Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I have experienced alike situation in another game months ago. We did roll back once, but we still failed to generate the new turn and finally accepted it.

To be worse, the same error happened again just after we had received another turn successfully.
After that, we decided to abandon the game and report it to llama and illwinter.

I once thought this issure was resolved since it is mentioned in the current changelog. So you shouldn't take that story too serious. But an error reporting to llama seems to be necessary.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

It's not just happening in this game - Preponderance seems to have something similar going on too. I'm hoping it's a coincidence rather than llamaserver issues.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I'd like to try a rollback at least once, if possible.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I did it.

My intention is to open two copies of Dominions in two windows. Then I will attempt the following:
Load my old moves for turn 61 in one of them (from the old, bad .2h file).
Delete the old, bad .2h file.
Open turn 61 in the second window and make my moves there, while looking at the first window for reference.
End the turn in the second window, creating a new, clean .2h file.
Send the new .2h file to LlamaServer.
Close the first window, saving nothing from it.

Hm actually here is a safer plan:
Set up my .trn and .2h files so that I can immediately open my old moves for turn 61.
Leave Dominions open, with those moves showing.
Copy the whole program directory.
Delete the .2h file in the copy.
Open Dominions in a new window, from the copied directory.
Make my moves in the new window.

I'm just speculating here. But anyway it seems like we can do this without TOO much trouble if we are clever.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Mist does not seem to be a very good spell.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

That may depend on what you're using it for. Although Storm is often more useful, I agree.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Well, I guess it reduced the range of enemy spells and missiles, as advertised. But then it stopped working because the guy who cast it was killed by an enemy spell or missile, even though he was standing in the back, in some mist.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Well, I now have 2000-odd maenads bottled up in a castle. Are they going to hide away behind locked doors like cowards, or are they going to come out and massacre me in a fair fight?

Only time will tell...

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Mist will only halve the precision, and even can not effect the precision bonus from experience and magic too much.

I believe the key point is Hinnom should have separated their formation to avoid the missiles, or even cast arrow fend. Too shame if they have not researched that given such a late phase.

For the fomorian fronts: everyone should understand that organizing over 2000 maenads is a great burden for the leader, so it is reasonable to save energie if it is obvious things will just remain the same whether trying or not, right?

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I take it that means a lock-in for the nude warrior women then?

One question occurs: They're in a castle under siege. No-one gets in or out. Where do the extra women come from each month?

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

They become stealthy upon first hearing the Panic tunes (distantly, from beyond the walls of the castle) and they sneak in. (After that they finish going wild and lose their stealth.)

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

(I just made that up, I don't know exactly how maenads work or even which castle you're talking about.)

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Ah, yes, the game manual does say Mist only reduces precision. The in-game description is wrong! Well, now I have a painful defeat to look back on, so that I can remember it better in the future. Look out, future opponents!

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Well, after that I might as well give up. I must have killed nigh on a thousand maenads, but that castle isn't even getting scratched. At least it took the edge off your harrassment attack for the turn...

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Do you mean give up sieging or the whole game? I believe while you are wasting so many units waiting outside the wall for months, Pans have swarmed over any other corners of the world. So with each turned passed, the chance of turning the game seems less for Hinnom and Fomorian.

But even pan has still a long way to go before victory.- I havn't any plan to defeat Morrigans in the open field yet.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

As Bifrons went, so will go Pangaea!

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Hmmm... seems to be some small victories for Hinnom. Finally they have got good news to celebrate.
Thanks to those 4000+ maenads, I have to spend more than 8 hours for one turn, and can not deal with every battle well. Now I believe the last and yet the biggest enemy in this game is myself.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

:(

This map is a pretty big map, isn't it?

Well, all enemies will be defeated soon enough.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Seriously, though--8 hours is a LOT! Now, I am not ready to give up, and I don't know whether Gregstrom is. In fact, I would like to fight to the end, no matter who wins. So, you cannot hope that the rest of us would rather concede than slowly, painfully lose. Because I will not concede for that reason--I would rather slowly lose!

But I don't want to punish you for doing well! And if Pangaea were obviously going to win (which seems impossible now that you have lost Bifrons), then I would consider conceding in order to prevent you from having to spend your whole life playing this game. I do want everybody to have fun.

In the future, I think I will not use such big maps. :)

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Losing one of the ice devils one turn is quite acceptable for me, since I have enough blood slaves income to spend. But to carefully forge stuffs without filling my lab out is a much bigger pain.

Next time I will definitely suggest using VPs for large games.

This game is quite fun for me anyway.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Ah yes I forgot about VP's. I will consider that.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Oh arse - I staled. Unsanity has unexpectedly turned into a nightmare of complex bugs and cobbled-together fixes, which is eating all my time.

tbh, I'm pretty messed up anyway, and have insufficient capability to put up adequate defence or offence any more. I should have done a lot of things differently about 15-20 turns ago... but that's life, I guess.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

You fail to consider the effect on Pangaea of the loss of one of its ice devils.

Without Bifrons to excite them with his icy tunes, the maenads will all be surrendering soon.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Well, I don't mind trying to make Pan's victory slow and painful for a while.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Anyone mind if I go AI?

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I do--it is my general preference that people don't go AI, even if they're sure they will lose! But it's up to you. I won't be mad at you or anything. :) (Also thanks for asking. People usually just disappear!)

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I was half-expecting the next thing I heard from R'lyeh to be a series of wishes for Armageddon, not a request to go AI.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I have watched the long stalemate in the water and concluded the victor will not not be a big threat to the land.
Striving to win my first game, I will welcome rlyehs decision. Hope he had enjoyed the game, and we could see each other again in another game.

p.s someone is looking for "Armageddon"? the bad news is I have forgotten how to spell this magical word, the good news is now he has reminded me. Now I wouldn't mind starting counting down, lets keep some gold reserves before I finally rasie a S9, shall we?

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Alright, I'll hang in for as long as I can.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

A lot of blood mages made a lot of bad decisions this month! They certainly don't know how to deal well with the horrors that are always coming for them.

Well, at least one horror will found out what the Inferno is like!

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Sorry for the stale last turn. I'll get the next one in.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Sorry, I'm going to need an extension. Won't have a chance to get to my turn until tonight (I'm -8 GMT).

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Okay, by my rough and probably erroneous calculation that means you need at most seven hours, which I have provided.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Sorry everyone I'm trying to be a good Dominions citizen but I'm just too busy at work right now to get turns in consistently. I'm either going to have to go AI or someone is going to have to take over for me. Let me know which it's going to be.

Anyways, I had a lot of fun playing. I'll see you all again in some future game.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Well, I have trouble finding substitutes even in excellent situations (as for Ermor in this game), so I probably could not find one for you now. You may as well go AI. Thanks for playing!

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Hmm. I just now postponed hosting, at the last possible interval, so that I could set R'lyeh to AI myself, since the nation was about to stale and it's clear that that matches charshep's intentions well enough.

But it turned out that R'lyeh was password-protected, so I could not make the change. Now we are stuck with staling R'lyeh until charshep intervenes! I will send an appropriate private message.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

The game master password should let you set R'lyeh to AI yourself, I think.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I have a password for the LlamaServer instance of the game, but not for the game itself... I know how to set a nation to AI by routing its turn to me, opening the turn in the game (with my eyes shielded), pressing Escape to go into the menu, and choosing to make it AI. LlamaServer says this is the way to do it. According to my understanding, this requires the player's password, if the player set a password.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

R'lyeh is fixed.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

This weekend was busy as hell, and I am not sure I can finish my turn tomorrow evening. Could you please extend 12 hours so that I can make use of tuesday evening? Thanks.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Hmmm... Two more SCs were lost in this war. But pangaea is still processing to its goals.
I am hesittaed to ask this, but if others are also losing interests in continuing the game, I would not mind stopping it either.

It is a very impressive game though.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Like I said before, Hinnom will never give up! ...But if you find it boring or painful enough to continue that you must quit, then it would be pretty silly of me to pretend I've beaten you. :)

And, although my willingness to play a nation until it's destroyed borders on insanity, I will definitely try to make things more pleasant for the winner, in future games that I host--by making the map smaller, or the victory conditions looser, or both.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

To clarify: I'm specifically interested in the idea of taking the game seriously enough that nobody ever quits. I want to do that, and I want to play with others who do that. And now I am finding out what happens when you do that. It does feel silly to finish this game, but sometimes doing silly things helps you learn!

I swear I could have saved Agartha's capital from Fomoria, if the guy had just stayed around for one more turn! I had about a dozen rings of tamed lightning all ready for his super-powerful earth mages to wear. But instead he lost interest, and staled on the exact turn when my offer of the rings reached him, so that when his mages retaliated they had no defense against lightning and they were slaughtered. People should not give up!

(Granted, a strong Agartha to rival Fomoria might only have made Pangaea's ascension easier, but the principle stands.)

Of course both of you guys have already played the way I want people to play; if you want to quit now that's fine. I will stay until the end.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I have to admit I thought Agartha gave up a little quickly - I'd only taken two of his provinces. However, I think very little other than an alliance of most of the remaining players against Pangaea would have actually changed the outcome of the game.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I beileve its because seeing Fomoria so esaily destroying Agartha that made the sauromatia give up, also forced Pangaea to enter this area. Fom had army decent enough to block Pangaea and had driven Pangaea to avoid a war in the openfield, it was due to the gap left by Sauromatia that finally let Pangaea overrun the borders.

I am no longer the guy enjoying playing against impossible AIs in huge map until ascension. At this point I know everything is just a matter of time and it can not be called a war anymore - like the two SCs lost in last turn, the major issue for me is only to calculate which gears should be forged again and how to cut the item list short in the lab. Thats not about challenge or strategy, just about working.

In my all Dom games I have never surrendered a single one, yet I have also never played a game using so much time. (say 5-6 hours just to finish the move without much thought in one turn, and its quite usual to script for one battle for extra hours.) Now I hear Fom is ready to surrender, I beilieve its the best time to save the fun and discuss some other things of this game. This will also improve your dom skills far more than just clicking against some AIs. (also improve my English):)

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Yeah, maybe. But at the time, I thought you were the strongest nation, and therefore that if you took Agartha, you might become too strong to stop. If my assessment of the situation had been correct, then rescuing Agartha with my lightning rings would have improved my chance of winning, and whether I was right or wrong, accepting my offer certainly would have improved Agartha's chance of winning. As it turned out, I was wrong to think that Fomoria was the most dangerous nation--but I was right to think that, if I were going to win, then the world must remain in balance until I was strong enough to take over!

If we had all tried to keep our rivals in balance, and if we had all accurately estimated the strengths of the nations, then at some point everyone except Pangaea would have attacked Pangaea. Accurately estimating someone's strength is something one naturally learns to do over many games. But keeping rivals in balance is not something you'll ever learn, if you always focus on your local situation, ignore the greater world, and give up as soon as it looks like your local war is going to destroy you!

Hm yes.

I have learned some important things:

Hinnom is very, very strong.

Hinnom with a super-powerful blessing is probably not as strong as Hinnom with a weaker blessing... but it sure is fun!

In general, super-powerful blessings are not as strong as they appeared to me to be, before I played this game. I was unstoppable at the start, and at that point I could have crushed whoever I attacked, except R'lyeh. But I researched very slowly, due to my limited gold and resources and my drain scale, and now my mighty Rephaim are almost useless. It pleases me that the blessing system is balanced in this way.

EA Pangaea is VERY strong, if it has the chance to grow large.

Blood Vengeance is good... but it's not as good as I thought it was. (I wanted to use it to save my nation, once the numerous Pans and maenads became able to overcome my Rephaim, but that didn't work out--I guess I'd have been better off trying to summon more Grigori!)

The spell that sends a monster boar to terrorize a province (until it is found and killed) can be devastating. BesucherXia, I did not say anything about this when it happened (because I didn't want to encourage you to keep casting that spell), but when you sent several boars to raise unrest in my capital, it crippled me for several months! Even when I stopped taxing the people there, unrest was uncontrollable. The only way I was able to catch the boars was by rapidly researching Watcher, and then empowering an air Ammi in earth and air so that he could cast that spell, and then sending out a few Watchers to patrol. During most of the lengthy time this took, I was unable to recruit my strongest units, and of course I had no income from my capital. That spell can be extremely strong! (Of course, it wouldn't have been as powerful against me if I hadn't been relying so heavily on units that could only be recruited in the capitol. But even so, there are probably many situations in which you could badly hurt somebody by sending several monster boars into some key province of theirs!)

Hunting for blood slaves in one's capital is actually not a bad idea, when you don't get much money there anyway (due to poor scales) and on top of that all of your capital-only commanders raise unrest as soon as they're recruited because they are enormous, tyrannical man-eaters.

Caelum has a strong capitol fortress, and besieging it takes FOREVER.

I don't like entering into NAP's. I hate breaking my promises, so once I'm in a pact I feel like I must obey its terms--but it's hard to keep track of exactly when the pact ends, and anyhow, I am better at improvising than I am at making rigid plans, so chaos favors me more than order does... and entering into an NAP decreases chaos. I had trouble with a pact that BesucherXia and I made, because we unknowingly entered it with conflicting ideas about how long it should last, and then later I had trouble with a pact I made with Mictlan, because I miscounted the turns and attacked them when I wasn't supposed to. In fact that attack ended up killing their god (I think you saw that one Gregstrom!), and afterward I felt so badly about breaking a pact AND killing a god that I repaid Mictlan with a Ring of Wizardry. Which was expensive. In the future, I might make casual peace agreements that have no exact terms, but I will not enter any more NAP's!

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

I learnt that Fomoria is definitely more powerful than I thought it was, although its magic diversity genuinely sucks. And I learnt that they really need a lot more air gems than I was getting. I should have put up the gem generator global rather than getting 2 Air Queens, really.

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Check the Hall of Fame, and you will find Pangaea is not so great. I guess its because I have taken more lands and found some really nice sites in the early turns that granted me chance.

Monstor boar is ok. I had calculated its effect and made a detail plan before sending them, also combined with toad rains to ensure your capitol with 100+ unrests. But they are not cheap. As I saw you have found the best solution - Watchers, I just decided to enter next phase and save gems for thugs/GE/items. Beileve me I once planned to capture your lands, and I did not want them fully ruined either- thats why I did not send them everywhere.

We all know its hard to capture a capitol, but the reward pays off. I beileve Hinnom should have sent more armys conquering the indy provinces when the victory is ensured. You do not need an elite army to fight the walls.

Another lesson learnt from this game: do not waste too much time "manipulating the balance". If you really have enough power, hide it and get more. I think hinnom had not learnt too much from the first Hinnom-Pangaea war. Using archer against maenads is feasible, but you had also seen my Air mages long before. Like what Fomoria had done to block my advance, you need multiple armys strong enough to destory the maenads, and you need to control the lost in each battle. After all, you were too late to summon your angels, and the GE you casted is not very useful against maenads at all. The summoned assassins are also a great waste, why not save them for your SCs and Faerie Queen?

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Yes, this map is full of nice sites! Almost too full... I had two libraries for a long while--without those I might have done very badly. I also made lots of owl feather things and skull mentors though.

That's good to know! I would be especially afraid of a spell that strong, if it were cheap!

Haha I did a pretty good job of ruining my own lands, with my death scales and bad luck and blood hunting and man-eating. I remember that just before you entered one of those highly populous provinces near Egypt--I think it was Memphis or something? (my game isn't open right now)--there was a random plague there that killed half the people. Many thousands died!

Yeah. I thought the Rephaim would only need to hang out there for a little while--I recruited horn-blowers as fast as I could, to help bring down the walls, but my income was low and I needed the money for more Rephaim, too, since I only had one fortress for recruiting both kinds of units. (Even after that, I never built a single fortress!)

Yes, I wasn't well prepared to fight you--the whole time I'd been expecting Fomoria to eventually become our main foe. Also I was intending to use fire magic, assassins, and high-level blood spells against you, but I mostly didn't quite manage to use the fire, and as you point out, the assassins and blood spells weren't as useful as I'd planned. And I still haven't used the expensive ether warriors I summoned. (This was the first time I'd gotten so far into a game, so I hadn't cast most of these spells before!) I'd expected to give shrouds of the battle saint to my assassins, but then they turned out to be unable to wear armor, due to their wings! A disappointment.

I also hadn't realized the Grigori would be so strong. Several of those would have been great!

Re: Sovarinthy - an EA game for somewhat busy people (in progress)
 

Obviously I had privileged information about my own status, but there were a couple of giveaways that Pan were stronger than I was - they had about twice the territory I had (therefore ~2x the gem income), and 4 out of 5 globals.

Assassins are generally considered not so good, it's true. And against Pan, who get some very useful patrollers...

Ether Warriors are decent thug-equivalents, and their leader can get you useful diversity.