Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

I've seen some of what I would consider the most pointless posts receive multiple thanks though. Some people use the thanking feature all the time and if you make posts they like, you're going to get thanked a lot.

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Thanks, I was beginning to take that personally.... = )

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Redeyes appears to have a keen sense of irony. :) Even if the thanks is sincere, it's still pretty funny.

-Max

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

I use it all the time.

Any way, I'm a prime example on the fact that post counts don't mean a lot. I've read most guides written in these forums, but I don't actually play that much. And when I play, my strategies may be based on Dominions 2 or sometimes even the ancient, original Dom:PPP...

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

I thought I was the #1 example in this forum (altho the SEIV forum on Shrapnel has its own).

But just to prove it...
the math mentioned above loses me but I dont think odd shaped provinces mixes in. It might be worthy to note that Dom3 doesnt seem to recognize boundaries as much as pixel location. Each province on the map has a single white (255,255,255) pixel which you dont see while you are playing. The game reads from bottom left to upper right scanning pixel line by pixel line. Its why many people feel the numbering of provinces is random because they cant see that on provinces 1 2 3 that 2 is a single pixel line higher so it comes much later in the pattern.

Also to note that on many maps the single pixel can appear way to the edge of the province. The pixels mark the base of the flags if that helps. Anyway I think that any math on province spread must either be based on neighbors as listed in the .map file, or by pixels distance between those province pixels.

I suppose that could be tested by setting the battlesim map to have neighbors way across the map from each other and see which one affects dom spread.

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

I'm almost certain that dominion spread is based on neighbors, not on the pixel distance or anything else about the actual map picture.

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

This is certain.

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Not the pixels, the topology of the map. A pathological case: consider a map in which every province is adjacent to every other province, vs. a "ring" topology in which provinces are arranged linearly with exactly two neighbors each. Strong dom sources will take much longer to spread in the second topology, but they'll be deeper where they do spread.

I'm not sure exactly how to *analyze* the topology of a map w/rt dom spread, but it's definitely a factor given the way temple checks and such work (white candles are likeliest to be deposited "close" to the generating temple).

-Max

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Actually, when I invoked this generally unwise metric, I was thinking of Chris specifically, having read some of his posts in other threads. But, I agree that, in general, it is as about as useful as lines of code as a metric....

Different people have different signal to noise ratios.

But this post is about life and not about EA Arco strategy, so it probably is tipped more to a Noise 2 or 3 scale itself....

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Im not sure how irregular tile (province) geometry would apply then outside of the neighbor commands.

Re: Beginner's Guide to EA Arcoscephale
 

Thanks for the clarification, Max. This is definitely more what I had in mind and definitely not pixel distance. Also, I was hinting that radius was perhaps difficult to measure in certain regions of some maps, and so making something a function of it might be difficult by extension.