STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG) (Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer - http://www.flyingmoose.ca) VOLUME 67 Dec. 2, 2002 CONTENTS Feature Article – The Politics of the Stand-by, SW-1155 Questions – SEDG Web Page URL The Swap Corner Correspondence ANNOUNCEMENT This is the 2nd last article in my pipeline. So obviously this is a plea for submissions. I would welcome articles on specific games that were interesting, Variant SW games and opinion pieces about the game. If I don't receive any further submissions I will assume that I've finally exhausted the topic of 'Starweb'. I may continue to publish on a sporadic basis if an interesting idea inspires me or a submission comes my way. Good gaming and see ya on the web! Elliot FEATURE ARTICLE The Politics of the Stand-by SW-1155 John Shannonhouse I finally decided to try a stand-by position in Starweb. The fear of getting stuck in a hopeless position had always worried me too much before. Alliances would already be worked out. At least one turn would already be missed. Players would be ready to attack, and I would be unable to defend. The game was a lot more interesting than I had thought. SW-1155 started for me, as BURN the Collector, on turn 7. The good news was that I was a Collector. Assuming I could work out deals with enough other people, they could push my score up quite rapidly. The other good news was that I had a lot of ships for this early in the game. The bad news was that I owned very few worlds, had a low score, and had met only one other player, ICARUS the Apostle who I had just ambushed since my predecessor missed the last turn. Not only did I have almost nothing to trade, but also I had just antagonized the only player who could currently help me. I declared him an ally and loader, gifted him one of my few worlds to grow converts, began the expansion the old BURN should have done, and sent a diplomatic message explaining my predicament and offering my apologies to ICARUS. ICARUS proved to be the ideal ally. He pardoned the ambush, and gave me all his artifacts in exchange for the promise of ships and targets for PBBs later in the game. He also declared me an ally and gave me directions to other players. ICARUS had been excluded from an alliance, which included SPELLSNGR the Apostle, PRIMOS the Berserker, PEPTO the Merchant, and SHIGELLA the Pirate. SPELLSNGR, PRIMOS and PEPTO were all very experienced, extremely competent players. I did not learn the real name of SHIGELLA until after the game, so I did not know much about her. They had already crushed one player, ALDERON the Empire Builder (More on him later...). ICARUS gave me all the information he had on them, and I sent diplomatic messages to all of them. PEPTO acted as the alliance spokesman, and promised all their art in exchange for military assistance against ZANIAH the Pirate plus ships and targets later in the game for SPELLSNGR and PRIMOS. PEPTO did not think he would need the points for hauling in my territory, and I did not need that assistance. I tried to get them to agree to provide help to ICARUS as well, but they were not keen on the idea. They already had an Apostle, and were already offering me a lot more than I was giving in return. Personalities and playing styles were very important in this game. ICARUS was extremely supportive, but very hard to get hold of on important moves. Towards the end of the game I was transferring ships to his fleets to be used for PBB's, but I had a lot of trouble coordinating assistance. He was a major help to me in the game, and I wish I could have done more to assist him. SPELLSNGR was an important part of the major alliance. He was providing a lot of assistance with scoring. He seemed remarkably uninterested in the combats. His goal from the beginning was to get the highest possible score. He helped me a lot at the beginning of the game with the firm understanding that I would help him at the end of the game. Though he did not appear to need it at the time, I got him fleets and ships and tried to direct him and ICARUS to the same worlds so that they could mutually share the kills. PEPTO took on the job as leader of the main alliance in the game. He was the most war-like merchant I have ever met. It was his decision to attack ALDERON, and again to attack ZANIAH. He was having a wonderful time fighting. He also decided to drop PRIMOS from the alliance because he was afraid the Berserker would run away with the game, and he wanted to be the winner. I thought that was a dangerous mistake. That decision made PRIMOS the Berserker an automatic enemy. Once the decision was made, it would have been best to concentrate on attacking PRIMOS rather than ALDERON or ZANIAH. Even without the direct support of the alliance, he was still the greatest danger. I tried to contact PRIMOS to work out some deals with him, but he refused to reply. He must have felt that I was too deeply involved with the alliance that had turned him out. PRIMOS ambushed one of my artifact fleets, and I did not hear from him the entire game. ZANIAH the Pirate was another very competent, experienced player. He called me every turn. Most of the time he was trying to increase my paranoia about PEPTO. He was doing the same with PENGUIN. We did work out some strict point for point trades. I met ZANIAH by way of the 30 ship key I was sending into his territory. That key was to be used in the war effort against him. ZANIAH first called to try and talk me out of my military support for the alliance, and try to use art to bribe me into attacking the alliance instead. I was unwilling to do this since I had already made a firm commitment about military support. I surprised him by offering to trade plunderable worlds for Artifacts instead. It seemed weird to work out beneficial trade agreements when we were actually fighting, but we worked out some deals and stuck to them. I told the alliance members what I was doing. After some initial surprise, they decided my trades did not hurt any of them, so there was no problem with doing it. If either ZANIAH or I had been a serious contender for first place, they might have responded differently. I also transferred all the ships from my attack fleet to a SHIGELLA fleet as the best way of assisting the combat. PENGUIN was a first time player. PEPTO had mentioned that he decided to attack ZANIAH rather than PENGUIN because he did not want to discourage a first time player. PENGUIN did a lot of fence straddling most of the game. I told him that he should make a firm decision soon, or no one would trust him enough to give him what he needed to do well in the game. His best chance for a good rating was to throw in fully with the alliance. His only other choice was to throw in with the underdog ZANIAH and try to spoil the win for the alliance. Since he and ZANIAH both needed worlds to do well, they could not work together well to give each other points. PENGUIN surprised me by throwing in with ZANIAH. I worked out some point for point trades with PENGUIN as well. ALDERON was still alive! At least the standby that replaced him was still in the game. He was a Canadian playing in a regular speed game. He could manage because he was using Compuserve to send and receive his game turns. He had been under constant attack the whole game, but refused to give up. While looking for a place for a museum, I ran into his fleet, which held the Ancient Pyramid. PENGUIN gave me ALDERON's Compuserve ID, so we were able to talk. He had been under attack by the PEPTO-SHIGELLA-SPELLSNGR alliance for the entire game, but refused to give up. He agreed to trade the Ancient Pyramid for my home world and future considerations. He also gratuitously gifted his last art to me, even though I told him I did not have any more worlds left to trade. The game was almost over at that time. I was giving away the last of my worlds (other than the three reserved for museums). I had given worlds to PENGUIN, ALDERON, ZANIAH, ICARUS and PALADIN. PALADIN was an empire builder who bordered me, but did not communicate well and was slow in following up on his side of trades. I started getting fleets, ships and PBBs to ICARUS and SPELLSNGR to help them with their scores. I was also frantically trying to consolidate my art in groups of 10 for the museum bonus. That had been my goal from the beginning. I took some risks throughout the game trying to get the fleets and art together. That is how I was ambushed by a PRIMOS world. Without that ambush I would have had about 300 more raw points and might have been able to build a 4th museum. I still would not have won, but would have been closer. This game took a number of weird twists and turns. The primary alliance decided to drop PRIMOS the Berserker from the alliance because they were afraid he would run away with the game. The alliance also gifted a lot of worlds to PENGUIN the Empire Builder. The war effort against ZANIAH did not go well. PEPTO was doing most of the fighting, and he had a number of his large fleets captured. PRIMOS also threw in with ZANIAH and PENGUIN. The three set out to steal the win from PEPTO and SPELLSNGR. The alliance had given PENGUIN a lot of their worlds. He declared them all non-allies and non-loaders, catching them by surprise. The three spoilers showed up at PEPTO's world with a PBB to destroy it and keep him from getting more points at the home world. ZANIAH and PENGUIN felt that stealing the win from PEPTO was more important than doing well themselves. They began to get fleets and PBBs to PRIMOS so that he could exceed the scores of PEPTO and SPELLSNGR. On the last turn of the game I got a message from VAGABOND the Empire Builder. He wanted to trade art for worlds. He had been stuck off in a corner of the map fighting CANOPUS the Artifact Collector. He was having a great time, and thought he was in the lead because he could not see any of the game leaders. Turn 16 was End of Game. I had just finished creating my last two museums, so this was the ideal turn for me. A turn earlier and I would have lost 1000 points of museum bonus. A turn later and the leaders would have pulled even further ahead of me. SPELLSNGR won with a score of 8070. He was originally planning to coordinate scores with PEPTO, but PEPTO's loss of his home world on the last turn to a PBB dropped by PENGUIN seriously hurt his chances. SPELLSNGR did not want to slow down further to wait for PEPTO for fear that PRIMOS would win the game, so he dropped everything he could. It was the right decision. PRIMOS was only 35 points behind SPELLSNGR at the end of the game. If PRIMOS had ever taken me up on my offers of trade, he would have won the game. If the game had gone one more turn he would have won anyway. PEPTO came in a respectable 3rd with a score of 7250. I pulled in a distant 4th with a score of 5955. It was still a good result for a stand-by player. SHIGELLA was never looking for points in the game, so had a very low score by game end. She had concentrated on helping PEPTO with his wars. All in all SW-1155 was a very exciting game. To me the most fascinating part was my ability to work out deals with almost everyone in the game, even with players who were bitter enemies. I was open about what I was doing, and made sure that agreements I made with one player did not infringe on the agreements with any other player. I could have gained a temporary advantage by telling ZANIAH that I would throw in all my ships on his side of the combat in exchange for all his art, but whoever I double crossed in that deal would consider me a worse enemy than the one they were currently fighting. PRIMOS's showing in this game proves that you cannot afford to antagonize a Berserker unless you are willing to finish him off. Ignoring him does not work. It also proves that the existence of a large alliance early in the game does not mean the other players cannot make a strong showing. The game was fun, and I will probably start another stand-by game soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these? Question You are a merchant. You are at a HW with 60 metal but the HW already has 255 metal stockpiled. If you drop your metal - what is the metal count next turn AND how many points will you gain (are all the metal counted when you hit the maximum)? A: I've been in this situation before and tried it out. I was particularly interested in how the program handled this because it occurred to me that the metal could have been lost immediately (unloads happen quite early in the turn cycle) and then the industry would build and drop the metal count to 225 (plus the active mines) and perhaps the merchant wouldn't get any credit at all! As it happens, as long as you are not loading metal at this world you will get credit for the full 60 metal drop. The Starweb program tracts the metal drop accurately for the merchant AND the metal that gets consumed by the industry are replenished and the metal refills it to 255. The additional metal that would have taken you above 255 are destroyed (that is 30 you are holding plus whatever mines were working here). New Question: You are an Apostle in a heated scoring race with another player and you feel this is the final set of orders. Some of the gambits you might try at your HW are: - Migrating converts to two adjacent robotic worlds hoping that you can kill of the robots and have two more fully converted worlds. - Firing with your keys and homefleet at the same hovering berserker (that you have declared Jihad on) over your HW to stop him from robotizing your HW and decreasing the number of converts/converted worlds you own. What are the holes in your logic? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP - is now available on the web. Look for our MAPPER'S SECTION on the SEDG Web Page. http://www.accessv.com/~somnos/sedg.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURE - THE SWAP CORNER V1.6 and beyond Guys and Gals, V1.5b has been on our web site (http://www.flyingmoose.ca) for a very long time. It is stable and the only version I've been playing Starweb with for months. If you are a licensed user of our program you can download and use it FREE! That's correct. There are no upgrade fees for any of the V1.xx line. Drop me an email and I will send you the password. New users – go get it NOW – the price has not changed since 1997! The only hold up in labeling it as V1.5 is that I've not completed the changes in the help files yet. Mike is now considering what changes need to be made and additions for V1.6. I have asked him to include a button that will allow you to review the final rankings in a game when you run the final turnsheet. We already have a pop up that announces that the game is over and soon you shall be able to view the results. We are firmly committed to relegating an email turnsheet to the realm of a data file that you should not have to touch to play the game using our graphical interface. What else do you want? Should we have a way to review the orders you sent in found at the bottom of the turnsheet (Remember, you can review last turns draft orders in the Order Editor under the 'Previous' tab). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRESPONDENCE From your Editor: Guys – I've been on the waiting list for some variants almost forever! If any of you are interested in playing in a Partners SW, Extra long SW (VPT=25,000), Email variant or even a game of Lizards (can I mention that here ?) please send in a request to FBI. Let's get some of these games off the ground. From Jeff Calkins: Elliot, I had an interesting and unfortunate incident in a recent game and I wanted to run it by you. I am playing Utopia, a merchant until recently allied with Mirfak. Mirfak turned on me and this turn and captured my fleets. I did not think that fleets he gave away would count towards his pirate capture, but since gifts are after pirate captures, apparently they do. At least that is what I want confirmed. I'm writing on the off-chance I caught a computer glitch, but I guess this is how the rules work. Thanks, Jeff Calkins << Editor: I'm afraid that there is no glitch - gifts happen last and so a pirate can still effect capture while gifting his key and ships away. El >> Date: 01-Dec-02 14:29:01 MsgID: MC3-1-1DA7-597 ToID: 75304,3311 From: "RICHARD BROMAN" >INTERNET:fionnsolas@msn.com Subj: Re: SEDG Chrg: $0.00 Imp: Norm Sens: Std Receipt: No Parts: 1 My Starweb experience includes a clear and mystical vision in the early EIGHTIES (way back then!) of the game being played online, complete with a totally graphical interface, but I got sidetracked by a gypsy. Took some years off, and even considered school to learn the proper language to use in an interface, but chose a different major. You've seen the story since then. Echoes, posts, chats, exchanges with Rick to get permission to break one tiny limit, and here we are. Sniffing around the offal of IWars, then I get this mysterious invitation to try SC. I still would like to see SG expanding into the web-based game that they've TOLD me they want it to be. I suggested they get in touch with you, and their response was wise, but limiting. They want to wait to see how many people are interested in the game before they invest more time (and money?) into that avenue. On that question, intelgames is typically manic, but their approach is sound from a business perspective: instead of releasing a limited version of the game, hoping to lure in a customer-base, and THEN expand the game, they want to make it a very flashy game from the start, and take the customer-base concept more seriously. The tentative forays that SG are doing aren't going to cut it, I'm afraid. Among hardcore internet gamers, pb-em is something of a dinosaur itself, and among pbem, text-based games are even worse. Steve Jackson has interfaces you download, and your turns are sent as text via email ONLY to ease up the bandwidth. Part of the download is code to interpret the email and the game is formatted into graphics. I'm sure you're on top of that with your SWAP, but have you noticed that you don't plan to make your SWAP translate INTO a graphical format because the SW program won't understand it? There you are. End of the line. The game HAS to become graphic-based or it just won't be played anymore. And I'd hate to see the death of the world's first pbem game that was so good it started a genre. Do you play over-the-board games? Remember that visceral feel you get by looking over the board, and with satisfaction seeing your empire spread out before you? That's the kind of satisfaction that intelgames wants to buy into, and it has a real chance of meeting a market demand. It'd be too bad if that demand were to be met by a team like Intelligent Life, when it apparently could be met by a team of GAMERS like SG.... ;0) Editor: Yes - you need graphics. This is the shortcoming of SC (but looks to be the best game of the 2 new web based variants I've been invited to play). The Analyzer can only go so far. The Iwar interface just takes a lot of the analyzer (fleet, world and orders) and puts a big pretty picture up. It's not really much different from Starweb. It would actually take longer to do your orders in my opinion but at least iwar doesn't make you memorize lots of text as orders - it's mouse/graphic driven and that's good. SC has some additional stuff but the game is basically web based but text – not too appetizing. Well, that's it for 67 Volume. Don't be afraid to submit articles or suggestions. They don't have to be long. Address your correspondence to Elliot Hudes at somnos@compuserve.com