In this case, I'm thinking that organizing the starting positions into groups of 3- essentially for the 8-player format- might work best. Then setting the max number of groups per player to 1, that way in all types, 2-player thru 8-player, each player would start with 3 regions. This would eliminate any chance of dropping a bonus and also provide a relatively balanced game for any number of players.
Ender, from your experience does this sound like the smartest route to take?
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cairnswk wrote:My bad, i left a copied fence on his property ... he has access to B13.
Aheh... whoops, yeah B13. That's what I meant. Must've hit the '5' key by accident.
cairnswk wrote:Understand. the good Reverends, no probs.
cairnswk wrote:I'd be happy to make that a +6/7 to make it worthwhile rather than drop it.
Awesome. I was about to say that +6 for 7 Accused was too high of a payout, but then I realized (again) that Judges can bombard any part of this bonus.
cairnswk wrote:But with the judges, there are two starting positions in town. If there is a battle over them and one player wins, that could become an easy bonus to attain even with such a high number of neutrals to conquer. So my question is:
should the judges bonus be made less accessible with a fence between Gedney and Hathorne?
Hmmm, well there are a couple of things to consider here.
First, if the starting positions are grouped as mentioned above, then the starting positions in town might not be dealt out in every game except for 8-player games. Also, they would be grouped with other regions that would almost certainly provide easier and better bonuses to grab (less neutrals and a higher payout). At +2 for 20 neutrals, it's a very hard sell if I was playing the game. I'd definitely want one Judge, so that I could disrupt Accuser +Accused pairs of other players and have an outside shot at the Witch Hill + Prison + Hanged bonus. But no more than that.
Second, the Reverends can bombard the Judges, which makes holding all of them more difficult. Even if I didn't start in town, I'd still be able to disrupt that bonus from a Reverend. I honestly don't think that the Reverend bombardment ability will come into play too often, but when it does I think it will be used against a player who is making a nuisance of themselves by bombarding from a Judge. (It's a delightful bomabrdment food chain that you have in this map, btw!)
That said, it's obviously up to you as to how desirable you want the bonus to be, since it won't imbalance the map if it turns out to be undesirable during beta testing. But I have a strong feeling that right now the Judges bonus will be a non-factor.
-- Marshal Ney