MP game - "Pantheons" Started

[Pickles]

Summary of the rules:-
2 teams of 5
Inland map Indep 5 site 50% rest default
24 hour quickhost - slowing to 48 hour quickhost when one team wants it to.

We have 2 teams sorted out & nations allocated to teams but one player has dropped so we need a replacement. He is on team B and due to play Jotunhem but I guess there is a choice of 3 nations. Check with the team.
We are good to go as soon as we get a player.

Pickles

back to original post:-

"Hi
We were talking about playing a team game a while ago & have decided to try to set one up.

The basic rules would be standard 50% site frequency, L7 Indeps & 10 HoF.
There would be 2 teams of 3 or 4 or 5 depending on interest.
The map would be a small one that fit all the positions on it – Aran probably unless there were 10 players
Victory would be when only one team had any players left. This should be easier to achieve than a standard victory.
24hr quickhost until one team wanted to slow it to 48hr

I have got one team of Myself, Aku & Boron who are all hardcore but a bit green I would say – ie played intensely but not often beyond turn 40 or so at least MP.

There are many things to be sorted out & up for discussion (including the above)

- A host
- How to choose staring locations – something slightly less random than random would be good
- How to choose nations. We have 2 principle suggestions
---- Alternate choices starting with our opponents
---- We pick our 3 and our opponents choose what they want when they see these.
- Any special rules. Possibly banning some of these nations
---- Atlantis & Ryleh as they make the map choice more complex
---- Deadly themes. Hmm not sure why but they are pain for their neighbours maybe they will ban themselves
- Anything other people hate
- Any other suggestions or requests people have
This is quite preliminary & is a discussion document as much as a game start so what do you think?


Pickles"

[Aku]

Hmm Edi made a smaller Version of the Faerun map. They have starting locations predefined. Let me go find out how many provinces the smaller one is but it may still be too big.

[Agrajag]

I'd really like to play, and Im really green as well =P
Count me in if you can (its night time now, so I'll probably be updated on all the decisions you make after I sleep, unless I will make a late-night check)

[JJ_Colorado]

I've tried a 2 vs 2 multiplayer game and it was sorta fun but you need a big map I think, unless you want the game to end by turn 30. I like getting into the later turns to try out magic and summons, and find that more interesting.

I would suggest possibly a bigger map and maybe a limit on what turn attacks can begin (ex. no attacks on enemy provinces until turn 25). These are just some thoughts.

Regds,
John

[Pickles]

I've tried a 2 vs 2 multiplayer game and it was sorta fun but you need a big map I think, unless you want the game to end by turn 30. I like getting into the later turns to try out magic and summons, and find that more interesting.

I would suggest possibly a bigger map and maybe a limit on what turn attacks can begin (ex. no attacks on enemy provinces until turn 25). These are just some thoughts.

Regds,
John



These are radically different opinions from mine. I find the end game can become a chore & I like fighting* - the sooner the better so I personally want a relatively crowded game. In RTS I really despise no rush rules as they take away some of the tensions of the early game. I think a crowded game means that all of the tech tree is relevant not just the big end level stuff. If the game does end abruptly then at least it has not wasted a lot of time.
Of course if nooone else shares my tastes we could have a pure boomfest.

Pickles

*People not creeps

[The_Tauren13]

These are radically different opinions from mine. I find the end game can become a chore & I like fighting* - the sooner the better so I personally want a relatively crowded game. In RTS I really despise no rush rules as they take away some of the tensions of the early game. I think a crowded game means that all of the tech tree is relevant not just the big end level stuff. If the game does end abruptly then at least it has not wasted a lot of time.

Pickles




took the words right out of my mouth http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
i agree completely with pickles

[The Panther]

Pickles,

The problem with your map choice is too much water plus the fact that it is not wraparound. You might get stuck in a corner and can't get out except to attack your partners. Pre selected starting spots go around this, but I kind of like random starts. The only problem is that you might be surrounded by enemies and the game becomes a 3 on 4 quickly. But that is why you have allies (HELP ME!!!!!)

A wraparound map allievates much of these concerns. So does a slightly bigger map.

I would suggest Inland is perfect for a 5 on 5 (even a 4 on 4) because wraparound maps always play much smaller than their true size. Also, Inland does not have the choke points like Eye does, thus meaning you will quickly find an enemy on the other team if you build more than one scout.

The reason you don't have the rush capability in typical FFAs is due to the fact that you could kill someone but weaken yourself so much that a third guy kills you. It makes it a much more strategic decision about when to delare war, typical of any FFA in RTS like Starcraft.

In your plan here, you always know who to attack. When you see an enemy, you are automatically at war. None of that stuff like, 'oops, I didn't mean to take that province next to your home'. Or, 'I am taking that province there, pretty please?' Nope, you kill or be killed.

That no-rush rule above to turn 25 is totally absurd, by the way. The whole point of your plan is to engage your opponent and ATTACK!

Way cool idea, pickles!

Needless to say, I like this idea a lot. I don't think I am as good as any of the three of you, but count me in anyway.

[Gandalf Parker]

Just to give some ideas for choosing size..
Here is an excerpt from "Map Thoughts"
For a player to capture all of the provinces around his castle as a buffer and for resources, we are probably looking at.. 5? There are 17 nations (at this time) so 5*17 would be 85 provinces. Actually, if you fairly consider the land and water nations then the best map should probably be 15*5 or 75 land provinces, and 2*5 or 10 water provinces, to a total of 85.

So if 5 provinces each at 75 land and 10 water is a small map, then what would be good sized for the others? I guess anything smaller than that would be a tiny map. Plenty of desire for those since many people only want to play with 2-4 nations at a time and dont want them to be too far apart. A small (85 prov) map would be quite a game for only 2 players.


http://www.dom2minions.com/maps.shtml
It also has a link to a page where you can get random maps from tiny to epic sized. Not pretty but they are playable. (I can give some suggestions to pretty one if someone wants it)

[The_Tauren13]

Pickles,
The problem with your map choice is too much water plus the fact that it is not wraparound. You might get stuck in a corner and can't get out except to attack your partners. Pre selected starting spots go around this, but I kind of like random starts. The only problem is that you might be surrounded by enemies and the game becomes a 3 on 4 quickly. But that is why you have allies (HELP ME!!!!!)




once again, i completely agree. inland would work quite well if you want no R'lyeh or Atlantis

Pickles. I would be more than happy to offer up a neutral party for map placement and map choice (even an edited .map file that better supports team play).

Give a shout if you are interested.

[Agrajag]

Just wanted to say some things before I go to sleep;
All of this is supposing I get to be in the game:
1. I'd rather have the death scale nations Banned - they'd be just as harmful to your allies.
2. Wraparound is overall better for alliances IMO.
3. I think you should just let people choose their nation in a common FFA manner, he who shouts first, gets to pick first (and in that case I'd like to try Man =P)

Feel free to call me stupid and kick me outta the game (not that Im in) I won't get offended, too much... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[alexti]

I've never played team game in Dom2, but it was something I've wanted to try for quite a while. Count me in. And I agree with your view on the map size. It doesn't have to be too small, but something under 10 provinces per nations keeps it intense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[The Panther]

I just thought of a couple of other things:

1. Low indies like 3 would really help to get out and fight your human opponents quickly. And you will likely not be able to use a powerful indy province as a buffer to your enemy ever. On indy level 3, any race with any pretender can mow down indies at will early on.
2. Death themes don't need to be outlawed, for your partners might just dismiss you from the team if you select AE Ermor or, even worse, Miasma C'tis. Let the teams decide what they want to allow among teammates.
3. I think the races should be assigned totally random to avoid fights between the teams for pet races. Once ready, just run a random number generator and assign races to people when the game is full. That also gets people away from their personal set strategies and makes them think a bit.

When I think of more, I will post it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Cheezeninja]

i'd be interested in getting in this game too, however the settings turn out. Just in case we end up claiming races i'd like to put a shout in for Caelum as i like them and have never played them MP.

[Cohen]

If when I'll be back the game hasn't started I'm interested in.

[Sheap]

If you guys need a host, I'll do it. If you decide to go with randomly allocated races, I'll randomly allocate the races, too.

[The_Tauren13]

random races would be awesome!!
doubt many people would agree to that... everyone always *has* to play their particular race/theme /threads/images/Graemlins/crazy.gif

[Yvelina]

I would like to play, and I think Tuidjy will join as well. But as for random races, I simply have not played any of the non-human races. I would not know where to start.

[The Panther]

I am just adding up who has shown interest so far.

Definite:
Pickles
Aku
Boron
Agrajag
Panther
Tauren 13
JJ Colorado
alexti
cheezeneninja

Plus:
Cohen - Is out of town until about August 25, which is likely too late for him to join.
Yvelina and Tiudjy - Can't play random races? Don't worry, I have only played 4 races so far on MP and none of these past turn 25. I might get something like Mictlan or Jotunheim and be totally clueless, but so what? It's just for fun anyway. And having partners helping with suggestions would be a great way to learn a new race.

Pickles - You already seem to have enough for a 5 on 5 battle. Tauren 13 and I offer to join your team with Aku and Boron and we could have a team of five dedicated newbies. Tauren and I must be on the same team since he is my teenage son.

You could appoint Agrajag to select the opposing team since he has shown the most interest so far of the various posters on this thread.

I just reread the JJ Colorado post and he says the 25 no turn attack rule was only a sugestion. I apologize for sounding harsh in my reply to that, but I really would not be interested in a no rush rule. I used to join the starcraft no-rush games just to rush like crazy!

So far, I think that everyone is either beginner or low intermediate except maybe for cheeze and cohen. Not sure about JJ's skill level, though.

And I am impressed that people like Zen and Sheap have offered to host/ edit maps/ select races, etc., for us. It shows just how helpful the people on this forum are in general.

Cheers to all.

[Aku]

This looks like it is coming together really well. I also liked the wrap around map suggestion(I think the name of the map is inland?).

For nations that are used maybe have two team captains take turns on choosing nations or something and then they can internally(their team of 5) decide who plays what nation of the 5 picks they got.

Depending on the # of participants and the number and type of teams, the map needs to be chosen after that point.

As for the Team Idea. Perhaps you could Play Emperor variety. Each team has an Emperor (King of the Panthenon) and a Panthenon cannot win if their Emperor is killed. You can place the map and positions to have guardian wings and province neighbors to have an outlet to help each of his wings.

Just an idea. Team games always present/provide interesting setups/games.

[The Panther]

This looks like it is coming together really well. I also liked the wrap around map suggestion(I think the name of the map is inland?).

For nations that are used maybe have two team captains take turns on choosing nations or something and then they can internally(their team of 5) decide who plays what nation of the 5 picks they got.



Yes, Inland. That was the one I suggested in my first post in here. It works well because it is wraparound and has very few choke points. Frequent, wide open battles are to be expected. Not good for water races, though.

And as for picking the races, what is wrong with random? It completely eliminates all arguments. Let Sheap or Zen randomly choose 5 races per side. Then let each team decide on how to allocate which race to which team player.

For example -
Dude! You know how to play Mictlan?
Um, not me. Let that other dude.
How 'bout it, dude?
Well, I would rather not! Maybe that dude over there.
Um, any you dudes care to give it a try?
Sure, I will try it, dude. Three months ago I made a pretender and played 6 turns on SP as Mictlan. I am experienced with it!
Go for it then, you're appointed! Upload that old pretender and let's get started!!!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Cainehill]

And as for picking the races, what is wrong with random? It completely eliminates all arguments. Let Sheap or Zen randomly choose 5 races per side. Then let each team decide on how to allocate which race to which team player.




Then you get to see both how the people are with their nations, and also how they are at teamwork - picking nations that complement one another. Ulm/Arco being a classic example, but also any nations whose mages contrast, or a nation with strong units but horrible scouting teamed with another with weak troops but great scouting / stealth (Pangaea/Caelum for flying scouts, or Ulm, Marignon, etc, for spies).


Sounds like a real fun game; hopefully it goes well, this kind of game would be a welcome change of pace for many people.

[Lex]

count me in! I think this game is a brilliant idea! I'm open to playing pretty much any race as long as I get a few hours to test the hell out of it before uploading a pretender http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

oh, and I think its best if I change my name from "Alexi" to "Lex", since it might get confusing with 'Alexti' in the same game

[Agrajag]

Two more things:
1. I think that just for the sake of order, it would be a nice idea if everyone added their team number (and perhaps their shrapnel name) to their pretender name, for easy identification and to avoid confusions.
2. If you go random - Ermor (and if we intend to use inland - Atlantis and R`lyeh as well) shuold be Banned, Im pretty sure there's no one who wants to play default Ermor and without any deathscales whatsoever (or being forced to play with a really low dominion to avoid friendly-scale-fire.

[Sheap]

Though I do not plan to play in the game, I don't think deathscales should be Banned, just the population-killing themes. There are many nations (Abysia comes to mind of course, but they are not the only ones) that can do well with a death scale of 1 or 2 points, which even if it spreads a little, isn't really going to be the end of the world. It's really the destructive dominions and not the death scale that hurts.

[Pickles]

First more comment

Thanks to Sheap for offering to host & Zen for offering his map choosing talents I am sure we will take you both up on this. (& I was being a bit ingenuous* & relying on the Boards good nature posting like that).

I think I may have sounded a bit harsh to JJ Colorado - a bit of trash talk in there. My apologies I respect your opinion it is just not mine.

I am pretty conservative & so want a game as close as possible to the usual MP so Indep 6 & no extra rules like Zens Emperor suggestion. If this game works then we can try variations (or maybe if it doesn't work!)

I think a wrap round map has gained popular approval and a slightly larger size than my initial thoughts seems OK. In a game like this we will probably start fighting one another before clearing all the indeps unlike standard MP so the map is kind of shrunk. Also I like tough indeps as they form "terrain" that will change over the course of the game I am open to being converted though.

With the themes I do not see the need to ban death themes unles nations are given out randomly in which case banning Ermor is probably a good idea (noone has ever played BE AFAIK). Looks like the water themes are out too as the map will be pretty dry.

Pickles

*or maybe disingenuous I can never figure out which is which.

[Pickles]

There are a number of areas that need finalising

Choosing nations
I think there are two proposals - I am discounting FFA!

A) Random allocation to teams then free allocation to players within teams. (corolary Ermor Banned)
B) Teams alternating picks - to be picked probably by a captain but with the others input

I can live with either so choose to abstain.
I prefer the idea of choosing but it could be hard work! While random could shaft you with unbalanced sides. With 5 nations random is less likely to give an unfair match up plus there is more likelyhood of finding a nation you like.

Independent Strength

A) Low 3
B) High 7

Low will mean they get cleared quickly so allowing concentration on the other players. High means they form terrain & fit the usual MP experience.

I vote for high as this will canalise people and give more decisions - clear them or not which with L3 is not a decision. Plus low will "grow" the map size.

Score graphs
I did not mention these before (forgot)
A) On
B) Off

I do not care either way. The information is less relevant as you cannot do anything about it - you are already picking on your opponents.

Please expresss your preferences

Pickles

[Pickles]

One other point - I do not know how the team members should be grouped on the map. I guess they should all be in contact with one another. This is probably less of an issue on a wrap round map. I was going to abdicate responsibilty for this to Zen who has kindly volunteered to set up positions. However if you have any opinions then please voice them.

Pickles

[Pickles]

Game summary
Rules standard except:-
Indep 3 or 7 to be decided
Site frequency 50
NB HoF 10
Map – Inland
Staling – let your team mates know your password to avoid staling
Nations – No Water nations. No Ermor if nations chosen randomly
Each team will chose a short Pantheon name
Your pretender name should include your Pantheon name
(or some other code to show teamness readily – same initial letter etc)

Team A

Pickles
Aku
Boron
The Panther
Tauren13
(probable Mark the Merciful who I have yet to ask as he has disappeared)

Team B
Agrajag
Alexti
Cheezeninja
Yvelina
Tuidjy (prob)
Lex

Did not actually express an interest but space could be made:
JJ Colorado

Interested but not around just now:
Cohen

I do not know how experienced the B team is. I know we are quite sharky newbs - if we are still newbs even - in Team A. If there are no experienced players in Team B it may be better to swap Panther & Tauren for 2 green players from there. (Mark the Merciful lives in my house so it is too much of a pain to split him from me cf Panther & Tauren)

We seem to have 6 vs 6 too which I believe would fit on Inland.

Looks like we should be good to go in a couple of days - it always amazes me how fast games get going here.

Pickles

[Agrajag]

There are a number of areas that need finalising

Choosing nations
I think there are two proposals - I am discounting FFA!

A) Random allocation to teams then free allocation to players within teams. (corolary Ermor Banned)
B) Teams alternating picks - to be picked probably by a captain but with the others input

I can live with either so choose to abstain.
I prefer the idea of choosing but it could be hard work! While random could shaft you with unbalanced sides. With 5 nations random is less likely to give an unfair match up plus there is more likelyhood of finding a nation you like.

Independent Strength

A) Low 3
B) High 7

Low will mean they get cleared quickly so allowing concentration on the other players. High means they form terrain & fit the usual MP experience.

I vote for high as this will canalise people and give more decisions - clear them or not which with L3 is not a decision. Plus low will "grow" the map size.

Score graphs
I did not mention these before (forgot)
A) On
B) Off

I do not care either way. The information is less relevant as you cannot do anything about it - you are already picking on your opponents.

Please expresss your preferences

Pickles


A (It would be a lot of trouble going for B, and you might disappoint your teammates)
B {I don't care too much, Im green as a bush [Uh... You get my point (BWAH)]}
A (It won't harm gameplay, no one is going to gang up on anyone else... And its always nice to know how everyone is doing, OTOH you might wanna keep this information concealed...)



One other point - I do not know how the team members should be grouped on the map. I guess they should all be in contact with one another. This is probably less of an issue on a wrap round map. I was going to abdicate responsibilty for this to Zen who has kindly volunteered to set up positions. However if you have any opinions then please voice them.

Pickles



Sounds like a good idea.
Though we'd have to arrange the nations first =P




Game summary
1. NB HoF 10

2. Stalling – let your team mates know your password to avoid staling

3. Nations – No Water nations. No Ermor if nations chosen randomly

4. Each team will chose a short Pantheon name
Your pretender name should include your Pantheon name
(or some other code to show teamness readily – same initial letter etc)

5. I do not know how experienced the B team is. I know we are quite sharky newbs - if we are still newbs even - in Team A. If there are no experienced players in Team B it may be better to swap Panther & Tauren for 2 green players from there. (Mark the Merciful lives in my house so it is too much of a pain to split him from me cf Panther & Tauren)

We seem to have 6 vs 6 too which I believe would fit on Inland.

Looks like we should be good to go in a couple of days - it always amazes me how fast games get going here.

Pickles



1. Just wanted to point out that for a 12 player game it is more common to have 15 HOF AFAIK, not that I mind that much, I actually like HOF 10.

2. Obviously!
BTW, there's a nice chance that I'll be away on vacation from end-september to mid-october (~1-2 weeks I think), if it means anything then its from End-Yom-Hakipurim to End-Sukot,

3. Agreed, especially since Ermor being Banned on random choices was my idea =P

4. Agreed, but please stick to RP names, no "Waffle Goodness" Pantheons please.

5. As I said, Im green as they go, my MP expirience includes only the Hard_Slog game, where I play CW Pangea, so its nothing of use to me (And the game is at turn ~30 IIRC).
I wouldnt mind being swapped or staying as is (Though Boron sounds pretty good from what Posts of his I read =P)
We should probably wait to hear from the other player as to their noobness =P

LAST EDIT: Everyone should leave their Emails for easier team communication.

[Boron]

wow only 15 hours away from the board and such an overwhelming response http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I just reread the JJ Colorado post and he says the 25 no turn attack rule was only a sugestion. I apologize for sounding harsh in my reply to that, but I really would not be interested in a no rush rule. I used to join the starcraft no-rush games just to rush like crazy!




uh i loved those north vs south money maps with 10-15 minutes no rush . i always played zerg and exploited the larva-bug http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

hm i would like a map with fixed starting positions so it is like north vs south or east vs west .

karan would be cool for east vs west imho but for 10 players perhaps a bit too small .
i myself would totally prefer no rush for 20-40 turns and a lategame game but i accept all choices if the majority doesn't want this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
for a lategame i think karan / the small faerun would be good

otherwise wraparoundmap . inland would be perfect for a killing field i think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Boron]

B) Teams alternating picks - to be picked probably by a captain but with the others input



i vote for that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


B) High 7




my preferred option


Score graphs
I did not mention these before (forgot)
A) On




i vote for scoregraphs on

[alexti]

I do not know how experienced the B team is. I know we are quite sharky newbs - if we are still newbs even - in Team A. If there are no experienced players in Team B it may be better to swap Panther & Tauren for 2 green players from there. (Mark the Merciful lives in my house so it is too much of a pain to split him from me cf Panther & Tauren)



I suppose I should qualify myself mildly-experienced with half a dozen of MP games I've played/playing.

[alexti]

oh, and I think its best if I change my name from "Alexi" to "Lex", since it might get confusing with 'Alexti' in the same game


It's appreciated, at some point I've thought "I didn't post it!" until I've looked at the name carefully http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Pickles]

Of course he looks like superman & you, well don't

Pickles

[The Panther]

oh, and I think its best if I change my name from "Alexi" to "Lex", since it might get confusing with 'Alexti' in the same game


It's appreciated, at some point I've thought "I didn't post it!" until I've looked at the name carefully http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



Lol, I didn't realize that there were two of you until I read the post from Lex.

[The_Tauren13]

A) Random allocation to teams then free allocation to players within teams. (corolary Ermor Banned)




i vote for this, but i would be interested in playing BE Ermor. so if anyone on the other team would like to shout out, we could go ahead and unban it. otherwise, of course, it does need to be Banned. most people seem to think it is a useless theme.

Pickles: also, if it helps balance the teams, know that i am probably one of the worst players here. i cant even beat the difficult AI.

[Lex]

just a thought (everything that follows is just IMHO):
what bout 3 teams of 4? or 4 teams of 3? If there's more then just two teams, it might create alot more importance in deciding who you need to attack, like normal MP. If we had four teams, we could really roleplay this, by creating faction alliances/treaties, and good'old diplomacy isn't lost from the game, which is a big part of MP.

Anyways, just an idea.. I guess it depends on how 'straight forward' we'd like this game to be.. Two teams would be a simple and bloody clash of two great empires, whereas three or four teams would be a more drawn out, complex comflict.

In reguards to Indy strength, I've tried to think of an arguement for why we should have Indy3: Because we have to rely on military support from other nations, it would be better if there was Indy3, cos this would allow everyone to move into position where they can join a war. cos people far away from a battle front would need to forge a path around friendly kingdoms. I think we should encourage that. Especially since it would then be possible to cut off reinforcements from a particular battle front. This encourages team members to get involved (rather then justify staying out of the war because of their location. I just think that using Indy as terrain isn't as important in a team game cos you're gonna be hit from multiple directions anyways.. you can't rely on Indy to create choke points. And IMHO its much more important to have each team member control the right provinces in order to be effective at striking in unison. This means lots of provinces being used as supply lines (which might even be exchanged between team members).

What d'you think?

Aww, man! Half of the fun is beating up on a God Named "Waffle Goodness" or with a Prophet named "Chicken" and an Ice Devil named "Beer"

It lends creditibility that commercialism really has become a god in our modern age. Also let us not forget that zealots will believe anything. The holy reverend and high priest of blood, glory, and meowmix, voice of Fluffy, benevolent goddess of birds and parrots!

[The_Tauren13]

low indys would be good imo

i think the whole point of this allied game would be that as soon as you see an enemy, you are at war and have no reason not to fight, but making multiple teams would change this, thus, imo, defeating the point of the game

[The Panther]

I thought about this idea of more teams of fewer people.

But even if there is only three teams, you are back to the FFA concept. In other words, you are not automatically at war with a nearby enemy because of the possiblity of the third team swooping in after a big fight and taking the spoils from both sides. You said it yourself, it is more like the usual way of playing the game.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Pickles idea was to try something different, more of a rush type concept. Hence, only two teams.

[The Panther]

just a thought (everything that follows is just IMHO):
In reguards to Indy strength, I've tried to think of an arguement for why we should have Indy3: Because we have to rely on military support from other nations, it would be better if there was Indy3, cos this would allow everyone to move into position where they can join a war. cos people far away from a battle front would need to forge a path around friendly kingdoms. I think we should encourage that. Especially since it would then be possible to cut off reinforcements from a particular battle front. This encourages team members to get involved (rather then justify staying out of the war because of their location. I just think that using Indy as terrain isn't as important in a team game cos you're gonna be hit from multiple directions anyways.. you can't rely on Indy to create choke points. And IMHO its much more important to have each team member control the right provinces in order to be effective at striking in unison. This means lots of provinces being used as supply lines (which might even be exchanged between team members).



This is what I was thinking when I suggested low indys, but you put it FAR more eloquently, Lex.

Putting 6 or 7 indys just because it is 'normal' does not make any sense to me. After all, this idea of allied play is much different than 'normal'. The idea is to fight your enemy, not the neutrals. I would think you need to clear them out quickly to establish communications with your partners.


The main purpose of high neutrals is because the basic game is an FFA and you can frequently use the indys to help your situation.

[Aku]

My vote is for indy 3 because we already know who our enemies already are so we can fight them once we see them.

Two teams want to go at it as soon as possible and indy 3 will fill this nicely.

[Aku]

Also about the nation selection. It may be best with two captains taking turns choosing nations that way each team can try to form a theme they want or balance out their teams playstyle.

[Lex]

k, two teams then!

in order to speed up the process (if it wasn't moving fast enough already) I'd suggest having a third-party select random races for each player. Then if players don't like the race they've been randomly assigned, they can trade with their teammates. This will get the ball rolling for game hosting and start the converstations between team members reguarding playstyles and experience.

I'm all for creating "themed" teams, but we might be here till next week figuring out, post by post, what races to pick that complement our team (especially since we probably aren't experts with all the races). I personally am looking forward to playing a new race. My only request is that we decide the races soon, and then give a day to research/experiment first before uploading a pretender (so our choices are smart ones).

[Pickles]

k, two teams then!

in order to speed up the process (if it wasn't moving fast enough already) I'd suggest having a third-party select random races for each player. Then if players don't like the race they've been randomly assigned, they can trade with their teammates. This will get the ball rolling for game hosting and start the converstations between team members reguarding playstyles and experience.

I'm all for creating "themed" teams, but we might be here till next week figuring out, post by post, what races to pick that complement our team (especially since we probably aren't experts with all the races). I personally am looking forward to playing a new race. My only request is that we decide the races soon, and then give a day to research/experiment first before uploading a pretender (so our choices are smart ones).



Yeah 2 teams for the reasons the Panther noted.

Random allocation to player was not an option - random allocation to teams looks favourite on current voting followed by intra team haggling.

I am just not in that much of a hurry to start to need to rush things. I will give it until about 12.00 GMT tomorrow to allow those people who posted in the middle of my night a chance to comment then we can probably set the thing up. Still seem pretty precipitous to me & there is still no rush to start until everyone is happy with their nation & pretender.

Pickles

[Pickles]

Indeps Nations Graphs

Pickles 7 R Y
Aku 3 C -
Boron 7 C Y
Panther 3 R Y
Tauren 3 R -
????

Agrajag 7 R Y
Alexti 7 R Y
Cheezeninja3 R -
Yvelina
Lex 3 R -
Tuidjy?

Nations c= choose R = random
Here is how I believe everyone thinks - means has not expressed an opinion but has posted.
Until the others reply we cannot be sure but it looks like Random nations & graphs with indeps still to be decided. I give em 15 more hours or so.
(note I have come off the fence)

Pickles

[Pickles]

My vote is for indy 3 because we already know who our enemies already are so we can fight them once we see them.

Two teams want to go at it as soon as possible and indy 3 will fill this nicely.



I think Indep 3 will actually have the opposite effect as you will feel compelled to get them all.

But we will see - well we will see how one indep strength works out.

12 players is more than I really wanted & will surely be unwieldy but we will see how it all plays. I think if I do this again I would make sure I had arranged one team in toto then challenge people to get together another team.

hmm irrelevant musing
wibble

Pickles

[alexti]

I prefer 2 sets of nations to be defined by a neutral party.Then each team distributing the nations between its players as it sees fit. Graphs are ok, considering that with only 2 teams they won't cause any usual problems. Not sure if indy strength will make much difference, though I probably prefer 6 or 7.

[Agrajag]

12 players is more than I really wanted & will surely be unwieldy but we will see how it all plays. I think if I do this again I would make sure I had arranged one team in toto then challenge people to get together another team.



Hehe, I didn't expect so many people as well =P
And if you intend to make another team game, try and invite me please ^^

Im going to sleep now, the only problem is I know that I probably won't have the computer for myself until sometimes late tomorrow...
I'll see how things unfold =P

[The Panther]

I think Indep 3 will actually have the opposite effect as you will feel compelled to get them all.

But we will see - well we will see how one indep strength works out.




Pickles, please elaborate on this. Am I missing something? You will be compelled to get them all in any event just to maintain communications with your team (assuming, of course, preselected starting positions in team Groups).

I suppose if we have random starting positions where you might start near a couple of enemies, then yes, higher level indies will be more beneficial.

Also, with pre-selected starting spots, the need for a wraparound map is much less critical.

As for graphs, definitely yes for me. Since you always know who the enemies are, then the need to hide your stats when leading the game is not so important.

[The Panther]

Lex said:
My only request is that we decide the races soon, and then give a day to research/experiment first before uploading a pretender (so our choices are smart ones).



I could not agree more with this comment, as I for sure will take a race I have yet to play on MP no matter what method we use to decide races.

[Mark the Merciful]

This game books pretty cool, but I think I'm in one too many, already (esp.as large alliances generate a lot of work)

One comment; you might want to think about the balance effect of UlM. It could easily turn into a magic item factory fed by all the gems five allies can send it. Protected by its allies, and allowed to concentrate on alchemy and forging exclusively Ulm could become very gross, and massively boost the side that gets it. I don't think any of tho other races would synergise with alliance play in quite the same way.

Mark

[Pickles]

Quoting Panther re L7 indeps.

"Pickles, please elaborate on this. Am I missing something? You will be compelled to get them all in any event just to maintain communications with your team "

I have had trouble expressing this & it is pregame analysis - something I am prone to but know may well be off the mark (though I took about a decade to figure that out)

Anyway if the independents are weak you will be able to knock them over quickly for little cost in resources & will probably clear them out before meeting your enemies.

If they are stronger you will have to commit more forces to them which is force not available for attacking/defending. Thus you are more likely to only clear a couple of weaker provinces before you have to divert forces to "defence". They will then remain as a strategic option for you later - whether to risk using forces there for future revenues or to keep forces for use against the real opponents.

Hmm not sure if it actually makes any sense - you will probably stop creeping & start fighting as soon as you meet real opposition. Whether this is after you have cleared 3-4 L7 indeps or 7-8 L3 indeps it will be around turn 10. I am not trying to convert anyone I like L7 indeps, it is what I am used to, but I am perfectly happy with L3.

"And what does the Y mean in the voting above?"

Yes to score graphs - noone has said no so they are pretty well in.

Pickles

[Pickles]

Mark the Merciful said:
This game books pretty cool, but I think I'm in one too many, already (esp.as large alliances generate a lot of work)

One comment; you might want to think about the balance effect of UlM. It could easily turn into a magic item factory fed by all the gems five allies can send it. Protected by its allies, and allowed to concentrate on alchemy and forging exclusively Ulm could become very gross, and massively boost the side that gets it. I don't think any of tho other races would synergise with alliance play in quite the same way.

Mark



OK there is now a gap in the lineup. I suggest we wait for Yvelina to see if the mysterious tuidjy is in. If not we go 5v5, if he (or she) is then we need one more.

Ulm crossed my mind too. Not just forging - which could be pretty gross though I dont see forge of the ancients staying up long but the Great Alchemist. Ulm could turn an allied Abysias fire gems into 155 gold per turn - or 80 more than Abysia can alone etc.

I had thought of this as an opportunity but it may be too
strong.

We could ban the Alchemist, ban default Ulm, ban both or live with it.

I would be inclined ban the alchemist as that is a problem from turn 1 (well 2) & so most problematic or both (plus I want to try the other themes!)

Anyone else have any ideas?

Pickles

[The Panther]

Lol, I edited my above post while you were typing this, pickles. I saw in your earlier post that the Y was for graphs and edited my other post to vote yes.

And I had another random thought. (I wonder sometimes how my brain works..)

So far, if you average the indy province levels of people who have voted, you get 5 (which is square in the middle!) Since I think we are all fishing on this because we have exactly ZERO experience with this type of game, then maybe a compromise to five gets us out of this little box.

Assuming we get started soon, then in a month from now, the players in this game can decide if indies were too high or too low. Of course, that has ample opportunity to be yet another endless argument too!

[The Panther]

As for the Ulm thing with forging, I am currently playing base Ulm in one of my MP games. Because base Ulm gets exactly ZERO random schools of magic on the master smith (the ONLY mage it can recruit), then it still has very limited selections of things to build, no matter how many gems it gets. The forge benefit for Ulm is not all that great because you can only forge the same things over and over. No luck pendant even!

Of course, forge of the ancients changes this radically and would therefore be top priority for the enemies to dispel. I could see a team putting over 100 earth gems into that global enchantment and hoping it Lasts for a couple of turns to do mass forging. Still, that is a very high cost for sure and late game only. The other team, which put those gems into powerful golems instead of this enchantment just might have crushed you by then.

Also a rainbow alchemist that never left home would definitely be advantage to Ulm, but it is easy to simply disallow.

And if the team wants to pour mass gems into empowering the Ulm master smith, well then it will take a long time for the forge benefit to break even, especially for only the level 1 skill artifacts. A viable long term strategy, but it will take a while to reap the benefit.

Also, don't forget that ANY earth magic mage from ANY race can build the forge bonus tools, like dwarven hammers, and distribute them to teammates. This actually reduces one major Ulm advantage, the one that it can make a bunch of those things quicker than any other race can. For the team with no Ulm can just pool earth gems into the proper nation and build a bunch of them. You don't have to wait to pile up the gems, only wait for the Construction research. Don't forget that Ulm is a VERY slow researching race because of the high gold cost per base research level (just 5) on its only mage, the master smith. I believe that Ulm is the slowest researching race of them all, everything else being equal.

[alexti]

I thought that looking for pro-Ulm/anti-Ulm strategy could be a fun aspect, but if Ulm is too overpowered, let's ban it. I can't come to conclusion whether it will be too big advanatge for one side or not though...

Also, I'd suggest to leave couple of days between nation assignments to the teams and the start of the game, so that each team can discuss strategies on how to extract the best out of what they got.

[Cheezeninja]

Hmm, i think i tend to agree with using 3 str indeps over high str indeps, as it will allow for quicker and better teamwork. I also favour the idea of randomly pooling all nations between the two sides and allowing people to pick from their teams pool, this will allow people to avoid nations they dont like, hopefully get a nation they do like, and possibly allow team 'themes'.

Quite a bit is possible under teams that might not seem fair otherwise, thats the whole point of teams, acting like a team instead of 5/6 individuals. For instance if your team has multiple air nations you can have 1 team member rush conjuration and then pool gems/items for a truly beefier Air Queen far earlier than otherwise. Quite a few nasty strategies become available.... imagine a whole team of clamhorders, pool gems for wish, wish for gems and distribute the flavours to whoever uses them best. Or you could have mictlan in the back providing a blood economy for EVERYONE... the possibilities for exploitation of teamplay are dependant only on how clever you are.

[Agrajag]

Cheezeninja said:
Hmm, i think i tend to agree with using 3 str indeps over high str indeps, as it will allow for quicker and better teamwork. I also favour the idea of randomly pooling all nations between the two sides and allowing people to pick from their teams pool, this will allow people to avoid nations they dont like, hopefully get a nation they do like, and possibly allow team 'themes'.

Quite a bit is possible under teams that might not seem fair otherwise, thats the whole point of teams, acting like a team instead of 5/6 individuals. For instance if your team has multiple air nations you can have 1 team member rush conjuration and then pool gems/items for a truly beefier Air Queen far earlier than otherwise. Quite a few nasty strategies become available.... imagine a whole team of clamhorders, pool gems for wish, wish for gems and distribute the flavours to whoever uses them best. Or you could have mictlan in the back providing a blood economy for EVERYONE... the possibilities for exploitation of teamplay are dependant only on how clever you are.


Only, its not exploitation, its just smart teamwork!
Alliances are very powerful, but thats the whole idea!

[Pickles]

Ok the votes are in enough to determine so here is the rules set.

Game summary
Rules standard except:-
Indep 5
Site frequency 50
HoF 10
Map – Inland
Score graphs - on
Staling – let your team mates know your password to avoid staling
Nations – No Water nations. No Ermor. No Ulm Master Alchemist .
Each team will chose a short Pantheon name
Your pretender name should include your Pantheon name
(or some other code to show teamness readily – same initial letter etc)

Team A
Pickles
Aku
Boron
The Panther
Tauren13

Perhaps:- AN Other

Team B
Agrajag
Alexti
Cheezeninja
Yvelina
Lex

Perhaps - Tuidjy

Mr Sheap volunteered to host & to pick random nations so please Sheap pick 2 sets of 6 nations & allocate them to team A & team B. You can post them here.

If we have 5 players there will be a spare.
We can then allocate nations to team members.

Once this is done Zen can put them on the inland map in a suitable manner 7 we can start hopefully in the middle of the week.

Thanks again to Zen & Sheap for your offers.

If anyone has strong objections please let me know.
Indeps follow the Panther's very fine suggestion based on the close vote & thus will probably satisfy nooone!

Pickles

[Agrajag]

We need to leave our Emails for easier team communication!
Imagine what would happen after the random teams are "released":
"I claim Abysia!"
"No! You can't!"
"I said so first"
"When two people fight, the thrid gets to keep the prize"
"BLAH BLAH BLAH!!! QRRBIRRBRREL!!!?!!?!!"

So we need to write our Emails down for inter-team communication, see what everyone wants and make a decision (also regarding the pantheon name)

I'll go first guy3pwood (et) hotmail (dot) com.

[Pickles]

Agrajag said:
We need to leave our Emails for easier team communication!
Imagine what would happen after the random teams are "released":
"I claim Abysia!"
"No! You can't!"
"I said so first"
"When two people fight, the thrid gets to keep the prize"
"BLAH BLAH BLAH!!! QRRBIRRBRREL!!!?!!?!!"

So we need to write our Emails down for inter-team communication, see what everyone wants and make a decision (also regarding the pantheon name)

I'll go first guy3pwood (et) hotmail (dot) com.




I agree with the principle but sort it out via PM or something not here. I hereby appoint you team captain of Team B so you should sort out your team's communications & have final say on nation distribution. (Can I do that - well I just did)

Our team is already in pretty good communication BTW.

I am trying to remember where you name comes from - is it Pyrates or Monkey Island or something else?

Pickles

[Agrajag]

Pickles said:

I agree with the principle but sort it out via PM or something not here. I hereby appoint you team captain of Team B so you should sort out your team's communications & have final say on nation distribution. (Can I do that - well I just did)

Our team is already in pretty good communication BTW.

I am trying to remember where you name comes from - is it Pyrates or Monkey Island or something else?

Pickles


PMs are not a very comfortable means of communication, but if everyone else on my team thinks PMs are better, we'll communicate via PMs (So send your votes, ppl!).

Agrajag is from "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" series, he is a nasty creature that has reincarnated many times and every single time Arthur Dent accidentaly killed him.
He is made up of every animal he reincarnated to and is quite nasty and seeks revenge on Arthur.
Although... Monkey Island rules! =P
I finished every MI besides 2, and Im working on that now (I'll finish 3 and 4 again later).

[Cheezeninja]

I have my PM's set to email me directly when i recieve them, so unless the forum changeover has changed that reaching me should not be a problem. I'm going to email you anyway Agrajag so you have my email if pms dont work.

[Pickles]

Sorry argajag
I meant:
a) send out your email address other than in a public
forum eg via PM - though I see you code yours
b) guybrush threepwood

Pickles

[Agrajag]

Pickles said:
Sorry argajag
I meant:
a) send out your email address other than in a public
forum eg via PM - though I see you code yours
b) guybrush threepwood

Pickles


Now Im confused about what you mean (???)
And "Guybrush Threepwood! Mighty Pirate!"
Also, check this out, I wrote down the entire "How much wood" line of conversation:

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

A woodchuck could chuck no amount of wood since a woodchuck can't chuck wood.

But if a woodchuck could chuck and would chuck some amount of wood, what amount of wood would a woodchuck chuck?

Even if a woodchuck could chuck wood, and even if a woodchuck would chuck wood, should a woodchuck chuck wood?

A woodchuck should chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, as long as a woodchuck would chuck wood.

Oh. Shut up.

EDIT: Typo, I guess even TYPING the thing is difficult =P

[Pickles]

Argajag
Your name in your email is guy3pwood or somesuch so - where is that from?

Pickles

[Agrajag]

Pickles said:
Argajag
Your name in your email is guy3pwood or somesuch so - where is that from?

Pickles



OH!

Indeed you were right, it IS Guybrush Threepwood!

Want a Monkey Combat Walkthrough I made? =P

[The_Tauren13]

perhaps we could get an IRC chatroom or something for easy inter-team communications.

and we still need a 3rd party to randomly allocate nations, so we can go ahead and pick and test them

[alexti]

It's hard to make it work through IRC chatroom unless all the players are in compatible timezones and on compatible schedules. I think that team-group-emailing is the easiest way to communicate.

[The Panther]

Without the two water nations and ermor, there are 14 nations. So we might as well randomly allocate the full 7 nations between each two teams. This gives each team an additional choice for choosing races. It will also help to try and get complementary races among team members on the two sides.

We should do this right away so we can practice with our selected race to try to get a decent pretender.

[Aku]

I agree with Panthers idea of dividing the remaining 14 nations between the two teams so there is an extra choice to play around with.

[Pickles]

Fine on all 14

Here are all 14 split randomly into 2 sets by me (!)

Abysia
Ctis
Machaka
Man
Mictlan
Pangaea
Ulm

Arco
Caelum
Jotunheim
Marignon
Pythium
Tien Chi
Vanheim

If someome from team B wants to pick a set we can start haggling or we can wait for a true 3rd party.

Both have a bunch of human races so Yvelina should be ok
once she reappears

Pickles

[Sheap]

hmm

I wrote a little program to do this:

http://benatar.snurgle.org:8080/~fluffy/rng.c

Here is the results:
Team A:
Ulm
T'ien Chi
Pangaea
Arcosnuffle
Machaka
Marignon
C'tis

Team B:
Caelum
Abysia
Vanheim
Mictlan
Pythium
Jotunheim
Man

Since I went to the trouble of making the program you better use my randoms! <g>

[Lex]

outch, our Team B has the cold scales of Caelum, Vanheim, Jotunheim Vs the heat scales of Abysia and Mictlan... we'll have to protect our dominions from each other!!!

any ideas?

You *should* have to protect your dominion from each other. Otherwise you get a bunch of free points.

[The Panther]

Thanks, sheap!

You are definitely a geek. Spending weekend time writing a C program for fun to support people you don't even know in RL.

Just like me! Or more accurately, just like the rest of us. I have not written a C program in over 10 years, so it sure was fun disecting yours. I note that you can reuse it for other people with a different RANDMAX number since you put in all 17 races.


I propose we use Sheap's list (with Pickles team is A as mentioned previously), just to prevent arguments. There is no bias that way since Sheap is a neutral third party. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif
Now, how was it we are supposed to select a nation from this darn list? Shouldn't I know since it was my idea??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Pickles]

Thanks Sheap
I was unsure if you were wading through the massed verbiage or not (& getting the usual massive impatience that characterise us newbsishes). Of course we would love to use you races

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Pickles

[Sheap]

Heh, I read all the threads, even for games I'm not playing in. Since I'm involved in this one I have to read it.

[Agrajag]

I don't know how Team A is planning to choose their nations, but to Team B:
Please Email (or PM) me a list of all 7 nations in order of preference, your expirience with them so far included, I will then hand out the nations to who I see fit. (Being that Im the leader and all =P)
Also, a suggestion for a Pantheon Name would be nice in that Email/PM.

[The Panther]

Sheap said:
Arcosnuffle




Btw, Sheap, what is the joke behind this?

[Sheap]

It's just really hard to spell Arco the right way. A while ago there was a thread on how it ought to be spelled and I picked "Arcosnuffleupagus" which is, in fact, almost as bad as the original http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So I shortened it.

Not that exciting, but you asked http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[The Panther]

Sheap said:
It's just really hard to spell Arco the right way.



I used to have trouble with this before studying the word to make sure I was pronouncing it correctly:

The syllables are:
1. Ar - pronounced 'R'
2. cos - pronounced just as spelled, like cost but without the 't'
3. ce - pronounced as 'uh'? maybe, not sure on this one
4. phale - pronounced 'fail', the odd English rule where ph is pronounced as an f

Although, I had to go look the spelling up before posting this to make sure I got it right... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

Oh well, it made a good story anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Aku]

i just say arco and thats it lol

this should be an interesting game

[Agrajag]

The Panther said:

Sheap said:
It's just really hard to spell Arco the right way.



I used to have trouble with this before studying the word to make sure I was pronouncing it correctly:

The syllables are:
1. Ar - pronounced 'R'
2. cos - pronounced just as spelled, like cost but without the 't'
3. ce - pronounced as 'uh'? maybe, not sure on this one
4. phale - pronounced 'fail', the odd English rule where ph is pronounced as an f

Although, I had to go look the spelling up before posting this to make sure I got it right... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

Oh well, it made a good story anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



ar-COS-ca-feil
Is how you say you pronounce it, only in a more obvious way =P
BTW, if you team B pretenders have an idea for a strat, put it in the Email/PM as well. (I already got PMed one =P)

[Pickles]

Hmm R'cosuhfail

I always say Arco sef ally or arco sef alley (hmm some always)

It means Highhead or similiar dunno if that is a reference to something

Pickles

[reverend]

There was a thread a while back that traced Arcoscephale to its Greek origins. And I think it was agreed it should be pronounced

Arkos-ke-falley

(ok, hard to explain in written form...)


edit:



Actually I think it's 'Arcoscephale', but who's to argue about a single 'c' . I remember it because 'cephale' is the greek word for 'head', so 'Arco's head' is Arcoscephale.

I usually pronounce it Ar-kohs-kef-ah-ley




and



"Cephale" is indeed Greek for "Head": In Greek, the "c" sound is pronounced as a "k". The "s" sound for a "ce" is a more recent product.

As Arco is intended to be, well, Greek, it seems reasonable that it should be pronounced in a Greek manner.

[Agrajag]

I just pronounce it ar-kos-ka-feil, because kos kafe is a cup of coffe in hebrew (kafe = coffe, kos - cup/glass)
Back to subject - Where are all my PMs/Emails? =P

[Boron]

Sheap said:
Heh, I read all the threads, even for games I'm not playing in. Since I'm involved in this one I have to read it.


are you in team b http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ?

really challenging to chose a good team with our team A nations . your random program seems to flavour team B http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Lex]

really challenging to chose a good team with our team A nations . your random program seems to flavour team B http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif



haven't you seen enough Hollywood sport movies? the underdog team is always the favorite to win cos they got 'team spirit'. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[The Panther]

Boron said:
your random program seems to flavour team B http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif



Depends on what races you like. I suppose since people seem to like Abysia, Vanheim, and Caleum, then by these standards, the B list is better. But they will have conflicting temperature scales as pointed out already. We will not since, IIRC, all our races but one like neutral temp scales. Plus we get Ulm and Pangaea and Arco, which are all quite good races.

Pickles - I don't know how you are going to assign races, but I will take any one of these four choices:
T'ien Ch'i
Pangaea
Machaka
Marignon
This is mainly because I am already playing the other three races in MP right now and I want a new challange. Plus having different races in all my MP games will help an old guy like me keep them straight.

As for Tauren, he said he did not care, but I know he is currently playing C'tis and Machaka in MP so I expect he would prefer one of the other 5 races on the list.

[Agrajag]

Hmmmm...
So far Cheezninja and Yvelina seem to be gone...
We'd have to wait and see if they come back to life :\
http://planet.nana.co.il/ilikeeatingschintsel/Wall.gif

[Boron]

oh we have ulm i thought the others have ok i am quiet again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

i could play :
ulm
ctis
arco

i would prefer ctis or ulm
i guess nobody likes ctis so my chances are probably quite good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Pickles]

Tauren said he liked Marignon as did aku - I emailed them could you all pm me os other wise get email addresse to me so we can communicate that way please

(I could PM everyone I suppose...)

I was hoping there would be no conflicts on races & it looks that way (almost)

Machaka - me
Uml Ctis Arco - boron
Tien chi Pangaea - Panther
Marignon - Aku or Tauren
So provided either Aku or Tauren will change we are OK

Not sure what is happening with our other team - I will wait a day then open up it again. Maybe start a new thread with the game proposal clearly laid out & close this one.

Pickles

[Aku]

If Tauren really wants Marignon then he can have it. I can play filler to whatever race we need filled on the team if that helps any. My primary choice is Marignon but I will do what is best for the team.

[Sheap]

You know you have made a good distribution of the nations when both sides are complaining about the nations they've got to use http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think it is good - the blood nations are evenly distributed, team B has perhaps the stronger races on balance, but none of them have anything strategically or tactically in common with each other. Team A on the other hand has less powerful races which will work together more smoothly.

I assure everyone though that the races were distributed by the random generator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[The Panther]

OK, Command decision here. After consultation with Tauren and reading the Posts here, I have come up with the following assignments, which should make everyone happy (or equally unhappy???):

Pickles - Machaka
Boron - Ulm
Aku - Marignon
Tauren - Pangaea
Panther - T'ien Ch'i


Does this sound good?
This gives us a rainbow distribution of starting gem income, missing only air (unless in the unlikely event Aku chooses Conqurerors of the Sea). Team B has all the air races, I noticed...

[Pickles]

The Panther said:
Does this sound good?




Yes

Pickles

[Aku]

looks good to me

team B also has dominance of blood and clams but hopefully our team has better synergy

[Cheezeninja]

Agrajag said:
Hmmmm...
So far Cheezninja and Yvelina seem to be gone...
We'd have to wait and see if they come back to life :\
[image]



urmmm... i sent you an email already... i sent one awhile ago requesting my nation preferences. I'll send it in PM now.

[Agrajag]

Cheezeninja said:

Agrajag said:
Hmmmm...
So far Cheezninja and Yvelina seem to be gone...
We'd have to wait and see if they come back to life :\
[image]



urmmm... i sent you an email already... i sent one awhile ago requesting my nation preferences. I'll send it in PM now.


Okay, that leaves Yvelina.
I got your PM, but no Email... I'll go and check again =O

[reverend]

If you need a sub or replacement, I'd be willing to join. My semester-break starts next week, so I should have plenty of time for Dom2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Pickles]

I just PMed Yvelina giving her 24 hours. I suspect she is gone for good but she may just be less of an obsessive than the rest of us. In case she does return you could include reverend in the nation selection provided he drops back out if Yvelina does reappear within a day.

Pickles

[Agrajag]

Pickles said:
I just PMed Yvelina giving her 24 hours. I suspect she is gone for good but she may just be less of an obsessive than the rest of us. In case she does return you could include reverend in the nation selection provided he drops back out if Yvelina does reappear within a day.

Pickles


All he has to do is Email\PM me his nations of preference and if he has one, a multi-national strategy and he's good in case Yvelina doesnt show up [which I guess is going to happen (her/him not showing up)]

[reverend]

Agrajag said:
All he has to do is Email\PM me his nations of preference and if he has one, a multi-national strategy and he's good in case Yvelina doesnt show up [which I guess is going to happen (her/him not showing up)]




PM sent. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Lex]

we should really make a decision on our Team (B) as to what races we're gonna play. even if there's one variable, i'm sure we have enough to assign the races.

[Boron]

The Panther said:
Pickles - Machaka
Boron - Ulm
Aku - Marignon
Tauren - Pangaea
Panther - T'ien Ch'i




i would like to play ctis and give ulm to somebody else http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Agrajag]

Lex said:
we should really make a decision on our Team (B) as to what races we're gonna play. even if there's one variable, i'm sure we have enough to assign the races.


The 24 Hour Time limit has expired.
Now I'm off to read all the PMs and Emails and give out our nations =P

[Agrajag]

Agrajag said:

Lex said:
we should really make a decision on our Team (B) as to what races we're gonna play. even if there's one variable, i'm sure we have enough to assign the races.


The 24 Hour Time limit has expired.
Now I'm off to read all the PMs and Emails and give out our nations =P


OKAY.
I have made up my mind, now Im going to PM everyone with out strategy (developed by alexti) as well as with their nations.
I'll tell you this much - almost no one got what they wanted, but I think no one got less than their third choice =P

EDIT (BLEH) : The Pantheon name is "Equilibirum", reverend's suggestion (also, the ONLY suggestion)

[alexti]

Time to go practice... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[reverend]

Indeed, not my nation of choice, but it could've been much much worse. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Are we going to have a rule or pattern to name our pretenders? E.g. name must start with a B (for Team B) or an E (for Equilibrium) ?

[Agrajag]

reverend said:
Indeed, not my nation of choice, but it could've been much much worse. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Are we going to have a rule or pattern to name our pretenders? E.g. name must start with a B (for Team B) or an E (for Equilibrium) ?


Give your pretender a name and then Just put as much of Equilibrium as you can after it, as far as Im concerened.
But I didn't start this game, so its not my final choice =P
Doesn't matter meanwhile anyway =P
*Off to practice*

[Pickles]

Adding equilib.. sounds fine - we just want to be able to
quickly id the team.

I have no inspiration for a team name but how about all team A names start with "A"?

(Arachnophilia for me)

Pickles

[Aku]

Aku for me lol

damn you guys made it hard for me to think of a name that starts with "a" lol

[Lex]

I believe its now time to go practice! Or as the Duke would say, 'it's time to kickass and chew bubble gum.. and i'm all out of bubble gum'

[Lex]

Agrajag, did you get everyone's emails? cos we're gonna need a better method of communication then PM (which is only one-to-one) or ingame.

[Agrajag]

Lex said:
Agrajag, did you get everyone's emails? cos we're gonna need a better method of communication then PM (which is only one-to-one) or ingame.


Nope!
Still Cheezeninja and Reverend to go (all I have so far are the two alexs =P)
*cough* Cheezeninja and Reverend *cough* Please send your Email to me through the Email I gave *cough* Once I have everyone's Emails I'll Email everyone everyone elses Emails *cough* That sounds stupid *cough*

*cough*s are just so nice, they do so much to conceal the true meaning of what I intended to say
yas ot dednetni I tahw fo gninaem eurt eht laecnoc ot hcum os od yeht ,ecin os tsuj era s*hguoc*
-----------------------------------------------------------^------------------------------------------
You'll never believe how fast I typed that Last line |

[Karacan]

Agrajag said:
*cough*s are just so nice, they do so much to conceal the true meaning of what I intended to say
yas ot dednetni I tahw fo gninaem eurt eht laecnoc ot hcum os od yeht ,ecin os tsuj era s*hguoc*
-----------------------------------------------------------^------------------------------------------
You'll never believe how fast I typed that Last line |



Don't drink and play Dominions. At least, not in Multiplayer.

Trust me, I know what I am talking about. ("Umm... why was my province X hit by a murderous winter when I casted it at province... uh... nevermind.") http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Agrajag]

Karacan said:

Agrajag said:
*cough*s are just so nice, they do so much to conceal the true meaning of what I intended to say
yas ot dednetni I tahw fo gninaem eurt eht laecnoc ot hcum os od yeht ,ecin os tsuj era s*hguoc*
-----------------------------------------------------------^------------------------------------------
You'll never believe how fast I typed that Last line |



Don't drink and play Dominions. At least, not in Multiplayer.

Trust me, I know what I am talking about. ("Umm... why was my province X hit by a murderous winter when I casted it at province... uh... nevermind.") http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Nope, no drinks involved.
Just severe boordination...

[Pickles]

OK team A is ready to go, well give a couple of days for practice, so give us a holler when you are team B.

I will post the positons we are playing here when you are ready so Zen can distribute us on the map. I would post them now but that would give you valuable intelligence (like I care)

Pickles

[The_Tauren13]

OK... weve all had plenty of time to make a pretender and practice it. can we get started now???

[Pickles]

I echo the Tauren - any action from the B team?

Pickles

[The_Tauren13]

and what about the map? did a third party ( zen? sheap? ) give us set starting spots on inland?

[Aku]

yeah one is suppose to be made up for us...the wrap around inland map with starting locations

[Aku]

we also have the new problem of agrajag going poof...so we need someone new for team b to replace him

[Cheezeninja]

you might want to change the title again, to let everyone know we have an opening.

[Aku]

or does anyone from team b have a friend they want in the game possibly so your teamwork isnt affected as much from the sudden player change?

[Cainehill]

Might also want to repost the team / nations, so a prospective player doesn't have to go through all the Posts trying to figure out what they'd be stepping into.

Edit: Especially since the team assignments were never posted for team B. I don't think you should expect someone to leap in when they don't know which of the nations are being played, and which of them would be open (or if the person _has_ to take the nation Agrajag theoretically assigned to himself).

[The_Tauren13]

Team B:
Caelum
Abysia
Vanheim
Mictlan
Pythium
Jotunheim
Man

i dont know which ones people have already claimed, but those are the nations to choose from

at this rate we'll be lucky to start this game by 2006 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Lex]

how did this happen!? is it a confirmed poof or an assumed poof?

as for starting this game quickly, agrajag was playing Jotunheim, it would be easier if someone would like to play that race.

[Aku]

the thing is we need another player for team b to play jotum or whatever team b is doing

[Cheezeninja]

Team B is being very secretive and communicating through coded emails and third party reandevous. Our strategy is so good we have to keep it very hush-hush.

Be afraid... wooOOoOOooOoOoo

[Lex]

just a reminder: we're looking for an extra player to play in a team game. we're all playing new races, so it doesn't matter if you've never played Jotum, and if you have that's terrific.

(oh, and Team B has killer strategy too, so you'd be on the winning side http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)

[Pickles]

Zen after disappearing has still asked us how we want the map set up. Since we are stuck I suggested he did not bother & we look for someone else to do it.
We could still send him the teams as they are but that locks the team B replacement into Jotunheim. If team B wants to do this then send me a PM (with your choices) & I will send the team lists to him.

Cheers
Pickles

[Sheap]

I guess this ought to be my job, since I'm hosting. But I would rather you let Zen do it.

If not, how do you want the map laid out? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Mark the Merciful]

OK, in order to get things going, and because Pickles deserves a good arse-kicking, I'll take Jotunheim for team B.

So what's the plan?

Mark

[Pickles]

Bah! that would be my strategy "in newb game 2"

Pickles

[Lex]

nice! thanks for joining the team Mark!

[Cheezeninja]

Send me a pm mark and we can get you the emails of all the players on our team, then maybe talk a little strategy.

Ok so now its time to work out the map, do we still have anybody to do this?

[The_Tauren13]

Cheezeninja said:
Ok so now its time to work out the map, do we still have anybody to do this?



i guess sheap can do this for us now that zen bounced out?

[Sheap]

Yes I am willing to do it, but I stopped paying any attention to that aspect of things after Zen said he would do it. So tell me exactly what is required and I will take care of it.

[The Panther]

Sheap, we wanted someone (you?) to put 10 fixed starting spots on Inland grouped in the five on five teams. While I have yet to mess with the editor, I assume that this means you must know the ten races and which race is which team to make this happen.

Also, I thought that Mark the Merciful lived in the same house as Aku, which means they cannot be on different teams unless they have two computers AND two copies of the game.

Somehow, I think we have thus taken one step forward and two steps back.

[Sheap]

Hmmmm.

So you want all the players on a team to be grouped together? If so, should they be relatively close, or all spread out, but just in the same general area with no enemies between?

Secondly, whatever situation Mark and Aku have, is not really relevant to the game, as they will have the same problem with any game they play in together. The team aspect doesn't really enter into it as the CD-checking has no concept of teams. And as long as everyone uses passwords they won't be able to look at each other's turns, even if they are on the same computer. So I will assume that they know what they are doing on this point.

[Aku]

mark and i dont live together...and i dont even know who he is

does he live with someone else in this game?

[Pickles]

Sheap the teams should be evenly spread out with no enemies between team members. I think this may mean there is a "hole player" on each team with no adjacent enemies as there are 5, but we should be able to work round that
& thanks for the help.

Mark lives in my house (well at the moment) so I did not really want him on the other team as it has proved awkward in the past - there is a grey area between chatting about games we are playing & discussing in game plans. However we have stopped talking(!) so that should be OK. We have seperate PCs & seperate copies of the game.

Pickles

[Mark the Merciful]

Hmm.

I think the only awkwardness comes when one of the two players is trying to maintain a deliberate air of ambiguity so he can time his backstab properly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But that was a different game. It'll be straightforward enough when we know from the start we're in opposing teams.

[The_Tauren13]

Pickles said:
Sheap the teams should be evenly spread out with no enemies between team members. I think this may mean there is a "hole player" on each team with no adjacent enemies as there are 5, but we should be able to work round that
& thanks for the help.


it would be great if you could not have anyone start surrounded by allies so they cant even reach the opposition. i for one would rather start surrounded by the other team than my own.

edit: not to say that you should have someone start out surrounded...

[The Panther]

Aku said:
mark and i dont live together...and i dont even know who he is

does he live with someone else in this game?



Hmmm... I could have sworn you said early on that you were trying to recruit Mark on your team since you lived with him. But I could find no such reference in this thread.

Maybe it was a different Mark. Maybe even a different Aku. Could even be a different universe.

*sheesh* It's hell to get old...

[Lex]

the inland map is pretty devoid of landmarks, but there is one row of mountains that kinda stretches accross the "middle". You could drop Team A on one side and Team B on the other. The wraparound would ensure that everyone is attacked north and south, but has allies on their east/west.

[The_Tauren13]

that looks pretty sound to me, Lex

i just want to get this game started already!

[Sheap]

OK, I'll lay out the map according to Lex's plan and start the game probably tomorrow as I am very busy today. Nuzzle.

[The_Tauren13]

cool, thanks sheap

[Sheap]

Um... so I've been a bad sheap. I set up hosting for a different game and thought that satisfied all my hosting obligations. But then I realized I was supposed to start TWO games today, not just one. And yours isn't done yet.

Oops.

Working on that now. Nuzzle.

[Sheap]

Hmm.

No one ever actually told me which nation on each team is being left out.

So I am going to make the map with all seven nations started, and one of them will be blank.

If you don't like it, send me a list of nations and I will fix it. Otherwise, I'll be posting the host/port momentarily.

[Sheap]

OK. Ready.

The mapfile: 'pantheons.map' is available for download from:
http://benatar.snurgle.org:8080/~fluffy/pantheons.zip

Everyone will need to unzip this into their maps directory.

Team A should be, generally, between the mountain range, and the sea. Team B should also be between these geographical features. But on opposite sides. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Team A should have the sea to their north and the mountains to their south. The mapfile description says "two teams of five players each" but that is a lie, all 14 nations have been placed.

Each pair of two home provinces is at least 3 spaces apart (i.e. a move 3 flying unit could cover the minimum distance from one home province to another). Where possible, they are farther apart than that. There will be "gaps" where the two unused nations would be. And no home province borders a sea, because of risk of natural disasters. While effort has been made to ensure starting positions are fair, not all starting positions are good, and definitely not all starting positions are in optimal places for the nation. This is because I am mildly sadistic. For a sheap, anyway.

The host is at:
benatar.snurgle.org
port 2006

[Mark the Merciful]

Thanks, Sheap.

Mint sauce.

[reverend]

When does the game officially start?

[The_Tauren13]

[censored] i accidentally put a god up for mictlan.. and theres no way to take it back... do we need to restart the server or something then?

[The Panther]

Sheap said:
Each pair of two home provinces is at least 3 spaces apart (i.e. a move 3 flying unit could cover the minimum distance from one home province to another).



It would appear that there is a typo in the map file. T'ien Ch'i starts adjacent to Machaka.

And thanks for all your work in doing this for us.

[The_Tauren13]

actually tien chi appears not to be in a fixed location...
and the indys seem a bit too weak to be 5...

[Sheap]

OK, perhaps I have screwed something up in the map file. I'll go back and double check. It was late. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I guess you have been checking this by starting test games, since the actual game is not started yet (have only 7 uploads). In that case the indy strength is determined by the indy level you set at game start, rather than the mapfile.

[The Panther]

Sheap,

The indy level is hardwired into the map file and cannot be changed in the start game screen on SP.

Also, I checked the map again and I think the problem is Machaka, not T'ien Ch'i. It is like Machaka has a random start location and it was put in the TC start spot that first time out, thus relegating TC to a province adjacent to its desired start location.

Cheers.

[Sheap]

I tested the map out and the positions of Tien Chi and Machaka look ok to me. But I specified the indy strength, which makes my Last post wrong. I'll fix the indy problem and post the revised mapfile. However I think no one should really need to download it (unless they want) since the terrain types and neighbors won't change.

[Sheap]

I posted the new mapfile zip, same place as the Last one.
http://benatar.snurgle.org:8080/~fluffy/pantheons.zip

I unset the "scenario" flag, so now normal game settings work. I really do not think there is anything wrong with Machaka or Tien Chi starting positions, they seem to be working fine to me.

I also kicked out the Mictlan pretender, so Tauren can re-upload a correct one.

[Sheap]

Oh, one more thing. (And no, I am not posting just to hear myself bleet...)

Go ahead and continue to upload all your pretenders; if you've already uploaded one, you dont have to do anything. I'll start the game on the final Version of the mapfile when the time comes.

[Aku]

sheap...renaming is allowed right on the settings on the server?

[Sheap]

It's a game start option, but I normally enable it.

[Aku]

cool thanks sheap

[Sheap]

7 pretenders uploaded so far... let's move along http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Sheap]

Up to 9 players. Where IS everyone? There is no reason it should take more than 2 days just for people to upload their pretenders, especially since there was so much time available to design them while the team strategies and such were established, and the starting positions picked.

Because I have need of my computer for other purposes, this game (only) will suffer a hosting outage at some indeterminate point tonight, remaining until some indeterminate point tomorrow. Sorry I can't be more precise than this, but it will probably be about 12 hours, and will start around 1:30 AM Eastern time. Once the game gets going I'll move it onto my main server computer and such outages will no longer be a possibility. Of course, different outages might still happen http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Other games I am hosting will not be affected by this.

Anyone that wants to upload their pretender while the server is down should send me a PM and attach it there.

[Pickles]

Sheap there are only 10 players not 12 as we lost some along the way.

Given the leisurely pace we have got this game going I cannot see we will miss a few hours with your server down.

Thanks again for your time Sheap.

Pickles

[The Panther]

Actually, I believe that everyone has uploaded their pretenders and the game can start anytime. There should be only 10 players in the game, as Pickles said.

[Mark the Merciful]

And the server seems to be unavailable right now...

[Aku]

yeah sheep said it would be down a long time today

[Sheap]

Cripes. We have 10 players uploaded - I thought we were having 12.

So. My ranting was not entirely justified as I thought there were a large number of laggards and there weren't actually any, as the 10th had uploaded before I took the server down.

I'll get the game up and running again momentarily.

[Sheap]

OK, server is up.

Host: benatar.snurgle.org (24.8.118.21)
Port: 2006

I did a quick runthrough to make sure everyone is in the right spot. It seems OK, but maybe I screwed it up. So if you are concerned about your location, let me know and I'll make sure you're in the right spot.

[The_Tauren13]

im getting errored... seems i dont have a particular mod... am i missing something?

[Aku]

did you download the modified map?

[The_Tauren13]

yes.. it says i dont have "/mods/MolochCowardFix.dm"

[The Panther]

I got the same message...

[Aku]

hmm are we suppose to have that mod in this game?

[Sheap]

Oops.

No, that mod is not supposed to be part of this game. It's a bungle on my part.

You guys are going to start regretting your choice of hosts soon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I will fix this problem and reset the game. Everyone that's played already will have to redo their turns. But no one has to re-upload. Sorry for the inconvenience http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Sheap]

OK, problem fixed.

The new game is called "Pantheons2" to distinguish it from the bogus one.

Everyone can reconnect and play their turns again now. Please check to see what other things I have screwed up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Lex]

umm.. what about the patch..

[Aku]

i havent done any patching bec none of my mp games have said to patch to 2.13 so not sure what to do

[Sheap]

The patch policy is in my server thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=284656&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

[Aku]

for anyone who doesnt want to read the link then here is the summary...stay with 2.12

[Pickles]

Agreed at least until 2.13 is stable.


Pickles

[Pickles]

This turn there was a ballsy attack on my capital by the one eyed guy from Van. Unfortunately my PD seems to include a Witch doctor who used my "national spell" to poke out the other eye as well. With 0 att & def & mistform he still killed oodles of infantry and was only taken down by the summoned longdeads (just), presumably 150 successful attacks later.

Scared the crap out of me - unlucky.

Pickles

Who is Van anyway?

[Aku]

wait if i read this correctly...vanheim sent a cyclops at your capital and lost his ONLY eye to a spell and died?

[The Panther]

Not a cyclops. The one eyed glamour guy of Vanheim, the Allfather, I think its called.

[Pickles]

As the spell was "blindness" the fact he already lost one eye was irrelevant. He was pretty unlucky in a number of ways but since he had only 14 MR getting hit by a take out spell was not as unlucky as I first thought.
It is "allfather" though in my mind it is "odin" or "wotan" or "wanderer" I can never remember the in game name.

Pickles

PS I am posting this in the clear as presumably it will be shared by the evil bad guys anyway & we have haphazard intra team communication. Does anyone mind using normal email for this as it seems the most efficient way?

[Mark the Merciful]

dum-de-dum-dum-dum-dum dum-de-dum-dum-dum-dum (insert punchy news theme here).

Welcome to the Aran News Network tonight, as the cold war that's Lasted a decade turns hot, and fighting breaks out across the continent.

The main story tonight; the Vanheim Allfather dies in an abortive "decapitaion strike" on the Machaka capital. Eyewitnesses say he was Last seen crawling on the ground crying "my eye, where's my eye?" when he was killed by a longdead infantryman. A Vanheim spokesdwarf said, "oops".

In a major campaign, Arco forces threaten to surround the Pythium capital. "We cannot get out! We cannot get out! THey are coming..." said a slightly hysterical Pythium spokesnake.

In a shock development, C'tis' main fortifications turn out to be made of gingerbread. Standing within the wreckage of the gatehouse at C'tis, Njarl Njarlsensen - a Jotunheim Niefel Giant - said; "I just knocked on da door and it all fell down. Mmm, tasty!" In a rare personal interview, the C'tis Ghost-King said, "whooooooooooooooooo!" (Tune in at Eight tonight for a two-hour special on the role of gingerbread in military history)

Mictlan forces fight a delaying action against hordes of Machaka spiders. As Mictlan prepares for a long siege, a sacrificial spokesvictim said "arrrgh!"

As the joint forces of the Motherhood and Apple-pie Alliance struggle to hold off the advancing Evil Overlords, many are asking what Caelum is contributing to the effort. The Caelum spokesmammoth was unavailable for comment.

And finally, Pangaea reasserts its commitment to peace. Their spokeshippy said; "hey man, what if they held a war and nobody came? Everybody should, like, give up this terrible fighting and live in communion with nature. Yeah, baby!"

And that's the news tonight. Good night Aran.

(fade to black as punchy news theme comes back)

[Pickles]

Mark the Merciful said:
In a shock development, C'tis' main fortifications turn out to be made of gingerbread. Standing within the wreckage of the gatehouse at C'tis, Njarl Njarlsensen - a Jotunheim Niefel Giant - said; "I just knocked on da door and it all fell down. Mmm, tasty!" In a rare personal interview, the C'tis Ghost-King said, "whooooooooooooooooo!" (Tune in at Eight tonight for a two-hour special on the role of gingerbread in military history)




Obviously this is not a problem as 10 big blue giants on turn 10 is one of the specific threats we identified & were ready to deal with.

I am right aren't I Boron?

Boron?

[Lex]

ROFL

[Aku]

Pickles...Boron will kill the giants with his gingerbread man army. They also do the spell "rain of ginger" which coats the giants with ginger for the ginger bread men to eat them.

[The_Tauren13]

LOL Mark that was good stuff.

[Cheezeninja]

I am Vanheim, for the record, and it was my Allfather that met his dysmal end against Machakan PD. I knew it was a risky move, but a few of my allies were being pressed and i decided to take the chance, I didnt think it would be quite THAT risky though... ahh well, live and learn. At least he will still be plenty powerful if i can ever get him back and healthy... That newscast was hilarious =)

[Mark the Merciful]

dum-de-dum-dum-dum-dum etc.

Welcome to Aran News Network, brought to you by the Power of the Spheres.

The main story tonight; Ulm's Cyclops dies in a tragic wraithsword accident. An Ulmish spokesmith said, "He'll be back. Anyone need any horseshoes?" The Jotunheim Ministry of Propoganda and Gloating issued the following press release; "Ha ha ha!" Analysts speculate that one-eyed Pretenders may have had their day; "in these modern times one needs to have a global vision to be a competiitive Pretender" said Pontius Pontificus of the Aran Institute of Theology. "That's twice as hard with only one eye."

A bribery scandal rocks the Motherhood and Apple-pie Alliance, as several prominent Mercenary Companies defect from the Evil Overlords, causing much confusion on the front lines. Many claim the defections are the result of enormous bribes paid to the mercenary Captains; eye-witnesses state that every soldier in Brave's Breakers was wearing a gold Rolex at a recent parade. Aides to Captain Brave say that he is currently unable to comment because of an Ulmish lance stuck through his head.

Machakan and Arco forces withdraw from some of their most advanced positions. "Aaaaaargh!"s of celebration were heard from sacrificial victims all across the Mictlan capital city.

In a new development, giants in the armies of Jotunheim are going into battle with strange runes etched into their breastplates and shields. An Ulmish crossbowman who took part in a recent battle said; "a bloke in my platoon speaks Jote, and he told me the runes said things like; 'this Niefel Jarl is proudly sponsored by Cealum Airlines.' and 'Caelum Airlines: Fast as lightning.'" Does this indicate a new phase in the war? A Caelum spokeseraph smiled seraphicly and refused to comment.

And finally, mysterious Pangaea continues to maintian its lonely peaceful course. The Pangaean spokesmaenad was so distracting we forgot to ask her any questions. Pictures at seven, eight, nine, eleven, twelve and all through the night on the Aran XXX channel.

And that's all from Aran News tonight. Good night.

Dum-de-dum etc.

[reverend]

*swamp gas forming the National Pythium News logo*

In a confusing turn of events, celebration of Pythium Archtheurg Egalitus over encircling the Arco army sieging the Pythium capitol was cut short, when Caelum Airlines landed in the snakes camp.

Caelum Spokesseraph comments on this: "Ooops."

Caelum Airlines CEO blames this event on bad weather, to which Pythium spokessnakes reponded: "This isn't bad weather, it's a SWAMP for snakes sake!"

*swamp gas forming the National Pythium News logo*

[Aku]

Pangaea says that Korak is a male name not a female name.

And keep up the writing Mark.

[Lex]

reverend said:
*swamp gas forming the National Pythium News logo*

In a confusing turn of events, celebration of Pythium Archtheurg Egalitus over encircling the Arco army sieging the Pythium capitol was cut short, when Caelum Airlines landed in the snakes camp.

Caelum Spokesseraph comments on this: "Ooops."

Caelum Airlines CEO blames this event on bad weather, to which Pythium spokessnakes reponded: "This isn't bad weather, it's a SWAMP for snakes sake!"

*swamp gas forming the National Pythium News logo*



Official Response from Caelum Airlines: "The flash of light you saw in the sky was not our Airlines. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus."

[Mark the Merciful]

(cue airy violin music)

...And welcome back to ANN's Reading Matters. Our final book tonight is the "The Battle of Dershid: Last charge of the giants." by Erik Eriksen. As the Global War still rages around us, it is clearly far too early to make historical judgements about its course so far. So Eriksen's book must surely be seen as more journalism than history. Still, it is the first book to cover a decisive battle from the first phase of the war.

The author is at his best when narrating the battle and the maneuvers leading up to it. His clear crisp prose powerfully brings to life such dramatic moments as Frosty the Son of Niefel storming forward to turn the tide of battle, or the tragic failure of the Niefel Giants as they fell one by one trying to break the Ulmish line, or the cool heroism of Ulm's Master Smiths as they fired magma bolt after magma bolt into the giants; even as a pack of winter wolves broke into their rear and rampaged amongst them.

Eriksen's analysis is more controversial. He is surely right to suggest that Dershid was a Pyrhic victory for Jotunheim. But his speculation that the pursuit that led to the battle was the result of an Ulmish intelligence failure is unsubstantiated, and his assertion that the failure of the Niefels at the gates of Ulm and their fall at Dershid were the result of C'tis War Syndrome and widespread Gingerbread addiction is hotly denied by the Jotun temple authorities. Still, this is a well written and thought-provoking work that will appeal both to the amateur militatry historian and the avaerage giant in the street.

That's all we have time for tonight. Next week in Reading Matters we'll be looking at "Wot you lookin' at? The rise and fall of the one-eyed Pretender", "Give Peace a Chance: A one-page Enyclopedia of Pangaean war heroes" and "Lizards in the mist", the new best-seller from C'tis. Until then, good night.

(cue more airy violin music)

[The_Tauren13]

Something is all [censored] up with my turn... i cant get in.

[Aku]

umm half of team A has the blinking problem so are unable to do their turns...is this the same thing with team B?

Oh and its not their computer it is their nation. I can do my pangaea turn but if I log into their turns I get the blinky problem. It blinks so fast that you really cant see anything.

[alexti]

Yeah, I have this problem, it's only in the nation selection screen though, after that it's ok.

[alexti]

After careful examination I can see that the nation screen doesn't show my (Mictlan) turn as made. Though when I select the nation it warns that I've already played this turn. So I've no idea if the server has accepted my turn submission or not.

[Mark the Merciful]

It's been fine for me since yesterday evening (and I've done my turn, cancelled it, done it again, then logged in twice to make changes!)

[Lex]

my turns are working fine

[Aku]

half of us are screwed bec out of the 10 of us...5 of us are going to stale lol

[Boron]

I always get the error : ppt : error reading ret turn .

Anyone an idea what to do ?

[Mark the Merciful]

Boron: you tried deleting the game directory for Pantheons, and re-connecting?

[Aku]

What is going on with this game? Didn't five people stale Last turn from not being able to enter the game?

[alexti]

I staled the Last turn, but the current one seems to be fine. I guess we've escaped with just stale turns for few nations.

[The Panther]

Yep, I staled also, for the second frigging time this game! This is getting quite annoying indeed. I am just lucky that nothing too bad happened to me with those two stales, but I luckily escaped unharmed.

Not that it really matters, as this game is basically over due to the cheap false horror bunk. That spell needs to be nerfed for sure.

[Lex]

well.. false horror is the best use of a Seraph. but you should know that Caelum's false horrors where pretty useless against Machaka's Black Hunters, and anything with really high moral will have no trouble against a group of FH.

one or two SCs with flying would also put a stop to Caelum's seraphs. so would any decent group of flying units in general. (as long as there's no storm.. and so far Caelum's been raiding nonstop without any Staff of Storms, making them very very vulnerable to flying units. luckily no one has summoned any)

false horror isn't unbalanced, it just requires deliberate effort to counter (which is why its so effective, since its such a pain to commit resources to counter a particular tactic early in the game), but i would have imagined that in a team game, someone would have focused entirely on countering Caelum, just like the others focus on defeating their nearest opponent.

In this case I'm surprised Pangaea hasn't attacked Caelum yet (since he's the closest). Obviously I'm ready and waiting, but still, you can't just ignore me!

[Pickles]

Yeah I agree with lex that I have not yet got enough information on false horrors though it is unquestionably strong. It is the combination with flying that makes it so horrific. Mind you the fact that my 750 gps of spider plus a couple of leaders plus 25 PD could defeat 550 gp of seraph plus 6 troops is only what you hope would happen. I am not sure whether anything would counter the full mass of Caelum's seraph forces - must be over a dozen & could be 20 plus by now. I have not seen this though so who knows?
As to countering Caelum. As well as not being sure how to Caelum can choose to engage whoever it wishes & will avoid its counter pretty easily - provided it is not next door as our earlly power house Ulm was next to a good counter to it in Jotun.

The graphs are depressing though. I think our main weakness has been lack of communication. I never seem to get round to it & noone picked up on the email thing.

Anyway onwards & downwards!

Pickles

[Boron]

This turn works now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So ONWARD MY MINIONS to victory ( trying to bolster myself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

[The Panther]

False horrors are unbalanced because it makes 90+% of the national troops worthless much too early in the game. Even my power-blessed heart companions with very high morale are worthless against false horrors. My chariots and elephants, were I to build any, would be even more hopeless because trample fails miserably against ethereal troops. My many priests refuse to cast sermon of courage because of some problem about the horrors that I have yet to understand.

Ulm has pretty much no counter to the horrors either until he gets mechanical men, which occurs significantly later than Caelum gets horrors. The smiths cast bladewinds and magna bolts on their own troops when the horrors arrive.

There has been many a post on the forum on this very subject. You can argue against this all you want, but that does not make it any less true. That is one of the reasons that Caelum is frequently Banned in many a new game.

It looks like my turn will work now. Staling twice in the Last 4 turns is rough, but at least it means I have some extra gold now. Also I now have the research to counter the horrors if it happens again. But it is too little and too late for the good guys, I am afraid.

[Lex]

Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs. But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs. Maybe an army of Devils or other summons would work well. A lone SC wouldn't have a chance against the 200+ False Horrors, but a group of them would eventually push their way to the Seraphs, who would be asleep from exhaustion after so many turns.

Its also useful to know that Seraphs can't seige a fortification in a million years. Even a group of 20 Seraphs would need a half dozen turns sometimes. So building castles is a good defence against Caelum, since it means the worst they can do is cause unrest and disrupt income for a turn.

Also, is everybody forgetting that anything etheral can fly through a storm? That means etheral SCs or Ghosts or Vampires can attack Seraphs directly on the first turn. If you have more then Caelum has Seraphs, you'll win. In mid to late game, any player with a blood economy should have no problem attacking Caelum. And you don't need to attack Caelum's armies, obviously you attack Caelum's empire and force his armies into a defence posture.

Its just really expensive (or impossible) to defeat massive amounts of False Horrors with your "normal" units. And defeating it early game is almost impossible, which is why False Horror is level 6 research. But obviously it pays off to do the research and raid all you unsuspecting opponents before they can summon an army to stop you. That's simply a good strategy.

Anyways, I'm gonna stop telling you guys how to kick my ***, and get back to playing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[alexti]

Same goes for Ice/Arch Devils, Elemental King/Queens and even simple Bane Lords. You just can't use national troops alone except in the very beginning. Add to them some fliers or mages with area damage spells and a SC or 2 and they become very decent force. So the main problem with seraphs is not defeat them, but to catch them. They're more similar to call of winds/call of wild in this sense. But of course, when you caught out unprepared, those seraphs with their false horrors can be nasty.

Though in this game with known sides and starting locations, Caelum's seraph-fest was as easily predictable as early Ulm's power rush and the early assault on Mictlan.

[alexti]

Lex said:
Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs.


That's why you'd better move in small Groups of 1-2 seraphs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


Lex said:
But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs.


You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif For now.

[Boron]

Lex said:

Its also useful to know that Seraphs can't seige a fortification in a million years. Even a group of 20 Seraphs would need a half dozen turns sometimes. So building castles is a good defence against Caelum, since it means the worst they can do is cause unrest and disrupt income for a turn.

Also, is everybody forgetting that anything etheral can fly through a storm? That means etheral SCs or Ghosts or Vampires can attack Seraphs directly on the first turn. If you have more then Caelum has Seraphs, you'll win. In mid to late game, any player with a blood economy should have no problem attacking Caelum. And you don't need to attack Caelum's armies, obviously you attack Caelum's empire and force his armies into a defence posture.





Are you sure about vampires etc. flying during a storm ?!?
Afaik it doesn't work .

Your fortification hint is not very helpful .... .
First some nations like ulm play usually with a high admin fort so madcastling is not an option .
Second severe madcastling is so expensive that you fall behind in research or other important areas .
Third you don't need to really siege the castles just as you said taxing to 200% is enough .
On other provinces than the capitol you can normally keep anyways a small seiging force to put unrest >100 . Often there are no mages .

The false horror is too powerful but mainly because of the problem with the fear aura as Stormbinder / Arryn suppose .

2 or 3 seraphs with a few archers can't be beaten even by a small garrison + pd .
You would need to have everywhere mages or SCs but thats impossible for a long time .

Level 6 research is earlygame , at about turn 10-12 at least you have it researched and it gives you good SC buff magic as well .

Especially in a teamgame where you get probably gold from other players you can very quickly build 2-3 new castles and spam hordes of seraphs .
No enemy expect pan cw and ermor can beat that in early - midgame reliable and not too costintensive .

[Boron]

alexti said:

Lex said:
Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs.


That's why you'd better move in small Groups of 1-2 seraphs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


Lex said:
But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs.


You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif For now.



Yeah an SC of the right kind . But that is only 1 or 2 seraph armies .

It is just brutal he can strike at will on all weaker defended provinces . If you split your forces to avoid that then another teammember like jotunheim comes with a SC army and defeats one garrison after the other .
In a normal game you could probably deal with caelum better but in our teamgame we should have forbidden it imo .

[The Panther]

False horrors may be level 6, but it is in the school that Caelum usually researchs first. And Caelum researches faster than any other race, except possibly for GE Arco and Ermor.

It dawned on me that I could have gone GE Arco and gotten the flying elephants. This would have completely eliminated the Caelum raid strategy against me (but not anyone else). But GE would have been far worse against my nearest neighbor Pythium than standard Arco.

Also, with our team having no air races, there was no way to get a staff of storms, which is another possible counter.

As far as the flying SC thing and the army of devils, that takes easily more than 3 times longer to achieve than Caelum merely researching up to level 6 in its preferred path.

Still, the bottom line is that we are getting badly beat, almost primarily due to one single unbalanced spell. Without that, Pickles and I may have eliminated both Mictlan and Pythium by now.

Of course, this does not take anything away from the fact that the Team B playing well and using their inherent advantages to the fullest. They surely are.

I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???

[Boron]

The Panther said:
I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???



It is still a bit too early but i think in 5-10 turns it is time to call for a rematch . We could play with the same map / nations but with changed nation allocations to teams . This way Team B could show if they can do as well with our nations against us .

[Lex]

Boron said:

Are you sure about vampires etc. flying during a storm ?!?
Afaik it doesn't work .



Vampires are etheral. False Horrors are etheral. False Horrors can fly in a storm. Therefor Vampires can fly in a storm. It also makes sense that if you're etheral, a little wind won't stop you from flying around.


Boron said:
Especially in a teamgame where you get probably gold from other players you can very quickly build 2-3 new castles and spam hordes of seraphs .
No enemy expect pan cw and ermor can beat that in early - midgame reliable and not too costintensive .



for the record, I've had a surplus of gold all game. I've been giving it out whenever its needed. Remember that no one has attacked me, with the exception of a single scout who took one of my undefended provinces TWICE. So I've just been sitting on high income provinces and enjoying the quiet life with Pangaea while an early raiding army of 12 seraphs split up and had some fun down south.

Edit: i actually had more then 12 seraphs to start with.. i lost a whole raiding party to machaka's Black Hunters and I've since been avoiding him http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

[alexti]

Boron said:

alexti said:
You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif For now.



Yeah an SC of the right kind . But that is only 1 or 2 seraph armies .


Yeah, but the Caelum player won't be happy to lose even one 20-40 seraph army per turn. And the right kind of SC can cloud trapeze/teleport, so it will completely prevent Caelum from using massive seraph armies. They can still raid by lone seraphs though. But on another hand, killing that lone seraphs with remote spell only costs 3-5 gems, so it's more or less equal exchange.

[The Panther]

alexti said:

You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif For now.



Obviously, a single air queen can stop this easy. Several flying pretenders can also. Also a flying bane lord, perhaps. But I built my pretender with my neighbor Pythium in mind, not Caelum.

The crux of the problem is that false horrors is a quick, easy research to level 6 in the preferred path for the fastest researching nation. Air queens are not only light years further away, they are impossible for our team in this game with no air races.

I think for a possible rematch, we will have to ban Caelum to be fair.

[Lex]

also, consider that Caelum has the absolutly perfect starting position for this team game. Its protected from almost all sides, and is far enough away from the other team that it would take considerable time for non-flying armies to try attacking it. In my opinion, that simple starting position is what made Caelum unstopable, and not the spell False Horror

Imagine how things would have been if Caelum started next to Ulm? Or next to two opponents. So far I think most people missed the point about how to defeat Caelum. Their biggest weakness is their near-inability to seige a castle. A good general would not try to mad-castle. A good opposing general would go straight for Caelum's capital and/or production centres and steal their castle with typically low defence (Watch Tower or Mauseleum). Once you have their production centres, Caelum is helpless, and will most likely never be able to get them back. They might have a few Seraphs left, but they are defeated.

[The Panther]

I admit that I did wonder what was the logic for placing Caelum in such a remote starting location on the map. Switching Jontunheim and Caelum start locations would have made a big difference, I think.

I still believe that Caelum does not really have any big weaknesses, though, except for being kind of weak early on with the wimpy national troops. Other than that, it is a solid race, the best in the mid-game for sure.

[alexti]

The Panther said:
Also, with our team having no air races, there was no way to get a staff of storms, which is another possible counter.



Staff of storms would rather be helpful to seraphs, but air would give you call of winds which is a good counter.


The Panther said:
As far as the flying SC thing and the army of devils, that takes easily more than 3 times longer to achieve than Caelum merely researching up to level 6 in its preferred path.



Not true, you can start fielding Bane lords with Conj-5 and Con-2 which is less research than Alt-6.


The Panther said:
Still, the bottom line is that we are getting badly beat, almost primarily due to one single unbalanced spell. Without that, Pickles and I may have eliminated both Mictlan and Pythium by now.



That's a bit optimistics, considering that you couldn't even harm my walls and probably I was summoning fiends faster than you could bring re-enforcement. Still it was seriously hurting my development, but at the same time Caelum enjoyed
unhindered growth allowing him to quickly get required research and infrastructure.


The Panther said:
Of course, this does not take anything away from the fact that the Team B playing well and using their inherent advantages to the fullest. They surely are.

I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???


I think that the race selection for Team B is stronger than for Team A. Basically, we had all stages (early,mid and late) well covered, plus we had races with their own specialities which were complementing each other.

Rematch sounds interesting. I would be for exchanging nations, we play Team A nations, you play Team B nations (which nations to choose from the allocated selection is up to each team).

[Lex]

alexti said:
Yeah, but the Caelum player won't be happy to lose even one 20-40 seraph army per turn. And the right kind of SC can cloud trapeze/teleport, so it will completely prevent Caelum from using massive seraph armies. They can still raid by lone seraphs though. But on another hand, killing that lone seraphs with remote spell only costs 3-5 gems, so it's more or less equal exchange.



You Flames from Afar my capital, then jump in with some SCs that slaughter my Seraphs, move to the three neighbouring castles before I can recruit enough mammoths to take my castle back, and then one by one, you hunt down my remaining Seraph raiding parties. You could kill me in 10 turns.

Edit: granted you'd need Gate Cleavers at least to seige in one turn. and you'd have to hope that I haven't modified my strategy beyond False Horrors. But Caelum's defeat, had it been planned for, is at least in theory a real possibility.

[The_Tauren13]

I vote for re-randomizing nations for a more fair game if we have a rematch. And maybe going with random starting locations. And maybe allowing Ermor; I've been wanting to play broken empire. And maybe taking out Caelum.

[Aku]

I need to catch up and reading the rest of this page but Vampires DO NOT fly in a storm. Staff of storms was used against me in another game against my vampire army and my vamps didnt fly.

Oh and team A has NO air nations or blood nations so the counters I have read so far are impossible for us to do.

Going to continue reading the rest of the Posts.

[alexti]

Aku said:
I need to catch up and reading the rest of this page but Vampires DO NOT fly in a storm. Staff of storms was used against me in another game against my vampire army and my vamps didnt fly.



Yep, I don't think vampires can fly in the storm. However, horrors do, apparently their flying is teleportation based, rather than wing-based. Anyway, has anybody ever seen a horror with wings?


Aku said:
Oh and team A has NO air nations or blood nations so the counters I have read so far are impossible for us to do.



May I remind that team A has choosen not to use their air and blood nations?

[alexti]

The_Tauren13 said:
I vote for re-randomizing nations for a more fair game if we have a rematch. And maybe going with random starting locations. And maybe allowing Ermor; I've been wanting to play broken empire. And maybe taking out Caelum.


To ensure fair rematch, I'd vote for the same nation sets, but reversed. Besides, it would be interesting to see if all those people who suggest various counters will be able to use them in practice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Aku]

What air or blood nations did team A have that they didnt use?

The current 5 team A chose are not air or blood nations. The 6th nation was marignon and the 7th nation was tien chi.

Well I guess you could say pangaea could of done blood with its 320gp blood hunters lol or bf ulm theme was chosen or use tien chi for a little bit of air but realisticly all of those options are not feasible. They are nowhere in comparison the same as what team b has which is complete blood and air dominance.

The botton line is that getting raided on turn 15 by false horrors was able to put 5 players on lock down. One nation shouldnt be able to do that. It has nothing to do with the teams or the players it is just a balance issue in the game. It just happens that the nations that could counter it that early were not options to pick for team A such as vanheim and man.

Bleh I still have to read the rest of these Posts because the forum went down right when I posted before. So if I am repeating anything it is because of that.

[Aku]

Pangaea is closest to caelum but vanheim is closer to pangaea than caelum is. Also heavy cav indies blocked the way to caelum which are too much for maneads who get butchered on just heavy inf. So like someone pointed out Caelums starting position secluded like that made it perfect for raiding everybody while nobody can attack back. And someone said a bane lord counter...our only death is from ctis who gets put next to jotumheim to get raged early on.

The placement was extremely bad. The random generator didn't seem too random. I personally felt it was extremely biased and if a rematch was did with the teams swapped I would refuse to play because team B would have all the crap nations that team A is using now. What would be the point of playing an unbalanced team game. Waste of time if you ask me.

The set up of the game was done improperly. We should of had 2 captains where they take turns choosing nations. Also the two captains would choose players. Basically one would get option to choose players first while the other gets to choose their first nation first. Would of been fair. It would of taken probably a week to set up but who cares. I rather it take longer to set up something properly than play something that was half assed rushed out.

Those are just my thoughts.

Aku

[Mark the Merciful]

Aku said:
The placement was extremely bad. The random generator didn't seem too random. I personally felt it was extremely biased and if a rematch was did with the teams swapped I would refuse to play because team B would have all the crap nations that team A is using now. What would be the point of playing an unbalanced team game. Waste of time if you ask me.



I think you put that unreasonably strongly. Team A has/had a lot of strong early game options to choose from. The only bias I think that's built into the starting position is the location of Caelum, which is ideal for the role it's taken.

And why not take the rematch with swapped sides? Maybe we'd like a chance to prove to you that good play and strong inter-team communication is important to winning a game. And you'd get a chance to prove to us the False Horror really is broken.

Mark

[alexti]

Aku said:
What air or blood nations did team A have that they didnt use?

The current 5 team A chose are not air or blood nations. The 6th nation was marignon and the 7th nation was tien chi.



Marignon Diabolical Faith is a very strong blood nations, probably second to Mictlan. And unlike Mictlan Marignon even has a decent national troops. The only drawback is forced turmoil. However in the team game it's less of a problem. Somebody can help with financing.

Marignon's Conquerors of the Sea is a good air nation. Unfortunately, you have to choose between blood and air in this case. If you want to go into blood heavily, you have to take Diabolical Faith Marignon, there's no other really strong blood nation on team A roster. But if you plan to use blood only for items, Pangaea will do it just fine. Everybody can bloodhunt with every random blood they got and send blood slaves to Pangaea. If you decide that you want all kind of devils, it leaves you with Tien Chi to cover the air.

Obviously, with Caelum, Vanheim and Man team B has air dominance. But team A has advantage in death, earth and nature. How to capitalize on this advantages is a good question. But maybe we can learn some answers during the rematch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Boron]

Good analysis Alexti .

Those Tien Chi S&A CM's should be almost as good False horror casters than Caelum .
But Tien Chi is not an option :
Tien Chi is seen as the probably weakest nation .
The CM's are capitol only so they can't be used like caelum can because they are not so easy replaceable .
Pythium furthermore could put a mind duel Theurg in the important provinces and so has good chances to kill of a lot of CM's .

Otherwise Tien Chi is just weak .
The main benefit from being air is getting the Airqueens .
We with Tien Chi only would have had no chance to win the researchrace against caelum .
Then vanheim + man can just give their airgems to caelum and they get all 3 airqueens before we can get them .

Marignon DF would have been probably a good idea .
Iirc the map position of marignon was really bad though . At least panther said so .
Our advantage in death , earth and nature is worth [censored] .

For summons blood is way better . For SCs blood + air is better than death + nature too .
Not to forget that you have SCs from the beginning with your Jotun niefelheim .

Weaponwise a bloodthorn or a hellsword is better than a wraithsword too .
Death + blood serve similiar roles but until Tartarians/ghostriders/demilichs death is clearly inferior to blood . We likely never get these spells .


The biggest advantages of your team nations lie in Flexibility , Mobility and most important the option to pick out where to attack very cheap via stealthy van/man armies + caelum drops .

With Ctis , Tien Chi , Machaka and Ulm we have 4 little liked nations in our team .
Arco is probably a top 5 nation and pangenea + marignon are middlefield .

You have with Caelum the probably a bit overpowered nation which is often Banned .
All your nations are very liked . So for your team the decision which 2 nations not to play was quite hard while for us the decision which nations to play was even harder because most of them were worse than your nations imo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[alexti]

Boron said:
Good analysis Alexti .

Those Tien Chi S&A CM's should be almost as good False horror casters than Caelum .
But Tien Chi is not an option :
Tien Chi is seen as the probably weakest nation .
The CM's are capitol only so they can't be used like caelum can because they are not so easy replaceable .
Pythium furthermore could put a mind duel Theurg in the important provinces and so has good chances to kill of a lot of CM's .

Otherwise Tien Chi is just weak .
The main benefit from being air is getting the Airqueens .
We with Tien Chi only would have had no chance to win the researchrace against caelum .
Then vanheim + man can just give their airgems to caelum and they get all 3 airqueens before we can get them .



Tien Chi's mages are too expensive to use them as seraphs. They just give an access to air to search for air sites, forge few magic items and cast calls of winds (which is very important to counter Caelum's raiders). But taking air for this purpose isn't a must, at least someone on the team is likely to find air-capable indy mages.

To get Air Queen you don't really need air nation, just pool all air gems to air-capable pretender. Conjuration is need for many nations anyway. I guess this strategy will get one out of 3 air queens.


Boron said:
Marignon DF would have been probably a good idea .
Iirc the map position of marignon was really bad though . At least panther said so .
Our advantage in death , earth and nature is worth [censored] .

For summons blood is way better . For SCs blood + air is better than death + nature too .
Not to forget that you have SCs from the beginning with your Jotun niefelheim .

Weaponwise a bloodthorn or a hellsword is better than a wraithsword too .




Concerning summons, blood and air gives you better (and more expensive SC). Bane Lords are not as powerful, but they're much cheaper, need little equipment and for the raiding purposes they work just as well as stronger SC. Air doesn't have much summons besides Air Queens, while death (bane lords, wraiths, ghosts, wights and more) and nature (lamia queens, lamia, ivy kings+vine ogres, faerie queens) have a lot of good summons. Plus nature have very nice sort of summoning called charm which allows you to get various SCs (air queens, Ice/Arch-Devils) which you wouldn't be able to get otherwise.


Boron said:

Death + blood serve similiar roles but until Tartarians/ghostriders/demilichs death is clearly inferior to blood . We likely never get these spells .




Blood doesn't even have anything comparable to Ghost riders. And tartarian mages are real monsters, and they come in unlimited quantity. The only problem here is to survive until you get death industry running.


Boron said:
The biggest advantages of your team nations lie in Flexibility , Mobility and most important the option to pick out where to attack very cheap via stealthy van/man armies + caelum drops .



Mobility, yes, mostly due to Caelum. Taking Van, Man and Caelum wouldn't be practical (too much concentration) and stealth-wise, Pangaea is very good too.

But flexibility comes from the choice of the strategy.


Boron said:
With Ctis , Tien Chi , Machaka and Ulm we have 4 little liked nations in our team .
Arco is probably a top 5 nation and pangenea + marignon are middlefield .



I don't know how you making this conclusion. C'tis is a perfect nation for team game, possibly the best one. You can buy D3N mage for 180, plus a random pick. And they have one of the cheapest national researchers (due to sacred), which is also useful on the battlefield. And if it wasn't enough they can just rollover the indies with 0 losses. Opponents are better expect roaming Bane Lords by turn 10. And in a team game they're likely to come properly equipped.

Ulm is not particularly strong by itself, but if he is used as a forger for other 5 nations, it's a huge gem saving.

Machaka is strong nation on its own, both mages and national troops. Part of their strength comes from flexibility of their mages, which is somewhat lost in the team game though.

Marignon, as another specialist nations suddenly gains value in a team game.

Standard theme of Tien Chi is pretty good, but their main strength in their magic versatility, which makes them much less attractive in the team game. Given the set of nations on team A, they still probably need Tien Chi for the air and water, unless they want to take a risk and rely on indies.


Boron said:
You have with Caelum the probably a bit overpowered nation which is often Banned .
All your nations are very liked . So for your team the decision which 2 nations not to play was quite hard while for us the decision which nations to play was even harder because most of them were worse than your nations imo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif



I think it's wrong to evaluate nations for the team on the basis of the regular MP. TC has a weakness in the early game and is likely to fall a victim of a rush. But the same applies to Mictlan. In a team game, nations that come into force early can help and protect other nations which can contribute to the team later. That doesn't work well for TC though, because their strength is in flexibility and for the team game specialization is more valuable. For the same reason Arco, which is one of the best nations, may not necessarily be very good pick for the team.

[Boron]

alexti said:
I don't know how you making this conclusion. C'tis is a perfect nation for team game, possibly the best one. You can buy D3N mage for 180, plus a random pick. And they have one of the cheapest national researchers (due to sacred), which is also useful on the battlefield. And if it wasn't enough they can just rollover the indies with 0 losses. Opponents are better expect roaming Bane Lords by turn 10. And in a team game they're likely to come properly equipped.




Well you have jotunheim niefelheim which can make the first SC on turn 2 .
D3N gives you not sooo good battlemagic a bit drain life a bit animate skeletons and that's it basically .
A niefelgigant should normally kill a banelord easy .

Basically the only weapon we have is charm . But thats high research and since ulm is dead now he can't forge Lanterns for pangenea speeding up research .

Hopefully you will show us in the rematch what ctis etc. can do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I fail to see how they fit better for a teamgame then e.g. caelum http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Lex]

2 Ctis just defeated 4 of my Seraphs in battle. went a little something like this:

Seraph 1: *yawn* well, he we go again. you guys ready with your False Horrors?

Seraph 2: Yup. Lets scare the [censored] outta the poor Ctis army.

Seraph 3: Did you guys notice something different about these dudes?

Seraph 4: Yeah, they kinda look "undead" a bit.

Seraph 1: Just start pumping out the False Horrors, everything should go as usual.

... many many many turns go by

Seraph 3: Hey guys, why are we still here?

Seraph 4: Because those [censored] Sauromancers are producing more Skeletons per turn then our False Horrors can handle.

Seraph 2: Doesn't that mean that we'll eventually lose this battle?

Seraph 3: Yup! Actually one of us will probably get killed, and then the rest of yous will run like little girls.

Seraph 1: Hmmm, yeah, sounds about right.

Seraph 4: *AHHHH* I'm being torn apart by a stupid skeleton! This wasn't in my job description!!! *AHHHH*

Seraph 1: Ewww. Time to run boys!

[Mark the Merciful]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Boron]

Well for poor Ctis it was not that funny http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
I guess those horrors would even give a banelord trouble http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

[Lex]

Boron said:
Well for poor Ctis it was not that funny http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
I guess those horrors would even give a banelord trouble http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif



oh. you know, playing Caelum really desensitizes you to the massive death toll other races face. i didn't even notice the big army Ctis had except for the two Sauromancers that gave me trouble!