MP Game: Age of Men - Completed - Arco wins!
 

This game will be a themed game which will focus on the power of human/mortal armies, rather than the power of battlefield magic and the SC. Details as follows...

House Rules:
1) Only human pretenders.

2) Only recruitable commanders can be used as SCs.

3) Only 1 mage per 25 troops allowed in combat

Game Server:
IP: benatar.snurgle.org
port: 2001


Game Settings: [*]Indys: 7 [*]Research: Very Hard [*]Site Freq: 60 [*]HoF: 15 [*]Graphs: On [*]Victory: Standard [*]Map: Karan [*]Timing: Quickhost only (will move to 24hr/48hr if players are slow)

Mods: Age of Men Mods
Zens pretender, spell, and scale mods. Age of Men Mod (big battlefield and strategic artillery spells harder to cast, more supply and gold to support big armies, some items removed)


Banned Nations:
Jotunhiem and all unholy nations (Ermor, Pangea CW, Ulm BF, Ctis DT)

Player List: [*]Arco - Ironhawk [*]Machaka - Msew [*]Marginon - Cohen [*]Tien'Chi S&A - Quantum[*]Man - Tomahawk (Sheap has taken over)[*]Pangea NE - Wazooking [*]Mictlan - Yellow Cactus

Some particulars about house rules that came up when discussing the game. Summoned commanders cannot use any magic items aside from magic boosters (blood thorn is being removed from the game tho) and ranged weapons. If, during fighting, an army is reduced below the mage:troop ratio, the mages must immediately retreat to the nearest friendly fort. I will mod a High Priest unit into any players (base) nation who has only mage+priest units so that priests can be deployed in combat at will without using a mage "slot".

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I'll be playing Pythium.

And on a side note, for the purposes of house rule #3 it was decided that communicants have to count as a "mage". Otherwise the pythium mages would be far too powerful compared to other nations due to the restrictions on number.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

machaka

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I'd try Marignon


What about modding magic summoned guys to have no slots, but to boost their base magic (ie an Earth King has no slots but start with 6 Earth magic).

About "only recruitable" commanders can be used as SCs, this means I can give to my ie Arch Angel casting fire spells boots of quickness, items for recuperation of fatigue and so on? (cause they're not SCs items). Or you mispelled and intended only recruitable commanders can be equipped?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I'll play as Man.... Lee


PS this is weird, but I used some other guy named Tomahawk's login and password. They sent me his info when i joined as a new user "Tomahawk." I decided not to check his private Messages.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I think that would be an enormous amount of work.
IMO, as long as the items are usefull for spellcasting and
the player is not scripting them as an SC, it is ok.

I'll take T'ien Ch'i.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I would like to be playing Pangaea (New Era)
Which Versions of Zens pretender, spell, and scale mods are we using? And will the Age of Men mod conflict with Zens' spell mod?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Yeah, it's too much work to do this Cohen. In my limited modding experience you would need to pull up every summoned unit and manually mod out its slots and improve its stats. There is no way to do it automatically that I am aware of.

About equipping summoned units: I stated further down in the original post that "Summoned commanders cannot use any magic items aside from magic boosters (blood thorn is being removed from the game tho) and ranged weapons". So boots of quickness etc would not be allowed.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I see what you are getting at Quantum, but where do you draw the line. Boots of quickness and Cloak of Shadows are great for spellcasters. But put them on the right summoned commander and put him way in front of your troops instead of behind so he draws enemy troops to him and suddenly he is an SC even tho you have only scripted him to cast spells.

I think to just make 100% sure that there is no abuse of this we should just outlaw all items except for boosters and missle weapons on summoned commanders.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I understand if it would make it too complicated. However I see a big dividing live between reienvig. items, and say, cloak of shadows. Some directly help the mage cast spells,
others just make him harder to kill/do more damage in melee.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

This will be interesting. I am not sure that I will do that well, but I am willing to give it a try. By the way, how do you define 'human' pretender? Everyone who needs only 10 points to start a magic path, even if it is an archmage riding a freakbeast?

In any case, I claim the world for Vanheim!

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Atlantis
-Yc

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

There is a new Version of the spellmod with some changes that conflicted with alot of what was intended. You may want to look at it and see if you wish to play with it instead of Version 1.7

www.techno-mage.com/~zen/

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Hahaha - The Freakbeast!!!

Umm... I can't recall all the pretender choices offhand but the "human" pretenders are usually like the Archmage, Master Druid, Crone, etc. The size 2 ones that are living, mortal, dont have many hp, no interesting combat abilities, and generally look human. But I think the freaklord or whatever pretty much falls into this Category as well in terms of stats and abilities, right? Plus it is really funny http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Where can I find the age of men mod?
-Yc

Oh, and can we have ghost kings?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I'm still finishing up the age of men mod. Given what zen has said about the latest spell mod, what I will likely have to do is: grab his latest spell mod, then look thru it for conflicts with Age of Men and resolve them. And then post up a Zen/AoM combined mod so that we dont have any problems.

For the record, of the nations people listed to play: are they all base, except for Pangea? Cause I dont want to add in High Priests for nations if they can't even use them.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

No, they are definitely out. I think the must-be-10-points-for -paths rule is a good one.

Oh, and I'm using Spring & Autumn.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I don't know what kind of Marignon I'll use ^^
sorry.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

The Age of Men mod is basically ready to go. There was surprisingly little overlap with Zen's spell mod, but enough that I just tagged my changes onto the end of his file. The only problem remaining is that I want to mod out Gaap the Ice Devil (without throwing out ice devil summoning all together) or at least remove his Hell Sword, but I dont know how to mod that.

Anyone know?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I don't think thats going to be a problem as long as he's scripted for spells AND the owner of gaap givens him an item to hold. Then he can't use his sword..hehe
-Yc

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Hahah! Make it a requirement that if you summon Gaap you have to give him Totem shield or something? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

You can change the weapon he wields, with a nasty non draining life sword.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I'm sorry, guys, but I think I will sit out this one, after all. Someone pointed out a few things to me, and convinced me that this game will be less fun than it sounds. Once again, sorry for dropping out like this.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I'm changing to Mictlan! Blooooooooodddd!

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I took Gaap's hellsword away and the mod is now ready. In the end I decided not to mod in High Priests into base nations. It would be unfair to people not playing base. Players will just have to make creative use of Standard items I think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Anyway, here are the mods for this game:

Age of Men Mods

Go download them and start working on your pretender. I'm planning on a game start of Monday or Tuesday evening which should give people some time to get used to the mods and play a bit. I'll probably open up the server for uploading pretenders sometime on sunday - there will be a post when I do.

Now, as for maps, it looks like we have 8 players. Anyone have a suggestion for what to play on?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

So, I looked at a couple of maps just now... Seems like Inland might be a good one for us since no one is aquatic. But its just a little too big. If we had one additional player that would probably be just right.

Other than that, maybe Karan or Parganos? If people dont have an opinion about maps I will just pick one and you can all suffer with my choice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Parganos is known for his little cash income, I'd prefer Karan unless we use a rich setting Parganos.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Karan is fine, although I have had a start location that only had two connections, one to a water location.
On another note, could we turn off the score graphs?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Ok, Karan it is. For anyone who does not already have the map, here is the link from the Illwinter website. Just download it and unzip it into your maps directory:

Karan Map

As for graphs: Nope I strongly prefer graphs on. I understand people's arguments against them but IMO, they relieve countless hours of tallying up all kinds of minutae about your opponents.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Ok, the server should now be Online for pretender uploads. Connect at...

IP: benatar.snurgle.org
port: 2001

... game will begin when all pretenders are in!

Oh!! And everyone remember to password protect your pretender so there can't be any mixups.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Oh, don't forget. Human pretenders only

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Hrrrrrrm! After thinking about it for a long while I have to bail on Pythium and switch to Arco. Without communicants pythium's mages just wont be able to deal with the number of troops we are going to see. Astral magic is too focused on single unit spells.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I think we only have 7 players in the game.
Yvelina bowed out earlier in the thread.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

Oh! Yvelina did indeed drop out. I hadn't even noticed, thanks for pointing that out Wazooking. In that case we have only one player left to upload and we can begin. I will send him a PM now. I was terribly afraid of the Vans in this game anyway so that is kind of a relief :}

Re: New Game: Age of Men - uploading pretenders 6/
 

game Version to use is 2.15 correct? (i.e. the latest Version of the game as of today's date)

site-searching
 

can you site-search with solo mages?

mage movement
 

What are the rules for moving solo mages:

a) from forts to other forts
b) from forts to adjacent armies
c) from forts to armies in the field
d) from armies in the field to other armies in the field
e) from site searcing (if they can) to armies in the field
f) from an army in the field to solo sight searching (if they can)
g) from armies in the field BACK to a fort

mercs
 

are mercs allowed?

Re: site-searching
 

Yeah site searching is fine. To put any limitations on that would just make life hard for players.

Do try to be reasonable tho - it is not acceptable for a player to "just happen" to have a 5 air mage ready to cast wrathfull skies or something "searching for sites" along the border of a warzone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Yes we are playing with v2.15, the latest.

BTW, everyone, msew was the Last player in, the game has now begun!

Re: mage movement
 

Good questions msew. And... I had originally written up this long winded answer to each individual question. Which is just lame, no one is going to remember or care what you can or cant do in situation a, b, z, x, etc. So lets just restate the house rule with the following addition:
[*] Mages cannot participate in combat without 25 troops per mage in combat with them.
[*] Mages can move about however they want in any *friendly* province, but must have orders set to Retreat unless they are with an army or in a fort.

Now - before people start complaining about having to change orders all the time!! You dont need to reset the orders of every single one of your mages when they step out of a fort. Just be realistic: is this mage going sitesearching in friendly, safe provinces? Or moving from one fort to another in your empire? Then dont bother changing orders. But if you are sending a mage from a forward fort to an army in a warzone then you should definitely set them to retreat (until they arrive at the army).

I know its trouble to do this guys but I think its the solution that provides the most flexibility. You get the freedom of moving your mages around without worrying overmuch about rules or some huge list of situations you need to check against. And it still makes mages conform with the spirit of the Age of Men house rules.

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

So, Cohen brings up an excellent point in his in-game message: How do we handle the situation of one player attacking and storming another players research center where they will be practically gauranteed of being over the 1:25 mage ratio. I'm going to think about it some today but does anyone have some suggestions?

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

The purpose of the game is to make mages on "active" / "usable" when there are 25 non mage units.

When mages are out searching by themselves they must have their orders set to: "retreat".

If there are N mages out searching without troop support they must have all their orders set to: "retreat".


When mages are moving from army to army they have their orders set to: "retreat".

When mages are moving they have their orders set to: "retreat".


Okie. Cool. We all agree on that.


So: Now we have mages hanging out in their respective forts. Researching perhaps. Idling about. Just arriving from being out in the field. etc etc.

So by those rules ALL mages must have their default order be retreat. And only when they 25 non-mage units allocated to them may they choose to change it.


So if you have a research province all of the mages that do not have 25 non-mage units must have their orders set to retreat.



Consequences:

a) if all of your mages are concentrated in one area and can only retreat you better make certain they have a place to retreat from or you will lose them.

b) An enemy attacking a concentrated research province could massively disrupt your researching. And maybe kill off some mages in the adjoining provinces with secondary attacks

c) this stops the tactic of: making forts and dumping 10 mages that are "researching" and can defend that fort quite easily from the 50 unit 2 mage assault force

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

So on who's got a Watchtower will be able to bring his retreating mages to safety, meanwhile who's picked a castle has his retreating mages trapped inside ... not fair.
I'd suggest you can't script any mages that excedes the limitations. The tactical AI will start to buff them with shields, and all other stuff, then start spamming crap spells.

I'd change too the "retreat" option of the site searching mages. Keep in mind in a such game, Provincial Defence could be worth. Indeed some nations get a mage too in Provincial Defence (for 20 men).
I'd apply for site searching mages, and all mages outside/inside castle without their 25 troops retinue, the rule of not being scripted.

Those cases are purely defensive however, in attack you're forced to the 25:1 ratio.

I'd suggest an exception for Mercenary mages, as they could be considered always active. They're avaiable for all, and this could enhance their value. Don't forget if they retreat you'll lose them. So I'd believe this could be fair.

To substitute the uber-micro needed for the "all retreat", according to my rule, we can add an string to the scripted mages, to check better if someone tries to trick the house rule, like "***" (three asterisks) at the end of the mage name, to identify him as scripted. (We will notice so on an F2-A1 mage scripted doing something like Air, Summon Phoenix Power, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball ... meanwhile an AI lead F2-A1 mage casting Air Shield, Fire Shield, Charged Body, Air, some buffs, then spamming spectral warriors or something like =P )

Re: New Game: Age of Men
 

I would use msew's rules, with the exception of capitals (i.e., you can stack as many mages there as you want without retreat orders). This would allow everyone a safe research base, while keeping the mages out of battle most of the time. While this would make players hard to kill, this is not neccesarily a bad thing. Also, you could always 'starve' the capital mages out from lack of gold.

Moving to QuickHost
 

It's really ridiculous that we are stalled again here for the 2nd day in a row. These should be 10-15 minute turns. To keep this from happening again I will be moving this game to 24hr quickhost once this current turn generates.

Additionally, if this current turn does not generate by 7pm Eastern US Time, I will force it. So, one way or the other, there will be a turn tonight and we will be on 24hr quickhost from here on out.

I'll send cohen a PM to warn him now as well since he is the only person out....

Re: Moving to QuickHost
 

Slow, deep breaths Ironhawk....
I'm the first to grumble when the turn isn't in, but lets keep in mind that this game isn't on quickhost. And even were we Quick Hosting, some players are going to stale. Complaining about it makes you feel better, but won't stop players from going out of town, or playing DaoC until they're blue in the face. So sharpen your pikes and host without them!
<Unless someone requests more time>
-Yc

Re: Moving to QuickHost
 

I'm not that upset, cactus. But its an adding insult-to-injury situation here, you have to give me that. I mean, not 2 turns ago I specifically sent out an in-game message asking people to respect the informal 24hr.

And of course I have no issues with people needing more time and going out of town, etc. But there was no communication to that effect. Coupled with the simplicity of these early turns some irritation is warranted.

Anyway, the game will be progressing tonight so there is that to look forward to.

Re: Moving to QuickHost
 

new turn is up

All non-combat mages must Retreat
 

I've put some thought into the "Researching Mages" house rule problem and I think msew's option is the only way to go. Cohen's suggestion is really nice cause you dont have to go through and set all your mages to Retreat, which is kind of tiresome. But the truth is that you cannot be 100% sure that unscripted mages will not cast important spells.

For example, if someone tried to attack a research center of my Arco Mystics they might be up against 10-15 of them. And I feel very sure that the first spell the AI would pick would be Mind Burn or something like that. 10-15 of those a turn would be a significant force on the battlefield. Not to mention my priestesses all casting Protection on my troops and continual SoCs.

So, unless someone can come up with a third option then we just have to set all mages to retreat. I suggest that you bind Retreat as a scripted order and just assign it to every new mage you recruit as they arrive.

As msew pointed out this decision has serious consequences. Even more than a normal game, you DO NOT want your research centers being stormed. :} Fill them up with skellies or vine men or something. Also, to address the point of fleeing from Forts: I believe that the fort type does not affect whether or not you can flee. So if you have a fort and Retreat from a Storm attempt you can still escape so long as there is a province to flee to.

I\'ll be away
 

Hey all, just wanted to let you know that I am going to be gone from Feb. 8th to Feb. 13th. I'll be at the irl wedding of one of our fellow players, Tomahawk. Since I will be staying at his place for that period I should be able to continue to do turns, but perhaps not as quickly as when I was home. Just thought I would let you know in case I start causing slowdowns