Game 10

Are we agreed from now on if anything bad happens in G10 its all the fault of Rozwi agents or their Witch Doctors putting a hez on the rivals of the King for the title of the most honourable character in G10?

How about a title for this thread : G10 - The curse of the witch?

I actually think a patient non-European position could play absolute havoc in Europe by slowly building up an network of agents to create conflicts between powers that they could exploit, or just to distract the Europeans into warring on each other while your plans to expand go unmolested.

Who could ever imagine some heathen nations could learn to play the colonial powers against each other? They're just stupid funny colored heathens after all!

I like it, Stuart and Deacon.

If the Rozwi got too popular I'd imagine that the Grand Inquisitor of the Portuguese Inquisition would start badgering King Pedro II to cut off dealings between Rozwi and Mozambique, and the witch hunts might cause problems. Bugger up my trade dealings too!

Deacon wrote:

I actually think a patient non-European position could play absolute havoc in Europe by slowly building up an network of agents to create conflicts between powers that they could exploit, or just to distract the Europeans into warring on each other while your plans to expand go unmolested.

Who could ever imagine some heathen nations could learn to play the colonial powers against each other? They're just stupid funny colored heathens after all!

Anyone care to design a Rozwi network of agents designed to cause the max amount of trouble & keep interest in southern Africa to a minimium my top Rozwi agents "The scummy six" would be :

1) A Jacobite agent in the British Isles........wind up the Clans & cause trouble between the English, Scots & Dutch on one side and the French plus Pro Jacobites on the other.

2) A Old Believer agent in Russia.......call the Czar a drunken beardless heretic anti Christ..... and watch him try and decide if he hates Swedes, Poles or Turks more.

3) Ottoman slave trader agent.......pay Barbary Corsairs to raid ships and fishing villages in Spain, France, Portugal or Italy or some Tartars to raid into Poland/Ukraine/Russia...........flog a few Nuns to a nice harem and watch it all kick off.

4) Shia agent or Christain agent sin the Ottoman Empire.

5) Hindu agent in the Moghul Empire

6) Agent in the Spanish Empire to make sure Carlos II dies as early as possible and who ever is made King faces support for a rival.

Note this a purely a "what if" and I am sure the King of Rozwi is much too honourable to consider it for real. The Doge of Venice however

Stuart Bailey wrote:

Deacon wrote:

I actually think a patient non-European position could play absolute havoc in Europe by slowly building up an network of agents to create conflicts between powers that they could exploit, or just to distract the Europeans into warring on each other while your plans to expand go unmolested.

Who could ever imagine some heathen nations could learn to play the colonial powers against each other? They're just stupid funny colored heathens after all!

Anyone care to design a Rozwi network of agents designed to cause the max amount of trouble & keep interest in southern Africa to a minimium my top Rozwi agents "The scummy six" would be :

1) A Jacobite agent in the British Isles........wind up the Clans & cause trouble between the English, Scots & Dutch on one side and the French plus Pro Jacobites on the other.

2) A Old Believer agent in Russia.......call the Czar a drunken beardless heretic anti Christ..... and watch him try and decide if he hates Swedes, Poles or Turks more.

3) Ottoman slave trader agent.......pay Barbary Corsairs to raid ships and fishing villages in Spain, France, Portugal or Italy or some Tartars to raid into Poland/Ukraine/Russia...........flog a few Nuns to a nice harem and watch it all kick off.

4) Shia agent or Christain agent sin the Ottoman Empire.

5) Hindu agent in the Moghul Empire

6) Agent in the Spanish Empire to make sure Carlos II dies as early as possible and who ever is made King faces support for a rival.

Note this a purely a "what if" and I am sure the King of Rozwi is much too honourable to consider it for real.  The Doge of Venice however  

If memory serves me correctly. That is why Paul. Or the count de Monet. dropped from lgdr games. As well as personnel problems. Players via the above spy action. deliberately undermining his positions. He felt he was wasting his money paying for turns, only to be deliberately spoiled. He played in all the lgdr games as well.

It is so easy to lose honour. That a good strong spy network could seriously undermine playing positions. I do think that us players have to be very careful if we choose to go down the above mentioned road. Players can lose heart and drop from games. Thus killing those games.

Thus why I feel. Honour is too hard to gain. Yet too easy to lose.

jamesbond007 wrote:
If memory serves me correctly. That is why Count de Monet, dropped from lgdr games.
Players, via the above spy action, deliberately undermining his positions. He felt he was wasting his money paying for turns, only to be deliberately spoiled. He played in all the lgdr games as well.

I wasn't aware of this, and I really do feel sorry that that was the case.

I'd hate to think that I'd spoiled the enjoyment of another player, so I tend not to interfere with other nations.

The furthest I've gone with activity against another player was when playing Blackbeard, in another game. I took control of Jamaica while England's back was turned and ran it as an English possession, but syphoning off the recruits etc for myself. This was all mentioned in the newspaper, though I didn't use Blackbeard as the character acting as governor. England eventually realised what was going on and reclaimed Jamaica for their own - gifting a knighthood on my character for the work he'd done on their behalf while governor.
I like to think I was being a bit cheeky for doing that, and it wasn't meant to harm or spoil the fun of the player playing England - it was revvaughan playing England. Just adding to the game by creating a bit of interaction and minor plot twists.

If you are worried that your stunning wit and prose may reduce a fellow players honour score and spoil the game for them........play a Ottoman:D

You can then be as rude as you like about the vast majority of other positions and the only effect it will have on them is that their honour will go up! and vis versa.

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jamesbond007 wrote:

Stuart Bailey wrote:

Deacon wrote:

I actually think a patient non-European position could play absolute havoc in Europe by slowly building up an network of agents to create conflicts between powers that they could exploit, or just to distract the Europeans into warring on each other while your plans to expand go unmolested.

Who could ever imagine some heathen nations could learn to play the colonial powers against each other? They're just stupid funny colored heathens after all!

Anyone care to design a Rozwi network of agents designed to cause the max amount of trouble & keep interest in southern Africa to a minimium my top Rozwi agents "The scummy six" would be :

1) A Jacobite agent in the British Isles........wind up the Clans & cause trouble between the English, Scots & Dutch on one side and the French plus Pro Jacobites on the other.

2) A Old Believer agent in Russia.......call the Czar a drunken beardless heretic anti Christ..... and    watch him try and decide if he hates Swedes, Poles or Turks more.      

3) Ottoman slave trader agent.......pay Barbary Corsairs to raid ships and fishing villages in Spain, France, Portugal or Italy or some Tartars to raid into Poland/Ukraine/Russia...........flog a few Nuns to a nice harem and watch it all kick off.

4) Shia agent or Christain agent sin the Ottoman Empire.

5) Hindu agent in the Moghul Empire

6) Agent in the Spanish Empire to make sure Carlos II dies as early as possible and who ever is made King faces support for a rival.

Note this a purely a "what if" and I am sure the King of Rozwi is much too honourable to consider it for real.  The Doge of Venice however  

If memory serves me correctly. That is why  Paul.  Or the count de Monet. dropped from lgdr games. As well as personnel problems. Players via the above spy action. deliberately undermining his positions. He felt he was wasting his money paying for turns, only to be deliberately spoiled. He played in all the lgdr games as well.

It is so easy to lose honour. That a good strong spy network could seriously undermine playing positions. I do think that us players have to be very careful if we choose to go down the above mentioned road. Players can lose heart and drop from games. Thus killing those games.

Thus why I feel. Honour is too hard to gain. Yet too easy to lose.

If this was England in game 8, I think he thought that was the case, but I don't think it was. England, I am told, is a tough position to run well. We discussed some early research trading and I thought he made some dubious decisions on what to research in the early game. I don't know, but it might lead me to suspect he made other dubious decisions on economic/honour matters that may not have played out as he hoped. I also closed all but two of my ports to english trade in retaliation for some of the things he said. Given my experience of such actions in game they can have larger economic impacts than people think. In game 3 as Pope I retaliated against an Ottoman action by forbidding pilgrimages to the holy lands, and the ottomans complained about the economic impact of that.

Agents are a powerful part of the game, but dangerous. You play with fire when you use them. I think people are prone to suspect their involvement a great deal more often then they're actually involved. Agents acting against your state is a pretty good cassus belli, so you have to be pretty committed to the project if you're going to try to use agents to really hurt someone.

that's why agents have to be planned well and given careful tasks just not plonked in and told to disrupt.

If memory serves me correctly. That is why  Paul.  Or the count de Monet. dropped from lgdr games. As well as personnel problems. Players via the above spy action. deliberately undermining his positions. He felt he was wasting his money paying for turns, only to be deliberately spoiled. He played in all the lgdr games as well.

It is so easy to lose honour. That a good strong spy network could seriously undermine playing positions. I do think that us players have to be very careful if we choose to go down the above mentioned road. Players can lose heart and drop from games. Thus killing those games.

Thus why I feel. Honour is too hard to gain. Yet too easy to lose.
[/quote]

If this was England in game 8, I think he thought that was the case, but I don't think it was. England, I am told, is a tough position to run well.  We discussed some early research trading and I thought he made some dubious decisions on what to research in the early game. I don't know, but it might lead me to suspect he made other dubious decisions on economic/honour matters that may not have played out as he hoped. I also closed all but two of my ports to english trade in retaliation for some of the things he said. Given my experience of such actions in game they can have larger economic impacts than people think. In game 3 as Pope I retaliated against an Ottoman action by forbidding pilgrimages to the holy lands, and the ottomans complained about the economic impact of that.

Agents are a powerful part of the game, but dangerous. You play with fire when you use them. I think people are prone to suspect their involvement a great deal more often then they're actually involved. Agents acting against your state is a pretty good cassus belli, so you have to be pretty committed to the project if you're going to try to use agents to really hurt someone.[/quote]



We all make mistakes and it could have been Paul's . Count de monet 's first attempt at playing England. It was in a few games where he felt spy action was ruining games and positions.

As I recall Paul played lgdr for nearly as long as the games where around. He played for about 16 years I believe. I think he was a little better than what you give him credit for.

I think the main point from him. Was that spy action was too easy and successful, if played well. Considering how easy it is to destroy a players honour. He felt vindictive, or spoiler players were just killing positions for fun and after pumping in hundreds if not a thousand or two of cash it was ruining enjoyment.

For my part. I can understand his views and to a point. He is correct.

Looking at why Paul. The count de Monet left the games and my problem with honour is this.

If you have an honour score of say ten. With a skilled determined player with say 30 spies in your country. He can too easily play against your honour score and reduce it to  one. Then Agema will cause a natural disaster upon you. Undoing a  couple of years or so worth of work in a turn.

You would have probably spent a thousand or two in turn fees over a couple of years or more. Imagine how you would feel and think about in game honour after that.

This is why I sympathised with his position and why I think honour plays too big a part in the game. Unless you specifically play for honour, it is to hard to gain, to easy to lose. Just my thoughts and beliefs.

Low honour doesn't result in natural disasters. that's low Economic Health (EH).

In most cases low honour doesn't have much effect at all.

My personal theory on honour is that there is a soft max that grows as the games age. maybe .5 a point or so a month.

So you start with an honour of 6, at the end of year one, your soft max is 12. Getting to that number is easier than getting above it, and if you're far below it, it doesn't take much to move it up.

In game 3, I joined the game as Pope in I think 1736. My honour skyrocketed quickly with relatively small actions (albeit good in-character ones). In game 8, I've been trading the top spot with Hanover for the last 6 months or so (he owned it for quite a while) and every point is HARD to get.

My sense of all this is that getting close to the honour leaders isn't hard with consistent effort. Getting to the top can be. So even if agents do drag you down, you're farther from that soft max, so regaining that honour is easier.

But like many games, if you ignore a part of the game in Glory, that's the part of the game that will bite you.

A high Honour score also means increased estate income. As a rule of thumb in my experience you get £10,000 per point of Honour. In one game I play a small Northern European state with a top 5 honour score which is vitally important to my annual income. In another I play a large central European state with the top honour score, but the income is a drop in the ocean to my annual budget. I believe in the past Honour score effected the number of Armies Fleets you could effectively control each turn.

I must admit, I have never focused too much on honour but at the same time I have never had too many problems in picking it up. I find just playing as the 18th C version of a 'general nice bloke' seems to work and the times I have lost honour it has been because of a mistake I realise (in hindsight) I foolishly made.

The only positions I have struggled with honour is China, as you really only pick it up there by gifts to the Emperor, though you don't get the benefit it seems if you give him a gift he has had before (from you or another Chinese player). It does make the positions both more of a challenge (trying to find increasingly obscure gifts to give) and a bit easier (the Emperor doesn't care if you are rude to Barbarians, so you can treat the colonial powers any way you want).

As Goldstar pointed out, honour once a time affected the size of your armies and fleets and it doesn't now, so in some ways it's now less important than before I guess.

One day I am having to go and play a pirate, just to be evil and get 'honour' that way

Honour means what they think of you, as to having a lot of spies in your country that requires a lot of money and plans, plus they can be easier to find, the less spies in a nation the better , they are
harder to find unless they are given stupid orders. Always remember Richard will take orders and do what you tell him literally with a twist

The point I was making is. If you play the usual nation builder or political game. No problem with honour. Because you are ineffective spending money on raising it.

If however you are playing a wargame. Then you are spending your money on raising and serviceing armed forces. Hence struggle to raise honour, as you are not spending on it.

This is why I think honour is unfair and restricted to the wargamer. Especially as in most cases you cannot raise honour from taking towns and with it gaining more income and recruits.

Hence, if you have a low honour score because of the above. It can quite easily be attacked using skill and spies. Then if the honour score reaches nought or one. You can expect some sort of uprising or rebellion I would presume.

This is what I think Paul or count de Monet was getting at. Hence I feel a distinct disadvantage for the wargamer.

Jason wrote:
One day I am having to go and play a pirate, just to be evil and get 'honour' that way

European gentleman acting as pirates gain the appropriate honour from spending a month, now and again, in their big house at Kingston, Jamaica. Not leaving their (bought separately) harem - especially when agents of the King of England come knocking on your front door And the gent also has a 'wife' living on another island who's just bore him a child out of wedlock. Oh, murdering Spanish officers in plain sight, on board rampaging ship in the middle of Havana harbour, lifts a pirate's honour, too ... Though such an act also puts a price on your head


When I was Blackbeard I found him to be the character I least used when role playing to cause fun, and get articles in the newspaper. I had a homosexual bloke who was a businessman based out of Kingston - the legitimate face of the business ventures, laundering money - and the chap who I installed as the governor of Jamaica, who was also wooing the governor's daughter of another English island close by. I only wheeled Blackbeard out if someone needing murdering, or if I wanted to have a despicable story get into the newspaper.

In all honesty, playing as a pirate is great if you want to role play and fight a (limited in size) war game. Also, if you want to take part in a game of TGOK in only a small way, Pirates allow this.

I'd quite like to try my hand at Wako pirates, as then you get to play a Japanese position, but not the always sought-after and harder to play nation of Japan. Or, the Barbary pirates may be fun. Madagascan pirates don't really do it for me, though.

Playing a Pirate can be fun but lonely.  Need an ally at the start but beware they do not start on you.

My raid on Havana  was a good one built on a successful spy mission that told me they had no troops and no cannons so it was a case of capturing a merchantman and filling it with my guys and pretending to chase it into harbour, they let in and then we quickly overran the place, lots of treasure to be had and the governors daughter  

Kingmaker wrote:Playing a Pirate can be fun but lonely.  Need an ally at the start but beware they do not start on you.

My raid on Havana  was a good one built on a successful spy mission that told me they had no troops and no cannons so it was a case of capturing a merchantman and filling it with my guys and pretending to chase it into harbour, they let in and then we quickly overran the place, lots of treasure to be had and the governors daughter  

My feeling is that Kingmaker knows far more about agents and dirty tricks than a true gentleman should!!! I look farward to reading his new guide ........"The Cads Handbook" subtitled how I looted Havana & founded the Sons of Liberty plus other dastardly deeds by Edward Teach.

For players who are hit by agent lead operations like Blackbeard's raid on Havana these type of things can be used to improve your honour by acting in a positive way. In this case Spanish Insurance Underwriters paid out rapidly and the Spanish Navy put a £60,000 reward of Edward Teach's Head. So apart from the money cost the Havana raid did not do any real damage to Spanish EH or Honour (rather more damage to Spanish Player pride ).

As for propaganda attacks by agents on Honour........I look at it this way..........its 30/40 Guys grumbling in a Inn V thousands of Government published papers and broadsheets, plus thousands of Priests etc trained in rhetoric giving surmons under guidelines issued by me, plus Schools etc, etc. Basically any lies in my territory is going to be slain by my "Internal Propaganda" campaign.

The "truth" esp as seen by the GM however can be harder to deal with so if you want to attack someone's honour using agents/propaganda it needa to be at least roughly based on the truth about their actions/words. Otherwise its really easy for the "attacked" player to deal with.

I know some players do not like "propaganda" aspect of the Game and feel it gets in the way of the "Wargame" or is somehow unsporting and you should only say nice things about people. But I enjoy a good propaganda battle esp in the historic style and if you look at the real Characters from the period like Louis XIV and William of Orange plus Swift and Defoe etc we are looking at some really brutal "Spin Doctors" in action. I swear Louis XIV never took any action without considering how it "looked" or could be recorded to his greater Glory.

On the forum etc please be nice in person but in character feel free to be as rude as you want about my character. Still have copy of Glori du Roi published after Iskander Kruppa Leyerbey of Rumelia and Ghazi stormed Venice which is full of the most savage attacks possible........it was really fun reading and my honour went up as well. But however get a slight feeling that my cunning plan to grab Venice and trade it for a Bourbon withdraw from Egypt may have not have worked exactly to plan.

there is more than one way to wage a war and it dose not mean the use of troops.....

Kingmaker wrote:there is more than one way to wage a war and it dose not mean the use of troops.....

Call me an old fashioned Ottoman........but I still say its hard to for a foe to wage a Propaganda campaign if you nail the printers to the walls and burn the printing press down

Agh......the smell of burning villages in the morning it smells like Victory!!


PS It should be pointed out the both Cardinal Portocarrero in G7 and Viscount Hardinge in scabble are kindly old coves without a nasty bone in their body who are both unfairly picked on esp the HEIC

Stuart Bailey wrote:PS It should be pointed out the both Cardinal Portocarrero in G7    and Viscount Hardinge    in scabble are kindly old coves without a nasty bone in their body who are both unfairly picked on esp the HEIC

Yes Stuart...but you have form...we all know sooner or later you'll be slaughtering whole populations every other Tuesday afternoon...

Stuart doesn't slaughter them without reason. They are given the choice to join the Honorable Company! Effective is what I call it and I dare say the the good Lord Hardinge is quite the nice guy. Lord help the world if Lord Beaconsfield every comes to power!

On another note... It has been rather difficult to build honor in several English positions. Even with some rather major developments that are certainly in favor of the government, the honor has been elusive. It appears that I am much better at making massive piles of money as the English than really accumulating any honor points. Perhaps it might be time to try something different.

In the same way as some positions in Glori & Scrabble seem to have particular strengths ........ie the Holy Roman Emperor and the Doge of Venice seem to gain honour just by breathing. While the English & Dutch aways seem to have loads of cash, The Great Moghul and the Czar loads and loads of recruits.

It would probably not be unreasonable for certain positions to have particular weaknesses. I wonder if perhaps a particular English weakness with the Whig/Tory/Jacobite split in Glory & Tory/Liberal/Socialist split in scrabble is a marked sensitivity to hostile propaganda or even how news is viewed since so many people, papers. MP's etc are predisposed to think the worst about their leaders.

So Marlborough suffers heavy losses (mostly allies) to drive a hostile Army from the Field at Malplaquet and take the important frortress of Mons and the opposition turn it into a bit of a disaster for the Government & Marlborough. In a way which just would not have happened for a Russian commander for instance.

Perhaps Lord Derby will just have to get used to the idea that no matter how often he cuts the tax rate, runs a surplus budget, expands the Empire or gets invited to tea by the Queen he is never going to join the list of murderous autocrats and drug runners who make up the Prestige List in scrabble.