BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Greentick, I don’t really like the idea of dynastic benefits tied to a past dynasty. It feels a bit exclusionary to new players, and will often require balancing dynastic rules around this potential transfer of resources.

Now that I’ve had a bit of experience with the mechanic, I think that it may enhance the dynasty where the Favours are awarded, but that it tends to cause problems in the subsequent dynasty, when the Favours are used. So I’m mildly in favour of repealing it, but could easily be persuaded otherwise.

I agree that this is a good time to consider repealing it.

One way in which this CFJ could potentially be improved: as it’s currently written, if I turn Favours off, it’ll break the CFJ (and of the two dynastic themes I’m considering, one would prefer it on, but the other really wants it off). So it’d tie my hands a little less if the CFJ is written to work regardless of whether the rule is active or inactive.

Oh, yeah. Screw Favors.

It was worth giving them a try, but it does feel like they aren’t really working.

I think there’s a fundamental feedback loop problem in the fact that Emperor-held Favours are objectively better for everyone than non-Emperor ones. Once someone has sold a Favour to get ahead, they’re now the best player for everyone else to buy further Favours from (because if you help kingmake the lead player even further ahead, you’re more likely to get an Emperor Favour out of it next dynasty; if you try to kingmake someone else and they come second, you risk getting a weaker Player-Favour) and the seller loses nothing by selling those favours if they win (because Emperor Favours cost that Emperor nothing).

It’s also felt like an awkward constraint on dynastic design. Both in avoiding simple low-number numerical stats because Favour-owing players will probably vote against them, and in having to be constantly on guard for “what if an Imperial Favour was cashed in immediately at any point” loopholes in otherwise carefully structured dynasties.

The combination of those two things probably makes Favours too hard to balance. Although Imperial Favours could be weakened to be closer to the non-Imperial level, the usefulness of them is ultimately up to whatever dynastic rules get written in the subsequent dynasty.

The fact that I could’ve just gotten jumble to give me 5 favors last dynasty in order to get a huge leg up in this one certainly speaks to their issues. I think Kevan hit the nail on the head when he talked about favors not even necessarily actually costing an incoming emperor anything. I’ve kinda come around on the idea of a metacurrency that can be used to reward people who get close to achieving victory but don’t, but if anything favors have the opposite problem in that they just reward the cabal members even more.

that being said… did this have to be a CfJ? no favors were used last dynasty so ais doesn’t have to keep them on. feels like we could’ve done this by proposal.

all seems fair to me, it was an interesting experiment in interdynastic continuity & alternate objectives while it lasted :0

(plus, aside from its native environment of getting 8 other players invested in a 1v1, i feel like the rule thrived the most in josh’s most recent dynasty, when it was mostly overwritten in favour of dynasty-specific mechanics! that says something for sure)