MP: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI. Game Over. Team ACGHHS wins!

[Septimius Severus]

Alright, not having heard from the other team captains and seeing no further evidence of a desire to continue by a substantial number of players I am calling this game at turn 55.

Team ACGHHS (formally Noobheim) having won by concession. I note that team ACGHHS' win was aided by alliance with the Mysterios and the Blessed Ones but does not detract from their own remarkable achievements.

Now for thanks to the following players, alternates, subs, and others:

Viccio
Maerlande
Ghoul31
Frozen Lama
Hoplosternum
Immaculate
Agusti
Stagger Lee
Pyg
Rdonj
GrdugeBringer
Squirreloid
RabbitDynamite
Illuminated One
Tam-Lin
CuriousCat
PsiSoldier
Shard
Makinus
SciencePro
Sum1lost
Frank Trollman
Tarrax

Special thanks goes to the following team advisors, captains, and others:

DrPraetorious - Captain
Chrispedersen - Captain
Algaenymph - Captain
Agema - Captain
Executor - Captain/Advisor
Micah - Advisor
Lingchih - Advisor
Melnorj - Co-admin
Edi - for the BI mod and assistance

And finally, very special thanks goes out to:

Gandalf Parker - Server admin, host of our game, and creator of the AI team.

And to the whole of the Dom3 community.

[GrudgeBringer]

LOL, I think I was too....

NP, I just was suprised that it came up and I read it a different way than you meant it.

Good game all, and a special thanks to Chris for taking me under his wing and explaining WHY we where doing things!!!

I am deleting the file so it is final for me.

Thanks for all your work Sept, dang it must be a chore...

[Stagger Lee]

Good game guys. I had a lot of fun fighting pyg and his melquarts, and I learned quite a bit (let's see if it sticks). Team games do require a different mindset, and things are not as black and white as they maybe should be. One thing I know, Septimius, is that you put a lot into this game, and tried to make everyone happy. Not an easy task. I suppose if I had read the whole thread before volunteering to sub in here, it wouldn't have happened.

It's done now, and for what it's worth I'm glad I was part of it. Thank you SS, and thank you all. Maybe I'll see you in the next installment.

Congratulations and long live ACGHHS. Well played.

[Gandalf Parker]

I also learned alot from this game.
For one thing, I learned that it might have been easier to just beg LLama to do the couple of things he doesnt support which shifted it to me.

And a renewed appreciation for what LLama does and puts up with. I run about 60 games at a time and some are larger than this one. Now I understand why his problem threads are more common than mine. And why his is the only pbem server still running. I wont be as quick to do another pbem soon.

[chrispedersen]

Thanks to all players, to sept for admining, and to gandalf for setting up a server.

Special thanks to all team members past and present. Hop, Hunt, Squirrel, Grudge, and our occassional alternates.

If my team members don't object, I'd be fine giving out the password to our forum. All of our turns are there, as well as our plans, how we attacked problems. Personally I think they make a great after action report.

54,205 ! Pretty incredible guys.

Best wishes to all, wherever life takes you..

Chris
for the last time
Team Achoo!

[DrPraetorious]

I think our forum might have passwords and suchnot in it, so probably we can't open it up, unfortunately.

Good effort team, well played opponents, kudos to all and sundry.

[Septimius Severus]

Our usual practice is to archive and make public all team forums upon game completion. Unless I hear an objection, I will go ahead and take care of that.

And don't miss the next game in this exciting and innovative series featuring:

• New teams and themes
• More provinces to conquer
• Additional special magic sites to claim
• A deadlier and more powerful AI team to defeat
• Additional victory conditions for more ways to win
• Introducing a new optional human played mercenary nation
• New supporting roles for non-participants including advisors, diplomats, and spies
• And much, much, more

The critics are raving:

"I had a lot of fun with Sept. S., rdonj, and the gang in NvV"
- Pyg

"Kudos ... for creating interesting games"
- Chrispedersen

"Septimius is a visionary genius. No one puts more work, time, and effort into creating games than he does. I commend him and look forward to joining future games"
- Anonymous fan

[pyg]

The Devas were defeated by diplomacy. If this game had been non-diplomacy we would have been ceded the game >5 turns ago. In order to win against 12:4 odds you need to have had a much larger lead than we ever did. For me, the diplomacy aspect of the game is the thing that bothers me most about losing.

I also didn't enjoy the game as much without rdonj. His upbeat attitude and his outstanding communication really make him a great person to have on your team. I recommend that future games start off by stating a no-rollback policy. Arguing for exceptions should be allowed, but being late is not one of them. I thought the server worked pretty well for a beta version. Hopefully it was at least a little fun to write/debug for Gandalf. My teammates were all great as well after the very first one quit.

Good game everyone. This game was a lot of fun for me. I especially enjoyed the drama although I prefer more in character stuff. Thanks Sept. and Gandalf.

[Gandalf Parker]

It was fun to write and debug this game.

I also greatly appreciate the chance for adding designed AI's to the game. I know that this first one wasnt too impressive but on a scale of 1-10 it was only meant to be a 3. A slight improvement over randomly built AIs, based on some of the "everyone knows" suggested player-builds. The starting army was simply duplicated. And the secondary location was specifically a "mage lab" location. Basically like a 10-turn head start for the AIs. It was good enough (in my humble opinion) that you couldnt ignore it.

The next set of AIs will be more toward a 6 on a scale of 1-10. Using god-builds specifically around what the AI does and doesnt do well (such as, no sending of gods to Arenas). Better entrenched. Better selection of units. Its still not likely to win the game but again, I wouldnt ignore it.

And in game 3 there will be no restrictions. On a scale of 1-10 the AI might be a 12.
And that still wont be using ALL of the tricks possible for creating a better AI game.

Its been a long time since anyone has given me a challenge. I majorly thank Septimius and all of you for providing a not-just-the-usual game. Lets do more.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by pyg

The Devas were defeated by diplomacy. If this game had been non-diplomacy we would have been ceded the game >5 turns ago. In order to win against 12:4 odds you need to have had a much larger lead than we ever did. For me, the diplomacy aspect of the game is the thing that bothers me most about losing.

I also didn't enjoy the game as much without rdonj. His upbeat attitude and his outstanding communication really make him a great person to have on your team. I recommend that future games start off by stating a no-rollback policy. Arguing for exceptions should be allowed, but being late is not one of them. I thought the server worked pretty well for a beta version. Hopefully it was at least a little fun to write/debug for Gandalf. My teammates were all great as well after the very first one quit.

Good game everyone. This game was a lot of fun for me. I especially enjoyed the drama although I prefer more in character stuff. Thanks Sept. and Gandalf.

Thanks pyglet. I really enjoyed playing with all of you as well. I think we made a great team, and worked hard to help each other out. I had fun in the game. My greatest moment was probably butchering two fomorian kings in one turn with my stone sword gargoyle. My most disappointing, the air drop on my army the turn I was about to storm TC's capitol, which pretty much denied my team any chance of doing significant damage to the blessed ones for the rest of the game, because iirc the very next turn is when fomoria jumped all over me :P With pyg's melqarts struggling in the east, we just couldn't afford to fight over there anymore. Actually the biggest disappointment hadn't happened quite yet. That was when 2 flames from the sky and a bunch of seeking arrows failed to take out arco's god, instead hitting nothing but TC targets. Which proceeded to destroy everything arco had stolen from me, so I guess it wasn't all bad. But still, very disappointing. If that hadn't been over a fort, we would have killed 3 of the 4 ACGHHS gods over the course of that game.

I enjoy drama as well, but only the in character sort of drama. Much of the drama this game spawned was not really the fun kind of drama. Limiting the amount of rollbacks to be done in the next way is a good way of lessening that sort of drama, IMO.