glorious Ethiopian nation tomorrow? Will most likely miss the session

 

[KingSnake]

Glorious French-Ethiopian AI incoming.

 

[fanboi]

Glorious French-Ethiopian AI incoming.

Incoming colonial wars

 

[Deleted member 125677]

The great colonial revenge war, fought by AI proxies. It's like settling your business with a rooster fight

 

[Kabouter]

Server ID 90095572179285000

 

[Haly]

We should play a game of EU4 themed or CK2 themed Mafia.

We could all be OPMs in the HRE and vote to coalition blob the Conquerers.

 

[Kabouter]

Maps

 

[Deleted member 231381]

We should play a game of EU4 themed or CK2 themed Mafia.

We could all be OPMs in the HRE and vote to coalition blob the Conquerers.

fufufufu... the addiction has you. :3 That's right, lure all these fools over to the Mafia community.

 

[fanboi]

Explain? Mod?

 

[mkenyon]

We should play a game of EU4 themed or CK2 themed Mafia.

We could all be OPMs in the HRE and vote to coalition blob the Conquerers.

Sorry Haly, I started out pretty well, but had an issue with my dog and had to drop out.

Poor thing is having these like 1-20 minute sessions where her back legs just stop working right. Only four years old too

Looks like a slipped disc.

Also: http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Game_of_Mafia ?

 

[Haly]

Its okkay mkenyon. I hope your pup is alright.

And yeah im talking about that game.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1044457

 

[Kabouter]

Server ID 90095610702014464

 

[Toma]

Missed another session, I probably need to drop out Real life is catching up to me atm in a rather unexpected and untimely manner. Sorry for everyone affected.

 

[Morfeo]

Missed another session, I probably need to drop out Real life is catching up to me atm in a rather unexpected and untimely manner. Sorry for everyone affected.

I am here as well. Or rather, the combination of the bloodthirst of Kingsnake and my lack of skill in getting anywhere caught up with me. Have fun!

 

[Steeven]

Germany AAR

Got destroyed. Part of it was my own fault. I just lowered troop maintenance so to get some money. It was meant to last for only six months at most. Then Kab DoW-ed me and before I knew it, half my army was destroyed just at the start of the war. Oh well, should have payed attention to his spies claiming my provincies and the troop build up near my borders. Unfortunately, my only allies, the brave people of Ming and Japan, were on the other side of the world and were kept busy by Fitz. King couldn't join because he was busy elsewhere. But even if I was at full strength, I would not have turned the events into my advantage. There were simply too many parties involved.

Good game anyway, really enjoyed it!

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Lost a PvP war to a man who normally has to have his own continent before he even thinks about playing, automatic -5 rating.

Spoiler

 

[Haly]

I, for one, welcome our new Orangeist overlords.

 

[KingSnake]

Well, with this last war Kab practically has a rating guaranteed -

Spoiler

6

Nice round!

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Remember to send Kabouter your ratings for next session while they're still fresh in your mind.

 

[Haly]

Crab - 4
Kabouter - 5
Fitz - 1

FUFUFUFUFUFUFU

 

[Kabouter]

We ended the game in 1682

http://dropcanvas.com/1cl2j < Savegame available here for a short time, edited the save to enable the ledger for easy stats viewing and what not.

Points
1. Netherlands (Kabouter) - 6893 (6.07 monthly gain)
2. France (KingSnake) - 5245 (5.23 monthly gain)
3. Mughals (Fitz) - 4666 (4.43 monthly gain)
5. Ming (Gamma) - 3093 (2.05 monthly gain)
6. Ethiopia (fanboi) - 2294 (3.77 monthly gain)
7. Germany (Steeven) - 2021 (0.49 monthly gain)
9. Venice (Morfeo) - 1552 (no monthly gain)
10. Japan (Roboleon) - 1441 (4.09 monthly gain)
11. Portugal (Jwitjes) - 1225 (no monthly gain)
12. Songhai (haly) - 1088 (no monthly gain)
13. Uzbek (mgoblue201) - 1030 (2.51 monthly gain)
14. Tunis (Toma) - 759 (0.91 monthly gain)
15. Denmark (RickDeckerSpiegel) - 680 (1.46 monthly gain)
30. Iroquois (Stefan) - 124 (0.23 monthly gain)

Armies
1. Mughals (Fitz) - 420k (521 force limit)
2. Netherlands (Kabouter) - 380k (341 force limit)
3. Japan (Roboleon) - 184k (184 force limit)
4. Ethiopia (fanboi) - 178k (187 force limit)
5. France (KingSnake) - 178k (167 force limit)
6. Tunis (Toma) - 104k (128 force limit)
7. Uzbek (mgoblue201) - 99k (125 force limit)
8. Germany (Steeven) - 97k (170 force limit)
9. Songhai (haly) - 69k (84 force limit)
10. Ming (Gamma) - 67k (296 force limit)
11. Iroquois (Stefan) - 62k (73 force limit)

Anyone else still left so much lower that not worth ranking.

Max manpower
1. Mughals (Fitz) - 510k
2. Ming (Gamma) - 322k
3. Uzbek (mgoblue201) - 316k
4. Japan (Roboleon) - 294k
5. Netherlands (Kabouter) - 287k
6. France (KingSnake) - 224k
7. Germany (Steeven) - 220k
8. Ethiopia (fanboi) - 177k
9. Songhai (haly) - 155k
10. Tunis (Toma) - 132k
11. Iroquois (Stefan) - 80k

Any others too low to bother ranking

Navies
1. France (KingSnake) - 305 (337 force limit)
2. Netherlands (Kabouter) - 260 (248 force limit)
3. Japan (Roboleon) - 217 (381 force limit)
4. Ethiopia (fanboi) - 200 (439 force limit)
6. Tunis (Toma) - 81 (209 force limit)
7. Ming (Gamma) - 80 (169 force limit)
8. Iroquois (Stefan) - 76 (87 force limit)
12. Venice (Morfeo) - 33 (69 force limit, appropriate number)
Not quite last but close. Uzbek (mgoblue201) - 6 (8 force limit)
Last. Mughals (Fitz) - 0 (125 force limit)

Income
1. Netherlands (Kabouter) - 553
2. Mughals (Fitz) - 314
3. France (KingSnake) - 278
4. Ethiopia (fanboi) - 184
5. Japan (Roboleon) - 173
6. Ming (Gamma) - 168
7. Uzbek (mgoblue201) - 157
10. Venice (Morfeo) - 86
11. Germany (Steeven) - 83
12. Iroquois (Stefan) - 82
13. Songhai (haly) - 75
14. Tunis (Toma) - 74

Base tax (rankings reflect players who were present at least once within the last three sessions only)
1. Mughals (Fitz) - 936
2. Ming (Gamma) - 678
3. Netherlands (Kabouter) - 555
4. France (KingSnake) - 535
5. Japan (Roboleon) - 528
6. Germany (Steeven) - 398
7. Uzbek (mgoblue201) - 389
8. Ethiopia (fanboi) - 275
9. Tunis (Toma) - 254
10. Iroquois (Stefan) - 245
11. Songhai (haly) - 239
12. Venice (Morfeo) - 104

Remember to send Kabouter your ratings for next session while they're still fresh in your mind.

Please hold off a bit. Fitz said he wants to make a post on ratings and the like. Also need to get a list going of who has to rate and who should be rated.

 

[Mgoblue201]

Too bad they game didn't last a few decades longer. I was going to set up a nice trade capital in Novgorod, finish quantity ideas, and get a more respectable army going.

 

[Haly]

Bernd: But was a fun game, just got a bit stale towards the end
kawaii caliphate: no one wanted to fight
kawaii caliphate: game 3 was much more interesting
kawaii caliphate: er...
kawaii caliphate: 4?
Bernd: I was considering fighting you for a while actually
kawaii caliphate: game 4
kawaii caliphate: pfft
Bernd: If I had gotten a CB last session I would have attacked
kawaii caliphate: i'm
Bernd: Ivory Coast trade node
kawaii caliphate: fucking saving this convo
kawaii caliphate: so the world knows
kawaii caliphate: SO THEY ALL KNOW

Sans comment.

 

[Uzzy]

That's an early finish! Guess I better get started on some fresh starting strategies.

 

[Deleted member 125677]

Kabouter the bullshit alliance GAME ENDER. Backstabber and conniver of the forever. Conjurer of filthy tricks. May his reputation be forever dragged in the swampy mud it belongs in.

Spoiler

<3 5/5 rating gg

 

[Mgoblue201]

Yeah, I managed to get my income over 200 in a few years, mostly by fiddling with trade and getting Russian as an accepted culture.

 

[Morfeo]

This round completely killed my enthusiasm for this game, and considering the summer vacation is coming up, I say we start next round in august, hopefully with new ambitions, friends and motivation. And an old enemy in Kingsnake.

 

[Toma]

If the next round is starting anytime soon, I would also pause due to the aforementioned issues.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Too bad they game didn't last a few decades longer. I was going to set up a nice trade capital in Novgorod, finish quantity ideas, and get a more respectable army going.

yeah, the power balance wasn't as good this game compared to the last game, because you were all mad enough to let Fitz play the Timurids and then KingSnake baby-sat Kab for half the game.

EDIT:

Bernd: Pffft, half the game
Bernd: KingSnake babysat me for at least like 3/4ths

I stand corrected, 3/4ths.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

This round completely killed my enthusiasm for this game, and considering the summer vacation is coming up, I say we start next round in august, hopefully with new ambitions, friends and motivation. And an old enemy in Kingsnake.

august?!?! D: let's be reasonable! I was going to say early July at the latest. ;_;

 

[KingSnake]

This round completely killed my enthusiasm for this game, and considering the summer vacation is coming up, I say we start next round in august, hopefully with new ambitions, friends and motivation. And an old enemy in Kingsnake.

I barely touched you.

It could have been way worse if I wouldn't have been busy with the big Portugal that jwites managed to do up to a point and didn't have crappy leaders early one (which hurt my coring capability). And if it wouldn't have been me, it would have been somebody else. Venice is always destined to die unless Fitz/MGO helps it.

 

[Kabouter]

yeah, the power balance wasn't as good this game compared to the last game, because you were all mad enough to let Fitz play the Timurids and then KingSnake baby-sat Kab for half the game.

EDIT:



I stand corrected, 3/4ths.

Now I don't have a terrible reputation for flopping as Gelre anymore though! <3 KingSnake

 

[mkenyon]

Roboleon's tag never stops being relevant.

 

[Morfeo]

I barely touched you.

It could have been way worse if I wouldn't have been busy with the big Portugal that jwites managed to do up to a point and didn't have crappy leaders early one (which hurt my coring capability). And if it wouldn't have been me, it would have been somebody else. Venice is always destined to die unless Fitz/MGO helps it.

It could have been much worse and you barely touched me, but with that shape I was in, barely, was more than enough!

 

[Fitz]

Never got to finish off India or the Ottomans, a permanent blight on my EU MP career.

This round completely killed my enthusiasm for this game, and considering the summer vacation is coming up, I say we start next round in august, hopefully with new ambitions, friends and motivation. And an old enemy in Kingsnake.

It was a long goodnight for you, don't blame you for being put off. Don't forget there's a large update/DLC next month though!

Roboleon's tag never stops being relevant.

Just noticed how many people in this thread are tagged, it's like a prison.

 

[Kabouter]

Never got to finish off India or the Ottomans, a permanent blight on my EU MP career.

Otoh, you set a new record for base tax, so I think it all worked out

 

[Fitz]

So I've not been overly happy with our current rating/ranking system and have been thinking about how we can improve on it, now that we've got some time before our next session, it's as good a time as any to discuss.

There's 2 components to the system at the moment, nation rankings, and player rankings, player ranks are then used for a further 2 things, to determine order of selection and available nations for selection. Ordering players by rank and using that to determine order of pick makes complete sense, it's a handicap on the more successful players, and prevents a mad dash to get in before anyone else to pick, however the other two parts could do with streamlining.
My proposed change is fairly conservative, we rank players and nations just like we do now, however instead of leaving the ranks where they stand, we round the ratings to form 5 tiers e.g.:

Nations (ignore the nations, didn't put any thought into the ranks)
- Tier 1: France, Castile, England, Ottomans, Muscovy
- Tier 2: Burgundy, Portugal, Mamluks, Sweden
- Tier 3: BBurg, Novgorod, Venice
- Tier 4: Scotland, Kazan, Morocco, Bavaria
- Tier 5: Ulm, Ryukyu, Timurids, etc (Unrated)

Players
- 5 Star: PlayerX
- 4 Star: PlayerY
- 3 Star: PlayerZ
- 2 Star: PlayerA
- 1 Star: Fitz

Meaning that players could then select from their tier and below, functionally similar to what we're already doing, however it means someone ranked 2.5 for example, could select anything from Tier 4 or 5, whereas currently they'd be able to select only from tier 5 and half of tier 4. Ranking players at the end of each session would remain the same (1-5), and we'd do the same for nations, only with 1-5 being reversed, i.e. 1 for strongest nations, 5 for weakest. Of course we'd only actually put ratings for nations deemed tier 4 and up, the rest would be assumed to have a 5 rating. This would limit player selection as it does now, but give a little more space to pick from.
To simplify further, we could flip the tier names, e.g. 5 high/1 low, but we'd also have to flip the rankings as well. I'm tired, not sure if that even made sense.

This isn't really much different to what we're doing now though, if anyone has a more radical improvement, I'd be interested to hear it. Personally I'd prefer to remove the nation limitation from selection all together, allowing anyone to pick any nation, just in reverse rank order, but apparently this isn't a popular stance.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I don't get what the point in that is. There's a big gap between a 3.9 and a 3.1 that the system currently captures that a rounded system doesn't. What you propose sounds exactly the same as what we currently do except less accurate.

My suggestion was just going to be to raise the player+nation score cap to 7.5, because the nation scores rise very quickly as you reach the last few, which means increasing the cap only changes the amount of nations available to low ranked players by a little bit, but gives high ranked players a bit more choice. I was also thinking we'd average player scores over the last 3 sessions say to prevent a player getting a much too powerful nation because of an egregiously performance in one round (not that I'm talking about you, Fitz).

Spoiler

or am I

 

[Uzzy]

If we're going to streamline the player ratings into 5 scores, then how do we decide the order for choosing nations, within each rank? Does someone have a random draw machine handy?

Average scores are certainly something I'd suggest too.

 

[Kabouter]

Well regardless of what we decide about the specifics, here goes for the ratings first. Rate people 1-5 for their overall performance during the game, not just the end result. In the ratings 1 is worse than AI, 2 equal to AI, 3 better than AI, 4 much better than AI and 5 dominant.

The following players can vote (since they played for all or most of the game):
- KingSnake (France)
- mgoblue201 (Uzbek)
- me (Gelre/Netherlands)
- Fitz (Timurids/Mughals)
- Gamma (Ming)
- fanboi (Ethiopia)
- Steeven (Brandenburg/Prussia/Germany)
- Morfeo (Venice)
- Roboleon (Japan)
- haly (Songhai)
- Toma (Tunis)
- Stefan (Iroquois)

Aside from those players, who also all need to be rated by each other (your own rating of yourself won't count ), these players played enough that they can be rated as well:
- Jwitjes (Portugal)
- Uzzy (Pasai)
- RedArremer (Mamluks and later Poland)
- RickDeckerSpiegel (Denmark)

(crab played enough that normally a rating would make sense, but no one could actually see him during the time he was in the game, so while it sounded incredibly impressive and probably deserving of a high rating, there's no way for anyone to have seen it )

Send me a PM on GAF with your ratings, I will post the average scores of everyone once all have voted and will post the total average rating by taking an average of the ratings for the last three games if available. (You lucky bastard you with your 3.5 Fitz)

Edit: If you have no idea how/what someone did, you can just not rate that person and we'll just take the average from other people's ratings of them.

 

[fanboi]

Sent my ratings.

 

[Deleted member 125677]

Japan end game report:

This session overall was felt like the anti-thesis of last session.

Negatives:
1) I've barely been involved in player wars, and the ones I've been involved in has been too unbalanced to be of any interest honestly - both the one aggressive PvP I had versus Pasai, the first defensive war with Ming against Mughals, and of course the last war. The last war in particular felt really rigged, more or less designed to just end the game. Most so because France was engaged in a war against three province nation Portugal, calling in Netherlands as an ally just before Netherlands declared Germany. Now, I have no doubt KingSnake needed all the help he could get against the mighty Portuguese empire P), but of course it had some really unfortunate results for his other ally Steeven, as this neat series of coincidences made it impossible to call France in defensively. Kab also brought the Mughals and Uzbek to complete the farce, and poor heroic Germany was singlehandedly facing an combined dutch-mughal-uzbek army of - I'd estimate around 600K? The last ~300K of the Mughal army was dealing with Ming and a couple of Japanese suicide platoons on the other side of the globe. Such interesting war. Much Glory

Sum: PvP wars in general was very uninteresting to me this session, which was a disappointment compared to last session where they were the highlight.

2) I'm not happy about my end game tech level (18-18-20), which is to some extent related to the late westernizing process. I was the last non-western player nation to westernize, the strategy of going to Mexico has worked much better in single player games, since Castille, Portugal, France or England almost always show up there pretty early in the game. In a multiplayer game where Castille gets destroyed and England not choosing to colonize at all in the early game, and player nations showed up late, this turned out to be a poor strategy on my end. I also couldn't really afford decent advisors before very late in the game, in general had really poor rulers in the first half of the game, and had to make some costly decisions to go catholic.

Positives:
1) I fulfilled my main targets and general strategy for expansion, cleaned up the whole Indonesian region, and had a really solid nation economically speaking towards the end, almost beating mighty France in base tax, which I think is really good for Japan.

2) Going catholic as Japan is something I have never done before, and that was quite fun, even though the dream of the Japanese pope turned out to be a pipe dream.

 

[Steeven]

Japan end game report:

This session overall was felt like the anti-thesis of last session.

Negatives:
1) I've barely been involved in player wars, and the ones I've been involved in has been to unbalanced to be of any interest honestly - both the one aggressive PvP I had versus Pasai, the first defensive war with Ming against Mughals, and of course the last war. The last war in particular felt really rigged, more or less designed to just end the game. Most so because France was engaged in a war against three province nation Portugal, calling in Netherlands as an ally just before Netherlands declared Germany. Now, I have no doubt KingSnake needed all the help he could get against the mighty Portuguese empire P), but of course it had some really unfortunate results for his other ally Steeven, as this neat series of coincidences made it impossible to call France in defensively. Kab also brought the Mughals and Uzbek to complete the farce, and poor heroic Germany was singlehandedly facing an combined dutch-mughal-uzbek army of - I'd estimate around 600K? The last ~300K of the Mughal army was dealing with Ming and a couple of Japanese suicide platoons on the other side of the globe. Such interesting war.

Sum: PvP wars in general was very uninteresting to me this session, which was a disappointment compared to last session where they were the highlight.

(

For what it matters, I engaged my remaining army in some battles and they appeared pretty decent against such an overwhelming force.

Regarding the rape of Germany, well, even King could not have turned the tide there. I was expecting an endgame of the hordes versus another alliance, but some chose certain victory over challenge instead. That became pretty obvious when Kab became allied with MGO and Fitz. I can understand that, but it forced the endgame pretty soon indeed. But it's too easy to solely point the finger at others, I could have tried harder to manage my allegiances for instance. I became a very tempting target for Kab and MGO, probably because my coalition could not match them anyway, especially with Fitz backing them. In the future, I will put more thought in my alliances, especially in the long run, although I regret nothing regarding the choices I made in this game.

 

[Kabouter]

For what it matters, I engaged my remaining army in some battles and they appeared pretty decent against such an overwhelming force.

Regarding the rape of Germany, well, even King could not have turned the tide there. I was expecting an endgame of the hordes versus another alliance, but some chose certain victory over challenge instead. That became pretty obvious when Kab became allied with MGO and Fitz. I can understand that, but it forced the endgame pretty soon indeed. But it's too easy to solely point the finger at others, I could have tried harder to manage my allegiances for instance. I became a very tempting target for Kab and MGO, probably because my coalition could not match them anyway, especially with Fitz backing them. In the future, I will put more thought in my alliances, especially in the long run, although I regret nothing regarding the choices I made in this game.

I think it's mainly that KingSnake was allied to me all along. I mean, usually you would expect that me playing Gelre, I would have ended up having both you and France as my main enemies given that you both would have an interest in me not growing large. With that combo, I would never have been a threat and you in particular would have grown more, giving Fitz/mgo a major challenge. (Although in this game, without France, I wouldn't have grown at all regardless but would have been annexed by Utrecht about half an hour into the game )

 

[KingSnake]

When I was done with continental Portugal (actually 5 province) unfortunately that gave me something around 60 game score, I needed also the colonies to have a decent peace. And there it was where Kab was useful by its danish colonial nation. I thought it will be a fast war and be done with it, but needing to move my troops in Cuba, Azores and Madeira took a bit longer than expected. By the time I was done, Germany was also done. Even if I could have been there from the start, just look at the gap in troops number between the two sides, France and Germany barely matching Kab's army. Although, if I would have known this was the last session I would have gone into war even late just for the fun of it.

 

[Deleted member 125677]

august?!?! D: let's be reasonable! I was going to say early July at the latest. ;_;

Yeah, sorry about that crab, but I'll be away in Italy and Southern Norway the entire month of July as well, so no point for me in starting before that. You guys are welcome to go ahead and do a summer or full session without us flamboyant beachboys of course

 

[Fitz]

I don't get what the point in that is. There's a big gap between a 3.9 and a 3.1 that the system currently captures that a rounded system doesn't. What you propose sounds exactly the same as what we currently do except less accurate.

My suggestion was just going to be to raise the player+nation score cap to 7.5, because the nation scores rise very quickly as you reach the last few, which means increasing the cap only changes the amount of nations available to low ranked players by a little bit, but gives high ranked players a bit more choice. I was also thinking we'd average player scores over the last 3 sessions say to prevent a player getting a much too powerful nation because of an egregiously performance in one round (not that I'm talking about you, Fitz).

Spoiler

or am I

If we're going to streamline the player ratings into 5 scores, then how do we decide the order for choosing nations, within each rank? Does someone have a random draw machine handy?

Average scores are certainly something I'd suggest too.

Less accuracy was what I was going for really, we'd still have an accurate list of player ranks, e.g. 4.54, 3.23 for the purpose of selection order. Players would then be able to pick from groups based on a rounded rank. Though this would end up favouring players with ranks < x.49 and hindering players with > x.5 rank. I don't know if there's better rounding methods.

I'd be up for raising the max for player/nation scores, though if we just rank players/nations using fractions instead of rounding to integers, then that should achieve the the same effect of added accuracy, otherwise we might as well go all the way up to 10. Though honestly I dislike the nation ranking system as a whole, it's good for obvious 5's like France and England, but it's harder to balance down the tier as people get less familiar with the nations, Timurids being the obvious example.

 

[Kabouter]

Yeah, I'd honestly prefer not switching to a tiered system. It only seems like something that would make things less accurate (and far more arbitrary). I am however in favour of raising the cap to 7.5, it makes sense given the overall increased skill levels of people. It's not fun to have no major nations played by humans.

I'd be up for raising the max for player/nation scores, though if we just rank players/nations using fractions instead of rounding to integers, then that should achieve the the same effect of added accuracy, otherwise we might as well go all the way up to 10. Though honestly I dislike the nation ranking system as a whole, it's good for obvious 5's like France and England, but it's harder to balance down the tier as people get less familiar with the nations, Timurids being the obvious example.

More experienced players should point out ratings that are way off. Like me and crab, unsuccessfully, did last time. In general, it is probably fairest to blame fanboi for Timurids being rated too low.