ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!

[Valerius]

Summary

The intent of this game is to emphasize the mid-game (to me the most fun part of the game), discourage turtling and have national mages and troops be relevant throughout the game.

This is accomplished by limiting magic to level 6, having all spells (except for some remote attack/movement spells) be set to level 0, having all sites already discovered (and double gem income in your cap), remove all global spells (even those below level 7), no indies (including magic sites that allow recruitment), no mercenary recruitment, no diplomacy.

If you think you might be interested please download the attached mod and two versions of the map (one with preset starts for six nations) and take a look.


Game settings

Era: Middle
Number of players: 5
HoF: 15
Gold: 125%
Resources: 125%
Mods: modified version of CBM 1.6 (see attachment)
Starting provinces: six preset start locations of 8 provinces each (see fort section below)
No indies, no mercenary recuitment
Map: modified version of a section of Cradle (see attachment)
Hosting: 24 hour interval until turn 10, 48 hours until turn 30, 72 hours after that. The reason for this is that I expect turns to become complex very rapidly. Turn 10 in this game should be similar to turn 30 in a normal game in terms of the armies being fielded.
Other rules: Attack orders can be given on turn 3, no sooner.
All other settings default


How it works

1) Choose a nation (see list of banned nations below)
2) Once all six positions are taken rdonj will message everyone their randomly selected starting locations.
3) You will then let him know where you would like your capitol and up to two additional forts located.
4) Play!

Note: Thanks very much to rdonj for his help. His assistance means that we won't know who our neighbors are before the game begins nor will we know everyone's fort locations.


Details

Banned nations - All water nations, Ashdod & Jotunheim (giant nations in a no-SC game), Ermor & Pan (free spawn issues in a game without battlefield clearing magic).

Map - This is a modified version of a section of Cradle. I've tried to balance the terrain types. Most importantly, each nation only has two neighbors (note that the position in the middle of the map does not share a border with the two nations in the northwest corner). The only indie provinces are four water provinces.

NAP to begin game - You cannot issue attack orders until turn 3. I'd like to see some good fights - not just a first turn attack from a flying pretender on an opponent's cap.

Diplomacy - There is none. No trading, no NAPs, nothing. General talk in the game thread about how you are destined to rule the world is welcome but don't reveal any game information such as "nation x has their cap in province y" or "nation x has their army in province y".

Indies - This is a no indies game. I've modded indie units to have a resource cost of 800. But it's quite possible I missed something. If so, we're on the honor system - just don't recruit it. IMPORTANT - no recruiting mercenaries either!

Magic - Magic is limited to level 6. So there won't be a traditional endgame with army destroying spells and SC's dominating the battlefield. Remote attack and movement spells have been put at level 3 for the same reason as the NAP that begins the game. Researching these spells is actually the only reason to have mages research at all - since all other spells are set to level 0. There are no global spells at all - again, to remove any incentive to turtle. If you've got gems use them to summon/forge. If you want more gems or gold, conquer someone.

Forts - Each nation will be limited to 3 forts. With only 8 provinces per nation this means almost 40% of provinces will have forts. The aim is to prevent raiding from being too powerful but also to keep the game moving and not have every province castled. Income and resources will be set at 125% to offset the lower province count. At the start of the game you must select at least a capitol province. You can select up to two other provinces to have forts. The forts will be whatever your nation builds in that type of terrain. The forts will also have labs and temples. If you leave one or two fort slots free you can later build a fort in whatever province you choose, at any stage of the game. You may want to leave fort slots free in order to see if you have particularly valuable provinces you want to protect or to give yourself strategic options later in the game. The cost is one less recruitment center at the game's start and of course you'll have to pay for the fort (and lab/temple) yourself. Note that if a nation has a free fort slot and that nation is eliminated the fort slot is lost (i.e. does not go to the conquering nation). IMPORTANT - fort provinces, once selected, can never be changed and never torn down! If you receive a fort through a random event you must tear it down as quickly as possible (but if you have a fort slot free you can choose to use it on the free fort you received).

Sites - All sites are set to level 0. There is no need for site searching! Mages are for forging, summoning, and fighting. Sites that allow recruitment of units have been removed (this is *really* a no indies game). Sites that cause potentially deleterious effects have been removed (it would suck to preselect a fort province and find it was causing disease, incinerating your undead, etc.). Sites that provide bonuses to schools of magic have been removed (no ultimate gateway ftw). Your capitol province will have double the amount of gems of each type as normal in order to emphasize your nation's magic. However with all sites discovered you may well end up with a strong gem income in a type of magic your nation doesn't have - keep that in mind when designing your pretender.

Blood magic - If you want to play a blood nation take a close look at the mod first. Blood magic was nerfed heavily - all summons more expensive, many spells removed, etc.

Misc. changes - Naiad warriors nerfed; hereos blade, soul contract and lifelong protection not forgeable; Machakan spider forms have upkeep cost; Pythium's cap gem income 10 gems, like other nations.

Balance - Obviously I have some concerns with balance given my list of banned nations, but I can't guarantee anything given all the changes here. It would be nice if some usually weak nations did well (and I think they might) but I also suspect astral nations will be very strong. While they lose some high level spells the battlefield also becomes safer for communions with rain of stones out of the picture (but earthquake is still available). If the game turns out to be fun but with balance issues I'll make changes for the second game. One possibility is having some level 7+ spells made available (perhaps with reduced effectiveness) or even removing some spells currently available. I'd also consider adding more thug options if there's an interest in that - but no SCs.


List of Players

Agartha - NooBliss
Bandar Log - Squirrelloid
Caelum - LoloMo
Eriu - Valerius
Mictlan - LDiCesare


PROPOSED SETTINGS FOR SECOND GAME

Number of players: 6-8
Map: looking for a map that averages 12 provinces/player (no water nations)
HoF: 15
Gold: 100%
Resources: 100%
Diplomacy: Yes
Independents: Normal indie settings; merc recruitment allowed; magic sites with mages/troops allowed
Starting provinces: 4
Forts: Normal fort rules.
Magic: Currently same as first game; max level 6 magic, all spells level 0 (with a few exceptions at level 3 and MoD banned), no globals. *Note: blood magic will be somewhat un-nerfed.
Sites: all sites level 0; 30%+ Conj./Blood and all Constr. sites banned
Banned nations - water nations, Ashdod, Jotunheim, Ermor & Pan

Special rules:

Misc. changes - Naiad warriors nerfed; soul contract and lifelong protection not forgeable; Machakan spider forms have upkeep cost; unique magic items (less powerful ones of course) assigned to Constr 2-4-6 so that random events still grant magic items.

[Rytek]

hmm, must resist joining another game. This looks really good. I would love to see some wind guided flaming longbows. I think mindhunt will be really nasty for non astral nations. with no chance of getting at least lizard shamans or crystal amazons the only protection would be summoning wraiths, having high astral on your pretender or just lots of decoys.

[Valerius]

hmm, must resist joining another game. This looks really good. I would love to see some wind guided flaming longbows.

Thanks! Hope you change your mind. :) FWIW, I think this will play quickly - I'll be kind of surprised if there's more than two nations in contention by turn 40 (and I wouldn't be surprised if it were over by then).

I think mindhunt will be really nasty for non astral nations. with no chance of getting at least lizard shamans or crystal amazons the only protection would be summoning wraiths, having high astral on your pretender or just lots of decoys.

The astral definitely concerns me. And Arco with its ability to heal its mind hunters will, I think, be real tough. If you're not a nation with S mages I think you either need it on your pretender or maybe summon spectres quickly. I hadn't really considered that getting decoys will be tough without indies to recruit. But it also occurs to me that unlike a normal game it could be worth empowering scouts or other stealthy troops to S1 and giving them a starshine skullcap. Expensive, but with the lower province count you'll only need a few to safeguard your armies as they travel and you may luck out with a strong S income so you can afford it.

BTW, in my test games I found my gem income was around 25-30 gems/turn (10 from the cap province).

[NooBliss]

Interesting. I'd try Agartha... but does 'no indies' include indie mages from random sites? That might be an overkill, really.

[Squirrelloid]

Ooh, Agartha actually sounds fun under these conditions, curse you Nooblis.

This is so wacky I simply have to play. I need to think about nation some more though, because this is weird.

[NooBliss]

(Evil blissful laughter)

[Squirrelloid]

Are there any limits on pretender design?

[LoloMo]

Very interesting! Caelum please!

[Squirrelloid]

I have decided - Bandar Log please!

[Valerius]

Welcome to the game everyone! I have to admit I was getting a little worried that my niche game was a little too niche... :)

Interesting. I'd try Agartha...

I have decided - Bandar Log please!

Agartha is the main nation I was thinking of when I mentioned weak nations possibly doing well under these settings. Though Bandar is also promising - nice summons and strong astral.

Very interesting! Caelum please!

On such a compact map Caelum's ability to fly should be even more useful than normal. Also note that with the level 6 magic cutoff I don't believe there are any summonable A mages available.

does 'no indies' include indie mages from random sites? That might be an overkill, really.

It does. I really wanted to emphasize national units. In a normal game I'm thrilled to find Adepts or Crystal Mages when playing Eriu but at the same time they become second to only my capitol mage recruitment in importance, changing the flavor of my nation.

So I think your pretender becomes even more important than normal in covering for the weaknesses in your national mages. Offhand I'd say an SC pretender with enough magic diversity to open up areas your mages lack would be a decent choice.

One more thing about astral. Some starting areas have areas have wasteland so you may want to also consider Hidden in Sand as a way to get S magic if you start in one of those territories.

Are there any limits on pretender design?

No limits and with almost no research to be done I guess the main question will be whether people go with Drain 2 or Drain 3. :)

[NooBliss]

Welcome to the game everyone! I have to admit I was getting a little worried that my niche game was a little too niche... :)

Well its like... a different game alltogether. :)

[LDiCesare]

I'm interested. I must check the mod first before picking a nation, though.

[Valerius]

Well its like... a different game alltogether. :)

That's what I'm hoping for. :) The core of it is the changes to magic and site frequency. This lets the game jump right to mid-game action - but not proceed past it to a traditional end-game. Most of the other things could be changed easily if they prove unpopular and some were dictated by the small size of the map (which I thought was a good idea both so that if the game settings don't prove to be fun it won't take too long to finish and because I didn't think this would be the most popular game ever posted ;)).

Also, I just want to make sure everyone understands that if you conquer an opponent's fort you don't (in fact, can't) tear it down. In a normal game you almost inevitably have more forts than you can afford to recruit mages from. That won't be the case here (unless you take *really* bad scales). If you begin a war evenly matched with your opponent at 3 forts each and they take one of your forts you'll be at a significant disadvantage since they will now have 4 recruitment centers to your 2 - regardless of how much gold they have available.


I'm interested. I must check the mod first before picking a nation, though.

Welcome aboard, I'll reserve a spot for you. Only one to go!

[Valerius]

If you begin a war evenly matched with your opponent at 3 forts each and they take one of your forts you'll be at a significant disadvantage since they will now have 4 recruitment centers to your 2 - regardless of how much gold they have available.

Correction to above statement: should be "regardless of how much gold you have available."

[LDiCesare]

I used the mod and the map (not the start versions one) and got an Academy of the Crescent Moon in one province, allowing to recruit some wizards. You might want to check it and remove it, as it's pretty strong (wizard of the crescent moon W2S1+100%WSAD for 160 gold).
movement spells have been put at level 3: Teleport's level 0. Gateway, Faerie Trod too.
Remote attack
Wolven winter is available too at level 0. Same for Raging hearts.
remove all global spells
Fata Morgana is available, and level 0 to boot.

Do you want to leave Mists of Deception in? I think it might be better modded out entirely due to potential abuse.

[Valerius]

Thanks for the testing! And if anyone else notices problems when running test games please let me know.

I used the mod and the map (not the start versions one) and got an Academy of the Crescent Moon in one province, allowing to recruit some wizards. You might want to check it and remove it, as it's pretty strong (wizard of the crescent moon W2S1+100%WSAD for 160 gold).
movement spells have been put at level 3: Teleport's level 0. Gateway, Faerie Trod too.
Remote attack
Wolven winter is available too at level 0. Same for Raging hearts.
remove all global spells
Fata Morgana is available, and level 0 to boot.

All of the above are errors. Well except for the movement ones maybe. I think at one point I wanted them to be at level 0 - doesn't matter, I should match the game description so all that you've mentioned will be fixed.

Do you want to leave Mists of Deception in? I think it might be better modded out entirely due to potential abuse.

I'm inclined to leave that in unless there's a problem I'm not aware of? Despite usually playing nations with air magic I don't know that I've ever used it. I know there was an issue with the caster being able to leave the field of battle and the spell continuing but that was patched. I used level 6 as a dividing line for magic because above that level you start seeing a lot of battlefield-wide spells. It isn't a perfect dividing line, though. Things that may make sense at a certain level in the context of a normal CBM game may not work as well with these settings. If there's a second game I think there will definitely have to be some work on balance but I'm hesitant to start selectively removing spells or (even worse) changing the game conditions from what people have signed up for.

[NooBliss]

I dont think leaving Mists of Deception while removing other battlefield-wise effects is a good move.

[Squirrelloid]

there are plenty of battlefield wide spells by level 6. You just don't have most of the really uber ones. That said, Mists of Deception is pretty uber. I'd support removing it.

[Valerius]

I'm not attached to it myself and have no objections to removing it; my concerns were just about switching settings after people sign up.

LoloMo, you've got the strongest air nation in the game. Any objections to removing MoD? If not, then it's unanimous and MoD is gone.

[LDiCesare]

I will pick Mictlan if it's available. Otherwise, Eriu.

[LoloMo]

No objections to removing MoD. But I may change my nation pick. Any other changes that need to be discussed?

[Valerius]

I will pick Mictlan if it's available. Otherwise, Eriu.

Mictlan is available. Eriu I had already taken for myself. :)

No objections to removing MoD. But I may change my nation pick. Any other changes that need to be discussed?

Thanks for being flexible. And that's a good point about discussing other changes now. Anything else that people feel will be a problem?

[Valerius]

Looking through the available spells there's three that stand out as possible problems.

Earthquake - This one I had thought about beforehand and decided to keep in. With rain of stones out of the picture I thought it was important there be one spell that could disrupt communions. It has high casting requirements and is available to anyone by summoning troll kings and giving them earth boots.

Darkness - Darkness is just a tough spell to deal with but that's the case even with high level magic available since solar brilliance has some definite drawbacks.

Iron Bane - This was a tough call and of the three here is the one I'm most inclined to remove. The troop buffs that increase natural protection and have a large AOE start at level 7. It will be real difficult to give your troops natural protection using the spells available. I had also considered giving spells like Iron Warriors/Protection an AOE of 2-3 to help this situation (though N is in better shape since Wooden Warriors has an AOE of 5).

[Valerius]

Also, I'm going to hold off for a bit on posting a fixed mod in case we find any more bugs or decide there are other problematic spells. Looking over the spells just now I realized Sea of Ice was castable. Not that it would be of much use on this map, but still...

[LoloMo]

I vote to ban all 3 and communions too :D Or make communions cost gems and make communion stones cost more.

[Valerius]

Hey, if we can get a consensus that's fine by me. ;) Actually, I like the idea of communions costing gems. If there were no earthquake, communions would be pretty safe but they'd be expensive - you'd have to limit large communions to when they were really needed.

[NooBliss]

Sigh.

These three spells are amongst the best things coming for Agartha. :(

[Valerius]

I don't think we're really going to eliminate them. I think LoloMo was (partly) joking. I think it's worth considering if there's a second game and balance changes are made but unless we have the type of agreement we had for MoD we'll leave them in for now.

On another note, I'd really like to get a sixth player but if there's no interest by the weekend I'll either edit the current map to fit 5 players or come up with a different map so we can move forward.

[Squirrelloid]

Of those three, darkness is the only one i see as a potential problem.

Ironbane: still requires a strong blow to actually destroy the armor, which means until then you get protection (I like destruction more, even if you have to cast it more frequently). And its a counter to E9 blesses, so deserves to stay for that if nothing else. Note Wooden Warriors isn't all battlefield, but its large AoE natural protection boost.

Earthquake: This spell's performance is so lackluster i'm not even sure it qualifies as real communion disruption.

Darkness is pretty awesome, but it has a counter, and requires a heavy undead or demon strategy to really shine. And demons are probably painfull expensive since you jacked up the cost of all the blood spells. So, definitely good, I'm not convinced its better than MoD with the new blood costs.

[Valerius]

Earthquake: This spell's performance is so lackluster i'm not even sure it qualifies as real communion disruption.

True enough; I've used it a fair amount as Vanheim and always been underwhelmed by the results. In addition to low damage per casting, one problem I had was my later casters getting killed (despite my attempts to protect them and not having any fatigue yet) by the first casting(s). If you had high HP casters like, say, Agartha I think you'd have much better results stringing together the 3 castings you need to really have an impact.

Of those three, darkness is the only one i see as a potential problem.

Darkness is pretty awesome, but it has a counter, and requires a heavy undead or demon strategy to really shine.

And Agartha. That nation is starting to look OP! :) But I'm not sure what you mean by having a counter? I thought the choices were Solar Brilliance or the Ark (neither of which are available)?

Also, if we don't find another player I've got an easy map fix: I'll combine the two northwestern starts into one and eliminate the water province in the northwest corner (since it will now be undisputed).

[rdonj]

Why not just make solar brilliance castable instead of darkness uncastable?

[LDiCesare]

I have no issues with the remaining spells, earthquake, darkness, etc. to remain in.

[Valerius]

I have some concerns that solar brilliance would be abusable. A strong astral nation could have one mage cast solar brilliance, another antimagic, give them some bodyguards, and blind a good percentage of an opponent's army. You may well sacrifice the mages/bodyguards - but it would be worth it.

Sure, you can do this in a normal game but there your opponent might have recourse to GoH, Chalice, even faery queens or a mage swap with a nation that has healers. Also, a normal game transitions to SCs, who aren't threatened by solar brilliance, whereas this game won't (though it's possible thugs will end up dominating the field of battle).

With the current nation lineup it's mainly Agartha that will really be able to take advantage of darkness. I'm more inclined to give them a chance to shine than to help out astral nations. :)

[LDiCesare]

I agree, I'd rather not see solar brilliance.

[LoloMo]

High Hitpoint, Ethereal, Stealthy, Life Draining Army of Umbrals from turn 1 with Darkness may be slightly OP. :p

[Valerius]

We will learn to fear Ashdod! Umm, I mean Agartha.

So the reactions to Darkness range from concern to ambivalence. NooBliss are you ok with removing Darkness but leaving Iron Bane and Earthquake in? You'll still have two spells you can use better than anyone. Other options that come to mind are increasing casting requirements/gems for the spell or having a fixed duration to it (I should be able to mod it to only last a given number of turns).

[Squirrelloid]

Darkness from turn 1? Do you know how hard a time of it Agartha has casting Darkness? Getting a D4 mage is hard!

For some reason I thought solar brilliance was in. Oh well, whatever, still not especially concerned.

[LoloMo]

Charm is out, but Hellbind heart is in, anyone have any concerns with this?

[Valerius]

Sure, Hellbind Heart is now out. After what I did to blood magic I don't mind hitting it with the nerf bat again. :evil:

BTW, I just finished fixing the tga file for five starts. If we can work out a compromise for Darkness I can make the fixes for the mod and upload everything so we can get started.

[Valerius]

About D mages. There's no mound fiends so I don't think there's a way to summon a mage guaranteed to have D2/D3. You'll probably get a spectre or lamia queen with D2, but getting D3 is more unlikely. Moving Darkness to D5 casting requirement would make it something for pretenders or really boosted D mages.

[LoloMo]

If I'm the only one with a concern about Darkness, I'll withdraw my objection. I can work with either Darkness as is, or with requirements boosted.

This is shaping up to be an exciting game. Pretender design will be a puzzle solving exercise! :D

[Valerius]

If I'm the only one with a concern about Darkness, I'll withdraw my objection. I can work with either Darkness as is, or with requirements boosted.

Thanks. I think I'll leave it as-is, since even though there were some concerns about it everyone said they could live with it. This way I can finalize the mod and get it out to everyone in the next few hours.

This is shaping up to be an exciting game.

I really hope so. In retrospect adding so many different things in (no indies, fort limitations, etc) might have been a mistake. The core concept I wanted to try out was the idea of eliminating research and site searching so we could jump right into the action. So, we're the beta testers. :)

Pretender design will be a puzzle solving exercise! :D

I'm finding this too. The e9nx bless I enjoy so much with my Sidhe Lords doesn't look like a good choice here. Sure, I'll have Constr. researched but will I have time to equip them and will they find any easy provinces to raid?

[Valerius]

I have updated the first post with a new zip containing the revised mod (same name as before - just overwrite the old one), and a new version of the map for five players (as before there are two map files, one with fixed starts for five sample nations).

List of fixes:

Teleport, Gateway, Cloud Trapeze and Faery Trod moved to level 3

Wolven Winter and Raging Hearts moved to level 3

Mists of Deception and Hellbind Heart removed

Fata Morgana and Sea of Ice globals removed

Academy of the Crescent Moon magic site removed

* A note about magic sites: I used Edi's invaluable database and sorted by sites with recruitable commanders in order to determine which sites to remove. This particular site didn't list any recruitables and I missed it. It's possible there's others like this so if you get one please don't recruit from it.

Also on the first post is a graphic indicating the letter identifying each starting location. rdonj will contact you to let you know where you are starting. Please let him know once you've decided on your starting fort location(s).

[LDiCesare]

I found another site that might be problematic:
- Brigand Lair. Allows recruitment of brigand. That and increases unrest, but nothing else. Not really fun. It's just bad with nothing good out of it, and the unrest increase on a fort can be an issue. I think it should be removed. Of course it's not as bad as disease spreading sites, but it adds nothing to the game.

[Valerius]

IIRC the brigands should have a resource cost of 800 and be unrecruitable. The increase in unrest is a hassle and I agree it's worth eliminating the site but I don't want to drive everyone crazy by continuing to release updates. We'll need to allow some time for everyone to choose their provinces and for rdonj to make the map fixes so let's wait and if more stuff comes up I'll release a final version of the mod right before I setup the game on the server.

[rdonj]

PMing people their locations now.

[LoloMo]

Do we specify our forts before the game starts? Are the gem sites random, or do we get to see where our gem sites are before we decide on where to put our forts?

[Valerius]

Yes, send rdonj at least your cap and up to two other fort provinces before the game starts. Sites are random so if you build all three forts at the game's beginning there may be high gem income provinces you can't protect. OTOH not having three recruitment centers at the beginning has disadvantages as well.

[Valerius]

Nice job getting in your start locations guys. We're just waiting on NooBliss, who may be away for the weekend since he last logged in Friday.

[NooBliss]

Yep, I was.

Just submitted my fort locations, so we can start.

[rdonj]

Map is 90% complete, but someone found out that one of their fort locations wasn't going to work out how they wanted, so I'm waiting on an update. Once I hear back from this person and get a chance to work on the map again it will be done fairly quickly.

Edit: By the way valerius, I notice in the OP that you've said all magic sites will be known, but I don't see any lines in either map file to that effect. Did you want me to do that?

[Valerius]

No need; I gave every site listed in Edi's db a level of either 0 (allowed sites) or 5 (banned sites) in my modified CBM so just owning the province will reveal whatever sites the game places there randomly. All the cap provinces have also had their starting gem incomes doubled. Thanks for checking, though.

[rdonj]

Oh! In the .dm. Right, silly of me not to have checked that :P

I haven't gotten that update yet, so unfortunately the map is going to have to wait until afternoon. Sorry about that. I can't say when I'm likely to have the time to finish. But I am pretty confident it will be out tomorrow.

[Valerius]

No problem; thanks for your help! We should have plenty of action soon enough. :)

[Valerius]

I just checked with rdonj and he's still waiting for a change in fort location from one player. Please send him this info ASAP so he can finalize the map and then we can get started.

[Valerius]

Good news; rdonj has received the final fort location info he was waiting for and can now finish work on the map. Thanks everyone for your patience (and especially rdonj for your efforts). Hopefully everyone's had plenty of time to test their builds and once I setup the game on the llamaserver we can get a quick start.

[Valerius]

We should also agree to a policy regarding stealth movement in the first two turns. Only two nations have recruitable stealth units (and only mine lives by them) but anyone can take a stealthy pretender or prophetize a scout. Whether a battle is fought or not, going for a dom kill is an attack. Also, if the stealthy unit is discovered it forces a battle, thereby violating the two turn NAP. So I think the best policy is to say only non-prophetized scouts can move into an opponent's territory the first two turns. If you all disagree we can change that policy but I think it's important everyone is operating under the same set of assumptions.

[rdonj]

For the record most of the work I have to do now is correcting some mistake I made earlier in the mapmapking process that has ulm being a mictlanese domain :P

[Valerius]

For the record most of the work I have to do now is correcting some mistake I made earlier in the mapmapking process that has ulm being a mictlanese domain :P

Typical Mictlan bless rush. :)


A couple of things people should be aware of when the game starts:

* Aside from your capitol none of your starting provinces will have PD. You'll want to put buying PD (or not) on your turn 1 checklist of things to do.

* Also, while I'm sure everyone will check their gem income please also check each of your magic sites. If I missed a site that allows a bonus or recruitable units we can just go on the honor system and not use those things but if I missed a site that has a deleterious effect we have more of a problem (especially if it's a fort province). Related to that, thanks for the testing LDiCesare. I think the only outstanding problem we have is the Brigand Lair. I'm going to leave that in since the unrest isn't too bad of a problem and I think it's less hassle for everyone not to have to download another version of the mod (but if there's a second game I'll remove useless sites like that).

[LoloMo]

Caelum agrees to no stealthy movements other than from a non preacher scout. But I think it would be easier to just ban all tresspassings whether stealthy or not. If I understand correctly, the NAP is no attack orders until turn 3, which means attacks will be witnessed on turn 4. We can do the same thing for stealthy units, you can script them to move into enemy lands on turn 3 and make everything simpler. Otherwise we may have to cover all the possible ways stealthy attacks can occur, including unrest causing scout with bane venom charm, idols, etc. To be complete, we should also include no remote spells can be cast until turn 3, which means their effect will be seen only on turn 4.

[Squirrelloid]

Agree with Lolomo.

[Valerius]

LoloMo, your understanding about when attacks can be launched is correct. And just so there is no confusion I will post in the thread on the turn attack orders can be issued.

I agree with your point regarding scouts with items (I hadn't considered that one).

I'm also fine with no movement at all (even for scouts) into enemy territory before turn 3 but when you say no remote spells do you mean no hostile spells or no scrying spells either?

[Valerius]

I think there's two choices:

1) No spells (including scrying) cast at or movement into enemy territory before turn 3

2) Only scrying spells cast or unequipped scouts enter enemy territory before turn 3.

How about we make things simple and just go with the first option (which is what I think you meant anyway)?

[LoloMo]

yup, let's just go with option 1 to make everything simple :)

[rdonj]

Okay, I've just finished running a test game and everything looks good. I've uploaded the map to the llamaserver now... it's called ValerianGlory. With any luck I haven't stupidly missed anything! Good luck to you all.

[Valerius]

Thanks rdonj!

The game is called ThreeFort and is ready to accept pretenders. Note that the only mod you need active when creating your pretender is the ThreeFort mod since it includes CBM.

[LDiCesare]

Do we need to download the map from somewhere? There's no download link on llamaserver.

[Valerius]

No need; you already have the tga file from the first post in the thread and only rdonj and now the llamaserver have the .map file. As players we don't actually need this file as long as we have the correct map graphic. The nice thing about this is that instructions can be placed in the .map file that are not known to the players.

[LDiCesare]

thanks for clarifying this, I thought we needed the .map. I'm happy to see we can start slaughtering, err converting, each other soon.

[Squirrelloid]

Whoops, I had totally forgotten this was no diplo! Please disregard any PMs you may or may not have received from me, and I'll desist from writing more.

Edit: Nothing was said that wasn't immediately obvious.

[Valerius]

Hmm, well I guess just flip a coin over who you attack. That way if you offered a NAP to someone they won't know if circumstances have changed. :)

I'll also mention again to check your PD since despite my reminder I forgot to do so before sending my turn. :rolleyes: Other than that, I don't see any problematic magic sites in my provinces so hopefully that's the case all around.

I hope everyone enjoys the game!

[LoloMo]

Just to clarify, we are not allowed to recruit any indy commander or troop at all, even if they are available for 800 resources each? Even barbarian commanders, indy scouts, or indy priests? This would mean the only recruitment possible will be from the 3 forts, and should be the type of units that can be recruited in the capital.

Also I'm assuming units resulting from lucky events are allowed?

[Valerius]

Yes, that is correct - no indie recruitment at all. All units should be national units from your three forts and any additional forts you conquer. Cap only troops should only be available in your cap. The other forts should only have the units available that your nation can normally recruit outside of your capitol. So, if you are seeing cap only units available outside your cap that's a bug and they shouldn't be recruited there.

I think units from lucky events are ok since they can be difficult to get rid of and you'll have to pay upkeep on them.

Important note, though: if you get a free fort from a lucky event it must be torn down!

Also, please remember: no mercenary recruitment.

[LDiCesare]

I just realised graphs are on. They should probably be off in this kind of game imo. Still, I don't think they're going to be very useful but they do give some info.
And the HoF too, of course...

[Valerius]

Hmm, yes the HoF does indicate a certain player is an imbecile... :doh:

[Valerius]

As mentioned in the game description, hosting has been changed to 48 hours. We may well not need the time since we've been moving at a good pace and armies are smaller than I thought they might be at this point, but still I did say it would switch at turn 10.

[Valerius]

There was a glitch with the llamaserver and the ThreeFort game has disappeared. As soon as he gets a chance llama will restore the files. I think all the turns were in so I expect it will host once it is restored.

[LoloMo]

Not sure if this is a bug or just a result of the game settings, but twice or thrice already, a lucky event saying I received a magic item did not show up in the lab. I was forging on the same turn, don't know if this affected it. I have not yet received any item from any lucky event. No big deal, just wanted to mention it in case some of you are experiencing the same thing.

[Squirrelloid]

I've long suspected not all of those events that gave items worked. But I, too, am usually forging when i get those messages, and unless something jumps out at me its hard to tell.

[Valerius]

I haven't gotten any items from lucky events this game. I have to admit I'm so used to receiving poor items that I sometimes forget to even check what I received when I get that message. You can imagine how surprised I was one game to discover a ring of wizardry in my treasury. :)

But I can't think of anything in the game settings that would cause this so perhaps it's like Squirrelloid says.

[NooBliss]

Just great. :(

Again, my pretender decides to cast some fatique-heavy crap instead of self-buff...

[Valerius]

I take it your pretender ignored the script? Usually buffs are followed by the AI. Any chance you had something like Breath of Winter scripted with non-cold immune units nearby so the AI ignored it?

[Squirrelloid]

Content deleted - sending a PM to nooblis instead.

[LDiCesare]

In case another game with similar settings is started someday, I'd suggest removing water provinces altogether, as one of the 5 nations has no access to it so didn't have the opporunity to go there, which put them at a slight disadvantage.

[Squirrelloid]

5 nations seems like an unfortunate number anyway, since one of them is just sitting there are letting another one kill a neighbor while the 4th and 5th work on mutual annihilation.

[Valerius]

I did have some concern about the water provinces and as I recall tried to give the starting position without access some additional terrain types to give them a slightly higher starting gem income. But it would have been better to give that position more than I did. I also figured the water provinces would end up being fought over more than has been the case.

I was hoping for 6 nations and I think it would have helped the situation but of course it's still possible that four nations would square off and two would end up at peace, building their strength.

In retrospect, I think I should have created a game to test the core idea of the changes to spells instead of changing so many things at once. I like the idea of a game where magic doesn't proceed past the mid-game. A game where it doesn't end up being all about SCs and master enslave and where national troops and mages have a role to play throughout. Perhaps if I had just focused on this there would have been more interest in the game.

[LoloMo]

I think the idea is quite solid and a second game of this type would get more players.

Regarding the water provinces, the map was handed out for perusal before the game started and which nation starts where was unknown, so any disadvantage the nation with out direct access to the water province is no more or else than the disadvantage another nation has for having less gem income or less gem income of the type that is useful to him. Regarding fighting for the water provinces, I'm sure there'll be more of that, we're barely two weeks into the game after all. Plus with easy access to flying items and teleport spells, I don't see why any nation would have no access to the water provinces and experience the subsequent retaliation :p

Regarding the number of players, it doesn't matter how many players a game has, some will be at peace, some will be annihilating each other, some will be winning, some will be losing, and some will be fighting multiple opponents at the same time! :p

[Squirrelloid]

I'll just say I'm glad I'm not next to the Mictlan hordes, nor does it appear I will be in the near future.

[Squirrelloid]

Regarding items failing to appear, I think I've figured out why *all* such events are failing. Items are probably generated by tier and then by specific item. All of the items are now in Item0, so any attempts to generate something from Item1, Item2, or Item3 results in no item. Yay law of unintended consequences.

[LoloMo]

That's it! Nice catch!

[Valerius]

It could be interesting to take some unique items (probably the less powerful ones) and set them to Constr. levels 2, 4 and 6 with a maximum forge cost (65 gems in both primary and secondary paths). This would make it impractical to forge them but provide some magic items at those levels for lucky events - items that normally wouldn't be attainable with these game settings.

[LDiCesare]

I'm finding this extraordinarily boring.
Forts which never get breached despite sending hordes of besiegers, even with magic items to help, make for a wholly uninteresting game.
I certainly played badly, but still, I'd rather quit, frankly. I'll keep playing because it'd be unfair to other players, but if a lurker wants to see what such a game looks like or if other players find this dull, at least they'll know.

[Valerius]

Sorry you aren't enjoying the game. It's good you mentioned it, though. More than once I've been in games that people weren't enjoying and once one person mentioned something the others spoke up.

I know my chain casting of call of the winds has been boring but I didn't think I had any chance to beat you and wanted to see what Caelum would decide to do before risking what I had left on a major battle.

Also, it was only recently that you took over all my provinces and put all my forts under siege - up until that point I had the gold and gem income from those provinces and was actually still able to recruit despite my capitol being under siege. I think if you had done that earlier I couldn't have defended all of those castles and they would have started falling.

Thanks for sticking it out, though. On that note, Agartha staled this turn so I'll PM NooBliss.

[LoloMo]

I'm quite enjoying this game, and don't seem to have encountered Mictlan's problems sieging forts :p I will still probably enjoy the game even when Bandar Log eventually beats my ***! :p

[Squirrelloid]

I think you overestimate my chances!

Ok, maybe not, but Caelum certainly looks scary over there. Poor Mictlan!

[LDiCesare]

Considering all my armies were busy in Eriu, I couldn't defend against Caelum. And I can't spam Call of the Winds or Seeking arrow.
I also think Bandar Log is taking its time to take Agartha forts.
I think I totally misunderstood the strategies needed for this setting. I thought it was about national troops when it's actually all about national mages.
And damn the eater of the dead, too.

[Valerius]

I see your point. With all those spells available from turn 1, mages can immediately do considerable damage (and of course there's little reason to keep them in the lab anyway).

But I will say, I've really come to dislike your D9 bless. I much prefer Mictlan with an F9 bless. Give your thug/SC some fire resistance and decent protection and they're ready to go to work against Mictlan. With that D9 bless there's so many MR rolls to deal with that some fail - which is real threat to low HP units.

Which leads me to the Eater of the Dead. :) I'd never summoned it before and was just looking for something tough to send against your sacreds. I'm happy with it so far, considering it's the only reason I still have that castle, and can report that after its first battle it's considerably stronger. Hopefully I can keep control of it for a while and not have it attack me...

[LoloMo]

Oh my! Eater of the Dead is Scary! Mictlan slaves will make good munching, he'll grow quite fast!

BTW, I'll be out of the country July 7-9, wed to Friday. I'll send in this turn in time, and will try to get the next turn in before I leave if I can, but after that I may need a 48 hour extension. Thanks!

[Squirrelloid]

i just put most of Agartha's forts under siege, and the one i've been sieging for awhile is his cave fort capital with a bunch of stuff in it, so who knows how long that will take... It'll probably be the last of the three i breach.

[NooBliss]

Speaking of Agartha. I was absolutely going to give a last stand fight, but my fully equipped Marble Oracle and some items for second thug disappeared. As simple as that, I dont have him anymore. So, I can do absolutely nothing now. Summoning crap just to prolong siege for Squirrelloid (without any hope to give a good fight afterwards) is, imho, unsportsmanlike, so I will just go AI if nobody minds.

Overall, this game format is interesting, but I sort of underestimated just how much of impact it will have. Namely, that Bandar Log will have access to arrow fend immediately, making bladewind (and thus my mages) nearly helpless. :) Well played.

[LoloMo]

My pretender died a while back too. Took about 5 turns to call him back. I thought Umbrals plus darkness would be quite nasty under these settings since you can have a whole army of them quite early.

[NooBliss]

Well, it's not exactly easy. I had no astral, no death and no water income - bad luck with gem sites. With just 2 death gems per turn from my pretender I couldnt really afford a big army of Umbrals. Not until Bandar Log sacreds, summons and massive communion would make a handful of Umbrals obsolete. So I rushed and failed. :)
Oh, and my luck dominion yielded me some water gems twice and generated two 'master thief stole your magic gems' events. So you can do the math, how long would it take me to summon a whole army of Umbrals. :)

[Valerius]

NooBliss, thanks for playing. You are certainly correct that these rules change things: you can almost skip over your opening strategies and go right to your mid-game, realizing of course that your opponent can do the same.

I tried to make sure each nation would have a decent supply of gems in its main paths by doubling cap gem income but in a case like Agartha's, where you have a strong strategy in a path in which you have no native income, it is up to luck whether you'll have a chance to implement it. Though I think your chances are better than in a normal game where you'd first need to find the gems to search in that path (or search manually).

I'm not sure what happened with your disappearing units. I vaguely recall reading about this happening but I thought maybe it was in larger games with many units?

[Valerius]

Oh my! Eater of the Dead is Scary! Mictlan slaves will make good munching, he'll grow quite fast!

He's really been enjoying the Eagle Warriors. They make for a delicious and healthy snack. :)

BTW, I'll be out of the country July 7-9, wed to Friday. I'll send in this turn in time, and will try to get the next turn in before I leave if I can, but after that I may need a 48 hour extension. Thanks!

No problem; I'll keep an eye on hosting and postpone as needed.

[Valerius]

I postponed hosting for the current turn by several days to make sure LoloMo has time to complete his turn.

[LoloMo]

I'm back and turn has been sent! Thanks for waiting for me :)

[Squirrelloid]

I see I am to be the next victim of the Caelian armada. Very well, bring cake, I'll provide the party favors.

On the gem income: Agartha got a really weird distribution of gem sites. Admittedly, heavily skewed towards a couple types, which should actually be an advantage. (I think he was only getting 3 types of gems from sites... !!!)

[LoloMo]

Well, the mind hunts might have something to do with it. How's Mr S4? :D

[Valerius]

Mind hunt is a powerful tool, of course, but has a real risk in this game since unless your pretender has healing abilities (or maybe some heroes?) there's no way to cure feeblemindedness (i.e. Chalice, GoH, even faery queens).

Regarding gem distribution, Agartha's seems very unusual. I ran several tests looking for sites that I needed to add to the banned list and didn't have any results with so few types of gems. My experience in this game is the exact opposite: an even spread of gem types and incredible uniformity in gem income per province.

In other news, Eriu is pleased to announce that we've regained control of almost all our provinces. Sure, the unrest is sky high and our income is 50 gold/turn, but you can't have everything. :p

[Squirrelloid]

Thanks for killing my feebleminded S4. Oh, and thanks for the bottles and the high seraph, i'm sure i'll find a use for them...

[LoloMo]

OUCH!:doh:

[LDiCesare]

Damn. I missed a nice battle apparently. Must get my scout (yes, no plural) back to where it matters before I'm dead.

[Squirrelloid]

Bandar Log asks for a moment of silence to mourn the passing of Arka, the markata scout prophet of Embarrassed Bear who had a fondness for Legendary Cruelty. He will be sorely missed.

.
.
.
.
.
.

*ahem* Now if you'll excuse us, we have corpses to finish looting.

[Valerius]

I'm postponing hosting by 24 hours because I'm too tired to figure out what to do about Mictlan's seemingly unending armies of sacreds.

[LDiCesare]

I'm postponing hosting by 24 hours because I'm too tired to figure out what to do about Mictlan's seemingly unending armies of sacreds.
This very easy: Just surrender. Script your mages to cast useless but fatigue-heavy spells, and put them in the front lines. Put your other troops in the back with a stray commander, with guard commander and hold*5 + retreat.
Soon, you won't have any problem left.

[Valerius]

Hey, no making fun of my strategy thus far!

[LDiCesare]

I'm not making fun. I used the same strategy agaisnt Caelum with the same success. Of course, I had to adapt a bit. Instead of sitting ducks, I use sitting turkeys.

[Squirrelloid]

Caelum has apparently decided the new optimal strategy involves several hundred blackhawks. The monkeys are deeply confused and perplexed by this development.

[LDiCesare]

He's stealing Eriu's strategy too. Fortifying your castles with hawk feathers has been Eriu's trademark.

[LoloMo]

We're trying to breed some monkey eating eagles. Unfortunately, eagles are in short supply, and we're making do with black hawks.

[Valerius]

Indeed, what foe does not despair when they see black hawks manning a castle's walls and realize that they cannot hope to take it? It could have been worse, though. If I had gone with the Lord of the Forest pretender I would have had armies of meese as well!

[LDiCesare]

What were all those Eriu horsemen doing sneaking down there?
As a side question, does anyone think the monkeys can lose? I think the game is effectively over since Caelum is folding, Mictlan will follow, and Eriu will probably never be able to compete with an ampire four times its size.

[Valerius]

A few turns ago I saw your dominion dropping and thought I'd try for a dom kill. But then it seemed like you noticed it and your dominion started rising so I figured I'd withdraw them. That didn't work out too well. :)

I think you are right about the game situation. I've attacked Bandar but don't pose much of a threat to him. Unless LoloMo has something up his sleeve I'd say the game is decided.

[LoloMo]

I concur, Bandar has won this game. I have a plan to retake my provinces, but it will be at the cost of most the yazatas I've been summoning. Without any significant attack on Bandar log in the north to slow down his reinforcements, any battles I win in the south will just be a minor inconvenience for the monkeys.

I made a huge tactical error when I lost my main army a while back, and it has taken me too long to resummon that army.

[Valerius]

Well, I think my attacking Bandar has slowed down his reinforcements in the sense that he's got around 500 units and his pretender up in the north. My forces are ... more limited. But hey, I've got still got the Eater of the Dead and I know that terrifies Squirrelloid.

This game didn't go too well for me. In a first while playing Eriu, I didn't go for an E9nx bless (in retrospect I think it would have worked well since the necessary Constr. and Alt. to equip thugs were already researched on turn 1). My flawed plan was to put my cap in 32 and with that, my prophet and my VQ pretender, push my dominion into whomever neighbored me to the south and attack. When the game began and I saw my neighbor was Mictlan (dom 10, maybe 9?) I realized I had a problem. Then I made a really dumb mistake and suicided my pretender and of course Mictlan attacked me.

I chain cast Call of the Winds in order to keep my cap and hold out until I saw what Caelum would do. I was kind of surprised Mictlan didn't take my other provinces and for a long time I was still able to recruit at my other forts. Once Caelum attacked Mictlan I figured he'd withdraw his forces and I'd get a breather to try to get back into the game. Only ... he didn't. In fact, he eventually started attacking my other provinces.

BTW, good job LDiCesare. Even with just one fort left you were still a factor and it meant Caelum and I couldn't just focus on Bandar.

Thanks everyone for playing this experimental game. Comments, negative and positive, are welcome.

[Squirrelloid]

Wait, is that meant to be a concession?

[LoloMo]

Yes, you've won :)

Mind hunts were just too powerful. I couldn't raid without a sneaking astral mage and those were in short supply. And for this small a map, we really need all players to fight to the death! Kudos to Mictlan for never giving up!

Shall we have another go at this type of game? :D

[Squirrelloid]

I'd play again.

I wouldn't say Agartha didn't fight to the death. It was hard fought and he was totally out of material when he set AI - as in, not a single unit left or province left to his name. I just had to finish breaking fort walls.

And I don't know about mindhunts being too powerful. I think I lost more mindhunters to becoming feebleminded than I actually killed units. Now, admittedly, it did have a plausibly big effect on your tactics, but if you had raided you would have decreased the number of pearls I had available for other uses even without the astral mage to feeblemind my hunters. I wasn't exactly overrunning with pearls, and your (Calian) seraphs weren't exactly easy low MR targets to whack.

I think the really big thing was I was the only nation that took order scales whereas everyone else took turmoil scales. This let me support a larger force of mages and rely on recruitables for chaffe more regularly. And while I'm sure I saw fewer total events because of it, O1 opens up a lot of cash events, so I may have seen relatively more cash events than the T3L3 nations.

Enslave mind also got me into death via an Agarthan Oracle. Because yeah, I didn't take any D on my pretender (and stupidly enough, was pulling in 2d/trn from my home territories - death income I had absolutely no use for except the possibility of turning it into pearls until i managed to enslave an Oracle).

I am entertained that 3 of the 4 pretenders I saw generated gems. =)

[Valerius]

Yup, you've won. Congratulations, Squirrelloid!

As far as another game like this goes, I think the rules would have to be simpler in order to attract more players (I'm not into large games so even 8 players would be good).

The core idea was to change the end-game by limiting magic to level 6. Since that excludes most globals it makes sense to ban all of them, even those lower than level 7.

Then there were the anti-turtling measures: most spells researched at the game's beginning, no need for site searching, limiting the number of forts, even pre-assigning provinces/forts to eliminate the expansion/building phase.

I'm inclined to keep most spells at level 0 and leaning towards leaving all magic sites at 0. But I do think the fort and province rules need to be simplified. Recently I've been thinking setting rules such as no fort can border another or perhaps each fort can only border one other fort would be a simple way to keep the game moving in the later stages. As far as starting provinces, I'd probably just go with starting everyone with 3-5 provinces and having a short expansion/fort building phase (maybe a map with approx. 12 provinces/player?).

We also had some rules that had nothing to do late game/turtling (no indies/mercs, no diplo) and these could of course be changed for a second game.

As regards mind hunts, I'm increasingly of the opinion they should cost 3 gems in a normal game. But I'm not sure about with these settings. Without the Chalice, GoH or even faerie queens Bandar had to take a risk with his mind hunts. But this wouldn't be the case if someone chose Arco, or to a lesser extent TC, next game. Nations with healers and strong S worry me. But it's worth noting that if we allow indies and I include mage recruiting magic sites non-S nations would have more opportunities to protect against mind hunts.

[Valerius]

I just took a closer look at Bandar and realized the recruit everywhere gurus have S2. Squirrelloid, I assume you were using those when you had a cap and coin available instead of risking your rishis?

Some ideas I've considered to balance astral (especially mind hunt) in normal games are: increase mind hunt cost to 3 gems, give spectres a better chance of getting an S random, add a reasonably priced summonable astral mage (something along the lines of an Adept of x Order).

[Squirrelloid]

Cap and Coin? Lol. I never forged a coin all game, and only a single cap.

I cast a total of 6 or 7 mindhunts. Every mindhunt was cast by an S4 rishi.

Most of my pearls went to Kinnara, gear for Kinnara, and Gandharvas. I think i forged a total of 3 boosters in total, and most of those late in the game. I simply couldn't afford to use gems on such things regularly, I needed troops and I needed Kinnara for the air access, holy, or thugging ability. (In particular, arrow fend was *necessary* against Agartha's bladewind spam, so early on that need was especially dire). Kinnara's holy magic let me use divine blessing while communioned without my prophet being there (my priests otherwise are all H1).

Now, at the end I had 7 Kinnara and an 8th on the way. That's 200 pearls right there. That's about half my pearl budget for the game in Kinnara alone. Figure another 4x18 for Gandharvas, 50 pearls in gear for thugs (ethereal robes + pendants x5), and a decent number of pearls spent for LotNS/PotS in combat, plus some sundry other forgings (some void eyes, the one cap), and you start to realize just how tight my pearl budget was. Now, arco may have *nothing better to do* than cast mindhunts. But BL certainly does.

So honestly, I didn't see much impact of mindhunt on my end. I agree there were likely *metagame* effects because I *could* cast mindhunt. But my pearls were being used in entirely different ways.

I'm not sure I agree mindhunts should be 3 pearls. A pearl is worth double another gem, and seeking arrow is what, 4a? Of course, its not MR negates, but does have to deal sufficient damage to kill (Eriu, you were targetting the entirely wrong province if you wanted to actually kill something). And even when it fails to kill it might inflict a wound or can be built on by other arrows. Mindhunt is defendable against by a few items, is a lot more expensive to boost penetration (and less total boosting), so the actual cost to kill a commander that matters is expensive (multiple mindhunts from mages with good gear), and then you're gambling that your opponent doesn't have a sneaky astral mage in the province or didn't teleport one in before your mindhunt went off. I made very sparing use of mindhunt because its so expensive to use well and because of the risk.

I do have some suggestions for the next game regarding spell access:
1) The all-battlefield resistance spells should be made available. I know they're normally Ench 8, but without them its much too hard to defend against a number of elemental strategies at all, and its only 50% resistance so its not like it even makes you immune. There is no good counter to things like Grip of Winter or Heat from Hell without access to them.
2) While bloodmagic is underpriced in the normal game, i think the repricing was handled the wrong way in this game. It was no surprise that no one even tried to do anything with blood magic (that i saw - did Mictlan even try to use their national blood spells?). Given the gem economy was basically online immediately, but you'd have to start up the blood economy from scratch, slaves should have been treated as more valuable than in a normal game, if nothing else. The ultimate take-home here is that a number of blood spells probably needed to increase in price, but it wasn't all of them, and many of the price increases were probably too much.

[LoloMo]

We should simplify the initial fort system. I remember that we waited quite a while for all players to submit their fort locations. With this small map, no forts will be constructed. Is it possible to start the game with say 2000 extra gold that can be used for fort construction? Then we can set the initial forced NAP to the first 5 or 6 turns.

If it's not possible to give extra initial gold, then maybe a similar thing can be done by putting gold settings up to the highest.

Regarding the spells, we can just lower the level of spells that are included. It's natural for players to try to weaken other nations and strengthen their own nation by taking out certain spells. We can just lower the available spells to level 5 or even 4, rather than have long negotiations on which level 6 spell is overpowered. Hopefully, this fixes the problem with blood spells too.

[LDiCesare]

As for fort locations, you could just set them in the map and decide the capital to be in the middle. That speeds up the process and is quite easy.

To me the most annoying spells were the damn black hawks (impossible to break the walls despite almost all my forces on the fort, and with some wall-breaking bonuses to boot). I have no idea if they can be as effective in a non-nerfed game, though, but I think a Flame from the Sky ruins them pretty well. But then there are domes. But then FftS will eventually pass through if you spam it.

Also seeking arrows. I think that Caelum could stockpile air gems whereas I and Eriu were busy using our gems on other stuff (black hawks, jaguars...). Caelum's stockpile was efficiently used to slaughter the commanders whom I sent to besiege their capital. Without mages and leadership, my southern army was soon toast.
I'd suggest a map that forces players to attack an identified neighbour too btw. If 2 players randomly gang up on the same guy, the poor is likely toast and the remaining player can easily sit and wait, stockpiling gems instead of losing them in battle. When hsi neighbour becomes too big or small, he can effectively attack him. I think it's a bit cheesy, although one would be stupid not to profit from the situation. I started wondering where to go when Eriu pleasantly offered me a god to kill, but kept being afraid that Caelum would strike me rather than BL.
Also note that seeking arrows are very effective against humans but mostly harmless against giants and big-hp commanders. Since it was hard for me to summon big-hp leaders, this made seeking arrow more effective. This also makes nations with recruitable thugs much stronger. Oh. Also, I s*** at putting up domes.

I never tried blood. I had no blood mage to begin with, so I'd have had to hunt + empower + hunt + cast. The game was far too short for that.

[Valerius]

Ok, a lot to respond to.

Cap and Coin? Lol. I never forged a coin all game, and only a single cap.

I cast a total of 6 or 7 mindhunts. Every mindhunt was cast by an S4 rishi.

Most of my pearls went to Kinnara, gear for Kinnara, and Gandharvas.

Interesting info. I'm surprised you cast so few mind hunts. You hit me with, I think, 3 of them after I attacked you, so I figured you were using them more extensively. I had no idea you had that many Kinnara's - but with no indies and limited forts I'd imagine everyone had fewer scouts than usual.


I'm not sure I agree mindhunts should be 3 pearls. A pearl is worth double another gem, and seeking arrow is what, 4a?

I assume you mean that pearls can be alchemized into other gems at 2:1 ratio instead of a 4:1 ratio? Keep in mind that also can make S based spells cheaper to cast than other paths. If you're spamming mind hunt and I'm spamming seeking arrow, once we burn through our S/A gems you can alchemize much more cost effectively than I can in order to keep casting spells. But I think the biggest thing is that gem value is relative. If you're spamming seeking arrow you are likely an air nation and those are gems you won't have available for cloud trapezing. Now in this game we had a low province count and I doubled cap gem income so it was more viable to have a large stockpile of A gems to use against an opponent but normally if I'm spamming seeking arrow it's a sign things aren't going well.

But I think the biggest thing was that without indies or many forts it was difficult to stock armies with decoy commanders to soak up remote attacks. In a normal game decoys can help against mind hunt but they pretty much make seeking arrow pointless. Your typical indie commander will survive a seeking arrow and still be available next round as a decoy (you don't care if he gets afflictions). Decoys are effective against mind hunts but not as much so since usually they will kill the decoy commander so you have to keep restocking them. Mind hunt also has the advantage that it can target stealthy units and doesn't care about HP. So in a normal game seeking arrow is situational as opposed to a staple like mind hunt.

This leads to the question of whether we allow indies for the next game. If we do it will help with dealing with any kind of remote attack on commanders. Very interested in hearing opinions on this and also whether I should include magic sites that allow mage recruitment.


1) The all-battlefield resistance spells should be made available.

I wasn't too worried about this becuase the Ench. 5 Fend spells have a large AOE and without a need to keep commanders in the lab researching even 2-3 mages can cover a lot of troops. Of course if you don't have fire/water mages and you're facing an opponent using those paths things get trickier. Water's actually not bad because there's several summons that can give you access to that path. Fire is difficult but that's because until you get to elemental royalty and tarts the only summon with fire access that comes to mind is the terrain dependent Hidden in Sand. I can look into removing that or maybe adding an F2 summon so that everyone would have access to a fire mage. But I'd prefer not to have the battlefield wide resistance spells added.


2) While bloodmagic is underpriced in the normal game, i think the repricing was handled the wrong way in this game.

Well, obviously I nerfed blood heavily. I'm willing to take a look at the blood summon costs and reduce some of them and maybe add some spells back in. But I think the logic you used for your balance mod applies here as well. And it's worth keeping in mind that if you don't care too much about the few spells at level 3 you can basically devote every blood mage to blood hunting from the turn they are recruited.


We should simplify the initial fort system. I remember that we waited quite a while for all players to submit their fort locations. With this small map, no forts will be constructed. Is it possible to start the game with say 2000 extra gold that can be used for fort construction? Then we can set the initial forced NAP to the first 5 or 6 turns.

If it's not possible to give extra initial gold, then maybe a similar thing can be done by putting gold settings up to the highest.

As for fort locations, you could just set them in the map and decide the capital to be in the middle. That speeds up the process and is quite easy.

I can check into this but it seems easier to maybe increase gold to 150%. Depending on your scales, you may have to compromise between recruiting your most expensive mages or building your most expensive forts the first few turns but I think that's ok.

As far as the map goes, my thought was that we'd find a new map averaging around 12 provinces per player. But we can reuse this one if we don't get 8 players; either the five player version we ended up using or the original six player version.

If we do use this one again, LDiCesare's suggestion certainly simplifies things.


To me the most annoying spells were the damn black hawks (impossible to break the walls despite almost all my forces on the fort, and with some wall-breaking bonuses to boot).

Yeah, I actually felt it was a lame tactic. But I really thought if Caelum attacked you'd withdraw and I'd be back in the game - as long as I had managed to keep my cap. But I should mention the reason I was able to hold out was the doubling of my cap A income. Any opinions on this aspect of the game? My intention was to have each nation have a good supply of gems its mages could use but maybe it was too much?


Also seeking arrows.

I think seeking arrows really paid off for Caelum because he was at peace the longest, there were few decoy commanders on the field and cap gem incomes were doubled. Whether we make the next game a no-indies game is a big question.

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, a lot to respond to.

Cap and Coin? Lol. I never forged a coin all game, and only a single cap.

I cast a total of 6 or 7 mindhunts. Every mindhunt was cast by an S4 rishi.

Most of my pearls went to Kinnara, gear for Kinnara, and Gandharvas.

Interesting info. I'm surprised you cast so few mind hunts. You hit me with, I think, 3 of them after I attacked you, so I figured you were using them more extensively. I had no idea you had that many Kinnara's - but with no indies and limited forts I'd imagine everyone had fewer scouts than usual.

I probably would have made more extensive use of it if not for the following:

Caelum gets S1 randoms and was making certain he brought one with every force.

Agartha gets S1 randoms on golem crafters, and since he had a large force of golem crafters, I wasn't about to throw mindhunt around until i was sure all the S crafters were dead.

The only reason i threw 3 at you when you declared war on me is I saw your VQ (with astral, meaning i couldn't mindhunt her province) and the death summons elsewhere, and concluded you had few if any S1 spectres (barring a phenomenal death income!), so it was a calculated risk. Of course, you also had plenty of blackhawk leaders to eat mindhunts, so i'm not sure i did any real damage.

Basically, the high risk involved with using mindhunt combined with an abundance of better uses for pearls made me much more conservative in my use of it.

I actually had like 8 scouts at the height of my scouting power. Of course, I sacrificed some against Caelum to check PD levels. But they were worth the fort use to hire.

[Valerius]

The only reason i threw 3 at you when you declared war on me is I saw your VQ (with astral, meaning i couldn't mindhunt her province) and the death summons elsewhere, and concluded you had few if any S1 spectres (barring a phenomenal death income!), so it was a calculated risk. Of course, you also had plenty of blackhawk leaders to eat mindhunts, so i'm not sure i did any real damage.

Good calculation; aside from my pretender the only commander I had with undead leadership was a lousy ghoul. And you were 3/3 on your mind hunts: Sidhe Lord, Sidhe Champion and Black Hawk.

I actually had like 8 scouts at the height of my scouting power. Of course, I sacrificed some against Caelum to check PD levels. But they were worth the fort use to hire.

At game's end I had 10 scouts, all concentrated in Agartha's and Mictlan's provinces. I had more at one point but lost some to patrollers. My guess is that I recruited more scouts than anyone since I had plenty of turns with two forts free but not much gold. I actually had a scrying site but my pretender had better things to do and I had no other S mages that could use it.

[Valerius]

Guys, I've summarized the settings for the next game at the bottom of the first post. Once we settle on them I'll open a new thread and start recruitment. If you object to some of the settings please speak up.

Also, I think it fair that we get to choose nations before opening up recruitment. Of course you can keep your current nation but feel free to switch if you'd like. To review, the list of banned nations is: all water nations, Ashdod, Jotun, Ermor, Pan.

I'm going to power game this time and switch to Vanheim. Fear my skinshifter hordes!

[LoloMo]

Is the spell mists of deception still banned? Do we start with 12 provinces or do we start with just the capital and expand as normal? I would certainly play again!

[NooBliss]

>> I wouldn't say Agartha didn't fight to the death. It was hard fought and he was totally out of material when he set AI - as in, not a single unit left or province left to his name. I just had to finish breaking fort walls.

I had some Oracles prepared for a final fight tho. But they... disappeared. :(
Well at least I lost to a game winner. Arrow Fend impact was simply huge.

[Squirrelloid]

Well at least I lost to a game winner. Arrow Fend impact was simply huge.

It better have been, I spent a lot of pearls to be able to cast it wherever I needed it =)

[Squirrelloid]

Valerius, regarding proposed rules for next game:
1)Ok, I get the other items, but why no heroes blades?
2)If you want to discuss proper blood spell costs, I'd be happy to, since I've been doing quite a bit of thinking on the matter
3)I presume we aren't allowed to forge the 'downgraded' artifacts - they're there so events have something to work with and that's it.
4)Might want to consider changing eras, maybe LA?

[NooBliss]

>> It better have been, I spent a lot of pearls to be able to cast it wherever I needed it =)

Well, but it instantly rendered my battlemagic and thus more or less whole nation useless. :)

[Squirrelloid]

>> It better have been, I spent a lot of pearls to be able to cast it wherever I needed it =)

Well, but it instantly rendered my battlemagic and thus more or less whole nation useless. :)

That magma eruption was still pretty killer. Arrow Fend does nothing about that, I had to use screens of chaffe to stop it from totally destroying me.

-------
Game is mysteriously still running, despite having received teh 'game ending' email. I just got a turn! I'll be ignoring the game, since its supposed to be dead.

[NooBliss]

T_T... wish my mages could cast it more than twice before falling unconscious, having killed a sacred or two. :) Its not even nearly as effective as bladewind, at least for Agartha mages. Imho.

[LDiCesare]

I'd rather stick with no magic items than uniques at levels 2, 4, 6. Or maybe put some never used items there. I mean, noone will forge a champion's skull, a ring of warning. Might as well get one from a random event. Halberds of might, birch boots are also quite uncommon. (These might even be somewhat useful, contrary to black laurels.)

As for nation choice, I wouldn't pick Mictlan again. They can rush fine, but their mages are too limited and getting into blood's too hard. I might pick Ulm. If monkey PD can win, why couldn't the forgers?

[Valerius]

Is the spell mists of deception still banned? Do we start with 12 provinces or do we start with just the capital and expand as normal? I would certainly play again!

MoD is still banned. I think at this point the only spell change on my to-do list is making Hidden in Sand castable in all terrains. This provides an opportunity to obtain a fire mage as well as another option for S magic if your D income is poor and you can't afford spectres.

Do we start with 12 provinces or do we start with just the capital and expand as normal?

This is the big question. We can certainly get everything done that we need to by using map commands. If we go this route I can either do the work myself as a player (in which case we'd all know our neighbors and their fort locations ahead of time) or I can step into an admin role and take care of all this. I can ask rdonj to help out but it takes time to do this (even more so if we go to 8 players) and I don't want to impose.

Another option would be to start the game as normal (maybe everyone gets 3 starting provinces?) and there would be an expansion phase as in a normal game - the big exception being that there's no need to site search conquered indies.

I would certainly play again!

Glad to hear it! So by my count that makes you, Squirrelloid, LDiCesare and myself (unless I only admin). What about you, NooBliss?


Valerius, regarding proposed rules for next game:
1)Ok, I get the other items, but why no heroes blades?

Of the misc. changes this was the one I was most on the fence about. In the end I included it as a measure to protect pretenders - which I figured would be the only giant size SCs in the game.

2)If you want to discuss proper blood spell costs, I'd be happy to, since I've been doing quite a bit of thinking on the matter

Sure, sounds good. Obviously you're going to make some price adjustments in the next release of your mod but comparing the current release with the ThreeFort pricing it seems like in some instances your price was higher than mine, in others vice versa. But the big difference is that I eliminated many spells. I'm willing to put some of those back in but, in the context of this game, there are some I'd like to still leave out: Ice Devils (self explanatory), Infernal Disease (too cheap and too low level in CBM, even given high casting requirements - even more important I think has the potential to be un-fun and take away from this game - lastly, there's no earth attack or manifestation so I see no need for this either), Blood Rite (you know my whole gripe with immortal units). Stuff I'd consider putting back in but have concerns about price: Rain of Toads (especially concerning in a game with limited forts), Send Lesser Horror (bit of a price boost might be enough here), Bind Succubus (this one isn't a problem I think it just got caught up in my nerfing other aspects of blood).

3)I presume we aren't allowed to forge the 'downgraded' artifacts - they're there so events have something to work with and that's it.

Yes, exactly. It's mainly the honor system but I'll set them all to have max forging cost to avoid accidents.

4)Might want to consider changing eras, maybe LA?

The problem here is that I really don't like LA. I like EA but the list of OP nations expands considerably compared to MA. I'd like to stick with MA this time but if the next game turns out to be fun and there's a third we could switch eras (though if we went with LA I'd need a lot of feedack on balance since I so rarely play it).


Game is mysteriously still running, despite having received teh 'game ending' email. I just got a turn! I'll be ignoring the game, since its supposed to be dead.

This is a perfect example of why I think immortality is OP! Ok, I tried killing it again, let's see if this one sticks.


That magma eruption was still pretty killer. Arrow Fend does nothing about that, I had to use screens of chaffe to stop it from totally destroying me.

I was wondering about magma eruption as well. Tough thing about the fatigue, though. But also, doesn't Bandar have some armored troops that could be boosted up to around 20 protection with Wooden Warrriors (the only protection buff with a decent AOE under these settings)? It seems like those troops would be largely immune to blade wind, but maybe I'm underestimating massed blade wind?

[Valerius]

I'd rather stick with no magic items than uniques at levels 2, 4, 6. Or maybe put some never used items there. I mean, noone will forge a champion's skull, a ring of warning. Might as well get one from a random event. Halberds of might, birch boots are also quite uncommon. (These might even be somewhat useful, contrary to black laurels.)

Hopefully I can change your mind as I was really looking forward to this. :) Keep in mind I wouldn't add powerful things like the Gate Stone to the mix. I wasn't even planning on any of them being as powerful as a Ring of Wizardry or Robe of the Magi. It's more just for fun than to be something really powerful. But I don't want them to be useless either. As an example, what about something like Ember as a level 6 item?

[LDiCesare]

Well, I'm on the receiving end of ember in another game (where my mighty C'tis has single-digit death income by the time I should have tartarians, despitee controlling and searching a lot of provinces - this game's logn lost) and I'm not enjoying it.
Some artefacts would be ok.
Quickly, I think Percivale the pocket knight, the sharpest tooth, Holger's head, the flying ship, sandals of the planes, Carcator, would all be ok.

[Valerius]

I like your list, except for the flying ship, with which I've had some bad experiences.

So, here's a first draft. We can also fill out the list with non-unique, rarely forged, items.

Level 2:
The Sharpest Tooth
Sandals of the Crane
Holger the Head
Percival the Pocket Knight
Alchemist's Stone

Level 4:
O'al Kan's Sceptre
Winter Bringer
Rod of Death
The Flailing Hands
Fenris's Pelt
Krupp's Bracers
Carcator the Pocket Lich
Tome of the Lower Planes

Level 6:
Aseftik's Armor
Monolith Armor
Robe of Calius the Druid
Flesh Ward
Pebble Skin Suit
Boots of Calius the Druid
Tome of High Power
The Black Book of Secrets
The Tome of Gaia
Ardmon's Soul Trap

[NooBliss]

>> Glad to hear it! So by my count that makes you, Squirrelloid, LDiCesare and myself (unless I only admin). What about you, NooBliss?

Nah, thanks. I'll pass. I am right in the middle of another game now, and besides, I think I'll wait till you sort the balance out. :) I am... not quite content with arrow fend being awailable where rain of stones and other battlefield-wide spells are not. :) I may be easily wrong, so let's see how your future games fare. ;)

[Valerius]

Fair enough; I think after the next game we'll have a decent idea about what balance changes we need to make. Good luck in your other game! :)

[Valerius]

Good news: I contacted rdonj and he thinks he'll have time to help with the map again. So I'll get to work on making the changes we discussed and open a new thread to start recruitment by the weekend.

In other news, the ThreeFort game has risen from the dead again so ignore any notices you get regarding it from the llamaserver and I'll PM llama about the unkillable game.

[Valerius]

Sorry, I didn't have time to work on the mod this past weekend.

I also have another game idea I'd like to try (opposite of this really in that it opens up SC possibilities - affliction free tarts, unlimited elemental royalty) and can't join two games so I'm going to step into an admin role on this one.

Assuming everyone is still on board I'll make the mod changes this week and start a new thread to recruit players.

[Squirrelloid]

Maybe this one should just wait for a little while. I have no driving need to get into another game right away.

[LoloMo]

I second Squirrelloid. No need to admin a game you're not part of.

[Valerius]

Now that Cripple Fight 3 has ended I'll have time to work on (and play in!) this game.

In order to try to drum up more interested I thought I'd simplify the game's theme to "emphasize mid-game, eliminate late game" and eliminate the "no indies, only national troops/mages" aspect.


Proposed rules:

* Magic will be the same as last time. Spells limited to level 6, with the exception of the spells that were assigned to level 3 and banned spells. No globals. Lower power unique items will fill Constr. level 2, 4 and 6 for random events.

* All magic sites are level 0 - if you own province you'll know all the sites there.

* Start the game with 4 provinces and then have a normal expansion phase.

* Blood magic will get some nerfs (maybe less than last time).


Changes:

* Indies will be allowed (including magic sites that allow troop/mage recruitment) and mercs can be recruited. I think this will help with the problem of getting scouts as well as alleviate the impact of spells that target commanders.

* Diplomacy allowed.

* You can build forts as normal - this will make game setup easier and also allow you to protect your most valuable provinces.

* Cap gem income normal. With diplomacy allowed you can trade gems with other nations.


Any of you interested in, and have time for, a sequel?

[Squirrelloid]

How soon is it starting? The last game didn't take too much time, tbh, so i'd be willing to consider participating.

[Valerius]

I'm flexible on the start time. I should have the mod revised and be ready to start recruiting by Monday-Tuesday but I can hold off if that's convenient.

I liked the fact that the previous game played quickly. This one might take more time for the last few players since ideally I'd like to get 8 people (decent number for diplomacy, HoF eligibility - but still fast playing). If we end up with 5 or 6 of course then I'd expect another very fast, low micro, game.

[LDiCesare]

Still interested.

[Valerius]

Ok, I'll start work on the mod revisions.

I've updated the game two proposed settings at the bottom of the first post.

Since we are going with a more normal province/player ratio (about 12) and 4 starting provinces I think we can set gold/resources to normal. But I'm open to using the boosted levels if there's a preference for that.

I also think Squirrelloid was right about there not being a need to ban/nerf the hereos blade so that's back in.

[Valerius]

Ok, I'm about to start recruiting for the second game. I'll attach the revised mod there.

Squirrelloid, I basically copied and pasted the blood magic section from your balance mod. I made a few changes in costs to some units and removed spells that didn't fit these game settings but it's largely the same. Also, I removed Jade Knives but left SDRs in.

LDiCesare, would you be willing to test the mod like you did last game? That helped catch several errors. Also, I marked you down for Ulm - please let me know if you want to stay with Mictlan.

Since we aren't going with preset fort locations this time I allowed the deleterious (or potentially so) sites back in. The only banned sites are 30%+ Conj./Blood and all Constr. sites.

[LDiCesare]

Yes, I'll gladly test. Just tell me where it is, and I'll download it. And Ulm is fine.

[Valerius]

Thanks! The new game is called Battleground (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=46213) and I've attached the mod to the first post.