The Real Winners in ME-PBM:

    Alternatives to Victory Conditions

    By Greg Schooner


    The purpose of this article is twofold. First to provide recognition toothsome ME-PBM players who don't always make the top three "victory list" at the end of the game despite being outstanding players. Second, to give some alternative viewpoints to how victory might be assessed in ME-PBM.

    With enough interest and feedback from other players, perhaps GSI will consider these viewpoints the next time ME-PBM is due for a major overhaul. To lend some credit to what I'm about to say, let me state up front that I have served as an expert in performance measurements in the U.S. Armed Forces. Victory conditions are just that: measurements of the performance of nations in order to recognize and reward the victors. In this article I will discuss three options for doing this.


    OPTION ONE: KEEP THE CURRENT VICTORY CONDITIONS

    To give GSI credit where it is due, the current victory conditions are not all bad. They do provide a certain level of excitement and competition to the game, and the individual victory conditions provide the additional variety of political objectives.

    However, we've all seen some of the ways in which the current victory conditions can detract from the game as well. Who among us does not remember a game where other nations sat around for half the game doing nothing more than improving population centers, training characters, raising armies with no intent to use them, and raising taxes while the rest of us were taking losses and winning the war? Who has not seen the game prolonged into boredom while nations on the winning side manipulate the system to obtain a winner's certificate? What about the team games where several teams (of the same allegiance) transfer most of their population centers and gold starts one of their nations to ensure a placement in the top three? Surely in a fantasy wargame we should be glorifying those who fight the hardest, not those who manipulate their domestic affairs!

    While prolonging a game may seem at first glance attractive to GSI from a money-making standpoint (more turns played=more fees paid), in the end a prolonged boring game makes for lost player interest at the critical point when old games end and players consider paying for new ones. This is obviously important because GSI (after hearing concern from the players) recently took action to discourage unnecessarily prolonged games.

    It seems appropriate to mention that some players are happy with the current system. The system as it stands encourages a somewhat adversarial relationship with one's allies. It rewards those who manipulate others into fighting the wars while quietly attending to their domestic affairs. It also rewards those who can foresee when the game will end and make that one moment in history the moment when the game will end and make that supply of gold, armies, populace, and skilled characters.

    For the players who enjoy competition against friend and foe alike, the current victory conditions serve fairly well. They force us to make compromises between the goal of winning the war "at all costs" for the forces of good or evil versus self-interested goals (although there is some overlap between the two objectives). Some players may like this compromising position.

    I would like to argue that there is another type of player as well; which is perhaps the majority of players. This other type of player enjoys the thrill of conquest, an exiting game, and the pleasure of team camaraderie. Speaking for myself and several of my gaming colleagues, many of us are willing to wait weeks or months to coordinate a new game so that all positions can be filled with known "team players". Otherwise, we have to take the risk of obtaining frustrating allies.

    A separate issue is realism. True, a nation ending the game with a large standing army, powerful characters, many population centers, and lots of gold is likely to find itself in a powerful position. But surely, the "powers that be" in either allegiance (Sauron or the wise among the free peoples) would give some favor to their most effective and devoted servants who turned the tides of war, regardless of how decimated their forces had become. These nations would certainly be the ones most quickly rebuilt after the war, the ones provided with the most additional resources, and the ones most in favor with the supreme powers of their allegiance.

    One doesn't have to look too far in military history to find examples of supremely talented generals who returned from battles again and again with decimated forces, only to be re supplied with the largest remaining army (and the most resources!) because they were recognized for their talent, loyalty, and efficiency. Of course, the general who was previously in charge of that large army was relieved of the command, not rewarded for sitting around with a large army.

    Likewise, rulers are not likely to be rewarded by the "powers that be" for running around hoarding the holdings of their allies (either by deceit or by design from fellow teammates) to the detriment of focusing on the war effort. Yet these behaviors are currently rewarded as victory.

    An alternative measure of victory might then reward those who efficiently remove their enemies from the board and win the war for their masters. This could be approximated by taking the current victory conditions and altering them to reflect damage done to the enemy. That is, the conditions might look something like this:


    OPTION TWO: VICTORY BASED ON DEFEATING THE ENEMY

    POPULATION CENTERS:

    Total number and size of population centers taken from the enemy (only once per hex; no bonus for taking, losing, and retaking the same population center), whether it be by army or emissary.


    ARMIES:

    Total number of enemy troops destroyed (troop type, training, weapon, armor, and morale rank). This would include destruction in battle, and possibly also destruction by eliminating or capturing an army's last commander via challenges, assassination and kidnaps, curses, etc.


    CHARACTERS:

    Total number of enemy characters destroyed, and the combined skill ranks of each. This should also include characters held hostage. For international "curses squads", the points could be divided among the nations on the basis of health points inflicted.


    WEALTH:

    Total gold stores stolen from the enemy, possibly also production stores sabotaged and production stores captured when a population center is taken or an enemy army disbands and abandons its baggage train.

    The latter criteria, wealth, is one I especially have difficulty with in the current system. Gold stores are a temporary phenomenon, which can easily be taken away, rebuilt, and manipulated in the short term. Gold stores do not necessarily indicate the (long term) economic strength of a nation. The potential revenues of a nation (plus production, perhaps) are a more accurate estimate. For example: revenue at 100% tax or at current tax rate, plus gold production and perhaps other production values.

    Since this is fairly similar to the population center victory condition, I would argue that if the current victory conditions are to be kept, we could still remove the "wealth" condition, and either leave it as "population centers" only, or change to the "potential revenue" condition I've just suggested.

    Having both wealth and population centers as victory conditions is repetitive to the point that a nation could have a fair chance of placing in the top three positions by doing nothing but improving population centers, raising taxes, selling production, and hoarding gold for the whole game. As it stands now, these duplicative victory conditions state that a nation's economic wealth is as important as both its military force AND the strength of its characters put together!

    The option I've just suggested is of course a little more difficult to track than the current victory conditions. That is, under the current conditions GSI only needs to tabulate the current holdings of each nation in terms of population centers, gold stores, armies, and characters. With this option, throughout the entire game GSI would need to keep a running log of population centers taken from the enemy, characters killed, and so on. However, GSI currently does this to track things like "most kills" and "ritual character terminations".

    Surely there are many other good but not too complicated ideas out there about victory conditions, of which I've heard a few. Here's one I heard suggested by another player:


    OPTION THREE: CUMULATIVE VICTORY CONDITIONS

    Start each nation at zero victory points; points are earned for each population center, troop, gold coin, and character point gained past the initial holdings. While this would make it easier for, say, the Woodmen to compete with the Noldo Elves in terms of characters and population centers, it has, in my mind, two main shortcomings.

    First, it still doesn't prevent teams from transferring most of their holdings to one nation to bolster victory conditions. This could be prevented by using the idea from option one where points are only awarded for gains taken from the ENEMY, not from allies.

    The second problem is that some nations, such as the Witch King and Northern Gondor, are more or less doomed from the start to take losses from their initial holdings. Other nations, such as the Noldo Elves or the Blind Sorcerer, are in most games relatively secure from conquest and free to build and bask in luxury rather than serve in the war effort, at the whim of the ruler. Surely this sort of behavior would not be rewarded by the higher up "powers that be" at the conclusion of the war, nor would this behavior place a nation in a very friendly post-war political and trade environment with its "allies". This problem could be dealt with by taking this into account for each nation. for example, we might count on Northern Gondor losing hexes 3026, 3028, 3020, and 3716 as a minimum and not calculate these population centers into the initial holdings.

    Another possibility could be to provide these "front-line" nations with additional individual victory conditions, or to make the ones that they have more easily obtained. Which brings us to another topic:


    ALTERNATIVES FOR INDIVIDUAL VICTORY CONDITIONS:

    I have no particular quarrel with the individual victory conditions as they stand. However, they would be so simple to modify that it is hard for me to resist the suggestion that there could be more variety in them. The possibilities are endless, and not stating all of them in the rulebook would add an element of interest to the game. This would also make the commonly (but not always) useless "uncover secrets" order more interesting. Individual victory conditions could be added to and modified more easily, I imagine, than the encounters which GSI already changes from time to time.

    An even easier course of action would be to basically keep the same individual victory conditions, but substitute (or add) just one "wild card" victory condition per nation to add a little "spice". For example, the Blind Sorcerer could have a "wild card" victory condition related to intelligence gathering (think of all of the Blind Sorcerer's mages with intelligence gathering spells). Another example: the Cloud Lord could have a "wild card" to provide a certain amount of "foreign aid" to allies over the course of the game due to the Cloud Lord's fairly secure position and relatively solid economic base (plus gold thefts!).

    As I've just demonstrated, the individual victory conditions could provide additional excitement by being tied more closely to each individual nation. more examples: Cardolan, a coastal and river nation with a fairly small starting navy, might have the goal to hold the largest navy in Middle Earth. The Woodmen could wish to personally remove the Dragon Lord from his capital at some point in the game. The Noldo could aspire to place, at one time or another, an army of some strength inside of Mordor. The Long Rider might strive to move his capital to some specific (off-map) location deep in enemy territory where he can recruit and move armies without using a navy. The Dragon Lord might seek to maintain his capital and an army on the northern third of the map. The "cavalry nations" (Eothraim, Long Rider, etc.) might wish to hold the most cavalry forces, the most mounts in stores, or the highest production rate of mounts, and so on.


    "ORDER-BASED" VICTORY CONDITIONS

    I've also heard players suggest that victory be tabulated cumulatively based on the success and failure of a nation's orders. In this option, most orders placed would result in a variable amount of positive or negative victory points rewarded. For example, attacking an enemy army and winning might be worth 50, guarding a character or recruiting troops might be worth 10, losing a population center in a combat might cost you 65, and doing a nation transport would be worth zero. While this option has probably worked well in some games, in ME-PBM it seems to obviously favor those nations who start with powerful characters. How could the Woodmen or the Harad, who have to slowly train their characters before they can accomplish any difficult orders, hope to compete with the Noldo or the Dark Lieutenants in this regard?

    I mention this option mainly for completeness, and do not consider it one of my three major options. However, in some modified form it may have potential. it does do one thing which none of the other options do: it allows for the importance of succeeding in "intelligence-gathering" orders, which could be reward just like all the other orders (see section on intelligence gathering below).


    WHAT'S MISSING?

    What is missing in all three of these options? Probably more than I immediately realize, but two missing elements come immediately to mind. First, what is the reward for the player who uses the "intelligence game" to great effect in winning the war? That is, the person who is always locating artifacts, characters, capitals, and so on instead of training characters or raising armies and population centers? What Lord of Darkness or Lord of Light would claim that the intelligence-gathering activities in a war are not a powerful instrument for victory?

    True, intelligence gathering occasionally helps a nation to accomplish victory under various aspects of the three options discussed here. But often intelligence gathering merely helps the team to win the game while penalizing the individual nation, in terms of victory conditions, for not being more selfish. The truly effective "intelligence players" wield power by disseminating information to the whole team, not by hoarding it to themselves. Therefore, other nations may be the beneficiaries (in terms of victory conditions) of the intelligence gatherer's activities. This suggests the need for one additional victory condition:


    INTELLIGENCE:

    A composite score made up of total number of double agents, number of enemy hostages interrogated, number of enemy characters picked up on "scout for characters", artifacts located, characters successfully "counter-espionaged" back from double agent status, recons and scrys performed, secrets uncovered, and so on. Obviously, this score would be a little "messier" to assess than some of the other victory conditions, but with a little thought a good measure could be developed which at least approximates the worth of a nation's information gathering activities and rewards it accordingly.

    The second missing factor in all three options is something I like to call "team play". Just as essential to war fighting as "Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence" (known as C3I in today's military) is the teamwork of those who carry out those commands with those communications based on that intelligence. Where is the reward for those nations who help win the war by strategically giving population centers to allies, coordinating the communications and actions of the team, giving artifacts away to nations that can make better use of them, giving gold to nations in economic trouble, and so on?

    Under the current conditions, this sort of effective teamwork is penalized by giving victory points to the nation begging for help, and taking victory points away from the nation providing assistance. Surely in a world political environment, reality is exactly the opposite of this! The weaker nation begging for help would lose favor and status in both the world political environment and (say) Sauron's eyes, and the strong nation would gain favor for showing supremacy via giving aid to a weaker nation!

    The problem, of course, with giving victory points based on "team play" is that it is very difficult to assess. I heard one player suggest voting for the team winner, but this, I think, would very likely disintegrate into political manipulation (especially in team games) and uninformed bias. For example, a Cardolan player is likely to think Arthedain is a better team player than the Northmen, because Cardolan usually coordinates much more with Arthedain. Some nations hardly ever need to talk with certain other nations.

    The option I've suggested, "victory based on defeating the enemy", while it may not directly reward team play, is at least neutral to the issue. To the contrary, the current victory conditions often penalize a team player for supporting his or her allies, while boosting the victory conditions of the nation receiving the support.


    FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS:

    Hopefully this article has served to encourage ME-PBM players to congratulate the "real winners" among us, and to not assume that those with the most victory points are worthy (and vice-versa!). Most players probably recognize the truth of this, and some may play the game according to their own ideas about victory.

    However, as we say in performance measurement, "Tell me how you measure and reward your people, and I will tell you how they will behave". Measuring and rewarding people (and nations!) in an unrealistic manner will always drive unrealistic behaviors and result.

    I can only ask that players and GSI give thought to "victory based on defeating the enemy", "cumulative victory conditions", the problems with rewarding wealth twice (gold stores and population centers), and the difficult issues of rewarding "intelligence gathering" and "team play". I also hope that more players will make their thoughts known to GSI, and that GSI will solicit more and more the feedback from the players.

    As far as actually inciting a GSI-sponsored reconsideration of victory conditions, obviously it is easier to critique someone else's efforts than to design and implement a whole new system into the already existing larger system of ME-PBM. GSI will decide what is worth its effort; hopefully (for the sake of both GSI and the players) their decisions and actions will reflect the desires of the majority of ME-PBM players. Some of these options would certainly be easier than others to implement. In any case, major changes cannot be expected overnight, so until then:

    A salute to the "real winners"; your reward is in the pleasure of playing and in the minds of those who recognize you for who you are!

    (With special thanks to GSI, Scott Baltes, Dena Kiker, Bobby Rigel, Mike Pace, Jeremy Richman, and others who helped to develop these ideas; and thanks to Smeagol (aka Slinker and Stinker) my pet ferret who helped me by pouncing all over my keyboard as I was typing this).


    Click Here to return to the GSI Article Index