Variations on the Tournament Theme

A collection of possible rules variants

Written by Bob Heeter based on Playtesting feedback. Last Revised 20-Feb-98


City Renaming or Signpost Editing:

Some scenarios are too good to be changed, and changing the city names confuses the Remailer history because players no longer know which city is which - at least not easily. Sometimes this is the best way to play, even though it can take some of the fun out of the game if you can't customize your own city names and signposts...

On the other hand, if the cities are numbered so that they can each have a short standard reference, then the rest of the name can be changed at will. This allows players to be much more creative and less constrained in their role-playing.

Multiple Heroes:

There are several possible variants:

  1. In small-to-medium scenarios, players can receive a second hero on Turn 2, but must disband any ally offered. The second hero can only arrive on Turn 2.

  2. In medium-to-large scenarios, players can receive a second hero on Turn 2, and may keep one ally of any type allowed in that scenario. The second hero may not be received for less than 1000 gold. (Warlords doesn't seem to allow it, and neither do we!) The player cannot get a second hero after Turn 2. (If a player misses Turn 2 and is replaced with a sub, the sub can get the second hero on Turn 3, since that's only the second turn that the side actually moved, and it wouldn't be fair to handicap the sub by not letting them have a second hero.)

  3. A third variant is to let each player use their first few moves to simply revert and get a new hero, and not move any units. Then, by Turn 3 or 4, they have 3 or 4 heroes, and everyone can suddenly move, causing all hell to break loose! (The reason for not moving the heroes during the first few moves is to prevent players from coming into contact and to reduce the amount of reverting needed by keeping players from having more than one city until all their heroes are on the map.) The game could be allowed to run a few turns extra since the "start" (of serious movement) is delayed during the reverting-to-get-extra-heroes stage.

  4. A fourth idea involves scheduling the arrival of additional heroes. In this proposal, each player who has over 1000 gold (bare minimum) is allowed to revert and get a new hero *without an ally* on (for example) Turn 6, Turn 12, and Turn 18. (Assuming they do not have 5 heroes already.) By not allowing the ally, the amount of reverting needed to get the hero is reduced tremendously. So getting a 3rd or 4th hero (without an ally) when you have 8 or 16 cities is equivalent to getting the second hero (with your choice of the 8 allies) with 1 or 2 cities. And that's generally do-able, at least once or twice per game. The hero-replacement rules might need to be modified (see below), but one could arrange things so that players would be less likely to get enough of their heroes killed, and the replacement rules would be used less often. The idea of this rule is that it allows the game to run like regular Warlords, where new heroes arrive roughly every 6 turns provided you have enough gold. But the randomness is taken out, so the choice of where to get the new hero could lead to a lot of interesting complexity in the game!

    Elam's Comment: There is only one problem I can see at this point. The advantages of players who go ahead of other players may become much bigger on the turns when new heros arrive. The first player can easily use the arrival in attacking gestures, while those who go last would end up finding out that they lost cities because everyone who goes ahead of them arrived with heros and pounded on them. We could require the heros not arrive at border cities, or require the heros to essentially "wake up" for a turn and not move the turn they arrive.

In each of these variants, the additional heroes must cost at least 1000 gold (which is about as cheap as they can come). Players may not disband or otherwise lose any heroes until all the initial heroes have appeared. In order to minimize the amount of reverting done to get replacement heroes, one may not get any replacement heroes until *all* living heroes have been killed.

Hero-Replacement Variants:

One can alter the hero-replacement rules, and do things like changing the gold limits for Turn Y and Turn Z, not allowing heroes to come with replacement allies, not allowing replacement heroes at all, allowing Turn Y/Z to change when gold *decreases* as well as increases, etc. It's generally good to at least restrict the allowable allies that might come with replacement heroes. This prevents players from deliberately disbanding heroes in order to get new heroes with very powerful allies.

In scenarios with multiple heroes, an additional variant involves the replacement of heroes that get killed. Rather than allowing replacements only after all heroes are dead, one might allow replacements at other times. This is do-able, but the replacement procedure and gold limits need to change, because if you have a hero already alive, all new heroes cost at least 1000 gold. Also, it might make sense to have the rule that the replacement hero was not allowed to come with an ally, to limit reverting. ( If someone has 8 cities and just wants to get any hero with *any* of the 8 allies (or none), but in one particular city, that's the same amount of reverting as a player with only one city getting a hero with one particular ally out of 8. And that's not too much work, as we've seen in Round A. Of course, the extra reverting to replace the dead hero can be seen as penance for getting the hero killed in the first place, too. :) )

Diplomacy Variants:

There are two options so far besides the standard "Limited Diplomacy" rule:

  1. Unlimited Diplomacy: Players can send as many diplomatic messages as they wish, and negotiate any alliances or whatever without risk. All messages must still be sent to all players according to the "No Secrets" rule, however.

  2. Doves & Swords Only: In this variant, all diplomatic communication must take place in Warlords itself, via the "Doves & Swords" system, signpost messages, and city names. Turn-change messages are restricted to the exact content of the Turn Report Template, with no embellishments.

One might imagine allowing diplomacy only in the turn reports, but then the order of play becomes very important in what diplomatic maneuvers are possible, so we don't recommend trying it.

Ruin-Searching Variants:

[ Response by Bob Heeter to a suggestion by Dirk Pellett: ]

>Suggestion for a possible tournament rule change: instead of having a
>hero *always* survive searching a ruin, regardless of the defender, let
>the defender determine exactly how strong a hero must be in order to
>defeat it and get the item.  For example, an orc inhabiting a ruin would
>die to a strength-5 hero, but a dragon defending a ruin would slay any
>heroes below strength 9, hence that particular ruin (stronghold) would
>have a treasure the players couldn't just walk up and grab immediately.
>Getting it would require some strategy, to have enough blessings, battle
>items, and levels.

That's a great idea!  It adds some complexity to the rules, so I don't
want to change the rule now, but it would be a great variant to use
later on in the tournament (along with the multiple-hero rules and
some other ideas.)

[ Additional comments by Gary Best: ]
I like it!  We thought about doing something similar but couldn't figure 
out how.  As an alternate, how about a Hero being able to substitute armies 
for strength points.  So either a str 9 Hero is needed or a Str 5 Hero with 
4 support troops, kindof like the way the game works now.

To simplify things for players, how about a Ruin requires 5 strength points 
to search and a stronghold requires 9.  I think the problem we had earlier 
was that it would be hard to tell afterwards if a player had actually 
visited a ruin with the armies he claimed.  Maybe not include the alternate 
method.  OK, how about his: ruins require a str 5 Hero and Strongholds 
require a strength 7 Hero.  We could allow combat bonuses into this also 
and make the numbers higher.  In any case, the lowest should be 5 so that a 
replacement Hero without any items can still search successfully.  I also 
think it should be set though for Ruins/Strongholds rather than based on 
monster, just to reduce the chance for error.


Limited Quests: (The Turkish Quest Rule)

Quests will be allowed, but players are only allowed to receive Sack-and-Pillage quests. The minimum value for the quest is 900, and the suggested maximum is 1100 (5-10% of all quests are in that range). When the quest is completed, the player may only accept allies as a reward. Only 1 (or maybe 2 depending on the variant) allies may be taken. (This variant works best when the "temple allies" available as quest rewards are not too incredibly powerful.) It's also important to balance the unit costs and scenario gold so that sacking/pillaging 900 is possible but not easy. Otherwise allies would be inclined to collaborate and buy each other quests in order to get more allies. If the cost of the arranged quest is high enough compared to the value of the allies one can get, this will be discouraged. Thanks to Kerem Kandemir and Ali Sertac of Turkey for this idea!

One might also consider allowing the Kill-15-Blue-Units type quests, where your quest involves picking on a particular player and eliminating a certain number of units.


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