Well the hope is, until you've spent some money, you don't have the capacity to lose so much. And by then it's too late, you're hooked. How big a setback is it really? Think of all the tech and hull and experience you've accumulated. Cities are nothing.
Tech, sure. Hull, I've accumulated negative six. That's brilliant. Experience, of course, is invaluable. And yeah, I'm hooked -- I'm just concerned that other people might be less so and ready to walk away, especially those who haven't purchased Terraforming yet (and thus psychologically are required to stand by their previous expenditure. )
Newbie experience has changed a bit since you went through, now the lower tech tree is a breeze thanks to some juicy underling beatings and low production timers. The n00b shield should hold until they become customers, if they actually intend to play.
So.... Palantirs. As a sand player taking my first tentative steps into tier 2 tech territory (try saying that three times fast) they seem like the surest way to maintain my safety against battler players who seem to typically lack the means of producing Palantirs themselves. It also presents the opportunity to snatch the vaunted title of Watcher in the Deep. Which, let's be honest, just sounds awesome. So I'm building them.... all the time. And somehow it only occurred to me recently to consider the repercussions of my actions. It says Palantirs give me a 5% tithe from players. Does that mean I get 5% of their stuff all the time or do I actually have to vassalize them first and the 5% just gets capped on top? Also, the rules say that players are informed of a Palantir being smuggled into their land. Is this information conveyed to them the same way as corruption? (I.E. you lost X number of Y resource due to corruption) Or does it show up in their inventory with my name on it? I'm just curious if I'm setting myself up for serious diplomatic fallout. (Followed in all likelihood by actual fallout.) Posted here instead of the Battle Mines forums in hopes that my neighbors won't look.... Edit: Discovered the diplomatic problem the hard way. Apparently some people are VERY offended by Palantirs. So there's one experiment out of the way. Further info on the tithing business would be appreciated however.
+5% tithe means that when you initially vassalize someone, you get more stuff out of their inventory. That's "all", but it's actually pretty significant. It shows up in their inventory with your name on it (on the Resources chart, it'll say your name next to the word Palantir), and they get an announcement of it in the Events section. BTW, if you happen to be my neighbor, I'd really appreciate it if you smuggled a palantir to me.
Well I no longer have the resources to do so otherwise I'd do you that favor. After Psiweapon shelled me into the ground and stole my land I'm a little short on resources as well as production and my new piece of land generates coal instead of sand which makes it even trickier. Heh... enough coal to fire all the buildings that I no longer own. Somehow after that whole conflict I have a higher score than him which makes little sense to me since he has the buildings he inherited from me and I just have a bunch of random warehouses. How does scoring work anyway? Anyhow, I did send you a friend request a while back Essence. So if you want to be neighbors accept that and I'll be more likely to wash up along your shore.
Somehow after the collapse of my beautiful city I have become a world leader. Yay verily, on this very day did I descend to the throne of Anarchy and took my place, (however temporarily) amongst the greats on the scoreboard. But seriously... how the hell do I have a score of 85?! I have a dozen buildings half of which are warehouses. ( I.E. boxes made out of aluminum siding,) Though due to my newly acquired 'devil may care about the scorched earth' attitude, I have managed to persuade a few folks to be my vassals and I suppose I do still have a few Palantir floating around, so I'm just wondering how score is figured. It obviously has very little to do with current 'board positioning' as it were.
The home page now features a scoreboard of the world leaders, and a battle log! Take a look: http://battlemines.com/home.php
Found the score page in the instructions. Not sure how I overlooked it before, it cleared things up quite nicely. So when I lost my land from the Palantir debacle I dusted myself off and built anew. This time including a bunker in order to stave off any further land trades. I didn't bother with a church for a number of reasons.* One being that vassalage isn't really an undesirable state. It forces an equitable trade and halves your score but makes you immune to further attacks from the master player. It seems to me that being a vassal should be a bit more demeaning ( I should have a reason to try to get out of it) and it should be more desirable to have vassals, maybe granting the master an UNFAIR trade or levy a tax of some sort. Anyhow, vassalage didn't bother me, I just wanted to stop another land trade. The bunker did me no good in the end as it requires food in order to function properly and food rots. So the land I took weeks to build an economy and agronomy on was swept from under me and in return I was given a blasted waste. (20 pollution and 4 fallout.) Thankfully the pollution will mostly take care of itself but I'm forced once again to start over from scratch. So, I propose that you allow the bunker to keep a single item of food from spoiling so as to make it useful instead of a waste of space. I've made a similar, though shorter, post on the battle mines forums so that the community can weigh in on it. I hope the feed-back helps. Spoiler: Hint Text Other reasons include a simple shortage of Steel, and the accuracy increase between church owners since I'm mostly peaceful the increase is very undesirable.
Having vassals is one of those things that's extremely desirable in certain circumstances (you're a Monarchy, you're a Syndicalism), and as long you're not worried about your score (and who is? it fluctuates so much anway), not terribly undesirable regardless. I think that's deliberate. Monarchy can seriously pump out the resources with 3+ Vassals in tow; it's probably the best overall boost to PM in the game.
Yeah, I'm running as a monarch now and the PM boost is nice but it's a bit of a balancing act. PM is only useful when you have buildings that can produce and constant warfare is not conducive to construction. You also take a small hit on food since you can only throw banquets which is less efficient than feeding one at a time. In any case the game seems much harder to play lately as the requirements for technology are very steep and the market seems to be stagnating. For instance, I have three iron players around me but there is no iron or steel on the market. So I'm trying to subjugate them to force a vassal trade. Of the three, two of them are too small for me to attack ( 20% accuracy) and the third has beaten me in every salvo I've launched despite having the same number of cannons and the same accuracy rating. Just bad luck. It doesn't help that coal is likewise in short supply. I literally can't afford to stay at war since the coal players don't seem to have a need for sand or glass. Here's hoping the economy takes a turn.
Oh. Hi. I'm kind of amazed I got this far just by checking in nightly to harvest and letting my autotrades do most of the work. I'm tech-capped at terraforming due to gold (you may rightfully call me a cheapskate here) and am spending my time repeatedly building Hull instead, because why not. At this point I'm kind of just waiting for someone to nuke me into oblivion (and take 4-5 EUR hits in return) or land exchange me, at which point I'll probably just quit the game. The game's been entertaining in a sort of "I'm am not actually really paying attention" way, but I don't feel terribly invested in continuing.
Actually, banquets are a good thing. You get the effects of 5 food but only have to spend 3 to get it.
One food reduces hunger by three. It only takes two food to reduce hunger from five to zero, so throwing a banquet takes one more food. As a monarchy you can only throw banquets so you also can't ever PARTIALLY feed the people. It's either all of them or none. It's a fairly minor thing though weighed against the benefits of monarchy.
A new client is up now which is much more stable than the old one. Also I'm planning a new feature in the next few weeks which will stir things up and increase player interaction! Battle Mines yo! http://battlemines.com
Hi Gaslamp peeps, nice to see you Tuesday! How's old Tigerslaw doin'? I just wanted to let you know, Battle Mines has its first mini-game in place, Spy Hunt! Come check it out! Also, here's the video of my presentation at the Full Indie meetup. Good times!
The Battle Mines soundscape has had a complete overhaul! Welcoming the talents of Marcus Zuhr, Brent Silk, and Jacob Burgess in music, sound effects, and voice acting respectively. Log in to listen!
