Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Agree on 1 and 2.
3 just makes the games last longer and favors bless nations.
4. is going to make nations with recruitable SCs even more powerful
5. might be the same as 4. - make it harder to get enough summons to fight recruitable SCs when you are playing a human nation

I have a draft post on some of what I dont like about Dominions that involves MM, but also things beyond MM - maybe I will dig it up.

PS getting rid of hammers would save a lot of time - i like that idea.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I totally agree with IronHawk.
Every once in awhile I see someone saying that a particular game type or mod has become "standard practice". I always try to check just to be sure but I have rarely seen anything approach at MOST 50%. And thats usually on a specific server or a within a specific group of players. (so far Streamers and Standards seems to be the winner). I tend to put such comments in with the best nation, worst nation, game killer strategy, etc comments. Everyone seems to agree that they exist but there doesnt seem to be an agreement on what it is so it all seems to balance out.

On the other hand...
There is an interest at the moment in the RAND games. I have played around with the idea of an even deeper anonymous game. Since I do have my own server I could create a huge game called Anon and provide email addresses to each player. That and since it would be on my server I could monitor the connections and game logs to insure (as much as possible) that no multiple players and in-game messaging is going on. So far each time I come up with another way of monitoring it I come up with another way to get around it so for now its just a bunch of notes in the game-types folder.

Gandalf Parker

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Agreed, they are MM hell. Remember to remove gem gens from pretennders and sea troll kings too while you're at it.
I think that most games are played with too many players, and therefore too many provinces, to avoid late game MM. You're probably better off limiting the number of players to maybe 8 if you want to avoid MM and have room from a gut feeling, so that'd be more like 100-120 provinces imo.
I can't see why it should be mandatory. Just get smaller maps.
Don't like it at first glance.
I think it's just removing options.
No way. War is a side effect of diplomacy. Removing diplomacy from games is fun sometimes but unrealistic and unfun if it's made general. Forbidding trading of gold/gems/items is more interesting than forbidding any kind of diplomacy imo.
No. If people want to play them, let them do so. If you want a random nation, you just have to accept it when you get a bad one or you don't play full-random nations.
I miss the point about astral corruption.
Do you mean reduce research ability off some units? So Magic will become the best scale? No.

Overall, I'm sorry to say that I think the game is designed for less players than it's being played with often. 4 player games generally have all that you like: No late game MM, not much in terms of diplomacy. The issue is that, well, you don't reach "end game" and the game is over faster, which is exactly what your changes try to accomplish.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Well this thread isn't about how ALL games should be - the thread starter is just trying to assemble the needed changes to create games which avoid MM hell.

Is there consensus that RAND helps avoid MM hell? That's the question.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I am personally fine with CB doing nerfs like this, however I think there would be a lot of resistance. And, on a related note, if anyone thinks some spells are made too cheap in the current CB, I'd appreciate the feedback in the CB thread

And on gem gens, yes they will be unique items in the next CB.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I don't think it does. Knowing you have NAPs and that you can buy some items rather decreases the time you spend on your turns. So I'd say that RAND style games increase MM [unless someone claims diplomacy is part of MM].

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I agree with the CBM philosophy. The problem is that if you don't have recruitable/summonable SCs your only option is tarts. My suggestion was a quick and easy way to give nations access to some kind of SC and at the same time fix the tart problem.

But opening up other SC options through llama's mod is a much better option. It might be interesting to combine that with a mod adding national SCs to nations that lack them. With other options in place the cost of tarts could be made more realistic. As I recall QM didn't want to make them too expensive since it would make things even harder for nations without GoH/Chalice. With other options now available tarts could be priced accordingly (not necessarily on base CBM since it probably wouldn't include the new summons).

As an aside, I think at this point it is unlikely IW will be adding much content to the game (especially revisiting existing nations). If it seems like there's an interest in adding national SCs to nations that lack them I'd be willing to coordinate and put together the mod, but I'd need help with graphics.


With the removal of gem gens I'm not against adjusting the costs of some summons downwards. The last thing you want to do is give nations with recruitable SCs even more power. My point was directed more towards the fact that there are some nations that currently don't have an end game SC option if they don't luck into the Chalice or GoH. And towards the fact that tarts are out of line with other SC costs.


Interesting you should mention this. I had the same thought a while back but didn't see any way to implement it.

You know, there's a cap on how many units you can recruit due to upkeep costs. I wonder if a lot of the late game drudgery would be eliminated if summons also had an upkeep cost - paid in gems, not gold. This would limit the number of summons you could field. Having to make tough decisions on how to allocate limited resources is what makes the game interesting to me. But barring IW making that change that seems impossible.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Catching up on the thread. I must say I really like the sound of getting rid of Dwarven Hammers (by making them unique). As besides the MM relief involved, it could result in a lot of new strategies evolving for several nations if they no longer had to concern themselves during the build phase with how they are going to aquire Dwarven Hammers during the game.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

[shameless selfadvertising]

Concerning Research, I was working on a Mod that sets research output to a fixed number.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43679

I don't have the time to work a lot on it currently, but there is a "finished" version for SP EA games.

The features (beyond not having to mm your researchers) are:
Faster research in the early game
Slower research in the late game
Starting armies are out also, you could mod them in without commanders, but I haven't much bothered because with a few exceptions every nation has a way to get an acceptable start without awake SCs with the current settings.

At this point playtesting would be helpful

[/shameless selfadvertising]

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Indeed. :)