Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Congratulations, and you'll need to PM Annette about becoming DrDrP.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Congratulations Dr. DrP :D

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

See, there ya go showing me up. All I've got is a hangover!

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Congrats, and moreover your the first Dr. DrP I know.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

for the record that delay did me no good as i was gone the entire time it was in effect... however my partially done turn was perfectly fine and the battles i scripted and wanted more time to script more carefully.... the enemy didn't even engage me so there was literally no ill effect due to me running out of time at all


thanks for the delay though regardless

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Well, I guess that's good news :D

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Ermor has become a problem. He holds too many provs, and caps, and is assaulting an overlord. Ashdod hereby declares war on Ermor. Only overlords should take other overlords, Ermor... you have overstepped your bounds.

Let it be known that our other vassal nations should not fear us. We are merely moving to keep an unbridled Ermor in check.

-Lingchih of Ashdod

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Well, that was a less-than-optimal turn. Oh well, there are always more longdead! Nice demonstration of good battle magic, Dr. P!

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

wtb stone sphere for fair price (i have earth and/or astral gems as well as other types)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

2 questions about the game rules, to which the answer is no according to the literal rules but maybe not in the spirit of the rules

1) Can provinces which a random indie attack took from an overlord be taken back without consideration of dominion restrictions? Most overlords can pretty much keep their dominion covering their territories, but I'm pretty spread out and with (almost?) everyone pushing a strong dominion it's pretty much impossible for me to keep my dominion in skinny water along most of the edges, and at this point it's asking a lot for my pretender to be relegated to indie squishing.

2) Can voluntary province trades be done without consideration of dominion restrictions?

On a side note, I'm guessing I'm not gonna get much sympathy WRT a R'yleh nerf, but no bloodstones is a pretty nasty for a nation with E1 mages and no feet. :(

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

As a general rule, I think. An Overlord cannot attack a prov without dom in it, without the pretender present in the attack. That should cover both questions.

Life is hard for an Overlord.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

1) No.
2) Voluntary province trades, huh? I would be inclined to say yes, but if any of your fellow overlords object to this lets go with no for this game.

Life is indeed hard for overlords. I am taking suggestions to make the game more fair (and winnable) if I set up another overlords-themed game in the future. If you have any suggestions that you think would be helpful for making the game run more smoothly, feel free to drop me a line. Once this game is winding down I'll put up a list of suggested changes I've been given and see what people like and don't like.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I suggest allowing any regular player that takes over an overlords capital, becomes an overlord, and the previous player is relegated to normal.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I'd second some sort of advancement to overlord status criteria. Though I think taking an overlord cap is fairly light. And since anyone who is killing an overlord to do so will likely be taking everything else first under those rules--to minimize retaliation--the rule might be more in line with take all of the original starting forts (cap included).

And I'll agree that the mid-late game can be difficult for an overlord. But lets not forget its not without its perks. Two players seem to have capitalized on that head start and really pushed the advantage, the rest I dunno. And with the gate-stones in play a single overlord could quite simply put a halt on a would-be victorious normal. Sure they can only attack one province, but there are only so many provinces satisfying those victory conditions.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'd be interested to see how the game resolves before picking it apart.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

right now today or tomorrow someone should post a list of every vp



they are ALL WRONG on the map... it's not fair to have victory conditions no one is sure of... someone should compile a list of every capital and every noncapital yet "special" fort

many vp's have no forts and many capitals have no vps


a list like this would certainly make it easier for an overlord to take advantage of the whole stopping a victory by someone else with a gatestone perk...


there should be no punishment for killing an overlord i don't think.... killing an overlord isn't a gift to be balanced with a punishment it's a chore that should be rewarded with all those special gem sites? (plus other overlords know about those gem sites?)


I think that perhaps overlords should be able to use their prophet OR their god... (2 isn't much more than 1 and would help them out a lot especially if their god dies? i think the overlords doing badly are doing so because of a god death???)


I don't really think that overlords should be able to accept provinces in trade and breach the rules... however maybe the rules should be more lax so that it is easier for them to make attacks?? perhaps god, or prophet, or gatestone (that's 3attacks per turn max all with unique irreplaceable risks?) or maybe just god or gatestone? or maybe just god OR gatestone equipped to prophet....


or maybe baalz and atul are doing so well that the overlords should just not have picked tein chi or machaka because tein chi and machaka are awful nations? (machaka is awful tein chi is mediocre....)


wasn't pythium supposed to be the overlord instead of tein chi? what happened there? also DRP admitted to everyone he was picking a bad overlord nation to challenge himself intentionally

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Yeah, I don't understand that. I fairly meticulously set all the VPs by hand, checking and double checking as I went that they belonged where I wanted them. Here is the list of where I put them in the map commands:

--VPs
#victorypoints 284 1
#victorypoints 182 1
#victorypoints 38 1
#victorypoints 69 1
#victorypoints 173 1
#victorypoints 192 1
#victorypoints 263 1
#victorypoints 311 1
#victorypoints 222 1
#victorypoints 133 1
#victorypoints 199 1
#victorypoints 88 1
#victorypoints 21 1
#victorypoints 47 1
#victorypoints 316 1
#victorypoints 256 1
#victorypoints 241 1
#victorypoints 113 1
#victorypoints 262 1
#victorypoints 102 1
#victorypoints 10 1
#victorypoints 258 1
#victorypoints 244 1
#victorypoints 122 1
#victorypoints 76 1
#victorypoints 245 1
#victorypoints 232 1
#victorypoints 140 1
#victorypoints 200 1
#victorypoints 23 1
#victorypoints 39 1

I have no idea why there would be VPs anywhere else. If someone could explain to me why, and how to prevent this in the future, I promise if there's another overlords game to stamp out this silliness.




I'm not going to comment on all of people's suggestions right now. This will wait until the game is close to completion. But if there is an Overlords 2, I'm definitely going to look into ways to relax rules on how hard it is for overlords to attack people. Right now it's more than a bit excessive, and forces them to work a lot harder than they should have to.


I'm reasonably aware of squirrel's problems, as of a few turns ago. I don't think being TC was necessarily a deal breaker in and of itself, though possibly it caused other nations not to take him quite as seriously as some of the others. But he was really hamstrung by a few of the rules, among other things. If he wants to talk more about this he can, but I don't want to get even close to giving away state secrets. As for machaka, I have no idea what dr p is doing.

Baalz has convinced me that it was a bad, bad, stupid idea to have water overlords :P. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to allow water nations period if we do overlords part 2, but I could maybe be convinced to take a water nation that wasn't an overlord. It is just too hard to balance them for this format, and early on the other water nations are fairly easy prey.

The player for pythium bowed out, iirc, and I don't remember the exact sequence of events but I think squirrel had already picked tc and just took them into the overlord slot when I asked if someone would move up. This was after I decided that it didn't really matter what nations I thought should be overlords, because whoever ended up playing one could probably make a decent run of it as just about any nation (since I was picking mainly from the most experienced players).

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

squirrelloid just moved to the overlord position... to be fair though he should've been given the right to steal any nation he wanted from any normal player... now squirrelloid never would have done this because he is too nice of a guy but....


machaka and tein chi suck.... and all the other overlords are doing fine... so maybe overlords just need to be nations that are good nations to be overlords?

the reason i don't like the concept of trading provinces being okay is because that COMPLICATES the rule because a player with scouts there will think someone cheated when they really didn't.... if you want it to be easier to attack as an overlord a) less dominion strictness b) more attacks per turn...


i gave a lot of suggestions for b) already some for a) are.... make it so overlords can attack ANY indie (but not indies caused by spells as that's too exploitable?) or make it so overlords can attack any province with enemy dominion ONE or lower (instead of having to have positive dominion?)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

WTB antimagic amulets in bulk at a reasonable price (i have all types of gems to pay or etc)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I have gotten multiple suggestions of this nature so something along those lines is a possibility.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Haha, to be fair though, MA R'yleh is a serious powerhouse under almost any circumstances if played by an expert player. I don't think I'd be in too much of a different position at this point if I had started as a non-overlord (attacking more than one province per turn would make up for the slower start), and would be in a vastly stronger position at this point if I didn't have the overlord restrictions. As I mentioned, the advantage I gained leveraging the gatestone to gain easy territory was balanced by the fact that my territory is quite spread out. I've got temples in about half my territories (probably the most temples of any nation, with a dom score of 10)...and that's roughly how many have friendly dominion. Hopefully not to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but if a non-overlord were to get it together enough to push a decent raid underwater I could conceivably lose half my territories with no recourse at all to reclaim them. This would be rapidly compounded if said raids also destroyed several of my temples. Given the defined restrictions there are some serious drawbacks to being a water overlord just due to how dominion interacts with general water layouts.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

TC was selected as the overlord nation by the player who was supposed to be playing them, and was already locked in on the map when i stepped up to replace that player. As such, it was just easier to be TC than to make Rdonj rejigger the map, reupload the map to Llamaserver, and hope that didn't break anything. That said, I think TC is a fine Overlord nation, and I don't know why they're getting no respect. I imagine even Ashdod would have had problems if virtually all of his neighbors had turned on him, and I'm still alive and kicking here. (If I hadn't gotten jumped on I'd still be leading the research race)

I was originally to be Jotunheim.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

TC is not bad. Not bad at all. I don't see any problem with them being an Overlord nation. True, it does not inspire the fear that Ashdod does, and that was probably why it was attacked. But it's a good, strong nation.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

If you think about it Overlords may have started with a 3:1 lead in every thinkable way. But Machaka and Ashdod started with a potential battle on potentially 5 fronts. T'ien Ch'i on 6. Marignon only had 4 fronts to deal with, and logistically it wasn't a matter of running cross country to do it. R'lyeh may have had 6 fronts (before he gave himself more), but if I have to gear up to make an enemy of a nation I'm not well suited to dealing with, thanks but no thanks. I don't mean to downplay Baalz' or Atul's abilities, but they did have less to deal with. And Ashdod seems to have successfully made some allies where TC and Machaka have not.

So I guess what I'm saying is, while any one normal might have to step lightly around an Overlord. An Overlord would do well to go with the name of the game and actually be an Overlord in the spirit of the word. Were I to play one, it'd be well worth the gems, money, tactical assistance, etc... to convert those potential enemies into allies. Even though I might not "get" anything standard from them.

And in response to whomever wanted to see the start locations. Start an overlords game on the map with all the starting players involved. Not hard. If your fooled by a VP symbol over an empty province you've got bigger fish to fry. *teases*

-- At the moment only definitive suggestion for "Overlords 2" should there be one is to have a very well balanced map prepped in advance.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

You do make some good points. But I think in general R'lyeh makes for a particularly powerful overlord nation, and if some of the restrictions were lifted from them in regards to when and where you can attack, I think you'd be completely insane right now. So maybe underwater overlords being disallowed completely is overly-harsh, especially with the typical underwater dominion issues. But with some of the ideas floating around, I can't even imagine how much better you'd have done if you had had more free reign.

With regards to the map, yeah, the map definitely needs more work than it got this time around. It was a really last-minute deal, I generated something like 4 random maps and that was the best of the lot of them. I didn't think it was too completely horrible, so I used it and spent all my free time the next few days whipping it into shape. I still don't know what happened with thedemon, heh. Anyway, map suggestions are certainly requested as well. What worked this time? What didn't work? What would you like to see in a map for this sort of game?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

There was nothing I could have offered Man to make them my ally (given their position, I have to kill them or they have to kill me). Any future map needs to wrap because the corner effect is especially egregious in this game.

And Pangaea wouldn't even talk to me. Pythium's only messages to me were taunts. And Abysia was planning to attack me before the game began. Nothing I offered would have made *any difference whatsoever* in getting allies. Indeed, in such a diplomatic climate, offering handouts would have been perceived as a sign of weakness. So most of my neighbors were going to war with me regardless of what I did, there isn't much you can do about that.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

As far as the map goes, this map and my placement is very favorable to R'yleh in general. To be sure, balancing a map well is a serious headache and its my policy not to complain to the admins who donate their time, but you asked so I'll point it out: I started in a totally secluded water area with the two other water nations at each other's throats, a lot of water territory available and even more secluded islands I can easily hold. Wasn't really boasting when I said being an overlord didn't make too much of a difference - this is just a very favorable setup for R'yleh, who is arguably the strongest nation in the game. Even if I hadn't had the gatestone, teleport/gateway would have been a very early research target...almost all of my expansion was due to my unsupported pretender jumping around and he could have done nearly as well with teleport/cloud trapeze. The real trick was that I can leisurely pick whatever fights I want, bullying whoever I want into ceding easy territory as I'm comfortable that it's totally infeasible for anyone else in the game to attack me. Even at this point of the game I'm pretty sure that there is no nation whatsoever who could in any way pose a real threat to my homelands where I have strong dominion. Basically it's the reverse of what
Squirrelloid faced...

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I really wasn't sure if it would be better to have you seperated from the other water nations, or grouped with them. I figured, if you were apart from them they might be able to grow a little before coming into contact with you, which might give them a better chance to survive. If you were together, you'd be able to hit them harder, but they'd be able to group up against you. Or all of you could group together into some sort of underwater supernation, the others blocking for you while you used your gatestone army to take out the strongest individual armies. In retrospect, I probably should have had all of you in one pond with you more or less surrounded by land and the others on the outside of you with some sort of land connection.

Well, one of the other underwater nations is alive still anyway. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. :)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

what does controlling for 3turns mean? does that mean... get inside the fort... then have 5... then get gateston-ned on top of you... but since they can't break the walls fast enough you win?


or do sieged forts not count towards victory?


also does vanheim win with 2normal capitals+his own+an overlord capital+THE SAME overlord's fort?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I think only capitals count, each overlord only has one capital.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

A non-capital starting overlord fort counts for non-overlords. I can only imagine also possessing the capital should count a second time by a strict reading of the rules.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

You must have successfully stormed a fort. Non-cap starting overlord forts also count as per what squirrel said. Capitols only count once, unlike what he said ;)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I don't believe i said they counted twice. What I meant was if you held an OLs capital *and* one of their *other* starting forts, both those forts count (if you're a normal only).

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

So Lupus has won?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Nah, he's 2 forts away, including capturing an overlord's capital. So long as the overlords are not all asleep that's still a long way off.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Yeeeesh, everyone is so suspicious of the newbiest newb here! I'm sure Caelum, Man, and TC would agree: I've just been leveraging the power behind those wonderful little shifters--How long can that possibly be effective?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Well, your chances would be worse if i still cared. ;)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

as far as i can tell if everyone else but vanheim stales everyturn for the rest of the game it will take 3-4turns for him to achieve victory conditions and another 3turns for the victory to become official

every other game i've ever played ended via concession... so he's closer to any victory condition than i've ever seen any player in any game i've ever played.....



of course i doubt we'll all stale 7times in a row (that is still a solid measurement of the status as an unbiased metric)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I do not think my victory is guaranteed and I would like to play to completion. If for some reason that is not the view of everyone else and you are all not enjoying yourselves as much as I am. Then I would have no option but to accept such a concession. As I stated though, I am much further from victory than my current number of castles would imply.

And sure, if everyone from now until the end of the game were to stale, I'd have to beat pd and computer scripted mages after besieging and storming two 1000+ defense forts. Last I checked that's take something on the magnitude of 10+ gate cleavers, or 20+ wall shakers--to my great chagrin, I cannot seem to find these alleged sieging supplies. Or were those also being sent my way by my opponents under this nonsensical hypothetical situation? Hell, over such an 'unbiased metric' we might as well call all the games after the first turn--no one else's actions matter.

Dare I say Eriu is simply trying to draw attention away from the fact his own success long enough to bring his plans to fruition?

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Ashdod is far from alseep, and we watch with interest the gathering of capitols. Should we need to, we can intervene in any overlord cap in danger with unholy might.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

200defense on one fort 1000defense on the other :)


I have 2scouts viewing your area.... but even if my guesses about your troop formations are wrong you could still win in 8-9stales of every other player...


you aren't winning by that much, or doing that well... it's just that this game has the lowest victory conditions of any game I've ever played by about 300% thats why you're so close...


I think that even if EVERYOTHER player except me and you were to stale for 10turns I'd at least have a chance of stopping your victory and even if I failed I'd like to try.... (I really like this concept of ultra low victory conditions and forcing people to teleport to stop a victory makes dom3 less boring)



The point of this discussion is the victory conditions are very odd and I'm not sure everyone is clear on what they are! To illustrate my point... I am still not sure of the victory conditions!!!! rdonj has not cleared stated if you would even win under the circumstances.... it's possible that taking an overlords capital disqualifies you from getting credit from that overlords noncapital fort... or vica versa....


that point of unclarity is the entire reason I bring this up... no one is intending to quit... but the victory conditions are odd, and the victory points are incorrectly appearing on the map... I just want myself and everyone else to know for sure what the victory conditions are... because if no one knew what they were... then the victory IF it ever happens might come as a surprise...


If you truly are a new player as you claim... I would bet on you failing...

Also yes I do appear to be doing fairly well, although I am confident that baalz, atul, or ling could easily defeat me should they concentrate their mental prowess on doing so... I've been telling everyone I talk to I'm sure I'll lose not because I'm trying to "distract" anyone but... because it's common knowledge that eriu is a house early on but totally crap in the lategame


still turns to victory against all opponents staling is the fairest metric of closeness to victory i can imagine feel free to suggest a better one :)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

The victory conditions are stated clearly, or maybe I'm mistaken:
Normal: Must hold 5 Castles (4 of them must be capitals, 1 must be an overlord fort) at the same time for 3 consecutive turns.
Overlord (Option A): Given all other overlords are dead, he must hold 5 Capitals at the same time for 3 consecutive turns.
Overlord (Option B): Must hold 10 Capitals at the same time for 3 consecutive turns.

Consider this "metric" of yours is: Lets say a minimum of 7 turns with 0 resistance. That is to say if I played by myself 7/(33+7) or 17.5% of the game. Or perhaps we should look at it as 40/33, i.e. if I had ~21% more turns than everyone else. That's a pretty significant handicap.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

I did start with the intention of making victory conditions pretty obtainable. I have the feeling if I do start another overlords game I'm going to have to make them even lower. I'm starting to think they may be just a little bit too high. Maybe not, it depends on how much the rules do or do not change.

I guess my wording in the OP may be a little imprecise. All the victory conditions lupus pointed out are correct. For a normal, taking one of the overlord starting forts counts as a capitol (you're right, this really was not clear). Yes, this means that you can take an overlord's capitol and one of his starting forts and it will count as two capitols as far as victory conditions are concerned. However, for an overlord the starting forts of other overlords do not count (aside from the capitol). Does that answer your questions?

Hopefully this is early enough in that, now that it's clarified, there won't be some sort of scandal someone wins with two forts from the same overlord.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Every one of an overlord's forts counts as a capitol?! Holy crap, victory is pretty close for a number of people then.

If you do continue in this line of games, there needs to be more of an incentive for normal players to not just team up against an overlord. Starting with some extra territory is valuable, but the restrictions on attacking prevent overlords from being able to fight on multiple fronts. As it is, overlords are pretty powerful, but they can't address the problem of alliances of enemies. Perhaps if overlords had something that they could give to normals at no cost to themselves, that would help the normals. It would encourage people to work to become the overlord's "favored" minion, and betrayal would strip that benefit.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

LupusFatalis Pmed me with this.

Okay, here we go.

IF YOU ARE AN OVERLORD: Those extra starting forts you had do not mean anything to you, they are just a perk of being an overlord. They contribute nothing to YOUR victory conditions.

IF YOU ARE NOT AN OVERLORD: The extra forts that overlords STARTED with count as capitols as far as your victory conditions are concerned. Forts they built after the start mean nothing to you and have no more value than any other fort. A fort only counts ONCE, whether it is a capitol or a non-cap starting fort, it is never worth more than one victory point. And finally, all forts that an overlord started with are worth one vp to any normal who captures them. That is to say, if you own an overlord's capitol and both forts he started with, combined they are worth 3 VPs.


Lumen: I think I've already said this before, but if I start another overlords-themed game in the future I am almost certainly lifting restrictions on how overlords are permitted to attack, because at present I think they are too vulnerable to certain situations and they can be put into positions where they can be stuck fighting someone for an incredibly long period of time when they could just roll over and crush them in their sleep. I'd like to change that.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

Sure, then there are a bunch of people close to victory. And it also does make stopping people a bit more difficult. That is to say in my position I'd need to take any two of three rather than a specific one plus either of the others. Which adds some options. Suffice to say, I've no intention to actually start a siege of partake in any action gaining me a victory point within the next 8 turns, stale or otherwise. The Vanir have other plans, your childish races toward capital control do not concern us.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

wait? so province 100 does not count as an overlord fort?

then everything i've said so far has been totally false, heh...

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

It counts if it has one of those big, huge defense forts on it. My notes imply that 100 DOES count.

Edit: However, that VP province list I gave you earlier says that it does not count. I would have to check the map to be sure.

Having done so, I can now confirm that 100 does indeed count and that I somehow missed it when adding in the VPs. Does this mean I'm at fault for all the wrong and misplaced VP markers? I sure hope not....

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

so... anyone wanna make me some antimagic amulets or stone spheres at a reasonable price? anyone who already talked about it with me i'm still willing to deal with... it's just that they stopped replying to me before I got any of either :)

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

for tc, province 100, 102, and 140 count.

I'm not going to list everyone in the game, but if you start a game of overlords with all human players you'll easily find out on your own.

Re: Overlords - Game Thread. (playing)
 

If there is another such game (and I hope there is) I think the map needs to be a wrap around. And personally I would ban Water nations too. They are too seperate and make balancing difficult.

I am not critical of how this was set up however. No one really knew how it would all turn out - or at least they didn't say ;) And anyone who goes to all the effort of thinking up the rules, designing and making the map placements and running the game deserves respect. So well done Rdonj :)

But the initial plan was to have a sort of grid of Overlords and Normals surrounding them and I think in hindsight this would have been best. i.e. so while each Overlord is surrounded by normals and could be ganged up on each normal was to have two Overlord neighbours meaning going all 'one way' would be tough. That requires a wrap around map.

Instead we had most of the normals with only one overlord neighbour. And in TCs case this was extreme as most of the normals other neighbour was the natural barrier the sea. Baalz could have come out early and normals could have gone in after him. But early on the sea was basically acting as a map edge. So TC faced 6 normals - only one of which had a real border with another Overlord (Pan) and most had few even normal neighbours.

After seeing his terrible strategic position I changed my plan from toadying up to one or more Overlords to trying to organise a gang up on him. Not very successfully I might add :p I suspect that had all 6 of us attacked reasonably early then TC would have not been strong enough to resist. I don't think any of the other Overlords were in such a perilous starting position.

But had the map been a wrap around with all of us having a second (none water) Overlord the diplomatic position would have been very different.

Re the problem of the Overlords in the mid/late game. Please remember it is a problem now not early on. The Overlords could easily crush a normal without the restrictions on normals capitals early on and no dominion attacks.

So any fix should address the mid/late game issue not boost Overlord attack options earlier. So I don't like the prophet idea as it hardly solves Baalz's troubles now but would make an Overlord much tougher to resist earlier on.

You could for example allow an attack outside of dominion per Capital held by an Overlord. So he starts with one but can get more. Or simply add an extra attack every year or 18 turns. If you are worried about cheating you could have each Overlord post which areas he had attacked beyond his dominion without his Pretender - after the turn has progressed - so players can check if they were attacked legally or not. It gives all players some intelligence on where each Overlord is focusing but I don't see that as a big problem.

A restriction could have been placed on normals dominion (max 6? 7? 8?) so that the Overlords could have dom pushed more easily and made defence against that harder for the normals. That would help give Overlords more legal attack options.

I think packing the bonus gem sites in the Overlords forts would have been better than spreading them out as was done. It does make the Overlords core lands very inviting if they are looking in any way vulnerable. The actual forts are hard to take out - you can't just grab one, put up your dominion and enjoy the gem income - as you can with this set up.

Although the Overlords picked their own nations I think some are possibly more Capital focused than others. You could possibly get around this by making all an Overlords starting forts Capitals - i.e. give them the special sites of the Capital so they can build the capital only units/commanders. For variety you could have given other capital sites. e.g given TC his own Capital and the EA Capital in one fort and the LA Capital in another. Giving a wider variety of units/leaders and keeping them 'special' longer. As it has turned out there seems to have been little Overlord v Overlord fighting (that I can see anyway) after Dr P failed to decapitate Atul early on. But with the Gatestones an early take out of an Overlord Capital was very possible. A sieged capital can produce no units or mages which is very serious for some nations even if they have secondary forts. It was certainly my plan to get one of us to besiege TCs capital and stop his flow of good mages if we had been able to attack him early enough.