Sitting on the fence

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Disclaimer: I have no idea if any of these are possible. Ones clearly possible are exceptions to the rules.
Aside from the last one, are any of these remotely possible and worth me looking into?

Crazy game idea? I have no reason to suspect its possible, but ... an epic map. Many fantasy novels have an event where the world was sundered in twain. Or stuff like that. If at all possible, I'd suspect that the players would have to agree to replace their game map all at the same time. And the game hoster would have to mod the old data into the new map.

But ideas... Take for instance, Paraganos. Imagine that the two land masses come together (Sea -> Farmland) at one or two of the lakes, around year five. Then, one of the other lakes opens up a bit, or one of the provinces sinks below. The gamehoster would act as kind of a GM, and the gameplayers wouldn't know whats happening until maybe a year before the event. If anything was horribly unfair, they'd figure out some bone to throw someone on the short end of the stick.

I am fascinated by the "Other person's Pretenders concept". If you design the winning person's Pretender (and don't get it yourself) you get a bonus in the next game (choose start site, maybe?, pick a magic site), or at least an honorable mention?

Games with humans having a typical start, but one AI starts out as a small empire the rest have to overcome before turning upon each other. You could backstab someone before-hand, but then you'd have to watch your back.

Games with 100% sites, 30% resources, 80% gold. Summons for all.

Aside from the last one, are any of these remotely possible and worth me looking into?

[llamabeast]

The changing map one isn't I'm afraid. The map is fixed once the game starts. Well, you could change the picture, but not any of its actual properties or connections.

What you can change mid-game is mods. So you could have new units become available during the game or something. You could probably have everyone gradually change from the EA to the LA version of their nation through the game! But that would take a lot of work.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

That's nice to hear. But w/regards to that last paragraph, there may be an easier, though less accurate way to do that which would avoid the complication of removing units from the game.(though some nations such as Ctis would complicate things). If you can combine all three eras into one nation, say EA, MA, LA ulm into Single Era Ulm, and have three different mod versions of SE Ulm with all units available. In one version, you'd have the resource costs for EA normal, but the other two eras ridiculously high. The next version, you'd have MA normal, and so on. In theory, this would allow you to keep some of your heroes and commanders throughout the ages and offer up some real interesting strategies, since they'd no longer be recruitable later on. And if you wanted to force obsolescence you could invite glitchs by lowering max ages.

That'd still take a lot of work, but hopefully less on the part of gameplayers. If I find the time, I'll look into that. But I've got other things on my plate, ATM, namely, my first Dom3 MP game, server courtesy of the llamabeast, and finishing my godawfully large MA Agartha guide.

[Gandalf Parker]

I like that idea. It also would make the game abit more RPG since you would get very protective about early era champions that have made it thru the ages. And on a really large map that would breath new life into the game as it progresses thru the eras. I even think that this might be a good thing for Illwinter to look into. Adding a progressive game option.

I had an idea to do a big campaign scenario with 3 maps and try go with the feel of moving from era to era with carryover benefits but I could only simulate it. I couldnt really base the growth on previous actions. I really like the concept with a mod moving it along. You might actually have found my motivation to mod.

[Gandalf Parker]

I found an old "half an idea" writeup.

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Ive been leary of mentioning the "change game on the fly" since it adds to the concenr of trusting your host. Its a problem that we had in Dom2. Also, I suspect that use of it, might cause Johan to fix it (Ive personally had problems along that line )

However, it does hold some wonderful possibilities.
Here are some tidbits for you:

A) it is possible for an external program to programmically make changes to the mod during the game. For best results the game should be brought down and rebooted after the change is made.

B) it is possible for an external program to "see" and react to:
1) what turn it is
2) what season it is
3) certain nations failing to upload turn files, or failing to upload a turn for X number of hostings
4) how many nations have dropped out
5) how many are owned by a nation or by all nations:
1a) provinces
2a) forts
3a) income
4a) gem income
5a) research
6a) dominion
7a) army size
8a) victory points
6) all of the above as it applies to Independents to gauge the progression of the game. Such as when there are less than 10% provinces held by indepts.
7) largest change in any of the above
8) how many of something has entered the game:
1b) assassins
2b) horrors
3b) global spells
9) certain specific provinces being attacked (when the home of xxxx is attacked then)
10) certain spells being cast (meaning a way to check if a certain research level has been reached, or to know that AI Ermor is now capable of xxxxx)
11) what random events have run
12) specific items gotten from combats
13) overkills (such as a 2000 army killing a 200 army)
14) more than one nation playing with the same serial (one person playing as two and

Such as....
a game with a better planned Early Age Ermor as an AI. Well designed god, well chosen scales, tweaked to play well as an AI. And then an outside program can watch the logs. When Ermors castle comes under siege then "Ermor casts a massive revenge spell" and suddely goes total undead with tweaks to be a big problem trying to take them out.

Or a "sacred forest" stretching across numerous provinces and when they are attacked then Pangaea erupts everywhere.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Glad to know I've helped to motivate you just as someone helped motivate me to finish my Golem Cult guide. I'd be willing to help you with such a mod, as long as someone knowledgeable was in a leadership role.

I'm not yet willing to decipher the inner working of the mod files and save game formats, though coding a small program in Python or C++ to adjust what I'm told, would be within my field of interest.

And if some grunt work needed doing, I'd be willing to adjust everything needing change, as long as someone else did the thinking for me. "Here's this information, it looks like this, change all 100 of these values. Here's how you open it." I'm willing to do that, I've got the downtime with my job. "Here's what I want to do, how do I do it, where do I do it, and what is it called?" That requires brain cycles used by my job and guide write up- at the moment, that's tapped out. Though that will change for the better.

[Gandalf Parker]

Gee that would work well for me.
I have an over-active brain and extremely-lazy fingers.

[coobe]

Best Reason to play Dominions 3 is the game itself. I need no fancy mods (except cb mod), i play dom every day for several hours and still discover new stuff

[Gandalf Parker]

This is actually about new games, not just mods.
The mod discussed was one to facilitate some of the ideas for new multiplayer games. A way to create an admin account in a game which can watch more of whats going on

Some of us have been playing the game for a couple of years longer than others and we are more willing to try some weird game settings other than the game has in its game-creation menu

[Wikd Thots]

So?
Now that you read it again, what game are you going to give us?
Your server is getting rusty.

My preferences would be

BLIND EMAIL because you know how I love a game with ore backstabbing and paranoia

MOD AI's but I see you are asking he mod experts for some suggestions there. Don't do a map for soloists with it. Do a game for us

Same as MOD AI's but mix in MEGA-GAME (all 62 nations and AIs filling to 80 players) and also HEADSTART the AI's 10 or 20 turns

Maybe your CHAOS stuff, or the one with a mod that randomly changes things all thru the game. But only if it's offered instead of the others I mentioned.\
Get on the ball G!