Wouldn't rolling a dice be a better way to fix the honour bid.

1. All players make their bid from 1 to 5

2. One 0 to 5 dice is rolled (you can get them pretty easily) https://www.tarquingroup.com/dice-games/specialty-dice/black-and-red-dice-0-5-set-of-50.html

3. All player compare their bid to the roll. They then lose or gain honour to the honour token pool not between each other.

4. Players draw the number of cards equal to their bid.

Let's run a quick example.

3 players bid, player one bids 1, player two bids 3 and player three bids 5

The dice roll is a 3

Player one. Draw 1 cards and receives 2 honor

Player two draws 3 cards and doesn't lose or receive any honour

Player three draws 5 cards and loses 2 honour back to the token pool.

I like this idea better than the restrictions placed on bidding in the rules.

I think this would work as all players are against the single roll. The only difference would be when the dice rolls 0 and would drain some honour from every player or you could say that if the dice rolls a zero that mean all playera lose zero honor, that would work quite nicely too.

10 hours ago, Maffster said:

Wouldn't rolling a dice be a better way to fix the honour bid.

No. Adding more randomness to a tactical game is not good. It subtract from the skill needed to win and adds to the luck needed to win.

Maffster, while you have made many suggestions regarding various ways to play multiplayer, this one I really like. Honestly.

Only issue I have is the introduction of a ? into the workings of the honor bid dial, which would be too much of a stretch for FFG to go with.

You have a good starting point imo.

I especially disagree with Tabris above and, on the surface, don’t believe a randomness factor for the Honor bid would break multiplayer - it would actually elevate the overall difficulty of planning a deck, interacting with the other players in the match, and possibly not allow a given player to steamroll the ‘weaker’ player(s) due to (specifically) the randomness of the Honor bid ? roll. (unless, of course, I’m not thinking progressively enough about how much of a stranglehold a turn to turn die roll can have in a multiplayer match - which is quite possible)

30 minutes ago, LordBlunt said:

I especially disagree with Tabris above and, on the surface, don’t believe a randomness factor for the Honor bid would break multiplayer - it would actually elevate the overall difficulty of planning a deck, interacting with the other players in the match, and possibly not allow a given player to steamroll the ‘weaker’ player(s) due to (specifically) the randomness of the Honor bid ? roll. (unless, of course, I’m not thinking progressively enough about how much of a stranglehold a turn to turn die roll can have in a multiplayer match - which is quite possible)

A die will introduce an element of randomness that can give you a victory or a defeat without no skill involved whatsoever.

Let’s say a player is at 21 honor. Now, other players normally have to bid 1 to ensure that player doesn’t get an honor victory. The die rolls a 5. That player wins. No skill, no strategy, just sheer luck, without any possible response from any opponent.

Now let’s take the “0 means no honor loss”. So I bid 1, you bid 5, die rolls a 0. There’s no gain for me, and a lot for you, just because (again) of sheer luck.

Or players rolling the die into a dishonor loss just because, and there’s nothing they can do.

It messes with bidding low to deprive your opponent of honor. There’s no reason in fact to bid low. With three or four rolls per game, you can get lucky enough to not lose a single honor.

A bad idea, and I’m pretty sure the majority of the players would agree with me.

23 minutes ago, Tabris2k said:

A die will introduce an element of randomness that can give you a victory or a defeat without no skill involved whatsoever.

Let’s say a player is at 21 honor. Now, other players normally have to bid 1 to ensure that player doesn’t get an honor victory. The die rolls a 5. That player wins. No skill, no strategy, just sheer luck, without any possible response from any opponent.

Now let’s take the “0 means no honor loss”. So I bid 1, you bid 5, die rolls a 0. There’s no gain for me, and a lot for you, just because (again) of sheer luck.

Or players rolling the die into a dishonor loss just because, and there’s nothing they can do.

It messes with bidding low to deprive your opponent of honor. There’s no reason in fact to bid low. With three or four rolls per game, you can get lucky enough to not lose a single honor.

A bad idea, and I’m pretty sure the majority of the players would agree with me.

I was suggesting this for the multiplayer that locks players into bidding 2 or 4.

I thought this system would allow players the freedom to make any bid from 1 to 5 fairly.

When I gamed multiplayer (group of 4 players) the issue of gaining or losing Honor was the second highest factor of stabilizing the game (after the declarations of attacks by players, which was difficult to implement in a balanced manner). What we came up with actually worked for us and our few games ran rather smoothly, but did require a lengthy amount of time per each players’ actions. However, the gain or loss of honor wasn’t as critical as you might expect, as the great majority of the time we simply ran out of characters to attack/defend with before any other worries came into play. (I posted a thread on our multiplayer rules here on these forums and can dig them up for comparison if need be)

Judging by the few games that we played, the loss/gain of honor was not the key to the game as much as breaking opponents’ provinces were, and the ‘ganging up’ on the weakest player (player with low number of characters or low Honor count or not enough Conflict cards in hand, etc) was what made the multiplayer game not fun; it was too easy to sit back and “vulture” an opponent who either had a bad flop, or had 1 or 2 characters on the board, or had been involved in a costly conflict that used up 3 - 6+ cards, and so on... THIS is where we thought the multiplayer rules needed a suitable boost/re-working.

Thus, I still hold to the belief that a random element to the Honor dial (as proposed by the OP) might work if given a chance. It still needs refining and playtesting, such as anything else in card gaming. But to shut it down without any experimentation is not the attitude I would take. I don’t know if a majority or minority of players would agree with my approach, but I’m glad I shared. ?

4 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

I’m  glad  I shared 

Me too!

5 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

When I gamed multiplayer (group of 4 players) the issue of gaining or losing Honor was the second highest factor of stabilizing the game (after the declarations of attacks by players, which was difficult to implement in a balanced manner). What we came up with actually worked for us and our few games ran rather smoothly, but did require a lengthy amount of time per each players’ actions. However, the gain or loss of honor wasn’t as critical as you might expect, as the great majority of the time we simply ran out of characters to attack/defend with before any other worries came into play. (I posted a thread on our multiplayer rules here on these forums and can dig them up for comparison if need be)

Judging by the few games that we played, the loss/gain of honor was not the key to the game as much as breaking opponents’ provinces were, and the ‘ganging up’ on the weakest player (player with low number of characters or low Honor count or not enough Conflict cards in hand, etc) was what made the multiplayer game not fun.

One of the problems we ran into while multiplaying was, precisely, how easy it was to lose to dishonor, due to the amount of unopposed conflicts. So a player not being able to recover from that just because the die rolled low seems punishing.

5 hours ago, LordBlunt said:

I don’t know if a majority or minority of players would agree with my approach, but I’m glad I shared. ?

I don’t want to be a díck (although I’m gonna), but judging for the amount of downvotes Maffster’s comments got in the reddit thread proposing this idea... I’d say most people don’t agree.

12 hours ago, Tabris2k said:

One of the problems we ran into while multiplaying was, precisely, how easy it was to lose to dishonor, due to the amount of unopposed conflicts. So a player not being able to recover from that just because the die rolled low seems punishing.

I don’t want to be a díck (although I’m gonna), but judging for the amount of downvotes Maffster’s comments got in the reddit thread proposing this idea... I’d say most people don’t agree.

Yeah not one of my most popular ideas it seems

But I'll also guess that the idea was beaten up and left for dead without a single gameplay test being actually done.

12 hours ago, Tabris2k said:

One of the problems we ran into while multiplaying was, precisely, how easy it was to lose to dishonor, due to the amount of unopposed conflicts. So a player not being able to recover from that just because the die rolled low seems punishing.

V`1.1 of the Beta Rules has removed the honor loss for unopposed conflicts.

20 hours ago, Bayushi Shunsuke said:

V`1.1 of the Beta Rules has removed the honor loss for unopposed conflicts.

Really? That’s s big step in shaping what multiplayer will look like in the end.

Yep... the easy target is still easy target but it is easier to stay in the game.