Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Hmm, interesting idea. Going from this you could have some kind of unique secret victory condition for these advisors as well, which is different from their teams goals, so they do not just try to get their team to win. Maybe like letting them try to leave only nonastral nations (from whatever team) on the map when the game ends (fixed date), so they can enslave them easily. Or have nations with powerful women dominating (Sauro and Ulm and I don't know...). Sorry if that was already the idea. :)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

The original idea was called a Mafia game but its beginning to sound more like it should be called Illuminati.
Lets all sing the Illuminati Polka :)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.ht...reative=390957

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Thanks for the input, good to hear from players every now and again for things other than problems with the server and delay requests. :D

Of course, I'm not looking to change any victory conditions or differ from the current format really. I was thinking of setting up this extra non-participant team forum for awhile. Our game is open diplomacy anyway, so in theory anyone can betray anyone else, though it is obviously not in the interest of the team especially of the active players. At a minimum, putting the advisors in charge of inter team diplomacy and not the Captains (as it currently is) does give them a more active role and might act as a check to the Captain's executive power. It would turn advisors into real consiglieres, sort of.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I didn't get my .trn file for this turn yet?

Did anyone else not get theirs?

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Hopefully people have their turns now.
Im trying to figure out why it didnt happen.
Also I got some strange responses from the Yahoo server. Yahoo users let me know if you didnt get it and you might check your spam folder. Yahoo may have decided not to accept Dom3minions emails

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I've gotten 2 versions now... about 8 or 10 hours later.
very weird. It follows true to form that I get my turn much later than the rest of my team, (at the same mailbox).

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I hope everyone has gotten their turns by now. There seemed to have been a delay or something on the processing and sending of the files, which I am sure as Gandalf indicated, he's looking into. There appeared to have been no stales if the staling page can be trusted. Either Mictlan did a turn really quick or else that is a duplicate copy of the old .2h there in the directory. If the latter I am sure Chris will send a fresh one in to overwrite it.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Unfortunately, the confusion has been somewhat disruptive, can we have a 24h delay in hosting this turn? I'm only going to have time to quickly glance at it tonight, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to do a turn tomorrow or not. Sorry about that :(.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Yeah, all the devas have our turns now.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

W T F, why did I just get 5 different turns for this game?!

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Aurgghhh!!!Easy-Flee(TM)*$%^#%3hp*>#$!~*pyg$&^*

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Lol :)

Stretch! I didn't realize you were in the game. Who are you playing? I want to know who we have to look out for ;)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Can we just increase hosting time by 24h? Seriously? It takes me 24h to think about it, 24h to hear back from teammates and discuss proposals, and then 24h to do the turn.

Why did people vote against a hosting time increase anyway? Are you people not playing as a team or something?

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

As one of the people who voted against a time increase, I would say that I voted against it because my team generally does not need more than the current 56 hours to complete the turn. We mostly iron out our options in the first 24 hours, make adjustments and finalize orders in the second, and then we have the rest of the time to submit our turns or see if anything else comes up. More than 56 hours is generally overkill for us.

That said, I will probably vote for a timer increase the next time one is proposed. Turns are becoming more critical and delays are asked for almost every turn. If we're always delaying that's pretty much just an informally longer timer anyway.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Sorry about that. I'm really trying to work on the *running away* thing. Next time they will stay for the party.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Rdonj expressed my feelings pretty well. So did squirrel on the why didn't people vote for the extra 8 hours per turn question. There's still a fair number of people who only have a few provinces to manage, that may have been a factor. I scratch my head as well. I don't think we quite at the juncture yet where everyone needs 80 hours per turn, but I could be wrong. There's another vote coming up at turn 50, but I could move it up to now if everyone likes.

DrP, I've got your request for a 24 hour delay down. Will follow up shortly.

Don't know why Stretch would get any turns, nice to hear from Stretch again though.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Hrm.

1. There is a mictlan turn in, that wasn't sent by me.
2. I second the request for a delay and/or longer turns.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

At 3hp,your Son of Semayaza didn't have much partying left in him. He made the right choice. I just wish I could have stuck my foot out or something. :vroom:

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Game note:

I've created a work in progress preview(s) of the teams and themes for Nav II and NaV III. You'll find them in the attached files. I think it will be fun to pit nature vs death vs astral vs blood and to have teams adhere to a common theme (whether through nation choice or pretender choice) giving them specific strengths and weaknesses. I know I will enjoy watching the action. R'lyeh may be allowed with certain caveats.

To Caelum/Illuminated:

Caelum, this is Severus, your old pal and comrade in arms who loves you. Don't go on fighting against the Mysterios, we are not your enemy. We know that you are not like the rest of those despicable Devas. We know that you are not evil like the maniacal evil Doctor Praetorious but rather you've been corrupted by their sinister influence. Yes, we savagely slaughtered your god (as much as any dead thing can be killed) but it was (how shall I say) unwise of him to rush into battle against 5 SCs.

I admonish you my old friend, turn your back on your so-called companions, they are not your friends. They don't love you like we do. Stop your foolish attacks and join with the rest of the freedom fighters against the Devas. We shall spare most of your lands and your people. Set your mages to attack closest and evacuate your fortresses so that we may conquer the provinces necessary to accomplish this. Cleave to my busom once more. Betake yourself of my companionship like in the days of old.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Ah, sept. After the many and varied Mysterio SCs that illuminated has taken down, it is no wonder you would prefer that he lay down quietly :). But rest assured, he will be the end of many, many more before the game is through.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Btw - I don't really like the idea of path-based teams, but since I'm not playing in the other games it doesn't really affect me that much one way or the other. Having your alternates doing the diplomacy could be an interesting twist, but giving them incentives to betray their team and work against it, again, I don't really like. Team games with moles aren't necessarily a bad thing. In fact I think they could be great fun. But in the context of the Noobs lineage and the information leaks being non-players, I think it's a bad idea.

For example, in a game where you know one of your teammates is a mole, you know to expect this and you have to take steps to guard against this. If you think you know who the mole is, you can try to work around them, or maybe even kill that player, thus minimizing the threat they pose to your team. With the people leaking information and messing with your plans on the outside of the game, you can't do anything to stop them from messing you up, unless you take steps to make sure that they can't see what you're saying (thus defeating the purpose of their existence). Not having a recourse to prevent your position from being compromised is a mistake imo.

Anyway I'm not playing in the next two games, so my opinion is not worth that much on the subject :)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

~54 hours on the game clock, 0 out of 14 .2h remaining. Looks like Vanheim and TC are AI now? Where is my .trn?

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I don't have mine yet either. Maybe Stretch knows? ;)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Took me abit to get them out. Had to do some steps manually.

Interesting lessons learned (in case anyone is interested):
A) Yahoo apparently treats multiple messages to one mailbox too fast as possible spam. Not something that would have come up except in a team game.
B) ascii files between systems is a real pain. The Email list edited by Septimius was APPARENTLY not being read correctly. I say apparently because editing it and resaving it seems to have sent the files out but I wont know for sure if that was it until next hosting. (no it wasnt the end-of-line thing)

And yes, the files have all been edited to recognize the number of players rather than use the hard count of 16. Hopefully it will automatically recognize nations set to AI

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Got it.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Ahhh quirk on receiving updated Email list has been found. It was in the mail delivery. Should be fixed now so Septimius continue admining the email addresses as you have been.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Lol, did I even kill so many SCs? They all run away to come back and siege my forts...
But yeah, my mages will gladly come out for peace talks if you drop that lightning resistance.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

So I see I lost some maidens to arco. Well, okay. I was planning on killing those off on TC's cap, but if you insist. Kind of lame giving aid to another alliance like that though. Nice penetration bonus btw.

Anyone who is not on team ACGHHS - you lot are crazy, supporting the people who have all the good artifacts, numerous tartarians, and now on top of that, teleporting master enslave communions? Next thing you know, ACGHHS is going to be wishing for seraphs every other turn, and you all will STILL side with them. Well, all I can say to that is be prepared to lose :/ Meanwhile, we are still strong enough to kill any SC you throw at us. Feel free to continue doing so and weakening yourselves for the eventual ACGHHS victory.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Says the team with the massive nieflheim Jarl-Gygja army that is thus far undefeated.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Says the team with the massive jaguar warrior army that is thus far undefeated... ;)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

As always thanks for your input. Obviously I disagree about the theme based teams. I think this sort of team role playing can be a great deal of fun. Alot of games feature a common theme, take the many blood only games. You'd have instead of one such choice 4 choices. You can still have some diversity on your team at the same time, as to meet the theme you can do so via nation or pretender choice. I'd obviously prefer players choose both an apporiate nation and an appropriate pretender, though I probably won't make both mandatory. Having different strengths and weakness between teams, reproduces and enlarges what is already built into the game as regards the different nations. In the same way you wouldn't want every nation to be the same and have every path represented, so to with each team. It will hopefully cut down on the duplication in the ranked lists as well, as you can tell from the ordering in the previews.

Not going to give any incentives to betray one's team. I might as you say allow either the advisors or the alternates to handle diplomacy. Advisors should probably do so, but then a need a role for alternates. I suppose both could handle inter-team communications though, working as a diplomatic team with the advisor in overall charge. Again, the question will be, will either group have the time or inclination, since these positions are meant for those who can't/don't necessarily have the time to commit to a full active game.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Glad you got it worked out Gandalf.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Having path-based teams is possible, it just presents certain balance issues. As long as you can get good teams together you'll be fine, but if you get a remarkably unsynergistic team, you will be in for a bit of trouble.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Heh heh, just kidding about the turns. I saw that this thread had 1000 posts and had to stop by and see what was going on. If I was in another game I'd be dying right now, considering that I'm in 500-600 province map, CBM 1.5 (i.e. gem gens), 3 hours minimum per turn late game MM hell in the one game I'm in.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Yeah, that must be awful. ;)

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Well of course my goal is always fun/learning rather than an emphasis on the minutae of balance between every single unit. There's a certain amount of redundancy but of course that is pretty much the idea. Player and team skill, experience and synergy of course plays probably the most important roll in any team game.

If you look at the top 4 nation choices (and I might need to reorder the recommendations a bit, I.e for the Arboreans, they can live without Pangaea, but that nation will be more important for the Sanguinarium) with the exception of Pangaea and Mictlan in two instances, there should be very little duplication between teams.

It will also encourage the use and development of indy mages to bring that extra diversity which could give your team an edge.

Anyone care to wager (player skill and experience aside and assuming all players choose appropriately themed pretenders) on which team might have the edge assuming a matchup along these lines:

Arboreans (nature/earth): Man, Eriu, Mictlan, Machaka.
Sanguinarium (blood): Pangaea, Jotunheim, Abysia, Vanheim.
Supplicants of Set (death): Ermor, Shinuyama, C'tis, Ashdod.
Usurpers (astral): Pythium, Bandar Log, R'lyeh, Arco.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I wouldn't want to be an Arborean.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

MA Man + Eriu + Machaka on one team? Wow, that group just loses. It was already a truism that being good at nature wasn't worth much, and those are 3 of the worst nations in the game of *any* era.

My money is on Supplicants of Set. Only C'tis is weak, and the other three are really strong. Especially if you plan to run vanilla, Ashdod can probably kill another team by itself...

I'm going to have to go with Usurpers as runner up. BL would be a great backfield nation, and Rlyeh and Pythium are pretty strong. Arco is reasonably forgettable in MA, but they aren't notably bad. Comparing to the blood team, Jotunheim is the only one with anything really awesome going on.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Of course truisms are only true depending on circumstances.
The other truism is that certain pretenders piled with earth magic are the obvious best choice.

On the other hand, when you look at the actual game results it seems that often the earth gods dont do very well. And that the biggest problem with nature nations is when they are played like earth nations. But I guess that is usually chalked up to the play rather than any kindof disproof of a truism.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Sorry Sept...

I think those teams are just *awful*. As alluded to by others.
While themes can be fun there has to be some mechanism for balance - or the whole concept is not fun.

Even if you gave the green team three extra forts, I do not believe they could win.

the Sanguinarium I would handicap at LEAST a fort.

Finally, the astral team will have some teamwork difficulties, coordinating between land and sea.

Map design for this would be important...

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Yeah, largely I agree with squirrel. The only "good" nation on the arborean's side is mictlan, and MA mictlan is the only mictlan without recruit-everywhere jaguar warriors... which leads to its being commonly considered the least powerful of the mictlans. They may also be worse at bloodhunting or something, I don't know.

The sanguinarium could actually do okay, and has some decent nations. This is probably a more or less "average" team.

The supplicants of set look seriously powerful. Some of the most powerful nations of any era are on that team. Although I wouldn't necessarily say ma c'tis is weak. They are certainly weaker than the other teammates though.

The Usurpers are definitely a good team, but the supplicants are better. Still they would have a decent chance, and might be able to win if they played a very good game.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Well, not having any recruitable blood mages (barring the 10% on one commander type) probably makes them worse blood hunters, yes.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

:D Yeah, I imagine it does. I've not played ma mictlan before, so their complete and total lack of blood magic does come as a bit of a surprise. No wonder they're considered the weakest mictlan.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

My opinion, for what it's worth:

(This is going to be vs. AI team again, I'm assuming)

1)Ashdod, Machaka to the AI
2)Keep water nations out - Astral doesn't need R'lyeh
3)TC & Marignon on astral
4)Bandar Log on nature
5)Agartha on death

The only real problem I see is not being able to juggle blood nations in MA.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Does MA Mictlan dominion spread normally?

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Yup, otherwise they'd be in real trouble. Why drop Machaka to the AI, btw? It's not as if they're a powerhouse.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Just a comment here.
Think teams, think allies for the full game, not player-vs-player. Rethink the "everyone knows" facts that are much based on one nation trying to beat all other nations in duels on small maps. Maybe reread Kristoffers description of the nation. Here is a chance to use some of the built-in features of a nation which have been ignored while allowing an ally to bolster the lacks.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I wasn't trying to make a powerhouse AI, more like I was thinking of leveling the teams. Ashdod is very powerful on a powerful team, Machaka is very weak on a weak team.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

Machaka isn't the weakest part of the team though, and dropping it leaves no meaningful E access to the Arboreans. Or D access.

Re: Noobs & Vets: Rise of the AI Menace. EA, BI, Running.
 

I think BL and Man have E, if not strong E. I hadn't thought about the lack of D though. Maybe move Man to AI?

And you're right. I've heard that Machaka Warriors are awe inspiring, and properly kitted out, they are practically invincible. :rolleyes: