From: Elliot Wilen Subject: submission What follows is still more commentary on the game, including a few ideas for improvement that people might develop. It's a summary of some points brought up in an email conversation I had with Rick Heli, after I read his review of King of Kings at http://www.best.com/~heli/wargame/review /kok.html Rick had several criticisms of the game. Briefly, he felt that the game was too random because of the effect of dying during the Events phase. He also felt that there isn't enough combat, and not enough else going on in the game to fill the void. Some of the scenarios are unbalanced. Finally, the problems of being a monarch aren't adequately represented. I've played KoK a few times with various people, and nearly all of us liked the game. (The sole exception was someone who really had no business playing a wargame anyway.) However, we didn't really finish any of the games, except for the two-player Roman Empire scenario. It seems to me, though, that Rick's assessment of the effect of dying is a bit overstated. If you're dominating the game and die, then you still have a good chance of winning by counting your points and leaving the game. You should only stay in as your heir (thus losing your achievements) if you don't think you've amassed enough glory to hold the lead. Also note that you only have to make this choice if you die without ending the game. (The game ends during the second Events phase in which at least one monarch dies.) Still, Rick pointed out that leaving the game is boring. He's right. So, it might not be a bad idea to modify the rules and say that a player who dies and retires has the option of controlling (some? all?) independent neutral(s) which pop up. (Independent neutrals occur from the WAR event, IIRC, and maybe from some other events. In the regular rules, these neutrals are controlled by a rather dim-witted algorithm.) For that matter, a player who retires might as well also control any neutrals which become active due to being attacked by a player. (The regular rules cause these neutrals to immediately ally randomly with one of the other players.) This would give a "retired" player something to do--in particular, it would give him a chance to ruin the empires of the other players so that they can't catch up with him! On a related point, I've found that some players like to abuse the rules regarding minor allies. That is, they will get an ally, march its troops off to the middle of nowhere, then take over the ally's city. You lose the self-regenerating troops, but you gain income. Another ugly tactic is to attack a neutral, then talk the person with whom they ally into having them roll over without a fight. A simple approach to these two problems is to say (a) that you simply can't attack or sack an ally's city, and (b) use the rules for the WAR chit when a neutral is attacked by a player, instead of having them ally with someone. What I prefer, though, is a Public Relations index whereby you get good PR for helping allies and bad PR for betraying them. Your PR index then affects the chance that someone will choose you as an ally. I had some rough rules for doing this, but I don't remember if they're in a usable state. Moving on to Rick's next criticism, in my experience the lack of battles isn't bad. Some people enjoy figuring out trade routes and arranging entrepots for exchange of goods between several players' caravans. Others like to stomp on neutrals. Either way, at some point the people who aren't in first place will find themselves tempted to resort to arms, and as this becomes apparent the leaders will be forced to build armies. In the games I've played, this turns into a kind of cold war, with everyone nervously eyeing their neighbor, and it can be quite fun if you enjoy the tension. Clearly, a good player should endeavor to figure out whether he's a "status quo" power or if he should be pursuing the revisionist path. As for scenario balance, Rick singled out the Punic Wars scenario (a 4-player game with Rome, Carthage, Syria, and Egypt) as being unbalanced against Egypt. I played the Punic Wars scenario once--it was very enjoyable even though the Carthage player goofed from the start (due to unfamiliarity with the rules), making it very hard for the rest of us to catch Rome. My analysis of the scenario is that, basically, Carthage should get Seleucid financial backing for an immediate attack on Rome, who is the obvious leader. Egypt will probably ally with Rome for protection against Syria and may be able to offer some military aid (distracting the Syrians from directly attacking Rome). Or at any rate, given that Syria and Carthage are going after Rome, Rome must offer Egypt something to keep from being completely isolated. A general principle of multi-player games applies: as long as no one player can beat all the others combined, astute players will tend toward a balance of power. That said, I agree that Egypt is at a disadvantage in practice. Rick asked me which scenarios I thought were good. My reply was that I liked the Punic Wars scenario in spite of the weakness of the Egyptians and the "scripted" alliances. I've started a couple games of Sea Peoples which were enjoyed by all the players. However, the Sea Peoples themselves aren't formidable enough to be more than a very minor nuisance to the players. Cyrus seemed balanced enough to be worth a try, and we had fun playing it. Nearly everyone (except the one nonwargamer I mentioned above) also liked the Aurelian scenario (from Roman Empire). On the other hand, I think almost any two-player scenario is suspect unless played with Ancients; the game doesn't have enough strategic depth to get by without the diplomatic aspect, but as everyone has noted, it's dandy as a scenario generator for tactical games. Hammurabi, I think, is too small. I doubt that the Peloponnesian War scenario (from The Greeks) will work due to the map scale. The Crusades seems too unidimensional. Not sure about the rest, but I'd like to give Attila and Vikings a try. Finally, concerning Rick's last criticism, that the problems of being a monarch and ruling a country aren't adequately represented. The "unruly nobles, recalcitrant taxpayers, diseases and other problems" that he misses are actually in the game, in the form of Events and the bad things that can happen on the Diplomacy table. In general, each column on the Diplomacy table reflects the good things that can happen from concentrating on a given area as well as the bad things that can happen from not concentrating on the other areas. Admittedly, this may not be detailed enough for some tastes. I do think that building Roads (and maybe some of the other achievements) should offer some advantage besides VP's. I also think that the raiders and pirates in KoK's scenarios are somewhat underpowered. This is remedied in Imperator. But Imperator has its own problems, besides errata. As I've written on r.g.b., what's really needed is a combination of the best features of both games. --Elliot