Phantom Domain Discussion

For the problems about map itself, please comment below the map.
Here we can discuss about the tactic and mod settings.

1st part Personal Profile (Some statements seem to be too complicated because of my poor English. )
There were 4 alliances, being Good, Evil, Neutral, Phantom
Victory Condition: Good-Defeat Phantom and Evil
Evil-Defeat Phantom and Good
Neutral-Defeat Phantom and survive till Good/Evil is defeated.
Phantom- Defeat all non-phantom players.

Player:the-deadly-shadow BH
Alliance:Phantom
Victory Condition:Defeat all non-phantom players
Ability_Lurker:By giving up extra income in SW you can have 2 tokens on Day 5 and every 5 days afterward. You may have extra firepower though. You will get 1 token if you capture a SW city, but your ability no longer works.

Player:H0RSED1K YC
Alliance:Phantom
Victory Condition:Defeat all non-phantom players
Ability_Arms Dealer:For each mod unit sent after you, you got 1 token.

Player:Naegleria GS
Alliance:Good
Victory Condition:Defeat Evil Alliance and Phantom Allaince
Ability1_banker:For every 5 tokens you have, you got 1 token at the beginning of the day.
Ability2_Head start:Your SE Region is unlocked at the beginning.
Ability3_Extra income:Your income from the mod lab will be multiplied by 1.5. (Your final income will be fixed. You got only 1 token if you control only 1 lab)
Ability4_Invincible:When the ability is on(by default) you lose 2 tokens when 1 mod helper unit is sent after you, but the mod helper unit will then be eliminated. You must have tokens to automatically eliminate those units when they turn against you. The order of elimination will go from the cheapest to the dearest. You may turn on/off this ability by giving me a press. But remember that your ability works ONLY WHEN a unit turns against you and after the day I will not delete that unit.

Player:Castanietzsche RF
Alliance:Evil
Victory Condition:Defeat Good Alliance and Phantom Alliance
Ability1_Thief:On day4 and every 5 days afterward you can choose a target player and you can get 1-4 tokens from the player on the next day. The number of tokens your target has will not affect how many tokens you get.
Ability2_Bribery:By spending 1 more token than its original value you can turn a mod helper unit against its master. The master will be informed of the case though.

Player:Tmi489 PC
Allaince:Evil
Victory Condition:Defeat Good Alliance and Phantom Alliance
Ability1_System Error:You get 5 tokens by capturing a mod lab, which will be activated automatically and available for
only once.
Ability2_Hacker:By spending tokens you can make your target player lose tokens. For each token you spent your target will lose 2 tokens. The tokens he lost may exceed his property and you will not be refunded in this case.

Player:lavagainer GE
Alliance:Evil
Victory Condition:Defeat Good Alliance and Phantom Alliance
Ability1_cheater:You will always win the APC lottery no matter where your APC is.
Ability2_cheapskate:All your token purchase and mod helper unit purchase which costs 3 tokens or more will be 1 token cheaper.

Player:liandry BM
Alliance:Neutral
Victory Condition:Survive till someone met their victory condition. Or only neutral alliance survived.
Ability1_Token Monitor:You will be given the number of tokens of every player at the beginning of the day.
Ability2_Observer:You will have a free Reconnaissance Scout on day 5 and every 5 days afterwards.
Ability3_Alarm:You will be warned when a mod helper unit is sent after you. You will know who send it and the unit kind.

so you have 2 phantoms vs 3 evil, 1 good and 1 neutral.
this does not look well balanced. Especially the 1 good player has practically no chance?

I gave GS a good starting advantage, which can make him even stronger than phantom in the beginning
of the game. Unfrotunately he was defeated by BH when BH had only an extra tower...... So the idea failed.

GE and RF fromed a concrete alliance. They two had relatively OP abilities. The cost of redirecting should be more and the prize of APC lottery is too much. The thief ability is a little OP when you have a good luck.

YC chose a strategy of tank spam against PC, and PC was pushed back slowly until YC was rushed by RF.

BM fought for the centre with GE and they both gave up after the activations of piperunners. Then BM decided to mech-spam to take out PC. As a result the defense of PC collapsed.

By the time of deleting, GS was out. GE and BH were fighting in GS territory. GE was colonizing the centre. RF got YC territory with ease. YC and PC were struggling to survive. BM got into the territory
of PC. So I came to the conclusion that people tend not to unite. And this setting should have only 1 phantom for a balanced game id the settings were proper.

That's quite a difference from when I got to play on this map, when there was a lot of uniting going on in the background.
Of course, most of that was morons allying with the Phantom, which resulted in a Phantom win when the last moron teamed up with the Phantom against me for some reason to give the Phantom an easy victory while the last moron realized too late that he couldn't be a co-winner with him and was immediately back stabbed like a moron.

People seemed to be more conservative nowadays......

1st game: phantom domain 2nd
It was played on the old phantom domain beta, and in this game I do find it hard to
reach an elimination. No wonder why Urbani attepted to introduce the APC base setting. Also the purchase list is too cheap for so many labs, resulting in token flooding, which can be fatal considering the opness of 6 tower Javier. To weaken the op mod units, more redirecting abilities can be introduced like what we have in the deleted game.

2nd game: pocket phantom domain test.
A new map after the map editor flaws, Tiny but with everything available.
To avoid having a 10 tower Javier with APC hq setting, the mod has only 4 towers.
Considering the number of labs( and the expensive purchase list inheritted from formal map, mod units are maybe too weak. Time will tell whether this needs a change.

I'm currently playing in phantom domain beta. As the game is in progress I don't wanna tell too much, other players might read.

But it seems very interesting and what I like miost about it is that all players are active and the game progresses very well.

As the game is FOW it is very difficult talking about the balancing.

Players' profiles
In this game Players of Alliance Evil know the identity of each other.
Player: ymouba
Alliance: Evil(Phantom)
Victory Condition: Defeat Good Alliance
Ability_Thief: You can steal 0-2 tokens(random) from a player on day 5 and every 5 days afterward.
Ability_Peace Breaker: On day10 and every 5 days afterwards, to any player without changes in power metre from the last checkpoint, 3 mod tanks will be sent in the name of moderator. The list of target players will be announced on the checkpoint day. You may choose to spare some of them, and the spare list will be announced next day while mod tanks take off. The details of this ability will be broadcast at the beginning of the game as a phantom's ability.

Player:the-deadly-shadow
Alliance: Evil
Victory Condition: Defeat Good Alliance
Ability_Trickster's Poll: On day5 and every 5 days afterwards mod will start a poll. As the host of the poll, you will decide its prize on the day before. The 'prize' is losing/gaining 1 or 2 tokens. You can write an illustration for the poll. If multiple players have same votes no one will get the prize. You will be informed of the result and you can choose to publish the result or not.
Example: (broadcast sent by mod on day5)
Topic: Ability_Poll
Content: Please vote for a country and press me your vote. The country with most votes will receive the prize, which is losing/gaining 1 or 2 tokens. If multiple players have same votes no one will get the prize. Here is some information from the host of this poll:
" "
Ability_Income Boost: You received 1.5 tokens rather than 1 for each mod lab you occupied. The figures will be fixed when calculating the final income on day5 and every 5 days afterwards.

Player: ISurrender
Alliance: Neutral
Victory Condition: Survive till Good or Evil Alliance is defeated.
Ability_Unwelcomed Guest: You can not use the mod services. In return you can not be the target of mod services as well. (You may gain, gift and receive tokens. Other players can not send mod units or activate piperunners against you. Mod can do so however.)

Player:Jackie Milton
Alliance: Good
Victory Condition: Defeat Evil Alliance
Ability_Spy Program: You can choose to monitor the usage of tokens today. This ability can be used every 3 days.
Ability_Mr Anonymous: You can send a free annonymous broadcast every day.

Player: ichbinsehselber
Alliance: Good
Victory Condition: Defeat Evil Alliance
Ability_Early bird: You start with 3 tokens.
Ability_Sacrifice: You can redirect all mod units on the map to yourself at the cost of 1 token.

Player:Tmi489
Alliance: Good
Victory Condition: Defeat Evil Alliance
Ability_Final revenge: You can send a 12-token-worth pack of mod units when you're eliminated.
Ability_Kamikaze: You can freely activate mod piperunners against a player by making yourself a target as well. The ability can be used every 5 days.

Player:CCCP
Alliance: Good
Victory Condition: Defeat Evil Alliance
Ability_Recon Probe: A mod recon will follow each mod land unit you sent. AI is the same, except that mod recon will remain still if the main unit is destroyed.

See also: http://www.takeyourturn.net/t911-phantom-domain-game-2#5286
for discussion about that specific game.

Purchase list will be modified since we have lots of tokens here and 6T mod.
APC HQs will be introduced for easier elimination and special victory condition or something else will be applied to counter the extra towers moderator may get.
I will reconsider the balance issues for 2 evil players.
About useless abilities
Abilities are not necessarily useful. And some are hard to value. I can try to balance them in numbers next time. 13 months ago I got 2 abilities and a neutral identity for being a new player to AWBW. 1st ability is to unlock my SE area at the start of the game. 2nd enables me to transform the next mod unit sent after a target player into a transport unit at the cost of 2 tokens. This is obviously an unwise investment for me to avoid future mod units.

"4 tower test" is a phantom domain session hosted from 2017/02/05 to 2017/09/05.
Player's profile

AceChaos AB
Alliance:Neutral
Victory Condition:Survive until others met their victory condition
Ability_Head Start:Your SE Area is fully unlocked at the beginning.
Ability_Lottery Bonus:You got 1 extra token for winning the APC lottery.

Naegleria BM
Alliance:Good
Victory Condition:Defeat all Evil Alliance players and mod must not have 10 towers or more
Ability_Prophet:You can spend 2 tokens to know a player's alliance since day20 and every 2 days afterwards.
(You can spend 2 tokens to know a player's alliance. It can be activated since day20 and it is availabe every 2 days)
It has a cooldown of 2 days.

StayTech BH
Alliance:Good
Victory Condition:Defeat all Evil Alliance players and mod must not have 10 towers or more
Ability_Healing:You can send a mod APC to repair a target player's damaged APC by joining with 1 token.

ISurrender RF
Alliance:Good
Victory Condition:Defeat all Evil Alliance players and mod must not have 10 towers or more
Ability_Aircraft Discount:Air mod unit token cost-50%(Final price will be rounded)

TacticsCommand YC
Alliance:Good
Victory Condition:Defeat all Evil Alliance players and mod must not have 10 towers or more
Ability_Immotality:After losing your HQ APC mod will deduct 1 token from your account 3 days later and every 2 days afterwards. Mod will start capturing your HQ if you do not have any tokens to be deducted.

Hanzhe^4 TG
Alliance:Good
Victory Condition:Defeat all Evil Alliance players and mod must not have 10 towers or more
Ability_observer:You got free mod lab info on day5 and every 5 days afterward.

Jackie Milton GS
Alliance:Evil-phantom
Victory Condition:Mod gains 10 towers through capping HQ or Defeat all Good Alliance players
Ability_Evil Echoes:You can send 1 free anonymous broadcast every day. It is an ability shared by Evil Alliance
Ability_BOOM:Select a target player and spend 3 tokens. Mod will announce the event and delete the targeted player's APC 10 days later. Of course such a god-tier ability can be used only once and available since day15.

ichbinsehselber GE
Alliance:Evil
Victory Condition:Mod gains 10 towers through capping HQ or Defeat all Good Alliance players
Ability_Evil Echoes:You can send 1 free anonymous broadcast every day. It is an ability shared by Evil Alliance
Ability_Token miner:You got 1 token on day5 and every 5 days afterwards.

The result was a victory of Alliance Evil.

Conclusion: This game to some extent proved that the pocket version map tends to stalemate easily. Therefore after the ongoing game I will try to reactivate the formal version with minimal revisions.
This game is also a perfect example of AWBW's FFA golden rule: The end of diplomacy act is always a backstab. RIP tacticscommand

The large map is somehow restored and a new test is recruiting participants.
https://awbw.amarriner.com/prevmaps.php?maps_id=70198

Mod units are commanded by 6-tower Javier, making them OP against same level units. However, they are no match against higher level units if they don;t have a good terrain. A mod tank can overwhelm 2 tanks, but it is no match against an MD on the city. According to the AI they will ram into the most expensive units able to reach. You may wonder how it is possible in early games to deal with a mod tank, when you're unable to afford a heavy units immediately. This thread aims to inspire you to utilize ambushes to buy enough time for your counters.

The AI regarding mod units is listed below.
Mod helper units will be produced at the facility closest to their target.
Mod Helper units AI: Mod helper units will move towards the mod city in the original start location of the target country until they die.
They will not attempt to refuel or repair and will attempt to attack the unit with the highest cost mod think they can reach within Mod's vision.
Mod will coordinate his units to achieve a better outcome if possible.
Mod piperunner will try to clear the road tile next to mod's subs in the centre when vacant if a mod helper unit is blocked inside the spawn area.

They will attempt to attack the mod units with highest cost. In that case mod units will attempt to be after a tank rather than an infantry when they are both in range. You can choose Mod units' target. The game is FOW and there are many woods. Since mod units have simple AI ambushing tactic is actually available.

Below is an example to ambush a mod tank deployed early(day6). In this pictures mod units are dark while unwaited units are actually yours.




As we can see we won't get attacked if we know what we're doing. Build a path through the wood and mod units will be ambushed. Once you got your bigger tanks they should possess no threats.