Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

well i doubt it was arco as they just turned up on my border with a Blue Dragon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Haha, ok... i just assumed it was the Arcos because of the nasty number of kills their god is racking up.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

OK, this is Marverni nation bowing out.
I have asked the host to set me to AI control, my castle is besieged and I have no troops left.

Lessons learned: the map generator sucks. It put me and 2 othr nations at starting positions within a small piece of territory of about 8 provinces, this should be further spaced apart.

I would dearly like to know how Lanka pulled this one off...having an army of 70 troops + prophet + pretender beelining straight for my capitol on turn 5, and having another 30 sacred troops reinforcing that on turn 8...while also having captured himself half a dozen provinces in the meantime...

Are awake pretenders a MUST in multiplayer?

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

I can see how he did it. Expansion with mercenaries (you can see Lanka hired a lot of them) while the pretender sticks around building up troops; then he stumbled upon a red candle, gathered his men and followed the trail straight to your fortress. He's got a lot of sacred troops because his dominion is totally beefed up, resulting in a high holy rating for his home province. You know he has high dominion because his pretender has so many names.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Well, it depends entirely on how many players are on the given land mass. I think Nix has the right of it - it can be surprisingly easy to track down another player, with just a bit of luck.


I'm new to Dom3, but at the least I can say based on reading the forum that bless strategies are enhanced by sleeping or imprisoned pretenders. Beyond that, I suspect it can work, but its tricky and rather nation dependent.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Red candle ?! This was frigging turn 5 ! I had just given my first order to capture my first province on turn 4 ! (Mostly cause I was scared of getting beat by indies and kept failing to buy mercs, even though I offered em twice their asking price.... and I staled for a turn). Point is there *was* no trail to follow back, I found his home province just before dying and it was 3 hops due north of me. Way too close. Its not like he ran into my dominion candles either cause I noticed that the turn he showed up I was even down to zero dominion in my home town, and 1 candle in 2 neighboring provinces.

A map setup like that (in terms of player density) pretty much forces everyone to be ultra agressive from turn 1 onwards and spend 300-400 on mercs, otherwise you get run over by the others who do that. Boring...

Anyways, I am considering starting (hosting) a new MP game that hopefully addresses this by having 12-15 provinces allocated to each player (so no more than 10 players on a 130 province map). That should allow for more refined strategies to also get a shot...
Perhaps the Cradle of Dominion map, I like a well designed map which also graphically looks nicer than the stuff the random generator makes.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

He's talking about your domain going positive, which will show up as red candle on Lanka's map. This is certainly possible by turn 5. (and actually it's a black candle w/ a red tip)


For your next game you should figure out how to take your first indy no later than turn 2. (I know some people do it on turn 1 - not sure if that's a good idea or not)


Again, a single candle could screw you.


agreed (see below)


I think it's more complicated than that. For one thing dominion candles come and go pretty frequently in the first few turns.


Sounds good (let me know, I'll likely want to join in!). However, you're actually describing a very dense map - the map for this game had 17.6 provinces per player, at the outset (230 provinces w/ 13 players). So, you might want to consider upping the provinces per player a good bit more.

I suspect that it is actually rather difficult to write the code for a good map setup, that is maximally fair to all players. I noticed that DrPraetorious has hosted a couple of games where he used a script to generate fair starting positions. I don't know if he's considered making that publicly available, or not.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Well, Lanka also risked quite a bit going right for you... lets say he hadnt found you, or couldnt beat you and ran into another nation with a SC, hed have wasted all his time and troops, and not have cleared all the provs around his capital.

I am a bit curious how Lanka was able to pay for all these sacred troops plus mercenaries... regardless, he got lucky, and you got unlucky. I dont know if it completely erases the validity of random map set-ups. I also dont think you have to buy mercs... in fact, on a map with so many players, bidding for mercs is often a very bad idea in my opinion.

Anyway, sorry you got knocked out so early, it sucks.
Let me know about the new game you plan to start =)

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

yeah, he also spent 250 points on having an awake pretender, plus another chunk getting his dominion high enough for awe. If he couldn't have a good shot at taking a lot more provinces than other players early on in the game (or even taking them out entirely) he'd be pretty screwed down the line once his horrible scales and/or limited magic selection start to be felt.

Sure it sucks to get taken out early, but if you'd met him on turn 50 instead of turn 5 you'd have just as much of an unfair advantage as he did now, it's all part of the choices you have to make. I also saw one battle you had with him with a scout, and I believe I remember you sinking a few javelins into his ghost king, though not enough to kill him. Pretenders aren't invincible, and he did have to wade through a bunch of indies, plus you get the advantage of having more turns of recruitment and the benefit of PD.

Oh, and whoever said that you need to expand on turn 2 is 100% correct...having to recruit with only the 80 resources in your capital is a really good way to lose.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Hi all, Lanka here. I thought I would throw my two cents into the ring and give you an idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes to Marveni's capital.

Finding Marveni:
This step was not very difficult. When I took my 2nd or 3rd independent province I saw one of Marveni's black candles on the independents to the south. I sent my army to investigate and immediately found Marveni.

Defeating Marveni:
This was more difficult and a lot more risky. I was very lucky to have this turn out well. A couple of crucial points:
1) Right after I arrived next to the Marveni capital, we both attacked the same independent province. The Marveni army had to fight the independents first, and then faced my army without their PD to back them up.
2) In the battle that Micah mentions, 1 or 2 more javelins would have done for my ghost king. As it was, he caught a disease from one of their spears. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
3) If at any point I lost a battle, or my mercenaries, or hit any sort of significant delay, I would have been locked into a long grind of a war while everyone else was expanding. I think it pretty much would have been game over for me if I lost any of our battles.

Mercenaries:
I agree with Micah, mercenaries are a sometimes food. They are very useful when they complement your troops or if they give you an immediate boost in a crucial province. I kept trying to get a second group of mercenaries for the push on the capital, but other people kept making even more outrageous bids than me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Marveni actually won the bids on 2 groups of mercenaries, which is one more group than me.

Candles:
I believe that you can see all enemy dominions that neighbor your own dominion. When Marveni's capital went down to 0 candles, that was because my pretender and prophet had been next door to the capital for at least one turn. When I first showed up the Marveni capital had 1 candle.

Notes for next game:
This is my first game using a SC pretender; the main reason I picked one is because in my previous 1 on 1 against seej, he did to me what I did to Marveni. Dragonlord, I would encourage you to try a SC pretender in your next game. It makes an amazing difference in the early game in terms of your rate of expansion and your strategic options. Of course, as Micah points out, the SC becomes much less impressive as the game rolls on. Now there is nothing for Lanka but to fade into gilded obscurity in the middle game, much like a cannibalistic Netherlands....

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Well, given that you just took a 2nd capital over on turn 7 or whatever I'd say you're in pretty good shape, since that's a huge chunk of extra income and gems. The trick now is to leverage that and continue to expand, since if you stop it's an invitation to get passed up by someone with better scales.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

No, no, you misunderstand. The Lankan people have had enough of foreign adventures. Now we just want to rest on our laurels, do a little magic research, and maybe write our memoirs. We are well content with our current lands, just like Hobbits in the Shire. Or, Holburgs. You get the idea.

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Lankans == hobbits

Now that's a hoot!

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Hi Zhao, I really appreciate you posting here on how things went from your point of view. I'll just add some info to some of your comments.

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

That is right, it was a roll of the dice on whose movement went first, and you got lucky. I had taken the one good province to my west (which was on the coast and had really good income, and was crucial for me), and that turn I could either retreat into my capital again and get new troops, or try to take the crappy province directly north of my province in the hope that you would ignore that one and retreat back north yourself. I had reason to hope for that as you had sent an ingame message that turn professing a desire for peace, and an intention to explore your east rather than gambling everything so early on on taking me out.

But the way things went you even took my nice western province from me, but got weakened in the process. Then I saw your new army of reinforcements show up from the north, which the game reported to me as having 30 troops, mostly archers. By then all I had was my capitol army of about 50 troops, and I had to prevent those reinforcements linking up with your pretenders army. So, I sent my 50 guys vs your 30, while bidding like 250 for some mercs in capital. If your pretender would jump my capital next turn I would gamble on my PD + mercs winning, or weakening you so much that I could return my 50 guys after taking the 30 archers and finish off your pretenders army.

What happened though was your 30 turned out being 40 including like 20 very good sacred infantry, killing my 50 guys while I only killed 5 or so. Those 50 routed back into the capitol which by now was besieged by your pretender (all same turn, luck of movement priorities?) so my 50 all died without a place to run too, and I gave up.

Agreed.

Actually no, In my memory I only won 1 bid, which was crap, I paid like 200 for a troop of infantry that had already been used by another player and only had 8 units left when I received em, so it was a bad deal, but I had the money anyway and needed every drop (I could only recruit like 5 decent units a turn anyway having only my capitol).
(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

Yep, I freaked when I saw the big dominion swing your pretender and prophet had caused in just one turn, and then I set all my 4 mages in capitol to preaching rather than researching.

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

Yes, I don't think Lanka is just going to "fade away." At the same time, everyone else is going to take notice of his early aggression... and we also know that Lanka isnt built for a long-term fight in this game =)

So, good luck to Lanka!

Re: Random set up, PBEM game for new players
 

I only had cheap monkeys (not sure how many), mercenaries, and ~10 holy troops with the starting group. I was able to reinforce it each turn, since it was always within 1 move of my capital.

I agree with you about the Marveni troops. They seem underpowered when compared to some of the early beasts like Jotunheim or Ryleh.

Heh, sorry, I did not know that you were Dutch. I picked the Netherlands because I think of it as a nation that had amazing early successes relative to its size, and then had a relatively peaceful retreat from a global empire to well governed nation with (I assume) universal health care. Another reason for the Netherlands it that it is incongruous with Lanka, like the Shire is. Hopefully I've avoided an international incident. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Nodens Attacks!
 

We the warm and peace loving people of Abysia are now the victims of an unprovoked, unjust war! Our attempts to placate the insatiable Dragon of the West (aka Nodens of Arcoscephale) have failed, and now his forces have attacked Abysian territory.

In Nodens correspondence with us he has repeatedly impugned our honor and accused us of lying, so we use this public forum in defense of our honor. Skipping the details of our correpondence, the upshot of it was that on turn 8, Nodens claimed a perimeter that fenced in a whopping 27+ provinces, while our perimeter would be likely 19-21. When we accede to some of his demands (but not all) Nodens sends us missives including such statements as:
"... while talk of peace you take provinces I clearly establish as my dominion ... ".
However these claims of his were never established by mutual negotiaion, instead unilateral on Nodens' part. Were we to accept all his demands, and cede uncontested this area of 27+ provinces, it certainly would have crippled our nation, but also likely led to great trial and tribulation for any neighbor of Nodens.

In defense of all the people in the world of the Golden Lion we have drawn a line as to how much Arcoscephalian greed we will tolerate. No more, we say! We Abysians being the peace loving people that we are, are ill prepared for this war. If any nation would be willing to render any type of assistance, be it however minor, we would be most grateful. Types of assistance that we could use would include: scouting reports, trade in forged items (particularly ones useful for SC combat), loans, etc. We encourage any nation interested in defending the world from Arcoscephalian appetite in engaging us in private discourse via PM or email.

Tchort
High Priest of Nar Kalath, Lord of Fires


Edit:
All the above is (of course) in character. Out of character, we get it: Have dragon, must travel

Re: Nodens Attacks!
 

Oh, btw, it may sound ridiculous to talk about giving loans to a power that is against the ropes, but we do have a stock of gems that could be used as collateral. I.e. a loan might look like payback w/ 100% interest after N turns, but should the war go badly, I would pay back w/ a large # of gems, just before my demise... Anyhow, might be worth considering.

Re: Nodens Attacks!
 

It seems things are getting a bit... spicy, at least on my side of the map. With my personal knowledge, and from the past few posts, I deduct that:

1. Arcoscephale and Abysia are duking it out on the Western continent (from the amount of provinces in play, they're probably alone).

2. Lanka stretches out over the northern part of the Eastern continent - Agartha is cowering in the northeast corner, awaiting Lanka's attack.

3. Pangaea, Ermor and Yomi are somewhere in the southern part of the Eastern continent. Their exact locations are somewhat vague to me, but Pangaea is probably the most centrally-positioned of those three nations. Ermor and Yomi would, therefore, be in the southern corners.

4. I have no idea what's going on in the seas, as I (Tien Chi) am completely removed from any expanse of water.

Re: Nodens Attacks!
 

The People of Pan have moved to supress the evil Arcos their wanton crimes against nature will not go unpunished!

New patch
 

Let us know when we should upgrade... make sure that we aren't on different versions when you host.

Gem Trades
 

Here are some rates for gem trades or sales that I would propose to any nation within the world of the Golden Lion (well, at least if you don't worship that dead god, Nodens, or come to think of it, if you don't come from the land of Lanka):


Gem prices for cash:

Fire 25g
Nature 35g
Water 40g

For trades (I give :: You give):
2 Fire :: 1 Death
1 Nature :: 1 Death
1 Air :: 1 Death (very limited qty of Air avail)
1 Water :: 2 Death (limited qty of Water avail)
1 Nature :: 1 Earth
1 Air :: 1 Earth (very limited qty of Air avail)


A few comments on gem economies in Dom3:

First of all, gem values to any given player will always be different (depending on opportunity for use [demand] and magic sites + ability to find magic sites [supply]). This variation is of course the basis of why trade happens.

In my experience from Dom2, I tended to think of water gems as the most valuable and fire as the least, so it is quite possible that I am biased by my Dom2 experience, and have not correctly adjusted to the Dom3 world. I might also be biased by the nations I tend to prefer to play and my play style w/ those nations.

A note on the cash prices, before someone tells me how crazy I am, remember that I can cash in my fire gems for 15g ea, so I'm looking to beat that price, at least. I can say for sure that there have been games where I have been willing to pay these kinds of prices for gems (though I admit I would tend to be willing to pay a premium for gems more in the end game).

For all these trades or sales, the terms are flexible, especially in volume.

Nar Kalath, Lord of Fires

Upgrade
 

For the record, everyone. I am still using version 3.04. Can someone tell me how this upgrade this has to go for the game to work?

I.e. should I upgrade while there is plenty of time for people to resend turns?

Re: Upgrade
 

If I upgrade now will it work for everyone to send or re-send me turns that are run on upgraded copies?

Re: Upgrade
 

OK I am going to upgrade, everyone should also upgrade.

Re: Upgrade
 

Gems for sale! Gems for sale!

C'mon, some one out there must need some gems, right?

If anyone is fast enough, I have a 1 turn only special (turn 19, that is). 20g per fire gem, 30g per nature

Get 'em while they're hot!

Re: Upgrade
 

I'm going to be out of town for the 13th through the 15th, afaict, this won't slow us down much, but i'd just as soon not stale, if possible.

Re: Upgrade
 

OK I will put the game on hold from the 13th to the 15th

Re: Upgrade
 

Can we try to get a couple turns in before then? Terrel/Hellboy, can you try to send in your turn before you head out on the 13th?

Re: Upgrade
 

I'd like to.
Of course. And depending on how things go there's at least a chance I'll get a turn out the night of the 15th.

Umm...
 

Can anyone explain what just happened? I fought Yomi and "lost" the battle - Yomi now controls that province - but watching the battle, I clearly won. What gives?

edit: my god is also dead, even though he wasn't killed in the battle - he was in mistform throughout...

Re: Umm...
 

Yomi here... ya. You are right. I "Won" the battle, with my army somewhat intact (as per report), but the replay was rather different. I suspect we ran into the common bug where replays are... invalid.

On another note, Death to the Jade Emperor! Boku wa anata o koro****e tsumori desu!

Re: Umm...
 

That is comforting. If I lose, I can just consider all the replays to have been invalid.

Seriously, if you can't trust your battle reports or R'yleh, what can you trust?

Re: Umm...
 

Nix, Valandil, it looks like you're seeing something very much like what Ewierl & I saw in another game. Dr Praetorious reported it in the bug thread (he was hosting), it might help if you guy added a comment on the thread saying you saw something similar. Here's the link ( report)

Re: Umm...
 

Are you guys running at 3.06? Sometimes version differences can cause that bug.

Re: Umm...
 

At least in the case of Ewierl and I (and I suspect Nix and Valandil as well), everyone was on 3.06.

Re: Umm...
 

Alright, well I'm throwing in the towel on this one. That battle really broke my back, but the situation was dire anyways. I'll chalk this game up to experience and hope to play again with you all.

Re: Umm...
 

Ok i will be away from the game for the next few days

basically i managed to bring my dom3 cd with me but forgot to bring my cd key/manual so i am feeling a bit stupid http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Umm...
 

Looking for earth gems, anyone interested in trade?

I have primarily astral or nature in surplus, though there are a couple of other possibilities, in more limited quantities.

Re: Umm...
 

Hello yall,
I think Oceania has dropped. He hasn't replied back or sent in a turn for a few. This is particularly bad because this is my first GMing and i didnt set a master password - so I cant hand his turn off to a substitution player or make him an AI.


What do we want to do ?

CJ (Rlyeh)

Re: Umm...
 

Keep trying to get in touch with him, at the very least to get his password... I had something do the same thing in another game though, i havent heard from them in a month... I really dont get it. At least send an email or something.

Re: Umm...
 

Could someone(s) verify that AdmiralZhao was the winner of this game? This game was submitted to the Hall of Honor thread, but I don't see any discussion of the winner here...

Re: Umm...
 

Yes, AdmiralZhao was the winner.