Congratulations JonathanDark.

This dynasty was a bit of an interesting one, and I think there were enough pieces in play that victory could honestly have gone to anyone who had enough support. I probably wouldn’t object to future dynasties having random starting values, but not as a frequent thing.

I’d personally been planning to unidle at a key moment to swoop in and claim victory when the king’s health looked shaky, but I’d been expecting that to take until the new year. Still, I’m happy to see that it was my proposals (that of the Kitchens, and of the Land Owner) that led to victory, even if I didn’t get to abuse the rules myself.

I was the same, SB; I tried to signal that I was unidling only to oppose Ear of the King (so as to keep the threat of a victory-from-idle from the active players) but it was enough to get JD to call in his chit.

I really have to thank Clucky for this victory. He suggested the steps and worked hard on the math and timing. The irony is that he doesn’t believe in cross-dynasty favors, but if he did, I’d owe him one for helping me to the finish line. If this dynasty had gone on longer, there’s a number of things that other players could have done to take me out of the lead, so ending it quickly was certainly in my favor.

I feel bad that the Tyngwall didn’t get a chance to settle into what would have roughly been the game loop. It was pretty close to it at the time.

The random starting values actually seemed pretty good for short-cutting the usual early-game standoff where everyone is too cautious to make the first move in case they end up as an outlier. And the tactical slicing-up proposals played out okay in the long-run - when a rule restricted players based on their stats, the almost-quorate outgroups were able push back with amendments to those rules.

Disappointing to see a second victory in a row pivoting on a secret metadynastic favour, though - that the plan here may well have become untenable if played in a vacuum where its third man had, like Clucky, also been negotiating for a significant chance at personal victory. I do think we need to either rule this kind of thing out, or make it clear in the ruleset that we endorse it, also telling new players about it when we explain victories and mantles to them.

@JonathaDark Even at my most liberal on this I think you either get an equity slice or a cross-dynastic favour, not both. Clucky had his roughly-a-third shot in the three-person cabal and it didn’t come good; I don’t think you owe him anything.

@Kevan

If Josh had wanted to win, we could’ve done literally the same thing, only with the added step of JonathanDark using his extra wealth to bump the Eldest claim down by 15 so that Josh’s Prestigious Estate claim, which he was the sole owner of once Lendun got disowned, was now the highest

Absolutely. Forest would also have been an easily promotable candidate, as second-Eldest, if you’d brought them in instead.

I didn’t mean the plan would have been impossible, just that it may have become less appealing for Jonathan if he’d had to shave off even more of his own winshare (already down to ~64%) to pay for Josh’s assistance as well. At some point the remaining share dwindles enough that the plan might not be worth pursuing. If you’ve got a secret favour chit, though, you can bypass all that.

I do think it’s funny how relevant Eldest ended up being. I put it in as a placeholder to have a claim to build rules around, but I figured that everyone who’s not the eldest would immediately start proposing claims of strength 60, 100, etc.

I think people were reluctant to do that for fear of having a target on their back.

I was surprised that people didn’t make more use of their Resources to manipulate the Claim Strengths. That was what I was fearing the most.

I was considering building a bunch of tracts to spam resources, but I never really did enough to bring that into fruition

would’ve also been helped by the fact that Estate Upkeep is a communal action, which means only one tract could be removed at a time