ANDalusian Sun: Lolomo wins after more than 2 years of gruelling competition!

[Amhazair]

Finally. I finally made it.

It had taken me months of dubble shifts at work to save up the money for his trip, the low-cost airliner in which I had booked passage to Spain was hideously overbooked, leading to a frenzied shouting match before boarding, and an air-control strike led to a delay of many hours.

Upon arrival they told me that my luggage had missed the flight and would not arrive for several more hours, the bus from airport into town broke down halfway there resulting in a 5-mile hike and the shower in my motel room seemed incapable of providing water much above freezing tempratures. Flopping down on the bed in utter exhaustion rather than trying to scrounge up an evening meal in the middle of the night only served to acquaint me with the lumpiness of the matress and the dust in the horsehair blanket.

But all of that was in the past now. The early morning sun reflected off an endless expanse of blue water, the temprature already was balmy, and the pristine white beach stretched for miles in each direction. Best of all, it was a remote area, and I wouldn't have to bump into doddering pensioners, abrasive, overweight German couples and their whiny kids or arrogant Dutch adonises every time I turned around. It would be 3 weeks in heaven.

Working my way down from the cliffs I noticed a large vibrantly blue beach-towel and, more importantly, the person lying on top of it. And ooh, boy, what a specimen it was. If the personality was even a quarter as intresting as the package...

Shaking my head to clear it from the daydream that had suddenly found it's way into my mind I changed my course and started moving in that direction.

Finally stepping from the rocky path onto the soft sand of the beach I noticed 21 other persons emerging from differnt entrances to the beach, each of them with their eyes fixed on the same target.

I picked up my pace, for, in the end, there could only be one. the first one to introduce himself.


So, time for me to start up a new game I think. I have allways liked the RAND games for a change of pace, also enjoying not having to spend hours on diplomacy. (Or feeling guilty/worried because I was neglecting to.) However, I still played few enough games that there's several nations I still really, really want to try out, so I'll be dropping the R(andom nation assignment) and keeping the A(nonymous) N(o) D(iplomacy) parts.

For those wondering what the introduction was about: I have absolutely no idea, I was certainly not planning to write that when I clicked the 'New thread' button, but whatd'ya gonna do when something unexpected leaves your keyboard? (Besides, you try to find an (English) word starting with And you can write a dominions-related story about. Androgynous? Andorra? Android?) However, now that it's written I'm rolling with it. Style points for anyone going for a pretender design including Heat1/Sloth1 scales.

Settings:

Era: Late
Players: 13.
Independents: 5
money/Resources/supply: Standard
Reseach: Normal
Special Sites: 45
Hall of Fame: 15
Random events: common
Renaming: On, but only use them for MM purposes. Do not use it to give false informetion. (ie: don't name your W2S3 Starspawn S5 for whatever reason) In addition, make sure to give your pretender the name of your nations, in caps, (ie: ATLANTIS) so they're all the same.
Graphs: On (I generally like graphs off, but for a game where it's far more difficult to coördinate and impossible to share information things are different.)
Victory: Hold 8 VP's. (Half +1 of the total.)

Hosting schedule: Relaxed. (We're on holliday at an Andalusian beach, remember?) Starting at 24h, but becomming longer as needed.

Map: Riverlands (Attached to this post together with final map file for those intrested in it.)

Admin duties will be taken on by Dimaz. (With my heartfelt thanks.) PM him with any admin-relate issues, since letting me know (or asking for delays in the thread) might give away clues about your identity.

A note on dropping out and going AI: Since this is supposed to be a competitive game it should go without saying I expect everyone to fight to the end to the best of his abilities. (But I'm saying it anyway at the urging of people who've had bad experiences with the "should go without saying" theory.) Of course, sometimes real life intervenes and you can't play on. If that's the case, please try to at least notify the game admin (Dimaz) to let him know you're dropping out. Additionally, DO NOT SET YOUR NATION TO AI YOURSELF UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. If you truly think there's absolutely no point in continuing to play, run it by the admin first so he can judge for himself whether to indeed put it on AI, or to (try to) convince you to play on or find a sub.

Banned nation(s): I really hate to ban nations, but LA Ermor really isn't the best candidate to have around in no-diplomacy games, so unless there's an outcry against this decision they will be banned.

Mod Nations: The second reason I don't want nation assignments to be random. I want to include a couple of mod nations in the game, since I think there's quite a few quality ones around and want to give them a chance to shine in a bigger audience. However, randomly handing a mod nation to someone who has never seen it before and might have no intrest in playing a mod nation doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Since this still is an anonymous game I didn't want anyone suggesting their favorite nation, so I made the one-sided decision to make Ulm, Reborn and Jomon, Broken Swords available to play. Both can be found here (http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=2&st=0) for those wanting to take a look. Both of these are well made, balanced, and intresting to play in totally different ways, and as such have received the official "Amhazair Seal of Approval" (TM)

Other Mods: Combo mod for this game including CBM 1.84 and Lesser Holy War. As well as Jomon, Broken Swords. In addition it adds a minor gem income to the new sites from the Holy War mod. Attached to this post.

Who can play?: Since an anonymous game takes the equalizing element of diplomacy out of the game, this will not the best game for newer players to participate in. I'm not reserving this for the most hardened veterans only, but would advice against signing up if you don't have at least a few end-games under your belt. (I will ask whether you're certain if I don't know you(well))

Nation choices: Each player picked three nations he'd prefer to play in order of preference. After finishing signups nations were assigned by Sasooli, attempting to give everyone one of their choices. Full list of nations:



:medal: Winner: Lolomo playing Ulm. May eternal sunshine be his reward. :medal:



Still standing, but left behind in the dust:

T'ien Ch'i => Mockingbird
R'lyeh => Wraithlord


Tripped over his/her own feet and fell face-first in the sand:

Abysia => Dr.Praetorius: eliminated on turn 10.
C'tis => Yandav: eliminated on turn 35.
Atlantis => Priestyman subbing for Fantomen: eliminated turn 41.
Marignon => Llamabeast: Gone AI turn 41, eliminated turn 44.
Patala => Aethyr: eliminated turn 45.
Arcoscephale => Baalz: Gone AI turn 50.
Jomon (Broken Swords) => Amhazair: Eliminated turn 68.
Utgard => Don_Pablo: Eliminated turn 70.
Bogarus => Calahan, later Maerlande: Eliminated sometime when the sun was already down.
Mictlan => P3D, rejakor, CUnknown, Stagger Lee (Succeding each other at some time) Crumpled in sight of the target.

[Amhazair]

I have 3 job openings for ambitious people.

1) Since both mods have been gone over by the mod-compatability project to be compatible with each other and CBM I initially thought no more work would be needed. However I stumbled across this post: The odd thing is that every MP game will still need a combo mod, because you can't just update mods to the latest version on llamaserver (for good reason). You could rename the file to include the version name each time I suppose,...

But those combo mods are extremely easy to make once you know the mods are compatible. so apparently I was wrong.

Good news is it's apparently a very easy job. Anyone taking this up might want to wait until it's clear which (if any) of the mod nations end up being picked. (Also, if you prefer patiently teaching me how to actually do this myself instead of doing it yourself that would also be fine, allthough I'm afraid it will be signifficantly more work for you. ;)

2) Handling nation assignments

3) Adminning the game.

Since I will be playing myself I can't be doing 2 and 3 myself. If no-one volunteers I'll be sure to guilt someone into it though. :D

Remunaration for either of these jobs will be a hearfelt push on the "thanks" button. :)

[yandav]

I'd be glad to play and I vote for CBM 1.8+.

[Thanatus del Dragos]

I'll play.
1.83? Whatever the most recent is.

[WraithLord]

I would like to play.
I vote for CBM 1.83.

I would also like to request a predictable relaxed hosting schedule, something akin to the scheme I use in my relaxed games. like start with 24h and every 15 turns add 24h until end game settles on 120h. It's reasonable and players in my games enjoy the pace, except for those who like blitz-like games (but then again, relaxed games are not really their cup of tea anyway).

Q: If you ban Ermor then why keep R'lyeh?
Q: Are all other LA games available to choose from?

How much time do we have to prepare and make up our minds re. nation picks?

[Amhazair]

I would also like to request a predictable relaxed hosting schedule, something akin to the scheme I use in my relaxed games. like start with 24h and every 15 turns add 24h until end game settles on 120h. It's reasonable and players in my games enjoy the pace, except for those who like blitz-like games (but then again, relaxed games are not really their cup of tea anyway).

Q: If you ban Ermor then why keep R'lyeh?
Q: Are all other LA games available to choose from?

How much time do we have to prepare and make up our minds re. nation picks?
* I intentionally stayed away from fixing the hosting scheduled upfront (like I see you doing) since the people who normally play at a slower pace might be small/at peace/otherwise in a situation where they're fine with the schedule and thus there is no need to slow the game down. As I said though, I do intend this to be a relaxed game, so rest assured the turns will get longer as needed.

* I really see no reason to ban LA R'lyeh after the nerf/fixing of the popkill rate. I will admit not to have played them since, but from theoricrafting I would put them at a mediocre powerlever at best now, and everything I've heard about them from others confirms this. I also see no reason to ban any other nation. (Do you?)

* I have no specific start date in mind, I guess it depends on how fast signups go. I'm guessing that with waiting for signups and allowing a couple of days after nation assignments to practice a bit the very earliest we could get started is the weekend after this one.

[WraithLord]

* I intentionally stayed away from fixing the hosting scheduled upfront (like I see you doing) since the people who normally play at a slower pace might be small/at peace/otherwise in a situation where they're fine with the schedule and thus there is no need to slow the game down. As I said though, I do intend this to be a relaxed game, so rest assured the turns will get longer as needed.

Fair enough. I trust you not to make us slaves to dominions with crazy schedule ;)


* I really see no reason to ban LA R'lyeh after the nerf/fixing of the popkill rate. I will admit not to have played them since, but from theoricrafting I would put them at a mediocre powerlever at best now, and everything I've heard about them from others confirms this. I also see no reason to ban any other nation. (Do you?)

I can't say for sure as with all the changes I lost track of current LA R'lyeh.


* I have no specific start date in mind, I guess it depends on how fast signups go. I'm guessing that with waiting for signups and allowing a couple of days after nation assignments to practice a bit the very earliest we could get started is the weekend after this one.
good :D

[llamabeast]

I will have to think about whether I want to play. However I can definitely sort the mod for you.

[Amhazair]

As promised, a big thanks for the Llama. :)

And, as an incentive to have you join: Look at my revamped OP: Fantomen suggested your version of Burnsabers Holy War mod. You really have to joint the first (possibly) MP game to use it, right? ;)

[WraithLord]

+1 to lesser holy war.

hopefully the Ember lord blinding bug would be fixed by CBM :angel before we start the game.

[P3D]

I sign up to play.

[Baalz]

I'll play

[don_Pablo]

Hi.
Count me in. :)

What about using Asia_twist map?

I'd prefer to play with CBM 1.6 + EMD (latest)

[Aethyr]

I'll play--thanks.

[ghoul31]

I'll join

[LoloMo]

I would like to join. I vote for cbm 1.83 and including the lesser holy war mod

[WraithLord]

It so happens that AsiaTwist is one of my favorites so I vote for it too.

Looks like some fine gentleman have signed up so far :cool:

[DrPraetorious]

I can play.

[NooBliss]

I sign up.
I'd prefer 1.6 with EDM.
Also without holy war, if possible.

[Aethyr]

I'm OK with either CBM 1.6 + the latest version of EDM, or 1.83. I'd like to give the lesser holy war mod a try.

[Thanatus del Dragos]

Wait, take me off the list, I read "Experienced" as "Inexperienced" and I'm a newb.

[DrPraetorious]

Update - I can only play if renaming is on, for management purposes only.

I can avoid using my signature mage-naming scheme (which people probably recognize), but other than that, I simply cannot administer even a mid-game empire if I can't rename my units.

If people *want* to reveal their identities, you can't really stop them anyway.

[Amhazair]

NooBliss and P3D, what would you mind filling me in on your experience level? I don't intend to offend, but since I don't know you guys (yet) and a game of this type just runs a lot better with players of a roughly similar level I'd rather ask, thatn just assume things.

Wellcome to all signups, and also: Hey, Lolomo, long time no see. I thought you weren't around anymore, but looks like I was wrong.

Dr.P.: I suppose we can turn renaming on as long as everyone uses renaming for management purposes only and is very careful not to do anything fancy with it.

[Fantomen]

I prefer renaming on as well, for the same reasons.

[Ossa]

I'd like to join;)

[Amhazair]

Wait, take me off the list, I read "Experienced" as "Inexperienced" and I'm a newb.Thanks for this. For some reason your name seemed very familiar to me, so I signed you up without question. I don't know if I confused you with someone else, or what went on in my brain, but happy to be corrected.

Ossa, same question for you as for others before: I see you signed up in 2008, so you at least have had the time to accumulate quite a bit of experience, but since I don't think I've come across you before I'll ask you to confirm this.

[Valerius]

I think Ossa qualifies (up to him to say of course). But it's kind of funny he keeps getting questioned - check out this conversation (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=772172#post772172) from one of Calahan's newbie games.

[P3D]

NooBliss and P3D, what would you mind filling me in on your experience level? I don't intend to offend, but since I don't know you guys (yet) and a game of this type just runs a lot better with players of a roughly similar level I'd rather ask, thatn just assume things.

About 10 MP games, getting to late-game phase in about half of them.

[Baalz]

(IF YOU DO PUBLICLY POST YOUR PREFERED NATIONS DESPITE THIS WARNING, YOU'LL BE ASSIGNED A RANDOM NATION INSTEAD.)



Alrighty, then I choose Ermor.

[Ossa]

I do keep getting questioned quite offen;)

To make an educated guess - I've played about 30 MP games from start to finish so far. I've won only 2 or 3 of them, but I've also done a few random/no diplo games so far.

So yes, I do think I qualify;)

[Dimaz]

Unfortunately I can't join this great game due to time concerns but I signed for admining it. So please contact me when my duties as admin will be needed. Preferred method of contacting me is by PM here, usually I'm offline 2:00 - 9:30 Moscow time, and keep refreshing forum page at least every few hours during rest of the day.

[Amhazair]

Just popped in to let everyone know I'll be gone for most of the weekend, so feel free to subscribe, discuss and fool around at your leisure, and I'll process it all after the weekend.

[LoloMo]

Wellcome to all signups, and also: Hey, Lolomo, long time no see. I thought you weren't around anymore, but looks like I was wrong.



Yup, still going strong especially with the new cbm changes. Although I've dropped from simultaneously playing 6 games during my newbie year to 3 now, with a soft spot for no trading settings :p

[LoloMo]

Dr.P.: I suppose we can turn renaming on as long as everyone uses renaming for management purposes only and is very careful not to do anything fancy with it.

Maybe we can set out a few standard renaming nomenclature that anybody can adopt:

fe2
fee
FE2
Fe2
fE2
FEE
Fee
f ee
f e2
I guess any of the above would be quite anonymous.

[rabelais]

I'd like to play. I have no vote on mods but will withhold my nation prefs until they settle out.

[Amhazair]

Sasooli has agreed to manage nation assignments, so feel free to PM him your nation choices whenever you feel ready. (No rush, as I imagine exact settings, map and # of players might influence that choice.)

It also looks like the preference is going towards CBM 1.83 and using the Holy War mod. I'll allow the rest of the weekend for further dicussion and cut the knot then.

[Fantomen]

Dr.P.: I suppose we can turn renaming on as long as everyone uses renaming for management purposes only and is very careful not to do anything fancy with it.

Maybe we can set out a few standard renaming nomenclature that anybody can adopt:

fe2
fee
FE2
Fe2
fE2
FEE
Fee
f ee
f e2
I guess any of the above would be quite anonymous.

Of those I'd prefer the first one.

[WraithLord]

Do we have finalization on settings, and, most important for nation selection, mods?
Are we go or no go for lesser holy wars?- Same for CBM 1.83.

Sasooli handles nations assignments and Dimaz will admin, right?

Edit: Sasooli has PMs turned off.
I vote for fe2 as well

[Aethyr]

Perhaps I'm being (over) infuenced by experiences in my last two MP games, but I'd suggest we consider adding the Banned Spells mod.

[WraithLord]

What, no BoT and no AC?- I'm sorry Aethyr, but I wouldn't like to see them banned. I don't think they're OP or abuse-able, they're just extremely annoying - yet part of the fun of this game.

[Aethyr]

It's just a suggestion, I'm not saying they are OP, just an "annoyance" I can do without. :smirk: I'm cool with whatever either way. :)

[WraithLord]

I know you didn't say they're OP, neither did I say that I was thinking that you were thinking that I was saying that you were saying that they were OP :D
Bah, I blame it all on trigger happy Executor ;)

On a more somber tone - I will accept the majority decision here and already stated my preference.

Oh, and I think I managed to PM Sasooli on the other forums.

[Fantomen]

I vote against banning spells.

This look very interesting: http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=377
It's an experiment in improving the spellcasting AI, if Llamabeast thinks it's ready for MP testing I'd be willing to give it a whirl.

[llamabeast]

You know, obviously it's brand new and kind of experimental, but actually I think it might be good for MP testing (once people have had a quick prod in SP). Because it just has two effects:

- Self-buff and summon spells will only be cast when scripted (with the exception of Raise Skeletons), or when the mage has absolutely nothing else to do
- Self-buff spells can be cast repeatedly (with no additional benefit of course). This is obviously undesirable, but in reality I think it hardly matters - you won't script to cast them repeatedly, so it will only come up when the mage has nothing to do, for example as the enemy are running away.

So I am optimistic that it will give a straightforwardly beneficial effect to casting AI. More Lightning Bolts, less Phantasmal Warriors. All your astral mages shouldn't cast Twist Fate, Resist Magic, Astral Shield, Personal Luck every single battle (unless you want them to). And hopefully, your massed ranks of fire mages won't cast Phoenix Pyre!

[WraithLord]

llamabeast, your mod sounds great and I'd like to try it out in SP but I think it's premature to introduce it to this game. I'm more concerned with what we don't know about it than what you told us, i.e. all those possible undesired side effects or possible bugs that needs to be ironed out.

I think a smaller MP game focused on play-testing this mod would be more appropriate. Perhaps as early as a week or two from now you'd have enough feedback to at least "beta" your mod. If it were "beta" then I'd be in favor of adding it, currently it's probably more "alpha" state.

[llamabeast]

WraithLord, I think you're right, this is too big a game to get too experimental on. Just got overexcited. :)

[rabelais]

I think I will have to drop out. My kid is sick again, and I was mostly excited about the holy war mod. Plus I just fell asleep from exhaustion and staled in a different game.

Definitely not time for a new one, sorry for the tease.

[Calahan]

I think some sort of executive decision (as democracy sucks) needs to be made regarding just how ""experimental" this game is going to be in regards to mod testing, and decide whether or not a (R)AND game is the best setting for mod testing.

Since not only are (R)AND games meant to be a more 'serious' type of game than regular games, there is also the simple mod-testing problem of it being a lot more difficult to provide feedback on the mods being tested, as you will often have to wait until the end of the game to do so. Since you can't just post in the relevant mod thread saying "I just had a fight and encountered a bug with XYZ", since a sharp eyed player can easily join the dots to the error report and the in-game battle to work out which nation a player is. (and I've seen countless anonymous ID's given away with careless posts in other threads). You could PM the bug to the mod creator of course to safeguard your ID, but players often get both lazy and forgetful, leading again to the careless thread post problem.


As someone who has done a lot of laborious testing with the casting AI, I really would add a note of caution to using any mod that adds spells to the game. Since while the modding code to add new spells isn't that hard if you know the system, and indeed it might look snazzy to add a few minor spells thinking "that won't do any harm", the actual effects it has on the casting AI in-game need to be thoroughly tested IMO before seeing use in proper/serious (call them what you will) games.

Since I'm sure any Machaka player will testify to how annoying just one spell can be in ruining a perfectly good mage. As they line up their item/spell boosted F5E5D1 Black Sorcerers on the battlefield expecting them to decimate armies with a range of Evo's for minimum fatigue, only to see the casting AI regularly decide that no, I don't want to kill the enemy, as I think the best thing is to utilise the D1 path and summon a skeleton for 30 fatigue instead. And if you haven't encountered similar problems with certain spells (Protection!!) for most nations, then you likely just haven't played the game enough.

But the point of the above example is to highlight how just one spell can screw up an entire nation's mage line-up, and this means adding new spells *really* has to tested in relation to how they affect the casting AI of mages, and not just "what the spell does". During my testing I also found that (unsurprisingly) mage-priests got an even more rotten deal with the casting-AI, as they can be easily distracted from using their mage paths if even one banishment target is on the battlefield (and not just in testing, as skelly spam to distract mage-priests is an example of just one tactic I'm sure many players will testify to having seen/used). And if there are H2 mage-priests around, then one sight of a deomn will see them spamming smite demon all day long (regardless of how high it's MR is)

And having looked at the Holy War mod this morning, I think a few spells there could potentially just make a mage-priest pretty much redundant in battle. As spells like True Heal and Divine Protection could easily see mage-priests happy to spam them all day long in every battle. Which may be good for *just* priests, but not so good for mage-priests, who will likely have something better to do with their mage paths than lightly healing/buffing a handful of troops.


Oddly, I'd be more confident personally about using llama's Well Behaved Wizard Mod than Holy Wars, since WBWM appears to be just a light version of a mod I'm currently working on to improve the casting AI, and as such I know that I've done a fair bit of battlefield testing on the effects that the changes have on the casting AI. But this confidence is purely my own, and there's no way I would project it outwards by saying my mod is ready for testing in a real game. And certainly not outside of a game with the stark proclaimer of *This is a very casual game to test an extremely experimental mod, and the consequences it will have on a proper game are totally unknown. As such please don't play if you don't like the thought of your game being potentially ruined due to changes the mod makes to how spell-casting works*


I'm not sure if I will be playing in this game yet, but whether or not I do isn't relevant to what I've said above. I'm all for creating mods and seeing them get some air time for testing, but like I said at the very top, I think some clarification is needed from those in charge on what the guinea pig setting for this game will be (since don't forget, if the game ends up using CBM 1.83, then there are still sections of that which are comparatively un-tested as well)

[llamabeast]

Well, Holy War has already seen a fair bit of MP testing. The new version is just a slightly toned down version of the well tested version. I don't remember having any issues in previous games with the mod, and certainly no-one has reported anything about AI problems.

[llamabeast]

I think I will play in this game after all, if there's still space for me.

My votes (predictably) are for CBM1.83 and for Holy War, since I think Burnsaber did a nice job on it and it's interesting.

[WraithLord]

Amazing how you manage to articulate things I think even before I manage to find out exactly what's itching me :)

Oh and due to your post I'd like to change my vote re. holy war. I prefer to play it safe, just CBM 1.83 + the two nation mods.
Edit: llamabeast, if you are gonna play and think holy war is safe then you have my vote :)
I'm now officially seconding your vote.

Amhazair, you better decide something soon before we vote our selves to death on the mods :eek:

[llamabeast]

Oh gosh how confusing! Well, just to say I'm happy either way. :)

[LoloMo]

I'm sure we'll have fun whichever mod we have. I'm still for including lesser holy war, and the AI mod. As experienced players, we'll adapt and exploit the hell out of any loopholes. And make sure we win the battle by round 5!! :D

[Amhazair]

First off, for those looking for answers from me: I did say I'd be gone for the weekend, and would see about making final decisions after getting back, so shame on you for all your impatience! ;)

You do have a good point about casting AI behaviour Calahan, (which I admit I did not think about) but since all people who expressed an opinion before were in favour of using the Holy War mod, and since Llamabest assures us there were no issues with the previous well-tested version that's good enough for me.

I'll update the OP to refelct we'll be using CBM 1.83 and the Holy war mod.

With Llamabeast joining and Rabelais dropping out (Have a good rest I'd say :) ) we have 14 players so far. (If Calahan confirms participation.) While there's obviously room for more I see no specific reason to hang around waiting for more with a nice field of players allready assembled and no new signups the last two days. I propose we start making our nation choices and send them to Sasooli. (I asked him to turn on his PM's). Anyone new signing up before nations are assigned is obviously still free to join.

In the meantime (and assuming no more people sign up: Any map suggestions? From the ones I have on my disk Cradle of Dominion seems the best fit. (Rather roomy, but not too much so, and not too many water provinces.)

[Amhazair]

(IF YOU DO PUBLICLY POST YOUR PREFERED NATIONS DESPITE THIS WARNING, YOU'LL BE ASSIGNED A RANDOM NATION INSTEAD.)



Alrighty, then I choose Ermor.You know, you could have just posted saying you wanted a random nation and have achieved the same result without having me be utterly mad at you for flaunting my authority. :p

[Fantomen]

Not only is Sasoolis PM:s turned off here, his inbox at dom3mods is full. Arrgh!

[Amhazair]

Hah! Probably everyone in this game first asked him to turn his Pm's on here, and then sent in his nation choices in his next PM. :) Should be fun.

[Ragnoff]

Full up yet?

Random nation is fine if there are any left

[Calahan]

First off, for those looking for answers from me: I did say I'd be gone for the weekend, and would see about making final decisions after getting back, so shame on you for all your impatience! ;)

Disappointed to hear about your lack of omnipresence. But Dimaz might have been around (although not sure what decision making powers you've given him during the design stage)

You do have a good point about casting AI behaviour Calahan, (which I admit I did not think about) but since all people who expressed an opinion before were in favour of using the Holy War mod, and since Llamabest assures us there were no issues with the previous well-tested version that's good enough for me.

I'll update the OP to refelct we'll be using CBM 1.83 and the Holy war mod.
I'd be interested in knowing what games the mod has seen action in, and in particular what nations and players were involved. As nations without (important) mage-priests like (all LA) Man, Jomon, Pangaea won't be affected much at all by a load of new holy spells. But the likes of Arco, Mictlan, TC to name just a few of the many in LA with mage-priests, could have they top line mages severely affected by a load of new spells. Plus some players don't tend to scrutinise the battle replays close enough to report feedback on this sort of thing, as it's nowhere near the same as testing units. Since if you got royally stuffed in a fight, you're unlikely to replay it several times to notice your mage-priests casting junk, and hence report it as a problem

And I hate to sound like the elitist jerk I know I am, but there are very few players I trust when it comes to testing and providing proper feedback, and that list narrows to less than the digits on one hand when it comes to observing casting AI behaviour. Since when wars are going well and you are tanking someone hard, who bothers to take the time to notice what your mage priests were casting after the 6th round. And while I haven't tested Holy Wars mod yet to know for certain how it affects nations (but I will try to soon), I do know enough about the problems with mage-priests in general to know you likely can't just add new holy spells and expect there not to be potentially adverse side-effects. Especially for 0 fatigue spells (I'd be surprised if Faith Healing wasn't very popular with the casting AI).

It way well be that most nations aren't that effected at all, and most may well benefit. But if just one nation/player has their game severely compromised or even ruined by these new spells due to no fault of their own, then I for one would find that very unfair, and even wrong. And that's regardless of whether I was that nation or I was fighting it (since I certainly don't want to win fights or wars due to problems caused by a mod. And I'd rather be that nation in that case for the challenge, rather than fighting against it with an unfair advantage)

But democracy has spoken it seems, even though democracy often just sees people voting "we want more" (which is one reason why it sucks). Do you want more spells? "Yes". Do you want the government to mint lots and lots of extra money and give it freely to everyone? "Yes, that sounds great". More != good, as it's almost never that straightforward.

Anyway I've said my bit, so I'll shut up and leave it there I think. :)

(If Calahan confirms participation.)
I'll hopefully be able to let you know in a few days. Also, I think you've left a few players off the list (Ghoul31, NooBliss), unless they are still awaiting clearance.

In the meantime (and assuming no more people sign up: Any map suggestions? From the ones I have on my disk Cradle of Dominion seems the best fit. (Rather roomy, but not too much so, and not too many water provinces.)

Here are two wraparounds to consider.

Riverlands (231+17) - http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43606

or if you want a tighter fit

GreeeceStain (181+18) - http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44078


The Wiki has a good range of maps to browse through (and the llamaserver has most as well)
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Category:Map


Edit - Are caps going to be VP marked? and are starts going to be random, or is someone going to place them? If the latter, then the former will decide the range of people who can do that. Since if caps are not VP marked, you need someone not playing to fix the starts. And VP caps also means "capture and hold capitals for X turns" is a trickier option, as the game auto-ends once the target is reached (although there are ways around this by setting the in-game requirement to all VP's, but then using out-of-game requirements at half+1 pr whatever. Which is no probelm as long as players are aware the in-game winning line on the VP-graph isn't the actual winning line. If that makes sense)

[Amhazair]

Not at all full. (In fact, up to 10 spots still available. :) ) Might I encquire about your experience level though? As explained before, this really isn't the best game for inexperienced players to participate in.

Edit: Ghoul has backed out after a PM from me, and am still waiting for a response from Noobliss about his experience level. (As I don't know him at all.)

[P3D]

In the meantime (and assuming no more people sign up: Any map suggestions? From the ones I have on my disk Cradle of Dominion seems the best fit. (Rather roomy, but not too much so, and not too many water provinces.)

The Cradle map will give two or three players poor starting locations (3-4 low-resource neighbors). What about the (fixed) Riverlands map?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43606

[Sasooli]

Not only is Sasoolis PM:s turned off here, his inbox at dom3mods is full. Arrgh!

Oops! Yes, it looks like my inbox on the other forum is also now full of people demanding I actually do something useful over here.

My PMs are now enabled on this forum (I believe!) so everyone please send me your nation choice. I'll then perform some wizardry to combine them all in a way that leaves as many as possible of you feeling cheated and vowing eternal vengeance on me and my potential descendants.

[Dimaz]

Noobliss definitely has enough exp for this game.

[Amhazair]

Noobliss definitely has enough exp for this game.All right, I'll take your word for it. (You are the all-powerfull adming after all. :D Added to the list.

[Here are two wraparounds to consider.

Riverlands (231+17) - http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43606

or if you want a tighter fit

GreeeceStain (181+18) - http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44078 From just looking at the map image GreeceStain appears to work best with exactly 18 players. I do like Riverlands though. Again, a bit roomy right now, (16.5 prov/player if we stay at 15) but not too much so, and offers enough room if a couple more players sign up. Unless I hear protests or we somehow manage to fill up to 20+ players I say we stick with that one. I see no specific reason to fix start location if the map is balanced, but if others have a different opinion that's fine with me too.


Lots of words about VPIn my opinion managing to take half+1 capitals in a competitive field pretty much means you've won, don't really feel the need to add to the bookkeeping with a 'hold for 3 turns' clause. Neither do I mind the fact Capital locations will be known if marked as VP's mysels. But, once again, I'm more than happy to change my mind if others prefer other conditions. (Hence the ? behind my proposal in the OP.)

[Amhazair]

My PMs are now enabled on this forum (I believe!) Indeed they are. (Just tested it ;))

I propose everyone submits their choices by wednesday, that way Sasooli can perform his magic and assign nations by wednesday evening, leaving us a couple of days to test things for a weekend start. (If that fits Sasooli's schedule of course.) Sounds fair to everyone?

[llamabeast]

The only problem, which I should have mentioned, is that I am away Friday lunchtime until Monday evening (going to Paris!). But I can find a sub for the first couple of turns.

[WraithLord]

I prefer riverlands, 9VPs, marked as capitals and no hold for X turns clause.

I'm sorry, I tried anonymous VPs in GoTM and I find it to be too much of a hassle. It's my personal taste but I think the game already requires quite a lot of attention and MM. No need to force players to go crazy with scouts or severely punish those that fail to become all knowing. I have the same gripe with graphs off.

[Sasooli]

I propose everyone submits their choices by wednesday, that way Sasooli can perform his magic and assign nations by wednesday evening, leaving us a couple of days to test things for a weekend start. (If that fits Sasooli's schedule of course.) Sounds fair to everyone?

That works for me. I'll wait until Wednesday, and anyone who hasn't sent me their choice by then will get a random nation unless they let me know they need more time.

I've had a couple of questions about my methods of assignment. Here are the answers, though if Amhazair/Dimaz object I'm happy to backtrack.

Q: How many nations can we put on the 'definitely not' list?
A: A maximum of two.

Q: Will conflicts be solved by coin toss?
A: Not necessarily. I will make it a priority to try and give everyone one of their first three choices, if at all possible.

Q: Hypothetically speaking and purely for academic interest, do you know what the average bribe was for fixing nation assignments in PBEM games last season?
A: I believe it was in the region of 10 astral pearls per game, though bribe size was strongly correlated with physical attractiveness of the bribee.

[Amhazair]

That works for me. I'll wait until Wednesday, and anyone who hasn't sent me their choice by then will get a random nation unless they let me know they need more time.

I've had a couple of questions about my methods of assignment. Here are the answers, though if Amhazair/Dimaz object I'm happy to backtrack.

Q: How many nations can we put on the 'definitely not' list?
A: A maximum of two.

Q: Will conflicts be solved by coin toss?
A: Not necessarily. I will make it a priority to try and give everyone one of their first three choices, if at all possible.

Q: Hypothetically speaking and purely for academic interest, do you know what the average bribe was for fixing nation assignments in PBEM games last season?
A: I believe it was in the region of 10 astral pearls per game, though bribe size was strongly correlated with physical attractiveness of the bribee.I totally agree with all these answers, especially for the second question. (A bit more work for you, but that's why I hired expert help of course. :) )

As for the last question, with no particular reason in mind I suggest you ask Llamabeast what benefit he got out of gaining my gratitude once upon a time.

[llamabeast]

Sasooli has drunk some!

[Amhazair]

I prefer riverlands, 9VPs, marked as capitals and no hold for X turns clause.

I'm sorry, I tried anonymous VPs in GoTM and I find it to be too much of a hassle. It's my personal taste but I think the game already requires quite a lot of attention and MM. No need to force players to go crazy with scouts or severely punish those that fail to become all knowing. I have the same gripe with graphs off.I would have rounded 15/2+1 to 8 myself, but sure. Since no one else expressed another opinion (on this or the other settings) I've removed all '?'s from my OP. (Due to this overwhelming lack of unsupportiveness I can only assume I'm the master of inventing the perfect settings on my own. :angel Also, I really like to make up words.)

[llamabeast]

9 capitals sounds like a high bar to set, although I don't think it matters because once someone's got 6 or so I expect it will probably be obvious that they've won anyway (i.e. no objections).

[Calahan]

I prefer riverlands, 9VPs, marked as capitals and no hold for X turns clause.

I'm sorry, I tried anonymous VPs in GoTM and I find it to be too much of a hassle. It's my personal taste but I think the game already requires quite a lot of attention and MM. No need to force players to go crazy with scouts or severely punish those that fail to become all knowing. I have the same gripe with graphs off.I would have rounded 15/2+1 to 8 myself, but sure. Since no one else expressed another opinion (on this or the other settings) I've removed all '?'s from my OP. (Due to this overwhelming lack of unsupportiveness I can only assume I'm the master of inventing the perfect settings on my own. :angel Also, I really like to make up words.)
Or maybe some people just like thinking long and hard about these things :) as some of us are getting on a bit now, and can't handle this modern quick thinking malarkey :(

If opinions are still allowed though, then for capital requirements I'd prefer 50%+1 rather than anything approaching 60%+, if 50%+1 is the minimum offer on the table that is. As given the field we have lined up it should probably be nearer 40% IMO, as the higher the quality of players, the more chance of a game dragging on forever if the goal posts are too high.

For the map, Riverlands looks a good choice. If all options for starts are open, then in order I'd prefer

1 - Non-marked VP capitals with preset starts done by a non-player.
2 - VP marked capitals with preset starts done by someone (note this can be a player)
3 - Non-marked VP capitals with random starts.


What should be avoided at all costs though is VP marked capitals with random starts. As then rush nations could start just 2 provinces away from a neighbour, and given the bulleyes marking, they can beeline for someone's capital and be attacking it on turn 4. [Calahan puts his broken record on again]. And rush nations certainly shouldn't be given this sort of unfair help and advantage from just the start locations. [Calahan turns off his broken record]


Also, I'd like to suggest a few further rule requests that I've found help games run smoother, especially (R)AND games. (all taken from my soon to be published book "Good Admining 101". Pre-orders currently being taken :))

1 - That the admin makes it perfectly clear that nobody is to turn AI without prior notification to the admin, and only to the admin (and certainly not on the thread). And that everyone should fight until the last man unless they have a very good in-game reason not to. (out-of-game reasons are a different matter)

2 - Breaking of the no-communication rule, or revealing your ID, should result in immediate expulsion from the game.

3 - Player ID's are only revealed when a nation is defeated, and not if a player sub outs (as this makes it too easy to guess ID's by knowing which player is no longer in the game)

4 - Requests for delays and hosting interval increases are to be PM-ed to the admin only, and not posted on the thread in any way. As any thread posts relating to either makes it very easy to guess ID's.

These rules (mainly in relation to 1+2) should apply to all players, and nobody should be exempt from them in any way, regardless of who they are, or who they think they are.


Edit.

ps. @ llamabeast - Will you be able to fix the Ember Lord causing blindness before the game starts? Or if not, maybe increase the cost a bit to reflect this (since I understand you are making a unique combined mod for this game, so that change won't affect other games)

ps2. I checked the Riverlands map last night (the "crown5" version of it), and there are one or two errors that need correcting, and one or two other things to tidy up a bit. Which I will probably volunteer to do myself unless someone else does.

[Amhazair]

If opinions are still allowed though, then for capital requirements I'd prefer 50%+1 rather than anything approaching 60%+, if 50%+1 is the minimum offer on the table that is. As given the field we have lined up it should probably be nearer 40% IMO, as the higher the quality of players, the more chance of a game dragging on forever if the goal posts are too high.Changed to 8 since you me and Llama are all of the same opinion and the three of us together trump even Wraithlords opinion. :)

For the map, Riverlands looks a good choice. If all options for starts are open, then in order I'd prefer

1 - Non-marked VP capitals with preset starts done by a non-player.
2 - VP marked capitals with preset starts done by someone (note this can be a player)
3 - Non-marked VP capitals with random starts.


What should be avoided at all costs though is VP marked capitals with random starts. As then rush nations could start just 2 provinces away from a neighbour, and given the bulleyes marking, they can beeline for someone's capital and be attacking it on turn 4. [Calahan puts his broken record on again]. And rush nations certainly shouldn't be given this sort of unfair help and advantage from just the start locations. [Calahan turns off his broken record]My personal preference is to heve VP's marked, mainly to avoid bookkeeping hassle, also since intelligence gathering is harder as it is in RAND games. I don't object to fixed starting locations. If you want to I hereby give you leave to arrange start locations. (Though you might want to wait till signups are finalised.) Possibly at the same time you do this:ps2. I checked the Riverlands map last night (the "crown5" version of it), and there are one or two errors that need correcting, and one or two other things to tidy up a bit. Which I will probably volunteer to do myself unless someone else does.

Also, while I agree that it's very scant consolation for the rushee, I can't remember the last time I've seen a nation optimized for an early rush actually win a game. So it might* be argued that rushers in fact do need an unfair advantage.

* I'm still not arguing it though. Just playing devil's advocate for a moment.

[WraithLord]

hehe, just one of you three is enough to trump my opinion ;)

8 VPs are cool :)
Option 2 (2 - VP marked capitals with preset starts done by someone ) is most preferable to me though the others are also ok (if somewhat time consuming due to added book-keeping).

Calahan's rules are golden and I know from experience that he's very good at balancing and fixing maps :up:

[Calahan]

If we end up going for "VP marked caps with preset start locations" (and it very much looks like we are), then I have no problem with sorting the map out. I'll obviously wait for recruitment to finish first though :) I'll probably have to wait until the final nation list is published as well, as if R'yleh or Marignon are in the game, then special arrangements have to be made regarding their start locations. (not sure if Atlantis need a coastal start as well. I think they don't, but logically they should?!?)

Also, the Riverlands map (like a lot of Elmokki's maps) has a number of provinces tagged as 'many sites' (they appear on the map as sort of white ruins/buildings/towers), which basically means is there more chance of the province containing a full set of four sites (not sure if it means higher chance of rare sites or not). I'm not sure what you want me to do with these provinces, but the likely options will be...

1 - Remove them
2 - Ignore them
3 - Try to make sure none of them are starting locations

And that's about it. I already know I won't have any chance of trying to 'balance' these provinces in relation to the start locations. So if they stay then some start locations might well be adjacent to 1 or 2 of them, and some starts several provinces away from any, as these 'many sites' provinces are not spaced out on the map.

For the starts themselves, I'll try to make sure everyone has between 4-6 adjacent provinces to their cap (if only 4 then I'll try my best to ensure 2 are mountains or forests). And that all caps are at least 3 provinces apart, ie. X-1-2-3-X (or possibly 4 on this map, as there are a lot of choke points).

Hhhhmmm, think that's about it.


....I'm still not arguing it though.
But I like a good argument, and haven't had one in ages on the Dom forums. Guess I'll have to go start one somewhere else then, as you are no fun :(

[Sasooli]

Sasooli has drunk some!

For a couple of minutes I thought you were accusing me of being drunk for talking about bribes. But yes, I sampled one of the biertjes and they were heel lekker Amhazair.

[Sasooli]

Just a reminder to send in your nation choices today. The following people still haven't contacted me:

Llamabeast, Baalz, Ossa, DrPraetorius, Noobliss

If you're one of these and thought you had sent me your pick, let me know. It's possible it got lost in the PM confusion.

[Fantomen]

Atlantis does need a coastal start iirc, at least the game itself always places it in a coastal province. About the "manysites", my preference would be to remove them.

[Amhazair]

Atlantis does need a coastal start iirc, at least the game itself always places it in a coastal province. About the "manysites", my preference would be to remove them.I'm quite certain that's indeed the case in regard to Atlantis. As for the manysites my personal preference would be to ignore them - I'm not personally worried about perfect balance, and the occasional plum falling into your lap is allways fun - but I believe most players, competitively cutthroat as they are, will prefer to remove them, so go with that I guess.

[llamabeast]

Okay, in fact we won't need a special mod for this game. The mods will be (I believe, it's Amhazair's say after all):

CBM 1.84 (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47252)
Holy War: Lesser Edition (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47250)
Expanded Nations Pack 2 (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47230)

[WraithLord]

But, but wait a sec. If ENP is used then can we choose mod nations from it?- I was working under the assumption that only the 2 mod nations Amhazair suggested were available.

[llamabeast]

No, only the ones Amhazair listed - I'm only suggesting using the pack because it's convenient and the fact that it includes stuff we're not using does no harm.

[Sasooli]

Ok, nation assignments are done. I've PM'ed Damiz and am sending out the individual notices now - flood control on PMs is a bit of a ***** when you have 20 messages to send!

Everyone has one of their first two nation picks, which I think counts as success.

[Sasooli]

Ok I have to go out for a bit, but I'll send the last few nation picks when I get back in a couple of hours.

[NooBliss]

Well... Having looked at the holy war mod again, I like it even less than before. If it's not too late to sign out, I'd like to do so.

If that will cause you guys to waste time looking for another player, I can stay tho.

[Calahan]

Well... Having looked at the holy war mod again, I like it even less than before. If it's not too late to sign out, I'd like to do so.

If that will cause you guys to waste time looking for another player, I can stay tho.
I can't say I'm too fond of the Holy Wars mod either, or if I'm honest, the changes CBM 1.8+ has made (to 1.6). But I promised myself I'd try one game with CBM 1.8+ to see if I liked it, mainly out of loyalty, with this game being that one game. So right now I'm just viewing Holy Wars in the same way, with this game being the one test it gets.

Although if there is a 11th hour vote to remove Holy Wars, then I would raise my hand in favour. (although that's probably unlikely now that the nations are decided)


@ Dimaz/Sasooli - Can on of you please post the final list of nations, as I need to know what nations are in the game to arrange the map. Although just saying "No Marignon, R'yleh or Atlantis" or "Just R'yleh" will also be good enough if you don't want to give out the full list for whatever reason.


And Re: Atlantis and coastal start.
I think they get priority for a coastal start if one is available, but unlike water nations or LA Marignon, the game won't crash if there isn't one available. Or at least that was my understanding for the Prep2 game, where LA Marignon needed to be given a special neighbouring water province.

[WraithLord]

how much time do we have to test builds?

Oh and when creating pretenders should we be careful re. order of enabling mods?- as in CBM 1.84,Holy War: Lesser Edition and last - Expanded Nations Pack 2

[llamabeast]

Re mod load order: If you are playing a mod nation then CBM needs to be loaded before the mod nation. Otherwise it doesn't matter.

[Calahan]

how much time do we have to test builds?
WL, for testing you get 3 minutes starting....now!


Although speaking of testing, can I please ask everyone who is testing to use the attached map. It's not the final version for the game, as it has no fixed starts. But I have hopefully fixed the few remaining connection and terrain tag errors it had.

And if anyone spots an error can they please post it (or PM me). Or even if you think something might be an error, please also report it. As I'd happily have dozens of false error reports if it means also netting the one that fixes a bug. As it's rare one person can find all the bugs, as I find if you don't spot an error straight away, then you become blind to it forever after. And since map bugs can't really be fixed once the game is running, it's now during the pre-game stage that they need to be spotted.

[Colonial]

Hello guys.

I'm a noob, but have had the idea kicking around the back of my head for a while to write up a LP of a veterins game with a target audience of the more committed set of new players who might want to become veterins one day (as it stands, the only LPs available are of newbie games aimed at people thinking of buying the game). This game looks like a nice opportunity to go for it. the plan would be to compile information while the game is im progress, and only begin to publish the LP after the game has finished.

To do this I would need 1-3 of you lot to volunteer to my new-player analysis (I would write up the one who survives longest), and then send me an email every turn including: both parts of the turn file (for before and after) and a quick summery of what messages you sent. I would also need you're pretender file at the beginning of the game.

you'd get your name in lights for no effort on your part, and we as a community would get a good resource for noobs to make their game more rigorous.

If other players are ok with this, my email address is in the database.

[Amhazair]

Well... Having looked at the holy war mod again, I like it even less than before. If it's not too late to sign out, I'd like to do so.

If that will cause you guys to waste time looking for another player, I can stay tho.Since we haven't started yet, I see no reason to stop you. Little point joining a game when you prefer other settings. Confirm your decision fast though, since it will affect Calahans Capital-fixing work.

I can't say I'm too fond [...]the changes CBM 1.8+ has made (to 1.6). But I promised myself I'd try one game with CBM 1.8+ to see if I liked it[...]Pretty much the same for me, though less empathically than in your case I think. Let's see what 1.8 brings.

Although if there is a 11th hour vote to remove Holy Wars, then I would raise my hand in favour. (although that's probably unlikely now that the nations are decided)Yeah, probably a bad idea after nation picks. I don't really have an oppinion about the mod yet, allthough the fact that it (supposedly) pays off to site-search holy now alone gives it a plus in my books.


@ Dimaz/Sasooli - Can on of you please post the final list of nations, as I need to know what nations are in the game to arrange the map. Although just saying "No Marignon, R'yleh or Atlantis" or "Just R'yleh" will also be good enough if you don't want to give out the full list for whatever reason.I had originally asked Sasooli to only PM players their own nation and a full list to Dimaz thinking it would allow till game start for late signups. Capital fixing obviously changes that and I intended to ask Sasooli to just post/let you know a full nation list so you could get to work on the map, but I seem to not have gotting around to it somehow.

how much time do we have to test builds?
I'd say we start saturday at the earliest, allthough with Calahan having to wait for nation confirmation to fix the map, having to wait for the map to start the game, and then waiting for all pretenders to be sent in it might run a bit later.

[Sasooli]

I believe I've told Calahan what he needs to know.

He suggested I post the full nation list here anyway, partly so people aren't tempted to leave Pretender design until the last minute so they can look at who else is playing. I'm happy to do that if Damiz and Amhazair have no objection?

[Amhazair]

Sure, go ahead I'd say.

[Amhazair]

Hello guys.

I'm a noob, but have had the idea kicking around the back of my head for a while to write up a LP of a veterins game with a target audience of the more committed set of new players who might want to become veterins one day (as it stands, the only LPs available are of newbie games aimed at people thinking of buying the game). This game looks like a nice opportunity to go for it. the plan would be to compile information while the game is im progress, and only begin to publish the LP after the game has finished.

To do this I would need 1-3 of you lot to volunteer to my new-player analysis (I would write up the one who survives longest), and then send me an email every turn including: both parts of the turn file (for before and after) and a quick summery of what messages you sent. I would also need you're pretender file at the beginning of the game.

you'd get your name in lights for no effort on your part, and we as a community would get a good resource for noobs to make their game more rigorous.

If other players are ok with this, my email address is in the database.

This certainly is a nice idea, and I would not object to it in principle. You are aware though that this is an anonymous game, and thus you should keep peoples identities secret, and not even hint anything you might know or have learned until after the game is finished?

I'm also not sure that this is the first choice of game to comment on, as it takes away the entire diplomacy and trade aspect of the game. (It also means no one would have to summarize messages, since there would be none. :D)

[Dimaz]

Jomon player asked me to post the following information about the problem he has with the mod (I rephrased/removed some portions of his message to protect anonymity - even writing style can reveal the author):

Checking out Jomon, Broken Swords to test my pretender build I noticed that I had a Woodsmen Blowpipe recruitable in addition to the units I should have. <...>
I spotted these lines at the list of recruitables in 1.4 that wasn't there in 1.2:

--addrecunit 2285 -- Jikininki
--addrecunit 2287 -- Akurojin
#addrecunit "woodsman blowpipe"
Jikininki, Akurojin are new summons in 1.4. I don't know if they're supposed to be in that part of the dm file or not. They certainy don't show up as recruitable in the game itself.

[NooBliss]

Yes sorry guys, I'm out. My mistake, should've checked the mod before entering.

+1 on the 1.8 CBM thoughts. :)

[Colonial]

I'm also not sure that this is the first choice of game to comment on, as it takes away the entire diplomacy and trade aspect of the game. (It also means no one would have to summarize messages, since there would be none. )

As I mentioned, I wouldn't publish anything until after you all had finished. as for no deplomacy: seems to be quite a common choice in vets games, and the no messages would be vary handy...

so yeah, if anyone is up for it, drop me a PM

[Amhazair]

Jomon player asked me to post the following information about the problem he has with the mod (I rephrased/removed some portions of his message to protect anonymity - even writing style can reveal the author):

Checking out Jomon, Broken Swords to test my pretender build I noticed that I had a Woodsmen Blowpipe recruitable in addition to the units I should have. <...>
I spotted these lines at the list of recruitables in 1.4 that wasn't there in 1.2:

--addrecunit 2285 -- Jikininki
--addrecunit 2287 -- Akurojin
#addrecunit "woodsman blowpipe"
Jikininki, Akurojin are new summons in 1.4. I don't know if they're supposed to be in that part of the dm file or not. They certainy don't show up as recruitable in the game itself. I have now checked both mod nations, and while I didn't see anything wrong with Ulm Reborn, I did notice Jomon's Cur Scout has 40 leadership, which I'm pretty certain he's not supposed to have.

I'm also not sure that this is the first choice of game to comment on, as it takes away the entire diplomacy and trade aspect of the game. (It also means no one would have to summarize messages, since there would be none. )

As I mentioned, I wouldn't publish anything until after you all had finished. as for no deplomacy: seems to be quite a common choice in vets games, and the no messages would be vary handy...

so yeah, if anyone is up for it, drop me a PMYeah, but appart from publishing the thing you might also comment on something you saw in a certain battle of ask questions about it in some other thread that might give someone's identity away. You'd have to be very careful about everything you say.

Having said that, if you're certain you can protect anonimity I have no objections. Does anyone else? (If anyone does that's fine with me, I think we all have to be on the same page for this one.) IF we do this I think it best that no one says in public he's participating, instead just PM'ing you about it, as an extra layer of 'protection.'

[llamabeast]

Yep, confirmed that Jomon has the two issues listed: Cur Scout has leadership, Woodsman Blowpipe recruitable (the Jikininki and Akurojin are correct). I've reported these to Sombre.

Shouldn't present a problem though, so long as the Jomon player doesn't either use the Curs as commanders or recruit Blowpipes. Be good, Jomon player! (and... am I talking to myself? Hmm...)

[Aethyr]

I get a nagot gick fel! error with CBM 1.84, Holy War LE, and mod pack 2 enabled when choosing any age (early, mid, late) in pretender design.

[llamabeast]

You shouldn't (just tested again to double check). Make sure though that you have the latest version of the Expanded Nations Packs, they changed yesterday to v1.01. And make doubly sure that you have no other mods enabled.

[Aethyr]

Thanks Llama, I had not seen your most recent update. :)

[Calahan]

I'm going to try and find some time in work today to have a stab at the map, otherwise it might have to wait until late tomorrow, as I'm away for the night. Although I need either Dimaz or Sasooli to let me know if NooBliss's departure has changed anything regarding the nations in the game I need to know about to sort the map. And maybe confirming the final number of players would be useful as well :) (just in case I can't count, or one has unthinkably slipped off Amhazair's well oiled OP)

Although the game can be created (for Pretender uploading) without the final .map file, which might be an idea to speed things along (just remember to switch off the autostart until the map is done)


Edit - Oh, and attached is a slightly updated version of the map file, as I spotted two connections errors. (although still no pre-set starts of course). The image file is the same as before, so isn't included in this attachment. The .map file overwrites the previous .map file I attached (as I don't want to litter you harddrives with map files)

[Sasooli]

Here's the final nation list according to me:

Tien Chi
R'lyeh
Atlantis
Utgard
Mictlan
Patala
Ctis
Jomon (Broken Swords)
Ulm
Abysia
Arco
Bogarus
Marignon
Caelum

[Baalz]

Hello guys.

I'm a noob, but have had the idea kicking around the back of my head for a while to write up a LP of a veterins game with a target audience of the more committed set of new players who might want to become veterins one day (as it stands, the only LPs available are of newbie games aimed at people thinking of buying the game). This game looks like a nice opportunity to go for it. the plan would be to compile information while the game is im progress, and only begin to publish the LP after the game has finished.

To do this I would need 1-3 of you lot to volunteer to my new-player analysis (I would write up the one who survives longest), and then send me an email every turn including: both parts of the turn file (for before and after) and a quick summery of what messages you sent. I would also need you're pretender file at the beginning of the game.

you'd get your name in lights for no effort on your part, and we as a community would get a good resource for noobs to make their game more rigorous.

If other players are ok with this, my email address is in the database.

FYI I'm doing something very similar, for similar reasons profiling a game I'm in which is in its final stages (been working on it for months). Didn't want you to feel like I stole your thunder once you get dug in here. PM me if you're interested in collaborating on that, or by all means feel free to go forward on your own and I'll volunteer to participate on this one.

[Colonial]

Thanks for the brillient reply folks. I got 3 PMs right away, so, barring a last minute veto by someone I will be going ahead with it. On the other hand, 3 empires is about the upper limit I am willing to faff about with and store on my machine, so your chance to put your name in lights is over, I'm afraid.

@ Baalz

thanks for the heads up and the spoiler on things to come. this is certainly an area where there is room for more than one contribution, and I will still have the distinction of being the first vets LP from a newbies perspective, which I am happy with.

If that is an offer to be a guinea pig, as I've said, three will be plenty, I'm afraid. I don't have as much time on my hands as that crazy guy on something awful who did an entire 10 player game:(. thanks for offering though.

--------------------------

So yeah, for the first 20-30 turns I think I will limit myself to gathering all the turn files, then have a look at writing something then. wish me luck...

[Calahan]

@ All

A quick update on the map before I disappear for the night. I made some attempts to sort the starts out today, but I didn't get very far due to a stream of constant interruptions. (annoying people wanting me to do the job I'm paid for :mad:)

Although what time I did spend on the starts was enough to convince me that given the water distribution on the map, I'm going to have a hard time finding a spot for the lone water nation. As such I've taken a map editors decision to change the 2-province island (95+101) in the biggest lake to water provinces, so that R'yleh have an obvious and convenient (to everyone!) starting location. (it's marked with a ruin).


I will hopefully have time to sort the starts out tomorrow evening when I get home. Although if anyone objects to the changes I've made, please can you let Dimaz know so that he can inform me (I'm saying to let Dimaz know, as now that the nations are done, it's probably best not to post anything in the thread that doesn't have to be posted)


The new edited map is attached. I've also renamed it to reflect that the map has been altered specifically for this game.

[Amhazair]

I was about to put up the game tonight (After checking with Dimaz, he prefers me to do it and just give him the password.) so people could start uplading pretenders, but it looks like none of the 3 mods we're using has already been uploaded, and I'm way too tired to go about figuring out what to upload, let alone writing the fancy description and finding shrapnel post numbers and what not. (Damn you, Llama! Why are you so organised? If you hadn't written all that stuff down so nicely I wouldn't have known I had to go to all that trouble.) I'll put it up first thing after getting home from work tomorrow. (Early afternoon)

In the meantime, for people in the know: Do I only have to upload the dm file of a mod to the Llamaserver (Since the other part is 'just' images I believe.) or does the server need the corresponding folder(s) too?

[Amhazair]

The game is up. (Temporarily using a previously-uploaded version of the Riverlands map, will change that as soon as Calahan finishes assigning start positions.) Time to upload preternders. Hurray!

By the way... I hope I guessed right here: In the meantime, for people in the know: Do I only have to upload the dm file of a mod to the Llamaserver? If not we might have a game running with 3 faulty mods. Feel free to correct my humble endeavours and/or mock me mercilessly if necessary.

[Calahan]

I'm back a bit earlier today than I planned, so I hope I shouldn't have any problem getting the map sorted by the end of the day. But I do have two other problems though.

***Rant Warning*** / ***TL;DR Warning***

The first is in response to this, and regarding the Expanded Nation pack this game is set to use.
... I'm only suggesting using the pack because it's convenient and the fact that it includes stuff we're not using does no harm.
Sorry llama, but "does no harm" isn't quite correct, as the Expanded Nation pack creates a lot of new units and summons that can be wished for. (I've tested this to be correct)

And while I haven't examined every single nation in the pack, my instincts tell me that given "balance" isn't always a mod creators first instincts when their creative juices are flowing, there's a good chance somewhere in that mod pack is a nation with a "summon super-monster" spell that summons an uber SC that is completely OP, and which is probably well worth 100 pearls in this game. Or a similar monster added as a Pretender (as you can wish for them as well)

And I see no reason why being able to wish for "something" connected to one of the mod nations in that pack (and not in this game) should be an option in this game. Plus the ever present problem with mods of something being overlooked which screws up a unit already in the game by giving it weapons (for example) that it shouldn't have. (like the example of New Jomon having Blowpipe recruits and a Scout with leadership)

So I for one would prefer to use the New Jomon nation mod rather than the Extended Nation pack (since that adds who knows what to the game via Wishing). As that gets rid of the wishing problem, and minimises the chance of yet-to-be-discovered bugs.

-----

My second problem is again with the Holy Wars mod, since has anyone else noticed how the Holy Sites mod really disrupts site searching with all the new Holy Sites. Here's a sample of just one of them to demonstrate their awesomeness.

Distant Holy Site. - No gems, +20 gold, and allows recruitment of...

Pilgrim - Cost 5gp 2r
HP 11
Prot 1
Mor 11
MR 11
Enc 3

Str 10
Att 8
Def 11
Prec 10
Move 2/12

Weapon - Quarterstaff / Armour - Robes


Battle Pilgrim - 10gp 11r
HP 12
Prot 10
Mor 13
MR 12
Enc 5

Str 11
Att 11
Def 13
Prec 10
Move 2/10

Weapon - Broad Sword / 4 Parry Shield


Pilgrim Warrior Saint (comm) - 70gp 12r

HP 14
Prot 9
Mor 15
MR 14
Enc 5

Str 12
Att 12
Def 16
Prec 10
Move 2/10

Leadership 80
H1. Sacred. Standard (20)
Weapon - Enchanted Pike (magic) / 4 Parry Shield


So those 3 units are basically bog standard Militia and Medium Infantry, plus an expensive H1 Priest that can be a rubbish magicless thug to a bless nation (who likely have national commanders far better for thugging given that they took a bless in the first place) and a standard effect that can be reproduced with a few nature gems for a Sleeper or Horn of Valour. (and those don't take up a precious commander recruitment slot either)


In testing I found a fair number of these new Holy Sites, all of them pretty much as useless as the above one, with one stellar province I came across in testing having...

Dojo - +1E
Grand Temple - Allows you to recruit crap units
Distant Holy Site - More crap units and +20g
Theologian's Guild - More crap units

I'm sorry, but when I find 4 sites in a province, I do not expect to see results like that.


(IIRC) This is the exact same problem that was reported with the Underwater sites that the UWGIM mod added (before some were removed or edited, again IIRC). In that by adding lots of rubbish low level sites, that might indeed add "a nice bit of flavour" to the game, but in doing so caused regular sites that might actually be useful to players (ie. those that give gems) to become rarer, and thereby interfere with the amount of gems that players are used to finding in previous games. And indeed actually punishing players (due to it replacing a regular site) for finding one of these new sites. Since nobody should think of these new holy sites as being "extra" sites, as that's not how site distribution works in the game, as it is more accurate to view these new Holy Sites as being "replacements" to the regular site you would have otherwise found anytime you find one of these new Holy Sites.


It's too late to remove the mod now that nations are selected (almost entirely due to the new spells it adds), but I highly suggest that the section of the mod that adds new Holy Sites be removed from the mod for this game**. Since I can't see how anyone could be relying on these sites, or the units they give, as part of their strategy. And I for one have no interest in recruiting units like Pilgrims, Followers, Monk, High Guards, or any of the vast majority of rubbish that these sites contain. Please give me +1 gem instead any day of the week.

As if I want Indy-type troops like the ones 80% of these sites produce, then I'll recruit regular Indy troops like I do every game I want them. And as most players know, the "recruitment window" for almost all Indy troops is within the first 20 turns at best. And you will need a big bless to really use any of the sacred troops over regular troops, but in that case you almost certainly have national sacred troops anyway for your bless (unless you're a nut job who takes a big bless without any national sacreds to use it on). So all that these extra units from these sites really mean is you have about 10 turns to use them at most, and then for the rest of the game, instead of having a site that could have been giving you gems, it is in fact costing you gems (in lost gem income) by even existing in the first place. (as it took the place of a regular site you would have otherwise found instead of it)


I'll say this yet again, "more does not equal good", and the chance of finding more rubbish sites certainly doesn't enhance a game of Dominions for me. As I get my enjoyment from playing the game, and not from seeing "a nice new unit that looks pretty, but I won't ever use because it's useless". Mod creators do a wonderful service to the community, but sometimes in their excitement to add new things, they forget how the actual mechanics of the game works (ie. Site distribution, AI spell casting), and sadly as a result, their mods can sometime affect the game in a negative way. And creating new sites, even more so than creating new spells, is definitely a case of "more does not equal good". Especially if the new sites are rubbish, as in this case there's no such thing as "I know, I'll add a few extra low level sites for fun and flavour, since that won't do any harm :)", as it does do harm if you know how the game works :(


** (and the idea of new sites sent back to the drawing board for the mod itself. Maybe make sure that each site at least gives "something" rather than just new units. Even if it's just +1 gem or +50 gold. Players should generally be happy to find sites, not annoyed, and I was distinctly annoyed to find almost every new Holy Site when I was testing the mod).

-----

And I apologise for all the whining I'm doing, but when I plan to (potentially) invest several months into a game, I don't like the thought of that time and effort being wasted due to experimental mods, or mods that screw with the core mechanics of the game and alter how it plays (such as mods that add spells and sites). Since I'm afraid the more my competitive instincts are increased by the thought of playing a good game with a good group of hardened players, the more my willingness to be a mod testing lab rat goes down.

Anyway, rant over, please resume your day :) Map hopefully on the way in a few hours.

[Colonial]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wouldn't upping parcentage magic sites in setup effectively deal with the 'sh*te sites' problem at significantly less imput effort than changing the mod? Would randomly boost blood hunting I guess...

[Amhazair]

...[Rant.]... (Including some good points)...[rant]...1) From a quick glance through the dm file when the mod was first suggested I think about half of the sites had some gem income, allthough the main draw should be the recruitable units. Looking at it again though, the half with gems are mostly the uncommon sites. :( Wheter the recruitables are good enough to justify it is another matter though. I definitely did not go trawling through the file to (try to) find out, but the ones I encountered in my few test games ranged from decent (will probably recruit some, but won't alter my strategy) to useless. Which does indeed seem underwhelming, although sample size is small.

I don't think editing out the Holy Wars sites after nation choices is a good idea though, for the same reason it wouldn't be a good idea to remove it entirely. I don't know how likely it is, but I can easily imagine someone with decent but capital-only sacreds (Utgard, Atlantis, New Jomon, T'ien Ch'i spring to mind among the ones in the game) using the easy availability of independent sacreds to help justify going for a (somewhat bigger) bless than they otherwise would. I will say I briefly considered this before looking to select nations myself, before deciding that trying to figure out if the sacreds from the mod were worth it was too much effort.

If no one objects I can easily hike up the site frequency a bit though, (50? 55?) to compensate for the few gem sites lost due to new holy sites. That way you can have your "boring-but-useful" gem generators, and others will still have their "flavourul and well made but ultimately useless" new units and everyone is happy(ish?)

2) In all the mods I've looked at so far (which includes 3/4 of the ones in the nation pack) I haven't seen a single unit that's worth wishing for over the "usual suspects" (Seraph, Chayot, Mandaha,..) Allthough I definitely won't vouch for every single one. Easy to overcome with the blanket rule "no wishing for units outside of the Mods intended for use." (And there's definitely nothing worth wishing for in New Jomon nor New Ulm)

I won't say much on possible bugs as that's out of my area of expertise. I did go out of my way though to use all national spells and summons from both nations after the blowpipe scare and didn't notice anything else untoward, but best not to consider me an authority on the issue.) I definitely wouldn't mind using only the strictly necessary mods, but apparently uploading the newest version of Jomon, Broken swords on it's own isn't possible, so it would need someone going through the effort of making the combo mod. (If someone wants to explain to me in very, VERY small words how to do go about it I don't mind doing this myself, but it would probably be more work to explain to me how to do it, than to actually do it. :D)

[Fantomen]

The wishing problem I see as minor, but I suppose you're right.

We could perhaps increase the magic setting to compensate for the holy sites?

[Amhazair]

The wishing problem I see as minor, but I suppose you're right.

We could perhaps increase the magic setting to compensate for the holy sites?Hah! I used way more words than you to say the same thing. You suxxors!1one11!

[Calahan]

Blood is overpowered as it is, so I really don't think it needs the boost that increased site frequency would give it. Not even sure why it was increased to 45 from the LA base of 35, but that was in from the start so....

Why not just edit the mod to make sure each new Holy site give at least +1 Astral, thereby making sure each new Holy Site is at least as good as the base game site "Ancient Temple" is, which gives +1S (as I suggested above towards the end of my novel)


And you could set a house rule for the wishing problem, but I must admit that this idea is really doing a number on the logic circuits in my brain. Since this would not be a rule to solve a hardcoded problem with the base game that we can't solve any other way (like copying Bogus orders). But instead a rule to deal with a problem that we are adding. So we ourselves are deciding to create this problem to the game with our choice of mods, and then making a rule to accommodate the exact problem that we ourselves are creating due to our choice of mods?!??! [:Calahan's brain explodes:]. I apologise if I'm the only one who finds that idea simply whacky.

I'm far from a modding expert, but nation packs have been used as stand alone mods in games several times before, so I have a hard time believing it can't be done again here so that we only use the New Jomon nation. Sure the mod might need editing, but the code is already in the Extended Nation pack (assuming that actually works properly, since it's never been tested either), so it should be just a matter of lifting the code out of the Expanded Nation Pack (which I might attempt to do once I get the map sorted).


Edit - Although I do agree with Fantomen in that the Wishing problem is a minor one. But it is a problem (that we are creating) none-the-less.

[Colonial]

keeping up my general stalking of your game, Byzantine Pythium has 7 unique archangle summons that might merit a wish, particularly the seventh

[Calahan]

Ok, the map is more-or-less done. I'm about 80%+ happy with it.

The unhappiness comes from one or two starts being a little good/bad compared to some of the others. And while I was hoping to have several starts near the coast so that players can't just play the easiest ever game of "Where's Wally" with Marignon, in the end I only managed to have 4 coastal starts. Atlantis don't need a coastal start though, neither do they have a preference for one. So players will have a 25% chance of guessing where Marignon are. (in the test starts I did to bug hunt the starts, Atlantis often started away from the coast)

Each Land capital is at least 4 provinces away from their nearest Land neighbour. So that's X-1-2-3-4-X. All Land capitals have between 4-6 neighbours, with the ones having 4 getting at least 2x Mountain or Forest neighbours to ensure decent Capital resources. I had to put R'yleh in the smaller of the two inner lake provinces I created, as in the larger one they would share neighbouring provinces with Land caps. (which I really want to avoid)

I've also included a save game so you can see where the starts are (the location of the nations in the save game is entirely random apart from R'yleh.)

I'd also like to ask for some volunteers to create some test games on the map with the nations in the game to see if all the nations start in one of the intended start provinces. As I wasn't able to use the usually #start map modding command for some reason (guessing it was to do with Marignon). So instead of being able to indicate which provinces are to be a start location, I've instead had to go over the map making every other province a no-start. As such I might have missed one which could really screw thngs up badly. Although I have created half a dozen test games with the attached version, and each time everyone has started in one of the intended places. Which are....

1. 28
2. 41
3. 67 (C)
4. 69 (C)
5. 94
6. 128
7. 147 (C)
8. 150
9. 199
10. 185
11. 210
12. 237 (C)
13. 244

14. 95 (R'yleh)


I also had to remove a connection between 28-44, as I wouldn't have been able to get equal spacing without it (it looked a bit illogical anyway as it goes through a huge mountain). I think I've corrected all the connection and terrain errors. I also hope I've found and removed all the provinces tagged as many sites (although there were more than I thought, and harder to spot, so I could have missed some).

If I have generous amounts of free time between now and the start (ie. tomorrow) then I might have another bash at doing the map to increase my happiness level to 90%+. But if I don't get the time, I'm confident that the attached one will produce a balanced enough game.


@ Amhazair - Don't upload the map to the server yet in case I do have another attempt at balancing it.

[Amhazair]

Question for anyone with a bit of modding knowledge: Is combining several mods really as simple as copy/pasting the relevant parts one after the other? (Provided the ID conflicts had been resolved in advance) In view of the various minor issues we're having I thought I'd see if I could figure out how to do it, (In the expectation of getting nowhere and giving up after some frustrating tries.) and looking at some previous combo mods and it sure looked like this was the case.

So I tried it with the 3 mods we're using, and I did manage to start up a game without any explosions. (Also, al New Jomon recruitables are as they should be, and pretenders are the CBM version, but I didn't go around summoning all the possible summons or searching for (holy) sites or the like.)

So, behold: My first ever modding effort, (hopefully) combining CBM 1.84, Holy Wars LE and New Jomon, Brokens Swords 1.4, while fixing the blowpipe issue, and (again, hopefully) adding a minor gem income to all Holy War sites* I did not touch the Cur Scout's leadership, as I don't feel confident about it and don't want to screw up more than I fix.

*Mostly 1S, though I took any excuse given to me by the name of the site or the recruitables to use another gem type to not skew gem type balance too much. In 2 cases of a site with a very impressive name I added 2 gems.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE: Someone look at it, test, do stuff with it. While I'm actually surprisingly confident about my effort, and I'll never claim I know nothing about modding anymore if this works, I still insist I know very little about it and thus need to be supervised.

Follow up question: Do people have to enable the combined mod to create their pretender, or doesn't it really matter since any pretender created using the separate mods will also be legal using the combo version?

[Amhazair]

Well, since no one else dit I tested it out some, and it looks to work perfectly. Holy sites have their extra gems, and the Jomon summons are as they should be, as are the EDM and regular-but changed by EDM ones I tried. Unless someone else finds a bug I declare the Combo-Mod a-go. I will attach it to the OP. Use the version on the OP, I did fix the gem income from two sites in the OP version. (apparently they didn't show in my first try due to being on a wrong line or something.)

Llama comes back from his trip tomorrow, so I suggest we see about starting the game on monday.

[Calahan]

@ All

New version of the map attached. My happiness level approaching 90%.

Change Log

- Moved the start at 28 to 25, as 28 was a particularly bad spot.
- Moved the start at 210 to 202 and the start at 185 - 175 to accommodate the above change
- Moved the forest from 175 to 168 to ensure 175 has decent enough resources.


As before I've included a saved game that shows where the starts are.


@ Amhazair - I'll upload the map myself in a few hours, as I want to create a dozen+ test games with it first to make sure there are no rouge starts anywhere. And give it a final check over to make sure no other gremlins creep through the net (I'll post when I've uploaded it)

----------

@ Amhazair again - I'll try and check your mod out later if I get chance. Although as far as I know all you need to do is copy and paste the part of the code from each mod into one (which it sounds like what you did). Main issues when conmbining mods that I know of are the id conflicts, which should in theory already have been sorted by the PTB in charge of CBM, Expanded nation pack etc. But I'm sure llama can give it a once over as well.

[Calahan]

@ Amhazair - Sadly I didn't get a chance to test the map starts or look at your mod in the end today. (had a lot busier evening than I originally planned :(). But I will try and do both tomorrow.

-----

@ Dimaz - Will you be posting the rules for the game? As besides the usual turning AI stuff, there's also cheese issues such as attacking with lone commanders to block movement ("I wasn't blocking movement, I was in fact probing his army" "Yeah right of course. Bollox"). Most of the time this is covered in games with "don't be a douche", but I wouldn't mind some clarity from above before we start. (and what punishments are due to rule breakers. As "Oh sorry, I forgot" isn't an acceptable excuse in my books)

[Dimaz]

Well, I think this sort of things is mainly game creator/players responsibility. My job as admin, as I see it, starts with the game itself and ends with it. It includes supporting the game rules and in general supporting the smoothness of the game, but not declaring the rules, as I'm not actually participating in the game. Of course I can do it too, but it will require more time as I didn't think about it so I'm not ready to post such rule list immediately, and it's time to sleep here.

[Calahan]

@ All

One tiny tweak to the map (I noticed that 25 didn't have a forest tag). The attached version of the map will be the final one (unless anyone reports any errors).

I've started 10 games on the map with the nations in the game, and each time everyone is in one of the designated start locations. So the chances are slim that a rogue starting province got through the net (but I'll be able to tell if anyone starts where they shouldn't by the VP locations once the game starts)

------

@ Amhazair - I've uploaded the map to the llamaserver. It should be at the bottom of the map list. It's named "Riverlands for 13+1 (Andalusian Sun)".

I've also quickly looked at your mod, and everything seems fine at first glance (apart from not having an icon image, which makes it harder to know if you've enabled it.)

[Calahan]

Ok, lets try this again. Attached is another final version of the map, as there was still a few connection errors that I somehow missed up until this point.

For clarity, I recommend you delete any previous versions of the map you might have downloaded, as I've had to rename the .map file in order to upload it to the llamaserver.


FYI - The image file is the same as before, and has the same name.

[Calahan]

@ Amhazair - Found a few errors in your mod relating to the Holy Sites. The basic problem seems to be that each site can only provide 5 "things". With "things" being units, gems, scale shifts etc. So in the mod code for the sites, these "things" appear to be everything between the #rarity and #end commands.

(Edit- The game doesn't crash or anything due to this, it's just that only the first 5 "things" will appear in the site, and anything else is ignored. ie. Basically the gem income you've added to sites which already had 5 "things")

I've had a quick look through, and the following have more than 5 (think they all have 6)

849
843
832
829
828
827

Search the mod file for #newsite (number) to find them.

I can try and make some suggestions if you like for what to get rid off in each site to bring them down to 5. (I'll try and create a map as well for you to see all the new Holy sites, so that you can see first hand the changes without having to guess/hope the sites are working as planned)

--------

Edit

#newsite 849
#name "Dvaraka"
#path 8
#level 3
#rarity 2
#loc 256
#mon 573 (Amber clan warrior) --- 1
#com 575 (amber clan mage) --- 2
#com 576 (amber clan priest) --- 3
#gems 2 1 --- 4
#gems 4 1 --- 5
#decscale 5 --- 6 ***Problem***
#end


#newsite 843
#name "The Cathedral of the Tablet"
#path 8
#level 2
#loc 16607
#rarity 1
#com 3489 (HOLY TABLET)
#mon 3473 (HIGH GUARD)
#com 3475 (MYSTIC)
#gems 3 1
#gems 4 1
#decscale 0
#end


#newsite 832
#name "Fanatical Congregation"
#path 8
#level 0
#loc 81
#rarity 1
#mon 217 (FLAGELLANT)
#mon 3465 (FOLLOWER pitchfrok)
#mon 3466 (FOLLOWER torch
#com 3478 (RABBLE ROUSER)
#com 3479 (PREACHER)
#gems 0 1
#end


#newsite 829
#name "Large Chapterhouse"
#path 8
#level 2
#loc 85
#rarity 1
#mon 3452 (CRUSADER)
#mon 3453 (TEMPLAR)
#mon 3451 (TEMPLAR KNIGHT)
#com 3456 (TEMPLAR COMMANDER)
#gems 4 1
#res 40
#end


#newsite 828
#name "The Destination"
#path 8
#level 2
#loc 223
#rarity 1
#mon 3450 (PILGRIMS)
#mon 3467 (BATTLE PILGRIMS)
#mon 3451 (TEMPLAR KNIGHT)
#com 3454 (TEMPLAR MONK)
#com 3456 (TEMPLAR COMMANDER)
#gems 4 1
#end


#newsite 827
#name "Church of the Relic"
#path 8
#level 1
#loc 16465
#rarity 0
#mon 3473 (HIGH GUARD)
#com 3488 (SAINT RELIC)
#com 3487 (PRIEST)
#com 241 (HIGH PRIEST)
#gems 4 1
#decscale 0
#end


The above is the code relating to each site error I listed.

----

Edit 2

Attached is a map and save file that acn be used to see the Holy Sites. If you edit your Andalusian mod, then the cahgnes will appear in the game after a restart.

[Amhazair]

Changed game settings to include the proper map, and turned automatic start back on. We're off as soon as all pretenders are in. (apart from not having an icon image, which makes it harder to know if you've enabled it.)Yes, but to include an image I'd have had to do something besides copy/pasting. :angel

[Amhazair]

@ Amhazair - Found a few errors in your mod relating to the Holy Sites. The basic problem seems to be that each site can only provide 5 "things". With "things" being units, gems, scale shifts etc. So in the mod code for the sites, these "things" appear to be everything between the #rarity and #end commands.

I've had a quick look through, and the following have more than 5 (think they all have 6)

849
843
832
829
828
827

Search the mod file for #newsite (number) to find them.

I can try and make some suggestions if you like for what to get rid off in each site to bring them down to 5. (I'll try and create a map as well for you to see all the new Holy sites, so that you can see first hand the changes without having to guess/hope the sites are working as planned)Ahah, so that's why. My first guess was it had to do with the order in which the 'things' were listed. This seemed to be confirmed by a look at another mod I had lying around in which the gem income stood on another position in relation to gold as where I had originally put it. Thought moving it around would have fixed it, but didn't check anymore. (Due to having spent way too much time on it allready and hoping it would slip through unnoticed if I was still wrong. Should've known I couldn't fool you. ;))

[Calahan]

@ Amhazair - Found a few errors in your mod relating to the Holy Sites. The basic problem seems to be that each site can only provide 5 "things". With "things" being units, gems, scale shifts etc. So in the mod code for the sites, these "things" appear to be everything between the #rarity and #end commands.

I've had a quick look through, and the following have more than 5 (think they all have 6)

849
843
832
829
828
827

Search the mod file for #newsite (number) to find them.

I can try and make some suggestions if you like for what to get rid off in each site to bring them down to 5. (I'll try and create a map as well for you to see all the new Holy sites, so that you can see first hand the changes without having to guess/hope the sites are working as planned)Ahah, so that's why. My first guess was it had to do with the order in which the 'things' were listed. This seemed to be confirmed by a look at another mod I had lying around in which the gem income stood on another position in relation to gold as where I had originally put it. Thought moving it around would have fixed it, but didn't check anymore. (Due to having spent way too much time on it allready and hoping it would slip through unnoticed if I was still wrong. Should've known I couldn't fool you. ;))
Ah, I didn't manage to edit my post before you replied :)


I've attached a save game and .map file (Silent Seas map image required) to my above post. With that you can see the sites the mod adds, and use it to see how any changes you make affect the site. (so you can easily see if things are working as planned). (Edit - Select "Man" nation to see them)

I think some of the militia type units can be removed from the sites having problems. As I can't see anyone wanting a Militia unit (but it has stick+stones!!!) over gem/gold income.

Edit - There's also a naming conflict in the original mod, as there are 2 UW sites called "Laccadive", but I'm pretty sure only one is working, as the code of the first instance is overwriting the code for the second. (So changing the name of one of them should fix it)

[Amhazair]

Fixed by removing 3 units, (Follower with torch and pilgrim are quite poor, and provided by other sites too; priestess is nothing special and there's a H2 priest available from the same site) and changing gem income from W1 S1 and E1S1 to W2 and E2. Left the large chapterhouse as the only site without gem income. (Didn't want to break up the "tiered progression" from the site, and the units are quite useful anyway. One unit with no gem income shouldn't be the end of the world.)

Renamed one of the Laccadives to Lacadive. Since I don't know what the word means, misspelling it doesn't offend my sensibilities. :D

I'll update the OP in a minute.

Edit: Updated.

[WraithLord]

Does that mean that pretenders need to be recreated?- Hopefully the answer is no :)

[Amhazair]

Does that mean that pretenders need to be recreated?- Hopefully the answer is no :)I can't imagine it being necessary, but I'll let Calahan/Llamabeast/someone else answer for certain, since, as we've established, I don't know anything about mo... erm... I mean...

Since I'm clearly a master modder I've ingeneously made sure you do not have to remake your pretender and have nothing at all to worry about. (Pssst, Calahan: Back me up on this will you? So I can remove the small text before the editing time limit expires.)

[Calahan]

Does that mean that pretenders need to be recreated?- Hopefully the answer is no :)I can't imagine it being necessary, but I'll let Calahan/Llamabeast/someone else answer for certain, since, as we've established, I don't know anything about mo... erm... I mean...

Since I'm clearly a master modder I've ingeneously made sure you do not have to remake your pretender and have nothing at all to worry about. (Pssst, Calahan: Back me up on this will you? So I can remove the small text before the editing time limit expires.)
I'm 95% certain that you don't need to recreate Pretenders. Since as far as I know (regarding the cheat detection process for Pretender design), when the game is created it checks that each Pretender can be created for the game exactly as it is in the Pretender file that was submitted. If it can't recreate it exactly, and with the exact same remaining design points, then it reports a cheat message.

So unless Amhazair did something to the Pretenders (which I highly doubt) then all should be fine. As in theory, you can still create certain Pretenders in vanilla for CBM games (for example, I don't think CBM touches the Lich). But obviously don't do that just because you 'might' be able to :)


@ Amhazair

Good work sorting those sites out, and many thanks for your efforts. We'll get this game started yet :) (who needs llamabeast :D In fact, llamawho?)


I've also created an icon for your mod if you want to use it.

Just put the image in the same directory as the .dm file, and insert the #icon command near the start of the mod file, like so...

#modname "Andalusian Sun"
#description "No description"
#version 0.2
#icon "Andalusian.tga"
#domversion 3.26

[llamabeast]

Wow. Seems there's been a few thousand words of concern while I've been away. Can't help but feel there's a degree of much ado about nothing (I particularly don't understand the worry about wishing), but much respect to Amhazair for taking up modding from scratch and getting it working - nice one.

I am not certain that the gems on holy sites was necessary - some of them are pretty strong actually I think - but I haven't looked into it closely or done the maths so I won't comment for now. In any case adding the gems will probably increase the fun factor, and I will look more carefully at the maths later to see if it would be a good idea to implement for the base mod. Quite possibly it's a good improvement.

The pretenders will be fine.

Anyway, definitely keen to get started as this looks like it will be an awesome game. Great lineup of players, and I'm also keen to get a chance to play with Burnsaber's mod. Plus this will be my first ever (R)AND game so it'll be cool to try out the concept.

[Amhazair]

Can't help but feel there's a degree of much ado about nothing I mostly agree, in the sence that any issues were really minor and I would personally have been perfectly happy to ignore them and start out with the separate mods as they were. On the other hand, if a little effort can get rid of even the minor objections and make everyone a little happier, then why not?

Anyway, definitely keen to get started as this looks like it will be an awesome game. Great lineup of players, and I'm also keen to get a chance to play with Burnsaber's mod. Plus this will be my first ever (R)AND game so it'll be cool to try out the concept.Oh, my! We have a RAND virgin! I would suggest to be gentle with him, but unfortunately the anonymous nature of the game makes that quite difficult. ;) Chomping at the bit myself too.

Calahan: I actually really like the banner image you made. (Holliday, baby!) However I didn't want to clutter the Llamaserver, nor confuse everyone further with yet another new version of the same mod. Am I right in assuming that if I edit the mod with the banner in question people can subsitute the newest version for the old one, while the Llamaserver keeps running with the old one? (As the banner doesn't actually change any content.) If that is the case I will arrange it once we're we'll and truly underway so those who want a banner can use it, and those who prefer to live without extra hassle can ignore it.

[Dimaz]

I added master pasword to the game, in case someone sends the password protected pretender and then disappear for some reason. Only one pretender left. Good game everyone, and let the most skillful win!

[Dimaz]

So the game finally started. Just a quick reminder: if you want to contact me, the best way is to use PM here, but if the speed is crucial, I think the fastest way to reach me is to write to gmail box dimazzz80. Also, current hosting time (2:00) will prevent me from adding last-minute delays, as I'm sleeping at that time. Please keep this in mind.

[Calahan]

Can I please request that turn reminders be set to 12 hours (if nobody objects), as I find 6 hour reminders more annoying than useful. (in the sense that it's very annoying when they arrive whle I'm sleeping, and telling me that hosting is also taking place while I'm sleeping :mad: As that's like rubbing salt into the stale you've just woken up to :hurt:)


In fact @ llamabeast - Any chance you could change the default reminder on the llamaserver to 12 hours instead of 6? As it's very rare I see players saying "I like 6 hour reminders", but I often see players saying "I don't like 6 hour reminders". Please and Thank You :)

[Amhazair]

Wee! Game On! I'm off to see which corner of Andalusia I'll be whiling away my days in for the next couple of months. (Hopefully)

[llamabeast]

Calahan - yes! Good point. That has been annoying me too but I haven't gotten around to changing it. I will try to do so tonight.

[Dimaz]

Reminders changed to 12h.

[DrPraetorious]

Excellent! Let me begin by thanking my many enemies, whoever they may be, for providing such an entertaining foil to my unstoppable forces.

[DrPraetorious]

HA! Your mewling struggles continue to amuse me. If you surrender now, I will show you no mercy whatsoever, but will keep you broken and chained as playthings in my games of unspeakable torture.

Of course, when I conquer you utterly, shatter your inept followers, and ascend to the throne of all, I'm going to do that anyway. So it really makes no difference what you do.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 6 hours. The game will now host at 07:10 GMT on Saturday April 9th.
Player's request.

[DrPraetorious]

Are those wails of despair I hear? Fret not, for when I have ascended to sit My throne, you will all be dead to joy (not that it would come up) and sorrow. The anguish that you feel now? That is but a passing thing, with time the coming nightmare will be normal.

[Fantomen]

You are mistaken, those wails are naught but your own vain daydreams of glory. As blind as the mole ascended from earth, as blind the pretender pretending to know his future. As the cowards cower from the rustling wings of foolish thugs, true power matures in the shadows.

[DrPraetorious]

Is this what you tell your feeble, mewling underlings?

Psst. We're winning! But it's a *secret*, don't tell anybody.

You have done well, and earned yourself a place of honor - every other monday, I will trot you out of your cell to be my capering jester. Don't worry, you won't be missing out on any of the fun of our rivals - the missed 12 hrs of torture will be spread out over the remaining two weeks, in place of your nightly hour of sleep.

You are mistaken, those wails are naught but your own vain daydreams of glory. As blind as the mole ascended from earth, as blind the pretender pretending to know his future. As the cowards cower from the rustling wings of foolish thugs, true power matures in the shadows.

[Dimaz]

Hm, looks like we have a problem. I've been informed by one of the players that he received an in-game message from another one asking for NAP. Obviously this is clear violation of game rules. Personally I think we can either find a sub for the player who sent the message or warn him and continue. Probably he missed the OP part about the game being anonymous. However, as no information about player's identities has been disclosed (only that one of the players doesn't like to read the game rules for the game he's joining), I think we should warn him (by PM, probably) and continue if he promises not to repeat this in the future.

[Dimaz]

OK, after considering the fact that similar incident happened during YARG1 game and the decision was to remove the player from the game, I'm going to do the same here. The offending player will be removed from the game, and I'll try to find a sub soon. I'm adding 48h to game timer.

[Amhazair]

However, as no information about player's identities has been disclosed (only that one of the players doesn't like to read the game rules for the game he's joining), I think we should warn him (by PM, probably) and continue if he promises not to repeat this in the future.Yeah, I suppose this is probably the best solution.

Feel free to add some serious wrist-slapping on my behalf though. :)

Edit: Heh, great timing for my post. If it's a repeat offender I guess you're right (again) though. You may still feel free to slap...

[Calahan]

Dimaz has asked me to post in the thread, as I mentioned to him that restarting might be an option.

As it's only turn 5, and since there's no guarantee a sub is going to be found, it might just be easier to cut our loses now, and restart with 13 players to have a 'clean' game (free of subs and broken rules), rather than wait an unknown amount of time for a sub to turn up.(As we certainly can't continue with an AI nation.)

I reckon I can re-do the map for 13 starts this evening in less than an hour, and there's a fair chance we could be back to turn 5 by Wednesday's turn deadline, resulting in no real time being lost.

(probably best to post replies to Dimaz rather than thread, as we don't want any more rules broken or ID's compromised)

Edit - I might just re-do the map anyway, since I have a bit of free time right now.

Edit 2 - Just realised we need a good sub as well :( Since given the player line-up, the high chance of a newb being unsure of the nation he'd inherit, and the unfamiliar plan of his predecessor, a newb would likely be just as unbalancing as staling or AI. Why can't players spend just 5 minutes to read the rules :mad:

Edit 3 - Ok, map is re-done for 12+1 if needed. Quite a nice fix actually, as a few of the poorer starts managed to get a bit of love in the process :)

[Dimaz]

So far we have 3 votes for restart and 0 for continuing.

[Calahan]

Here's the map for the restart (if it happens).

Everyone will need to download the image file again, as I've made a few changes to it. (mainly I did something I should have done before, which is to make sure nobody starts on a Forest, as that can trigger the nasty Ancient Presence event)

[Dimaz]

I received 2 more votes for restart and 1 for setting offender to AI. Looks like we're heading for restart. I've received the following instruction about restart - (quickest way would be roll back all the turns until the start, un-start the game, change maps, and click start. Rather than creating a new game and waiting for Pretender uploads). Is it correct? If yes, I'll do it in a few hours.

[Calahan]

I've received the following instruction about restart - (quickest way would be roll back all the turns until the start, un-start the game, change maps, and click start. Rather than creating a new game and waiting for Pretender uploads). Is it correct? If yes, I'll do it in a few hours.
I think that's the best way, but then I would think that seeing as how I wrote it :)

I've just set up a new game on the llamaserver to test that theory out though. As it is just a theory based on what I know of how the llamaserver works from all the games I've admined. But restarting a game on turn 5 is not something that I've actually done before though.

The game is called RestartTest, and I'll host turns until turn 5 is reached, then see if I can roll the game back to turn 1 and un-start it. (will post results when it's done)

Edit - Test game is up to turn 5, so I am rolling back now.

and 1 for setting offender to AI.
Must say I'm a bit concerned that someone thinks that the AI appearing on turn 5 in a vet game is the best option? As that's by far the worst IMO, and likely ruins the game on the spot.

[Calahan]

Ok, the test went as follows...

I submitted turns in the test game until turn 5 was reached, then rolled the game back to turn 1 and un-started it. The result of which was the game reappeared in the "Games Waiting For Pretenders" area of the llamaserver, where it needed to be :) I then tested removing Pretenders, changing maps and mods (all seemed ok). After this I then restarted the game and played the first turn of all three nations. (which is where that game is now). Again this went nice and smoothly and to plan. Here's the game logs

http://www.llamaserver.net/doAdminAction.cgi?game=RestartTest&action=showadminlog

06:26 GMT on Monday April 11th Rolled game back to turn 4.
06:37 GMT on Monday April 11th Rolled game back to turn 3.
06:42 GMT on Monday April 11th Rolled game back to turn 2.
06:54 GMT on Monday April 11th Rolled game back to turn 1.
06:57 GMT on Monday April 11th Returned game to the "Waiting for pretenders" state.

But.... (sadly there's always a 'but' :()


I did notice that the admin option to "Un-start game (go back to "Waiting for Pretenders" was available on turn 5. Which wasn't what I expected to see. And a new game (TrojanHorses) that I started yesterday as admin also has the option available on turn 2. So the option to Un-start a game appears to be time based and not turn based as I originally thought. Whether or not it's only time based though I have no idea right now (as the option could appear on turn 1 or within X hours of the game starting).

Llamabeast would likely know the answer to whether the Un-start option is time based or turn+time based. But right now I'm a big question mark on the matter? As the option to Un-start might appear if the game is rolled back to turn 1, but then again it might not.

Of course the other way to restart is just to create a new game and get everyone to send Pretenders again. Although if the game is restarting for definite one way or the other, then there's probably no harm in trying to roll the current game back to turn 1 and see if the Un-start option appears. (as then the worst case scenario is the Un-start option doesn't appear, and the game has to be deleted. But that would happen anyway if a new game is created.)

[llamabeast]

Um... hard to follow all the words, but I think the "Un-start game" option is available until turn 6.

[Dimaz]

OK, looks like I've managed to do this procedure of rollbacks and restart and the game is waiting for first turn from everyone. Hope nothing went wrong except for restart itself. But if you have any problems with new turn, please write me ASAP. Also I recommend completely deleting game folder from savegames and creating new one, just in case.
Also, I think some of the players are interested who caused all the mess. Well, I regret to inform you that it was Ossa playing Caelum, the same person who did the same thing (sending NAP proposal) in another RAND game YARG1. So I hope you understand that I had no other choice but to remove him from the game. Also I recommend taking special measures next time you see he tries to join a game with game-specific rules (as he's clearly not paying enough attention to them).
Good luck everyone, and let the most skillful win (again!) :)

[llamabeast]

Thanks for the smooth admining Dimaz.

[Calahan]

Um... hard to follow all the words, but I think the "Un-start game" option is available until turn 6.
:doh: I didn't even think to check if the Un-start option was there on turn 5, as I assumed it was only there on turn 1. But having just found this game on turn 7.

http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Newbies_and_Sharks

I can indeed see that the Un-start option is there :doh::doh::doh: So the rollbacks themselves probably weren't needed. Oh well, another llamasever lesson for my experience log.

----------
OK, looks like I've managed to do this procedure of rollbacks and restart and the game is waiting for first turn from everyone. Hope nothing went wrong except for restart itself. But if you have any problems with new turn, please write me ASAP. Also I recommend completely deleting game folder from savegames and creating new one, just in case.
Judging from the VP's, all the start locations seem to match the revised map.


Also, I think some of the players are interested who caused all the mess. Well, I regret to inform you that it was Ossa playing Caelum, the same person who did the same thing (sending NAP proposal) in another RAND game YARG1. So I hope you understand that I had no other choice but to remove him from the game. Also I recommend taking special measures next time you see he tries to join a game with game-specific rules (as he's clearly not paying enough attention to them).
Good luck everyone, and let the most skillful win (again!) :)
No way, it can't be Ossa again. How can someone get booted out of a game for making the exact same mistake you got booted out for last time. It boggles the mind how anyone can have no capability to learn from past mistakes.

But there's always room on my blacklist for more names :) (as I did give him the benefit of the doubt in YARG1, but no chance of that here)


Thanks for sorting the restart out Dimaz. And one good thing about it is that at least the re-start gives us all a few more days of playing before Dr.P engulfs us all with his army of nightmares.

[llamabeast]

Oh, turn 7! Maybe it lasts until turn 12 then. I thought it made sense to keep it available for a fair while, but eventually take it away so that some crazed admin didn't "unstart" a game on turn 40.

[Calahan]

Oh, turn 7! Maybe it lasts until turn 12 then. I thought it made sense to keep it available for a fair while, but eventually take it away so that some crazed admin didn't "unstart" a game on turn 40.
I'll keep an eye on the new game I started last night and let you know when the option disappears :) (or this game of course, depending on which one goes quickest)

And Un-starting a game on turn 50 in a rage fit has to be the new "in" thing I reckon :cool: as rage quitting simply because you were attacked is just so last season :yawn:

[DrPraetorious]

Time itself writhes like a serpent, in cunning mimicry of the horrific tortures you will all endure.

[Amhazair]

Boy, what a mess. But very well handled Dimaz. (And Calahan for a record-speed map-conversion.)

I did strangely (besides a number of rollback notifications and the expected new turn 1) get an email from the Llamaserver with the subject line: "Andalusian sun, Turn 5 received...", in the email itself it told me: "Hello! Please find the attached turn file - Hinnom turn 71 for the game cyberrand4." While in effect the mail itself did not contain any attachment at all.

As I said, I did get a correct turn 1, so I suppose I can just ignore it, but thought I'd mention the weird behaviour anyway.

[llamabeast]

Amhazair - wow, weirdest bug I ever heard of!

[Amhazair]

To make an educated guess - I've played about 30 MP games from start to finish so far. I've won only 2 or 3 of them, but I've also done a few random/no diplo games so far.Weird... Ossa himself mentioned no-diplomacy when signing up, so it wasn't even that he didn't read the OP and knew from the start. The mind boggles...

[Calahan]

@ All

I forgot to mention that for the revised map, I re-connected 44-28 (like on the original Riverlands map). Since one of the main reasons I removed it for the first map was to help with fitting the starts in. But with one less Land nation in the game for the re-start, this was no longer necessary.

Thought I'd mention it just in case (and because I mentioned removing it in my previous posts about the map, so want to be clear that the connection had been put back)

[Ossa]

Just to speak up for myself here:
Sorry for causing this mess again.

I actually truly did forget about the specific rules while doing my term. I'm a bit stressed in RL (job + 10w old daughter) right now and obviously I do not pay enough attention to the specific rules of the game I'm playing.

This not only happened here, but also in another game which I played for 100+ turns now :(

So, sorry again for this mess, and if I happen to enlist to a game with specific rules you are in - plz drop me a line that it might not be the best idea.

I'm, truly sorry again for your wasted time on these 5 turns.

[WraithLord]

Ossa, thank you for the explanation. I admit I was puzzled, to say the least, by all this.

You should probably make a habit of writing down any specific game rules on a note or something, or just stay clear of games with house rules.

Good luck on your second job as a father, it's plenty and stressful but well worth it :)

[LoloMo]

Congrats on your daughter! :-)

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 23:25 GMT on Friday April 15th.
Player's request.

[Fantomen]

Just to speak up for myself here:
Sorry for causing this mess again.

I actually truly did forget about the specific rules while doing my term. I'm a bit stressed in RL (job + 10w old daughter) right now and obviously I do not pay enough attention to the specific rules of the game I'm playing.

This not only happened here, but also in another game which I played for 100+ turns now :(

So, sorry again for this mess, and if I happen to enlist to a game with specific rules you are in - plz drop me a line that it might not be the best idea.

I'm, truly sorry again for your wasted time on these 5 turns.

A heads up like that shows the kind of spine I appreciate, it makes all the difference. So no hard feelings on my account at least. (reminder to self: remove Ossa from wanker list ;))

[Aethyr]

Be well Ossa, best wishes to you and your family.

[Dimaz]

Ossa, first of all, congratulations, I hope your child is well and everything is OK. Now, while I certainly can understand difficulties Ossa having now (I have 3 children myself and one of them is less than 6 months), I cannot understand his position of joining games for which he obviously won't have enough time. In fact, having 3-month old was one of the reason I had to skip this game, as I know that it's hard to find time for good turns in such situation.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 2 hours. The game will now host at 22:48 GMT on Saturday April 16th.
Player's request.

[Dimaz]

Changed reminders to 12h (again). Seems they were reset during restart.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 12 hours. The game will now host at 10:49 GMT on Monday April 18th.
Player's request.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 4 hours. The game will now host at 20:04 GMT on Wednesday April 20th.
Player's request.
Also, one of the players asked if it's possible to change hosting schedule to 26 h to prevent hosting time creep. If noone objects during next 24h, I'm going to do it.

[DrPraetorious]

Ouch. Well, I'm first to bow out. I liked the previous start better :(.

It's one of the hazards of taking a dormant God as a nation like Aby. Sometimes someone punches you in the face. My defensive play was not perfect but I don't think it would have made any difference. Perhaps a more thorough AAR will follow the game.

You are all still doomed.

[Amhazair]

Heh, maybe one of these days I'll actually organise a game in which you get the opportunity to play a significant part. :)

Thanks for playing Dr.P

[Dimaz]

24h added.

[DrPraetorious]

One brief comment for future - you really can't restart a game like this around turn 7, because, from the previous game's expansion graphs, you know who is pursuing what strategy, at least to some extent!

In my case, I seriously doubt it made any difference, it was purely bad luck on my part - the plan of him-what-killed-me was clear, he was going to kill whoever was next to him, regardless of who they were. So I highly doubt it made any difference here - but in a more borderline situation, it might've.

[Dimaz]

24h added.
DrP, I'm not sure which course is better - switching to AI on turn 7 or restarting. Both create problems.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 3 hours. The game will now host at 00:11 GMT on Friday April 29th.
Player's request.

[Dimaz]

One of the players asked about switching to 48h. If there are no strong objections, I'll do it tomoroow.

[Amhazair]

Heh, good timing. I came home today with the idea to make a post that - since this is supposed to be a game with a relaxed pace - anyone starting to feel the need for longer turns should feel free to PM our esteemed admin about it. :)

[Dimaz]

The hosting interval for ANDalusian_Sun has now been changed to 48 hours, and the deadline for the next hosting has been automatically postponed by 24 hours.

[Dimaz]

Atlantis player haven't submitted the turn so I added 2x24 h delays and trying to contact him, I'm going to wait some more time for the answer.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 19:38 GMT on Saturday May 14th.
Player's request.

[llamabeast]

What's going on?

[Dimaz]

Atlantis player disappeared again. Last time the problem was described as "Internet blackout"; now after a turn or two it seems to happen again. I'm not sure what to do in this situation (as the player didn't express the desire of finding a sub after previous case) so I'm just waiting for him to reappear and explain the situation. If it doesn't happen soon I'll start looking for the sub. If you have better ideas please PM me.

[WraithLord]

I'm breaking radio silence since I think private emails to Dimaz won't cut it.

I'm truly concerned for the fate of this game. I think what's happening here is unacceptable, the whole game is held hostage by Atlantis player. This is not the first, nor 2nd, pause in this game due to this player but it's certainly the most annoying.
You know what, if he had a good reason and Dimaz were to tell us: "guys, a player just had yyy happen to him so needs a week's extension" I'd have understood and accepted, but it looks to me like he couldn't care less that the game is stuck and we are all kept waiting.

Anyway, something has to be done, like take a few days to search 4 a sub starting right now, else turn him AI. It's bad, but IMHO better than forfeit the game.
If he re-appears I hope he'll be more considerate in the future.

[Dimaz]

OK, I'm setting a deadline for returning of original player at 19.05, if anyone knows somebody who may wish to sub you can PM me now, after the deadline I'll open the sub thread if nobody appear before that and the game will continue with normal schedule on 21.05 with either original player, sub or AI. If original player reappear before the deadline I'll ask him to find a sub that can help during future "Internet blackouts" if they happen. Please don't post anymore in the thread.

[Dimaz]

Looks like I forgot to add another delay after all. That's how life corrects even our best plans. I still don't have any news from Atlantis, so the plan remains.

[Dimaz]

Control over Atlantis is switched to a new player. I added 24h for him and will add more if he asks.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 22:59 GMT on Wednesday May 25th.
Player's request.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 13 hours. The game will now host at 11:59 GMT on Thursday May 26th.
Player's request.

[Dimaz]

One of the players asked me to change hosting interval to 75h as he will probably have bad Internet access during following month. If there are no strong objections I'll do it tomorrow.

[Dimaz]

Another player objects to 75h because more players may lose interest in the game this way. I have to ask you, please PM me your opinion on the subject. I will decide tomorrow what to do.

[Dimaz]

The majority of players agreed that it's better to stay with current schedule and to monitor turn submission closely to prevent accidental stales. So, the question is closed for now.

[Amhazair]

I intentionally stayed away from fixing the hosting scheduled upfront (like I see you doing) since the people who normally play at a slower pace might be small/at peace/otherwise in a situation where they're fine with the schedule and thus there is no need to slow the game down. As I said though, I do intend this to be a relaxed game, so rest assured the turns will get longer as needed. Just quoting myself here (even though I only gave my personal oppinion, and didn't interfere in Dimaz' decision) to restate that I have no intention of forcing anyone to play faster than he's comfortable with, but, unless I misunderstood Dimaz' post, this isn't a question of a player needing more time, just of being unsure of internet availability, and that can be handled just as well by keeping an eye on the Llamaserver to prevent accidental stales.

[Dimaz]

I added another 24h delay for Marignon player to appear and sent him a message. If he doesn't appear soon we'll need a sub, fortunately I have a list of players who were willing to sub previous time so I hope it won't take long.

[yandav]

It seems that I'm done. Well it was quick and painful:
I was attacked by a nation who relied on heavy troops and elephants so I focused my research on the counters to them... and, of cousre, I was attacked by a nation who massed a lot of archers.
It was too much for my poor skills :p

It was fun playing with you anyway.

[WraithLord]

Your nation?

[Amhazair]

That should be C'tis, I believe.

Two against one is the early game is allways a strugle, hope you had fun anyways.

[yandav]

C'tis indeed.

[Dimaz]

I added some delays to prevent Atlantis staling. I'm trying to contact the player to clear the situation.

[Amhazair]

So who was (were) the intrepid Atlantis Player(s)?

[PriestyMan]

I was the one who led atlantis into its grave after Fantomen dissapeared. looks like she had a hilariously good early game, but then got attacked by two very powerful nations. I think i managed to do a lot of damage with the forces i had left before i went down though, so at least there is that.

Funny story though, the nation who took atlantis's cap had some weird plan where they sat on the cap with a vastly superior force for like 4 turns with the walls down just sitting there decided not to storm. almost like they forgot to hit the storm castle command

[don_Pablo]

Marignon went AI last turn.
Who was its leader, I wonder?

[Amhazair]

Damn, I missed that.

While Marignon clearly wasn't in a position to do much of anything anymore, it would have been nice if he had at the very least notified the admin, as asked in the OP.

[Dimaz]

It was Llamabeast.

[llamabeast]

Apologies for that. I was in a twilight state of being doomed and trapped in my capital for... maybe 20 turns? And of course I couldn't talk to anyone. So I kind of lost track of things a bit.

I attacked Atlantis early for fun, and made progress until they started fighting back. It was looking to be a fun war, but then Jomon attacked me (fair play, I should have noticed them massing on my borders), and then Mictlan piled in on the next turn. Probably coincidence since I'm not sure Mictlan can have known what was happening. So my three turns were like:
n: Oh, Atlantis can actually kill my troops when they try! This should be a fun war.
n+1: Oh, Jomon has attacked. I have probably lost, but this could still be a fun war if I play well.
n+2: Mictlan has attacked. Ugh.

Anyway I quickly got trapped in my capital, and then sat there building Lifelong Protections with the blood slaves obtained from mages in my other fort (which Mictlan inexplicably didn't siege for ages. I also had a few Soul Contracts so my army was gradually improving. Finally I burst out of my capital and satisfyingly massacred Jomon's sieging army, and went on a brief rampage. After a few turns though he gathered an army to attack me. I was looking forward to thrashing him - my army was strong enough to last a few turns, and I had 6 Lifelong Protections, so time would swing the battle my way. However he had some flying things (can't remember what now - actually maybe it was Mictlan with Eagle Warriors) which swooped in and killed all my commanders with the Lifelong Protections on the first round of combat. Vastly disappointing.

[Amhazair]

Apparently there are some issues with various mods (including CBM) due to the new modding commands in the last patch. I haven't looked into it myself yet, (Hell, I didn't even watch my turn yet. Or patch the game.) but will it be necessary to put the game on hold till the issue is fixed, or is it possible to play on regardless?

[Dimaz]

I don't know. If anyone knows for sure what to do now, please PM me.

[LoloMo]

It seems that some magic sites were affected also, can anyone else confirm this change?

[Dimaz]

24h added as it seems some of the sites are heavily affected by the new patch and one of the players looses too much from it.

[Amhazair]

24h added as it seems some of the sites are heavily affected by the new patch and one of the players looses too much from it.Since most players have already submited a (possibly provisory?) turn, I've supplemented this by turning off quickhost, so everyone who wants to submit an updated turn has the opportunity to do so. I'll turn it back on for next turn.

As far as I understand the working of mods everything pertaining turn resolution (including gem income from the affected sites and the like) will be resolved using the newly fixed version on the Llamaserver, (Thanks Llama!) but recruiting is handled client side, so you might want to see if you can recruit a couple of more dudes due the resource costs of affected units being brought back to normal.

[Amhazair]

Hmm, I hadn't realized it straight away, but apparently Llama's (awesome and quickly delivered fix) only corrects the weapons/armour issues, but not the site modding change.

I'm not certain how to fix it, since - even if I managed to identify and fix all the affected sites in our combo mods, which I have no idea how te even start to do; or got someone else to do it - I believe it's not possible to update mods on the Llamaserver, nor to upload an updated version and switch to it in mid-game.

Anyone has any suggestions on how to proceed from here on?

I've added 24h for now awaiting people's brilliant ideas. (Common, I know you're all brilliant, don't try to be modest about it now...) Will be gone myself most of the day tomorrow, though I'll try to check in before leaving.

[Amhazair]

Due to an utter lack of brilliance on y'all's part I had to ask over on the other forum, but apparently there indeed isn't a way to update mods mid-game, so I'm afraid we'll have to move on as is. Tough luck for those badly affected. :(

[llamabeast]

Yeah, it's just Whispering Woods in fact - sorry to anyone who has that site!

[Dimaz]

Patala is finished; it was played by Aethyr.

[Dimaz]

I received a message asking to move to 72h. I remember that last time there were objections to it, however now it's later stage and I think it's time to switch to 72h.

[Amhazair]

Thanks for playing Aethyr, hope it was fun. 8 players left, with one clearly heading towards the exit. (With my apologies if I'm jumping to conclusions :) ) Exiting times.

I realised I hadn't updated the OP with the previous demises so I added the turns from memory. Feel free to correct me if my memory is flawed. (And if Priestyman or Dimaz remember when the Atlantis subbing took place I can add that too.)

[Aethyr]

Thanks Amhazair, first time out with Patala and it was fun in spite of the insanity that led me to pick a fight wiht the giants. :)

[Dimaz]

Hosting changed to 72h.

[WraithLord]

FYI
"
ANDalusian_Sun, turn number 45

Map: Riverlands for 12 + 1 (Andalusian Sun - The Restart)
Mods: Andalusian Sun

Next turn due: 17:40 GMT on Wednesday July 6th

Hosting interval: 48 hours
Quickhost mode: On
Reminder e-mails: Send 12 hours before hosting
...
Last updated at 18:25 GMT on Tuesday July 5th
Current time: 12:34 GMT
"

[Dimaz]

I tried it again:
The hosting interval for ANDalusian_Sun has now been changed to 72 hours, and the deadline for the next hosting has been automatically postponed by 24 hours.
Let's see if it will work this time.

[WraithLord]

Last updated at 18:25 GMT on Tuesday July 5th
Current time: 13:45 GMT

Looks like the server is not feeling well :sick:

[Amhazair]

Indeed. Good news is that thanks to the well-known brilliance of Llama(s?) it should process all new information (including change of hosting time and all sent turns) before resolving the turn, so all should be well.

[Amhazair]

The Gentse Feesten is a music and theatre festival in the city of Ghent (Belgium). Besides stage events there is a large variaty of random small street acts. It starts on the Saturday before July 21 (Belgium's national holiday) and lasts ten days. The last day (always a Monday) is known as De dag van de lege portemonnees (The day of the empty wallets) alluding to the fact that many people have spent their last penny at the festival, and is by the people of Ghent seen as their day while the stream of visitors from other places ceases.


The first Gentse Feesten were held in 1843. The intensity of the festivities changed throughout the years, sometimes very strong and radiant (e.g. the 100-year anniversary was said to be very festive and lively), but sometimes also very low-key.

The modern day Gentse Feesten were started in the summer of 1969 by Ghent singer Walter De Buck and the people from the Trefpunt cafe. In the beginning the festival consisted of one stage near the Saint Jacob Church. Since the late eighties the festival has grown enormously and now covers the whole inner city of Ghent.

Although the festival has become a mass event, it has retained some of the rebellious and anarchistic atmosphere of the early days. Public drunkenness is not entirely unseen.*

About 2 million visitors attend the festival every year, making it one of the biggest cultural and popular festivals in Europe. The number of unique visitors on top nights surpasses 250,000. In a 2005 ranking by www.localfestivities.com, the Gentse Feesten was called the third biggest city festival in Europe, only preceded by the Fallas in Valencia and the Oktoberfest in Munich.

Traditionally the shows at the festival have been free, and the main events still are**, but in the later years a number of side festivals have chosen the period of the Gentse Feesten to organize separate events.

Gent Jazz Festival (formerly Blue Note Festival) (since 2002): jazz festival, the first years in the Castle of Counts and then in the Bijloke abbey.
Comedy Festival Gent (since 2007): comedy festival at JOC Rabot, which also hosts a few English-speaking shows.
International Puppetbuskerfestival: festival for puppet players spread over the whole city.
International Street Theater Festival: street theater
Polé Polé Festival (since 2003): World Music at the Korenlei and Graslei.
Ten Days Off (since 1995): electronic dance music in the Vooruit. Around 20.000 visitors in 2005.
Boomtown (since 2002): Alternative music.
Ground Zero Festival [1] (2009): Free no-nonsense music festival in Damberd Jazz-café on the Korenmarkt

*This might in fact be something of an understatement. It's often quite funny to take my bike to work in the morning and ride through the city center, seeing some of the late (early) revelers drag themselves home. :)
** Keeping the 'Feesten' free is a returning struggle for the organisers, but so far they're mananging, through a combination of sponsorship, city funding and, of course, licencing a huge amount of food & drink stands. Yeah, I might in fact be a bit late to sing the praises of this wonderful event since it, like, started last weekend, but, what can I say, this is my first quiet evening at home since the start of the events, (need to recuparate sometime, right?) and I didn't think to blow the trumpet before. Since I've been living and working in the wonderful town of Ghent for the last 15 years I'm honor bound to enjoy it as much as possible. (And not only on the day of the empty wallets, you Wikipedia mugs.)

Aside from the pointless prattle I occasionally like to engage in you may also consider this post as appology for any rushed turns I may submit and advance warning for a possible extension request. (Still have to puzzle out when the turn after this one should be due and what I'll be doing those days.)

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 48 hours. The game will now host at 12:25 GMT on Monday July 25th.

[don_Pablo]

Arco went AI last turn

[WraithLord]

Yucks :(

So who captained that sinking boat, almost to end?

[don_Pablo]

... I'll be away till the beginning of August, if you start your game in August I can join too.

It seems Dimaz will hardly answer soon...

[WraithLord]

Hey, it's just one month to wait :p

[Dimaz]

Arco was played by Baalz if my information is correct.
Also, I'm going to leave soon and I'll be away 28.07 - 8.08. Most likely I'll have Internet access by GPRS on my ppc but it's hard to do admin duties this way. I hope Amhazair will be able to substitute me as admin during this time. However, if for some reason you'll need to contact me, it's better to use gmail box dimazzz80. I'll try to check it once or twice a day.
Hope nothing will go too wrong during this period.

[Amhazair]

Baalz, huh? Damn, I thought I had him pegged as *some other nation*.

I'm obviously available for admin issues in case of an emergency, (and it's likely to be too short a time to start recognising patterns and learn peoples identity) but I'll see if I can scrounge up a temporary admin for this period to be on the safe side anyway.

[Amhazair]

DrPraetorius has kindly agreed to take over admin duties during Dimaz' abscence, so if anything adminny needs to be done, feel free to contact him about it.

[DrPraetorious]

I check the forums twice a day; but please give me plenty of advance warning if you need a delay.

[DrPraetorious]

Hosting delayed 24h by player request.

[Dimaz]

I'm home so admin requests can be sent to me again.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 04:50 GMT on Tuesday August 16th.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 04:25 GMT on Tuesday August 23rd.

[Dimaz]

Maerlande asked me to post a message here that he subs one of the nations in the game so you shouldn't talk to him about game situations in IRC or other forum. Thanks Maerlande for following the anonymity rule.

[Dimaz]

Mictlan player asked me to find a temp sub until 12th, however looking at the score graphs I don't think it's a good idea to sub at this stage of a game for such short period. He said he'll be able to do the turns anyway (probably he just needs more time to do better ones), so I think we should extend hosting intervals until 12th (or remove the timer at all) so he can do proper turns. Mictlan, please PM me if you agree. If anyone has objections, please post here.

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 12:25 GMT on Saturday September 17th.

[Amhazair]

Turn 68 sees the demise of Jomon, Broken swords, which was played by your gracious game-organiser. (With a cameo from Executor during my holliday in august, which was just after I lost the battle for my capital.) I'll post a short-and-little-detailed account of my demise later. In the meantime: good luck for the remaining contenders, looks like it could be an exiting endgame for y'all. (Well, maybe not so much so for Utgard, buy you catch my drift.)

[Dimaz]

Hosting postponed for ANDalusian_Sun by 24 hours. The game will now host at 04:20 GMT on Friday September 30th.

[WraithLord]

Who was Utgard?