Patrizierforum

Brainstorming ...
Possibilities, most of them rehashed, for assessment. Primarily for a clean game.

1. Happiness, assessed monthly, quarterly, biannually, annually, or a annual average read off of the happiness-of-life graph window, eg from two save files on 31-6 and 31-12 (there are plenty of programs out there to turn graphs into numbers). Higher frequencies / averaging make cheap fix-for-date-x tactics harder (although so does making players poor by removing arbitrage)

2. Structure, as for #1

3. CV. In a game without free-money-generation, that should be challenging to achieve.

4. Likewise, the old ones, population/production, which lend themselves to lots of poor.

5. Automation - who's Hanse can continue to do x for longest after a save:
a. Grow in population (lends itself to cheap trickery)
b. Turn a profit for the company (with money returning from loans, meditteranean etc. either somehow excluded, perhaps by just looking at monthly buy-sell-produce net profits or else forbidden)
c. Stay above some level of happiness
d. Keep the player as Aldermann for the most years

6. Reputation; read off the graph as who can become most greatly revered. Would require starting from some sort of pre-played game to calibrate the graph I think.

7. Militaristic: Who can successfully defend the most seiges, judged eg by wins minus losses (see lots of people trying to encourage seiges!). Bit silly, but could be rewarding.

8. Militaristic/security - alternatively, play would be similar to a production/population goal, but a contest designed as a race to achieving full walls/towers around every Hanse city by the earliest possible date.

9+. ...


Some of the side rules are likely to have as much affect on play as the contest goals. Most possibilities below are obvious, the first a bit wacky:


-Shipless; can build ships to auction them to an AI, but can never control a ship leaving harbour, hire captains, etc. Reduces a player's control of a game to that they can exert from within towns. Would obviously start with trade offices in every city.

-Slightly shipless: Start the game with no ship owned.

-Clean; no money generation other than normal goods supply (and maybe loans?) and no constructing buildings without paying the full resource cost for that building.

-Unclean; opposite of the above.

-Loanless; either no loaning of money allowed or no impounding of goods/ships. Using loans as in contest 2007 makes it much easier to supply a Hanse with both goods and ships.

-White; no player-induced combat (including tavern missions) other than destroying on-map pirates or aldermann missions.

-Light Grey; combat allowed, but cannot obtain new ships from any source other than the shipyard / auctions. This might well allow town raiding for money as it does not result in new ships. Would probably require a restriction on loans.

-Dark Grey; no attacking of AI ships.

-Very Dark Grey; all piracy allowed, but no use of save/reload to avoid indictments

-Black; none of the above white/grey options, ie unfettered use of tavern/pirate/patrol missions and capture of AI ships as in contest 2007.

And ... I'm out of silly ideas.
For now.

I spent some time reading the online games formats at Kevins website and I like the ideas they are using there. He has a multiple set of skill level games that are ongoing.

You lay the framework for the game , and then the first one to do X wins.

For beginners and mid skill players, I can see the advantage of being able to produce some relatively easy to play contests which would be easy to oversee. The 2007 contest has been and still is a complex game for a beginner like me.

There is a list of "good & evil" in my mind, which looks as follows:
1) Save/Load: absolutely forbidden, i.e. the player does not have the ability to predict (and change) the future. That means we get random Med contracts, are likely to be sentenced for piracy, have no idea about the industry in new-built towns, cannot repeat battles with bad results and so on.
2) Arbitrage: forbidden, i.e. no auto-routes with buying and selling in the same town without sailing somewhere else in between.
3) Piracy: all allowed except outrigger trick, which is a combination of some kind of betrayal and silliness of the AI. Apart from that, I believe piracy is a well-balanced part of the gameplay as long as item (1) is observed.
4) Turkish building: no restrictions, i.e. we may raze our own buildings as often as we like (and also half-timbered houses on 31st December, if we think that's due).
5) All goods' tricks: forbidden, i.e. hemp trick etc., which are obvious program bugs.
6) Demolishing and auctioning of AI buildings: forbidden, as this is an obvious program bug that causes a very unrealistic gameplay.

We it comes to assessment and evaluation, I think the criteria of this year's contest are a good start. As there wouldn't be any way to generate unlimited funds, the inclusion of total number of inhabitants and company value could yield some benefit, too.

The points should not take all players average as a base but rather a set average, say 3.5 for happiness and 10/20/70% for structure. Production should also be related to absolute figures, e.g. points=squareroot(production). A similar equation could possibly be found for inhabitants and CV. Yearly assessment must be sufficient, as it should not take the assessors too much of their real life time.

Special points could be awarded for founding new towns, as this year, and additionally for the other elderman missions, i.e. wiping-out pirate bases, fighting notorious pirates, sprucing up depauperate towns and building of land connections.

Regards, Balou

I posted this idea as a "late rule change" to contest 2007, we'll see ...

Anyway, here it comes:
Why not take the production effeciency into acount? Or better: population AND effeciency (this would prevent Startstrucks (good trick)?

Anything that can't be proven of should be allowed. A code of conduct would and will be broken (see doping in sports).

elite64

@elite64

Zitat

A code of conduct would and will be broken (see doping in sports).

I won't comment on rule suggestions for the 2008 contest at this time, but I would like to comment on this statement.

Your opinion that any kind of Code of Conduct would be broken does appear strongly pessimistic - and the comparision to sports does not seem to be the best of its kind.
First, there is nobody in this community earning money for participating in the contest.
Second, there is nobody in this community playing Patrician III as his or her profession.
Third, as far as I can remember the past (that's not too far, I admit), there has been no attempt of cheating in the contest.

I strongly suggest not to base contest rules on apportionings of blame that are made in advance.

Since i don't know how easy/hard a save game could be analized, if it's done by hand or with a program ...

Suggestion:
1. ******* title and subheading deleted. Derogatory innuendos are not acceptable bizpro
Most exports to America in a given period of time/year/lifetime/per year

2. Global Network
No wares on startmap that can be imported from the mediteranian sea, bad points for wineyards etc.; good points for happy people (like contest 2007)

3. Pirate War/Wellfare
Most cash from pirate nests (single ambush, no cheat/trick)

4. Transporter
Most people without building, except houses => KI has to build all production facilities

5. Building Madness (Turkish reversed)
Use all place to build with the least houses/production, first will win
5a. Daily production is counted, the more the better

6. No Captain
No captains allowed

Well that's all for now, if i got some other weird ideas i'll let you know.
elite64

@Amselfass:
Glad to hear that noone even tried to cheat/bend the rules . In my case i can tell you that i don't have the time to brood over new tricks, i play for fun. Contest2007 will prove that (as soon as i got 1300 finished).

Balou has very good points; the programming oversights are not really reasonable in a good game. Piracy is clearly an element of the game, but not the use of S/L to avoid penalties. It would be very clear if there were no accusations, no trials, that a player who took a dozen ships is bending rules if he had no indictments.

I would only add three points. There should be an identical map in an international version of the game, since patrol missions never pay a bonus for encounters with pirates when a German game is loaded. Next, the game should be played at the most difficult level for trades - and a map set up for inefficient production, with the chance to improve your wealth with acquiring new cities that are efficient in production. Inefficient iron ore, wool, cattle, hemp, grain and timber especially come to mind. Lastly, the "free ships" available from the pirates exceeds all reason. A vast fleet of pirate ships never could have existed, and acquiring hundreds of ships from them in a year is ridiculous. Limit pirate ship acquisitions to one per month, and sink or escape the rest - on escort missions, patrol missions, or avenge my brother, and of course the normally generated pirates.

That way, happiness, CV, everything could be counted. And as a test of your ability to plan and trade, it would be an outstanding game.