60 Player MegaGame Discussion Thread

[Velusion]

This is an open thread to discuss a 60 player MP TCP/IP game I will likely host in the near future. This is NOT a signup thread, but rather a thread to discuss the best selections/options for the game. The game will include ALL the nations that exist in all of the ages (total as of 3.06 is 60). You will need to use a mod to play this game and it will be based on Gandalf’s Single Age mod (but slightly modified – v2). This mod does not change the basic game play.

There are a couple of game settings that are not open for discussion – and are simply my personal preferences. The settings not open for discussion (unless you want to tell me how awesome my preferences are) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif:

• The map we will use is here: http://67.66.187.69/dominions3/perpetualitysmall.jpg
• Speed: 24 hours per host for the first 18 turns moving to 48 hours per host after that. Once the game gets into turn 70+ we will up it to 72.
• Victory Conditions: 650 out of 1000 (~65%) provinces controlled, or the surrendering of all other players (the latter is much more likely).
• Graphs: On
• Hall of Fame: Highest possible
• Magic Research: Difficult or Very Difficult
• Magic Site Density: 40 (default middle age setting).
• No other mods… this is because we can’t be sure they will work properly. If this one goes off well I might try and host a CB + WH modded game of this.
• The only real house rule: Arcane Nexus is BANNED. I already thought this spell was overpowered in larger games… but with 60 players I fear there would simply be a rush to put it up as fast as possible. Casting Arcane Nexus gets you put on AI.

Things I want input on:

• What “age” do we want to set this in? This matters as far as the indys that we fight. I think I can easily update the mod to set the game in another age besides early if desired.
• Do we want Magic Research Difficult or Very Difficult? My desire is to make it so at the very end of the game the biggest players have acquired about 60-75% of the available research points. I’m leaning toward Very Difficult, but I’m not sure of the consequences…
• Nation Selection. I normally do random nation assignments because I like to try new nations and I dislike the standard “first poster gets whatever nation they want” method. However I know random nations wouldn’t appeal to everyone. So state how you think they players should pick/assign nations here. Try to think of something fair but not complicated.
• Patch Level. Do we wait for the next patch? I keep hearing it is coming out soon...

Also, I’m not a modder and I don’t really have the time between hosting/playing games to delve into the wonderful world of modding… but…If there is modder (or two) out there who would like to contribute to this huge game (and future games) there are a few things that would be extremely handy:

• New Nation Flags for some of the duplicate era nations (maybe just change the color on 2 of the 3). This could be a separate mod but it would probably be better to integrate it into the Single Age v2 mod.
• Larger Hall of Fame – it would be great if the mod could include a HoF that is 25 in size!
• More Global Spells – it would be great if the mod could give 10 open Global Spell spots. (if anyone can think of reason that would be very bad mention it here).

Remember this isn’t a sign up thread – just give me your thoughts! If there is something I didn't think of or address here, feel free to bring it up.

[Meglobob]

I like EA best for indys.

I would like very difficult research as well, there is a tendency to pass over all the lower level spells, unless your desperate, saving gems for just the high level stuff. Would be fun to use the low level spells for longer. Never played with difficult or very difficult research so no idea as to the long term consequences.

Nation selection, I really think in a mega longterm game like this a player should get a nation they really, really want to play. How about everyone gives a top 5 in order of preference?

Patching causes alot of hassle, especially with new players, also it looks like its going to be a pretty big patch so everyone will be keen to use it. Having the 2 new nations will be fun too. So I say wait for the patch. It will probably take some getting going, a game like this anyway.

Finally, what if the game does not fill up ie... all 60 nations or not taken? Leave them out or have them in as AI?

[DrPraetorious]

Peronally, I like my bidding system; but with a game like this, we'd need alternates - are the alternates stuck with the bids of whomever they replace? I suppose they'd have to be. Also, just managing the bids for 60 players would be quite a headache.

Very hard research is a real problem for certain positions which are heavily magic dependent - Pythium, Marignon, for example. I think a system of bids would help to alleviate this problem, as well as making all 60 nations viable.

The flags are easy from a modding standpoint, but I'm no good at drawring.

The other two options would require diving into the executable, I believe. For one thing, the window isn't big enough to display more than 5 globals, so you'd have to add a scrollbar to the GUI, which I don't think you can do, at least at present - so even if I code-dive I don't think I can change that.

Finally, if you're going to ban Arcane Nexus - I can add a line to disable it in the many-nations mod. Likewise, if we wanted any other mods - I suggest my blessing hotfix, which many nations (LA Ulm for example) rather need to use some of their sacred units. All it does is allow regular bless to affect undead, and it definitely works I've tested it pretty thoroughly.

I should say, given how powerful Arcane Nexus will be, and given only five slots for globals, people will fight over it, and fiercely, so it may not be needful to disable it.

[solo]

I concur on suggested mods and EA, and would also like to try very difficult research.

Otherwise I agree with Meglobob to allow players to select nations, and think first come first served is okay, because many nations have similar versions.

If not all nations are taken, I think it's best to leave out the ones not selected. If only 30 or so want to play, we might consider have each player control two nations instead of one!

[Velusion]

Meglobob said:
Nation selection, I really think in a mega longterm game like this a player should get a nation they really, really want to play. How about everyone gives a top 5 in order of preference?




I agree it would be nice to give people what they want - but even if people gave me a top 5 or top 10 its pretty likely that with 60 players a number of players still wouldn't get the nation on their list.


Meglobob said:
Patching causes alot of hassle, especially with new players, also it looks like its going to be a pretty big patch so everyone will be keen to use it. Having the 2 new nations will be fun too. So I say wait for the patch. It will probably take some getting going, a game like this anyway.




I wouldn't mind waiting for the next patch if it is going to come out in the next 2 weeks or so. I'm not going to wait a month+ however. Anyone have any rumors on when it is coming? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif


Meglobob said:
Finally, what if the game does not fill up ie... all 60 nations or not taken? Leave them out or have them in as AI?



Probably put them on hardest or second to hardest AI.

[lch]

I'd suggest to use a wraparound map, but I know that it might be a problem to get such a large map for so many players...

[Ironhawk]

An ambitious plan. I do think you are headed for some trouble tho just in the sheer number of players involved. It is hard enough to get 18 players on the same page (pretenders uploaded, mods correct, etc). The thought of trying to manage 60 is daunting. Additionally, player turnover will be a problem. As DrP says, you'll need alternates. But with a game of this size I wonder if there are enough players in the community to support a full staff and alternates.

Personally, I think you would be better off trying with just two ages first: maybe early vs. late?

BTW, you cannot mod the size of the HoF or the Global Enchants. We asked for this as a game setting in the beta and it was not accepted by the devs.

[Hadrian_II]

I would like very difficult research, because this game will be so big, else everyone will have researched everything too early.

About the selections, i think random assignment is not so good here, as this game once started will likely take ages before it is finished, so everyone should have a nation he likes. Maybe a system, where everyone has to give 5 proposals he would like to play and then he would get a nation out of the proposals. (this would still be work for the host, but id like a system, where you still have a chance to get a 'good' nation, even if you are late to sign up)

[Velusion]

DrPraetorious said:
Peronally, I like my bidding system; but with a game like this, we'd need alternates - are the alternates stuck with the bids of whomever they replace? I suppose they'd have to be. Also, just managing the bids for 60 players would be quite a headache.



Yea I have my own bidding system I worked on awhile back that I considered... but really I want the setup to be rather simple. I think this game is too big to be trying out bidding on for the first time.


DrPraetorious said:
Very hard research is a real problem for certain positions which are heavily magic dependent - Pythium, Marignon, for example. I think a system of bids would help to alleviate this problem, as well as making all 60 nations viable.



Maybe just difficult then? Any more opinions on this?


DrPraetorious said:
The other two options would require diving into the executable, I believe. For one thing, the window isn't big enough to display more than 5 globals, so you'd have to add a scrollbar to the GUI, which I don't think you can do, at least at present - so even if I code-dive I don't think I can change that.




Ahhh well thats a shame - but not that huge of a deal.


DrPraetorious said:
Finally, if you're going to ban Arcane Nexus - I can add a line to disable it in the many-nations mod. Likewise, if we wanted any other mods - I suggest my blessing hotfix, which many nations (LA Ulm for example) rather need to use some of their sacred units. All it does is allow regular bless to affect undead, and it definitely works I've tested it pretty thoroughly.




I'm not opposed to mods that fix verified known bugs - provided thats all they do. There probably are a number of them.

[Velusion]

Ironhawk said:
An ambitious plan. I do think you are headed for some trouble tho just in the sheer number of players involved. It is hard enough to get 18 players on the same page (pretenders uploaded, mods correct, etc). The thought of trying to manage 60 is daunting. Additionally, player turnover will be a problem. As DrP says, you'll need alternates. But with a game of this size I wonder if there are enough players in the community to support a full staff and alternates.




Well, while I do think getting 60 might not be possible, all my large MP games fill up in less than 12 hours normally. I'm reasonably confident I can get about 30-40, we'll just have to see if we get more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

I think I've gotten pretty good at managing games, so I'm not concerned about the admin time.

I would require passwords from everyone so we can replace a missing player. I don't normally require alternates because I can usually find replacements for players fairly fast on the forums - worse comes to worse the nation gets put on AI.

I know there are a number of players that dislike including AIs in games (I know I do) but with large a game it's going to happen occasionally.

[DrPraetorious]

The fact is, nations from different eras are not well balanced against eachother, especially at very difficult research.

You could give people larger starting armies, or you could give people big piles of initial money, more than 1 starting province, there are various things you could do but they tend to reward some nations/strategies and punish others (like having an awake SC God.)

I think a bidding system is the only robust solution - everyone is entitled to their own opinion about which nations are over or under-powered, and to vote with their wallet.

Of course, my bidding system isn't well-tested yet. I'm planning to start a bid-based game as soon as the patch comes out.

[Velusion]

solo said:
Otherwise I agree with Meglobob to allow players to select nations, and think first come first served is okay, because many nations have similar versions.

If not all nations are taken, I think it's best to leave out the ones not selected. If only 30 or so want to play, we might consider have each player control two nations instead of one!



Right now I'm leaning to announcing a sign up time(to be a bit more fair to people who don't monitor the forums 24x7) in advance and simply start letting people pick during that time.

[Baalz]

Very hard research sounds good to me.

Dr. P's bidding system sounds interesting, but I think getting this thing organized is already going to be difficult. I second the suggestion to wait for the patch, we can start organizing now.

You probably want to state up front a policy on staling (are you switched out after 3 consecutive stales?, etc). With 60 people, somebody is always going to be staling, people are going to just disappear, etc. Also, you might want to set a time for the game to start if all slots don't get filled "we'll start when we're full or next Sunday, whichever is first"

I don't personally care if Arcane Nexus is banned, but a few of the globals are going to be more powerful than they usually are because of scaling. I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to get 10-15 players (or more) to pool gems for a dispel on anything that looks too threatening. My guess is this will be a self correcting thing. The thing with AN is any MP game that you can get it up and keep it up, you've pretty much won already anyway so it just speeds up the cleanup.

I don't think having people play more than one nation is a good idea. That might be fun in another game but we're already doing something quite different here so I'd suggest doing one thing at a time.

Yeah, it is a bit different with such a potentially long term game. It might be better to do a first come first served approach so that people signing up could pick from what's remaining. The down side is we might have trouble filling in the last few nations that few want to play, but the up side is that the people playing will be more satisfied with the nation they have and more likely to stick it out for a longer time.

[Velusion]

DrPraetorious said:
I think a bidding system is the only robust solution - everyone is entitled to their own opinion about which nations are over or under-powered, and to vote with their wallet.




I agree, but I'm not really super-concerned with balance this game (or I would have looked into the CB). I also think that with the more players the more self-balancing (to a certain degree) the game gets. The late game is going to be crazy and unpredictable.

I guess I'm saying that I agree bidding would be a fairer way to distribute nations, but I'm more concerned with starting with little or no hassle. I'd be happy to test your bidding system in a future game though...

[Micah]

No one is going to know how strong a nation will be in this type of situation, so it will be hard to post meaningful bids, especially with the large number of nations available making it hard to be familiar with all of them.

I think putting too much effort into trying to balance something this large/ambitious the first time through is just going to end in frustration. Obviously any glaring holes should be patched up, but a point-by-point bid system isn't going to work outside of giving people the illusion of having control over what they end up with. People who play in this game are going to have to realize that things WILL be unbalanced, and deal with the problem accordingly. Diplomacy will be vital.

As for research - You're going to be stuck either hamstringing research-reliant nations early on or having everything researched very early, and I don't think there's any way to fix that without altering the geometric series equation (so low level things are still easy to research but high levels get really really hard). I think very difficult research would be the best way to keep the late game interesting though, and to me that's more important than early game (if you get blitzed and killed on turn 10 because you can't research the spells you need you've spent maybe 10 hours on the game, total...by turn 50 you've invested a lot more into the game, and since the turns take 2 hours each I'd want them to hold my attention instead of just turning into a phyrric gem-throwing contest.)

[Velusion]

What is the research gain difference between:

Normal?
Difficult?
Very Difficult?

I saw a post on it long ago, but I can't find it anymore.

Here is another question - would it be possible to mod a research level like the one Micah mentioned? "(so low level things are still easy to research but high levels get really really hard)". I doubt it is, but I thought I would ask.

[Micah]

Research costs thread:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=494296&page=1&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

And the progression is not moddable afaik, that would have been a change along the lines of adding global slots which would require tweaking things the devs didn't intend to be tweaked.

[Velusion]

Also - I'll leave the Aracane Nexus choice up to the general consensus of this thread then.

I'm pretty skeptical about it being able to "self-balancing" itself in such such a large game, but if the majority here thinks it will work itself out, Its not a big deal to me.

My concern is that in the late game there will be massive amounts of gems floating around. I think it will be much, much harder to get rid of this once it goes up, and I think that the winner will most likely be the on who puts up AN and makes it stay.

[Velusion]

Baalz said:

You probably want to state up front a policy on staling (are you switched out after 3 consecutive stales?, etc). With 60 people, somebody is always going to be staling, people are going to just disappear, etc. Also, you might want to set a time for the game to start if all slots don't get filled "we'll start when we're full or next Sunday, whichever is first"



I already do that with all my games! Though I do cut some slack every so often... something that wouldn't be possible here.

[Shovah32]

I think the nexus should be banned. Even throwing it up for one turn with minimum gems(or however many are needed to overpower existing globals) would get so many gems that you could put it up with a huge boost next turn, possibly allowing you to keep it up for a while and continue to reinforce it.

[Gandalf Parker]

How about first-come first-served unless bidded thru paypal? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Evilhomer]

Casting AN might cause you to be at war with 59 other nations, I would think twice before putting it up. I doubt its a problem.

[Cor]

I would be for banning AN. Being attack by 59 other nations is not nearly as scary if only 10 know where you are.

[Evilhomer]

10 nations *might* be enough to kill you, global or not =)

[lch]

Evilhomer said:
Casting AN might cause you to be at war with 59 other nations, I would think twice before putting it up. I doubt its a problem.


You also get gems from 59 other nations, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

That's why I suggested wraparound: Nobody can cuddle up in his corner, everybody has other players around him everywhere.

Another suggestion I'd make to prevent people from abandoning the game: Maybe make this a team game? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif

And last but not least: 60 nations isn't the limit, you can get 80 nations into a game... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Cor]

Evilhomer said:
10 nations *might* be enough to kill you, global or not =)



True enough!
1 nation is often enough to take me out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Cor]

Other areas of disscussion:

*New nation flags- A must in my opinion.
*Very difficult research.
*I am against the bidding, way to complex.
I would like to see random nation with three picks. (you are given three random nations and you choose which to play) Unfortunately it will still have to be first come first serve.
*wait for the new patch, for the love of all thats holy, wait

[Velusion]

Cor said:

*New nation flags- A must in my opinion.




Are you volunteering? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Cor]

Velusion said:

Are you volunteering? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Hardly. I have a basic grasp of modding in Dom2. Never done it in dom 3. Either way graphics are beyond me.

[Velusion]

Cor said:

Hardly. I have a basic grasp of modding in Dom2. Never done it in dom 3. Either way graphics are beyond me.



I got you beat. I can't even spell "mod".

[lch]

Or just DON'T use new flags, but every age's nation is allied with his two other counterpart and they start next to each other on the map... to balance out the early/middle/late strength conflict. Okay, a bit problematic that not every nation is present in every age. Use mods! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[BandarLover]

Isn't there already and banners and standard mod that changes each era of each nation? I believe they should all be different enough with that mod. Hard magic research would be good, difficult could seriously hamstring some nations (MA Argatha and MA Yomi (?) come to mind)

[Foodstamp]

I agree with bandar, just use Zepath's wonderful flag mod. It makes the flags unique to every era.

[mivayan]

A fellow in the irc channel thought you might run into the cap on how many units and commanders can exist. I think that's a point. The cap is some ridicilous number, but still. Perhaps banning LA ermor and rlyeh would help with that, since they tend to have more units than many other nations combined.

amusing thought:
Turn 30, arco casts wrath of god.
Turn 31, arco's capitol wanishes in a puff of nuclear blasts.

but arcane nexus is still too good.

edit: removed hesitation and bad grammar from last line.

[DrPraetorious]

Turn 32, now that there's space on the enchantment scale, Machaka casts Burden of Time.
Turn 33, Machaka laughs because no-one is alive to dispel it.

[lch]

*waiting on Ermor's Utterdark and Niefel's Illwinter*

[Gandalf Parker]

mivayan said:
A fellow in the irc channel thought you might run into the cap on how many units and commanders can exist. I think that's a point. The cap is some ridicilous number, but still. Perhaps banning LA ermor and rlyeh would help with that, since they tend to have more units than many other nations combined.


Most of the limits in the game were tweaked based on me doing things that Johan never thoiught that anyone would ever try and do. The maximums on sizes in maps were made smaller, packet transmissions larger, and maximums on things like units and commanders vastly increased.

I ran many test games with a few human players and the rest AIs. One of them is still running.
http://www.dom3minions.com/games/PvK-e-Oceania/scores.html

But this is a game no one has done yet so we dont know what will happen. I expect it will be on a linux server in text mode. I recommend that the map be downloaded by everyone instead of having the server send it on the first turn. And I recommend rotating backups on each pre-exec

[BigDisAwesome]

if you decide to use a flagmod, someone should throw together one that is super simple to tell who is who. it could only have black text on white background, and just say "EA Abysia", just the age and nation.

[Ironhawk]

Arcane Nexus doesnt bother me.

Utterdark should be banned. With 40+ players you would think that it could be dispelled... but if it cant? or people dont orgnaize properly? Then Utterdark player wins without needing to capture any territory.

I vote against a bidding system. Too complicated with this many people. Just do first come first serve and keep the post updated.

[jutetrea]

Difficult of very difficult research
Ban Nexus
I kind of like the idea of 3 random picks, choose 1 on a first come/first served basis...or maybe even 5 random picks.
Wait for patch only if within 2-3 weeks (maybe a test run till then?)
No vote on starting age, especially with site % fixed


Questions:
With 9(?) water nations, how many water tiles on the map?

Random start locations or fixed?

At 16.xx provinces per nations this is going to get crowded pretty quickly. Any thoughts on increasing map size?

Any randomness going on? Random units, commanders, provinces, buildings, etc?

[Foodstamp]

The flag mod Zepath did is different from age to age. It even has a cheat sheet jpg preview file telling you what age the nation is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[BigDisAwesome]

Ahhh, well with a cheat sheet it works great then.

[Velusion]

Ironhawk said:
Utterdark should be banned. With 40+ players you would think that it could be dispelled... but if it cant? or people dont orgnaize properly? Then Utterdark player wins without needing to capture any territory.




Yea, I'm worried about this one too... however at least everyone has an immediate need to dispel it - where as arcane nexus doesn't directly hurt anyone.

Also, unlike Arcane Nexus, it isn't directly helped by the number of players. If you think Utterdark should be banned here, wouldn't it be reasonable to ban it in any sized game?

What does everyone else think?

[Jazzepi]

I really don't think you should be banning *any* spell (besides that one summon that summons the wrong creature). There's no reason why Utterdark is any more threatening than Arcane Nexus. I believe in the market of ideas, if people find a spell threatening enough, then they should be able to band together to dispel it. If they can't, then they deserve to lose.

Think of the amount of resources that 59 nations could put together versus 1.

Jazzepi

[jutetrea]

Correct me if I'm wrong please:

AN creates a gem imbalance, more players = more gem income = greater chance of popping it back up reinforced. Starting a cycle where eventually its hypothetically impossible to dispel.

Utterdark just hits gold (not gems right?) so even though it pretty much sucks for everyone, over time they should be able to gang the caster.

IMO no ban on utterdark

[Gandalf Parker]

There is a link to the map on the first post. It looks like plenty of water and looks like at least a 1000 province map. If all 60 nations played then that would be 16 provinces each. 60*16=960

[Micah]

Nexus would only be a problem because the turn order is bugged, at least for Corruption. Globals aren't supposed to go into effect until after the rituals phase is over, so nexus shouldn't generate income the turn it is cast according to the book, but it will (I believe) in practice, although how much will depend on where in the random casting order it ends up. So if people were routinely spending 600 non-astral gems/turn on rituals it would be a safe cast, although it would be 1200 if you figure in alchemy since you won't get pearls from it (you get half the gems spent, and on average will collect from half of the spells cast the same turn as nexus because of random cast order. 150*2*2) I BELIEVE forging DOES happen before rituals, so the nexus caster won't be collecting from forging on turn 1, just rituals. This seems like it could happen late-game on a 1000 province map, although it is a huge chunk of gems.

I think a better solution would be to up the base cost of it, maybe to 300 pearls so that there's actually some strategy going into the gem economy equation. It'll be hard to make a profit with it if it's that hard to cast. If people can't get their stuff together to dispel it, well, they brought the loss upon themselves then, no?

[Velusion]

I just tested the flag mod - it seems to work so that fixes that problem.

[DrPraetorious]

You should probably combine the flags and 60-nations into a single mod. I was thinking of doing that myself after the patch came out.

[Velusion]

Is it as simple and cutting and pasting the contents of the mod into one? <<<< Knows nothing about mods.

[DrPraetorious]

That should work, but it'd be cleaner to cluster all the mods to each nation # in the same place.

It shouldn't take long, though.

[Gandalf Parker]

All players will have to have a copy of the mod before they can pull down their first file.

I was going to merge the mods also but I was waiting for it to include all 80 slots. Should work for the standard 60 nations though. (well except for Tir na N'og which should be in the game by the time you start)

[Morkilus]

Holy crap. I'd like to be part of this just to say that I was. In any case, I'm guessing there'll be a market for replacements. I'd definitely suggest waiting for the patch, what with some nasty bugs in the current version.

[WSzaboPeter]

I would like to play too. It would be great experience.

[djo]

This game both fascinates and scares me.

I would suggest some kind of managed nation assignment. It would be a pain to have to read through five pages of forum posts to figure out which nations were taken and which weren't (if you were one of the later sign-ups). And you know people will make honest mistakes and double-claim nations. But if you go first-come, first-serve, I would suggest you open it up on a weekend, so people who can't check the forums while at work have a chance at not being last.

If there is someone out there with too much time on their hands, they could go through all the games currently active on this forum and count up how many different active players we have. I wonder how close that number is to 60.

[llamabeast]

There're over 60, I reckon. Hard to know though. Also hard to know what proportion would be up for such a huge game. I'd be scared, although I might be tempted when the time comes.

[calmon]

I would never play this game with Arcane Nexus in the spell list. In my experience you get around ~200 astral gems in a normal full game. So count 500-600 in a big one like this. You would have enough gems to recast it for 999 in the turn after you cast it.

I can second micah, the global shouldn't be in effect in the turn cast (from manual) but up to date it works in same turn.

Utterdark on the other side isn't a real problem. 90% of the nations are affected and so nobody from them got a real advantage.
The 10% which got some advantages from utterdark will be in trouble very soon. Remember there are dozen of nation which can spend for a dispel.

[DrPraetorious]

I agree that game-balance is less important than getting this game working at all. On the other hand, it's going to be a looooong game and it'd be nice if people felt it was reasonably fair.

How's about this.

Everyone makes six choices in descending order. Players are randomly assigned their first choice until everyone is either assigned (unlikely) or everyone's first-choice is taken.
Then, players are randomly assigned second-choice positions until all the second-choice positions are taken, and so forth.
Finally, players will be assigned to remaining positions at random.

If you get your first choice, you get nothing.
If you're forced to take your second choice, you get an extra scout with richness 4 random magic items.
If you're forced to take your third choice, you ALSO get +50% of your starting army and an extra commander.
If you're forced to take your fourth choice, you get 50,000 people in your capital. Yes, LA Ermor still gets this (you can pillage them for precious money to build forts/temples and soulless, it's actually good.)
If you're forced to take your fifth choice, double your starting army (instead of +50%) and the extra commander also gets richness 4 random magic items, in addition to the scout and population.
If you're stuck with sixth choice or a random nation, also start with a loremaster with a ring of water breathing and your capital has 60,000 people in it.

I'd be willing to administer all this if-need-be - it would only require customization of the map file.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes lets get the first one going before we throw in too many things that can cause problems.

I commented in my big-game thread (which I never started) that Id expect the blitzing crowd will love early game and late game. In mid-game when it gets to be micromanaging they might decide to turn their nation over to a sub. If that nation ends up on the losing curve then at a later date when its gotten small again but has lots of research completed then the MM player might give up on it and the blitzer can get it back for all kinds of new fun.

Of course everyone is abit of blitzer and MM so there will be a variety of drop-off and return levels but I think if the game doesnt crash the server then it will probably continue to completion with many subs swapping in and out. OR a possibility is that the ebb and flow of subs might create a never-ending game where no nation stays on top long enough to be declared a winner. Scarey huh?

[Teraswaerto]

DrPraetorious,
With those bonuses I would try to get assigned the sixth choice. There's easily 6 nations I am happy playing and the bonuses you are describing are quite big.

[jutetrea]

I like it, if you don't think it would be too much of a pain for 60 edits.

Kind of makes you hope you'd get your 5th or 6th choice as long as you can stay away from a random. And if you get your first choice, well hopefully you either put your fav in there or at least something powerful.

[Gandalf Parker]

Doesnt a bonus system like that require set starting positions on the map? I think that a 6 nation list of preferences would be enough, and hard enough to manage.

Easier than editing for bonuses would be to just allow all choices even if they conflict and edit the mod.

[Methel]

hmm, clamming and gem producing items would probably be a HUGE factor in this game.

[DrPraetorious]

Yes, it would require me to randomly determine the start positions before assigning the bonuses.

I've got the scripts set up to do this already, however, so it wouldn't be that difficult to do.

Ter - yeah, those bonuses might be too large. What level of bonuses do you think would be fair?

[Evilhomer]

perhaps an increase of 5% pop for each nation choice you passed on.

[Ironhawk]

jutetrea said:
Utterdark just hits gold (not gems right?)



If you've never actually been on the recieving end of Utterdark then you arent really in a position to vote on it.

[Foodstamp]

The real question is, where are you going to scrounge up 60+ players to play this type of game? BTW, I want to play! 59 to go.

[Evilhomer]

I really doens't think any global will cause any problem. With very hard research you won't see utterdark or AN anytime soon. When it does arrive however we can work together to dispel or kill that nation. And if we don't do anything about it, then we deserve to lose.

[Teraswaerto]

DrPraetorious,

Not sure, but those seem quite high. I'm not sure I see the need for any bonuses, but if they are deemed necessary something more like Evilhomer would be IMO better.

Utterdark will cause huge amounts of desertions, prevent most recruitment, and all battles are fought under Darkness. That doesn't mean I think it should be banned from the game though.

[jutetrea]

I obviously disagree http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I've only been hit with it once, and didn't remember didn't check if it hit gems because it got dispelled the next turn.

Its not a matter of how nasty a spell is, its whether or not there are realistic ways of countering it. Even if gem income were reduced to 90% it could still be dispelled.

You can counter AN as well, but as mentioned before it has the chance of enabling a 999 cast, repeatedly.

very simple, get the 60 and vote it.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually it gets simpler than that. To quote a couple of bits from the first post of this thread......



There are a couple of game settings that are not open for discussion – and are simply my personal preferences. The settings not open for discussion (unless you want to tell me how awesome my preferences are) :

• The only real house rule: Arcane Nexus is BANNED. I already thought this spell was overpowered in larger games… but with 60 players I fear there would simply be a rush to put it up as fast as possible. Casting Arcane Nexus gets you put on AI.



But of course it never works to say "no discussion" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Foodstamp]

Btw, the map you chose looks awesome. It looks like the generator even put a choke point island towards the middle. Great map.

[DrPraetorious]

Velusion, could you bounce me the .map file? I want to try placing start sites on it in any case.

We need 53+ land and 7+ sea, correct?

[Velusion]

Foodstamp said:
Btw, the map you chose looks awesome. It looks like the generator even put a choke point island towards the middle. Great map.



It takes forever for me to finish a map.

I literally spend days just generating maps until I find ones that look cool. Then I go in an photoshop it up (usually add few straits) then edit it so all the water and land provinces that looks like they should be connected are. Then I go though and flag all the land provinces that only border 3 or less other land provinces and sea provinces that border 2 or less sea provinces as "no start". Then I make sure that all the mountain blocking makes sense, removing a lot of connections that shouldn't be there. This time around I marked some of the Border Mountains as normal Mountains.

Tweaking the map is a long process for me, I hope everyone likes it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Velusion]

DrPraetorious said:
Velusion, could you bounce me the .map file? I want to try placing start sites on it in any case.

We need 53+ land and 7+ sea, correct?



I'll PM yo with a link to get it once I'm finished and with more details.

[Velusion]

Alright I think I know how I want the game to look like now. Thanks to everyone that contributed ideas and helped with the discussion. There is no way to please everyone but hopefully, even if people don’t agree with all the settings, they will manage to have fun!

Soon I’ll start a sign-up thread with details on what exactly it will look like.