Kjeld wrote:

Agree with 11's- BaO is familiar and people want that.

Got some evidence to back up that assertion?

Gotta say I doubt that many people on WF actually played BAO games much, as the system was pretty complicated for the majority of casual players that populate that site. Also, if they took the time to learn BAO over there, don't you find it likely that they'd also take the time to learn an alternative (and *cough* better) system on WarGear?

I want that.

IMO, it's a good and simple (simple in the idea that it uses basic dice, compares dice to determine kills, etc.) system and it doesn't involve charts to understand it.

(Again, not that I'm against another system or a slightly different BAO system too.)

I don't want BaO.

I played it a few times on ToS and found it confusing and counter-intuitive. To be honest, I never figured it out, and that was probably because I was stubborn enough (as I'll bet a lot of us are) not to go looking for help and instruction at every turn.

My picture of what simultaneous-move play should look like on WG is one of accessibility. I'm not saying that people should be able to play it well the first time they try it, but the meaning of the orders should be understandable, and the ramifications of what they do should be self-evident without some Samaritan having to come forward and say, "Well, that was because he moved his attack behind yours by padding it with nonsensical orders." Like most people really want to hear that!

This community is barely large enough to fill a tournament, let alone support a what amounts to an entirely different and somewhat erudite game. I'm not married to any one idea right now, but I'm envisioning the way K's engine will seem logical from a player's point of view, and I'm taking the time to understand it, not to mention make a few visuals to move the discussion along.

M57 wrote:

I played it a few times on ToS and found it confusing and counter-intuitive. To be honest, I never figured it out, and that was probably because I was stubborn enough (as I'll bet a lot of us are) not to go looking for help and instruction at every turn.

Hmmm that's interesting...

This community is barely large enough to fill a tournament, let alone support a what amounts to an entirely different and somewhat erudite game.

I would say the community as better ability to support BAO rather than Tournaments since BAO is on a per game/board basis rather than relying upon many players to fill a tournament...but that's a bit beside the point.

Yertle wrote:

M57 wrote:

I played it a few times on ToS and found it confusing and counter-intuitive. To be honest, I never figured it out, and that was probably because I was stubborn enough (as I'll bet a lot of us are) not to go looking for help and instruction at every turn.

Hmmm that's interesting...

I was able to execute turns.  It's not like I couldn't make it work, but I really had no clue how the outcomes were determined.

This community is barely large enough to fill a tournament, let alone support a what amounts to an entirely different and somewhat erudite game.

I would say the community as better ability to support BAO rather than Tournaments since BAO is on a per game/board basis rather than relying upon many players to fill a tournament...but that's a bit beside the point.

Actually, it's a good point.  My argument was a bit of a straw man.

I was just playing a game of Appomattox with a noob (from ToS) who was appreciative of the fact that I warned him that Appo is going to be unlike any map he's ever played on ToS, because he was definitely caught off-guard.

My point in my previous post should have been that the designer features that we have right now can make for some pretty sophisticated game play just in a turn-based game, and guess I'm a bit concerned about adding a layer of confusion on top of that.

I know it's not possible, but I alluded to it in an early post; It would be wonderful if there was minimal difference between playing BaO and turn-based.  I even suggested that my dream engine would let me make an attack complete with hypothetical results (which I determine), which would then enable me to make additional attacks, and then additional attacks, etc.  I.e. it would almost be like taking a regular turn.  Then after everyone has submitted their full move, the engine goes back and fulfills their wishes to the extent that it's possible.

Kjeld wrote:

 

Agree with 11's- BaO is familiar and people want that.

Got some evidence to back up that assertion?

 

Gimli, Riskyback, Yertle. Hugh mentioned he wants Bomb factory, and bomb factory requires BAO. 

I know the only reason Blackdog stays on WF is for BaO. Who knows who else is like him?

As for me,  I am ALL FOR a new system, if cool games can be created from the rule set. I can also roll with BAO if that is what we want. I'd like to see how BAO jives with capitals, artillery, etc. (didn't I already say this?) 

My take: Why not do both? We're smart people. Do BAO to appease the masses, bring WF'ers, then institute KESP to show its as fantastic a system as you claim. I'd be happy to think about how to build a map in the system, after I read the 157 pages of dialogue you had with M57 about it.

(EDIT: this suggestion was inspired by angusjustice's post about him noticing growth on the site, which for me is still my #1 A+ top top top priority/concern for the site. If BAO brings more people then bring BAO.)

Something else to keep in mind is there are a LOT of people who hated BAO whose voices are not being heard here. Personally, I had no idea what "damage dice" were until I helped Nygma with Gent's duel.

I hang on ToS because of BOA; however, I may be able to go on a 12-Step program and get some help.

I didn't even know this conversation was going on, I'll take a look at it this weekend. I'm not specifically attached to the Warfish BAO system but I think it works fine and is not all that hard to understand. I think some sort of simultaneous play is necessary, you simply cannot achieve the same level of multiplayer strategy with turn based games... I would be fine with any system that allows for the style of strategic multiplayer games found in A&A and similar maps.

I'd like to learn more about Gimli's Diplomacy idea. I'll have to do some reading as I haven't played that game in ages.

Regarding BAO on TOS, it was great fun for boards like AnA but I lost interest (and ran out of time) when playing My Kingdom with very dedicated players.

I hated the way BAO was implemented at TOS but liked the added tactical complexity... until I realized that order stacking was such a huge part of being successful at it.

Really I'm just posting to support the idea that a lot of very active players are still stuck at WF based on their allegiance to BAO. Many of whom we have not heard of. I told Bla Bjorn to check out this thread, but it may be a lot to digest. He is one of many people I've heard from that say they don't really want to commit to a new site without BAO or a BAO equivalent.

I don't think doing both BAO and KESP or SMTNPLay or whatever should be considered all that strongly. I trust you smarties to work something out that captures all the qualities we're looking for. And I trust that we'll be able to sell dedicated WF BAO'ers that our system will be everything they're looking for and more.

I only played Bomb Factory a few times, but is there really anything about it that necessarily requires WF BAO and couldn't work with a KESP-like system?

Wallace Wishmaster wrote:

I'd like to learn more about Gimli's Diplomacy idea. I'll have to do some reading as I haven't played that game in ages.

Regarding BAO on TOS, it was great fun for boards like AnA but I lost interest (and ran out of time) when playing My Kingdom with very dedicated players.

I think others have also mentioned the diplomacy idea... but it is BAO... basically every of the 7 nations starts with important cities that allow you to have one unit, all start with 3, except Russia who gets 4. Units are divided into navy and land units. Each nation starts with 2 land, and 1 navy, except Russia has 2 of each, and Britain has 1 land and 2 navy (much of this is just for interest in the actual game, not the actual influence on BAO or gameplay ideas).

You only get a number of units for the # of cities you own... total! If you have 3 cities, and 3 units, you do not get 3 units next turn, you get none. If one dies, you get 1 unit on your next turn. The vital cities are marked by dots on the map. One unit per territory. http://people.hsc.edu/faculty-staff/mhight/Dip%20Images/Dip_Map.gif

Each turn, every player writes down orders for all units secretly - to hold, to move/attack to another place, or to assist a move/attack of another unit. All orders are resolved completely simultaneously. No steps or turn orders.

For example, if France and Germany attack Belgium with 1 unit each, they just bounce of the territory and stay where they were. If Britain also attacked, it would still be a 3 way tie, no one would advance. But if Germany has a navy that is supporting the German land unit, Germany conquers. In the actual game, Britain could even support Germany as part of a diplomatic agreement! If France sent support, it would still be a 2 way tie.

If Austria and Germany attack with 2 against the same Russia territory held by 1 guy, I think the 1 guy gets bounced out, but neither Germany or Austria can move in: it all happens at once. Either of the 2 attackers force the 1 Russian out, but the 2 vs 2 cancel each other out. It gets complicated, but I think that is how it worked. This happens all over the board at once, people who made gains in cities get to build more in the following turn!

Hence it is called diplomacy, because with about 3 neighbours each and only 3 units usually, you need at least 2 to conquer things (there are plenty of neutrals in the area) so you need to have some borders free... and so do your competitors! But in the end, there can be only one, so how long can you trust your allies? And how long can you afford to keep that deal? :) It's intense fun!

asm wrote:  And I trust that we'll be able to sell dedicated WF BAO'ers that our system will be everything they're looking for and more.

 

I'd be one of those people... can't kick the BAO habit.

I remember when I started on warfish...

There was no BAO activity that I can recall. Were there even BAO boards back then? I remember when BAO boards were coming out, I invited players I liked and who showed intellgence to BAO boards. It seemed a bit of a sell to complete new people. They'd join and complain. I had to include BAO warnings in the game names. Especially when I was getting people into Toaster's AnA.

I still can't think of anything that is missing in BAO... having all the extra goodies that are on wargear will jazz it up lots already. But I think that this being such an open process, with efforts to include thoughts and feedback will do much to sell whatever comes in.

Also having a good guide, maybe some example videos would help people get acclimatized too. Maybe some free memberships for promotional videos that hit 5000 views on YouTube etc.

So, I was on vacation when this exploded into all that is above, but I think I can summarize as such:

BAO is a style of play that most players who have used it and understood it like to some degree (the correct idea is there, but there are some side effects that players dislike to varying degrees). The most negative thing BAO has is phantom attack stacking (that is; attacking yourself so that the attacks against enemies you actually want will come at the end of a round when all else is hopefully already decided). Since on large boards this can involve setting 50-100 fake attacks, some people really don't like it (this is the reason I quit playing BAO on most boards on TOS).

Some alternative were suggested, I think Kjeld's version was the most hashed out alternative and seems to have merit.

But, there is the belief that if BAO were here many would come and in this interest, it should come over in some form not too different from the original.

My suggestion:
Attack the main problem with BAO.

Currently BAO has phases (if I remember correctly):
Issue orders:
1) Place
2) Pre-transfer
3) Attack
Run all turns simultaneously based on orders (all placement from all players first, all pre-transfers from all players second, all attacks in turn order fashion one at a time from each player until there are no more; the order comes from most armies first or something else).

My simple modification: During the "run" attacks phase add in a check that if a player attacks themselves, the attack will go through, but will count as a pre-transfer and the next attack from that same player will then commence until a real attack is reached or there are no more attacks from that player. Then, continue as before to the next player.
With this there is no reason to do phantom attacks, but the predictive element of reclaiming lost ground is there.

Sorry for all the writing, but I had a lot to say.

"My simple modification: During the "run" attacks phase add in a check that if a player attacks themselves, the attack will go through, but will count as a pre-transfer and the next attack from that same player will then commence until a real attack is reached or there are no more attacks from that player. "

1st, your memory is good! Though a few games do not have the pre-transfer option.

some things would have to be worked out... what if the territory has 15 units, and is attacked by themselves and there is a unit cap of 15. No pretransfer can happen if I understand. But the player sacrificed 15 units behind the line to hold this key territory. what happens if that 15 is then whittled down to 1, and attacked from a different territory? I think the territory would be lost, and that would be hard on the other player. Of course, it is a minor issue, and might just take a change in philosophy of strategy.

what if there was a limited # of transfers, like in turn based? Only your 1st 10 transfers are executed, the rest of orders to your own territories during the attack phase do not occur. That would stop the stacking of orders, cuz if you do, your late reinforcement drives will not occur.

I have a question regarding BaO v. KESP mechanics.  With KESP you place a round of orders and then all are compared and executed simultaneously.  I think this can be modified so that you could make a list of orders for a single stack so that multiple "moves" could be played out in one turn , but for now that's how it stands.

My question: In BaO, can you, in one turn, go on a rampage?

Attack territory A - move all in; attack B - move all in; attack C - etc..?

It seems to me this could save a lot of time with end games on larger boards.

M57... that could be an interesting option. It could be a part of normal gameplay... with reduced effectiveness (unless you are Germans blitzing). The runaway leader won't mind burning the extra units and it would speed things up, plus add other elements to a game.
Or maybe the ability to blitz in BAO gets triggered at a certain % of overall bonus. If in a 2 player game one of them gets 75% of available stats, the blitz option opens up.

G- I'm going to suggest that what you call a blitz could or should be standard fare, and I don't see that it's a problem with the KESP engine.

With KESP I can pretty easily envision the type of game-play that I described in an earlier post.

You make your moves and you actually see those armies that have orders to "Kill or be killed" move into the hypothetically invaded area, from which another attack can be initiated and hypothetically won.  The only trick is how to deal with unknown advancing army counts, though I think kjeld's idea of an retreat threshold could handle this quite elegantly. Here's an example where a player attempts a blitzing maneuver:

Player A has 21 armies in T-1. A attacks T-2 with 20 armies with a retreat threshold of 8. The board shows all 20 armies advance.

Player A now selects his hypothetical armies in T-2 and attacks T-3 from T-2 with 19 armies, setting a threshold of 8.  Again the board shows all 19 armies advance.

Player A now attacks T-4 from T-3 with 18 armies and sets a threshold of 8.  Again the board shows all 18 armies advance.

etc...

Player A ends turn.

KESP engine Resolution:

Player A's attack from T-1 to T-2 wins, but he loses 11 on the battlefield. Player A now occupies T-2 with 9 armies.  All other first round orders are simultaneously executed.

The engine see's Player A's orders to attack From T-2 to T-3 with 19 and commences an attack, but T-3 had 11 armies in it and they took out 5 of A's armies.  Now A has 4 remaining armies in T-2 and the threshold kicks in.

Turn over.

Because (and I believe this is where KESP sets itself apart from BaO) every first move on the board is resolved simultaneously, I see no reason this couldn't happen. The first thing the engine does is look at every territory and resolves all engagements.  So although you can give armies multiple orders, you can't really do much in the way of phantom order stacking.

So is anyone white boarding the logic flow for this?

where is the bulk of the KESP discussion, where we can find answers on how 3 attacks on 1 territory would work? and how it would handle players attacking into themselves? i've heard of the ideas in a link Yertle posted, but I don't even recall the term KESP having been decided. Perhaps I just forgot to finish the thread or something...

My current thinking is that it's not going to be too tricky to implement two order resolution system - one BAO + fatigue, one KESP. Most of the work is involved in updating the Player interface to support BAO, the back end part I am thinking will be quite straightforward.

This gives us the best of both worlds, the ability to port boards across and a new more advanced system for the pros to run with.

ps Alpha - that is a great suggestion, the only area where it falls down is you can still order stack by attacking enemy positions with 1 unit at a time - I did lots of this on ToS.

tom wrote: that is a great suggestion, the only area where it falls down is you can still order stack by attacking enemy positions with 1 unit at a time - I did lots of this on ToS.

I think attacking with one is fine as there is still a personal cost (that one is essentially lost which is unlike attack self).  This is strategy and the way things should work (Risky mentioned this above); attack making a diversion and then send your real attack.  Attacking behind lines is the major issue I remember hating about BAO and thanks for liking the suggestion.

ps. - fatigue will be a designer option correct?

Gimli wrote:
some things would have to be worked out... what if the territory has 15 units, and is attacked by themselves and there is a unit cap of 15. No pretransfer can happen if I understand. But the player sacrificed 15 units behind the line to hold this key territory.

if there are unit caps, then no transfer would happen (the units would stay where they were), but the attack/transfer would come off the stack of attacks.  No sacrifice, just 15 (really 14) units out of place.

Gimli wrote:  what happens if that 15 is then whittled down to 1, and attacked from a different territory? I think the territory would be lost, and that would be hard on the other player. Of course, it is a minor issue, and might just take a change in philosophy of strategy.

no sure about the question here.

In BAO, if you have a scheduled attack and you are preemptively attacked then either:

  the armies that were suppose to attack are no longer there and your attack is skipped and the next attack you had scheduled happens
or
  there is still 1 (or more) armies left to do the attack (even though original you assigned 50 to attack) and then you attack with 1 (or how ever many are left).

This is what made BAO more fun in my mind, you could try and predict and attack and preemptively attack, or you could predict an attack and wait to try to reclaim that territory by attacking yourself later in your attack "stack".  One way you would still be able to do this is as tom mentioned above.