Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

I wish i had a generic one. O I pine for mediocrity!

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

I can`t complain about my starting position... it`s... just average... Stop to lament boys... let the combat begin!!!

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It would be great if misfortune/luck scale affected the quality of your starting position http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Alas, that is true only when I lay out the starting positions myself, and I don't do that when I'm playing in the game.

Hopefully, I didn't screw this one up, everyone has the mod and absolutely nothing goes wrong for the next 50 turns.

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

Just waiting for atlantis...

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Sorry, forgot about my turn, will play it as soon as I get home. That is in nine hours.

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Doh. Well, everyone stales some time or other. Turn 1 is no big deal, its unwise to attack anything on turn 1 anyway, and its not like you lose your turn 1 tax revenue. If you were planning to raise tax and patrol, consider it your penance for forgetting to play your turn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

Looks like the misfortune of Ulm continues...

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Indeed! Random events have cut my income to 100 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif.

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Ugh, rough! Did you roll the dice with bad scales FAJ?

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1 misfortune.

Serves me right. But the worst part is the starting pos., which is not affected by luck afaik.

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If you took order, it is genuine bad luck to have a bad event on turn 1, even if you took misfortune 1.

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Wow, that is unlucky. I took more misfortune than that so I'm just crossing my fingers that I can break out of my capital before the whole thing implodes on me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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When I try to connect to the server my computer keeps crashing. (OCmpletely crashes, alt-ctl-del does not work.) This happens when I hit Ok on the screen where you enter in a Port. I am able to connect to port 2000 in Sheap's newbie game 1, and I was able to download turn 1 in this game. Now it crashes. Anyone have any suggestions on how ot fix this?

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

What event was it FAJ ?

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

Darrel: I will email you the turn, if you give me your email address, or go to IRC. See if you can open that. Also, try re-downloading the mod from the first post in the thread.

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

I cleared everything out, and reinstalled everything. I was able to connect this time.

Thanks Sheap

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Morkilus! Play your turn!

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

Noooo! Why did it have to be elephants?!

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Are we going to stay on v3.01 or are we planning to upgrade to v3.04?

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

I believe the plan is to upgrade (assuming there are no huge flaws in 3.04). Lets wait for the signal from Sheap before doing so, tho.

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We will upgrade to 3.04 right away, yes. The server is still on 3.01 and you can play with that version, but the 3.04 upgrade will happen, probably, for the next turn generation. I will notify everyone when this happens.

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Server has been upgraded to 3.04. The turn timer was reset.

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Wow is my income ever low. 40+ net with two provinces? Geeze.

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I had a wierd situation where the turn would not upload. i had to do my turn online. I was already patched to 3.04. I did my turn ok i think, but just a note of concern. It did not do that on my other game, so... not sure what cauased the problem, hope it fixes itself, with the server patching.

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

Usually problems like that work themselves out. I wouldn't worry about it.

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Noticed a bug in Conceptual Balance. I was in the Create a Pretender God tool and picked MA Arco, and the preselected physical form was Frost Father ... BUT he didn't have the Air mastery at all. I went to select him from the list and he had it again.

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You might have actually gotten preassigned a blue dragon.

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Neither Blue Dragons nor Frost Fathers have Air as the default do they? Blue dragon certainly doesnt. Dont think the FF does either, even in cb. They both have water. Are you sure you saw air?

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I think, in dom3 the frost-father starts with w1a1 and costs 5 points.

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Machaka! Play your turn! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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NOOOO!!! I staled and my provinces got conquered...and i'm under seige in my home province!!!! Godamn you NFL! Oh well, I learned my noob lesson.

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You and Jay Cutler both! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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Sorry Dragonninjaakira... this is a game only, i hope you are not bad.

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[quote]
Dragonninjaakira said:
NOOOO!!! I staled and my provinces got conquered...and i'm under seige in my home province!!!! Godamn you NFL! Oh well, I learned my noob lesson. /quote]

Who is seiging you?

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I think we should gang the sieger.

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Those infernal Abysians! And I don't mind getting beat this early i'm sure a new game will start up again soon.

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Oops, must have staled last turn. Weird. Now I've got big dudes knocking at my door.

Should have played some test games or something before I jumping into this game with the mod ... things are not going well.

Are we playing with low income on? I seemed to get stuck with retardedly low income provinces nearby. Plus my income in my main province dropped like a rock for no reason for a turn or two. Still have no idea what was up with that.

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

You did in fact stale last turn, as did Abysia.

Income is the default 100%. If you are used to games with income increased, it can seem a little low. Also, farmland produces the most income, with plains next, then forests/hills, and finally mountain, waste, and swamp all produce very little income. On the other hoof, the rougher terrains all are more likely to have magic sites, and Arco is exceptionally good at finding magic sites.

If you had an unrest-causing event (or overtaxed without patrolling) you can get unrest in your home province, which will cut your income dramatically. It's not 100% linear, even a little unrest causes a lot of income loss. Patrolling and cutting taxes will drop unrest, but these have their own disadvantages - patrolling kills population and ties up your troops, and lowering taxes causes a short-term revenue drop.

If you have left the taxes alone, and something in your home province causes unrest, the game will automatically drop the tax rate to get unrest back to 0. That seems like the most likely cause of a temporary income loss.

Looking at the charts, your income is exceptionally low, but it wasn't always. Your income is considerably lower than it was at the start of the game, so your unrest situation must be awful.

Especially early in the game, your home province is a huge portion of your economy, so if someone is sieging your capital, you will lose most of your income.

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A question to victory points:

Why not playing with 60% VP to win the game?

With 40% there is a big chance that the game is undecided and ended with someone luckyly get the 40% first because he has more VP provinces surround. I mean there is normally a great endgame often with only 2 players left (at least the dom2 games i was in). The VP should only prevent that we've to conquer 100% of the provinces to win. But 40% is not the dominance in which i would declare a winner.

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If you like game where we fight til one loner remains, perhaps you should setup such games. I find that 40% VPs are to much.

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And why do you like games which ends before they are decided?

I know that i could setup my own games. I just want to know the positive effects of <=40% victory points.

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They are decided as soon as someone wins.

I like fast pace and aggression.

Look at my last game I created, it will never last 50 turns. There will be violence from turn one.

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Sure fast games are ok, if you like it.

But 40% VP with so much players is not fast, its a long game. And for a long game there should be a true winner which dominates all others. But to make sure that this happen the winner should need somewhat around 60% VP.

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Well, I think any victory conditionas are fine. It is just about geting there before your opponent.

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Indeed! Case in point: This turn the Jade Emperor, Viridus Pontifex was dismayed to learn of not one, but TWO bands of brigands operating in the very capital of the Pythium Empire. Needless to say, he believes that this can be the work of none other than the scourge Bogus. Any information leading to his capture or death will be well rewarded.

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Yeah I'm not sure what the heck happened to my income. I don't think my unrest was up at all. I noticed one turn that my net income was only +40 or so, and that my capital was only producing 100 income. Later, it jumped back to normal.

And yeah, every province near me is Waste and/or Mountains. Oops! I should have pushed towards the sea more early on to boost my income. Oh well, live and learn.

I wish I had figured out some better strats for Arco by now. I don't like using Bless strats because they only get the one blessable unit which is VERY slow. Even with Quickness, they can only move 1 province at a time, which is annoying. Maybe I should play more research centric (researching pretender with lots of mages)? Arco seems to get some pretty heavy artillery with Astral Fires, but that takes a LONG time to research.

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Not all nations have good blessable troops. But in a long term game, blesses don't matter as much. You hear more about them because they are so important in blitz, and the nature of the beast is that a lot more blitzes have been completed than long-term games. In a long-term game, a bless is useful for expanding your territory rapidly so that by the time your troops start to suck, it doesn't matter. And, CB tries to make bless a little weaker in general. So your lack of bless is not really your problem. Your lack of income is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Movement speed doesn't matter much for initial expansion, but it matters a lot if you need to fight another player. Arco is definitely a nation that wins or loses based on research and gem income, rather than blesses.

Victory points accelerate the game by encouraging war without artificially disrupting the game strategy. Normally, the top nation has little incentive to get involved in a war, because they are already winning. All they have to do is keep building up and eventually they will be unstoppable. Victory points remove "victory through inevitability" and require players to fight sooner rather than later. This saves everybody lots of time, especially the top players, who have to struggle under the burden of managing their enormous empires.

In the other game I am in, without VPs, one of the two strongest nations is just sitting around building strength (the other one keeps getting attacked by everybody). If VPs were enabled, these two nations would be at war already as each would be within striking distance of the required 40%.

60% is too high, at 60%, the outcome is already decided. In fact, 40% is toward the high end of useful victory point settings. The only reason I set it as high as I did is to prevent a nation with a bless-rush and a lucky spawn from claiming both triple-VP provinces and a couple others and winning before the game really gets going. With 40% you need 12 VPs, too much to get with an early game rush for most plausible initial setups.

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I just haven't found a good 'master plan' yet for Arco. I don't really know what all spells to shoot for, what order to do them in, what I should do with my pretender, all of those things.

I like having an SC pretender, but using him as a fighter means very poor research as he goes around clobbering things.

Re: Concepts of Creation: Conceptual Balance (sign
 

Try a cheap pretender, since your mages cower most paths. Then you may have fair scales and ok expansion.

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40% is way more than enough VP to make sure a game is decided. Most games I've played are decided far before then if you know the true situation.