Nexus 0.95  by Jason O'Rourke
jor@csua.berkeley.edu

Play rules:  No diplomacy!  Active cities, intense combat off!, Quests on (?).
Computers should be warlords or random character lords at minimum.  For two
or three players, each should be alone in that third of the world.  (ie, be one
of NorthCal/SoCal, Americans/Confederates, Reds/Whites).  If there are
4 people, the two strongest should be playing in the same zone.  At 5 players,
the worst player should be alone in the zone.  Red is probably the easiest
side, not so clear which are the hardest.

When I had heard of the scenario builder coming, this was the one that came
to mind.  One city as the crossroads to the world.  No flying beasts, unless
a hero is Very lucky at a ruin.  This makes the middle city very important,
and makes for very large battle groups (40 on 32).  Also, since you have
a single road as your front, you need not defend in the interior.  And
hopefully, this will lead to quicker turns.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make 6 roads hit the city separately, so I settled
for three thirds of the universe.  I am also having problems with the ruins.
Sometimes a side gets 6 as it should, sometimes as little as 3.  Seems to
have something to do with normal ruins vs strongholds.  And sometimes a player
will just rack in gold, without any goodies instead. I'm considering losing
the ruins.  Another problem is that I can't always get the right unit
defending the neutral city.  The nexus should always have a lizard, but once
it had but a light infantry.  I had to remove other army units, lowering the
strength of the city to 1.  Other important cities in each zone are easily
taken because of this same trait...sometimes active cities don't pick the
strongest unit.

Testing:  I have only one person to play with, so I could only true 2 humans
or no humans.  I suspect the game is best with 3 or 5 or 6.  (4 bad because
two human are significantly weaker than the other 2).  The computer does seem
to understand coming toward the hub, but not well enough to be anything but a
hindrance.  If in a 3 or less player game, I think players should be allowed
to switch to playing the computer opponent in their zone if a tragedy (dead
hero) happens by TURN 5.  Other possible rules:  Humans can only take
computer cities that are defended.  This was a problem early when I still have
a nation starting out with a wizard.

Units: I used the normal set from WW2 but made these changes.

Dragons -> lizards.  -3 to enemy.  Very good city defender.  considering
        changing to -2.  Cost 99 to make, and 49 per turn to maintain.
        Only available in nexus, take 5 turns to make (I want to increase
        this to 7 or 8).
Archons -> lost wings.
Pegasi  -> Stallions.  lost wings
Griffins -> Pit bulls.  lost wings
wizards ... lost mobility
bats -> gimpy bats.  lost wings, more distance.
3 of the hero artifacts changed from wings to boots.

Take a look, send me comments.




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