Scenario: Orania Nasty Edition

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stormbinder:
But what do you think about having sligtly different Versions of your map for each of nations, so that all your modifications would only help AIs, not human player?

Too much bother to maintain strict Version control and cohesion of for a hobby project as I cannot use compiler-directives in the .map files.

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Well it's your project. I am only asking because your idea about "nasty Orania map" looks very interesting to me.


As for Versions control - you don't really need them I think. You could just continue to use single Version of the map until you feel you are happy with it, after you finish tweaking it. Then produce these maps for differnt nations just by removing whatever sites and stuff you had put in to help the particualr nation. I may be wrong of course since I am speaking from general logic point of view without any experince with Dom2 mapmaking. If so - I appologize.


But in any case- it's your call of course.

If you are done with it - could you tell me if it did help AIs more than it did human player? If it did, I would like to try it.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Officially, I never finish tweaking any of my projects, Stormbinder

That said, I surely hope that I receive feedback from those of you who play the map, in order that I can improve it. I strive for some sort of balance in the starting positions, as I will want to play it in MP one of these days, but it is obviously impossible to test the relative strengths of the VERY different setups fully with just one player.

As such, is any nation too weak? Any nation too strong? Is there some site that one of the nations just needs to have to give it that little extra tweak, for fun or for profit? Does some sites need to be removed?


As for you, Stormbinder, I suggest you play around with it a bit [as non-Ermor] with 16 impossible AIs and then, after a game or two, you tell me whether you want a Version where the advantages are removed for the country you play.

[Slogan]

Peter
I also like the Orania map, but had similar issues with out stripping the AI gem count quickly. Your map will not completely resovle the problem but it surely is a step in the right direction. Ermor starting with an income of 23 death gems is rather daunting! Overall this will make the map much more challenging. For SP there may be some balancing issues in that a player may be able to overpower the AI, but I don't think this will be an issue in MP.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Slogan:
Peter
I also like the Orania map, but had similar issues with out stripping the AI gem count quickly. Your map will not completely resovle the problem but it surely is a step in the right direction. Ermor starting with an income of 23 death gems is rather daunting! Overall this will make the map much more challenging. For SP there may be some balancing issues in that a player may be able to overpower the AI, but I don't think this will be an issue in MP.

For MP, I am a bit more concerned with the special spell bonuses from sites. I have tried to balance strength in spell sites with less gems, fewer (or weaker) summoning sites, and fewer special troop recruitment possibilities but nations such as Vanheim (starting with a 50% Conjuration site) may potentially become exceedingly scary in a short time if they rely on summoning.

I cannot rule out that I may have gone too far.

Heck, even AI AE/SH Ermor can occasionally be scary against a human in this setup once they get rolling despite the ease of massing priests, as the AI likes to mass Dusk Elders and have them Shadow BLast the opposition (At 23 Death Gems initial income, it generally recruits a Spectator or Dusk Elder per round from turn 1....) - I wonder how dangerous Ermor would be in human hands in this scenario.

[ March 30, 2004, 21:08: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

[Slogan]

It's not possible to forecast the outcome of the buffing in this scenario. It will need to be played again and again by several people until it can be stated with confidence whether a nation has become over powered. I know that I will enjoy doing this research. Once again this looks to be a great scenario!

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
Officially, I never finish tweaking any of my projects, Stormbinder

That said, I surely hope that I receive feedback from those of you who play the map, in order that I can improve it

Sure, I'll definetly send you my feedback once I'll start playing it.

As for you, Stormbinder, I suggest you play around with it a bit [as non-Ermor] with 16 impossible AIs and then, after a game or two, you tell me whether you want a Version where the advantages are removed for the country you play.

Heh, that's certanly sounds promising. I'll give it a try. But I think I'll have to play with 14 Impossible AIs for now - I don't want to fight Ermor all over the globe after he will conquer other AI (unless you somehow managed to fix it with your map) and Jotunheim is broken. Perhaps I should exclude Miclan as well for the reason of it beign too weak when played by AIs? But than maybe you gave it such a boost with your map modifications that it is cometitive vs other AIs now?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Heh, that's certanly sounds promising. I'll give it a try. But I think I'll have to play with 14 Impossible AIs for now - I don't want to fight Ermor all over the globe after he will conquer other AI (unless you somehow managed to fix it with your map) and Jotunheim is broken.

Leave Ermor in. They usually run into some problems with Marignon, C'tis, and Pangaea. Often enough that they are not an automatic candidate for exclusion, anyway.

Jotunheim is only broken if the AI chooses the Utgard theme, the odds of that are low. If you want to absolutely make sure it does not, you can add a #compspecdom 12 "Niefelheim" command to the map file.

Perhaps I should exclude Miclan as well for the reason of it beign too weak when played by AIs? But than maybe you gave it such a boost with your map modifications that it is cometitive vs other AIs now?

You should most definitely NOT leave Mictlan out. That leaves their area of the board ripe for conquest by Arcoscephale, Abysia, and Vanheim and you really don't want that.

The scenario works best if all nations are played. If you feel that one nation is too strong, set it to a lower difficulty level rather than leaving it out. Leaving out a nation assures that its neighbours can very easily acquire another ~20+ gem income and several good sites within the first 10-15 rounds, which can have unfortunate results.

[ March 31, 2004, 19:30: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]