Re: Olympia workers and Earning Power

Juris Baidins (baidins@barney.cis.udel.edu)
18 Apr 92 16:01:56 GMT

In article <1992Apr17.163240.1241@cbfsb.cb.att.com> skrenta@cbnewsg.att.com (Rich Skrenta) writes:
>gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) writes:
>> Well, there is one easy way to earn lots of money in Olympia today --
>> kill off lots of newbies and take their money ;-) Perhaps Rich should
>> start off everyone with 5 armed guards or something.
>
>This would just make the carnage 5 times bloodier! I'm considering
>ways to protect new players, but nothing has really gelled for me yet.
>
>So far the idea I like most is to put a protective aura around new
>players which lasted 3-5 turns. If they attacked anyone, it would
>cease, but while they had it, they couldn't be attacked. This would
>only apply to their PC's, not to formed units.
>

I would ask why are current players able to tell who is new and in
fact could even tell if a character was in a particular area (in
Olympia I guess this is a province). Unless a character is particularly
noteworthy (high prestige or notoriety), he should not appear on
someone elses turn report. Alternatively, a character could travel
incognito, trying to conceal his identity. This would be a function
that is turned on or off by player order. Whether or not a character
is noticeable should be up to the player.

In a commercial PBM I am in, characters can be spotted by:

1) Casting a locate on an artifact they have.
2) Casting a locate on a character name.
3) Depending on size of population center, a character may be
noticed, but cannot be seen in a wilderness square.
4) Having a spy poke around for noteworthy characters.
5) If the character is traveling with an army, some information
spells will spot him

Juris Baidins
baidins@cis.udel.edu