From: "Gary J. Robinson" Subject: Miranda Speaks: 30 Years' War Hear are the most relevant excerpts from an answer by Joe Miranda to Dan Raspler regarding Dan's questions on 30 years' War. Enjoy. ------------------------------------------ Forwarded message: From: j.miranda3@genie.geis.com To: keithschl@aol.com, osli@aol.com Date: 95-07-19 01:40:54 EDT HERE IS MY RESPONSE ON 30 YEARS WAR MY ANSWERS ARE IN CAPITALS... JOSEPH MIRANDA From: OSLI@AOL.COM@INTERNET# COMM INTERNET GWY To: J.MIRANDA3 Joseph A. Miranda Sub: 30 YEARS WAR musings Subject: 30 YEARS WAR musings The Diplomacy aspect of the game is very strange and, uncharacteristicly for a Miranda game, not particularly fun. Due to the fact that even at -1 on the table, a player may gain control of a neutral or neutralize another player's independant ally, every Dip round ended up with endless "rolling for 6s" on the -1 column. Everyone is always guaranteed a 1/6 shot. When you playtested, did everyone do this? If not, why not? For us, it became the "take turns trying to roll a 6 and get (or neutralize) England" round. [I THINK THIS CAN BE OVERCOME BY TWO OR MORE PLAYERS COOPERATING.] When determining the Loss Levels of the combatants, the rules in section 12.3(1) say to DROP fractions. This is strange because a two unit force begins all combats already having LOST, since 1/3 round down of two is ZERO. Also, this way, if five units attack, and one of them is eliminated, that side can't "win", even if they completely eliminate the defenders. Traditionally, this sort of thing is handled with retaining fractions, so 1-3 need to lose 1 to break, 4-6 need to lose 2, 7-9 need to lose 3, etc. [ROUND FRACTIONS TO THE NEAREST WHOLE NUMBER, NEVER LESS THAN "1".] Another question was about determining RV at the beginning of the game. Section 4.1 reads: "A Major Power's Resource (RV) Value is the total number of Treasury Points a player can collect from all its occupied provinces at the beginning of the game." We weren't sure how to handle the following: 1) Does the Swedish RV include its 10 TP income for off-map territory? [YES] 2) Do Hapsburg/French/Swedish RV include income bonuses from overseas? [YES] 3) Does RV include income bonuses from leaders' Political ratings? [NO] If the answers to all three questions is NO, then the Swedes have an RV of 5 while the Hapsburgs have something like 125. If the answers to the above questions are all YES, then the Swedes have an RV of 30 and the Haps have something like 155... a HUGE difference when it comes to victory determination. My final note is this: why is it faster and easier to have combat with a small enemy force than it is to move past it? It seems to me that +1 OPs to fight and +2 OPs to leave should be switched... +2 OPs to fight and +1 OPs to leave. Otherwise it feels sort of "gamey"; more efficient to march into battle, array the army, face off with a deadly foe, than to conservatively march away from them. This is particularly strange when you're talking about neutrals. In the rules (11.3) it says that it even costs +2 to leave a neutral-occupied province. Why should it cost more OPs to march past a neutral force than to engage an enemy one? [THE IDEA WAS THAT GIVEN THE PONDEROUS NATURE OF 17TH CENTURY ARMIES, IT WOULD BE VERY DIFFICULT TO OUTMANEUVER AN ENEMY FORCE. A +1 WOULD MAKE IT TOO EASY TO INFILTRATE AN ENEMY OCCUPIED PROVINCE.] ------------------------- end excerpts