Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

I like this idea, and do not like the resort to an omniscient out of game judge for anonymous spells like Ghost Riders.

Re: The Council of Wyrms - 2 spots open
 

A note on the wiki...

The recent changes page (I'm too lazy to link it) is very helpful, but the time & date will make much more sense if after you register, you click "preferences" and set your time zone correctly.

It puzzled me for a bit, so someone else might want to know.

The Council of Wyrms - Game Starts Monday
 

I have attached the revised map file. You must download the attached file, put it in the map directory, and remove the .txt extension (which was necessary to attach it in this forum).

It was pretty tough spreading out 17 starting spots on the map, but I believe that I managed to do a decent job. I also put in the 17 VP provinces such that each one is two moves from only one single capitol. That was even harder. Also, each starting province has 5-6 connections on land and 7 connections for the two water spots. That was harder yet...

Anyway, here is the list of starting provinces and the nearest VP province:
10 21
28 38
32 55
47 58
89 75
97 105
104 83
128 92
147 123
160 183
171 161
185 156
202 188
210 216
260 229
261 232
263 12

The VP provinces are fair game for anybody of course. But since you start closest to the one listed above, you ought to be able to get there first. It turns out that I was able to put the VP province in the general direction of the most open territory from each capitol, plus it is also a nice spot for your second castle. They also will not steal resources from your capitol since there is an open province between them in every case.

I also did the following:
1. Removed the incorrect connection 78-88.
2. Added the connection 26-38 to help out the person who started in spot 6.
3. Added the connection 263-279 so that the VP in 12 would be two moves from the capitol in 263.
4. Eliminated all special sites and special troops.

Anyway, for all those energetic people out there, take a look at the map file and see if I made any errors.

Panther

Re: The Council of Wyrms - Game Starts Monday
 

Did you ever decide on site freq.? It seems to me with less gold there should be fewer gems for balance.

Re: The Council of Wyrms - Game Starts Monday
 

I suggested 50% and posted that on the COW site. No one ever said anything positive or negative about that.

Re: The Council of Wyrms - Game Starts Monday
 

Ok, just last I checked it said TBA.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Hey - can the call for pretenders wait until Sunday morning? My boss was out of town this week, I'm working my butt off, and I have to meet him again today to discuss things before he leaves town again.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

OK, that's fine. Get it in as soon as you can. So far, I have 12 of the 17 pretenders.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Sheesh, so I'm not the only slacker. But at least I got mine in an hour before the deadline! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Remark about mapmaking
Wouldn't it have been easier to use 17 "#start" commands instead of 262 "#nostart" commands ??

When placing starting positions, did you pay attention to the terrain of the neighbouring provinces? I think you didn't ... . Some nations rely at least initially on troops build with ressources, which they might not have if everything around is plains or grass.

Map errors
wrong connections:
39 - 60
42 - 60

terrain errors:
#2 should be normal
#10 should be small
#58 should be large
#143 should be large


Magic Sites Setting
Someone said sites 50 would be a good balance with bloodhunting.

Did a test game on poor Orania map: Gives not only very few resources, but low income as well. This will limit the numbers of blood hunters.

Found myself constantly cashing in fire and earth gems just to be able to buy more mages (no bloodhunting, though).

This might result in a very gem-centric game. I would suggest sites 40 or something.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

OK, I don't know anything about map making.

1. This is the first I have heard about the #start command.
2. I did look at the surrounding terrain when making the start positions. I even changed terrains in a couple of places to try to make this better. However, it is not possible to balance this unless I change dozens of terrains. Each player will simply have the luck of the draw as to whether they have plains, swamps, farm lands, etc, around their capitols. There just is not anything that can be done about it. If you are relying on resources, then you had better select productivity. If you are relying on gold, select order.
3. I have no idea how to make a province large or small.
4. I believe that blood hunting will eventually rule because the poor world does NOT reduce population. There is just as many 5K population provinces on a poor world as on a rich world. Of course, getting the blood mages is not very easy and blood can't be traded for gold, so this may balance it out.
5. I too though 50% sites might be high, but never really heard any alternatives. I did a few tests at 40%, but the difference between 40 and 50 is not significant in 20 turn tests so I could not make any conclusions.

Arralen, If you want to take a stab at fixing up the map and attaching it, I would greatly appreciate this.


There are STILL 4 pretenders I have not yet received. These are:
Caelum
Ermor
Mictlan
Ulm

Send those in ASAP. I will be back from golf at noon today (unless I get rained out). I hope to see all pretenders by then.

Panther

Name of Map
 

Hi Panther:

When I downloaded the amended map file, it's name was:

386182-COW.map.txt

I realize that I need to delete the ".txt", but should I also change the name of the map file to "Orania.map"?

Thanks for your efforts to get this game going! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Pasha

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

I agree with this. If you're a resource-heavy nation then you need to plan for it with high production and admin values. Same goes for nations which need lots of gold. What happens to them if they get stuck in mountains or swamp? Just have to plan ahead, IMHO.

AS far as gems go, everybody's gonna need em, either for summons or selling so I don't see any imbalances there as we'll all have the same opportunities to get a strong gem income going. Setting it lower would probably just mean more slog, no?

Re: Name of Map
 

You can name the file anything you want. It'll show up in the game as "Council of Wyrms" anyway since that's the name that was given "inside" the .map file.

Re: Name of Map
 

file name
Do not rename the file to "orania.map" - this would overwrite the original Orania Map with our tweaked version. And it would result in a "map not found" error in the game.
Use COW.map !!!

map commands
Got the command from Illwinters PDF "Dominions II Scenario and Map Editing" :
> 6.4 #start <province nbr>
> By creating at least one start location for each player,
> every player will start at one of these locations.
in contrast to:
> 6.5 #specstart <nation nbr> <province nbr>
> Use this command to assign a specific nation to a specific
> start location. Nation nbr can be found in table 1.

With #start, the game will assign one starting location to each nation randomly, while #specstart will give fixed starting positions.
The Yalun, the Tyrande and the 'Power of the Eye (arcoeye)' map use this command. Seems to work ok.

How to make provinces nostart, large or small?
5.5 #terrain <province nbr> <terrain type>
Sets the terrain of a province. The terrain is calculated
by adding certain numbers for different terrain types or
other attributes.
1=small, 2=large, 4=sea, 8=rivers, 16=mountain,
32=swamp, 64=waste, 128=forest and 256=farm.
Not all of these can be combined, e.g. you should
not make a province that is small and large at the same
time.
Add to this 512=nostart and 1024=manySites.
A #nostart command put into the map file will be converted by the map editor automatically.


reworking the map
No way I could get that done for Monday. Next year http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Sry. Family, laundry, some missing lines of code .. the usual stuff, you know ...

Pretenders
 

So far, I have 2 magic-less wyrms, 11 wyrms with magic, and 1 red dragon. A quick look showed a lot of variety on the magic with only two L9 bless strategies. I am making an excel table and will ask djo to put it on the COW site when I am finished.

However, this means that I still need 3 more pretenders. I have sent an email or a PM to those missing players:

Caelum - High Priest Naresh
Ermor - Quantum Mechani
Mictlan - Shovah

If I don't hear from them soon, we may have to start looking for new players.

And thanks, Arralen, for the map info. I probably should have opened the map editing pdf file somewhere along the way. I have always been totally mystified by the province type numbers prior to now.

Now, if I can just find the time today during the baseball playoffs to make this spreadsheet. My golf game was rained out today so I do have a bit of time this morning.


Edit - Upon closer review, the human pretender was actually a dragon.

Re: Pretenders
 

i sent mine in, just worried about some things after play testing. (but i have found some interesting 'strategies')

Re: Pretenders
 

As of Friday evening, I have time...

Excel is a good place to make the table. Make the file dial-up friendly in size, and I can work with it.

Are you putting themes in too? I'd like to see them. You can spot national themes via the recruit page, but is there any way to tell, say, "water cult" from the UI?

Re: Pretenders
 

i like my fire+astral wyrm (usually also has 2 nature)cast body etheral+personal luck, then fire shield and astral shield, then resist magic (or anything else you want) and charge in. works best with a ring of regen and a reinvig item but can do without, i used 2 helmets with the gore attack since i was indie smashing and it worked great even on lvl 8 knight provinces

Re: Pretenders
 

The Supreme Court of Serpentine Creatures hereby advices the one known as Djo that all special Dominion types are indicated when checking province info in your own Dominion. The information text will thus display the name of your Dominion, be it a nation specific one (id est, Spring & Autumn) or a generic one (exempli gratia, Heart of Winter).

Re: Pretenders
 

I am putting in the nation-specific themes. But as far as I know, the themes available to multiple nations cannot be discovered from merely looking at a pretender unless you try to remake the pretender and see that there are points missing (to make an educated guess). I will not be doing that, of course, so any common themes will just have to stay secret.

I received the shovah pretender and am now missing only two.

Re: Pretenders
 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words; that one is only worth fifty-eight words (58), but hey.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7427/mari0qo.jpg

Re: Pretenders
 

heh!

I sure feel so darn stupid!

Re: Pretenders
 

How did I ever miss this?! It's the first time I've noticed it... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif Thanks for the tip.

Re: Pretenders
 

"Look at you, Panther, a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?" (*)

(*Exact quote is: Look at you, hacker, and the rest is unchanged)

Re: Pretenders
 

Shovah you know that putting astral on a battle-centric pretender is kind of a faux pas, right? One lucky lizard Shaman with a Magic Duel and your pretender is insti-killed.

Re: Pretenders
 

I am missing the pretender only from High Priest Narash.

Re: Pretenders
 

Astral Wyrms are very potent. As long as it has a moderately strong astral path, it should be fine.

And a shaman can't cast magic duel w/out an "expensive" cap, as astral duel requires lvl 2 path in the CB mod.

Re: Pretenders
 

i stuck on my wyrm 5 fire and 7 astal and empowerd him with nature

Re: Pretenders
 

Power of the Spheres or Light of the Northern Star would also do the trick; failing that, you can always give your Shaman a couple of astral pearls to reach level 2 for one spell, thereby allowing them to Magic Duel your poor Pretender.

Standard warning, Magic Duel only looks at your base level, with one possible exception, so beware! Second standard warning, the Banner of the Northern Star might give +1 astral to *enemy* mages, so you could empower them without even noticing it.

Re: Pretenders
 

I'm betting the wyrm from the nation with "body ethereal" as its starting spell will have astral.

Mine does, too, because it's sparkly.

Re: Pretenders
 

That would be Ermor.

Re: Pretenders
 

Same here and he kicks some major indie arse for early expansion. After that, if things get too dangerous with duels he can just retire and sit on the throne and tell his little grandwyrms all about his adventures when he was younger...

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

OK, I fixed all these things. The map is now complete, as best as I can get it. As soon as I get the Naresh Caelum pretender, I will mail everything to our Chief Justice of the Wyrms to make the first turn and we will be underway.

For a guy who hangs out so much on this forum, I wonder where Naresh went?

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

It sounds like the suggestion to change to 40% sites didn't go anywhere - but I'd like to voice my opposition to the idea anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Mostly a matter of principle. I don't like the idea of changing the settings after the pretenders have been submitted.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

And where can we d/l the fixed map?

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

You don't need the .map file; only the creator of the game needs it (that would be me).

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

It is Monday morning in beautiful New Mexico, and still no word from Naresh. He has not replied to either my emails or my PM.

We might already have our first player dropped out. If I don't hear from him by the time I get home from work today, I will advertise for a new Caelum player.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

One last thing about the game settings.

1. Victory condition. My latest proposal was a hard limit of 12 VPs to win. Alneyan suggested to make this a soft limit. I talked to my son about this and he offered the following:
a. At 12 VPs (1/3), a player is allowed to claim victory in Council. If the nation has been honorable in achieving this goal, the wyrms could easily recognize this and award the victory.
b. At 17 VPs (1/2), victory is automatic.

2. Magic sites. This will stay at 50% since people made their Pretenders with this posted on the COW site.

A final note: There are 14 wyrms of the 16 pretenders I received. So there will be either 14 or 15 votes in the Council. I am hoping for 15 because it would be nice to have an odd number of votes for possible contentious issues.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Who've thought our 12 year old would drop out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

I like the soft/hard VP. Very neat solution.

Fortunately, your rule 6 already states that ties = proposition passes. I like that--wyrms ought to be dynamic, and ties = defeat encourages stagnation.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Hmmm... I actually put him on 14, but you could be right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

eagerly awaiting turn one. I have a feeling the first month or so of this is going to be really slow.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Not if it hosts on schedule which will give us 3 turns/week which seems just about right.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

im 13

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

We were not referring to you.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

i know but just thought i would point it out

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Fellow Wyrms:

I have wandered long in the planes of otherness. Shall I join your contest?

Signed,

Sak the Wyrm

P.S. Err, that is, I am willing to take the place of any absent Gods. Although I now see that other dispossessed God spirits have already volunteered.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Zooko : I think if you send in a wyrm for Caelum, we'll be underway - Naresh has disappeared, and no one else has volunteered.

Re: The Council of Wyrms
 

Is it true that the Chief Justice has infinite scrying power, even unto seeing the future, for example, and that any three Wyrms of the Council can invoke him to use his power?