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Dima wrote:
Hey everyone,

how about a new feature that enables you to reinforce not just you, but also other players, even if you play an all vs all deathmatch.

Basicly it would work the same as the current troop reinforcement, just with the difference that you can put your troops on every territory that you want, even if its held by another player.

Example: You are playing as purple, your opponents use the remaining colors. You start your turn and reinforce your (purple) territories with all but 2 of yours troops. The remaining 2 troops you use to reinforce another player (cyan). By doing so these two troops will become cyan. From this moment on, cyan can use these troops as his own. So you basicly give away 2 of your troops to another player.

What is the purpose of giving away your own troops? Isnt it bad, because it means weakening yourself?

Well, not really. It will give you some additional strategical and tactical choices and thus make the game more competing and less straight forward!

For example you can reinforce a loosing player with few troops, thus making him able to survive a coming death. Lets assume he has 5-4 cards and one of your enemies is planning to kill him, get his cards, and get a stronger position. To prevent this, you can give the loosing player few of your troops, just enough to survive. So basicly you strenghten a weaker player, to prevent a strong player from becoming stronher. You play one against the other at a little cost of few troops, but all in all to your own benefits.

Or you can reinforce a choke point (morocco, milan, greece etc) held by player 1 to prevent player 2 from passing it.

And also your temporary alliances can offer more possibilities. Right now, alliances are just this: "hey lets not atk each other for few turns" or "hey lets band up and atk player X". Thats basicly all. But if you can reinforce each other, then it will make alliances more interesting and give you more options. For example in Game 1467258 was an alliance against cyan and blue to decided to blast him. I was on the other edge of the map and couldnt do much to support blue, although it would be good for me, if cyan gets blasted. So i just did nothing. But with the mentioned feature, i could have given blue 10 of my troops to use against cyan. Or if i was supportive of cyan, for whatever strategic reason, i could have reinforced him with my own troops, to make him stronger.
I usually play capped games, so the gameplay, tactics, strategies here are a bit different than in increasing games. You really need to "influence" whats happening on the whole board, put certrain people in certrain positions, stroke conflict here and prevent conflict there, strenghten one player here and weaken another player there, and so on....A bit like game of thrones.

This feature could also contribute to the solving of (at least some) stalemates. In a stalemate under normal circumstances everybody knows what the other player know and everybody knows that everybody knows it, therefore nobody dares to make a move and a stalemate is perpetuated. But using the proposed feature gives you some additional tactical chooces. You can basicly reinforce one player, create a temporary power imbalance and turn a fronzen conflict into a hot conflict and an entrenched confloct into a moving conflict (a real life example for this is russia bombing syrian militants). This is at least one of many possibilities, how to get out of a stalemate using this feature.

By the way, this kind of alliances, interfernces and usage of proxies are really common (and even crucial!) in real life conflicts. When germany invaded soviet union, they were reinforced by romanian and hungarion troops. Red army had troops from central asia. At the battle on the kulikovo field there were mongol/tartar troops, russian and polish troops on both sides! During the cold war soviet union and usa both reinforced their "proxies" with weapons, intelligence and troops. Or right now in ukraine there are foreign contractors on both sides! The same thing is with almost in every other conflict, just look at syria with usa, turks, iran, israel and russia playing their game using proxies and alligning with each other when it suits them. Or lybia. Or sub saharan africa...
But my point is not to make the game more realistic, but just to give more tactical and strategical options. The game as it is right now is getting a bit boring over time, cuz you already know whats the best way to play, what are good tactics and strategies etc.

The feature is also easy to implement. Just make reinforcements possible on every territory, instead of just your own.

Maybe some people will not like, but its okay. I never play increasing games, cuz they are too boring and straight forward. For me capped/fixed/no cards/fog are the best settings, but some people hate them. I also rarely play chained fortification, cuz it really limits your tactical choices (unlimited is much much better!).

So lets try it? Maybe some people will love it!

"vorple: the real strategy comes when you cant just win cuz you got lucky and got the big card stack"
1949midden wrote:
Adding troops to every other country (chain) in the move phase is a logical choice too.
This will create a very complex gameplay (and lots of frustration)
IrisPostTempestates wrote:
This seems like an extremely interesting option. I'm already imaging how differently even 3 player games could be! 
Dima wrote:
so guys, any attempts to implement it as an optional setting?
"vorple: the real strategy comes when you cant just win cuz you got lucky and got the big card stack"
Dima wrote:
its worth trying, would make the game more challenging and open many strategical/tactical options. even for increasing card game, although i am prefer capped games.

"vorple: the real strategy comes when you cant just win cuz you got lucky and got the big card stack"
Hoodlum wrote:
i didn't read the whole post, but being able to place on someone else territory to benefit your own game (play to win) makes a whole lot of sense, and had thoughts about wishing i could do this in many a game. i don't think it would be too hard to implement? since it's something we can do in team games. maybe maybe not.
Hoodlum is online.
Matty wrote:
I am currently not very active on the site and haven't even seen the post until now. But I do like the idea.

The only problem is 'we have too many options already, adding more is not necessarily better' (it will be harder to start a game for example.
But also screw it lets try.

But yeah, I can't implement this myself in the near future, I'm currently busy with other things.
"Strength doesn't lie in numbers, strength doesn't lie in wealth. Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers." ~Maria
Dima wrote:
"The only problem is 'we have too many options already, adding more is not necessarily better' (it will be harder to start a game for example."

Yes, but the thing is that once you have played many games with certain settings, i for example love multiplayer + fog + cap, you already know all the tricks and tactics and start loosing interest in the game, cuz it becomes too simple.

For me its not just important to win, but also to "understand" the game in a deeper way than just know the rules; i want to find out the game dynamics on a deeper level, some kind of patterns that occur in every game, no matter the players playing. And so once i get all these things, i get bored. And new settings can add a layer of complexity, make the game work slightly different and force me to understand the new patterns again, which is challenging and makes me want to play.

Increasing without fog got boring quickly, cuz i understood the basic ideas behind the game and so i never really played it. Same time is a bad setting, cuz much depends on your ability to make the turn as late as possible, but before your turn ends (or at least it gives you a huge advantage) and your ability to think very quickly and adapt to changes on the board.

I really dont enjoy any other settings except fog + cap. Capped cards limit your abilities to act (you cant just rush all over the board with a huge army you recieved through a turn in) and force you to focus more on geography, land conquest and relationship with other players and between them, while fog increases uncertainty for everybody (now you dont just have a dice, but also invisible board and a difficult to forsee behavior of other players). But even this setting becomes boring after some time, so maybe it would be time to add the setting i proposed, since many people like it and it shouldnt be so difficult to do - at least i hope so.
"vorple: the real strategy comes when you cant just win cuz you got lucky and got the big card stack"