Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Please, Septimus,

Give us an indication about where we stand in terms of timing, like a countdown to the end of this turn or a message every time we officially finish a turn with a clear indication of the delay until next one. Now I'm a bit lost :confused: , and I need to organize my time tightly as I'm starting a long trip inthe real world...

Thanks,
Numahr

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Thanks Gandalf, that is what I thought it showed.

Numahr, the direct connect system has a built in internal countdown timer, that is displayed when you connect to the game and that tells you how long you have left till hosting. We will be at 32 hour turns till we hit turn 10. The turn may host earlier if all turns get in before the 32 hours is up. This is likely to be the case with these first few turns. I currently show us at turn 3 with 29 hours to go till forced/fixed hosting of the next turn. Again, the turn will host sooner if everyone gets their turns in before that.

At this early stage, I recommend, especially, if you feel you are in a situation where you may need the full amount of time (but you don't necessarily need a special delay) that players when they first connect for a new turn (you'll see the message 'receiving turn file') that you do not hit 'End Turn' until you are sure you are finished with the current turn. Instead, you can save your work and come back to it later by hitting 'quit and save' from the options menu. The only thing to remember is when your ready to come back and finish it, select your game from the 'play existing game' menu (don't go to the connect menu first) and then connect only when your actually finished with the turn. You can also hit 'quit without saving' if you only have time to glance at your turn.

Generally it is best to have quickhost/fasthost on in the very early turns, but if people want it shut off (so you get the full 32 or whatever) every time, just let me know and I will ask Gandalf about it.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

A Wight mage right next to my capital - interesting. Though quickly solved with mighty Ulm army, of course. ;)
To Septimius:
Yes, as I said, I think that rainbow nation is a better candidate for merc. And I don't think that adding to them spies & other option via map editing is the best solution. Of course, I see that Atlantis could be a good possible candidate due to their underwater safety. But in LA with R'lyeh present that isn't longer the case anyway.
To Stagger Lee:
Thanks, I may also pay a visit when I have time and inclination. ;)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Thanks, Wrana for the input. So you'd recommend a rainbow nation with native spies/assassins.

Nice job on that Wight mage and his cronies! :happy:

Got a link for score graphs:

http://navii.dom3minions.com/scores.html

And staling data:

http://navii.dom3minions.com/stats.txt

Will add to post on main page soon.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

How about staling data of previous turns? However that is not especially useful, of course, so never mind.

p.s. This crazy AI makes me nervous :) 3 Storm general prophets are just fun. And one of them is "the most feared killer of men"... What does all this mean?
And also, how could Atlantis capture 4 provinces in 4 turns. Did he have "free" empty provinces? There is not much sense in keeping this information secret now, IMO. Just curious

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

It means Genocide! :D

Just kidding. Glad your having fun.

I've got a rough external timer for those who want to check on the time left while outside of the game. It operates like the in-game timer (doesn't countdown minutes) but should give you an estimate of time left to next host (not to be used as a substitute for the in-game timer) and which nations have submitted turns so far.

Click on link and hit refresh button on your browser:

http://navii.dom3minions.com/bin/chk.cgi

If people really want the older score graphs and staling data, I can post a link for the directory instead of the current turns.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

The stale and score data will be kept in rotating files numbered 1-9

As for the AI, its supposed to make you nervous. Do NOT consider it the same as what you have played in solo games. That is referred to as vanilla AI (level 0)

In game one, the AI was level 3 (on a scale of 1 to 10). It was designed builds of god, magic, scales, along the lines of player files (what human players tend to do, not specialized for AI).

In this game the AI is level 6. Its designed more specifically around what the AI does or does not do well. In game one they were allied. But in this game they are much more fully allied. They can use each others troops, coordinate attacks, and have specific goals. We should not see any of the common complaints about the AI.

ByTheWay....
In game 3, the AI will be designed at a level of 10.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Well, after reading all this AI stuff, I think I need a change of underwear.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Old staling data may be useful, by the way, to see whether the problem is chronic. And that's the main reason to know who stales: to see whether you should look for replacement before it's too late. :(
To Septimius on potential teams:
While it's surely possible for old enemies to ally (just look at European history of last centuries! :) ), it's still rare. And what I consider beautiful in Dominions nations is that there are almost never clearly Good ones (maybe MA Tien Chi. Maybe.), especially if we look up all 3 eras. And nations change in their outlook over time. Hinnom is clearly evil, but Ashdod less so. EA Ermor isn't (so) evil, but LA... ;) C'tis isn't evil per se, but Miasma makes it looking quite like it in MA. Abyssia becomes more evil over time. And so on. And in LA usage of Death and Blood magic doesn't make nation evil in and of itself: almost all practice one or the other... So while I agree with your idea of Heaven/Earth/Underworld teams, I suggest mixing them more by lines of traditional alliances and enmities.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

That is true of course, especially in FFA games. In team games, I'd hope Captains would be in closer communication than that and should generally know if someone is staling on your team. Heh, but I'll post a link for the directory and you can browse all the files.

Thanks for your suggestions Wrana, of course I am just kidding about the evil thing (my choices for teams are larely path based (not based on evil, hot/cold, old enemies, or anything of the sort) each team has real specific magic strengths and weaknesses like in the current game.

In my earlier post (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=745943&) I would give each team a choice of more than 4 nations to choose from, they only need to pick 4. So the Underworld team can choose 4 of the 6 nations listed, they don't necessarily need to take Agartha or Gath, etc.

True Agartha is generally in the same realm as Ulm earth wise, but the magic path nature of nations changes over time and that's what my choices are based primarily on (that and native gem income). In that respect LA Agartha has a slightly greater leaning toward the Underworld realm with a greater regular (non random) magic in both fire and death (2F,5E,6D,H4)= Combined mage and gem income levels, than Ulm.

Ulm changes quite a bit in LA, has much less earth, gets a tiny bit of blood, etc and is more versatile (5S,2D,1N,1B,1E,H4). They've got more Astral than anything else, so kinda difficult to place em. I also looked at common attributes like Dark Vision and Heat Resistance, Seige/Forge bonus, a bit. So feel free to look back at the post and tell me how you'd reallign the choices or if you want to go further give me your ideal 4 nation picks for each realm. That might be better than giving choices, though at least you've got some limited freedom of choice with my method. ;)

I'm posting links for the external timer and score graphs/staling data directories on the opening post of this thread. Having an external timer posted has both benefits and drawbacks in terms of turn submission speed IMO, but it is helpful nonetheless. We are currently still on turn 3 it looks like.