Re: unfair starting positions

[Emmanuel Fritsch <emmanuel dot fritsch at ign dot fr>]

"Brandon J. Van Every" wrote :
> 
> I'm realizing this is very unlike the Civ drill, where you actually
> build your own empire and can vouch for its quality to some degree.
> So... is standard Xconq a representative sample of starting position
> problems?  Or has some other game package solved these issues?
> Regardless, what are people's thoughts about these issues?

A game was designed, twelve years ago, in my school, with quite 
good results on starting position. It was very close to standard 
game, but : 

-- capitals were much more powerful than cities, and you had 
several capitals at the beginning. 

-- you started with may other units, particularly troop 
   transport (both sea and air transport) 

-- the presence of ships in your starting unit set, and a reduce 
size for the starting countries leaded the program to place your 
capitals near the sea. 

-- A patch was added to forbidd any capital or independant town 
in contiguity with another capital or town. 

-- some units were added, some modified : 
    -- katalina, an airkraft which transport infantry, with a 
        wide range (30/40 hex).
    -- torpedo which sinks ships. 
    -- bomber were now just able to bomb land units, and with 
        lower efficacity, ships and transport the bomb but not 
        infantry. 
    -- cruiser was splitted into a cruiser and a battleship, 
        Battleships were better against land units (particularly 
        against coastal cities) but easily sunk by subs and very 
        expensive. 

That was a great game. 

Except the patch, all ideas given here are easy to implement 
back to Xconq. The first three points, plus katalina, give 
a much better balance in starting position. 


a+
  manu