Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

So in the end, what place did my AI end up in? 3rd place?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Yes, I figured you might anticipate it was a trap and not go for it. But it was worth a shot. Actually, my early offensive strategy was quite simple and straightforward, detailed here: http://noobsvets.silverforum.net/vie...php?f=12&t=351

It is clear your team's extensive planning and your determination to win was most helpful. My leadership philosophy (which matches my playing philosophy) was somewhat minimalistic, I outlined certain things, but gave a lot of freedom to players to explore, learn, and have fun (and to make mistakes). I have no doubt had DrP and his team been in the game you'd have had a serious run for your money at the very least. And Chris' extraordinarily detailed, machine like, centralized, and highly efficient management philosophy (TAM) might have well have crushed you in the long run, if utterly, completely, and fully implemented, especially coupled with an alliance with another team. :D

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Your team put in a respectable showing, finishing in second place in terms of VPs with 6. Eriu was totally wiped out though.
The Usurpers came in 3rd with 5 VPs.
And the Children of Crom and Atlantis both ended with 4 VPs each.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Anything could have happened, but my management philosophy is much more detailed than Chris'. If you dived into the files I provided, you could notice that. That's actually why we stopped using the forums. It was just much more inconvenient than a regular chat in Skype. And it was very centralized while I remained the top skill player in our team but became less so after karnoza joined. I warned you about it and suggested 8-nation alliance right off the bat but you didn't listen.
Anyway, it was a nice teaming experience.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Glad to hear someone else get a reputation on the TAM style = ).

I started to comment on this, but essentially, as soon as I saw the first turn (turn 23 ) I realize the game was lost.

To have any chance at all in this game we needed mictlan to have 15 castles - more or less on turn 25. We had 5.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

I also think that making a good plan and sticking to it was a reason to ano's victory. Maybe another reason was that their team had played together before, too.
Considering our team - firstly, we started to plan before previous analysis of strong and weak sides of our nations. Then, we didn't correct Marignon's player mistake in design in time. Maybe the reason was that we didn't state a clear goal for each nation. :(
Maybe also I made my Pretender somewhat too single-player oriented and he didn't need all paths that he had as we had them in the team.
And then we didn't stick to a plan we had! As with our Forge Lords we should be more active in forging Bloodstones (and maybe Fever Fetishes) without using their time for other activities. Plus, we didn't pull gold for making castles at year 1 as I offered. As a result, we had too little too late.
Anything else?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

And what is TAM style? :confused:

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Tight Assed Management Style.

I really don't think that playing together matters much, so long as everyone contributes ideas, but then accepts the captains dictates.

I'm not in any games at the moment; I'd be up for a rematch.
But a rematch would have to involve:
a). A fair map. No border mountains. Reasonable water.
No planning for 4 teams - and then having only 3 = ).
b). No silly bless restrictions on mictlan.

But the biggest problem really is that the teams are not matched.

This is the biggest problem with letting Sept choose themes. His ideas of a 'cool theme' result in unbalanced teams. (no offense sept).

Also, if you set the conditions before hand, (border mountains, no water) and then bid, it makes the quantification of what is 'fair' much easier. Captains can just change their bid, rather than wrangling over how to fix 'unfair' conditions.

Now if sept wants to create themes ( I hope not); I'd suggest bidding on an entire theme - with bid points subtracted from the pretenders in the nation.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

T.A.M. actually stands for:

Tight Asset Management :D

It is a team management and leadership philosophy stressing extremely detailed and super efficient control of all of a teams assets including its human ones. Every gold piece, every gem, every move, every increment in PD, every unit recruited, every spell that is scripted, every research point spent, has a very specific, discreet, and expressly defined purpose and is painstakingly plotted and planned for each of the team members every turn and in advance. The team members function as an extension of the captain, and as a single unit with few decisions made by individual members. I'm not knocking it, it can be a very powerful style, especially if fully implemented. Just not my style of play.

How dare you Chris? I am offended. :) Yes, I admit I enjoy the fantasy role playing aspects of themes (which are actually inherent in the game itself) and just get a bang out of ancient or medieval warfare in general. I also tend to be a casual gamer, so trying to correct every perceived imbalance (I've noticed a few other balance mods coming out now, BTW) and getting into the all the technical details is sort of secondary for me. For those who are hyper competitive by nature, the need to having everything balanced the way they want is important, but this can turn into something of an all consuming, never ending obsession IMO, especially considering that opinions may differ.

I do think that game 3, will do a better job if not as good a job at balancing the various factions while still preserving and maintaining the very real and unique advantages and disadvantages of each team which is the goal behind the theme concept (expecially in the pretender selections). As for the nation match-ups of this game, even if Ashdod or Mictlan was allowed to take the full dreaded bless, or the nations e on each team were somehow different, it would likely not have changed the outcome which had more to do with other circumstances in my opinion, including the loss of the Sangiunarium, team leadership style, player experience and skill level, the strength of the AI, team placement, geography, etc.

Our team did do some initial strategy and laying out of goals, research and so forth for each player, but we certainly were far more laid back than the other teams it seems. :cool:

As for just mountain provinces and no border mountains at all, for some nations, that might make a difference, for others maybe not so. If it benefits one team more than another, that could certainly be viewed as imbalancing, perhaps why the compromise of mixed mountain and border mountain masks was agreed to.

As for water, well I suppose it depends on if your going to have water nations or not, how the water is distributed on the map, and how easy it is for certain nations to exploit it. Frankly, I think that with our central sea, the coastal provinces surrounding it, the swamps, and all the freshwater sites, there will be enough water for the teams who need it. And since I can find no custom map that really suits our placement needs (excepting a smaller version of AOM Ogre), and a random map with water here and there would not be distributed equally for every team, I think it's the best way to go. If anyone has image editing and artistic ability, though, and is willing, feel free to contact me to volunteer. I'd certainly love to have each teams quadrant made more thematic, terrain-wise.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Sept, if you think that one team is unbeatable, then why play the game; if you think one team is unbeatable why set up those teams.

I think ano did a great job organizing his team. But I think leadership is only about 35% of a game. Game design is probably 30% and diplomacy 35%.

Any number of factors easily could have shifted this game. If the AI had decided to attack the Sets on turn 12 or so, that alone would have *significantly* altered the game.

I reiterate.. I REALLY would like to ban powerful sites - no construction sites, no circle master sites.

I suggest using sombre's mod.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

We attacked AI ourselves somewhere about this moment, so I don't think it could decide. Also, we were sure than Man will not attack C'tis because Ashdod attacked Man and we convinced Atlantis to do the same. C'tis was one of the main powers at that time and as we knew how AI chooses his targets, we could be absolutely sure that C'tis and Machaka are safe and could focus on the top AIs. One thing that DID decide was our three PoDs (nothing except a PoD could beat an AI castle 125 PD early on and nobody bet it at all except us) plus rainbow lich. OTOH, nobody knew about 125 PD and I even didn't realize the AIs have two starting provinces, armies and castles. I was sure that the space near the map edges was free.
Construction site didn't decide much as well, however it, of course, would decide if the game continued
Speaking of water, I must say that we have had a VERY good water income that allowed us 3 or more clams per turn, boots of quickness and any other artifacts and we still had excess gems. And Ermorian lands were poorly searched. OTOH, our nature income was absolutely pitiful (every single province expect Ermorian ones was sitesearched with Haruspex or N3 mage) and mainly came from the capitals of Pan and Eriu that we conquered. Our fire income was also poor though we searched nearly everything as well and mainly came from Fetishes.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Thanks for explanations, chris & Septimius. Having both them makes it so much more clear. :)
As for balance, yes, trying to reach the perfect balance can consume too much time to too little effect. But to reach some balance is possible and I think this game's teams were balanced enough for it to matter. 3 teams had Death, Blood & Astral, respectively, while the 4th one had the best forging capability together with some good SC, etc. possibilities in Ashdod & Mictlan (summons). It's completely mea culpa that we used what we had so poorly. :doh: Of course, if we have a way to make it more balanced without going into the Quest for the Perfect Balance, we should use it. That's why we had pre-game discussion before this game and are having this discussion now. What in particular do you mean, chrispedersen, by teams offered for the 3rd game being not balanced? I think that in some cases we may agree with you... ;) And could you say what do you offer with "bid system" in more detail?
A map, of course, could be better. I hope it would be for the next game.
As for the random sites, etc. I think that restricting them makes sense for competitive chess-like games, but not for theme based ones. Everyone has a chance for something cool. It's in how you use cards you are dealt where skills are shown. Of course, chance still plays its part and it's especially impoortant when skills are near even. But so it goes. :cool: Theoretically, we can include some important sites in the map, add heavy defense (and make them appropriately beautified in the map picture ;) ), then exclude them from the random generation. But I'm not sure it is necessary. If someone wants to draw a special map, he/she may keep this idea in mind...

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

I would like also to ask you about my usefullness as a merc nation. I tried to offer interesting prices and I think I reached construction 4 before most nations and yet almost all my transactions were gem exchange, probably mostly because I was unable to give a good value to the different types of gems. When I offered to attack the AI only Ano answered ( you didn't "convince" me to attack Man, I wanted to do so but I needed your autorisation=) even though it was a great deal since I had around 15 elephants at that time. Later Septimus asked for two military operation and 2/3 items and this is it.

For the AI, I dont think the 125PD was the most important thing, the really crasy thing was the 50 to 100 indies per province around turn 5-6 with real armies of mamouth, knights, ... on top of that. The army who killed my elephants was stronger than the PD with certainly around 50 knights of the chalice.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

You're mistaken. We were far ahead in construction at that moment and so we didn't need anything from you except the things we couldn't forge ourselves (and this was only a few items) without Machakan pretender who was able to forge virtually everything

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

To conclude.
I do think that our team was the strongest by nations and pretenders selection if played properly (and I hope we did it). It was a bit unbalanced and even more so taking into account the enormous AI hordes and PD that our Princes could fight without problem. But, without doubt, it was not drastically unbalanced and I'm sure that the other teams, especially the Usurpers could perform much better if played correctly.
Also, the AI factor appeared to be too big in this game and this is what I particularly disliked. Game was over right before the fun was about to begin and we won by concession just because we fought AI better. I expressed my opinion regarding uber-AIs somewhere before, so nothing new here.
That's it. We made only one huge mistake - it was the loss of fully quipped Wight mage (Sickle+ Boots of the Planes) to Abysia because he refused to cast two "Resist Fire" spells (one from Fire school and another one from water+earth). Now I understand they give the same effect and thus don't stack but we didn't realize. He cast Blade Wind instead of fire resistance, gathered fatigue and died pitifully.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Nah. Didn't think any team was "unbeatable" in game 2 and though it would have been an uphill battle, Ano's team could have been beaten, just think those extra captain tweeks on the pretender blesses of Ashdod and Mictlan and having this nation or that wouldn't have made a huge difference because of the way things turned out. Btw, I won't be allowing those captain tweaks on the blesses in game 3, but the pretender lineup will get a revamp in game 3, so that every team has an equal number of viable, unique, and fun options to choose from. As balanced as can be for a theme based game.

I agree somewhat yes.

The game has so many variables that come into play as far as winning and losing that I don't think any one factor (such as a teams nation choices) by itself decides anything in the complete and final picture: Consider all of the following:

• Team planning and organizing
• Captains skill and experience level
• Player experience level
• Player skill level
• Team communication/motivation/determination
• Map geography and terrain (currently random)
• Starting location placement
• AI machinations and strength (where the AI expands, who it fights, or who fights it)
• Stength and type of Indies
• Luck and random factors (misfortune/luck scales, gem searching, random events, etc.)
• Diplomacy/Alliances
• Actions of the merc or human played indy nation

Then of course you've got the theme related elements:

• Team nation choices
• Team pretender choices
• Path restrictions
• Any special magic locations
• Faction specific bonuses (items, spells, heros, sites, etc)

My goal of course is to have the theme related elements play a bigger strategic role, but as you can see there is no single factor that will decide the outcome of a game like ours. That is what makes it so intriguing.

But you all have done a great job on keeping the input and feedback and discussions going here. I really appreciate it. I also encourage input and visits to the info and updates forum for game 3 http://noobsvets.silverforum.net/vie...1c9ca4785c2d67, which is open to all. Between Gandalf's work on the AI, DrP's work on the pretenders, and Cleveland's work on the map image, it is very much a collaborative effort.

In the meantime, I need something to wet my whistle. I see the traitors game is starting to fill up. :D I've also been considering admining my first non-team game. If I do, it will be small, relatively fast moving, and hopefully unique and interesting.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

chrispedersen
And they did trample our PoD's and they gathered a lot of afflictions. :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Yes the Usurpers did not play well. But even playing well there was not a thing we could have done to win that game.

Without an SC chassis, or forging, or water income, or a bless, or globals - there was no way for usurpers to be competitive. Sure we would have beaten caelum; we had in fact taken two of his castles. But fighting army v army we took hundreds of casualties. Which meant that turn after turn we fell farther behind Set.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

When did you fight Caelum. I had no spy reports of that. and we were able to observe every caelum territory.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Eriu and Man also had a lot of mammoth. They could recruit each other's troops, as Gandalf said.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Yes, thank you for reminding us yet again. This is why I don't want the archives deleted, so you can't hide how you treated us.So you constantly berated us for no good reason then?

Reality check, we are not you. We do not spend hours upon hours over every little detail as if we had nothing better to do. And if any of us made one mistake with the dozens of small ways you basically wanted to play the game for us you'd let us have it, while saying nothing about what we got right. You even try to micromanage people on other teams.

You've annoyed me to the point where I'm making it publicly known. Maybe I would have held my ire if you said "we didn't play well" instead of dumping it all on the rest of the team.

Oh, and good job leaving Squirreloid in the lurch for a month when you said it'd be a week.

*sigh*

Yes, I lost my temper, I don't want you feeling like you can freely badmouth us after how you treated us. I regret that I didn't act earlier, or constructively, but I needed to state my feelings.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

The TAM style can have its advantages, especially for the fresher, greener noobs, while more experienced players or players desiring a more free style may feel rather confined. It does mean less ambiguity and uncertainty about what to do and how to do it though. :)

As an aside, I recently downloaded a copy of Daggerfall, that I've been wanting to delve into (retro-gaming). I rather enjoyed Morrowind, and I heard that Daggerfall (though the graphics are far outdated and less detailed) was even grander in scale.

I do love epic, expansive, or open ended and free form (non-linear) types of games. Games like the Elite series ( Frontier First Encounters), Mercenary, etc. And though it had its detractors, and was perhaps too ambitious, I also enjoyed the Battlecruiser series of games. Nothing like being able to command a ship or even a fleet of them, land and fly a shuttle through the atmosphere of various planets. You could then land, get into a vehicle and explore the planet surface, or get out and roam on foot. I recall you could even exit your spacecraft, jetpack from ship to ship, or even walk about on the outside of the hull of a massive ship.

Yea, I do/did enjoy the great strategic fun of a Warlords, Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C, etc, or even a simple game of chess, and appeciate the greater detail and intricate MM in games like the Space Empires Series (which attracted me to Shrapnel) and Dom3, but sometimes ya want to get free of constraints, or you want to try something different or take on a role. This is the great thing about mods, themes, scenario-like games, they let you go beyond the ordinary, or let you play the game the way you want to, not the way that someone tells you, you ought to play. :D

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

I liked Daggerfall more than Morrowind.
Daggerfal was definitely a much grander scale, altho Morrowind made an effort to have more random to it.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

I said "we" didnt' play well. I count myself as head of the Usurpers. I'm sorry you chose to interpret it otherwise. Nonetheless, I am happy to have people compare my performance with your own.

Second, I said the turn I joined (right after turn 22) that the game was lost. In fact the name of the post from Numahar was .. "Have the supplicants won". (something to that effect). Given that the team wanted to continue I said I would give it my best shot.

As for good job leaving squirrel in the lurch - sorry that losing a home and a job qualifies as leaving squirrel in the lurch. Sorry that a trenchdigger cut the cable and left me without phone or internet for three weeks longer than anticipated. I *guess* I could have spliced that cable myself. Shall I forward you the repair order?

As for micromanaging other teams - you *have to* get other teams and players to do what you wish. Diplomacy is a key component of the game. The Supplicants getting Atlantis to attack the AI took Atlantis out of the game as a factor, and gave them a secure flank. I made quite a few efforts, but with no results. Unfortunately no one other that squirrel really believed me that the game was essentially decided if the game continued as it had been for the first 23 turns. And even if the at point if everyone joined up- it would have REQUIRED the crommies to step their game up as well. It would have required unified planning.

I did start trying to steer sept into the idea pooling resources - them forging for bandar thugs, for example. But there wasn't enough time get him to come around to my point of view.

As for "We do not spend hours upon hours over every little detail as if we had nothing better to do".

Algae - given that you voted to continue; given that I informed y'all that I was doing these hours in the middle of the night; given my circumstances; given the effort that I demonstrably put into the turns- I think I had a right to expect some dedication on your part.

It is funny to hear your criticism of my spending "hours upon hours over every little detail" when you couldn't muster enough dedication to build a fort 5 turns. Or blood hunt. Or fix taxation. Or change shape. or... bring a caster to cast arrow fend.

Praise is given where due.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

OK I would like to express that:
- I enjoyed both Squirrel's and Chris' leadership, who always engaged in dialogue when I had a different opinion, thus allowing for constructive dialogue;
- I enjoyed coordinating with my team mates, even though horizontal communication was indeed limited;
- I consider, for my part, that tensions arising from miscommunication are like unavoidable bumps on the road, especially in a situation where we have to change captainship in the middle of the road.

In short I enjoyed this game as long as it lasted, and will be happy to play in team games or otherwise with all of you if the opportunity presents itself :)

Now to give a little insight on the game from my modest perspective:
- Caelum attacked me turn 5-6! with hordes of mammoths... and never stopped. This makes a huge difference with an AI waiting for you to build up before the war starts. Fighting 40 mammoths turn 5 is not easy...
- Then 2 stales, one of which can be attributed to my lack of experience on direct connect (no comment on the other), resulted twice in military disasters;
- change in captainship meant that a lot of resources, in particular research, were lost due to a drastic change in strategy - even though the new strategy seems to have been fully justified;
- change in management style required a bit of time to adapt coordination routines already established;
- some newbie mistakes were committed - at least I learned and I do not commit them in my other MP games.

Again, thanks Sept for organizing the game, congratulations to Supplicants and greetings to my team mates and captains!

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

And so it seems that despite predictions by expert wargamers of crash-and-burn, this went off well.
People did actually join.
The drama was less than apocalyptic.
The team-play was more a plus than a minus.
The AI wasnt stupid and easily defeated.
The server was up to the task.
Direct connect didnt totally suck.
The lack of CBM didnt define end-game?
The BI mod benefited the game?

Any other predictions I missed? So all in all it seems that as a game variant this was worthwhile?
Im all for game variants. But then Im about as ancient to the game as you can get so boredom with the standard games shouldnt be surprising in my case. Its nice to see others opinions also.

I also have an automatic tendency to fight the defaults.
HACK LIFE. REFUSE THE MENU.
FIGHT THE DEFAULTS!

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

An entire team dropped out of the game creating an inherently unbalanced scenario.

Captain drama.

The AI was too strong and defeated much of the theoretical point of the game, and left at least one entire team (supplicants) pretty disappointed.

Server drama ensued. Both your server and the much touted llamaserver have their pros and cons, and I have nothing against your server, but it seems to require way too much of your personal attention to get things done, which creates excessive delays in communication, which seems to cause a lot of stales. People have been taking those well, for the most part, but to me that is one of the most offputting things about your server. The llamaserver has its moments too, though :)

The game ended before end game.

It's pretty hard to say whether BI did anything at all, and I don't think anyone has even mentioned the impact of that. Except septimius wishing he could have bought barbarians.



I mean, not that it was a total failure or anything, but you seem to be painting an excessively rosy picture of things. People did get a taste of team play though, and have an idea now of how team games can work. I do like team games and I think that has been a good aspect of this.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Wow surprise. I thought I was already well known for that. Its my job. (see title by name) :)

Pros and Cons. PbEM does lend itself more to mid-game changes and menu-driven maintenance. Direct is designed to be started and left running.

Much of the actions have been smoothed for particularly games. Either by the person running it having a login, or by automation such as the original NaV used. But in general Im not big on automating too much for direct connect games in setup or admining.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

It is well known. Which has its pros and cons, I guess. One of the cons being posts like mine pointing that out :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

But now we have a whole FORUM for that. :D

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Honestly, I think the fact that this was vanilla really tilted this game for one reason and one reason only: domes are too hard to research to.

At Ench 4-5 (CBM), i'd probably have made them an early priority in a team game. But at Ench 7-8? I'm not sure I'd have had the research to cast a dome and the boosters to do so early enough.

The game basically ended when like 10 fires from afar dropped on BL's capital on turn ~20. There was nothing I could do about this, and it killed a large number of valuable and irreplaceable (can only hire 1/trn) Rishi, plus whatever gear that went down with them. Even if I had dedicated all my research to enchant, I would have *just* gotten to domes, and I needed boosters to cast any of them (and thus constr 4+ research). As BL was the research arm of the team, this was absolutely devastating.

And this ability to nuke a key capital is more pronounced in team games, because there are fewer targets (both because some targets are actually your teammates, and because each team is going to have one target which it hurts more than the others to have it nuked). Add to that one team was actually AI, and there are only two priority targets for a team to go after, which makes remote spells really powerful.

Vanilla's late (and hard to cast!) domes horribly biases the game. Should i play in another vanilla team game (not likely), i know exactly what I'm doing. Choosing a nation with great remote spells, beelining them, and dropping 15-20+ on select capitals in year 2. Instant game over.

This is really lame gameplay. Just another reason CBM > vanilla.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Astral dome is Ench 6, as well as Air one and they're perfectly enough. There's no dome at Ench 8.
What? You must be joking. There were 3 fires from afar on about turn 23. And defense is pretty simple - just recruit 40 markata by spending 200 gold and you'll be nearly safe (and nobody will be wasting gems on markata). You do not need domes for this at all. You didn't think of it and this is your mistake and has nothing to do with vanilla or CBM. I'm surprised to hear such things from you, really. I thought you knew the game better.
That's exactly what it aimed for.
LOL. I'd like to see that. There're only two early battle spells - seeking arrow and Fires. Fires are very easy to defend from without ever needing domes (described above). Seeking arrow is rather expensive and you may also defend by moving your mages elsewhere and\or hiring decoy commanders. There're crippling unrest spells and so on but they all are costly and will not win you the game. Probably, Blight and Raging Hearts are the most unpleasant of them, but they're also not game-winning.
Not a single reason here. Just moaning

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

There were more than 3 fires from afar. I saw *at least* 5 messages, and probably more. And turn 23 is sort of like turn 20.

Markata do not help that much, and you're still likely to hit some mages. (I've lost 2 commanders in an army of 300 units before to one Fires from Afar, 40 markata aren't going to help much against spammed FfA. Losing *any* Rishi is unacceptable and potentially game losing, and you probably get 2-3 *per FfA* even with 40 markata.)

Now lets compare
CBM
Frost W4 Ench4 8w +1/trn
Fire F4 Ench4 5f +1/trn
Nature N4 Ench 4 8n
Astral S4 Ench 4 5s +1/trn
Air A4 Ench 5 10a

Vanilla
Frost W5 Ench6 15w +1/trn
Fire F4 Ench7 8f +1/trn
Nature N5 Ench7 10n
Astral S4 Ench6 10s +1/trn
Air A5 Ench6 20a

The only one of those BL could possibly cast sans booster is astral, and it requires pearls and dropping extra pearls into it for longer duration. Its a bad deal. Also level 6 research is literally half my research at that point. And the good domes are either absolutely impossible to cast for BL that early (air), or in enchantment 7 (nature - and it requires boosters). Water would have been plausibly decent, but impossible to cast with a national mage, and requires W5 which would even need boosters on most pretenders. (The astral dome rarely if ever gets cast for good reason - its only 50% block for a huge pearl investment. If it blocked 80% like air it *might* be worth it).

Vanilla in general places domes far too high up the research tree, makes them too hard to cast (about half of them are 5 required path length), and makes them far too expensive. Add to that a team game where there are few targets and remote nukes become far too good.

Oh yeah, and FfA is level what, 3? Against my team you could have just chosen *random* capitals since you knew where they were, and it would have been pretty devastating. Heck, you probably had a 1/2 chance of guessing where BLs capital was unless you thought we stuck them on the front line. Or you could have just paid Atlantis for the intel.

If you are scouting (which I can only assume you were), moving Rishi out doesn't help because they show up in scouting reports, and it costs a turn of research, which is somewhere on the order of 200 total RP at that point. That's a substantial and unacceptable hit in research, and they get nailed anyway when you just nuke the province they moved to.

Hell, in a team game with this few teams, domes should be Ench 0. There isn't enough target saturation to prevent focus fire for teams in a non-conflict situation. You could have been dropping FfA on turn 12, trivially.

(I have never seen someone try to drop FfA on a capital, and rarely seen anyone try to drop a remote on a capital. Its generally assumed they're domed (because in CBM that can happen really early) by the time any serious fighting breaks out, and then generally against an opponent you're actively at war against. Casting an offensive remote like FfA against someone on the other side of the map? It only works because there were only 3 teams, and one of the teams was sucking so badly they didn't matter. We might as well have been playing a team blitz, which wasn't exactly expected going in.)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

I find this interesting.
I hadnt heard of domes being hard to reach as a vanilla problem. Altho considering now I can see why it would It would place emphasis onto armies. Very desirable in some games.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

We cast it three times that turn and 10 times when you were not there (turn 32, IIRC). There's an archive of our turns attached somewhere above. I could suppose that the Cromites also suddenly decided to cast the Fires From Afar the same turn but I doubt it, especially considering the fact that your forums also mention that there have been exactly three casts.
Yes, some mages, but not what you lost in this game. I know the losses were huge. Also, no dome grants you 100% protection or even nears it. And I tell you, noone will cast FfA into a province with 200+ markata. If you're particularly desperate, hire 200 more, they're dirty cheap, and\or move some of your mages elsewhere.

Once again, I don't argue with the suggestion that CBM is a good mod. It is. And domes there are way more balanced than in vanilla. But I assure you that if you thought of the possibility of remote attacks beforehand and did what you should have done, we would not cast them. And no one would. This particular case it is absolutely not a matter of CBM vs Vanilla. It is just lack of thought which everybody can run into.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

In general, I echo Numahr and Gandalf's assesments pretty much. Even though we had a team drop, we decided to forge ahead to keep from the game from stalling out. And I think most had an enjoyable (albiet rather brief) experience.

The Direct Connect and PBEM server systems set up by Gandalf and Llamabeast each have their pros and cons for game admins to consider and I am sure we are all grateful to both of these guys for their work and dedication. Being able to quickly and instantly download and view all of my teams turns was a plus IMO, though it does take getting used to.

You know, some admins seek to avoid or minimize the difficulties and disagreements that can arise in team games by just going with 2 members on a team (really pairs or partnerships). It may be easier (especially when both players are of the same experience level or know each other), but I have always thought that larger teams give you more of the flavor of real team dynamics, interaction, and group identity. Again, its a question of pros and cons.

I would like to add though, as a generally non-competitive player playing a seemingly highly competitive game, I personally think a team should prioritize their overarching team "philosophy" as follows (this is just me of course, I can't dictate how teams choose to play:)):

Goal #1. Have Fun. This is the core reason we play any game.

Goal #2. Learn. The main goal of this series is to allow players to learn how to play the game against both AI opponents and other humans, how to work, communicate, get along with others (even with those they've never played with before), and to benefit from the experience and input of others.

Goal #3. Win. This should be stressed last in my opinion. Winning is nice, but it means absolutely nothing outside of our tiny little fantasy community. But learning how to work together as a group, how to lead or manage a team, how to respect and recognize everyone's unique personalities, now this is something that is a REAL benefit of the team game experience.

Regarding the BI mod, it seems like it did what is was supposed to do, which is limit the AI non-national hordes to mostly archers and other units the creator of the mod deemed most beneficial to the AI. It also has its pros and cons and I am debating various tweaks.

The debate between vanilla, CBM, or any of the other balance mods, well that is a topic that can fill hundreds of threads on its own due to various tastes and opinions.

The game is over, and as far as I'm concerned, everyone did a good job and played well. And I am proud of all of you. As long as you learned and had fun, my goal for the game and the series has been met. :D

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

You shouldn't use domes, they encourage turtling. Every mage who isn't blasting enemies on the front deserves to die a horrible death.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

I don't actually have a problem with FFA, it just magnifies the issues in the game.

Early on in the game, the usurpers put pd in place - due in large part to being attacked by caelum.

Machacka and shinuyama have good search mages which only arco has on the usurpers team. But due to the pythium, arco, mictlan caelum war (pd) arco searchers were unavailable to search other teammastes.

As for being perfectly safe, I had removed all the equipment from the targets (except one hammer) expecting retribution - and I had recruited like 20 or markata on there.
Markata have a diminished ability to make you safe - as they die in one hit as opposed to 2.

But more to the point, it was a calculated gamble at that point. The usurpers (and the other teams) had a number of weaknesses - it was only a matter of which one were you going to exploit.

1:1 there is a limit to the number of fire gems; ergo flames from afar is not that effective. In a team game fire gems can be pooled, which makes domes more important.

As flames are level 3, and domes are 7ish - there is a huge window where they can't be countered.

Like I said I don't mind ffa - but it just fed into the other issues in the game. You were the death nation - and you were buildling 3x as many clames as we were as the astral nation.

Consider every aspect of the game:

Military force
Remote Attack spells
National mages
SC availability
Thug Availability
Research
Pretenders
Dominion push
Gem generators
Forts
Gem Generators

I'm not taking away from a great strategy, well executed. But if you rate each team on a 1-2-3 scale who *wouldn't* find an advantage for the supplicants. As ano suggested with an 8 vs 4 arrangement.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

The problem was that when we asked, you either was unable to do what was asked in time or just plain unavailable... :( Maybe it was partly because we centralised dealing with you so I, for example, offered to purchase something at team forum, then Septimius said our diplomacy guy to reach you... But general impression was just that you are just unreachable. Real-life problems? ;)

125 PD made their capitals unreachable to scouts and even spies. Not balance-breaking by itself, but just not handy...

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

As far as I know, that's not it. AI just doesn't like to cast resistance-gaining spells on units which already have some (50+?) resistance of a given type.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Well maybe, but from what I understand these spells just give an identical effect. Phoenix Power would do the thing anyway.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Well, I like Wizardry series more, even though it had weaker graphics and you had to write down all quests & hints by hans. Morrowind was beautiful, but...
As for space games I think that there wasn't anything greater than ye goode olde Star Control. :) Of course, I don't like flight simulators in general.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

As space games I would list Stars! and Space Empires IV (but not SE-V) as being enjoyable for the same reasons that Dominions 3 is enjoyable to me. Lots of setup options and different styles to play.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Star Control was nice, for a space battle simulator. As I recall though, the early ones at least weren't massive 4x type games. I loved Starflight, and Omnitrend's Universe series.

Turns out Daggerfall holds the world record for the largest game world ever made. Hundreds of times larger than WOW and larger than any MMORPG or any other game world apparently yet made including LOTRO.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

The cool thing about Daggerfall is that you can gain a hero reputation in one territory then become a hated villain in the next door territory. Kill the guards, steal their armor, escape across the border to your home territory and sell it at great prices because of your fame.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!
 

Considering Daggerfall - Yes, but I still like Wizardry quests more. And there you could have quite different reputations for different factions, too. Actually, you could even spy on one faction for another. :D