playing ANYONE against everyone

[TirAsleen]

I like the tactic with hellpower and spawning horrors while blood mages are immortal

Other Ulm themes are pretty weak but BF is one of my favourites too and it turned out not that weak once in a MP game its the most versatile ulm theme too.

well, i go for LA Ulm, MA Ryleh and EA Mitclan. But Ashen Empire will always be my favourite for nostalgic reasions.

[Evilhomer]

Mivayan, well i have not tested it but according to the manual page 72, ordinary combat take place at turn resolution sequence 14, while "All dominion spread (for whatever reason) are conducted now." is turn resolution sequence 24. Unless the manual has another flaw i take that to mean that preaching which does change dominion should take place after combat.

[Hellboy]

Gandalf Parker said:
In a game of purely testing strategy, then there usually isnt diplomacy. There doesnt tend to be diplomacy in chess. Also random events, random maps, any kindof luck really.

In a more role-playing game, diplomacy is part of the role playing. So is taking your lumps with random things. Yes, this is my preferred playing style. Im afraid that I got alot of the random stuff added to the game. Try not to hold that agaisnt me.

Dominions tends to be split. There are those who play their god, and there are those who consider their god just another piece in the game. Since there is no easy way to keep diplomacy out of the game, I think this one will have alot of it.

Side Note: I do have a list of hacks I did to try and create a game with no diplomacy. Blind email accounts all off of my server, watching the log and reporting any msgs between players, etc etc. It still ended up short of absolute but I might host a game like that one day down the road.

I just have to say that this notion that diplomacy and/or randomness somehow reduce strategy is really quite simplistic. In both cases there are many, many hard core, intense strategy games replete in both. For example, in the case of diplomacy there is the archtype Avalon Hill boardgame called "Diplomacy" where the whole point of the game is, as its name says, to make (and break) deals. This is a game that has been analyzed and studied extensively. I imagine it is quite amenable to being studied in the light of the mathematics of game theory, and I'd be willing to bet that that has been done.

Equally so with randomness, randomness in no way decreases the amount of strategy/analysis to be applied. Just ask any bridge player. Yes it is true that many classic strategy games are deterministic, but requiring a player to make his/her analyses probabilistic instead can end up with a game just as deep and just as challenging (or more so).

Edit: Hope the above doesn't come off as hostile or insulting, but I have noticed that there is a school of thought on these boards that diplomacy somehow reduces the intellectual quality or depth of the game. Seeing this, I just wanted to raise the counterargument.

[Rytek]

Sauromatia.

[Tyrant]

I'd love to play this if it comes together, and i think i'd like mid Abyssia, but there are lots of cool choices.

[Meglobob]

Joining a game like this and getting knocked out early would be very depressing.

[FrankTrollman]

Deleted.

[KissBlade]

Experience in large games have shone me that,that simply isn't true. Once you have approached late game, a majority of your power comes from summoned units. Also I'm not sure how you can say that MA Pan has any sort of strong late game magic ... pans are just not that formidable.

Most huge games all generally meld around the same way of players building up clam pools and hoping out nuke the other player's clam pools out of existence.

[djo]

Meglobob said:
Joining a game like this and getting knocked out early would be very depressing.

(a) By turn 517 in 2009, it might be depressing not to have been knocked out early.

(b) I get knocked out early in most of the games I play anyway. It's still fun.

I'd do it just to do it. It'd be a historic event in the online Dominions community. I'd play any one of a bunch of nations, Ermor, Marignon, C'tis being particular favorites of mine.


Question for veterans of very long games: do games ever get so long that blood becomes less effective due to lack of population? Or, referencing KissBlade's comment immediately above, does it just become irrelevant before ineffective?

[Meglobob]

djo said:

(a) By turn 517 in 2009, it might be depressing not to have been knocked out early.

Good point, having a 50+ province empire can be painful, timewise and logistically. Ideally, it would be good to get defeated between turns 51-100.