Well before the next day update ill buy some more stuff first.

20 HC at A12.
20 HC at F13.
20 HC at D12.

20 HC at F8.
20 HC at G8.

30 archers at G12.
30 archers at G9.

Watchtower at G8 attack AY.
Watchtower at E12 attack B and obliterates it. After which, attack CD.
Watchtower at G13 attack CD.

That should leave me with 290 gold.

5 archers on all squares that is unoccupied along with 2 pikemen, aggresive stance.

As has, presumably, become clear, I don't think I'm going to be able to update this regularly enough to finish the game. I am going to call it nominally in favour of team Hammerfist because they came closest to winning. I think there was one point where Ai had a victory point in range and there was no one on team Thundersmash with enough move points to counterattack, but he didn't take it. On the other hand, maybe that should count as an automatic loss.

However you want to think about it, the main flaw in this game is the amount of time it takes to run it. I was barely able to keep up to date on it when it was just me and occasional PhD work. Now that I have an actual job again it is simply impossible. It requires two hours a day dedicated to this one task. I know it sounds like two hours a day is time you should be able to find, but when it's coming out of all your other spare time - like the time you usually spend browsing the rest of StickPage - it really adds up.

But, I would like to hear comments on the game from the players and from anyone who was spectating. Obviously I'm not going to run the game in the exact same way again, because I physically can't, but I'd like to know what people enjoyed and what could be improved for any future games I might try to run, or which anyone else might try to run.

I wouldn't say they lost. More like, it looked like they were losing. There were a few moments where I thought you could have dashed through their lines and really caused havoc, but didn't take the opportunity. On both sides I felt there was too little emphasis on defence - Fronox was the only one who had any real defensive line.

I always thought that games that used grid maps werent really fit for a forum format regardless of how much time you put into it. Imo, there has to be a way to translate that into a more streamlined format all the while retaining the need for tactics, foresight, and general strategy.

Fundamentally I agree with you. I just don't know how to do it. For a while I toyed with the idea of a flash-based game which people could update themselves, with users inputting a password and then being able to move their own units, but that's not much of an improvement tbh (aside from requiring less effort from the GM after the initial cost of programming). I intuitively feel like a game like this should be doable, but maybe it's just too ambitious.

Well my auction game was too ambitious. Well...I would say I would run it again because I really love making things to auction but the original concept of that was a tactical grid-based one as well. I sought to deter from using that formula and so I did it like that. Actually the original plan wasnt to use each other to vote in battles, but to use the community...we'd set up polls with the question "Who would win" in order to garner subjective response but also stimulate debate not unlike Ninjas vs Pirates.

But that was a dream. Perhaps it could work on another forum such as comicvine who's sole purpose is to pit fictionals together.


Anyways, my point is, perhaps just as I have tried, you can also translate your game to a different genre while still retaining the feel of freedom and control.

Camping wont do you any good because you dont get any territories. And another major problem with this game is how people kept going away. Jutsu, Xave. BBKing, I don't think he ever read/understood the first post, so when he joined Veir and Aquila would have a landslide of a win.

Btw I really much enjoyed this game. It was fun while it lasted. Oh and archers are pretty useless.

Quote from _Ai_

Oh and archers are pretty useless.

GOOD.


Also, I'd have made the map more easy to read. The letters and numbers with their information below made it a lot of difficulty to even read if I was looking in from the outside. Maybe have small-ish countries that take up a respectable amount of squares instead of each grid being a different territory, and you'd have toom to list all the unit numbers?

Bigger map would be rad. Also instead of being able to just create new units on the front lines I'd say you have to create a base of sorts somewhere that can train said units.
I'd be less likely to rush units on the frontlines if I needed a barracks first.