Perpetuality - 62 Player MegaGame (Finished!)

[Wikd Thots]

So I guess the name of the game now is "adapt or die" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[jutetrea]

I'm not too worried till we see the second turn, and even then it just means there's a crazy fog of war http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Playing conservatively will be an understatement.

[Velusion]

Velusion said:
Ok... here is the deal...

I backed up the game and then processed the turn. I logged in and checked and I could see everything as is should be. I then restored back to the original game.

So my assumption is if we stick it out this turn, things will get back to normal.

Now, as more and more people submit turns I'll be be backing up the server and checking to make sure it isn't a specific player or something strange. But as it stands now, I think things will get back to normal after this turn.

Unless you are very confident I suggest you play conservatively this one turn.

[atul]

Heh, conservative, scouting-by-retreating, relying on immortals, or... I just don't know any word to describe those guys with gods claiming 20+ kills on HoF on turn 2. "Very confident". Let's hope normality ensues.

BTW, the status page is very cool. Almost addictive.

[Velusion]

atul said:

BTW, the status page is very cool. Almost addictive.



Yea, a user on here LCH made it awhile back and updates it every so often - it really is handy. I have a tab up at all time for each of the the games I play in! Just don't be toooo reliant on it. Sometimes it screws up (or rather I screw it up) so make sure and go by what the game says first.

[FAJ]

It is going to be harder to keep up with this thread than keep up with the game!

[Amhazair]

Blegh, scales bug. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

There goes my order and my growth... remind me to go turmoil/luck next time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Velusion]

Oh how I wish I had the scales bug... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[WSzaboPeter]

atul said:
I just don't know any word to describe those guys with gods claiming 20+ kills on HoF on turn 2. "Very confident". Let's hope normality ensues.



I take this as a compliment.

[Salamander8]

My god locked himself in the basement and no one has found the keys to let him out yet.

Starspawn 1:"Our most dreadful lord and master has locked himself in the cellar, and someone drew one of those damn elder signs on it, so I can't use my otherworldly powers to get him out!"

Starspawn 2:"Did you try tricking some hapless b-movie actor into daring to explore the basment? That works in all the horror movies. And our god can devour their soul when they release them as an aded bonus."

Starspawn 1:"Yeah I tried that, but they keep drowning. That's the problem with cheap undersea real estate."

Starspawn 2:"Well, keep the slaves looking for the keys I guess. Did you try the freezer yet?"

[Shovah32]

Sorry guys but i dont have time to read alot. Can someone fill me in on the last hundred or so posts? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Evilhomer]

To summarize we are thinking about a 61 man alliance against LA agartha, want in shovah ?

[Wikd Thots]

I made an offer to whoever is in the bottom left corner peninsula

[Shovah32]

Evilhomer said:
To summarize we are thinking about a 61 man alliance against LA agartha, want in shovah ?



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

[Velusion]

Shovah32 said:
Sorry guys but i dont have time to read alot. Can someone fill me in on the last hundred or so posts? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif



I think the only thing of value was people debating how much risk to take this turn with the bug and our general hope that it will be gone next turn.

[BigDisAwesome]

I so wanted to just rush in, but I just can't do it. I hope it's fixed next turn, cause I hate having to send attacks blindly.

[BandarLover]

I don't know, I kinda like the 'flying blind' thing. Makes the game more exciting! Atleast, I'll feel that way until my monkey army stumbles upon a province with Trogs or elephants in it. Then I'll hate it.

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

[Shovah32]

Yea, i was wondering about the bug myself.

[StrictlyRockers]

That's not a bug, that's a feature.

It's the added fog of war penalty that all players will suffer for playing in a game this big and this fun. Start liking it. Or just pray that Velusion is right and it will sort itself out...

SR

[CelestialGoblyn]

Well, since it impacts everyone almost equally, the bug is not *that* annoying.
I'll live with it.

[FAJ]

Anything to give me an excuse for being the first out!

[Kydorias]

StrictlyRockers said:
That's not a but, that's a feature.

Heh, that quote along with your avatar cracks me up.

[StrictlyRockers]

Oops that was a typo. But still funny. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fate]

To bring up another topic, who got the mercs? How much (you can give an estimate if you don't want to disclose your spending).

How much do you think the Villains will go for (probably have gone for by now)?

[BigDisAwesome]

You can check who got them on the mercs tab. LA Ermor I believe.

I can't imagine the villains will go for very much. I never thought they were very good. But who knows in this game. I'd put my money on LA Ermor again.

[RamsHead]

New turn is up, and everything looks good.

[Fate]

First to make turn 3!

The bug is fixed (woohoo!).

LA Arcoscephale gets the mercs, interesting.

[Foodstamp]

I noticed a few gods have bit the dust. I am guessing they fired magic missile into the darkness?

[Jazzepi]

I attacked first round and only lost 2 skin shifters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I noticed the province north of the one I attacked had 50 troops filled with heavy calvary + infantry.

Jewel

[Fate]

It looks like, what with all the SC gods, there won't be much HoF love to go around...

But I AM glad I lucked out with a weak province on MY attack!

[jutetrea]

someone made a suggestion at some point (one of the wish list threads i think) where there would be a separate HoF for pretenders and one for everything else. Plus a bonus for pretenders on the HoF a la bonus ability. Doesn't make a ton of sense for most games, but it definitely would here.

[LoloMo]

Wahahahahahahahaha, I blindly attacked, and picked the only province surrounding me that had Heavy Cavalry, but survived! whahahaha hohohohoho I'm delirious with joy!

2 Mounted Commanders and 1 Priest routed. I was using blessed troops weeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[RamsHead]

I am glad I did my normal "send commanders in to retreat" thing so I didn't have to do any worrying.

All praise King Dragon! Let us hope the rein of this Lizard King will be a prosperous one for us.

[Lingchih]

Everything looks good. My troops successfully managed to sit on their asses and do nothing. At least I can see my neighbors now.

[Cainehill]

Gandalf Parker said:
Heehee. If the game is "broken" its because I broke it.
Making an "all nations" mod creates something very different than the devs wanted. I will let them know of the quirks we see but I wouldnt expect any kind of "fix" to show up.

We expected a different game. Its different.



Gee - either the devs, or the more vocal of their assistants, assured that all the nations could be played at once. I remember, "You just need a trivial mod to play them all" being said. My attitude was, "No, we have _fewer_ nations to choose from (in part because of the lack of themes)", but again, "it's okay - a simple mod fixes that".

You'd think it was american politics instead of indie game development. Feh. We have _less_ variety within a game, and more bugs.

[Cainehill]

CelestialGoblyn said:
Well, since it impacts everyone almost equally, the bug is not *that* annoying.
I'll live with it.



Almost equally? Don't think so. Actually, it very much favors those nations like Abysia who essentially can't hire spies in the early game, since spies & scouts are worthless.

[Evilhomer]

two gods bites the dust, wonder it they were immortal or not...Anyhow the great dagon is still alive and kicking and now he knows what he is facing, seems the game is working http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Velusion]

Cainehill said:
Almost equally? Don't think so. Actually, it very much favors those nations like Abysia who essentially can't hire spies in the early game, since spies & scouts are worthless.



The argument is moot. The bug was around for one turn then disappeared. Lets move on...

[WSzaboPeter]

It seems, that my agression is progression strategy worked. The laughing stuff is that I got mercs for less then 200 gold. I was thinking that in a game with 62 players you need to bet a lot more, but then again, everyone tought the same, and did not bet, since they don't worth the price.

Offering for gold: S9; D3, N3 Anyone interested? Drop a mail to: bids@ctdd.ro
Thanks a lot.

[HoneyBadger]

Up from the arctic depths of Time itself, the primordial Jotnar arise in anger to bring unto the world the wreak of Ragnarock.

Crops wither, brother fights brother, even the sun itself shall hide it's face in craven terror.

Sword time, crow time, wolf time...it has begun.

[Foodstamp]

HoneyBadger said:
Up from the arctic depths of Time itself, the primordial Jotnar arise in anger to bring unto the world the wreak of Ragnarock.

Crops wither, brother fights brother, even the sun itself shall hide it's face in craven terror.

It's HAMMER TIME, can't touch this...



fixt

[HoneyBadger]

I've got your hammer, right here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[atul]

Evilhomer said:
two gods bites the dust, wonder it they were immortal or not...

Russian roulette goes KA-BLAAM every now and then. Stumbled blindly into heavy cavalry province. %| ...next time...

Luckily I'm a wimp and chose an immortal, so be prepared to see Lodvathu, the god of MA Agartha, in the Hall of Fame 'till Kingdom Come! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Evilhomer]

In a game this size a heroic ability will be a pretty rare thing indeed

[Hadrian_II]

w00t, i found the knights and defeated them, but it looks like i will loose a turn for reinforcements (duh)

[Fate]

I don't think that an immortal who dies and is reborn is given a death. (seeing as they didn't... quite... die!)

[Tichy]

Turn 2 russian roulette report: woodsmen in the chamber, one druid for flavor. MA TC's mostly unaugmented opening army failed to humiliate itself. We are pleased.

[WSzaboPeter]

Waiting only for Morkilus, so the next turn is at our doorstep. I guess it will host within a few minutes.

[jutetrea]

Probably impossible with this many people, but I'd love to get the first 3 or four turns done this weekend.

[Cor]

Fate said:
I don't think that an immortal who dies and is reborn is given a death. (seeing as they didn't... quite... die!)



I am pretty sure that they given a death for the purposes pf the HOF.

[Manuk]

server down?

[Velusion]

yep - I'm at work so I'm not sure why. Might be a few hours until I can restore it.

[atul]

Fate said:
I don't think that an immortal who dies and is reborn is given a death. (seeing as they didn't... quite... die!)

They're given a death sign, as proved by my HoFfed god who's attacking again this turn. Never believe the disinformation campaign of the ignorant! MA Agartha is still alive and kicking! Our pretender has not met his final death on turn 2. I repeat: has NOT.

*krhm*

Continue, please.

[HoneyBadger]

server's down for me too-current time here is 7:37 pm mountain standard.

[Velusion]

Every have one of those days?

Work was a 13 hour clusterf*** today with things going wrong left and right and now I come home to find my router down along with my backup system (obviously the house took a power hit). The server - running on a battery backup stayed up and hosted the turn - however some people obviously didn't have time to do thier turns...

So I'm going to have to REHOST the last turn, because the server only backs up the system before the hosting occurs, so that last backup was immediately before the last host. Which means everyone is going to have to redo thier turns (not too big a deal) but some people are going to get lucky and others unlucky because of the rehost.

I'm at my wits end tonight...

So to those that get hosed because of this, I'm sorry - but I'm not going to let people stale because the server was unavailable.

P.S. I'm backing up now before and after hosting - I'm also going to backup to the hosting system from now on and then copy it to another system.

*le sigh*

[Velusion]

P.P.S. I host a number of other games - and none of them have these sorts of problems and seem cursed like this one...

[jutetrea]

don't sweat it mate. Its still early, we have plenty of time for some major clusters later http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[BigDisAwesome]

Well, we never really saw the outcome. So we don't know if we got lucky or not. So it really doesn't matter. Straight up redo.

[jutetrea]

All my commands were still there, I pretty much just had to hit end turn

[atul]

jutetrea said:
All my commands were still there, I pretty much just had to hit end turn

Indeed. I checked the battles and they were the same this time around, identical on both hosts...

...Um. Actually, the client never downloads the .trn file if there's a .trn file of the current turn in the game directory. So, should we delete the .trn file before connecting to the server? Is there a problem if we don't?

Edit: Everyone should delete the .trn file on their computer before connecting to the server, the new .trn file does NOT replace the old one automatically as their turn numbers are identical! The battle events were different when I did this. Also, the mercenaries have changed, no more archers to be bought.

[StrictlyRockers]

Really? We all need to delete the old .trn file?

I smell cluster.

[Meglobob]

StrictlyRockers said:
Really? We all need to delete the old .trn file?



Yes, really.

I got a mage with top random paths 1st time, naff random picks the 2nd time... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Swings and roundabouts...fingers crossed we have some smooth sailing turns from now on!

[Evilhomer]

Yeah i lost more troops in my fight as well. Some people had good surprises tho, seems one of the dead gods were resurected. Hopefully this remove file problem will not cause more problem.

[Reay]

I thought Velusion was talking about rehosting the 4th (accidental host) turn not the 3rd (current turn)? So I thought we just had to reupload our .2h files because the .trn files were the same.

However, it looks like the .trn files have changed so I guess we really have to redo our turns.

I guess some people might have thought the same as I and just uploaded their old .2h files. I wonder what happens when the .2h files are made on a different .trn file? Hopefully it should not matter.

[Szumo]

Velusion: Nation names on the status page no longer have EA,MA,LA prefixes - pretty sure they used to.

[atul]

Reay said:I wonder what happens when the .2h files are made on a different .trn file? Hopefully it should not matter.

I ran a small test with one nation, so the results might be different in this game, but:

Apparently, if the commanders are in same provinces in both .trn files, the orders are resolved just fine even if .2h comes from wrong .trn. Not sure what happens when commanders are in different provinces. Wouldn't count on that, but it _probably_ doesn't break anything too much, at least on global level.

Here's hoping for the best.

[DrPraetorious]

One of my games we had a .trn and .2h file mismatch, and we got some fairly serious weirdness.

Frank got a indie leader with the magic skills of one of them sauromatian cross-dressers (forget the name,) and the cross-dresser he recruited had the magic skills of a circle master, IIRC. Also some movement orders were scrambled and some weren't.

Everything was fine on successive turns, though.

[Evilhomer]

So we can expect another turn of roulette ?

[Velusion]

atul said:
Everyone should delete the .trn file on their computer before connecting to the server, the new .trn file does NOT replace the old one automatically as their turn numbers are identical! The battle events were different when I did this. Also, the mercenaries have changed, no more archers to be bought.



This is correct. Another interesting issue, in a game plagued with issues.

Please do delete your .trn files!

[Velusion]

Velusion said:

atul said:
Everyone should delete the .trn file on their computer before connecting to the server, the new .trn file does NOT replace the old one automatically as their turn numbers are identical! The battle events were different when I did this. Also, the mercenaries have changed, no more archers to be bought.



This is correct. Another interesting issue, in a game plagued with issues.

Please do delete your .trn files!



I'm adding a few more hours on to the clock in case people still want to do this.

[WSzaboPeter]

Don't worry people, the next 62 player megagame will be flawless. Thanks for Velusion's patience.

[Salamander8]

Man, I just caught this. I just deleted my trn file and I'll redo my turn.

[BigDisAwesome]

Does it matter that I did my turn again before I deleted my .trn file? Last turn I had a hurricane hit my capitol and cause some unrest. After I deleted the .trn file and logged back in, there was no mention of the hurricane but the unrest was still there.
What should I do?

[atul]

BigDisAwesome said:What should I do?

If you delete both .trn and .2h files on your computer (back them up), and then connect to the server, does it work? Shouldn't it work ok that way?

[BigDisAwesome]

Oh hell yes. Thanks Atul. GOODBYE HURRICANE!

[StrictlyRockers]

The same thing happened to me, but with a hailstorm and some brigands. The solution that worked for BigDisAwesome worked for me, as well.

I had the brigands come first and set up in a ruin in my capitol and raise unrest to 33. Then from the new file I got hit with a hailstorm, but the unrest from the brigands was still there. I assumed I was just clusterfunked and there was no solution to being hit with the ill effects from these two random negative events in the same turn. But this solution worked and the unrest from the first random negative event is now gone.

[Vathmoth]

YES!

With the new file I got a national hero http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[DrPraetorious]

Meanwhile, I got an evil omen in my capital on the regenned turn.

OTOH, I took fewer casualties in my first conquest, and my first archwitch has an extra random.

[RamsHead]

I am glad I saw this. I now have -1 death in the battle and +1 badass Udum'ukinna.

[Fate]

I think it is never too soon to start a global dispelling alliance, hmmm? Especially one specifically targeting Utterdark/BoT/etc...?

Nations which join and don't cast taboo spells, especially Utterdark, may compete for globals normally. Nations who haven't joined and cast a global or nations who cast a "bad" global will be targeted for collected dispellation (preferably by a high astral pretender/unit with 100+ gems from multiple players, to come as close to a guarantee as possible). Dues consist of:

A) Dispelling bad globals, or globals from nations outside the alliance.

B) Donating astral gems to a dispellation.

C) Attacking or casting damaging spells on banned nations (nations which cast bad globals).

D) Paying dues, preferably in gems or cash (as it can be transfered easiest), which will be split between the nations that dispell or attack. Dues are proportional to the number of enemy nations, and so will start at 0.

What exactly constitutes dues, and which spells will be categorized as bad are up for discussion.

Obviously, someone needs to regulate this alliance (I am willing to start, but I am new to this, so bear with me). A public place to keep records would also be good (so you aren't just trusting what the regulator says, and we aren't bloating this thread more than it already has been). Someone with site skills would be appreciated here (otherwise the group will just grow exponentially).

PM me if you want to join, or if you have ideas, or if you think you would be a good organizer/site maker... (please?)

I will try posting a list of members each turn, unless someone else steps up.

-Fate

[HoneyBadger]

Just wanted to let everybody know that I'll be doing my turn in just a few minutes-I wanted and tried to do it yesterday, but the server was down, so today I had to wait until work was over, since my job requires me to be on the phone.

[Velusion]

make sure and delete your .trn file from your savedgame folder before you connect http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Velusion]

Because the game didn't' replace the trn files, expect a few funky things this turn. Also expect a few reports of possible "cheating"... and just ignore them.

[Tichy]

FYI: I had to delete both files from by savedgame folder. (On a Mac) When I tried just deleting the .trn file, my messages reflected the new hosting, but once I dismissed the messages the game screen reflected the earlier host. When I deleted both it went fine.

In the new host, I lost a sweet extra money random event (boo!), but found an item in the battle (yaay.).

[Manuk]

4 hours till next host!
most people didn't take their turns.

[HoneyBadger]

Ok done

[Lingchih]

Velusion's Perpetuality page says 23 odd hours til next host though. I think I'll believe that one.

[HoneyBadger]

I got 23 minutes, but it wouldn't allow me to take my turn, so I did it over, and it said 4 hours.

I'm liking how the game is going so far-even with all the problems, everyone still seems excited about it. I hope for the next mega-game, we can see the addition of a few mod nations, and an expansion of the map to 1500 provinces-I have a few very nice 1500 province maps, and I may post one soonish.

[StrictlyRockers]

It said 4 hours, then I did my turn, then it said 24 hours until next host.

I have gotten hit with ugly negative random events in my home province every turn so far.

[jutetrea]

Vel -

Eventually (no hurry), could we work towards correcting the spelling of player names for the associated nations list? I know mine for LA TC has a few more letters and just tried to PM someone else with an incorrect name. Might make diplomacy easier in the future.

LA T'ien Chi - jutetrea

Thanks man, and loving it - wonky bits and all

[Salamander8]

Oh man this is crazy!

Cthugul arrived last turn which would have been great if he hadn't turned into a non-leader this turn! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

I ended up using him as a normal, if special-looking, Illithid now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[WSzaboPeter]

When someone has reached level 2 construction, he/she/it should contact me for some serious trading.
Thanks a lot, DreamSlayer

[Evilhomer]

Yeah, the first one who reaches con 2 and 4 could make a fortune selling stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Cor]

Velusion said:
Also expect a few reports of possible "cheating"...



I suggest a global alliance against the evil cheaters!

[Tichy]

Cor said:

Velusion said:
Also expect a few reports of possible "cheating"...



I suggest a global alliance against the evil cheaters!



<<quickly checking whether I'm on that infamous list...dumdedum...>> Agreed! Let's go get those evil cheaters! <<whew!>>

[solo]

I'm on the list, but wish to join this alliance.

[Amhazair]

Hmm, I just noticed that province nr. 428 - that looks as if it was a sea province, has the 'border mountain' terrain type. Unless this is just a display bug or something, this effectively cuts of the eastern passage between the two big oceans.

[Velusion]

Amhazair said:
Hmm, I just noticed that province nr. 428 - that looks as if it was a sea province, has the 'border mountain' terrain type. Unless this is just a display bug or something, this effectively cuts of the eastern passage between the two big oceans.



Ahhh... looks like something I missed! Doh!

I'll experiment with ways to fix that. For right now I wouldn't build any buildings on that area...

[Gandalf Parker]

Im pretty sure that doesnt fix. Its part of the fatherland file and our turn files now. If you do come up with anything that works then by all means let me know because I have a list of old dead ideas that involve modifying the map mid-game like you can a mod.

[BandarLover]

Hey, as one of those "cheaters", I can tell you, I've seen no great boon in my income, despite what the console thinks. Indeed, at 200 tax rate, I'm pulling in a whopping, 300 gold? What the-!!

If I'm a cheater, I'm the worst ever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[solo]

Don't sweat it. I think anyone that had 200% taxes at the time was incorrectly flagged as a "cheater".

[Gandalf Parker]

The "cheaters" have actually done things that are within the games parameters. The host machine just wasnt able to match up their apparent actions with the apparent results. No one got anything that would look like what they could get if they actually edited their files.

[DrPraetorious]

OTOH, if I *were* going to cheat by editing my files, I wouldn't take so much that I'd get caught, would I? That'd be pretty stupid.

<.< >.>

[Manuk]

they didnt erase .trn and .2h files.
so the orders didnt match the results.

[thraveboy]

I actually did erase both my .2h and .trn file and was still labeled a "cheater", so maybe it flagged people who did
erase their .2h and .trn files? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[RamsHead]

Hurry up LeSquide and Hurst. You only have about ten minutes left.

[LeSquide]

^@&!ing dial up connection. -.-

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, made my next turn

[HoneyBadger]

Everything seems to be running smoothly, by the way-I can see and attack indeps.

[StrictlyRockers]

Ok, I am getting frustrated. If you check the graphs you will see EA Vanheim spiraling dismally downward in income, way, way below everyone else. This is because I have gotten hit with bad random events in my home province of EA Vanheim (90) every single turn. This turn it was a hurricane.

I don't know what the odds are on that, but it seems pretty ridiculous to me. I took Order 3 and also Misfortune 3. The levels rise at different rates and my home province is at Order 1 and Misfortune 3 right now. I have never seen anything like this - four turns in a row, all in my home province.

I guess it's possible I am just that unlucky. Can anyone help me figure out if I took bad advice going Order 3 Misfortune 3? I've done it before and never had problems like this. Am I just being paranoid thinking I picked up some bug which gives me a bad event in my home province every turn?

I would like to keep playing. Unrest is up to 46. I have lost a good percentage of my population. I don't see how I can recover. I don't want to have to give up on this fun game. Maybe eventually I will stop getting random negative events in EA Vanheim every turn.

Many thanks to Velusion and to others who have contributed to this monster game. I think it's really cool of you to host it.

[Evilhomer]

Rockers you might just have had a stroke of really bad luck thats all, with mis 3 that can happen.

[Szumo]

StrictlyRockers said:
[...]I took Order 3 and also Misfortune 3. [...]




So why do you seem surprised? Anyone taking misfortune 3 should learn to "take it like a man" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[StrictlyRockers]

Ugh, I was afraid of that. Actually, if that's the case, that's great. That means they should stop eventually and I can keep playing.

[lch]

StrictlyRockers said:
Ok, I am getting frustrated. If you check the graphs you will see EA Vanheim spiraling dismally downward in income, way, way below everyone else. This is because I have gotten hit with bad random events in my home province of EA Vanheim (90) every single turn. This turn it was a hurricane.

I don't know what the odds are on that, but it seems pretty ridiculous to me. I took Order 3 and also Misfortune 3.


I was utterly [censored] by Order 3, Misfortune 3 myself and I never take it again. At least not in combination with Death 3. Hurricanes would have been a boon, I got a plague in my capital on turn 2 (half pop -> ~12k pop, makes the Order useless), then another one after about a dozen turns later (half pop -> ~6k pop in the capital, some other provinces had more than that).

[atul]

Rockers, you should remember that some conditions make bad events more likely to happen. For instance, you said you have unrest in your capital. IIRC high unrest makes it more probable to some stuff, such as barbarian attacks, to happen. If you can, it might be a good idea to try to stabilize your capital ASAP.

I had a similar streak of bad luck when I tested order3/misfortune3, and decided to steer away from those "free points". Currently you people are hogging my random events, not a single one in these beginning turns. Lucky me.

And Honeybadger, if you can see and attack only independents, you're totally missing something. I can see and attack other nations also! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ...on the other hand, who am I fooling, Agartha is filled with peace-loving, non-intrusive people with a thing for stone statues. We're not attacking anyone.

[Evilhomer]

I have not found anyone either, tho I can see black candles in a few provinces.

[Szumo]

That's pretty slow intel :S I've already located 3 of my neighbours capitals...

On the other hand, not everybody has move 3 flying scouts http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[vfb]

It seems strange that an Order-3 Mis-3 nation has had a random event in its capital every turn, whereas I have had no random events at all in this game, and I have Turmoil-3 Luck-3.

Obviously I'm jinxing myself and next turn Caspar and Bogus will show up to punish me. And yeah, I've only got two provinces. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif. But in a 10-player game I would usually be getting one or two events per turn for my nation by now.

Does anyone know how the total number of random events is determined, and how they are distributed? All I know is that it has something to do with total number of both provinces and nations, and possibly by how many provinces are owned by the nations. I don't know how the independent 'nation' is treated in this random event distribution either.

I tried experimenting with different setups, -ddddddddd, and counting "random event" lines, but nothing obvious (to me) popped out.

[Salamander8]

I haven't seen anyone else yet either. Of course losing a turn of movement on my scout by forgetting to move the little bugger on the first turn didn't help with that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[Vathmoth]

I have to report a bug:


When the 2nd(?) turn was hosted for the 2nd time a hero appeared in my capital - Li T'ieh-Kuai, Master with the iron crutch - so far, so good, lets rehost some more turns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

The problem is the next turn he went crazy - changed name to Cthugul, Master of the iron crutch, and changed his magic picks to W2 S5 H2. I'm not complaining, I like the new magic paths, but... it's a little bit strange.

[atul]

That Cthugul sounds like something that comes from R'lyeh. If the game keeps tracks of the units by global unit numbers the rehosting business may be the reason to that bug.

...I sure hope your S5 mage isn't immortal, ouchie...

[Velusion]

Vathmoth said:
I have to report a bug:


When the 2nd(?) turn was hosted for the 2nd time a hero appeared in my capital - Li T'ieh-Kuai, Master with the iron crutch - so far, so good, lets rehost some more turns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

The problem is the next turn he went crazy - changed name to Cthugul, Master of the iron crutch, and changed his magic picks to W2 S5 H2. I'm not complaining, I like the new magic paths, but... it's a little bit strange.



It's more of the minor rehosting funkyness that seems to sometime happen. Give thanks that a good thing happened to you rather than a bad thing.

[BigDisAwesome]

I found a pirate ship in my capitol this turn!

On a side note, none of the flags are showing up on my map, and my capitol doesn't have a fortress picture either. It's there, just no sprite for it. What should I do? Cause that could be real hard to tell who my neighbors are when we get these indies outta the way.

[HoneyBadger]

Oh, that's not what I meant, atul. I can see YOUR nation just fine! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif and I'll be attacking it any minute now /threads/images/Graemlins/Lips.gif

[Vathmoth]

atul said:

...I sure hope your S5 mage isn't immortal, ouchie...




He is... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[DrPraetorious]

He also spreads diseases so you might want to get him out of your capital.

The swapped magic paths bug seems to be common when there's a turn file mismatch, Frank got the same thing.

[Vathmoth]

DrPraetorious said:
He also spreads diseases so you might want to get him out of your capital.





I'm not sure about that, he should also have some kind of affliction (crippled?) and... he doesn't http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[DrPraetorious]

The afflictions - like the magic paths - are placed "on top of" the basic unit template, so it's no surprise that he'd get Cthugul's afflictions (none) as well as his magic paths.

I bet he still spreads diseases, though, since that's presumably intrinsic to his unit number.

[LeSquide]

Bizzare bug? report.

So, on the second turn, I foolishly expanded. In tests, my god had almost never run into problems versus middle independents.

Of course, I ran into 52 lizard warriors. The result, while not preordained, should be obvious.

However, on the rehost and through the stale turn...
I end up with a living god in the now-beaten province, but he shows up as having died once on the hall of fame.

[lch]

What do we learn from this, kids? Do not rehost with *.2h files that are not created for your ftherlnd file, and backup previously AND after generating the turn. I backup as much as I can, always, anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[BigDisAwesome]

So, anyone have any clue as to what I should do? I tryed redownloading the mod to see if maybe I just got a bad copy, but to no avail. I really need to be able to see forts and flags.

[vfb]

Did you unzip the subdirectories too? If your unzip doesn't do that by default, you may be missing the "mega" and "sns3" subdirectories in your mods dir. They've got all the .tga files for the flags.

[BigDisAwesome]

Yeah, I got the mega and sns3 folder in there with the Mega-Age.dm file.
inside the mega folder is megabanner.tga.
inside the sns3 folder is 64 tga files and the preview bmp.

[BigDisAwesome]

Apparently hitting the 1 key will make all the flags and castles disappear. I opened the game up and starting mashing buttons until I found this out.

[jutetrea]

buttom mashing FTW!

nice.

Do we want to start a new thread for this game? A bit unwieldy.

[Xietor]

ROFLMAO that is the best way to fix any problem!!!!

[vfb]

BigDisAwesome said:
Apparently hitting the 1 key will make all the flags and castles disappear. I opened the game up and starting mashing buttons until I found this out.



Doh, I didn't even think of that, 'cause of the mods. You might want to click on "Map Filters" and turn everything on, I find it's pretty useful.

[Szumo]

So LA Ermor has a very very nice Ghost King as pretender. Why not a lich queen i wonder?

[StrictlyRockers]

I had no random event this turn, for the first time. Everything seems to be working ok.

I may never take Misfortune - 3 again, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[vfb]

Not only that, Marverni got a random event! So the universe is back in order, or at least the RNG is.

[WSzaboPeter]

Well my pretender is an unusual one, but it seems to be a working strategy... 3 experience stars already and leading the hall of fame... I'm sad, that my other troops got beaten by some boodhange druids and 3 dark vines...

[Szumo]

Well, my pretender is second, but has the most kills http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[WSzaboPeter]

Indeed Szumo... I hope there will be an arena competition soon.

[atul]

Kills, pfft. Come and talk when your pretenders have as many deaths as mine. :p Big, slow, soft, the ideal punching bag. Not in any hurry to bull rush indies or anything.

[HoneyBadger]

I haven't encountered any other nations yet, but that, I think, is to be expected on a map of this size. It is a third smaller than the maps I usually play on, but still big. I do hope I run into somebody soon though, my Jotuns are very hungry and need the protein.

[jutetrea]

Be jealous then, I've met 4 already... all strong positions.

[CelestialGoblyn]

My virtuos prophet fell at the hands of the barbarians.
His death emboldens the other rangers and gives an example of sacrifice.

(which one of you guys took his boots and money pouch?)

No contact with other pretenders, not even a black candle.

[HoneyBadger]

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of Pretender and what forces was he leading?

[CelestialGoblyn]

My prophet?
I won't tell anyone who my pretender is, because that's a secret.
But the forces my propher accompanied were heavy infartry and some rangers...

[HoneyBadger]

Damn! he didn't fall for my evil ploy...oh well.

Barbarians are rough on us all, even relatively awesome SCs, in the beginning game.

In my last SP game, I lost my capital to three consecutive barbarian invasions. Each time I was able to break the seige immediately and capture it back, but it taught me a lot about paying attention to province defense above and beyond my PD rating.

Don't feel too bad though-just because they're barbarians doesn't necessarily mean they're cannibals. They probably just hung your Prophet's sacred entrails from whichever tree they're worshipping this year, and used the rest to fertilize their crops.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, I've taken my next turn and so far haven't had any bugs besides the first no-indep one. None of my jotuns have 4 arms or a forging bonus (unfortunately). So maybe things are back to relative normal?

[Velusion]

HoneyBadger said:
Well, I've taken my next turn and so far haven't had any bugs besides the first no-indep one. None of my jotuns have 4 arms or a forging bonus (unfortunately). So maybe things are back to relative normal?



Goodness I hope so...

[HoneyBadger]

Me too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'm having a great time, Velusion.

[Salamander8]

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

Not a lot has happened on the MA R'Lyeh front yet, apart from Cthugul's demotion anyway, but it's still good fun.

[HoneyBadger]

I've got the next three days off, by the way-including this one-so I might be able to do a couple extra turns if things move along fast enough. Maybe not, since we're going to close on the house this week, but it's a possibility.

[CelestialGoblyn]

HoneyBadger said:
Damn! he didn't fall for my evil ploy...oh well.

Barbarians are rough on us all, even relatively awesome SCs, in the beginning game.




Cannibals? That's something i'd expect from fish-people or ghouls. Cannibal diet is not healthy and those barbarians were big, robust ones.

But personally, I'm suprised those bastards did such a good job. I'm used to routing barbarians quickly most of the time.
Well, I will soon get my revenge with crossbows on them.

[Evilhomer]

Some other guy got cthuguls magic paths and abilities on one of his heroes and you got yours demoted. What a weird coincidence http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[HoneyBadger]

I wouldn't call the Carib or the Maori tribesfolk weak or undernourished-they were some of the toughest-and oftentimes most warlike-native peoples around.

They didn't survive on human flesh, ofcourse. They just consumed it occasionally in religious rituals.

And fish-people or ghouls wouldn't *be* cannibals, anyway, since they'd be eating human flesh. They'd just be carnivores.

It would be nice, by the way, to see more representation of individual cultures, than to see lables like "barbarian" in the game. It would increase interest, variety, and theme, while at the same time decreasing ignorance as to different civilizations and cultures.

Just my 2c.

[BandarLover]

Sorry for holding everything up. Total PC meltdown and I had to wipe and reinstall. YAY!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[HoneyBadger]

No problem, I mean I did the same thing, just in a different way.

[HoneyBadger]

So I know that I recognise a lot of very active, long-time posters to the forum in this game.

There's also quite a few people here that I don't recognise and don't know very well.

Seeing as how this is my very first Dominions multi-player game, I was wondering, how long has everyone been playing Dominions? And how many multi-player games have you all been in?

[Lingchih]

I've been playing off and on for a few years. Although I've only played in three or four MP games, and several blitzes. I'm not a multiplayer whiz, though I hope I know enough to hold my borders.

[Hadrian_II]

Im playing Dom3 since it is out, but i have only played very little dom2 so i supose im playing since a half year. And slowly i begin to know how it works http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Szumo]

I just met someone with 3 level 9 blesses - water, earth, nature (and it wasn't Mitclan). People must be willing accept really crazy scales to afford that :S

[WSzaboPeter]

I met 5 nations. From that five 3 is using heavy bless. Since I'm not that means 50% of the people are using heavy bless, since the sampling can be called random. (Due to random placement/nations.) After the game is finished I would like to know the real percentages, but then again, I think that in a future 60+ player games we should give some advantage to those who are NOT using heavy bless (like if you have no path at level 9 you could give some population bonus in your starting province and/or some added gold/troops).

[LoloMo]

Then everyone will go awake SC pretender http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[WSzaboPeter]

Well, I'm thinking on smaller bonuses so bless could still be a good choice, but not THE CHOICE for many nations.

[Evilhomer]

Well if there are almost only heavy bless nations left in 20 turns and the heavy bless nations ends up winning, then maybe we should. However its a bit premature to decide on those things, lets just wait and see.

[DrPraetorious]

There are many nations - Niefelheim, Mictlan - where bless is THE CHOICE.

This doesn't bother me, because - if you penalize bless, then other nations (LA T'ien Ch'i, MA Ermor for example) where bless is viable but far from a no-brainer, bless becomes useless.

Now, there is a *perception*, common among people who don't play much into the late game, that strong bless is the only way to go with every position and that only the quality of your bless-rush even matters. Needless to say, I disagree.

[atul]

Besides, statistics don't actually work that way, since the nations aren't identical. If I take WSzabo's approach to my neighbours, about 50% of the nations has a heavy drain scale. And no, I haven't even met Ulm yet.

...and that might tell a lot about how efficient long-term tactics are being utilized by many...

[Salamander8]

HoneyBadger said:
So I know that I recognise a lot of very active, long-time posters to the forum in this game.

There's also quite a few people here that I don't recognise and don't know very well.

Seeing as how this is my very first Dominions multi-player game, I was wondering, how long has everyone been playing Dominions? And how many multi-player games have you all been in?


I'm one of the new folks here. I've been registered on the boards for awhile, but have not been active till recently. I bought Dom2 early last year and almost immediately heard about the upcoming release of Dom3. I summarily pre-ordered it and I got it 1 or 2 days after the actual release, which I greatly appreciated after the long anticipation.

This is my 2nd MP game. My other MP game I'm still currently in and it is a smaller game with 7 nations. I'm EA Yomi in that one. There are no graphs in that one so I have no idea how well I'm doing. I'm so used to SP games that Vanheim's intelligent use of spies in that game threw me off, since the AI isn't very good with them. Luckily, my own paranoia and methodical practice of checking every provinces' unrest clued me into one of his sneakers, and I was able to get the inciter.

I'm enjoying the diplomacy in these games. I used to play some Empires in Arms at our old wargame club and the diplocmacy was critical to that game. I'm looking forward to more MP games and meeting more strategists from all over the world. I used to play EQ, and I'm currently playing some WoW on the side, and about half my EQ guild was British, and our raid alliance had many Europeans in it too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[PheasantPlucker]

I've messed around with Dom 2 and 3 for years, but am no expert and this is my first MP game. I expect to get stomped fairly shortly, some of you guys seem to have got stratospheric starts! However, I'm hopefully going to learn a thing or two and have a bit of fun first.

[Cor]

I have played Dom3 since it came out.

I have played Dom2 for about 2 years before that.

I am not very good, I have only two MP defeats under my belt.

[FAJ]

I would rather be fighting heavy bless than mammoths. I wont last through the first 15 turns at this rate. I took a late comming pretender and good scales, banking on this game lasting a long time. It was unfortunate that I would end up next to a dom9 wyrm and mammoth totting warmonger!

In other news... What the hell can MA Abysia do to stop mammoths so early? I managed to kill his wyrm, but its a small consolation.

[Wikd Thots]

If you click on someones login on any of these posts you can see when they created their account. That should give you an idea of who has or has not been around for awhile.
Mine says mid 2004.

On the blessed thing we might see that not prove to be as true as many people were thinking. Bless rush, or any rush, was bound to happen. So building up a strong defense and surviving the first rushes is a tactic to consider. After those rushes break on the defenses then push them back. If they fail to get a new castle to get more blessed troops then they will die off by mid game.

[Hadrian_II]

I dont think that the heavy bless nations will win, as they have way too bad scales for later (for an example with growth 3, after 116 turns you will have twice the income than a nation with growth 0 [and people that took death have shot their own foot, if not LA Ermor/Rlyeh]). Heavy bless is more of a suicide bomber strategy that will get you killed, but you can take one or two of your neighbours with you.

[Teraswaerto]

FAJ said:
I would rather be fighting heavy bless than mammoths. I wont last through the first 15 turns at this rate. I took a late comming pretender and good scales, banking on this game lasting a long time. It was unfortunate that I would end up next to a dom9 wyrm and mammoth totting warmonger!

In other news... What the hell can MA Abysia do to stop mammoths so early? I managed to kill his wyrm, but its a small consolation.



Glad to hear the cuddly wuddly woolly mammoths made an impression. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif Bad luck on the Wyrm, it was meant to fight just PD.

[Baalz]

Well, I find growth is not as effective as looking at the raw numbers would indicate. By turn 116 gold is going to be a whole lot less valuable than it is at first - plus, by turn 116 you'll only have a single province that has been under your dominion long enough to double in gold output. Hope those extra design points didn't cost you any early expansion, as this cuts into that differential to.

I don't personally feel like real crappy scales is the only way to go, but even if you're sure you're going to live 100+ turns, the growth/death scale is far from a no-brainer.

[Meglobob]

Order-3, Growth-3 is pretty awesome in a long game.

[Jazzepi]

I don't understand why people think growth 3 is only for the long game. It gives you increased income, and increased supply for fielding large armies of peusdochaff in the early game. Coupled with production/order three, you can simply overwhelm your neighbors, depending on your nation obviously, with the force of your endless supply of doods. Often times even while you're expanding elsewhere.

I'm very happy with my good scales in the early game XD

Jazzepi

[Arameyan]

I think growth is a bit weird sometimes: with pangaea, growth seems thematic but in fact you get many nature mages, so dont really need that much food.. also Vine ogres dont need to eat. Dont tell me it helps with tarasques http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It helps with maenads.

[Jazzepi]

I took growth 3 with LA Ry'leh on the advice of Baalz, and it's been incredibly helpful as far as keeping my troops from starving to death.

Conversely, I'm in another game and I'm being rushed by Vans. They don't need a great deal of troops to support for a good army. The person playing Vanheim or whatever it's called has Death 3 scales. The lack of supplies makes it very difficult to assault their citadel.

To me the most important part about Growth/Death is the amount of supplies you produce.

Jazzepi

[Baalz]

Yep, another important factor is if your mages are old, it makes a pretty big difference. There's a couple dimensions to growth I usually take it if more than one of them are in my advantage.

[Jazzepi]

It's interesting, the actual growth part of it seems to be the least relevant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Though I've been watching my LA Ry'leh capital, and even with dominion 10 there, I haven't noticed a decline in population despite the freespawn.

Jazzepi

[DrPraetorious]

Yeah, Growth-3 is a must for LA R'lyeh just to keep your poplation stable.

[Shmonk]

Less than a half hour to go before the turn hosts, just waiting on BandarLover, I hope he gets his turn in on time.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm all set to go

[HoneyBadger]

ok, my turn is done

[Hadrian_II]

Baalz said:
Well, I find growth is not as effective as looking at the raw numbers would indicate. By turn 116 gold is going to be a whole lot less valuable than it is at first - plus, by turn 116 you'll only have a single province that has been under your dominion long enough to double in gold output. Hope those extra design points didn't cost you any early expansion, as this cuts into that differential to.



More Gold means more mages, more castles, and more units and this are things that you can use even at turn 116. And for growth to get more money in than order it only takes 32 Turns, and that is not so far away.

And my scales are created after feeling and not necessarily after sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (Pangea with Turmoil,Luck and Growth 3)

[DrPraetorious]

Growth is also of great use to blood hunting nations - you're not going to get that much money out of it, necesarrily, but it'll keep your provinces above the magic number (5000) while you kill all those people one way or another.

[HoneyBadger]

Here's something I've always wondered: what happens when a given population reaches 0?

[FAJ]

I thought things always dropped by percentages, so you could never actually get to zero?

[Velusion]

In a province?

It's actually not that hard for a large enough force to pillage a province to a point that the population reaches zero. Once it is zero, it never grows back. I've done it many times as LA Ermor in another MP game. In that game it took me about two turns to completely liquidate the population of a medium sized province with a very large undead army.

The province will always have a minimum supply of 10 and the resources (if I remember correctly) also get reduced to almost nothing.

[Evilhomer]

Also a province with 0 pop will never have unrest as far as I know. So there is actually an idea to pillage your province to death (if it has low pop to start with) if it contains a site that gives a lot of gold. That way you can have the province at 200% tax without getting unrest (tax doubles that income from the mine as well).

[Jazzepi]

DrPraetorious said:
Growth is also of great use to blood hunting nations - you're not going to get that much money out of it, necesarrily, but it'll keep your provinces above the magic number (5000) while you kill all those people one way or another.



Does anyone have the numbers on how many people patrolling kills per point of unrest? And how many people blood hunting kills?

Jazzepi

[lch]

Evilhomer said:
Also a province with 0 pop will never have unrest as far as I know. So there is actually an idea to pillage your province to death (if it has low pop to start with) if it contains a site that gives a lot of gold. That way you can have the province at 200% tax without getting unrest (tax doubles that income from the mine as well).


Eh? No wonder there's no unrest, but how can it give you any tax? Am I the only one who wonders how an empty barren land can give you any revenue in tax?

[Velusion]

lch said:

Evilhomer said:
Also a province with 0 pop will never have unrest as far as I know. So there is actually an idea to pillage your province to death (if it has low pop to start with) if it contains a site that gives a lot of gold. That way you can have the province at 200% tax without getting unrest (tax doubles that income from the mine as well).


Eh? No wonder there's no unrest, but how can it give you any tax? Am I the only one who wonders how an empty barren land can give you any revenue in tax?



Well assuming its a special site like a mine - all you would need is a few miners to make the money - general population is not required. Now why the special sites are affected by what your tax rate is... that's another question.

[BigDisAwesome]

I never knew that. Now I know what provinces to slam some extra tax on when I'm desperate for a little extra cash.

[HoneyBadger]

You could make a case for the tax rate representing the amount of surplus food that's produced and sold on a land beyond that required to feed the people actually living there.
You could then ask the Devs to arrange the tax percentage scale to give you more supplies-based on the arability of the particular province, and with a high limit-if you lower taxes.
I also think it would be nice (and wise) to represent lower taxes (lower than 100%) increasing growth-again, based on the arability of a particular province.
90%=1% growth
75%=2% growth
50%=3% growth
25%=4% groth
10%=5% growth
0% means that every surrounding province that's being taxed at 100% or more loses 1% of it's growth per month, which migrates to your 0% tax province, *PROVIDING* that you're defending that particular province with a PD of atleast 40, OR have opposing scales from the province the population is migrating from, starting with Order. Example: Order scales migrate to Turmoil, Turmoil migrates to Order. 0 Order moves down the list to heat, growth, luck, etc, until a positive or negative scale attribute is found. No positive or negative scales means no population movement.


It would also be nice if you could have a similar resource-scale that you could lower to increase gold income (representing exported, outgoing trade) or raise, lowering the gold income (representing importation of goods). Either raising or lowering this resource scale should affect growth in a random way, either increasing or decreasing it by a maximum of 10%, to represent moving populations in and out.

Leaving the new resource scale at 100% would represent no trade, and actually reduce unrest over time, since your people would have much less contact with corrupting outside influences. Growth would be unaffected.

[Meglobob]

Shouldn't this gowth discussion be done on the main forum thread?

With 62 players this game is going to create the biggest game thread ever, no need to bloat it more than necessary.

Got to say this big map seems awefully small, as the 'blessed' are normally peaceful in nature I am trying hard to avoid stepping on anyone and squashing them. But its hard work...

Good fun being surrounded by nations from all ages and the banners are cool and make the map vividly colourful.

Anyone been eliminated yet or near to it btw? I see Ashen empire is busy crushing the first of his neighbours...all seem a peaceful bunch where I am, which is a nice change.

[Jazzepi]

Really, the discussion about growth is barely going to touch the natural increase of the thread. Growth discussion couldn't be taking up more than 1 page out of 60+. In the end, it simply won't matter.

Jazzepi

[FAJ]

I will be out within 10 turns. I hope someone else is out before that!

[vfb]

The bailiff in Marverni is afraid of werewolves and has increased our defense this month:
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/vfb_dominions/monst.jpg

He's right to be afraid!

Marverni + Sleeping PoD + Researching Const + Forging Items + Midgard = Dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Now, who will swear to defeat the Werewolves of Midgard? There's a shiny Dwarven Hammer in it for you! Barely used. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[BigDisAwesome]

I got lucky with a peaceful bunch of people near me. I thought I'd be in trouble playing one of those bless rush nations, but not rushing people seems to be working out pretty good so far.

[Velusion]

Meglobob said:
I see Ashen empire is busy crushing the first of his neighbours...



*chortals at the ridiculousness of this comment*

The Ashen Empire is under assault by the triple-uber-bless Niefelheim Giants who rebuked any talk of peace. I have instigated no wars and have been peaceful with all my neighbors. That lone "crushing" you mentioned is me buzzing like a fly around the unkillable giants.

I'll probably be out in 15-20 turns.

[Evilhomer]

People see the army graphs of LA ermor/rlyeh and assume we have quality troops and are a uber threat to society =). Meanwhile blessed niefel giants and such goes totally unnoticed.

[Velusion]

Meglobob said:
Giants got the usual E9N9 bless?



Now that I've fought a battle and seen it... they have...

E10N10W10

There is no way I can kill em at this point.
My only consolation is that they are going to totally **** up a few more of their neighbors after (or during) thier crushing of me... hah!

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

[Meglobob]

Velusion said:

Meglobob said:
I see Ashen empire is busy crushing the first of his neighbours...



*chortals at the ridiculousness of this comment*

The Ashen Empire is under assault by the triple-uber-bless Niefelheim Giants who rebuked any talk of peace. I have instigated no wars and have been peaceful with all my neighbors. That lone "crushing" you mentioned is me buzzing like a fly around the unkillable giants.

I'll probably be out in 15-20 turns.



Can we hold you to that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Opps my bad, I thought the ingame message from Abysia was talking about LA Ermor but it was MA Ermor.

Still 2nd in provinces, 1st in army, 1st in gems, high income and 1st or 2nd in all the graphs is not too bad eh?

What's the triple bless on the giants btw? I assume N9E9, not had W9 as well... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[Meglobob]

Velusion said:

Meglobob said:
Giants got the usual E9N9 bless?



Now that I've fought a battle and seen it... they have...

E10N10W10



How funny...there scales must be worse than yours...talk about a huge zone of death/misfortune/drain etc...

I had E9N8 with order-3, cold-3, drain-2 with a imprisioned pretender playing Niefelheim.

[Jazzepi]

Meglobob said:

Velusion said:

Meglobob said:
Giants got the usual E9N9 bless?



Now that I've fought a battle and seen it... they have...

E10N10W10



How funny...there scales must be worse than yours...talk about a huge zone of death/misfortune/drain etc...



I wonder what pretender you use for W10N10W10.

Bleh.

What section of the map are you guys in? Inquiring minds want to know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Jazzepi

[Salamander8]

Wow. Sounds like some parts of our world are really noisy.

I still haven't seen anyone yet. I'm not complaining mind you, but it's quiet in old MA R'Lyeh so far.

[Jazzepi]

I'm curious who will eventually be crowned the underwater king. I suppose they'll be a titanic struggle for control of the land beneath the oceans before those fellows even begin to come on shore.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

Jazzepi said:

Meglobob said:

Velusion said:

Meglobob said:
Giants got the usual E9N9 bless?



Now that I've fought a battle and seen it... they have...

E10N10W10



How funny...there scales must be worse than yours...talk about a huge zone of death/misfortune/drain etc...



I wonder what pretender you use for W10N10W10.

Bleh.

What section of the map are you guys in? Inquiring minds want to know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Jazzepi



My guess would be the son of fenris, thats what i use with that bless.

[jutetrea]

I have defeated the pesky Hoburgs! 3 Battles it took, Catquiet probably laughing the whole while. Spry little buggers.

The celestial bureaucracy is in turmoil, forms are being misplaced at a terrifying rate. The space-time continuum is disturbed as our glorious leader has heard reports of his Great-Great-Grandfather and Great^6 grandfather walking the earth again. We wonder if they will be upset that our mother was forced to marry the, uh, um.. oh yeah, wise and powerful nomad conquerer. Right, wise it is. Yes sir!

**psst - "we think the mangy barbarians had something to do with mixing up the forms"

Ahem, as we continue to look into these disturbing reports we would like to welcome our numerous neighbors who also seem to be confused as to their correct time line. Our diplomatic corps has recently gone through sensitivity training as to not offend this mix of ancient and current cultures.

**Note: The clerk in charge of timekeeping and the clerk-in-waiting in charge of changing the calendar had to be replaced as the shock was too much for them. Our new trainees are working out well by the way.

Oh yes, Greetings. In no particular order:

We wish welcome and good will to our neighbors:
LA Marignon
MA Arco
EA Helheim
LA Ermor
EA Agartha
And our slightly distant neighbor LA Atlantis.

Its a mite bit crowded in here, so no elbows, blows below the belt or GI by-products.

[LoloMo]

Hehe, the Tasty Dragon of EA Abysia calls out for help even as he launches his first wave of attacks. Fortunately, the wisdom of our Shadow Ancestors have predicted this move and the fearsome Shadow Vestals have marched within striking distance of the Abysian Capital and the Tasty Dragon. And with troops aplenty to spare at the only border not secured by a NAP. Our supernatural Shadow Vestals will make delicious Tasty Dragon Kabob with their sharp spears.

Prepare for a great feast next month as we butcher and roast the great beast!

[Ramiro]

Well by the moment, the dragon has a banquete of legionarie meat.
To all nations:Joing us in the cruzade against ME Ermor, before the plage extend and devour all lands !

[Shovah32]

Joing? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[BigDisAwesome]

There's only 2 pretenders you can use to get a bless that high. The Cyclops and Master Druid. You have to imprison both and make all of your scales -3.
The Master Druid has 41 points left to play with.
The Cyclops has 7 points left.

Sorry Velusion, but I can't imagine he'll last much longer.

[Jazzepi]

What level Dominion is that with?

Jazzepi

[BigDisAwesome]

Those are the points leftover when you take that pretender, imprison him, put all your scales at -3.
So the Cyclops has 2 dominion, and the Master Druid has 1.
You could pump the Cyclops up to 3 with those 7 points though.

Are you sure it isn't 9W/9E/9N?
Because it'd be some bad scales, but not NEARLY as bad as 10 in all.

[Szumo]

100% sure it's 10/10/10 myself.

[Wikd Thots]

I wouldnt be sure about the "only 2 pretenders" thing. I have managed to get f4a4w9e4as9d7n4b4
attack +2, air shield 20%, def +4, quicknes, reinv +2, magic resis +3, twist fate, aflictions +250%, regen +5 str +2
and whatever a regular bless gives you

99744444 blesses. I used a crone. I think anyone gets her.

[Meglobob]

Wikd Thots said:
I wouldnt be sure about the "only 2 pretenders" thing. I have managed to get f4a4w9e4as9d7n4b4
attack +2, air shield 20%, def +4, quicknes, reinv +2, magic resis +3, twist fate, aflictions +250%, regen +5 str +2
and whatever a regular bless gives you

99744444 blesses. I used a crone. I think anyone gets her.



Tough jaguar warriors then...plus you can virtually cast any spell, forge any item...interesting.

[Jazzepi]

The problem is increasing from 9th skill level in a magic path to 10th level in a magic path is hugely expensive compared from going from 0->4.

Using a crone to go from 9->10 with no original skill in that path costs 80 points.

Using a crone to go from 0->4 costs 82 points. It's much easier to get a bunch of low level bless effects than to get 3 level 10s. Assuming, of course, that your pretender has a cheap level 0 pick cost.

Taking Pangea, Age of bronze as a random selection, I picked a crone, imprisoned, with the 3x the worst scales for all selections, and 1 domininon. Unless you use Death as one of the level 10 blesses, it's impossible to reach 3x level 10 blesses. This is because she starts with 1 level of death, making the jump from 9-10 much cheaper than if she had started from 0.

Therefore, I can easily believe there are a very select few pretenders you can get a 3x10 bless with. They probably have 2 out of the 3 paths already. Or all three to begin with.

Jazzepi

[CelestialGoblyn]

You can get a 10/10/10 bless archmage with all the scales at -3 and still buy +3 dominion.

[Jazzepi]

I wasn't able to get a W10/N10/E10 bless with EA giants. So I checked out MA giants. The only possible way to get that combination of blesses is with the Great Mother pretender.

You even get Dominion 4 after it's all said and done so that you can recruit 4 of these ridiculous beasts each turn, provided you have enough gold.

I can't imagine trying to fight an army of those guys, they must be unkillable.

Jazzepi

[FAJ]

But due to the cost in scales, the low dominion and hits from scales, arn't the armies very small? Wouldn't they suffer greatly from things like bonds/prison of fire, or powerful, single target killing spells? God forbid they start getting charmed.

[Jazzepi]

FAJ said:
But due to the cost in scales, the low dominion and hits from scales, arn't the armies very small? Wouldn't they suffer greatly from things like bonds/prison of fire, or powerful, single target killing spells? God forbid they start getting charmed.



I'm not saying it's a good strategy but I will say this.

With Dominion 4, you don't have to worry about your own domininon spreading very far. Though I tried the build I just posted in single player, and in the first 3 turns I had my population of my capital cut by a 1/5th, then cut by 5% in one event after the other. I actually started patrolling the capital with the crappy guys just to make enough cash to keep pumping the sacreds out.

Playing on Aran in SP my strategy was to conquer my nearest neighbor as quickly as possible. I managed to do it on turn 15 or so without any difficulty. I just walked right up to their capital, and laid siege to it. I don't think I even lost a guy on the way there. By the time I was done, I had a second army of sacred giants ready to go.

So it is viable to get a good head start that way. Your main units are also sacred, so high MR. I would like to remind people this is a difficult research map, so it's easier for bless nations to abuse researching nations early on. There's simply not enough time to research the spells needed to counter an assault like this.

Is it a good long term strategy? Doubtful, unless you can find a blessable summon quickly enough to carry you into the mid and late game. Your capital is always going to be under full effect of your awful scales, and if you have average luck I would say by turn 40-50 you simply won't have enough population/resources to recruit from there. Though I haven't crunched the numbers on that. On turn 23 or so after patrolling my capital I was down to 19k population or so.

Jazzepi

[HoneyBadger]

I'll comment on my strategy/reasoning either at the end of the game, or if I should become eliminated.

[BigDisAwesome]

Good, cause it seems rather interesting.

[Arameyan]

What era do you think will do best?

I mean, globally, will Late era nations have an advantage over less-armored early eras nations? will Early era mages give a magic superiority in the middle/late game?

Just an idea: it could be great to have some graph to show how the 3 era are doing, like a kind of average of each era for each score graphs.

[BigDisAwesome]

Wasn't someone talking about making a PHP graph for MP games sometime or another? This would be the game to do it for. I've almost given up on scoping out nations on the graphs. It's impossible to see what they're doing unless you turn most of the others off.

[Shmonk]

One thing I'm noticing is that the HoF is mostly gods. So going forward there will be very few, if any, non-gods in there. Because some gods are awakening now and may take some of the slots over as they grow in power. So no or very few uber-SCs this game I bet (that have heroic abilities).

Which sucks because on turn 2 or 3 my prophet did make it in and recieved an heroic ability (a good one but not a great one, can't remember which), but then there was that trouble and we had to redo that turn, and he didn't make it in with the new generated turn. Now with 11 of the 15 slots taken by gods, he may never make it in.

Should make for an interesting game, few to no thugs or SCs with heroic abilities.

[HoneyBadger]

I believe two of my non-god, non-hero units made it into the HoF. Infact, one of them's a scout.

[WSzaboPeter]

I got a Str 18 Phalangite Commander, since he was brave enough to accompany my God to the very first battle.
Oh, and did I mentioned that my God slew a prophet? It was a great experience quite literally.

[Evilhomer]

It seems that a few nations has started to fight already http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Jazzepi]

HoneyBadger said:
I'll comment on my strategy/reasoning either at the end of the game, or if I should become eliminated.



Hey, taking -3 in every scale is pretty cool in my book and takes gigantic balls. I think I'm using an alternative strategy myself. I tried it in another game, and accidentally got myself dominion killed because I wasn't paying attention =\ Oh well!

I'm doing much better this game XD

I want to read your write up after the game.

Jazzepi

[HoneyBadger]

I'll be happy to oblige.

[Lingchih]

HoneyBadger said:
I believe two of my non-god, non-hero units made it into the HoF. Infact, one of them's a scout.



Honeybadger, your camp cooks could probably make the hall of fame, as long as they were blessed.

[HoneyBadger]

That's very true.

[Shovah32]

Im crying in this game. Getting your capitol taken over by indies at the start of a game is not cool http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[LoloMo]

Sounds like misfortune + turmoil =)

[Foodstamp]

I am pulling for HoneyBadger.

[Wikd Thots]

If we had a betting pool going I would wager heavily on the picks that Quantum Mechani gave the IRC channel. But it would be interesting to see who the big map and big game veterans like gandol pick.

[DrPraetorious]

What advice did QM give the IRC channel? Now I'm curious.

I strongly suspect that it'll be someone on the west (main) continent, with relatively tame or friendly neighbors, and that what picks people take won't enter into it. This is a political game, after all.

[atul]

Western continent, sure if all the nations are packed here east like it seems. On the other hand, I just might have had a rough hand dealt at me, as I get a feeling my neighbours don't realize that while they have still indies to conquer, my lot caps at ten provinces if I'm not stepping on anyone's toes. No easy way out of here, I say. *grumble*

[Meglobob]

This games so good its got 2 threads, loving the trading thread, every large MP game should have one. Its Ebay Dominions style.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Evilhomer]

Your just trying to lure people over to look at your owl quill offer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

I must add that so far its a sellers market. Going construction early is probably a good idea if you are at good terms with your neighbours.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually, Ive played with Quantum Mechani and if money were involved I would be tempted to bet on his picks over mine also. He knows the ladder better than I do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I have a tendency to pick the underdog. But going with the longshot in this game might not be a bad idea either. I think this game is likely to not allow the well-accepted notions of what is an automatic win to prove themselves.

[BandarLover]

Aha, there you have it folks. Gandalf is pulling for me!!

If I'm not an underdog, then I don't know who is.;)