MP: Noobs vs. Vets III: Revolution, MA, CBM. Game Over. Noobs Triumph!

[Lavaere]

Originally Posted by Septimius Severus

What vanilla nations are you familiar with?

Concerning MA vanilla nations. Shinuyama and Man for which I have been quickly dispatched come MP games

[TheDemon]

Originally Posted by Septimius Severus

So you mean that giant nations such as Hinnom don't have an edge when it comes to expansion? Assuming nation selection is not a factor then, why is it that vets can expand so fast vs indies, what's yer secret? heheh.

Sure, giant nations are easy to expand with. But if that's your reason, then how is it that Caelum, Helheim and Atlantis were able to keep pace? According to my turn 10 .trn, Niefel had 18, Atlantis had 19, Helheim had 21, Caelum had 22, and Hinnom had 24. My personal benchmark for a "usable" expansion strategy is 20 provs uncontested using default settings by turn 11 (late winter year 1). If I can't achieve that in a test game, I won't use that pretender build.

Part of this was due to the quirks of the map. I'm defintaely leaning toward some sort of symetrical evenly distributed map, which will make placement much easier and fairer for all. The distance between teams was intentional. Ideally I'd like it be around turn 20 before contact/hostilities break out. With water nations though, it makes it a bit more difficult. This will give noobs a chance to get some research and prevent the vet team behind overwhelmed by the noob early game numerical superiority as as happened in NvV I. Of course an NAP would have a similar effect.

Ideally you want no pressure on the noobs early, that's true. I mean, its no fun to lose early. But to reach turn 20 without borders, you'd have to have like 40+ provs between each vet and the noob team, plus however many you think the noob will need. Under a normal sized map (15 provs per player), you're going to get borders on about turn 6 or so. I mean, you can force the first battle to delay until turn whatever with a NAP, but that doesn't change that during those 20 turns of "research" the vet team snaps up indies at a ridiculous rate, and also in turns 10 to 20 get a kick-start on their fort-building and research. It's conceivable that by turn 20 the vets would have a higher team total on every single graph except maybe army size. After this game I don't think you can dispute that a similar vet team is capable of that under a 20 turn NAP.

[TheDemon]

Rather than just talking about problems instead of solutions, let's talk a bit about actual settings. 24 players is a lot. There aren't even 24 MA nations (there are 23). Even with one or two of the more balanced mod nations, you'd be hard pressed to not include at least one water nation. I think a 2:1 ratio is best. Its proven fair in both games as the series is tied. Obviously the outcome of the games was determined by other settings or perhaps by the play of the players. So in that case, why not all 3 water nations, but two are noob and one is vet.

I will say one thing on playercount, 24 players can make for an extremely tedious game. 24 players necessitates a huge map and the micro on huge maps is extremely annoying, and the game will drag out far longer which also equates more micro. Not to mention larger teams are harder to coordinate. A better format might be two 4 vs 8 games. Of course, you seem quite set on 24 players, so if it appeals to you go ahead.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a NAP, just keep in mind the consequences.

Same goes for changing supply or resource settings. I would stay away from messing with gold as that can really screw a game up.

I think using some system to distribute "power nations" is probably best not only in terms of balance but also because you want both teams to have a decent spread of magic and strategy availability.

[Lingchih]

I don't know. I'm kind of coming around to the idea of a large scale game for the final game of the series. Maybe 21 nations, so you could keep it even without adding in a mod nation to hit 24. It would be a grandiose game, but it is summertime now, and a lot of players have more free time.

I'm still not sure that I would play, and the idea of finding 7 vets to play seems a bit optimistic, since we had a hard time finding five for this last game.

[Septimius Severus]

Demon, yeah I was thinking of 2 water nations for the noobs and 1 for the vets using a 24 nations (1 mod nation if needed) that would even out to about 16:8 . 2 or those slots could be interchangable though depending on actual signups. so it could be 18:6 (slightly a bit more than 2:1) but still reasonable. I'll likely use a slot system for both starting nations and alternates. If all available slots cannot be filled we'd of course have to start with fewer.

To combat any expansion issues, I'll likely break up the noob team into informal groups of say 4 a piece, Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Western noobs. More spread out and arrange geographically.

Hmm, how can we enable the noobs to expand at the same rate as the vets (nation selection aside)?

My first thought was droping indy strengh all the way down, that way both sides could expand equally fast (though it would shorten the time before initial contact).

Another idea, and one that ties in with the large armies the noobs are supposed to be able to field, would be say to give the noobs favorable cap locations that would result in an initial bonus in terms of gold, resources, supplies etc. I think that prov neighbors has something to do with it (since the cap is a fortress). But other things such as farm provinces may effect this as well? Anyone know what province terrain types yield more resources, supplies, gold? This would enable the noobs to field larger initial armies and thus ease their expansions woes a bit.

AOM Ogre map which is built for 24 has some interesting placement possibilities and is rather symetrical. Cleveland's maps has fewer provinces and works well with 24 nations too. But I suppose actual player signups would determine which map we finally use. If we can get the full 24 then the aforemention maps might work very well, if not well a smaller map with a symertrical design will work fine too. I am definately shooting for the 24. Even if we've got to do alot of invites and advertising.

AOM Ogre has the benefit of being able to put a bit of water in between teams. In a game without water nations, that would I believe slow up the initial contact a bit.

AOM would be 24/416 = avg. 17 or so provinces per player.
Rorschacht would be 24/375 = 15 or so provinces per player.

Comments?

[TheDemon]

I think part of my point was vets have the knowledge to quickly find or the endurance to test until they get a pretender build and army quantity + scripting strategy that works really well for whatever nation. That is, part of what makes a vet a vet is he is able to expand faster than a noob, generally speaking. Unless you remove indeps completely, you're not going to be able to avoid this. And if you did that, there would be no expansion strategy at all, and little to no pretender build strategy. Those are a massive part of Dominions strategy and should be included in the learning experience.

18:6 is literally 3:1 so saying its slightly a bit more than 2:1 is a bit off. 17:7 would make more sense.

[Stretch]

I'm not sure about this one. Dragging it out isn't going to help much... with 17 people we'll still almost definitely be saddled with people who either are basically non-participants, or with players that have absolutely terrible initial expansions (but who we're not allowed to just steamroll and absorb in a couple turns).

I'm not sure who from the noob side is interested in playing some more but I'd like to do more strategizing with the 6-7 other noobs who were active on the messageboards (counting rdonj and Grudgebringer in that) and play 4 or so vets. TheDemon said that some of them were getting pretty good... why not even the stakes a bit in terms of players per team and get us all on an equal playing field in terms of communication and having at least a basic idea of how to play the game.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Stretch

I'm not sure about this one. Dragging it out isn't going to help much... with 17 people we'll still almost definitely be saddled with people who either are basically non-participants, or with players that have absolutely terrible initial expansions (but who we're not allowed to just steamroll and absorb in a couple turns).

I'm not sure who from the noob side is interested in playing some more but I'd like to do more strategizing with the 6-7 other noobs who were active on the messageboards (counting rdonj and Grudgebringer in that) and play 4 or so vets. TheDemon said that some of them were getting pretty good... why not even the stakes a bit in terms of players per team and get us all on an equal playing field in terms of communication and having at least a basic idea of how to play the game.

I wholeheartedly agree. Huge teams are just not that fun, and as you say there are bound to be non-participants. Also, I think finding enough vets for the huge game would be quite hard. Out of the five vets in the last game, I counted two that will probably not play in this one no matter the settings, and two (including myself) that would need some convincing.

[rdonj]

You raise a good point about potential non-participants. It's probably unavoidable that in any game of that size you'll have more people who are uncommunicative than you will in a smaller game. So it would be far easier to make a smaller game work out well. Septimius, what do you think about a little bit of a compromise. Go with the high resource/gold settings, or just start the noobs in much richer areas with perhaps some resource bonus sites (you could go with the idea that the uprisings are happening in slave camps, where workers are being forced to mine for the vets, something like that), but stay with a similar number of players to the last one. You would still get the massive uprising feeling, but keep the game more manageable at the same time.

I'm not sure if you recall or not stretch, but I wasn't playing this game except for two turns as fomoria to prevent stales . I'll stick around since I'm admin of the noob forum anyway, although I was definitely starting to feel I was repeating myself towards the end there.... I might be interested in playing that game but it's not really noobs vs vets, is it? Perhaps graduate school :P If you like the idea you might have better luck organizing it on the side rather than making a noobs vs vets game out of it.

[Stretch]

Oh, right, you have almost 1000 posts on this forum. Whoops. You certainly seemed to know what you were talking about on the noob forum, I was thinking 'damn, I wish this guy was around earlier'.

A smaller game would be something like

Rdonj, the great communicator, awakes from a long imprisonment to find the world a twisted shadow. Its dewy innocence has been plundered by the rampaging vets, and the noob races toil under the harsh yoke of slavery. As the years passed, two of the five lords of old grew sated with the spoils of war, and through dark rituals, transcended to another plane to search for the missing Pantokrator.

The remaining vets ponder their future as their depraved servants rule in their stead. They withdraw into their gleaming castles, and slowly the land returns to scattered fiefdoms ruled by independent barons. The taxes flow into the vet capitals, but their eyes turn towards the stars and they ponder following their two departed brethren.

Unbeknownst to them, the spirits of some old noob pretenders have found new hosts. They awaken to find the world hazy and indistinct, as many things have changed since last they roamed the world. They wait, poised to take a new capital from one of the many fiefdoms, and seek vengeance.

Will the noob menace force the vets to gaze once more upon this world, or will they follow their peers into the stars, leaving the battle to another seasoned warlord? What side will Rdonj lend his aid to? Have the noobs learned enough from their imprisonment to end the threat of vet tyranny once and for all?

Something to keep in mind if you don't get your full 16/7 complement, Septimus.