Sitting on the fence

[Alneyan]

As the title goes, I've been thinking about taking up Dominions again, but I still need to overcome my initial inertia. So, how would you convince someone to jump back in the arena?

I'm mostly interested in MP, so I'm looking for the crazy game ideas you came up with, or how Dominions 3 makes betrayal so much more pleasurable. In other words, what's the Great and the Brilliant in Dominions MP these days?

[Jurri]

I am the Great and the Brilliant!

...errr, that is to say, many of your old Dom2 buddies like me and Pashadawg still play regularly: what more reason could you need? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Kristoffer O]

Something interesting and fun, but not necessarily playable, is the 62 player perpetuality game. Gandalf or some other freako http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif has made a mod that enables all nations of all eras to play simultaneously. I do not play in the game, but have been following the discussions occasionally, and it sounds quite fascinating. I believe there is talk about starting a new one.

[Morkilus]

It's been playable and fun for now... it's exciting knowing that beyond your initial politics of 6-10 nations, there's another 50 out there you haven't even contacted yet. Trading becomes much more important, as well.

Anyway... welcome back, Alneyan! Stop by the IRC channel sometime.

[Shovah32]

Welcome back! As morkilus said stop by the IRC channel, im sure someone could fill you in.

[Gandalf Parker]

Alneyan said:
I'm mostly interested in MP, so I'm looking for the crazy game ideas you came up with, or how Dominions 3 makes betrayal so much more pleasurable.



"crazy game ideas"? Sounds like Im being paged. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

games with victory-point conditions

games using CBM (conceptual balance mod)

games with no indepts at all

games where each player is provided with a "blind email" on a server. maximum effort to try and keep all players totally anonymous which tends to increase the backstabbing and paranoia by quite abit.

games with no national sites (and elite units)

games where the players "bid" for their nations.

games where the farther down on your choice list you go, the higher the starting benefits you get. such as extra starting population

games where everyone turns in their gods but then they are randomly assigned to the players so everyone plays something other than they turned in

A game of "Musical Chairs". If there are 10 players then the game hosts whenever 9 have turned in their turn. The last player always stales.

games using mods as better AI's. Purposely unbalanced mods such as Amos does. Setting all of the AI's to ally with each other against all of the players can also be interesting.

games using low resources which seems to make the AI play better. Also trying the various other settings possible in the game which I dont think has been done completely in MP games

large games on a wrappable map

game on mega large map which makes nations play abit different (such as ones with stealth having advantages they dont get in small map games)

games with players and AI's which give the AI's a 10 or 20 turn head start

games on a tower map (very high but only wide enough for one nation at a time, very different playing)

games using the SemiRandom generator. Either to scatter interesting provinces on the map. Or using it to generate a game with AIs that have designed gods/scales instead of randomly created ones which might choose self-destructive settings.

games with all nations playing together at once. There are two of those running. One with 62 and one with 75 but with AIs included. The single nation mod allows all 3 eras to play together but setting up an MP game with it is rough.

games with the "randomly generated module" which changes one feature of every unit in the game forcing you to relearn and adapt during the game

Im also still messing with what kindof fun mid-game changes can be done by editing a mod while the game is running. Im thinking of tying it in with a routine that will watch the log output or scoreboard for certain occurances. The turn number, or someone getting a certain size, or first person out.

Hmmm I think thats all I can think of at the moment
Gandalf Parker

[quantum_mechani]

Alneyan said:

I'm mostly interested in MP, so I'm looking for the crazy game ideas you came up with,



1) Civil War- modded game where everyone plays the same nation.

2) Astral Fragmentation- play a map with all province connections removed and easy mass teleport modded in for all.

3) Unchalleged Victory- independant strength 0 game.

4) Untainted- game with only 8 players, and a mod that resticts each one to only one magic path (or optionally school).

5) Broken Empire- scenario set up where one player starts in the middle with a sizeable empire, they are declared the winner if they survive X turns, anyone else wins if they capiture the empire's capital.

6) Entitled- compile list of thematic bonuses for rare pretender titles, then have a third party assign them via map modding to nations that manage to generate them.

EDIT: Gandalf beat me to a list. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

@QM:
Civil War!
I forgot that one. Ive been asking for people to create mods that perfectly duplicate a nation. If we had an Ulm mod then a game could be played (I think) that puts that mod into every one of the 75 nations slots. A great way for people to prove who is the best at playing certain nations.

As long as you slightly rename the nation (Ulm1, Ulm2,.. , Ulm75). Maybe need new flags also. Flags with numbers? And a color for each?

[Salamander8]

Kristoffer O said:
Something interesting and fun, but not necessarily playable, is the 62 player perpetuality game. Gandalf or some other freako http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif has made a mod that enables all nations of all eras to play simultaneously. I do not play in the game, but have been following the discussions occasionally, and it sounds quite fascinating. I believe there is talk about starting a new one.


I'm loving the megagame, and it's only my 2nd ever MP! It had a couple early bugs, but has been great fun with lots of diplomacy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Velusion]

Kristoffer O said:
...or some other freako http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Hey!! I resemble that remark!

[Amhazair]

Not mentioned yet are a couple of games (hosted by Ironhowk I think) that had all players start out with 9? provinces, and a stack of sages in their capitol, so the early game is pretty much skipped. I had the impression those playing it found it refreshing and fun.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah I ran a couple of Accelerated Games as I've been calling them. VPs, 9 Starting provs, Easy Research, high gems, small map w/ only 1-2 indy provs per nation. The wars start almost immediately and rapidly proceed to late game mega-magic. Quite fun!

Think of it as the middle-ground b/w a Blitz and a 3-4month Long Term game.

[Alneyan]

Jurri said:
[W]hat more reason could you need? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Giving you the beating of the year, for starters.

Gandalf & QM: I was mostly looking for the new craziness offered by Dominions 3, like the titanic game or the civil war. Are there other such ideas floating around that could not have appeared in Dominions 2?

Well, I have two weeks to make up my mind about Dominions 3, so I'll be lurking now.

[Gandalf Parker]

The "Musical Chairs" one has some admining quirks to try and automate it which I havent messed with very far. You still have an account if you want to test one.

And one that has come up is a "Spoils to the Conqueror" idea which I havent tested. People sometimes mention that they wish they could recruit the other guys units when they get his castle. If a map is created with #specstarts for each nation, #killfeature, then use #knownfeature to reassign the national sites....
A) do they still work
B) if captured, do they still work?
C) if the above doesnt work then can they be assigned to a neighboring province and will that work? (yes everyone would start with double sites but it would still be even)

Hmmm that brings up another. Something along the line of IronHawks Accelerated Games. Start everyone with two or 3 castles with duplicates of their national sites.

(again, this is all untested hacks so I have no idea if they are possible)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Disclaimer: I have no idea if any of these are possible. Ones clearly possible are exceptions to the rules.
Aside from the last one, are any of these remotely possible and worth me looking into?

Crazy game idea? I have no reason to suspect its possible, but ... an epic map. Many fantasy novels have an event where the world was sundered in twain. Or stuff like that. If at all possible, I'd suspect that the players would have to agree to replace their game map all at the same time. And the game hoster would have to mod the old data into the new map.

But ideas... Take for instance, Paraganos. Imagine that the two land masses come together (Sea -> Farmland) at one or two of the lakes, around year five. Then, one of the other lakes opens up a bit, or one of the provinces sinks below. The gamehoster would act as kind of a GM, and the gameplayers wouldn't know whats happening until maybe a year before the event. If anything was horribly unfair, they'd figure out some bone to throw someone on the short end of the stick.

I am fascinated by the "Other person's Pretenders concept". If you design the winning person's Pretender (and don't get it yourself) you get a bonus in the next game (choose start site, maybe?, pick a magic site), or at least an honorable mention?

Games with humans having a typical start, but one AI starts out as a small empire the rest have to overcome before turning upon each other. You could backstab someone before-hand, but then you'd have to watch your back.

Games with 100% sites, 30% resources, 80% gold. Summons for all.

Aside from the last one, are any of these remotely possible and worth me looking into?

[llamabeast]

The changing map one isn't I'm afraid. The map is fixed once the game starts. Well, you could change the picture, but not any of its actual properties or connections.

What you can change mid-game is mods. So you could have new units become available during the game or something. You could probably have everyone gradually change from the EA to the LA version of their nation through the game! But that would take a lot of work.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

That's nice to hear. But w/regards to that last paragraph, there may be an easier, though less accurate way to do that which would avoid the complication of removing units from the game.(though some nations such as Ctis would complicate things). If you can combine all three eras into one nation, say EA, MA, LA ulm into Single Era Ulm, and have three different mod versions of SE Ulm with all units available. In one version, you'd have the resource costs for EA normal, but the other two eras ridiculously high. The next version, you'd have MA normal, and so on. In theory, this would allow you to keep some of your heroes and commanders throughout the ages and offer up some real interesting strategies, since they'd no longer be recruitable later on. And if you wanted to force obsolescence you could invite glitchs by lowering max ages.

That'd still take a lot of work, but hopefully less on the part of gameplayers. If I find the time, I'll look into that. But I've got other things on my plate, ATM, namely, my first Dom3 MP game, server courtesy of the llamabeast, and finishing my godawfully large MA Agartha guide.

[Gandalf Parker]

I like that idea. It also would make the game abit more RPG since you would get very protective about early era champions that have made it thru the ages. And on a really large map that would breath new life into the game as it progresses thru the eras. I even think that this might be a good thing for Illwinter to look into. Adding a progressive game option.

I had an idea to do a big campaign scenario with 3 maps and try go with the feel of moving from era to era with carryover benefits but I could only simulate it. I couldnt really base the growth on previous actions. I really like the concept with a mod moving it along. You might actually have found my motivation to mod.

[Gandalf Parker]

I found an old "half an idea" writeup.

---------------------
Ive been leary of mentioning the "change game on the fly" since it adds to the concenr of trusting your host. Its a problem that we had in Dom2. Also, I suspect that use of it, might cause Johan to fix it (Ive personally had problems along that line http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

However, it does hold some wonderful possibilities.
Here are some tidbits for you:

A) it is possible for an external program to programmically make changes to the mod during the game. For best results the game should be brought down and rebooted after the change is made.

B) it is possible for an external program to "see" and react to:
1) what turn it is
2) what season it is
3) certain nations failing to upload turn files, or failing to upload a turn for X number of hostings
4) how many nations have dropped out
5) how many are owned by a nation or by all nations:
1a) provinces
2a) forts
3a) income
4a) gem income
5a) research
6a) dominion
7a) army size
8a) victory points
6) all of the above as it applies to Independents to gauge the progression of the game. Such as when there are less than 10% provinces held by indepts.
7) largest change in any of the above
8) how many of something has entered the game:
1b) assassins
2b) horrors
3b) global spells
9) certain specific provinces being attacked (when the home of xxxx is attacked then)
10) certain spells being cast (meaning a way to check if a certain research level has been reached, or to know that AI Ermor is now capable of xxxxx)
11) what random events have run
12) specific items gotten from combats
13) overkills (such as a 2000 army killing a 200 army)
14) more than one nation playing with the same serial (one person playing as two and

Such as....
a game with a better planned Early Age Ermor as an AI. Well designed god, well chosen scales, tweaked to play well as an AI. And then an outside program can watch the logs. When Ermors castle comes under siege then "Ermor casts a massive revenge spell" and suddely goes total undead with tweaks to be a big problem trying to take them out.

Or a "sacred forest" stretching across numerous provinces and when they are attacked then Pangaea erupts everywhere.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Glad to know I've helped to motivate you just as someone helped motivate me to finish my Golem Cult guide. I'd be willing to help you with such a mod, as long as someone knowledgeable was in a leadership role.

I'm not yet willing to decipher the inner working of the mod files and save game formats, though coding a small program in Python or C++ to adjust what I'm told, would be within my field of interest.

And if some grunt work needed doing, I'd be willing to adjust everything needing change, as long as someone else did the thinking for me. "Here's this information, it looks like this, change all 100 of these values. Here's how you open it." I'm willing to do that, I've got the downtime with my job. "Here's what I want to do, how do I do it, where do I do it, and what is it called?" That requires brain cycles used by my job and guide write up- at the moment, that's tapped out. Though that will change for the better.

[Gandalf Parker]

Gee that would work well for me.
I have an over-active brain and extremely-lazy fingers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

Idea for the next mega-game. If anyone has been watching it they know that much of the games "diplomacy" has been based on the score graphs. Any game on a large map (20/player) and around 10 players or more has seen it. And I have taken note of the requests for games with scoring turned off.

So Im thinking.. run the game --noscoregraphs --scoreboard which kills the graphs IN the game but gives exact numbers to a file that the host can post.

But dont post it. Take the scores.html and process it to give "worlds general impression of" which you post instead. Keep a running total of the numbers and offer the average results by only listing the highest and lowest nation. "The worlds general impression is that Ermor has the largest armies, Arcos has the most magic, Caelum has the most resources". Since its a running average, sudden spikes or losses might not show up. The world would have to gradually get an idea of changes. You might know that generally the worlds impression is that Jotunheim has the smallest army even though sudden losses make Ctis the actual lowest in military forces. Hmmm over long-game that will get less and less useful. Maybe the running total should only reflect the last... 10 turns? year? And OBVIOUSLY Im thinking of automating the process.

It would make spying more useful, trading info more profitable, and make bluffing a real part of the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
OK yeah, its an RPG thing and the ladder people will probably hate it but then they tend to hate the mega games anyway.

[llamabeast]

I like that idea. It could be a running average with noise. As in, each turn the "army" value for a nation is its true size +=30%, adn the value shown is the average over the values for the last 10 turns. But the noise could be a parameter chosen at the start of the game, offering some kind of continuum between scoregraphs on and off.

I could do this easily if I had any idea how to automatically draw graphs (my knowledge of automated web and graphics stuff is pretty thin). I think at some point a while ago lch said he had some kind of a php script or something for doing it. That would be great.

[Gandalf Parker]

I was going for text rather than a graph. But it could be automatically graphed. Unix/Linux loves such things. There is a script language called ghost, or an old program called gnuplot. Some require more friendly familiarity with math than I have.
http://linuxgazette.net/103/okopnik.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Linux_graph_plotting_software

[Ironhawk]

An interesting twist on your idea gandalf: Make the players pay for the information http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/firedevil.gif

So, hide the graphs and generate the numbers. And if players want the exact numbers for that turn, they have to pay some gold amount to the GM. Its sort of like the price you would have to pay to support a network of spies to collect said information.

[Morkilus]

I was thinking of using that idea in the mega-age game - spend much of your money on scouts and sell the info to other nations. You gotta earn your money somehow if you're not a "rush" nation.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im surprised that in an older game such as mega game that someone doesnt rush for Eyes of God and then sell screenshots.

Or barter with other nations so that they all contribute gems to the casting of Eyes of God to make it strong enough to last, in return for regular updates on its view. Maybe based on how many gems they donate to the cause

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Has someone pulled off that civil war mod thing? It would be an interesting, though slow, way of developing a strategy guide.

[Gandalf Parker]

At least it would give us all an idea of who might be best to write the strategy guides. Note the word "guides". I do not think that anyone is likely to be the best choice for the guides of all nations in all game types

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Good lord, no. First, the scope of a full guide is horrifying to even imagine. You ever own that Master of Magic strategy guide? You know, the one that actually was released after the game was, vs. 1.31, so it didn't have that false crap. You know, the one bigger than some textbooks. I fear Dom3 would turn out worse, but I just might be imagining it.

Ignoring who's best to write the guides, it might give us an idea (especially if we had a record/replay feature like RTS) who has the best idea on how to design and use a pretender.

Personally, I just want an excuse, any excuse, to get involved in as many MP games as I can.

[llamabeast]

Isn't Eyes of God unavoidably dispelled by Fate of Oedipus, no matter how many gems were put in?

I like the idea of paying the GM for better quality data. If only there were a way to automate it... but I don't think it's possible, since the program would somehow have to know how much gold was paid to the GM, and it can't do that without opening the game and reading the messages (which would be very smart indeed).

[Gandalf Parker]

llamabeast said:
Isn't Eyes of God unavoidably dispelled by Fate of Oedipus, no matter how many gems were put in?

I like the idea of paying the GM for better quality data. If only there were a way to automate it... but I don't think it's possible, since the program would somehow have to know how much gold was paid to the GM, and it can't do that without opening the game and reading the messages (which would be very smart indeed).


messages can be read from the game logs

[Fate]

Gandalf, how much information is in the logs? And aren't .2h files not encrypted? Do you think this means someone could write an external AI that could submit its turns with .2h files?

It is a wild idea, but I might even try it if it is true.

[Gandalf Parker]

There is a ton of info in the logs. Who attacks who, what spells are cast, the AI's thinking, sneakings, etc. But its a file that only the host can see.

Its not the same as the .2h files. Unless you know how to turn on debugging and redirect it to the file then you will probably never see a game log even if you are hosting a game.

Its not encrypted. Its a really REALLY big ascii text file. But it could be parsed to gather info. I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread about all of the things that the host can find out. Much of that is from the log files.

Ive also mentioned in another thread parsing out province info and creating an ever-changing world-map like we had in our schoolbooks where each of the owned provinces would be colored for the nation that owned it.

added note: oh yeah, and people already can read .2h files so Im guessing that some future tricks might be possible using .2h files. I would love to see an external program for doing a "human player" as an AI

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

When you say big... Big for a text file, or big for downloading? What size is it, and would it be possible for one of you to upload a log from a finished game? I'd like to take a peek.

[Gandalf Parker]

From a finished game? No way!
Even at its lowest setting its too big to keep more than a turn or two before rotating the log. If you want to see one of those then I will zip one up and move it for you.
http://www.dom3minions.com/games/MegaAI_game.zip
Not a very standard game (its one player and 75 AI's)

Thats with a -d switch. Putting it up to -ddddddd gives you a HUGE file even with just one turn depending on how many players and how many provinces.

[Fate]

Okay, I have been looking at the log file It contains TONS of information on things like how the graphics engine is working. There a couple things I would like to know:

1) How are .2h files read? They aren't text files.

2) The game on -ddddddddd gives a lot of good information on nearly every sword swing in battle, and the original positions, but it doesn't give any territory information. I mean things like events, treasury, gems, items, commanders and units and their attributes, recruitment, sites, temples, labs, and forts, scoregraphs, and scouting reports.

The first is just my ignorance, but the second means no external AIs. I would politely ask the devs for a -info or -i command that gave a dump of a player's overall knowledge. It would be fine if it was just another text file. It doesn't need to include battles, b/c the log file has that already.

Thank you,
Fate

[Gandalf Parker]

1) The .2h is a binary file. It gets read by a program, and each character is important. But the people who worked on the God Viewer would be the ones to ask.

2) Im probably being misleading by calling it a game log. Its actually a debugging log. Turning on debugging to get a dump of the games activity is something that programmers add. Its meant more for Johan to see what is going on and what might be a problem. It wasnt really meant as something for us but I have gradually gained more info being put to the log and other output files.

There is also the scores.html which the game can be asked to dump each time it hosts. It looks like this...
http://www.dom3minions.com/games/Massive/scores.html

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

One more idea, this one relatively simple to implement and focused towards multiplayer.. I call it Vegas rules. As in, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".
I'd go with Orwellian titles like Ministry of Truth.

The basic principle is that there are no rules. Lying and treachery are encouraged- not required - and backstabbing within this game doesn't get held against you in a different game. Though it can certainly lead to consequences within the game.

In more detail:
A. Joining is semi-anonymous. In PBEM, an independent host (llamabeast) might handle this. In a network game, a few simple rules must be followed for joining.
A1). You cannot make a post claiming a faction. The faction goes to the first player uploading to the slot.
A2). You must respect slots where someone else has uploaded a pretender.
A3). You must make a post within 24 hours stating that you have joined the game and uploaded a pretender. You needn't mention the faction, though you may if you wish. You can make this post whenever within the 24 hours. Ideally, it will obscure which nation you selected.

B). Game Play
B1). Vegas rules aren't rules _during_ the game.
B2). Treachery and lies are encouraged, but not necessary. Truth can be a weapon too.
B3). Any backstabbing will be forgiven once the game ends, and shall not affect other games. What happens in Vegas stays in vegas.
B4). Juicy after action reports are encouraged- just be sure to mention that its vegas-style before detailing all your treachery.
B5). Both secret and public alliances are allowed. You can punish betrayal, but you should keep in mind when its to both side's advantage to call off a feud.

[llamabeast]

I had a similar idea for a game LP - I was going to call it a 'Machiavellian' game.

One problem - how can you do public diplomacy, battle reports on the thread and so on without giving away your identity?

[Kristoffer O]

> how can you do public diplomacy, battle reports on the thread and so on without giving away your identity?

In game messaging. But it might be slow.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Alternatively, you could get some instant messaging/chat program that gives you a number as an identity, and allows you to assign an alias, such as Agartha.

For battle reports, you might be able to have a blog or livejournal that allows anonymous/guest posters where you can type in a name each time you post.

Personally, I like the idea somewhat of having to give away your identity to manage really quick diplomacy. There will be a cost to complete anonymity. And to encourage 'coming out', theres the whole bit about "what happens in Vegas" stays in "Vegas". The anonymity lasting simply for joining is enough to prevent a player from designing a specific counter. There could be a definite advantage to not proclaiming you've taken a slot at all- polls to keep track of numbers.

I'm not really familiar with instant messaging clients, so I don't vouch on accuracy. I think maybe IRC or ICQ just assign you a number and let you pick and change an alias to your nation. I do know there are some anonymous online chatrooms, though I haven't used any.

Alternatively, if there was a huge demand for super secret games, maybe there could be something done with a separate forum. A game could be started here, with some discussion going on, and the rest done on a forum where users have to register (to prevent spam), but doesn't display usernames.

[Gandalf Parker]

One of my game ideas was to do a mega game and assign an email box on the system for each nation. It was part of an effort to have a totally anonymous game.

[Gandalf Parker]

with a new mega game being discussed, and it being pointed out to me that I need to dig up some of my old ideas for my ghost-town of a server.. it seemed like a good time to bump this thread.

But just to make it more than a bump..
let me add fuel to the fire on the "Civil War" idea that was discussed here. Im not a modder so I have no idea how well this worked but back in the Dom2 days we had a module to do what we needed.


Nation Replacement
This mod duplicates most nations of Dominions II, and Ulm's two themes, so that the same nation can appear many times one game.
Version 0.90
Created by Endoperez.
Download mod: nation_replicas.zip



Its still available on Illwinters site

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I was thinking about, and hadn't found...
A simple mod nation- Observers.
All national units completely immobile.
10 gold, immobile l4 priests to prevent dom kill.
Custom version of the spell that lets you see everything on the map, costing one astral pearl, one astral magic required.

Still... have a few problems with this. Taking up one global slot for a noncompetitive player, for instance.

The whole point of this nation would be to allow some third party to watch the game - as might happen with a RTS tournament. Could be abused during a game, but if I only release those turns ten turns later, perhaps?

[coobe]

Best Reason to play Dominions 3 is the game itself. I need no fancy mods (except cb mod), i play dom every day for several hours and still discover new stuff

[Gandalf Parker]

This is actually about new games, not just mods.
The mod discussed was one to facilitate some of the ideas for new multiplayer games. A way to create an admin account in a game which can watch more of whats going on

Some of us have been playing the game for a couple of years longer than others and we are more willing to try some weird game settings other than the game has in its game-creation menu http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Wikd Thots]

So?
Now that you read it again, what game are you going to give us?
Your server is getting rusty.

My preferences would be

BLIND EMAIL because you know how I love a game with ore backstabbing and paranoia

MOD AI's but I see you are asking he mod experts for some suggestions there. Don't do a map for soloists with it. Do a game for us

Same as MOD AI's but mix in MEGA-GAME (all 62 nations and AIs filling to 80 players) and also HEADSTART the AI's 10 or 20 turns

Maybe your CHAOS stuff, or the one with a mod that randomly changes things all thru the game. But only if it's offered instead of the others I mentioned.\
Get on the ball G!

[llamabeast]

Wikd,

If you want to run a game you can - you're welcome to use my server. You can set it up exactly as you like, blind e-mail, whatever.

I'm not entirely sure why I say this because you're probably the most/only objectionable person on this forum, but still - if you want this stuff it is entirely possible. It would be nice to see you contribute something for a change.

[Wikd Thots]

Oh don't sound like S-Hombre. At least I never offered to do anything. I'm just prodding G to do something with his server. G knows he needs a good prod. Nobody want those blitz games anymore and a perfectly good server is going to waste.

But it might help if some other nicer talking people maybe offer G some suggestions on what THEY would like him to put on the server. Mega is covered. Emails is covered thanks to you LLamabeast. So what is still not out there for multiplay games? If we don't prod him then he will just do more maps or offer up free ideas for other people to do or diddling in Basic. The server was the only thing that (a fairly large crowd) didnt laugh at.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive seen the logs of some of those conversations Wikd. Obviously that doesnt bother me.

But..
I wouldnt mind a few more (please some other people) suggestions on what to do with the server. It does seem as though 2-4 player blitzs on standard Dom3 maps is getting stale.

[Wikd Thots]

BUMP BUMP BUMP
Did anything happen with this thread?
Do we have any numbers on what people really want?

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes yes yes tho I was hoping for somemore input from other people.

Actually I did look at my sites log. I was surprised to see so much activity on some (and so little on others).

One thing it spurred me to do is that I did look at the "Poke in the Eye" map again. I tried to fix the problem with indept castles being too easy to capture but my first try at it created worse problems. In any case, the zip has been updated to include the new units (some of which arent in the game yet).
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Poke_Eye_v3.zip
Until I iron out the indept castles thing I dont think I will be turning on the daily updates to it like the Dom2 version had.

Recommended game settings for best AI seems to be:
A) turn up supplies
B) turn down resources
C) for THIS map, turn down indepts altho usually you should turn that up for AIs

Im guessing that higher money might also help. Not sure on special site frequency (probably turn it down). Im also not sure if AI is better with large or small Hall of Heroes (probably larger?).

Gandalf Parker

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

What seems to be the particular problem with your Poke in the Eye map and your fix?

Is there a particular thread - oh, you just created it now. I'll move my commentary on this to it.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=549126&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmm I just noticed that the AI allies are only the first 17 nations (old Dom2 code) so playing Early Age is probably best for a decent AI game

[Gandalf Parker]

Random Gods
This is already pretty much handled by the SemiRandom program as far AI's and solo playing. But I had a thought about it for multiplaying.

When I was trying to iron out the procedures for creating a mega game I had to include the renaming. The game was fudged to handle multi gods per nation in Dom3 by naming them in the savedlords directory with numbers. _0 and _1 and _2 etc etc. But when the player uploads them it renames them to age_nation.2h so if someone had a collection of gods, then a randomly selected early_ulm_*.2h to early_ulm.2h in the games subdirectory should work.

Unfortunately not for AI's, only human players. And you cannot make early_ulm_1.2h the god for early_ctis.2h and have it work. Hmm come to think of it there isnt much there. A large collection of gods and random selection for human players. Oh well, its still workable. Maybe someone else has ideas on it.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Heres' a scary idea. People have started a weak pretender game where they've tried to design the weakest pretender possible within a certain set of rules and have that assigned to another player. So, how about an AI designed pretender?

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm maybe I will host a game where everyone turns in their pretender in SemiRandom code. Then if I can figure out a way to randomly assign those it will have a side benefit of gaining us more AI pretenders for the SemiRandom program

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'm not quite clear as to what this "SemiRandom code" is. Would you please clarify? I'm not even sure whether its animal, vegetable, or mineral.

...
I mean... mod? Coding language? something you just thought up? Some utility I haven't seen yet, although I haven't been looking for any quite yet?

[Gandalf Parker]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
I'm not quite clear as to what this "SemiRandom code" is. Would you please clarify? I'm not even sure whether its animal, vegetable, or mineral.

...
I mean... mod? Coding language? something you just thought up? Some utility I haven't seen yet, although I haven't been looking for any quite yet?


The SemiRandom program uses map commands. You can use it to randomize things in a map and then play it. It does a better job than my totally chaos programs because it can place a pre-designed province properly. It can also load a logical god/scales creation for an AI. One built for Mictlan, or Pangaea, or Arcos which are all so different. Its a cool program.
some great province files here
Special Provinces, Unique Defenders. (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=523949&Forum=f 187,f194,f195&Words=%2B%23god%20&Searchpage=0&Limi t=25&Main=523949&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=&d aterange=1&newerval=5&newertype=y&olderval=&oldert ype=&bodyprev=1#Post523949)

Some examples of god files are in here.. the AI Conquers (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=530785&Forum=f 187,f194,f195&Words=%2B%23god%20&Searchpage=0&Limi t=25&Main=530020&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=&d aterange=1&newerval=5&newertype=y&olderval=&oldert ype=&bodyprev=1#Post530785)

Or a heavier conversation here...
SemiRandom (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=d3smm&Number=524042&Forum= f187,f194,f195&Words=%2Bnatural%20%2Bdisaster&Sear chpage=0&Limit=25&Main=523661&Search=true&where=bo dysub&Name=&daterange=1&newerval=5&newertype=y&old erval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=1#Post524042)

He also has a program to help you tweak the settings on the map generator in Dom3 to some more personal prefences (sh as colors) but those are actually two different projects which he has blended in one menu lately Idea Thread for SemiRandom (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=523949&Forum=f 187,f194,f195&Words=%2B%23god%20&Searchpage=0&Limi t=25&Main=523949&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=&d aterange=1&newerval=5&newertype=y&olderval=&oldert ype=&bodyprev=1#Post523949)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Half-assed Game idea- Assassination, Supers, Duels

Everyone needs to design an awake super-combatant. When their super dies, they lose. Any attack force must consist of their god and up to 5 national, recruitable commanders. There will be unit caps on the troop size. Say, 50 national troops. something else for Ermor. A defense force can consist of up to 10 commanders (who can be super-summons in their own right), and 100 troops, who can be summons?

Its obvious I haven't thought to hard about this. But the germ of the idea is there. It's not quite a deathmatch, but close. Keeping combats small scale in intent. Maybe allow attack forces more flexibility?

This would be best for less serious, smaller shorter games. A blitz. It can be fun to toy around with pretenders, and by restricting attack forces, we change the focus from conquests to specific battles.

[Gandalf Parker]

Alneyan said:
As the title goes, I've been thinking about taking up Dominions again, but I still need to overcome my initial inertia. So, how would you convince someone to jump back in the arena?


OK this is thread necrophilia.
Like the original poster Im trying to find my motivation to return to Dominions 3. Many of my wild ideas are in this thread. We have lots of new players. Maybe some of these ideas if they havent already been done will catch peoples eye as something they would like to see?

[Darkwind]

I thought the idea of having nations "evolve" over time into later-era counterparts would be interesting, maybe with harder-than-normal research so it didn't seem like either the eras were flying by or by the time you got to the late age, the heavier troops were useless because you were already well into the late game. It would be especially interesting with dramatic changes, such as R'lyeh EA->MA or Sauromatia->Pythium, Marverni->Man (I assume that's what Marverni turns into), etc.

I also thought it might be interesting to have one's era change by the season. So as R'lyeh, one season you could be happily playing with your Aboleths, and the next they could all be insane and trying to summon Cthulhu. The next, you could be summoning non-insane Illithids (or still stuck tryingn to summon Cthulhu). Come to think of it, what if every season (or six months, or year) players were randomly assigned to different nations? You could be happily elephant-rushing as Caelum and the next turn you could be Kailasa, on the opposite end of said rush. Or someone in a completely different area, even. All sorts of things could vary by the season, actually. Your order-3 society could turn into an effective turmoil-3 nation at the whim of the seasons. Do they even have to have the same effects? Your drain-3 could one day grant you +5% resources, +15% supplies and -14% gold. Not that randomly changing values would be a good idea . . . perhaps increasing/decreasing effect based on season? Say, in winter, growth 3 would be effectively growth 1, but order 3 would be effectively order 4.

Am I even making any sense?

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive pondered an arrangement like that. It would be an extensive download and install so it would need to be a really desirable scenario. It would end up using all of the tricks of the game.
A link to start the game with the right map and the right settings such as postexec command, stats command, log command, and a mod.
An executable to run each time the game processed a turn to check and see if its time for a change and then swap the files.
An executable to modify the mod file so it can be hot-swapped in.

And I still have to test if map image can be hot-swapped like a mod file can. That would allow some neat things also.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im not sure if this has been added to this "game variants" thread.

Some of the "hidden command switches" came up in another thread and it reminded me of a game variant. With use of --superhost and --comptrn it is possible for players to see the turn files of the AI players.

Tourist Game
A large game. Maybe on a maximum map. It could be all of an age with the extra nation slots (71 thru 94) filled in with modded nations. Or maybe a SingleAge game with all three eras in it. Two games wold run on the server. One named SuperHost which processes the turns continually. And then the post.sh could copy the turn files to the Tourist game which would run as a direct-connect server so that anyone can connect and view the turn files.

Better Spies
a version of the same game but with players and AIs. Since the player files would be password protected no one should be able to see their turns. But anyone, including the players, can view the AIs actions so it would amount to "better spying". The nicety would be in allowing other players to see the internal workings of a large MP game. (before anyone asks, the AI turns are only viewable. You cannot change the AIs actions)

Watchers Game
I had originally considered a Watcher game using the Watcher mod. But allowing tourist view of the ENTIRE game from one file didnt seem like something I create a game around. Im not sure that we could get enough players who were so confident that they would be willing to play in a no-secrets game of that type.

[Gandalf Parker]

A head-slapper comment was made by Squirrelloid in another thread.
In the event of a game using duped nations, the limit on how many nations can have the same national spell can be avoided. Since only that nation would be in the game then national spells can be declared as non-national.

The conversation got fun around the idea of a Monkey Madness Game of up to 90 nations all playing duplicate versions of Markata. Totally balanced. One huge game of Stealths vs Swarms strategies.

[chrispedersen]

I have really hoped someone could build an auction app, which would then hand off to an pretender verify.

so basically, just like dominions has a host mode where you wait and connect to a nation...

Players would be listed on the left, and across the top the nations they are bidding on.

..........Niefl..TC...Mictlan....Sauro....Kailasa
Squirrel..30.....5.....24.........20.......0
Chris..................25..................5
Dr.P......35...........05.........21.......0
Baalz.....20...........07.........25.......0


So, for example, in this instance, if everyone was happy with the bidding, the following would occur

Squirrel wins TC and pays 5 pts
Chris wins mictlan and pays 25
Dr P wins niefle and pays 35
Baalz wins sauro and pays 25

so this would get written to some records, and when they submit pretenders, they must have the bid number of points remaining (unused..)

[militarist]

I like idea about bidding for nation, which can be open or closed, in one iteration or through many, using just forum.

Like I bid 1 for Saurom
Gandalf Parker 2
Someone else 3..

At the same time we , at the same forum, bid on other nations, so it will be quite a log fast growing bidding thread for the game.



Also it wold be nice to have a game which allows you to play any nation regardless of other people choices. For example - you choose your nation, Hinnom, for example, and there can be several Hinnoms. The idea is good to motivate more players to join megagame.

This idea of Civil War is cool, btw. I'd join.

The idea of allowing to play different people the same nations would help CBM author and parents to balance the game better.

But bidding itself makes game more balanced automatically. After hard bargaining for Hinnom and Niefelheim, the nation will be inflated to the level of less popular nations in game.
I think the idea is really cool, and also will help to find players for megagames - which is not that easy now. The question is only in pretender points design control.

[Squirrelloid]

If the game host was not playing (eg, Pasha in the RAND games he runs), he could review all the pretender files to verify. Of course, this requires someone want to host the game and *not* play.

---------

Bidding would work best in a non-forum environment if its going to be active, such as IRC or other chat client. Its too tedious to bid via forum post if you need to potentially do a lot of it.

Perhaps first everyone submits a blind bid set to the organizer, who then announces the bid set after all bids are received, and then a regular auction occurs in which players can increase their bids if they like.

Some rule for what happens if you win multiple nations should be instituted - I can see choosing the nation of your choice, or being obligated to take the nation you won on which you bid the most points.

[chrispedersen]

Well, I like an app to do the bidding, and or a way to verify.
But I would be willing to not play and verify pretenders.

Actually, verifying wouldn't be tooooo difficult. catgod already has a line that says points remaining. So essentially we're looking for a version of catgod that can do one thing for us..

c:\catgod early_arco_pretender 26

which basically would output a true or false on whether the arco pretender submitted had 26 points remaining.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive worked with ProcMail in managing the latest game of "Newbies and Vets"
It should be fairly easy to setup an email box on my server then process emails. Such as
YARPbids@dom3minions.com

Incoming emails would be processed for
From:
Subject:
Body:

Something like
To: YARPbids@dom3minions.com
From: gandalf@example.net
Subject: game=YARP
Hinnom=30
Man=50
Ctis=10

This could be processed into just a display page with all email addresses being displayed underneath the nations.
YARP
................................Hinnom......Man... .Ctis
gandalf@example.net....30.........50........10

Any email with a new game= would create a new page.
A webform would be simpler but awfully anonymous which could run into problems. I could do either method and it would quickly lead to a very impressive bidding page.
Thats because my efforts are dirty and ugly and quickly make someone else do a much better version. :)

As to the catgod thing it would be very simple (at least on linux) to catgod all the files in the game directory and pipe it thru a grep (grab) for just the points left line so thats all that would display from each file.

[chrispedersen]

Wow.. I'm interested...
Gandalf wouldn't awk be a better choice?

[Gandalf Parker]

Wow.. I'm interested...
Gandalf wouldn't awk be a better choice?
crossposted over to the Webpages, procmail, and auctions! Oh my! thread.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44786

[Belac]

Dominions Mafia:

16/20 players, 4 teams of 4/5. But 1 player on each team is secretly a mole, and on Team Mole. The 3/4 real team members win if their team is victorious; the mole wins if Team Mole is. Each player knows who is on their team, and the moles know who the other moles are, but the lineups of the other teams are secret.

[Gandalf Parker]

I just had an interesting game idea that I want to get down before I forget it. Ballbarians wonderful God Editor program is meant to facilitate creating better AI gods for use by the SemiRand program. It does not create a mod, but instead uses commands which can be added to any map in order to create a scenario type game. It allows the players to build a pretender using ANY units in the game, set any scales, grant equipment, and add up all of the points involved.

OK here is the game idea. Allow players to create any god they want up to specific points. Not restricted to the usual god list. Not restricted by the usual wake, asleep, imprisoned method of extra points. Use a total warfare style map. Maybe one of the Arena style maps, or the Full World map. Or maybe just do it one-on-one with a really tiny dueling map or the Battle Sim map. They can send it to the person running the game who can use the GodEditor to check the points. Turn off cheat detection, add them to the map, start the game.

Its not really my type of game but you have to admit, it would be different. :)
And might generate some good god-builds for inclusion in SemiRand.

[sansanjuan]

Since the thread is unearthed....

Solitare PBEM challanges

players are given same nation/pretender/map
who can beat the ai in the fewest turns

maps and start locations are identical but choose your own nation /pretender

blitz. As above but who can win in the shortest time ( not turns)

ssj

[Gandalf Parker]

Since the thread is unearthed....
Solitare PBEM challanges
players are given same nation/pretender/map
who can beat the ai in the fewest turns
maps and start locations are identical but choose your own nation /pretender
blitz. As above but who can win in the shortest time ( not turns)
ssj
With abit of work the challenge map can also remove many of the randoms of the game. It can preset (or remove) populations, poptypes, recruitables, magic sites. And it can preset all of the factors of the AI. Which nation, which pretender, which scales, etc. That would make it more fair.

There is also a variation of having the same nations battle each other. Such as Ulm vs Ulm, or 12 nations in a game which are totally the same.

Im not sure why it would be pbem, especially with a blitz, but I guess that would work depending on the server.

[sansanjuan]

Since the thread is unearthed....
Solitare PBEM challanges
players are given same nation/pretender/map
who can beat the ai in the fewest turns
maps and start locations are identical but choose your own nation /pretender
blitz. As above but who can win in the shortest time ( not turns)
ssj
With abit of work the challenge map can also remove many of the randoms of the game. It can preset (or remove) populations, poptypes, recruitables, magic sites. And it can preset all of the factors of the AI. Which nation, which pretender, which scales, etc. That would make it more fair.

There is also a variation of having the same nations battle each other. Such as Ulm vs Ulm, or 12 nations in a game which are totally the same.

Im not sure why it would be pbem, especially with a blitz, but I guess that would work depending on the server.

G,
PBEM would be to keep people from redoing turns (though that could be another variant).

I agree the SP blitz game would be best done on a server like yours for "unambiguous" timing of each games.

-ssj

[Gandalf Parker]

PBEM would be to keep people from redoing turns (though that could be another variant).
That makes sense.
Would also be easier to manage some of the other variants. Such as "Musical Chairs" (last turn in is always deleted and goes stale).

[Gandalf Parker]

Some updates and held-aside ideas that I need to give up now:

A) The Tower Maps have been used now in half a dozen games, and they seem to be well received. Or as well as any map. It does make for a different game. Harder to gang up in early game, less micromanagement, the F1 menu is much easier to use. Its not very "realistic" but its good for some games.

B) There are now a number of different DungeonMaster mods available. My initial one (Watcher), then other variations such as DungeonMaster or the Debug mod or Pantokrator. If you havent seen the discussions this allows for a game where one person oversees and manages aspects of the game for the whole time that its running. It allows for in-game reward/punishment systems, NPC nations, and adding new "random" events to the game.

B.1) A variant is to use the DM mod to wish immediately for an arena. The game is designed as "All Pretenders to the Arena Please". Its a one-turn game but an interesting idea that shouldnt be forgotten.

C) A new feature has been added (by scripting) where a host can close off the option for players to turn themselves AI. This is handy for enforcing a rule such as "no going AI for the first 50 turns" and forcing the search for substitutes. It is also possible to pre-check gods for mod-compatability.

D) Remember that the mod switch is fixed. It is much easier to include all mods in games. That includes modded nations. Some of those are prime for use as AI opponents. Designing an AI into a game can make it much more viable as an opponent than the vanilla AIs you remember tutoring against. The scenario options are still broken for download/solo play but very workable for server games. Lets put the hated banned nations back into a few games as the goal of the game. How about resurrect my Dom2 scenario. LA Ermor in the corner almost entirely surrounded by water. Surrounded and allied closely with Rlyeh and Atlantis. "D.A.R.E. the Deadly Atlantis Ryleh Ermor alliance." Or the Pangaean map with all 3 Pangaeas and 2 Oceanias AIs allied. "The nations of Man have proven harmful to the world. Now you shall face Global Swarming!". Or two of Amos mods using the christian flavored one with angels and the satanic one with demons. Put them at top and bottom of a map, boosted AIs with settings to make them move toward each other. Then put all the players in between. "pagans, heathens, and idols. Give up your petty grievances and unite to survive"

E) There are also some very fun mods that add more-more-more to the game. More pretenders, more heroes, more magic sites, more summons, more spells, more nations. How about a really large game with as many of those as you can dig up (someone better at using the mod merging tool maybe)

F) The ultimate ally game. Let each player have 2 or 3 nations at once in order to closely ally them (and lets pretend it doesnt happen sometimes anyway). For more fun, use SingleAgeComplete mod so that they can even play with all 3 versions of the same nation if they want to.

G) Having the Independents operate with AI is a fun variant. Set it so that the white flags are able to choose a pretender, build, expand, move armies around. Ouch.

H) One of Kristoffers mods to limit magic to level 4 or level 6

I) A game with NO GODS. Just armies and magic. Or maybe even just armies.

J) Variation on the "All Gods to the Arena" game but doesnt need the DM mod. A game where the map is designed so that everyone can meet instantly. Pretender and starting armies deciding the game right away. Or maybe giving a turn or two to modify the starting army slight but agreeing on when everyone will meet in the middle.

[rdonj]

E would really be a lot better once the patch comes out. Just to make sure you can squeeze in as many things as possible. And I think the pretender arena matches would be much more fun if you had, say, all spells up to level 6 set to level 0, to add a bit more variety. You could maybe add in a few turns to build some small amount of gear... or not.

Amos' demon nation would make for a pretty fierce boosted AI. It'd be better as a boosted human due to practically all magic being blood, but that's one of the best existing nations for the AI to play.

[Gandalf Parker]

Note from another forum which should be put here for posterity in case it hasnt been mentioned here already....


Epic games with less micromanagement have been accomplished by things like using a small map but turning the settings for gold, resources, research, and HoF way down; events up, indepts to max (and AI turned on). I cant think of what else. It was different but I didnt see people rushing to do it again :)



And one from a completely different sites IRC chat:

In the Shrapnel forums the creative writings are AAR (here usually called LP's). There was a game JUST for AARs. The goal wasnt to just win (using unthematic strategies) but to PLAY the nation. Each nation was required to writeup their turns

It was the last time I remember one of the Dom3 games bringing Kristoffer out of the woodwork to play in an MP with us

[Korwin]

Interesting thread, is there a mod for playing the same Nation more than once?
Liked that idea.

[NTJedi]

It was the last time I remember one of the Dom3 games bringing Kristoffer out of the woodwork to play in an MP with us


The developers sometimes playing multiplayer would definitely spike interest in the current game. I recall a game hosted by Kristoffer where a stronger AI was in the center and started with 3 manticores. Unfortunately manticores can be swarmed and killed easily. I think immobile high level mages would have been much more effective.

[ExHeretic]

I have been thinking about 8 player map little bit like the old teather of war map. There would be 4 spheres with something like 20 provinces each. Two players start from the same sphere. Then there would be two spheres with something like 30 to 40 provinces. The 4 winners from small spheres would move to the bigger ones. And you probably guessed it already but there would be one big sphere where the remaining two would go for it in the end. Player would not be allowed to move to the next sphere before his opponent is defeated. Maybe there should be two connection points between the spheres. This kind of map would make bit different game where fast kills would be rewarded. It might benefit the bless nations more but i guess it would not be too big problem. It would be like rush game where turtling is only going to kill you. There would also be no dogpiles involved. Strenght of the independents should probably be set to 9. It would be possible to make 16 player version too.

I would be really interested in game like this :D

Dominions total war :D

[Gandalf Parker]

OK just putting this here for general scrutiny since this seems the place for it to be archived.

A conversation about a "Tourist" game developed. Having two games running. One is the game with the players. The other is where copies of the game files are placed by the post.sh each turn. In the second game anyone would be allowed to pick up and view the files just to watch the game in progress. The two-address system would insure that the tourists could not accidentally change anything since those files would not be the ones used for turn hosting.

BUT an interesting side conversation developed. Creating a maximumly huge game on a maximumly huge map (if I remember right that is 95 nations on a 1495 province map which would basically be only a "medium" game). NO nation would actually be owned by anyone. Possibly a large portion of the nations would start out AI but the general concept is that the players would be locked out of going AI. Anyone could pick up any nation at any time and do turns.

The interest was that some people felt they would love to do the early expanding. Others were interested in mid game, and others in late game with research accomplished. Some wanted to do a turn or two of a majorly expanded nation while others wanted to try and save one that is dying. Everyone seemed interested in the idea of doing a few turns, getting bored, dropping it, and coming back later to do it or maybe a different nation. No quilt or pressure if you did or didnt do a turn but a game worth watching and doing something once in awhile.

Not sure what to call it. Smorgasbord?
Anyway, it would be different. If anyone is willing to run such a game I am willing to host it.

[Korwin]

What happens when 2 players want the same nation for the same turn?

[ExHeretic]

There would need to be somekind of list that would work with "first comer first served" mentality. I would be more worried about those turns/nations that nobody wants to play. Stalling is not an option.

Those tourist games would be great. Think about championship tournament where players would go 1on1 and the whole community would watch. Think about players like Baalz, Wraithlord or mr. Parker going at each other with full speed :D

All the masters at action... Now that would be something to see :)
And to speculate in the forums ;)

[Gandalf Parker]

It wouldnt be a serious game. At least Im not picturing it as one.

And if its all-nations then that is 68? different nations in the game. That can go up to 95 if we included some large package of modded nations. I dont think anyone is expecting all of those to be active all the time. And as I said, only some people are really interested in early game. And those might fallout by mid game as "too much micromanagement".

Im also thinking it would be best to use the SemiRand god builds just so there is no bickering about what someone did for a build. That way if anyone feels that a god build was particularly unuseful for that nation we can just suggest that they submit a better one to be included in SemiRand.

One big problem I see is that we might want it to be two games to allow the "just curious" to pick up files WITHOUT a chance of changing them. At least until the choices in the Options menu get fixed for that, and maybe the 'e' key disappears. Or maybe only accept turn files sent by email for the hosting. That would block accidental changes and insure that only the more serious people are doing turns.

[Gandalf Parker]

OK another result of conversation.

A) Team games are great. No worries about back stabbing. Long involved battle plans. Sharing resources. A loss to one of the team isnt such a downer if balanced by a gain.

B) Team games suck! Micromanagement. Lack of coordination. No real feel of winning. Some people cant team, all they do is play solo with a permanent NAP.

Well lots more was said on both sides. But one of MY points was that I often see teams not being selected to make best use of pros/cons to fill in gaps and boost abilities.

Game concept: One Man Teams
Someone else might have done this in the past and I apologize for not remembering if you did. But the thought is for 1-player teams. Each player selects 3 nations that they play. Using the SingleAgeComplete mod might allow more variety. This might give people an idea of how to merge nations abilities and coordinate for future team games. It might also be fun to have a large map with start locations set. Then give 3 start points close together to each player and allow them to place their nations as they see fit.

[Awund]

Game concept: One Man Teams
Someone else might have done this in the past and I apologize for not remembering if you did. But the thought is for 1-player teams. Each player selects 3 nations that they play. Using the SingleAgeComplete mod might allow more variety. This might give people an idea of how to merge nations abilities and coordinate for future team games. It might also be fun to have a large map with start locations set. Then give 3 start points close together to each player and allow them to place their nations as they see fit.
That sounds like a very interesting concept. I'd surely be interested in joining such a game if someone started one.

[Gandalf Parker]

For those who loved the "no score graphs" games because it boosted the need to use scouts and information spells, the newly fixed "no nation info" should be checked out. At first glance it seems to make knowing anything about another nations pretender also require scouting it out.

[JonBrave]

I realize I come to this thread a couple days late.

This "Tourist" thing Gandalf & others mention: it sounds like a great idea for someone like me. Never done a MP; couldn't give the time commitment. But if you could somehow drop in & out of a MP, and play some turns without having to worry about mucking someone's pet nation up, that would be great!

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats the idea.
But UNTIL someone tries one, keep your eye out in the MP game threads for requests to permmanently sub. Or someone saying they are planning to go AI. Players will greatly appreciate if you step in. Sometimes people drop out with a dozen provinces and sizable armies but they know that the other guys are going to stomp them. Just stepping in and being more active than the AI would be appreciated. And you will get to look at advanced spells, equipment, and see some fantastic battles (as you go under). Provide them an honorable death. No guilt, and a ready made excuse for getting totally stomped on. But it can be fun when you dont have to blame yourself for it. And who knows, you might even come up with a surprise.

[Finalgenesis]

On an unrelated note, Abysia in the MP game "Kindanoob" is about to go under and we're about to turn them AI on the upcoming turn.

We wouldn't mind offering 1st hand VIP seating to Abysia's fall :o.

[Gandalf Parker]

A "Musical Chairs" game has finally been tried (on another forum) and is doing well. Thisis where the last person to upload their turn is automatically set "stale". One thing of note is that the last person to turn intheir turn usually gets to be the first person on the next turn so its rarely the same person multiple times in a row.

Also Im not sure if this has been mentioned but here is an interesting thread about creating a Dom3 game based on the "Survivor" TV shows.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=730681

[JonBrave]

Also Im not sure if this has been mentioned but here is an interesting thread about creating a Dom3 game based on the "Survivor" TV shows.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=730681

I thought you meant the (excellent, original) Survivors TV series... :p

[Doo]

Myself and a couple of others have been playing a human vs AI's game. Some things about this style of game has already been learned. From this a set of challenge .map files could be made where teams of humans beat the AI as fast as they can. Or if they can...

The ease of this is that Gandalf could easily host the games as he does these (http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/vsAI_chk.cgi) games and the server could log the finish date and players names for the high score table.

Also, as sansanjuan said here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=742550&postcount=76), it could be done for SP games. Again, hosted by GP so to have the high score table. I assume that GP's server's games are hack proof?

Sorry if asking too much of ya GP but you did suggest I post this here ;)

[Gandalf Parker]

Not a problem. Thats what the Dom3Minions server is for. It is specifically NOT menu driven in order to try and get people to challenge me with "can we get this" ideas.

Im just amazed I didnt think of it. Ive seen discussions about creating "ladder" games where everyone plays the same map on the same settings. Usually in a 1-on-1 duel so that the "top dog" could be rated. And I have of course been in every discussion about AIs and scenario games. But I hadnt considered the idea of teams playing the same scenario against each other but separately.

Im also thinking that it shouldnt be too hard to create a webpage for the game which splits the screen (frames?) and shows both of the games score files next to each other at the same time.

[Soyweiser]

Not a problem. Thats what the Dom3Minions server is for. It is specifically NOT menu driven in order to try and get people to challenge me with "can we get this" ideas.

I have a challenge. Create a menu driven system. :D :angel

But seriously, "try to win" scenario's sound fun.

[Gandalf Parker]

Not a problem. Thats what the Dom3Minions server is for. It is specifically NOT menu driven in order to try and get people to challenge me with "can we get this" ideas.

I have a challenge. Create a menu driven system. :D :angel

You mean something like this?
http://www.dom3minions.com/lab/MakeGame.htm
You can search and see that was one of the original ones. Even before LLamaServer existed. In fact it was one of the example scripts given to LLama when he first started the conversation about a server.

But seriously, "try to win" scenario's sound fun.
Something with a goal would probably be best.
I did a Dom2 scenario called "D.A.R.E (Deadly Atlantis Rlyeh Emor alliance)" which challenged all the players to ally and take out a heavily fortified and boosted AI alliance. Ermor was down in a corner on a large island surrounded by water. Atlantis and Rlyeh had the watery moat ocean surrounding it. They were all allied not to attack each other. And they had multiple castles, extra magic sites, extra starting armies. Not to mention designed pretenders and logical scales. The 3 of them owned that entire corner of the map. The 3 pretenders were "Siblings who have decided to stack the search for a new Pantokrator by teaming up until everyone else was gone."

Such scenarios are no longer downloadable/playable in Dom3 the way they were in Dom2. But they can be run on a server. And it would be easy to "see" the goal being reached. Such as taking the main castle of Ermor in the game log.

[Gandalf Parker]

Scenario games with Dom3 can only be setup effectively as server games. But we can use more of those.

Maybe this will help BROWSE THE NATIONS MODS
http://www.llamaserver.net/globu/Dom3_Mods_Catalog/Dom3_Mods_Catalog_Nations_EA.html

It doesnt have everything. Some of my favorites (and of course all of mine) do not seem to be there. But it is a fantastic community service. Looking thru some of those might make a scenario storyline come to mind

[rdonj]

Well, which ones are your favorites? As far as I can recall, globu had put up pretty near every single nation mod made for dominions 3. As well as pretty much every miscellaneous mod I can think of. In fact there's a few up there that are so old, I didn't know they existed until he posted them. Did you check the miscellaneous section? There are some mods in there that could maybe be what you're thinking of.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well I have always loved the AMOS mods which work particularly well with this thread. They just seem to scream scenario. As if they were made NOT to be used by the player but used by the game against the player.

[Gandalf Parker]

OK I found a very interesting post on one of the other forums. Its not a game variant but more of a server variant.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=1466188&sid=b6f41c5c71c1b0d219ac020263fdc1c0
It explains how to do a PbEM style Dom3 game on anyones server, but using a file share site such as DropBox.

Like I said, not a game variant but it seemed worth posting here.

[Soyweiser]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=1466188&sid=b6f41c5c71c1b0d219ac020263fdc1c0


Unrelated but browsing that thread:


4. Pitfalls

Jews might sue you for using their savegames or stealing their customers or some other jew ****.
...
Link to a SS march movie


WTF. Stay classy rpgcodex.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes it looked like a bit of a troll slipped in there to sell the idea of a pay-to-play Dominions server

[wonderloss]

Pretty typical RPGCodex. A mixture of intelligent RPG discussion (though that has arguably declined over the years) combined with wannabe 4chan antics.

[Gandalf Parker]

I was trying to come up with some mod ideas and I remembered this game variant.

Some people like gem-creation items and such. But others feel that they set the game on an automatic path if someone focuses on only that. So how about a game which uses a mod called CBM4now.dm

At the beginning of the game it would be a copy of the latest CBM mod.

And then at some set point in the game (turn 50) everyone would copy chopped version of CBM into CBM4now.dm

That way the many abusive items that CBM pulls from the game could be available but only late enough in the game to be minorly fun but not a game killer.

[krpeters]

Why not just increase the cost of the items that are causing the trouble?

Suppose clams required W5N3 instead of W3N1...