Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

OK so high magic would be possible but not high bless. Im not sure that a human high-magic pretender would offer more of a challenge than a Wyrm. Maybe for Atlantis since I considered its land-attack weak I was thinking of placing it behind the others. They would provide protextion so that Atlantis can research heavily for later game. Since they wont attack each other it would be easy to trap atlantis to where thats its only optionf or something to do.

But Rlyeh does well with magic doesnt it?

If the pretender is a Wyrm then it will go out and combat. Would the scale costs be worth adding magic to a Wyrm? I still like the idea of a nest of Wyrms. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nope, fraid not. Usually, the AI R'lyeh is killed by some landlubber, because R'lyeh is a magically-dependent nation that is very tricky to play, because Astral magic lacks the directness of other magics.

AIs simply do badly at magic: They don't synergize, they just make seemingly random decisions that are very short-term at best. Thus, any investment of points made into the AI's magic will yield poor returns. Give him lots of scales instead, so he can churn out lots of crud, something he does well.

Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

So if a 3-way alliance between Ermor, Atlantis and Rlyeh all had Wyrm pretenders with scales that cranked up on order and productivity and high-admin castles on a map which would allow some build-up time.. this would be step-up in challenge?

Who should get the most build-up time if none do magic well? Who does best in early, mid, late game? Should the map try to arrange it so that Rlyeh has first front? Then Ermor, then Atlantis?

Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

Ermor needs some death magic, however: Otherwise, they can't summon their mages and commanders.

The other problem with putting the AI allied with Ermor, is that then the AI will do absolutely nothing about the spread of Ermor's dominion into their lands: The result being that all the other nations will quickly lose their population and die off if Ermor is placed near them, particularly if Ermor is placed between them. Water nations, in particular R'lyeh and Atlantis, are unusually susceptible to dominion loss in such a manner due to the way water tends to expose their profiles.

Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

Put all the newbyes in the center of the map, and the big 3 CPU at the border, or however so that CPU won't clash its dominion.

Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally it was becuase the 2 water nations and Ermor were the nations I always left out of my early solo games. I felt they were too hard to learn against so they became my idea of a hard AI.

If it goes over well (and I do think there is a desire for co-op play vs AI's) then I was going to do others. I like the idea of doing it with dragons. Maybe also one of just big heads, the high priest and high bless nations.

Nations of death could be a possibility, Bless/priest is another especially for nations where the description refers to close history with another nation, maybe devils/blood, Non-humans vs humans.

Re: Expert Players vs Newbies game
 

Brilliant idea Gandalf!

I would definitely go with a theme for the enemy alliance, like the dragons. Pick 3 different coloured dragons and match them up with nations that are in style with the dragons colour/attributes. Eg., red dragon = Abysia.

Then add 9 picks of the path that relates to the dragon's immunity. Red = 9 picks of fire magic, Green = 9 picks nature magic, etc. Since a pretender loses 1 point from each path if it is slain, it will be reduced in power each time it is slain, but not so much as a rainbow mage would suffer.

The AI will inadvertedly also make some nice moves by pure circumstance when you have a nation like Abysia and a fire immune, 9 fire picks, red dragon pretender (eg., when it eventually unleashes a fire storm, some of the units in it's army will just happen to have fire immunity, because that what Abysia is a bout). So despite the limited intelligence of the AI, it should prove interested for new players.

Make one nation based on fire, one on poison (C'tis or Machaka), and one on something else.. Perhaps an underwater nation would be a good idea. New players are generally hesitant to get their feet wet (after they have their first heavy cavalry section chewed to bits by a school of sharks.) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif So maybe blue dragon and Atlantis as the third nation.

If you want Ermor as the antagonist, that could be a different (but similar) scenario. Ally Ermor with some of the other death themed nations and see if it works out (Carrion Woods, C'tis death theme?)..

/Rainbow