Re: Early Age Commentary
 

I am really enjoying this game too. But to do well, diplomacy is the most important. A more strategic map can be thought up, for example, a Map that is made of a series of concentric rings. At its simplest, the outer most ring would have 62 provinces, the next one would have 31 provinces, then 15, then 7, down to the last province in the center. Winning can be by victory points in the inner circles.

Then we can use the random special province mods for every province, mod out all teleportation spells. Set income, gems, resource to max. This way we have a very nice and tight fight or die map with diplomacy having less effect at the beginning, although it would still be important later in the game.

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

Gandalf, about the tower map wraparound, couldn't you just manually edit the connections between the top and bottom provinces so they're connected? I haven't done any mapping but I had the impression that province connections were editable, and there would only be a few provinces that needed to be tweaked.

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

Seconding the notion about the advantage of being in the corner. In addition to that Man did play his cards right there, with biding his time before attacking you, going straight at the capital and reaping the rewards of several nations' efforts. Now he's quite clearly the biggest guy in the continent, with few nations being able to be more than mere speed bumps. But Midgård starting essentially in the middle of everything was quite a raw deal.

Wraparound would be a good thing, it might also help to make sure no isolated land masses are left stranded by seas as is the case now.

But hey, a fun game. I'd be taking part in another like this too, maybe not the extreme kind LoloMo proposes, though.

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

I definitely enjoyed myself even though I got reamed by four nations at once ;P It was an interesting experience.

One of the big things that hurt me is that I didn't think hard enough about my neighbors. What I should have done is demanded vassalage from EA Maverni instead of attacking vfb, as he was more than willing to pay item tribute to keep me off his back. Then I could have gone after C'Tis who had no good early-mid game counter to a billion skin shifters. Unfortunately, for me I didn't really pay attention to what the makeups of the other nations around me were, which speaks to my inexperience at this game.

It also would have given me more time to develop my research towards storm + mist.

Also, vfb is the noisiest mother in the world when he's getting attacked http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Jazzepi

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

"Predictions? Some pretty hefty leads on troops, provinces, dominion and research so far. Will coalitions such as recently suggested by LA Atlantis knock off the leaders? I could see the game becoming very polarized in short order. "

I would not call that a coalition to knock off leaders. Given that LA Atlantis has just as many provinces it's just him wanting help to get rid of competition.

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

I'm getting a bug where I can't see one of my commanders on the map province screen. She shows up in the army setup list, but not on the map screen, so I can't give her any general orders.

???

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

Uh, sorry to ask this, but gotta make sure... You sure he isn't just last of the group and you'd see him if you scrolled down the map commander view? The down arrow has confused people before, it's quite hard to spot (to right of the bottom row of commanders displayed on map).

EDIT: and oh, I didn't know province count was THE big factor. Always thought the gem income and research were the graphs to look at. But you learn something each day. I'm relieved to know R'lyeh isn't the top dog after all. Canceling all the blights, then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

Thanks. Still took me 5 minutes to finally spot it. Guess I've never had that many commanders in one place before. You can tell I don't play Ermor.

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

Friends don't let friends play Emor.

Jazzepi

Re: Early Age Commentary
 

GP - I recall that the "ring world" maps wrap just fine. Technically they wrap in both x and y but if there are no province connections going from top to bottom, it's effectively a single strip.