First pre-beta test finished

First topic message reminder :

On Turn 19, the ruler of Underopia started building a mine 3 hexes from the Stormpeak capital. On Turn 20, Stormpeak scouts noticed him. On Turn 21, High King Peter led a stack of Dwarves and took down Underopia's leader, Queeky, and two Ratman Smiths. High King Peter and the Dwarves suffered no casualties.

In terms of GMing stuff, I noticed one big blaring problem: The combat calculator is buggy. It adds leadership bonuses to the empty spots in the stack, doesn't count the stack modifier, and isn't totally congruent with the rulebook. I might crank out a simplified combat calculator, and since the combat calculator is public, I'll probably make the combat formulas public too.

Also, none of the players (Tobias, Herbie, Twoy) sent me fortification stats for their cities, which is partially my bad for not asking for them. Tobias did send me stats for one of his cities, but he had three, so it's still a problem.

Part-way through the test, I realized that we need a standard format for orders. Turn summaries that clearly show treasury amounts, income and upkeep, units in production and units that pop that turn, and then orders make my job as a GM much, much easier. Anything vague or unspecific makes my job harder. For instance, don't say "..and I upgrade my city to level 3 once I have the schmuckers for it". Instead, tell me exactly which turn. Yes, this requires a little bit of financial calculation. But if the players can streamline things a bit more, the GMs might be able to take on more players. I can see myself managing 3 sides if they all sent in their orders clearly in that way.

Since there was only a single combat for the whole test, I don't have much experience with combat yet. Plus the buggy calculator makes things difficult. I'll work on a fix then get a combat test ready- Give one person a city and some units, give another person some units, let them battle it out. But that's not going to happen quite yet.

I'll also be adding a few things to the rules document soon. Like the order things in a turn happen (Income, upkeep, buildings/units pop, orders), clarification on casters. Also, mathamancers are getting an overhaul since right now they're more or less useless, and Tobias wanted the Retconjurer replaced with a balanced Deletionist. More on this story as it develops.

Something I thought of: In the comic, units seem to be clearly aware of what their XP is, how much they gain for a kill, and how close they are to the next level. Given this, couldn't we make the XP rules public and have side leaders keep track of which-unit-is-what-level? This takes the strain of tracking it off of the GMs and allows for all units to have XP - after all, a side that isn't keeping track is only hurting themselves. It also brings the amount of work a side has to do in line with the amount of work a GM has to do - fairness and all that. I'm also in favor of high-XP units being free of additional upkeep - in Erfworld, leveling up is hard for non-Warlords. The combat system seems too deadly.

Relevant: http://www.erfworld.com/book-2-archive/?px=%2F2009-12-03.jpg

I'd also like to take part in pre-beta battle testing, if a three-way could be arranged.

Actually, I'm going to have to drop out of the test anyways--I'll just hold it up, I'm a bit busy right now. So it's good that Squeejee's volunteered, I guess.

In that case: Prepare to die, Squeejee.

Since you mentioned it, below is a basic turn summary that I used in Kaed's game. I found it wonderful and had everything important.

Sir Shadow wrote:[size=150]Turn 27 Begins![/size]
A new turn begins, just like last turn. Ho-hum. Your mine and gold golem are one turn closer to completion, and sweet sweet schmuckers fill your treasury.

Economic Info:

Spoiler:

Known World:

Spoiler:

So .... are the combat tests taking place?

Nope. I haven't had time to do.. Well, anything really. We could theoretically do a combat test without changing anything, but it's probably better to tweak first. If somebody else wants to pick up where I've been slacking and suggest some fixes in this thread or in another thread, by all means