team victory conditions

[SafeKeeper]

Alliances between players are possible manually. Adding them to the game as a menu will just limit things.

How so? It works great in RTS games.

Look, I like unfixed teams, too, but I also like fixed alliances that cannot be broken.

I strongly dislike the "accidental battles". I should be able to jointly attack a province with an ally of mine without our armies fighting each other. They don't necessarily need to fight together, although it'd be nice if they somehow could (lining up next to each others or something), but having them be able to fight in the same province without tearing each others apart would be really, really nice.

[Archonsod]

I strongly dislike the "accidental battles". I should be able to jointly attack a province with an ally of mine without our armies fighting each other.

Surely that should be down to both players to organise, rather than the game? If you don't communicate with your allies, then that's whats going to happen.
I'm kind of 50/50 on the whole alliance thing. On the one hand, it could prove useful to the AI to know that one or more players are working as a team (i.e. it could assess the threat of both players as a combined force rather than individually, and act accordingly).
On the other, your troops are fighting to ensure that you become the one true god. I can't really see them being willing to work alongside these other guys who keep telling them their God is a fraud, and they should worship this other guy...

[Cainehill]

Archonsod said:

Surely that should be down to both players to organise, rather than the game? If you don't communicate with your allies, then that's whats going to happen.
(...)
On the other, your troops are fighting to ensure that you become the one true god. I can't really see them being willing to work alongside these other guys who keep telling them their God is a fraud, and they should worship this other guy...

Why wouldn't they work together at times? If a third-party pretender's ascension to godhoood is imminent, certainly your troops would be willing to cooperate with "the infidels" to prevent this. And I'm not sure that your armies are necessarily religious fanatics fighting to the death because of their belief in their "god" / pretender : if that was the case, you wouldn't have so many troops with ****ty morale who turn and run as soon as anyone gets nicked by an arrow.

It also ignores the possibility of pantheonic victories (in non-Dominions terms, the Greek gods fighting the Norse, or better yet, the Norse against the Giants). The ability to setup these kinds of a game is something people have long requested.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think its thematic that I as Pangaea would need to coordinate my attacks with my ally Ermor so that the two armies dont attack each other. Even with an alliance I dont see putting them together into a big army.

2 humans vs 10 computers I do now.

What I meant by limiting is that we now have more options than any menu will likely give us. And I dont like game-enforced unbreakable alliances.

I dont know why recognition of a team win is important in a game like this. I dont tend to every take it to where the game recognizes the win anyway. In multiplayer game just outputting the scores.html will show you the win before the game would.

Pantheonic victories we already have even if the game doesnt recognize it.

I will admit that having the game messages output would be nice. But it would probably output it to the host server and the host can already get a ton of priveleged info from the log file.

[DominionsFan]

SafeKeeper said:

How so? It works great in RTS games.

Look, I like unfixed teams, too, but I also like fixed alliances that cannot be broken.

I strongly dislike the "accidental battles". I should be able to jointly attack a province with an ally of mine without our armies fighting each other. They don't necessarily need to fight together, although it'd be nice if they somehow could (lining up next to each others or something), but having them be able to fight in the same province without tearing each others apart would be really, really nice.

There was an excellent old turn based strategy game, called Romance of the three kingdoms...in fact its a serie..There is RoTK XI..that is the latest afaik..but its only available in japanese/chinese languages..

Anyways in those games you can form an alliance with an AI player for example, and you can launch a joint attack on an enemy province. Im unsure that how the MP works in those games, because the last english version was RotK V. if Im correct and that game is many years old, there was no multiplayer in that part...maybe theres MP in the latest versions.

I always loved that feature, it would be a nice addition to Doms 3.

[SafeKeeper]

Surely that should be down to both players to organise, rather than the game? If you don't communicate with your allies, then that's whats going to happen.

The problem is that the way it is now you can't fight together, whereas if alliances were implemented, you could fight together. It's more than preventing accidental encounters.

I'm kind of 50/50 on the whole alliance thing. On the one hand, it could prove useful to the AI to know that one or more players are working as a team (i.e. it could assess the threat of both players as a combined force rather than individually, and act accordingly).

Not to mention that you could script in advantages for the alliance players (shared vision, etc.).

On the other, your troops are fighting to ensure that you become the one true god. I can't really see them being willing to work alongside these other guys who keep telling them their God is a fraud, and they should worship this other guy...

Yup. It's bending the rules slightly. But I can live with that. Just pretend they're fighting together temporarily for the time being or something.

I can't picture Marignon working with Ermor.

Then don't set up an alliance with Ermor. Just that you can, doesn't have to mean you have to. It's like Age of Empires II: You CAN have the Aztecs fight the Chinese, but you don't have to if you're into realism.

(As a side note, it's funny how alliances and teams are in every RTS game, but when it comes to 4X, suddenly no one wants them)

[Gandalf Parker]

I didnt say I didnt want them. I just dont want the game deciding what they are, and enforcing them unrealistically. I love alliance options with AI's (because I abuse them to death) but in a game like this I like the flexibility which automatically happens by creating your own alliance rules.

I know the game allows AI to ally with AI but Im not sure if it works for AI to player. In the AI-AI version they wont actually attack each others province but if they both attack someone elses province on the same turn then their armies will fight.

[Cainehill]

Nothing would keep you from breaking an alliance - you'd simply get a warning that you'd be breaking the alliance, and the other player (and possibly _all_ players in the game) would get a notification that a treaty/alliance has been broken by so-and-so.

And again : the even more important aspect is that when someone goes AI, the AI could know about treaties, alliances, as opposed to completely trashing a MP gamer as often happens now.

( And yes - I would say it ruins a game at least for the person who had a treaty, their armies on the other side of their empire, and gets rolled over when the other player goes AI. )

[Folket]

I see no thematic problems with firm alliances. Most religions that have existed up to date have more then one god.

Even the jewish religion (which later spawned cristianity and Islam) may have it roots in Polyteistic faith. The bible have referenses to a fertility god worshiped by semitic people in Syria. I do not know the exact name. Could be Belzebub or Belial. If anyone is intrested I can look it up .

I think it would also be a very intresting feature for SP as you may set up thematic senarios for AARs or if you want a challange.

[Gandalf Parker]

You can set them up in SoloPlay. At least as an opponent. In fact I did that in my WEvsTHEM scenario where Rlyeh, Atlantis, and Ermor were ruled by 3 sibling dragons. With boosted gods, selected starting positions, extra castles, etc its a pretty good scenario for cooperative human players to tackle.
www.Dom2minions.com

Its not my place to explain this but did anyone notice this on the developement page?
* Support for > 30 nations at once.

Gandalf Parker