Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Ack, Did I get lost in the shuffle?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Baalz - Lanka
Zeldor - C'tis
Executor - Formoria
Lingchih - Pangaea

Nice to see some of the strongest players ended up with weak nations ;) At least none of you landed Niefels, sauromatia or hinnom!

On another note, is Tir Na n'Og the only nation without a guide? I'll have to find some serious time to hit SP the next day or so somehow!

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Lanka weak? Huh, that's new to me :)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Ok, I can trade C'tis for:

-Hinnom
-Niefelheim
-Helheim
-Atlantis
-Caelum
-Abysia
-Ermor
-Mictlan

I don't think C'tis is weak nation, but I'd like to try smth else that time :) Not D nation...

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

You can look guides for eriu, that nations are very similar.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I'll trade Atlantis for C'tis!

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Ok, I am tempted to try EA or MA Atlantis. No chances to win, but some fun guaranteed :) C'tis is yours then.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

yeeeah rlyeh... never played them, should be fun

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

BTW, new CBM version should be released very soon. I think we should use it :)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I'm happy to trade Agartha for just a Lucky Coin! :)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Oh, I was so tempted to enter this, but unfortunately my other commitments would have prevented me. :(

New kitty and moving to and renovating a new place plus other things tend to do that. Be interesting to see how this works out, though, especially if the RPG aspect comes through. :)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Fomoria? Damn...
This pretender's gonna take some time to design.

I don't suppose Nehekhara or Jomon is up for a trade??? :)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

we really need fixed starts for the UW nations.
Its very likely to start next to 3 land provs, 1 VP prov and tritons :(

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Doh! I'm sorry LoloMo! Can anyone suggest one more mod nation that fits? The map can fit one more and LoloMo just got randomly assign an as yet unannounced nation...

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

How bout Agra Dis mod nation?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Is Skaven MA only?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Is it just me, or are most of the provs really really low pop? And they will be quite hard to conquer. Maybe we should play at increased gold and resources?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Falkor and I are trading nations, so I now have Ermor and he has Helheim.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Odd, just played a few test games and I saw the exact opposite. 10k+ province everywhere. Although all the starts were near the centre. I don't know anything about this map though, so maybe there are set areas that have high / low population.

Has anyone out there got any experience with this map?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

No, Vanheim doesn't have one either :( I've been doing the same thing.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Since a lot of people are unfamiliar with their nation and it looks like a little time before the trading shakes out I'm going to give the weekend to play around before I put the game up, then probably a couple more days to get people to send their pretenders in.

Lolomo, looks like you're playing Agra Dis

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I really think you should just set a date that people have to have their switches done by. Finalize the nation list on that date. And then give some extra time for pretender design.

Otherwise you're probably going to end up with people playing the wrong nation (or someone else's pretender design) ;P It's happened before.

Jazzepi

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Good point. Midnight Friday for all trades to be finalized and publicly posted. Then the weekend for everyone to play around with their nations, game will go up (probably) Sunday evening.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

anyone want to trade with me ? :) (rlyeh)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Trumanator (Vanheim) is switching with don_Pablo (Niefelheim). See you in game. And a big thanks to the don.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

EA R'yleh is one of those nations I just don't /get/. I have a hard enough time getting on land with regular ocean nations, but R'yleh makes it really impossible ;P

Jazzepi

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Only person I've seen do well with R'yleh was vfb, though he didn't start making serious moves on land until pretty late in the game from what I can remember. Might want to ask him what he did.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Tried some SPing last night on the map, and got my butt kicked by the AI. Those special sites are *mean*, some have glamorous units in them :hurt: Better look at the .map file to figure out where to move to avoid stepping into poo :angel


In other news, is the following list I've kept for myself up to date regarding traded nations?

Zeldor (C'tis) - Jarkko (Atlantis)
Falkor (Ermor) - Fakeymcfake (Helheim)
Trumanator (Vanheim) - don_Pablo (Niefelheim)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Does anyone else think that the non special indies on this are a bit beefier too, or is it just me?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Can't say I noticed them to be any beefier, but there seems to be *lots* of special sites.

Also, will this game use the victory points?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

If there's no guide for Tir na N'Og, there is a guide for Eriu by Baalz. Some of the ideas will be applicable back to EA.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Thanks Baalz, now gotta go check out what Arga Dis is all about

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

BLOOD, DEATH, AND VENGEANCE!!!!

Jazzepi

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

how do people know which map we are playing on?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Faerun is the map. and this looks interesting so I'll be watching the thread. wish there was also a way for me to watch the actual game to though

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

no one want to trade with me ?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Drager, here is the link to the Faerun Adventure map
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=40776

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

So are we using the to-be-released CBM? Or 1.41?

And it really seems that there is a lot of unequality on that map. SW region [water and land] seems to be really low pop [nothing more than 7k], due to terrains maybe too. And starting water locations need to be fixed, I think. They are totally random and can decide on who wins under water.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I have to agree that the west, and especially south-west, of the map is not in the the same league as the rest of the map. The income and resources seem to be much lower in west than in the center or eastern parts of the map. Also, the eastern part of the map seem to have many more choke-points, which basically will see nations in centre most likely turning west first (who will be poorer and will have a harder time to defend themselves due to the more open nature of the geograpy).

In all, based on the short experience (I've never before played on the map) so far, I think the Faerun map is damn excellent for SP gaming, but I am not entirely positive how balanced playfield it will be in MP. Remains to be seen, I guess :) Until that I am praying I get a start position in the east :D

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I did a decent job with EA R'yleh, on Faerun coincidentally. This is a huge map, with a *lot* of water so you can spend a considerable amount of time staying wet. Going onto land is, yeah, a challenge, but assuming you don't need to do that until you are dominating the water you've got one really, really big advantage working for you - you can sit and wait for the perfect timing to attack. Nobody is going to attack you, so just wait until somebody along the long coast is committed to a grueling war, then make a deal with whoever they're fighting with and hit every coastal province and as many inland provinces as you've got amulets of fish (mind lords can solo thug quite well). Blast mercilessly with the artillery (mind hunts, vengeance of the dead) which you've been meticulously passing out void eyes and spell foci for - with the gem income from your large unassailable water empire you should be thinking along the lines of a dozen artillery attacks per turn indefinitely - it's not a high bar for R'yleh. When you do have to have to fight a real army you can likely dictate a lot of the terms of the fight because of your strategic flexibility (attacking out the water, lots of teleporting troops), and make sure you use the advantages you have. CBM gives you slave trolls which are a *huge* addition, use some of the tougher summons to round out your roster for roles other than chaff. Ring of sorcery + 1 30-gem empower gets you to D-3 which gets you mound fiends which lets you leverage that strongish D income you've been dark knowledging into some undead troops - plenty of which are amphibious. For combat magic very small two slave communions + power of the spheres opens up a whole lot of possibilities for all those single path randoms particularly after you pass out a couple boosters. Mass protection, regeneration & foul vapors are fairly easily doable, weapons of sharpness, strength of giants, legions of steel & later army of lead/gold should be staples and those undead/darkvision troops start looking pretty mean under darkness. Of course you've got top notch astral support as well, so will of the fates etc. are pretty easy. Aboleths have some very nasty linebacker communion potential - think quickened, lucky, ethereal, breath of winter, resist magic (ok, they could have done all that themselves which is why mind lords make good thugs) plus iron skin, resist elements, personal regeneration (helps prevent afflictions), soul vortex (surround them with some sacrificial chaff so they'll suck up the reinvig they need after being slaves to cast this expensive spell) - and toss down a strength of giants on them as well as it not only improves their offense, it increases the rate they're healing from their life drains.

Once you've got a good foothold on land, leverage your good astral income (you've been clamming, right? And you searched all the underwater provinces with a priest to get the extremely common underwater temples, right?) to aschric record every likely looking place which, this being EA, should give you a good spread of indie mages to get you the rest of what you need on land.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Well, I've got no intention of spending a huge amount of effort in an attempt to balance everything, if you get a rough start you'll just have to roll with it and roleplay, hopefully everyone will have fun even if they lose messily.

Hmmm, the description for this map says there are 100 victory points on this map, mostly in the special (very well defended) provinces. Anybody know how that works with relation to the game settings if we use a victory point victory condition?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

We're going with the latest version of CBM available when I start the game (probably Sunday). As far as I know there aren't any big problems with 1.41 for EA nations, so it should be fine. Don't really want to hold up the game nor bug QM ("are you done yet?!?!")

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

PS - another distinct advantage EA R'yleh has on this map in particular is that there are two distinct large bodies of water and they're the only water nation with strong astral, which means you can take over one body of water, scry out the other, then blitz in and gateway in your troops while being completely immune from counterattack. Land nations still will almost never attack you in the water, even if they know you've just shipped 90% of your army off across the world....

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

By the way, aren't Agra Dis and Nehekhara MA nations or I miss smth.?

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Maybe they should be your next guide, they certainly fit your M.O.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Some info on the Faerun map:

• 50 VPs is the max you can set for required victory.
• All start provinces have at least 5 non-special neighbors on land, but the ones with seven or more are nostarts because they give too much of an advantage. Water starts should have at least 4 water neighbors, though in some cases you may have three. If all water nations are in play, there is the possibility that two start in the Sea of Fallen Stars (the inner sea), leaving the third with unopposed free rein in the ocean unless Agartha starts on the coast and makes a quick play into water.
• Rather few provinces have populations set in the map file. The map does tend to produce a lot of high population provinces.
• The east has more chokepoints than the west, but tends to be poorer in terms of magic sites if site frequency is 40% or below. There are also fewer special provinces in the east, and the specials function as barriers and chokepoints for a fair while into the game. The bigger special provinces will require some careful planning unless you just want to throw troops at them until they die of attrition, but that's not viable when you need to fight other players at the same time.

Everyone should also redownload the map, because it was updated last week to fix a few map bugs, three rather important forests were plains in the older version.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

With regard to start locations, there are a huge number of them, so this can result in a lot of players being clustered fairly close while others have more room to expand in peace. The deserts and swamps are nostarts, so anyone who starts next to the Anauroch desert can gain a lot of gem rich wastes fairly easily before running into neighbors.

Also, keep track of the VP markers on the map. If a province provides 3 or more VPs, traipsing in before scouting it out with something expendable is likely to hurt.

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

Alright, sounds like it'll be fun to play with victory points enabled, particularly from a roleplaying POV. Does 50 for a victory sound like too many? Some of them are worth 3 points, but they've also got defenders that will give even an end game SC pause...

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I reckon 50 is plenty :)

Re: Legends of Faerun - Closed (pretender design)
 

I dont like VP victory, as games will end with someone airdropping to victory.