playing ANYONE against everyone

[Gandalf Parker]

If you could play ANY nation in a huge era 1 game, who would you play? I mean a 1500 province map with all 3 eras being played (and the empty slots for the old grizzeled veterans).

To my count that would be 76 nations (you have to take out 23, 24, 25). So if you could pick one to play against all of the early, mid, and late era nations...

Think about it. It might happen.

[Evilhomer]

hmm, i'll vote lanka

[Hadrian_II]

i think mid tien chi --> not after edit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
they might be not so good, so EA Tien Chi (if meglobob dont want it or LA Tien Chi would be prefered. Or else LA Marignon and EA Abysya would be nice too. If they would be all taken, i'd stick to MA Tien Chi.

[Reverend Zombie]

Hadrian_II said:
i think mid tien chi



Why???

[KissBlade]

Probably Patala. IMO it has the best late game potential in the game. Spring and Autumn and MA Ermor might also get votes from me.

[Meglobob]

Well thinking about it, 1500/76 is 19.73'ish provinces per player which means you are unlikely to get rushed early.

Also this game would go on a long time, all most certain to never be completed unless you had special victory conditions.

So...I reckon you want a strong magical nation...errm either EA T'ien C'hi or a strong astral nation probably EA Arco.

Choosing to play LA Ermor or LA R'lyeh would be a total nightmare, can you imagine trying to move all those hordes of chaff around...'shudders'

I suppose this would be the ultimate Dom3 game.

[Xietor]

I will play MA Pangaea, MA Arcosphale, or MA Ulm.

Email me if this gets going or you start a MA game with 3-4 human players and the rest AI. dh987@cox.net

[Gandalf Parker]

Well consider making a new god for this (and please a password you would be willing to pass on). The game might go for years so a person might get bored, pass on their nation, take another, quit, come back a year later to sub back in on their first nation, etc etc.

[SelfishGene]

Some variant of Arcocephale would be hard to pass up. Healing is very tempting for your Pretenders. Although without Death...

I actually like LA Marignon alot for pure power. Astral Corruption ftw. Lanka is probably stronger, but i'm not completely familiar with Lanka yet (i can't remember which are capital only, ect).

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I'd have to go with MA Arcoscephale. With those parameters you're going to have to pick a good long term strategy so I'd go with good scales, strong research and expand early on the backs of elephants while castling up and cranking out the mystics. Strong communions & ability to heal afflictions on SC will carry you through the mid game, then strong astral magic (& good scales) will give you a good presence in the very long late game. You've got enough magic variety to handle anything, and great astral mages which will be brutal in the late game.

[Gandalf Parker]

I have to admit that EA Arcos would tempt me alot. In a game with every nation, running for so long, the ability to seduce commanders from every other era/nation would be very tempting.

[Meglobob]

Errm...thinking about it abit more, would'nt the LA nations have a huge advantage at the beginning with better weapons/armour and then in the end game the EA nations should come out on top with there more powerful mages/magic.

[Gandalf Parker]

Meglobob said:
Errm...thinking about it abit more, would'nt the LA nations have a huge advantage at the beginning with better weapons/armour and then in the end game the EA nations should come out on top with there more powerful mages/magic.


That did show up abit in the tests with AI's but Im willing to hear the expert veterans claims that AI's are at best a bare minimum comparison.

Human players might make all the difference. Can a great EA player make it far enough into the game to gain ground? Can a great LA player hold what he gains when the EA nations start gaining in their research?

[Baalz]

Meglobob, that's not entirely true. Some of the best national troops are EA sacreds (Vanheim, Mictlan, Neifelheim), while some really good late game powers are LA (Ermor, Ulm).

[Meglobob]

Gandalf Parker said:

Meglobob said:
Errm...thinking about it abit more, would'nt the LA nations have a huge advantage at the beginning with better weapons/armour and then in the end game the EA nations should come out on top with there more powerful mages/magic.


That did show up abit in the tests with AI's but Im willing to hear the expert veterans claims that AI's are at best a bare minimum comparison.

Human players might make all the difference. Can a great EA player make it far enough into the game to gain ground? Can a great LA player hold what he gains when the EA nations start gaining in their research?



This MP Gandalf, a player playing a LA nation could try to organise a early game massacre of all the EA nations. Can you imagine that, a huge alliance of LA nations slaughtering every EA nation they come across because they know such nations have a huge advantage later in the game.

EA Arco does'nt look so good now eh...as he could be public enemy no.1, would be good fun thou. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Or am I just http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif?

[quantum_mechani]

Meglobob said:
Errm...thinking about it abit more, would'nt the LA nations have a huge advantage at the beginning with better weapons/armour and then in the end game the EA nations should come out on top with there more powerful mages/magic.

More like EA nations would have a big advantage through the whole game. EA Vanhiem, Helhiem, Lanka, Niefelhiem could beat up almost any living LA nation, at any stage of the game. The differnce between ages isn't all it's made out to be... there are some extremely powerful nations scattered through all the eras, but EA has the biggest concentration.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually I was thinking that a lucky position would be EA arcos landing in the corner with LA Ulm sitting in front of him and cutting one super NAP (non-aggression pact for lurkers) "protect me now and I will make it worth your while later". Im thinking that either way, NAPs will have a big impact on a game this big.

[Baalz]

Yeah, diplomacy in general would be important. Don't want to be known as a pact breaker in a game running for 2 years. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Meglobob]

To quantum_mechani and Baalz:-

Yea, I agree with you both, some EA nations, like the ones you mentioned would be powerful from the start.

I was however, talking about the entire age as a group and generalising about overall strategy not focusing in, on a couple of nations.

[Xietor]

Do most of your mp games have diplomacy? The ones I play with my 3 friends are always everyone for himself. Diplomacy is considered cheating.

[quantum_mechani]

Xietor said:
Do most of your mp games have diplomacy? The ones I play with my 3 friends are always everyone for himself. Diplomacy is considered cheating.

That's the way I prefer to play, but most games/players are otherwise.

[Gandalf Parker]

In a game of purely testing strategy, then there usually isnt diplomacy. There doesnt tend to be diplomacy in chess. Also random events, random maps, any kindof luck really.

In a more role-playing game, diplomacy is part of the role playing. So is taking your lumps with random things. Yes, this is my preferred playing style. Im afraid that I got alot of the random stuff added to the game. Try not to hold that agaisnt me.

Dominions tends to be split. There are those who play their god, and there are those who consider their god just another piece in the game. Since there is no easy way to keep diplomacy out of the game, I think this one will have alot of it.

Side Note: I do have a list of hacks I did to try and create a game with no diplomacy. Blind email accounts all off of my server, watching the log and reporting any msgs between players, etc etc. It still ended up short of absolute but I might host a game like that one day down the road.

[Hadrian_II]

Reverend Zombie said:

Hadrian_II said:
i think mid tien chi



Why???



i like them

just that they are considered very weak has not to mean that i cant play them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. But as i think over it early or late might be the better choice, lets go to change my opinion, before anyone notices http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif.

[SelfishGene]

Early Era nations are more powerful magically with better sacreds, but lack Holy, mounted Knights, and x-bows. Death is less common in the Early Era as well.

Since Magic or Sacreds > all in Dominions, in the long run, i'd say Early Era nations would be more powerful on average than LA nations. AI, though of course, do not use magic or sacreds correctly, so LA nations are probably stronger in AI hands.

[Xietor]

I would not try actively to catch anyone teaming up. It would simply be the honor system. I see no point in cheating in a game? What would be the point of winning a game you had an unfair advantage playing in?

Now there may be people at the start, that say flat out they intend to team up, and if that is the case i can live with that. Albeit no amount of good strategy can overcome 4-5 people ganging up on you.

Despite Pangaea(MA) having limited mages and gems, I could see it doing well in a big game. Its units, with berserk, are never really obsolete. And stealth never really becomes obsolete either. With the use of blood, which i do not use against the AI, you could have very powerful assassins, and the spine devil is a cheap early unit that can give certain nations fits.

[jutetrea]

EA T'ien Chi

Wide range of paths, good summons and ok nats. I usually play with a chaos economy, but would think hard about going good scales for such a long term game.

I've recently started playing around with Growth/death scales at the extremes more and earlier there were posts saying death-3 has a minor long term effect. It seems noticeable, but survivable. My last FOTM was Pangaea, and growth 2 or 3 was noticeable late game as well - I could actually regen the provinces I would decimate hunting.

[SelfishGene]

MA Ermor is very strong, probably stronger than LA Ermor now. If they had Soul Gate, i'd love them to ...um, death.

What hurts MA Ermor is finding some mage time for research.

EA Ctis is very much like MA Ermor, with just a couple more negatives and several more positives. I like MA Ctis in theory, but i've not really played them in multi in all honesty. I just like free Disease dominions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Xietor]

The problem i have with MA ctis, is holding water squares. You cannot buy pd, and if you hire indies they die of disease.

Obviously you could try to have a horde of undead in every square, but that gets expensive. And on land, you would like to hire some good indies, like cross bowmen. But they die of disease as well. maybe if you took a pretender that could heal, but that would be micromanaging hell.

I doubt Ctis could keep gift of health up, or get the chalice.

[Shovah32]

I would probably go for LA Ulm with some growth just because i like them and they grow into a great late-game power(almost every count you summon increases your blood income for yet more counts until all your huntable provinces are being hunted in)

[Graeme Dice]

Of course the issue with LA Ulm is that counts aren't really good for anything besides blood hunting.

R'Lyeh is one of the few nations with access to W/N mages, so it will always be one of the most powerful in the late game.

[Evilhomer]

In part i agree with you, nations with access to either clams (+ astral) or blood stones(+ earth gems), or just plain blood hunting will have a good chance in a game as big as this.

[Gandalf Parker]

W/N?
For some reason Oceania always did very well in the AI tests.

[Xietor]

While making a 100 clams may be a great strategy, it is another perfect example of how to kill the fun of a game to me. I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.

ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race. Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.

I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.

[Shovah32]

LA ulm counts not useful for anything other than bloodhunting? With a high dominion fountain of blood you can have stealthy, flying squads of counts and vampires flying around risk free. You can have counts flying around to raise skeletons a few times, die and do it again next turn or my personal favourite get as many counts as you find neccesary and set them to fly in and either summon lammashtas, attack closest(in friendly dominion) or summon lammashtas, retreat(the lammashta fear often auto-routs counts but the lammashtas fight on so no problems).

When your blood hunters who are scattered around you empire are flying, stealthy, immortal, army leading, skeleton/lammashta raising, raiders who can fairly easily be turned into thugs you can be pretty versatile if you maintain your dominion levels. With my sleeping fountain of blood i can also get all blood royalty other than demon lords while having dom8 and nice scales(and i can also forge soul contracts early). The ideal defence situation is having an enemy army attack you in your dominion and hitting it turn after turn with flying, immortal counts and vampires(along with vampire lords who are even better thugs due to soul vortex).

[Xietor]

Though I have never played a race with a lot undead, I have played against Ermor a ton. Does Purgatory not affect LA Ulm?

[TirAsleen]

Ashen Empire - I can see armed soulless for years.

[Hellboy]

Xietor said:
While making a 100 clams may be a great strategy, it is another perfect example of how to kill the fun of a game to me. I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.


Well, that's a matter of taste, I think



ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race. Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.

It would be cool if that were moddable (and maybe it is?). I would expect it would be straightforward to mod such that clams (and related items) don't exist. If you're playing with trusted players it should be quite easy to incorporate this as a house rule.


I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.

Well, again, it may be a buzz kill for you, but some of us really enjoy the economic elements that forged generators add to the game. Oh, and btw, all the generators did get significantly nerfed between Dom2 and Dom3.

[Sombre]

Yeah, easy to mod clams away. You just make them require a silly amount of skill to forge and make them cost a silly number of gems.

[TirAsleen]

Modding things away is not a good thing for diversity. If some people want to spam clams its their decision. Other people can use that against them and attack right away.

In a special situation, like with 1500 Provinces, where a map is simply to big so the abuse of it is too much, one can simply make a house rule about it and rule them out.

I for one prefere 100 province maps and just sometimes 200provinces, if more players are availible. And its not an issue there. And yeah, i can remember clams beeing much cheaper in earlier dom versions.

[Graeme Dice]

Xietor said:
I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.



There's essentially no micromanagement. You build a few per turn, and put them on one of your researchers that don't already have one. You then press the pool astral pearls button once a turn.


ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race.



Let's not further neuter magic if we can avoid it. It's a strategy that only works under a very specific set of circumstances, which is why I've brought it up in both of these threads related to winning massive long-term games.


Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.



It does no such thing. The better your gem income, the faster you can build clams. A water gem income of 1 per turn is 15 times slower to start than a water gem income of 15.


I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.



The two game settings where I've discussed clams in the past week are already kind of a "buzzkill". It's also already been seriously nerfed to the point where you need on the order of 50 turns or more before you start to turn a profit. They are set on huge maps where you won't see any serious opposition for 20 turns or more. People will be dropping out of these games constantly.

[Graeme Dice]

TirAsleen said:
In a special situation, like with 1500 Provinces, where a map is simply to big so the abuse of it is too much, one can simply make a house rule about it and rule them out.



The advantage of a mod over a house rule, is that people can't break the mod, while they can break the house rule quite easily.

[Graeme Dice]

Shovah32 said:
LA ulm counts not useful for anything other than bloodhunting? With a high dominion fountain of blood you can have stealthy, flying squads of counts and vampires flying around risk free.



Sure they can fly around, but they can't actually accomplish much while doing so. They don't have the stats to act as thugs, which means that all that they can do effectively is raise skeletons and, in the very late game, cast disintegrate. You also don't need LA Ulm to get vampires, Mictlan is just as capable of summoning them (although they have little reason to bother) and is likely to have a higher blood income to boot.

[Shovah32]

Mictlan will have higher blood income to start but when your hunting in all your provinces it should be around the same(also counts auto-summon free thralls). The flying lets them raid(if you know they wont die) aswell as getting then where you need quickly(particularly useful when defending) and their stats are pretty nice. LA Ulm actually does have better access to vampires(though lower starting blood income unless you use your second tier mages for hunting) due to counts only costing 44 slaves rather than 77 for lords(they have slightly improved stats and +1D and blood, none of which really help any of the strategies i listed)

[Baalz]

Graeme Dice said:
Sure they can fly around, but they can't actually accomplish much while doing so. They don't have the stats to act as thugs, which means that all that they can do effectively is raise skeletons and, in the very late game, cast disintegrate. You also don't need LA Ulm to get vampires, Mictlan is just as capable of summoning them (although they have little reason to bother) and is likely to have a higher blood income to boot.



Oh Graeme, you're just not thinking about it. Here are a couple things that you can do with the counts:
Skelispam
Lashimas
Blood Sabbath - followed by hell power (hint: spawns a bunch of horrors while giving you some pretty big death mages until the horrors kill them before attacking the enemy. )
Drop a bunch of counts on the front line with a few death gems apiece and rain shadow blast down. The counts are so mobile, it's not hard to converge 10 of them wherever you want, and 20 shadow blasts has a pretty devastating effect on most armies.
Empowering counts can be damn effective if you're clever with blood sababath (the sabbath slaves are effected by the master's buffs). Empower a count a single level in fire and another count in earth and now you can have a swarm of iron skinned, fire shielded, immortal, flying, regenerating, lifedraining dudes who steadily build up xp because they never die. Variations on this are endless, and you never need to worry about the dude you empowered dying...
Enemy SC giving you grief? Again, converge a whole swarm of counts on him and hellbind the hell out of that heart.

Perhaps they're not the best unit in the game, but they are a FAR cry from useless if you just apply a bit of thought to them. The power of Ulm's counts is not that any individual one is a badass, it's that Ulm is unrivaled in the number of vamps it can generate, particularly early in the game. A swarm of counts can be very effective - and can't quite stress this enough - they're immortal! That fact means you can use and abuse them in ways you never would other units.

[mivayan]

Baalz said:A swarm of counts can be very effective - and can't quite stress this enough - they're immortal!


Those ideas seem quite usefull actually.

Just beware of the opponent using 45 stealth preachers to remove your dominion in a province on the turn of the big battle.... preaching happens pre-combat.

[Evilhomer]

Yeah but dominion spread happens post-combat (for whatever reason - including preaching)

[mivayan]

Evilhomer said:
Yeah but dominion spread happens post-combat (for whatever reason - including preaching)


Do you mean spread to other provinces? Preaching never does that.

Do you mean changing dominion in the province the priest is in? Someone posted success in preaching before defeating an enemy vampire queen, you mean this shouldn't be possible?

[Shovah32]

Either way, with thralls patrolling(without losses due to growth), strong dominion and count mobility you SHOULDNT(not that i dont say wont) have to fight outside your dominion(although attacking can be risky because they could mass preach before you hit them).

[KissBlade]

I find moving around gigantic armies to clobber at each other pointlessly a buzzkill.

[Shovah32]

Me too, generally, thats why i like the stealthy raiding form of play i get from LA Ulm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Usually with them i dont need any large armies because of the versatility and raiding potential(even in enemy dominion a flying, stealthy skele spammer who can handle himself pretty well in combat is nice) that lets me not have to have huge battles.

[TirAsleen]

I like the tactic with hellpower and spawning horrors while blood mages are immortal http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Other Ulm themes are pretty weak but BF is one of my favourites too and it turned out not that weak once in a MP game its the most versatile ulm theme too.

well, i go for LA Ulm, MA Ryleh and EA Mitclan. But Ashen Empire will always be my favourite for nostalgic reasions.

[Evilhomer]

Mivayan, well i have not tested it but according to the manual page 72, ordinary combat take place at turn resolution sequence 14, while "All dominion spread (for whatever reason) are conducted now." is turn resolution sequence 24. Unless the manual has another flaw i take that to mean that preaching which does change dominion should take place after combat.

[Hellboy]

Gandalf Parker said:
In a game of purely testing strategy, then there usually isnt diplomacy. There doesnt tend to be diplomacy in chess. Also random events, random maps, any kindof luck really.

In a more role-playing game, diplomacy is part of the role playing. So is taking your lumps with random things. Yes, this is my preferred playing style. Im afraid that I got alot of the random stuff added to the game. Try not to hold that agaisnt me.

Dominions tends to be split. There are those who play their god, and there are those who consider their god just another piece in the game. Since there is no easy way to keep diplomacy out of the game, I think this one will have alot of it.

Side Note: I do have a list of hacks I did to try and create a game with no diplomacy. Blind email accounts all off of my server, watching the log and reporting any msgs between players, etc etc. It still ended up short of absolute but I might host a game like that one day down the road.

I just have to say that this notion that diplomacy and/or randomness somehow reduce strategy is really quite simplistic. In both cases there are many, many hard core, intense strategy games replete in both. For example, in the case of diplomacy there is the archtype Avalon Hill boardgame called "Diplomacy" where the whole point of the game is, as its name says, to make (and break) deals. This is a game that has been analyzed and studied extensively. I imagine it is quite amenable to being studied in the light of the mathematics of game theory, and I'd be willing to bet that that has been done.

Equally so with randomness, randomness in no way decreases the amount of strategy/analysis to be applied. Just ask any bridge player. Yes it is true that many classic strategy games are deterministic, but requiring a player to make his/her analyses probabilistic instead can end up with a game just as deep and just as challenging (or more so).

Edit: Hope the above doesn't come off as hostile or insulting, but I have noticed that there is a school of thought on these boards that diplomacy somehow reduces the intellectual quality or depth of the game. Seeing this, I just wanted to raise the counterargument.

[Rytek]

Sauromatia.

[Tyrant]

I'd love to play this if it comes together, and i think i'd like mid Abyssia, but there are lots of cool choices.

[Meglobob]

Joining a game like this and getting knocked out early would be very depressing.

[FrankTrollman]

Deleted.

[KissBlade]

Experience in large games have shone me that,that simply isn't true. Once you have approached late game, a majority of your power comes from summoned units. Also I'm not sure how you can say that MA Pan has any sort of strong late game magic ... pans are just not that formidable.

Most huge games all generally meld around the same way of players building up clam pools and hoping out nuke the other player's clam pools out of existence.

[djo]

Meglobob said:
Joining a game like this and getting knocked out early would be very depressing.



(a) By turn 517 in 2009, it might be depressing not to have been knocked out early.

(b) I get knocked out early in most of the games I play anyway. It's still fun.

I'd do it just to do it. It'd be a historic event in the online Dominions community. I'd play any one of a bunch of nations, Ermor, Marignon, C'tis being particular favorites of mine.


Question for veterans of very long games: do games ever get so long that blood becomes less effective due to lack of population? Or, referencing KissBlade's comment immediately above, does it just become irrelevant before ineffective?

[Meglobob]

djo said:

Meglobob said:
Joining a game like this and getting knocked out early would be very depressing.



(a) By turn 517 in 2009, it might be depressing not to have been knocked out early.



Good point, having a 50+ province empire can be painful, timewise and logistically. Ideally, it would be good to get defeated between turns 51-100. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

[TirAsleen]

Especially painful with Ashen Empire.

[Shovah32]

One nation i can see doing well here is ctis(probably LA) due to their powerful sauromancers. They have strong access to death aswell as good astral/nature(national summons ftw http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) and fire in LA. With a pretender to cover the paths they dont have and maybe forge boosters i can see them being a very powerful force(i wonder what happens if all squares on the battlefield are full and you try to cast raise skeletons... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)

[Gandalf Parker]

Im hoping that the grizzled old veterans will leave the proving of their pet peeves to the younger set. Aftr all, if its a major abuse then anyone should be able to do it.

For them, Im offering abit of a challenge. I will include the empty and unfinished nations.
They can take:
13) Tir na n'Og - Land of the Tuatha
14) Fomoria -
20) early Gath - Time of Nefilim
45) mid Gath - Anakim
65) late Gath - xxx
69) Filler 69 - Veteran or Freebie
70) Filler 70 - Veteran or Freebie
71) Filler 71 - Veteran or Freebie
72) Filler 72 - Veteran or Freebie
73) Filler 73 - Veteran or Freebie
74) Filler 74 - Veteran or Freebie
75) Filler 75 - Veteran or Freebie
76) Filler 76 - Veteran or Freebie
77) Filler 77 - Veteran or Freebie
78) Filler 78 - Veteran or Freebie
79) Filler 79 - Veteran or Freebie

Since these are holding slots they would be very difficult to play. A bare list of gods, a generic starting army, no national sites, no national units.

Im still considering two things about the game. Whether to turn AI on for all unchosen nations. And whether to allow veterans to send a name and epithet change for their choices.

[FrankTrollman]

Deleted.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think a veteran might make a good match of it starting out as limited as a filler slot.

[Xietor]

Just put the Ai on mighty for all the races not being played by humans. That would allow someone that gets killed off to take over a computer race.

[Meglobob]

Xietor said:
Just put the Ai on mighty for all the races not being played by humans. That would allow someone that gets killed off to take over a computer race.



Okay I'll bite, how do you turn an AI position back to human control? I thought this was impossible.

[Xietor]

I have no idea, i thought gandalf could do anything!

[Gandalf Parker]

heehee. Well thats one I havent managed yet (at least not in a legal manner) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

I thought people might be interested in this from my latest test. I created an all_nations game and then let it run mindlessly with continual forced hosting.
Its down to 8 nations

http://www.Dom3minions.com/~~mmdom3/mindless/ (http://www.Dom3minions.com/~mmdom3/mindless/)

[SelfishGene]

Broken link.

[MaxWilson]

Take out the extra tilde~.

http://www.dom3minions.com/~mmdom3/mindless/

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Heh. LA Ermor's army size is 32000. Guess it maxed out a counter somewhere.

-Max

[iceboy]

So has anyone created this mod yet? Is this going to be an option in the next patch?

[Gandalf Parker]

heehee. no I suspect that this makes Johan cringe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I wouldnt expect to see it in a patch.

But if you really want to play that way on your own machine then I will provide my copy of the mod. Altho it will probably have to be fixed with the next patch or whenver those new nations come out.
http://www.Dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/SingleAge.zip

[Meglobob]

Just to let everyone know who does not visit the mods subforum, Gandalf has finished the mod and its now available.

With Gandalfs mod you can play upto 77 nations, from every era or EA Ulm vs MA Ulm vs LA Ulm for example! How would EA Atlantis fare against LA R'yleh?

Its called, 'single age mod', available in the Dom 3 Scenarios, Maps and Mods subforum.

Lets all say thankyou Gandalf! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Shovah32]

Thanks gandalf!

ps:looks like LA ermors cleaning house in the mindless game

[Gandalf Parker]

Heehee. Well if its extreme and chaotic then you can count on me to back the idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif/threads/images/Graemlins/Hammer.gif

[HoneyBadger]

I'd absolutely play EA Niefelheim.

[HoneyBadger]

Actually, I'll play whatever's left of the EA nations-this sounds really fun!

[HoneyBadger]

Along with the 50 nations, what about Tir'na'nOG and Fomoria? For that matter, what about a selection of "officially" accepted mod-nations like Haida G'waii?

[jutetrea]

Random nations would be fun, then gang up on face huggers or those showing undue advancement

oh yeah, color me in for EA T'ien Chi if avail

[Shovah32]

Id probably want LA agartha, bandar log, one of the ctisian nations or possibly one of the new nations.

Random nations would probably be best.

[HoneyBadger]

I'd be happy playing EA R'lyeh or EA Agartha too.

[Gandalf Parker]

HoneyBadger said:
Along with the 50 nations, what about Tir'na'nOG and Fomoria? For that matter, what about a selection of "officially" accepted mod-nations like Haida G'waii?


Those two are actually already in the game. Nations 13 and 14 have those names already assigned but in 3.06 they dont have much they can do. So Im guessing that when they show up in the next patch I wont have to do anything. The Eriu I dont know where they are showing up so I might have to edit the mod for them.

As for other modded nations, Im not sure what is needed. Feel free to try it and find out. I probably wont be offering them in my game unless a single mod comes out that fills the empty slots and gives them flags. Anything else is more work than I plan on doing.

I might toss the empty slots into the game as AI's. Or some veteran might try them. They start with an army but most of them have nothing to recruit so they are basically freebies for whoever lands near them.

[HoneyBadger]

It was just a thought. I'd rather play a game that you yourself were hosting, Gandalf, than a random one. That would be more appealing to me.

[Sombre]

In what way is Haida an 'officially' accepted nation?

I'm just curious.

[VedalkenBear]

Dunno, since it's, y'know, an egregious case of what I'm discussing in another thread ATM, Sombre.

[Foodstamp]

For this type of mod, I feel only the official nations would be appropriate.

Sombre, I think Honeybadger was saying it should be considered for some sort of list, not that it is on such list.

I didn't create Haida Gwaii with the intentions of it being forced on people or added to a list of accepted mods as is suggested.

I feel all player mods should always be a voluntary relationship, download it if you want, play with it if you like it.

And I think the criticism of such mods should always spring forth as constructive, not out of jealousy or a dislike of an individual.

[VedalkenBear]

Oh, I didn't know you made it, Foodstamp. If you like, I can explain my exact issues with the mod privately. With, of course, checking to make sure I have a current copy of the mod, so that I'm not going over stuff that is no longer an issue. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Foodstamp]

That is fine. Just keep in mind that I want the feedback to be constructive, and I would appreciate that you take the entire mod into consideration when determining if something is overpowered or underpowered.

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, I perhaps made a poor choice of words in using the term "officially" accepted.

What I was aiming for was "complete, vanilla-balanced, and well-liked by the community/accepted as a standard of high quality". I honestly didn't think anyone would take issue with the term, but if so, I appologise and I'll try to be more sensitive (well, atleast I'll have that good intention until such time as I forget about it).

[Gandalf Parker]

OK people.
I have some news. Good and Bad.

(1) On the one hand my tests have not gone well. It is possible to run this game by direct connect but getting that first game-creation hosting involves alot of manual work.

(2) On the other hand, we have a volunteer to tackle that. Velusian is starting a game now in the MP forum.
Mega Game thread (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=516567&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=6&o=2&fpart=1&vc=1&PHPSESSID=)
So if you thought this game as an interesting idea then go jump on his since it might be a long time before I decide to do one.

(3) My fingers are lazy but my mind is on continual outflow. A comment in the games thread about bidding on nations sparked me off, "You can get 80 players". My mod took for granted that it would be all nations of all 3 ages, and maybe the empty slots. But "80 players" got me to thinking. As far as I can tell from messing with the SingleAge mod the game might allow multiple renamings of the same nations. So it might be possible to create a mod at the start of the game to include any nations files that you received. Naming ea_Ulm files as ea_Ulm_# where # is a number. 6 Ulms, 8 Arcos, 12 Vanheims, etc etc all in one game. No bidding at all because it doesnt matter who wants what. Let them all in the game (up to the 80 slot limit of course). Oh well, add that to my already huge project list.

Gandalf Parker

[jutetrea]

whoah..my brain hurts. That might be really really cool! 5 Marveni's ganging up on a nearby Helheim (might take that many).

30 Helheims duking it out

EA T'ien chi vs. MA T'ien chi "Grandpa?"

Takes the pantheon idea to new heights

[Gandalf Parker]

Well thats been me thru all 3 dominions. If its randoms or chaos then Im all for supporting it to the extremes.

Hmmmm random AND chaos. I just had another thought. Im sure I can write a basic program that will write a mod so that you have no idea who you are playing against.

for 1 to 80 times...
select random nation
select randomly generated name
write the nation to slot 1
name it with the made-up name
next slot

Start a game with the mod and add as many of them into the game as you want. You might play against 4 late age Ulms but the nations might be named Fee Fhi Fho and Fhum. You wouldnt know for sure until you actually ran into them.

Hmmmmmm... it would have to have a way to tell it which nation to NOT include so I can play the nation I want. Or not. It just means that I would end up with a random nation also.

Gandalf Parker

[jutetrea]

Would add to diplomacy as well as you may not want other players finding out what you are. Banners might be difficult, maybe find a way to randomize the extra banner mod as well. Then they wouldn't know till they actually saw the troop types http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

How to get around the fact that some folks just HATE playing some nations? Allow 1 rejoin and somehow enforce it?

Also, how long did it take you to set up your chaos game with some random provinces? Not necessarily the whole % random or full random, just some extra spice to a 1000+ map?

[Gandalf Parker]

You mean like my Mega Map?
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/MegaMap.jpg
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/MegaMap.zip
Or something abit more logical like the RanMap can generate?

It depends on how its created. My version takes a LONG time to generate the fatherland file but I guess that wont matter in a multiplayer game.