Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

My pretender died a while back too. Took about 5 turns to call him back. I thought Umbrals plus darkness would be quite nasty under these settings since you can have a whole army of them quite early.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Well, it's not exactly easy. I had no astral, no death and no water income - bad luck with gem sites. With just 2 death gems per turn from my pretender I couldnt really afford a big army of Umbrals. Not until Bandar Log sacreds, summons and massive communion would make a handful of Umbrals obsolete. So I rushed and failed. :)
Oh, and my luck dominion yielded me some water gems twice and generated two 'master thief stole your magic gems' events. So you can do the math, how long would it take me to summon a whole army of Umbrals. :)

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

NooBliss, thanks for playing. You are certainly correct that these rules change things: you can almost skip over your opening strategies and go right to your mid-game, realizing of course that your opponent can do the same.

I tried to make sure each nation would have a decent supply of gems in its main paths by doubling cap gem income but in a case like Agartha's, where you have a strong strategy in a path in which you have no native income, it is up to luck whether you'll have a chance to implement it. Though I think your chances are better than in a normal game where you'd first need to find the gems to search in that path (or search manually).

I'm not sure what happened with your disappearing units. I vaguely recall reading about this happening but I thought maybe it was in larger games with many units?

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

He's really been enjoying the Eagle Warriors. They make for a delicious and healthy snack. :)

No problem; I'll keep an eye on hosting and postpone as needed.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I postponed hosting for the current turn by several days to make sure LoloMo has time to complete his turn.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I'm back and turn has been sent! Thanks for waiting for me :)

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I see I am to be the next victim of the Caelian armada. Very well, bring cake, I'll provide the party favors.

On the gem income: Agartha got a really weird distribution of gem sites. Admittedly, heavily skewed towards a couple types, which should actually be an advantage. (I think he was only getting 3 types of gems from sites... !!!)

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Well, the mind hunts might have something to do with it. How's Mr S4? :D

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Mind hunt is a powerful tool, of course, but has a real risk in this game since unless your pretender has healing abilities (or maybe some heroes?) there's no way to cure feeblemindedness (i.e. Chalice, GoH, even faery queens).

Regarding gem distribution, Agartha's seems very unusual. I ran several tests looking for sites that I needed to add to the banned list and didn't have any results with so few types of gems. My experience in this game is the exact opposite: an even spread of gem types and incredible uniformity in gem income per province.

In other news, Eriu is pleased to announce that we've regained control of almost all our provinces. Sure, the unrest is sky high and our income is 50 gold/turn, but you can't have everything. :p

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Thanks for killing my feebleminded S4. Oh, and thanks for the bottles and the high seraph, i'm sure i'll find a use for them...

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

OUCH!:doh:

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Damn. I missed a nice battle apparently. Must get my scout (yes, no plural) back to where it matters before I'm dead.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Bandar Log asks for a moment of silence to mourn the passing of Arka, the markata scout prophet of Embarrassed Bear who had a fondness for Legendary Cruelty. He will be sorely missed.

.
.
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.
.
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*ahem* Now if you'll excuse us, we have corpses to finish looting.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I'm postponing hosting by 24 hours because I'm too tired to figure out what to do about Mictlan's seemingly unending armies of sacreds.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

This very easy: Just surrender. Script your mages to cast useless but fatigue-heavy spells, and put them in the front lines. Put your other troops in the back with a stray commander, with guard commander and hold*5 + retreat.
Soon, you won't have any problem left.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Hey, no making fun of my strategy thus far!

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I'm not making fun. I used the same strategy agaisnt Caelum with the same success. Of course, I had to adapt a bit. Instead of sitting ducks, I use sitting turkeys.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Caelum has apparently decided the new optimal strategy involves several hundred blackhawks. The monkeys are deeply confused and perplexed by this development.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

He's stealing Eriu's strategy too. Fortifying your castles with hawk feathers has been Eriu's trademark.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

We're trying to breed some monkey eating eagles. Unfortunately, eagles are in short supply, and we're making do with black hawks.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Indeed, what foe does not despair when they see black hawks manning a castle's walls and realize that they cannot hope to take it? It could have been worse, though. If I had gone with the Lord of the Forest pretender I would have had armies of meese as well!

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

What were all those Eriu horsemen doing sneaking down there?
As a side question, does anyone think the monkeys can lose? I think the game is effectively over since Caelum is folding, Mictlan will follow, and Eriu will probably never be able to compete with an ampire four times its size.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

A few turns ago I saw your dominion dropping and thought I'd try for a dom kill. But then it seemed like you noticed it and your dominion started rising so I figured I'd withdraw them. That didn't work out too well. :)

I think you are right about the game situation. I've attacked Bandar but don't pose much of a threat to him. Unless LoloMo has something up his sleeve I'd say the game is decided.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I concur, Bandar has won this game. I have a plan to retake my provinces, but it will be at the cost of most the yazatas I've been summoning. Without any significant attack on Bandar log in the north to slow down his reinforcements, any battles I win in the south will just be a minor inconvenience for the monkeys.

I made a huge tactical error when I lost my main army a while back, and it has taken me too long to resummon that army.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Well, I think my attacking Bandar has slowed down his reinforcements in the sense that he's got around 500 units and his pretender up in the north. My forces are ... more limited. But hey, I've got still got the Eater of the Dead and I know that terrifies Squirrelloid.

This game didn't go too well for me. In a first while playing Eriu, I didn't go for an E9nx bless (in retrospect I think it would have worked well since the necessary Constr. and Alt. to equip thugs were already researched on turn 1). My flawed plan was to put my cap in 32 and with that, my prophet and my VQ pretender, push my dominion into whomever neighbored me to the south and attack. When the game began and I saw my neighbor was Mictlan (dom 10, maybe 9?) I realized I had a problem. Then I made a really dumb mistake and suicided my pretender and of course Mictlan attacked me.

I chain cast Call of the Winds in order to keep my cap and hold out until I saw what Caelum would do. I was kind of surprised Mictlan didn't take my other provinces and for a long time I was still able to recruit at my other forts. Once Caelum attacked Mictlan I figured he'd withdraw his forces and I'd get a breather to try to get back into the game. Only ... he didn't. In fact, he eventually started attacking my other provinces.

BTW, good job LDiCesare. Even with just one fort left you were still a factor and it meant Caelum and I couldn't just focus on Bandar.

Thanks everyone for playing this experimental game. Comments, negative and positive, are welcome.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Wait, is that meant to be a concession?

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Yes, you've won :)

Mind hunts were just too powerful. I couldn't raid without a sneaking astral mage and those were in short supply. And for this small a map, we really need all players to fight to the death! Kudos to Mictlan for never giving up!

Shall we have another go at this type of game? :D

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

I'd play again.

I wouldn't say Agartha didn't fight to the death. It was hard fought and he was totally out of material when he set AI - as in, not a single unit left or province left to his name. I just had to finish breaking fort walls.

And I don't know about mindhunts being too powerful. I think I lost more mindhunters to becoming feebleminded than I actually killed units. Now, admittedly, it did have a plausibly big effect on your tactics, but if you had raided you would have decreased the number of pearls I had available for other uses even without the astral mage to feeblemind my hunters. I wasn't exactly overrunning with pearls, and your (Calian) seraphs weren't exactly easy low MR targets to whack.

I think the really big thing was I was the only nation that took order scales whereas everyone else took turmoil scales. This let me support a larger force of mages and rely on recruitables for chaffe more regularly. And while I'm sure I saw fewer total events because of it, O1 opens up a lot of cash events, so I may have seen relatively more cash events than the T3L3 nations.

Enslave mind also got me into death via an Agarthan Oracle. Because yeah, I didn't take any D on my pretender (and stupidly enough, was pulling in 2d/trn from my home territories - death income I had absolutely no use for except the possibility of turning it into pearls until i managed to enslave an Oracle).

I am entertained that 3 of the 4 pretenders I saw generated gems. =)

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Running
 

Yup, you've won. Congratulations, Squirrelloid!

As far as another game like this goes, I think the rules would have to be simpler in order to attract more players (I'm not into large games so even 8 players would be good).

The core idea was to change the end-game by limiting magic to level 6. Since that excludes most globals it makes sense to ban all of them, even those lower than level 7.

Then there were the anti-turtling measures: most spells researched at the game's beginning, no need for site searching, limiting the number of forts, even pre-assigning provinces/forts to eliminate the expansion/building phase.

I'm inclined to keep most spells at level 0 and leaning towards leaving all magic sites at 0. But I do think the fort and province rules need to be simplified. Recently I've been thinking setting rules such as no fort can border another or perhaps each fort can only border one other fort would be a simple way to keep the game moving in the later stages. As far as starting provinces, I'd probably just go with starting everyone with 3-5 provinces and having a short expansion/fort building phase (maybe a map with approx. 12 provinces/player?).

We also had some rules that had nothing to do late game/turtling (no indies/mercs, no diplo) and these could of course be changed for a second game.

As regards mind hunts, I'm increasingly of the opinion they should cost 3 gems in a normal game. But I'm not sure about with these settings. Without the Chalice, GoH or even faerie queens Bandar had to take a risk with his mind hunts. But this wouldn't be the case if someone chose Arco, or to a lesser extent TC, next game. Nations with healers and strong S worry me. But it's worth noting that if we allow indies and I include mage recruiting magic sites non-S nations would have more opportunities to protect against mind hunts.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

I just took a closer look at Bandar and realized the recruit everywhere gurus have S2. Squirrelloid, I assume you were using those when you had a cap and coin available instead of risking your rishis?

Some ideas I've considered to balance astral (especially mind hunt) in normal games are: increase mind hunt cost to 3 gems, give spectres a better chance of getting an S random, add a reasonably priced summonable astral mage (something along the lines of an Adept of x Order).

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Cap and Coin? Lol. I never forged a coin all game, and only a single cap.

I cast a total of 6 or 7 mindhunts. Every mindhunt was cast by an S4 rishi.

Most of my pearls went to Kinnara, gear for Kinnara, and Gandharvas. I think i forged a total of 3 boosters in total, and most of those late in the game. I simply couldn't afford to use gems on such things regularly, I needed troops and I needed Kinnara for the air access, holy, or thugging ability. (In particular, arrow fend was *necessary* against Agartha's bladewind spam, so early on that need was especially dire). Kinnara's holy magic let me use divine blessing while communioned without my prophet being there (my priests otherwise are all H1).

Now, at the end I had 7 Kinnara and an 8th on the way. That's 200 pearls right there. That's about half my pearl budget for the game in Kinnara alone. Figure another 4x18 for Gandharvas, 50 pearls in gear for thugs (ethereal robes + pendants x5), and a decent number of pearls spent for LotNS/PotS in combat, plus some sundry other forgings (some void eyes, the one cap), and you start to realize just how tight my pearl budget was. Now, arco may have *nothing better to do* than cast mindhunts. But BL certainly does.

So honestly, I didn't see much impact of mindhunt on my end. I agree there were likely *metagame* effects because I *could* cast mindhunt. But my pearls were being used in entirely different ways.

I'm not sure I agree mindhunts should be 3 pearls. A pearl is worth double another gem, and seeking arrow is what, 4a? Of course, its not MR negates, but does have to deal sufficient damage to kill (Eriu, you were targetting the entirely wrong province if you wanted to actually kill something). And even when it fails to kill it might inflict a wound or can be built on by other arrows. Mindhunt is defendable against by a few items, is a lot more expensive to boost penetration (and less total boosting), so the actual cost to kill a commander that matters is expensive (multiple mindhunts from mages with good gear), and then you're gambling that your opponent doesn't have a sneaky astral mage in the province or didn't teleport one in before your mindhunt went off. I made very sparing use of mindhunt because its so expensive to use well and because of the risk.

I do have some suggestions for the next game regarding spell access:
1) The all-battlefield resistance spells should be made available. I know they're normally Ench 8, but without them its much too hard to defend against a number of elemental strategies at all, and its only 50% resistance so its not like it even makes you immune. There is no good counter to things like Grip of Winter or Heat from Hell without access to them.
2) While bloodmagic is underpriced in the normal game, i think the repricing was handled the wrong way in this game. It was no surprise that no one even tried to do anything with blood magic (that i saw - did Mictlan even try to use their national blood spells?). Given the gem economy was basically online immediately, but you'd have to start up the blood economy from scratch, slaves should have been treated as more valuable than in a normal game, if nothing else. The ultimate take-home here is that a number of blood spells probably needed to increase in price, but it wasn't all of them, and many of the price increases were probably too much.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

We should simplify the initial fort system. I remember that we waited quite a while for all players to submit their fort locations. With this small map, no forts will be constructed. Is it possible to start the game with say 2000 extra gold that can be used for fort construction? Then we can set the initial forced NAP to the first 5 or 6 turns.

If it's not possible to give extra initial gold, then maybe a similar thing can be done by putting gold settings up to the highest.

Regarding the spells, we can just lower the level of spells that are included. It's natural for players to try to weaken other nations and strengthen their own nation by taking out certain spells. We can just lower the available spells to level 5 or even 4, rather than have long negotiations on which level 6 spell is overpowered. Hopefully, this fixes the problem with blood spells too.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

As for fort locations, you could just set them in the map and decide the capital to be in the middle. That speeds up the process and is quite easy.

To me the most annoying spells were the damn black hawks (impossible to break the walls despite almost all my forces on the fort, and with some wall-breaking bonuses to boot). I have no idea if they can be as effective in a non-nerfed game, though, but I think a Flame from the Sky ruins them pretty well. But then there are domes. But then FftS will eventually pass through if you spam it.

Also seeking arrows. I think that Caelum could stockpile air gems whereas I and Eriu were busy using our gems on other stuff (black hawks, jaguars...). Caelum's stockpile was efficiently used to slaughter the commanders whom I sent to besiege their capital. Without mages and leadership, my southern army was soon toast.
I'd suggest a map that forces players to attack an identified neighbour too btw. If 2 players randomly gang up on the same guy, the poor is likely toast and the remaining player can easily sit and wait, stockpiling gems instead of losing them in battle. When hsi neighbour becomes too big or small, he can effectively attack him. I think it's a bit cheesy, although one would be stupid not to profit from the situation. I started wondering where to go when Eriu pleasantly offered me a god to kill, but kept being afraid that Caelum would strike me rather than BL.
Also note that seeking arrows are very effective against humans but mostly harmless against giants and big-hp commanders. Since it was hard for me to summon big-hp leaders, this made seeking arrow more effective. This also makes nations with recruitable thugs much stronger. Oh. Also, I s*** at putting up domes.

I never tried blood. I had no blood mage to begin with, so I'd have had to hunt + empower + hunt + cast. The game was far too short for that.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Ok, a lot to respond to.

Interesting info. I'm surprised you cast so few mind hunts. You hit me with, I think, 3 of them after I attacked you, so I figured you were using them more extensively. I had no idea you had that many Kinnara's - but with no indies and limited forts I'd imagine everyone had fewer scouts than usual.


I assume you mean that pearls can be alchemized into other gems at 2:1 ratio instead of a 4:1 ratio? Keep in mind that also can make S based spells cheaper to cast than other paths. If you're spamming mind hunt and I'm spamming seeking arrow, once we burn through our S/A gems you can alchemize much more cost effectively than I can in order to keep casting spells. But I think the biggest thing is that gem value is relative. If you're spamming seeking arrow you are likely an air nation and those are gems you won't have available for cloud trapezing. Now in this game we had a low province count and I doubled cap gem income so it was more viable to have a large stockpile of A gems to use against an opponent but normally if I'm spamming seeking arrow it's a sign things aren't going well.

But I think the biggest thing was that without indies or many forts it was difficult to stock armies with decoy commanders to soak up remote attacks. In a normal game decoys can help against mind hunt but they pretty much make seeking arrow pointless. Your typical indie commander will survive a seeking arrow and still be available next round as a decoy (you don't care if he gets afflictions). Decoys are effective against mind hunts but not as much so since usually they will kill the decoy commander so you have to keep restocking them. Mind hunt also has the advantage that it can target stealthy units and doesn't care about HP. So in a normal game seeking arrow is situational as opposed to a staple like mind hunt.

This leads to the question of whether we allow indies for the next game. If we do it will help with dealing with any kind of remote attack on commanders. Very interested in hearing opinions on this and also whether I should include magic sites that allow mage recruitment.


I wasn't too worried about this becuase the Ench. 5 Fend spells have a large AOE and without a need to keep commanders in the lab researching even 2-3 mages can cover a lot of troops. Of course if you don't have fire/water mages and you're facing an opponent using those paths things get trickier. Water's actually not bad because there's several summons that can give you access to that path. Fire is difficult but that's because until you get to elemental royalty and tarts the only summon with fire access that comes to mind is the terrain dependent Hidden in Sand. I can look into removing that or maybe adding an F2 summon so that everyone would have access to a fire mage. But I'd prefer not to have the battlefield wide resistance spells added.


Well, obviously I nerfed blood heavily. I'm willing to take a look at the blood summon costs and reduce some of them and maybe add some spells back in. But I think the logic you used for your balance mod applies here as well. And it's worth keeping in mind that if you don't care too much about the few spells at level 3 you can basically devote every blood mage to blood hunting from the turn they are recruited.


I can check into this but it seems easier to maybe increase gold to 150%. Depending on your scales, you may have to compromise between recruiting your most expensive mages or building your most expensive forts the first few turns but I think that's ok.

As far as the map goes, my thought was that we'd find a new map averaging around 12 provinces per player. But we can reuse this one if we don't get 8 players; either the five player version we ended up using or the original six player version.

If we do use this one again, LDiCesare's suggestion certainly simplifies things.


Yeah, I actually felt it was a lame tactic. But I really thought if Caelum attacked you'd withdraw and I'd be back in the game - as long as I had managed to keep my cap. But I should mention the reason I was able to hold out was the doubling of my cap A income. Any opinions on this aspect of the game? My intention was to have each nation have a good supply of gems its mages could use but maybe it was too much?


I think seeking arrows really paid off for Caelum because he was at peace the longest, there were few decoy commanders on the field and cap gem incomes were doubled. Whether we make the next game a no-indies game is a big question.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

I probably would have made more extensive use of it if not for the following:

Caelum gets S1 randoms and was making certain he brought one with every force.

Agartha gets S1 randoms on golem crafters, and since he had a large force of golem crafters, I wasn't about to throw mindhunt around until i was sure all the S crafters were dead.

The only reason i threw 3 at you when you declared war on me is I saw your VQ (with astral, meaning i couldn't mindhunt her province) and the death summons elsewhere, and concluded you had few if any S1 spectres (barring a phenomenal death income!), so it was a calculated risk. Of course, you also had plenty of blackhawk leaders to eat mindhunts, so i'm not sure i did any real damage.

Basically, the high risk involved with using mindhunt combined with an abundance of better uses for pearls made me much more conservative in my use of it.

I actually had like 8 scouts at the height of my scouting power. Of course, I sacrificed some against Caelum to check PD levels. But they were worth the fort use to hire.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Good calculation; aside from my pretender the only commander I had with undead leadership was a lousy ghoul. And you were 3/3 on your mind hunts: Sidhe Lord, Sidhe Champion and Black Hawk.

At game's end I had 10 scouts, all concentrated in Agartha's and Mictlan's provinces. I had more at one point but lost some to patrollers. My guess is that I recruited more scouts than anyone since I had plenty of turns with two forts free but not much gold. I actually had a scrying site but my pretender had better things to do and I had no other S mages that could use it.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Guys, I've summarized the settings for the next game at the bottom of the first post. Once we settle on them I'll open a new thread and start recruitment. If you object to some of the settings please speak up.

Also, I think it fair that we get to choose nations before opening up recruitment. Of course you can keep your current nation but feel free to switch if you'd like. To review, the list of banned nations is: all water nations, Ashdod, Jotun, Ermor, Pan.

I'm going to power game this time and switch to Vanheim. Fear my skinshifter hordes!

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Is the spell mists of deception still banned? Do we start with 12 provinces or do we start with just the capital and expand as normal? I would certainly play again!

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

>> I wouldn't say Agartha didn't fight to the death. It was hard fought and he was totally out of material when he set AI - as in, not a single unit left or province left to his name. I just had to finish breaking fort walls.

I had some Oracles prepared for a final fight tho. But they... disappeared. :(
Well at least I lost to a game winner. Arrow Fend impact was simply huge.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

It better have been, I spent a lot of pearls to be able to cast it wherever I needed it =)

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Valerius, regarding proposed rules for next game:
1)Ok, I get the other items, but why no heroes blades?
2)If you want to discuss proper blood spell costs, I'd be happy to, since I've been doing quite a bit of thinking on the matter
3)I presume we aren't allowed to forge the 'downgraded' artifacts - they're there so events have something to work with and that's it.
4)Might want to consider changing eras, maybe LA?

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

>> It better have been, I spent a lot of pearls to be able to cast it wherever I needed it =)

Well, but it instantly rendered my battlemagic and thus more or less whole nation useless. :)

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

That magma eruption was still pretty killer. Arrow Fend does nothing about that, I had to use screens of chaffe to stop it from totally destroying me.

-------
Game is mysteriously still running, despite having received teh 'game ending' email. I just got a turn! I'll be ignoring the game, since its supposed to be dead.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

T_T... wish my mages could cast it more than twice before falling unconscious, having killed a sacred or two. :) Its not even nearly as effective as bladewind, at least for Agartha mages. Imho.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

I'd rather stick with no magic items than uniques at levels 2, 4, 6. Or maybe put some never used items there. I mean, noone will forge a champion's skull, a ring of warning. Might as well get one from a random event. Halberds of might, birch boots are also quite uncommon. (These might even be somewhat useful, contrary to black laurels.)

As for nation choice, I wouldn't pick Mictlan again. They can rush fine, but their mages are too limited and getting into blood's too hard. I might pick Ulm. If monkey PD can win, why couldn't the forgers?

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

MoD is still banned. I think at this point the only spell change on my to-do list is making Hidden in Sand castable in all terrains. This provides an opportunity to obtain a fire mage as well as another option for S magic if your D income is poor and you can't afford spectres.

This is the big question. We can certainly get everything done that we need to by using map commands. If we go this route I can either do the work myself as a player (in which case we'd all know our neighbors and their fort locations ahead of time) or I can step into an admin role and take care of all this. I can ask rdonj to help out but it takes time to do this (even more so if we go to 8 players) and I don't want to impose.

Another option would be to start the game as normal (maybe everyone gets 3 starting provinces?) and there would be an expansion phase as in a normal game - the big exception being that there's no need to site search conquered indies.

Glad to hear it! So by my count that makes you, Squirrelloid, LDiCesare and myself (unless I only admin). What about you, NooBliss?


Of the misc. changes this was the one I was most on the fence about. In the end I included it as a measure to protect pretenders - which I figured would be the only giant size SCs in the game.

Sure, sounds good. Obviously you're going to make some price adjustments in the next release of your mod but comparing the current release with the ThreeFort pricing it seems like in some instances your price was higher than mine, in others vice versa. But the big difference is that I eliminated many spells. I'm willing to put some of those back in but, in the context of this game, there are some I'd like to still leave out: Ice Devils (self explanatory), Infernal Disease (too cheap and too low level in CBM, even given high casting requirements - even more important I think has the potential to be un-fun and take away from this game - lastly, there's no earth attack or manifestation so I see no need for this either), Blood Rite (you know my whole gripe with immortal units). Stuff I'd consider putting back in but have concerns about price: Rain of Toads (especially concerning in a game with limited forts), Send Lesser Horror (bit of a price boost might be enough here), Bind Succubus (this one isn't a problem I think it just got caught up in my nerfing other aspects of blood).

Yes, exactly. It's mainly the honor system but I'll set them all to have max forging cost to avoid accidents.

The problem here is that I really don't like LA. I like EA but the list of OP nations expands considerably compared to MA. I'd like to stick with MA this time but if the next game turns out to be fun and there's a third we could switch eras (though if we went with LA I'd need a lot of feedack on balance since I so rarely play it).


This is a perfect example of why I think immortality is OP! Ok, I tried killing it again, let's see if this one sticks.


I was wondering about magma eruption as well. Tough thing about the fatigue, though. But also, doesn't Bandar have some armored troops that could be boosted up to around 20 protection with Wooden Warrriors (the only protection buff with a decent AOE under these settings)? It seems like those troops would be largely immune to blade wind, but maybe I'm underestimating massed blade wind?

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Hopefully I can change your mind as I was really looking forward to this. :) Keep in mind I wouldn't add powerful things like the Gate Stone to the mix. I wasn't even planning on any of them being as powerful as a Ring of Wizardry or Robe of the Magi. It's more just for fun than to be something really powerful. But I don't want them to be useless either. As an example, what about something like Ember as a level 6 item?

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

Well, I'm on the receiving end of ember in another game (where my mighty C'tis has single-digit death income by the time I should have tartarians, despitee controlling and searching a lot of provinces - this game's logn lost) and I'm not enjoying it.
Some artefacts would be ok.
Quickly, I think Percivale the pocket knight, the sharpest tooth, Holger's head, the flying ship, sandals of the planes, Carcator, would all be ok.

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

I like your list, except for the flying ship, with which I've had some bad experiences.

So, here's a first draft. We can also fill out the list with non-unique, rarely forged, items.

Level 2:
The Sharpest Tooth
Sandals of the Crane
Holger the Head
Percival the Pocket Knight
Alchemist's Stone

Level 4:
O'al Kan's Sceptre
Winter Bringer
Rod of Death
The Flailing Hands
Fenris's Pelt
Krupp's Bracers
Carcator the Pocket Lich
Tome of the Lower Planes

Level 6:
Aseftik's Armor
Monolith Armor
Robe of Calius the Druid
Flesh Ward
Pebble Skin Suit
Boots of Calius the Druid
Tome of High Power
The Black Book of Secrets
The Tome of Gaia
Ardmon's Soul Trap

Re: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!
 

>> Glad to hear it! So by my count that makes you, Squirrelloid, LDiCesare and myself (unless I only admin). What about you, NooBliss?

Nah, thanks. I'll pass. I am right in the middle of another game now, and besides, I think I'll wait till you sort the balance out. :) I am... not quite content with arrow fend being awailable where rain of stones and other battlefield-wide spells are not. :) I may be easily wrong, so let's see how your future games fare. ;)