Sitting on the fence

[Gandalf Parker]

The "Musical Chairs" one has some admining quirks to try and automate it which I havent messed with very far. You still have an account if you want to test one.

And one that has come up is a "Spoils to the Conqueror" idea which I havent tested. People sometimes mention that they wish they could recruit the other guys units when they get his castle. If a map is created with #specstarts for each nation, #killfeature, then use #knownfeature to reassign the national sites....
A) do they still work
B) if captured, do they still work?
C) if the above doesnt work then can they be assigned to a neighboring province and will that work? (yes everyone would start with double sites but it would still be even)

Hmmm that brings up another. Something along the line of IronHawks Accelerated Games. Start everyone with two or 3 castles with duplicates of their national sites.

(again, this is all untested hacks so I have no idea if they are possible)

[Gandalf Parker]

Alneyan said:
I'm mostly interested in MP, so I'm looking for the crazy game ideas you came up with, or how Dominions 3 makes betrayal so much more pleasurable.

"crazy game ideas"? Sounds like Im being paged.

games with victory-point conditions

games using CBM (conceptual balance mod)

games with no indepts at all

games where each player is provided with a "blind email" on a server. maximum effort to try and keep all players totally anonymous which tends to increase the backstabbing and paranoia by quite abit.

games with no national sites (and elite units)

games where the players "bid" for their nations.

games where the farther down on your choice list you go, the higher the starting benefits you get. such as extra starting population

games where everyone turns in their gods but then they are randomly assigned to the players so everyone plays something other than they turned in

A game of "Musical Chairs". If there are 10 players then the game hosts whenever 9 have turned in their turn. The last player always stales.

games using mods as better AI's. Purposely unbalanced mods such as Amos does. Setting all of the AI's to ally with each other against all of the players can also be interesting.

games using low resources which seems to make the AI play better. Also trying the various other settings possible in the game which I dont think has been done completely in MP games

large games on a wrappable map

game on mega large map which makes nations play abit different (such as ones with stealth having advantages they dont get in small map games)

games with players and AI's which give the AI's a 10 or 20 turn head start

games on a tower map (very high but only wide enough for one nation at a time, very different playing)

games using the SemiRandom generator. Either to scatter interesting provinces on the map. Or using it to generate a game with AIs that have designed gods/scales instead of randomly created ones which might choose self-destructive settings.

games with all nations playing together at once. There are two of those running. One with 62 and one with 75 but with AIs included. The single nation mod allows all 3 eras to play together but setting up an MP game with it is rough.

games with the "randomly generated module" which changes one feature of every unit in the game forcing you to relearn and adapt during the game

Im also still messing with what kindof fun mid-game changes can be done by editing a mod while the game is running. Im thinking of tying it in with a routine that will watch the log output or scoreboard for certain occurances. The turn number, or someone getting a certain size, or first person out.

Hmmm I think thats all I can think of at the moment
Gandalf Parker

[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.

[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!

[quantum_mechani]

Alneyan said:

I'm mostly interested in MP, so I'm looking for the crazy game ideas you came up with,

1) Civil War- modded game where everyone plays the same nation.

2) Astral Fragmentation- play a map with all province connections removed and easy mass teleport modded in for all.

3) Unchalleged Victory- independant strength 0 game.

4) Untainted- game with only 8 players, and a mod that resticts each one to only one magic path (or optionally school).

5) Broken Empire- scenario set up where one player starts in the middle with a sizeable empire, they are declared the winner if they survive X turns, anyone else wins if they capiture the empire's capital.

6) Entitled- compile list of thematic bonuses for rare pretender titles, then have a third party assign them via map modding to nations that manage to generate them.

EDIT: Gandalf beat me to a list.