Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

Again - blanket statements... but no examples. How will it be significantly different? I'm not wed to the idea - but you have to get into more detail than: "The entire game will be ruined oh-es no-es!!"

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

Yeah, I was gonna hurry up and write another guide. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

I don't think being good at battle strategy and having the stomach to micro a large empire are mutually exclusive.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

Please oh please no turn limit on the game, It creates an artificial end of the world point that all strategies must point towards.

We had a horrible time in one of Zacariah's games (where his position was eliminated early) when he sprung a previously undiscused, unannounced 75 turn limit on the game just as the final decison making wars were starting.

I personally disagree with this current mindset that the late stage game is not fun. For me, it is the most fun. All that happnes before is prelude to the cataclysmic battles with wild magicks in the apocolyptic endgame.

Don't confuse your pwrsonal time constraints with the playability of the game. The real problem of the game is that it takes 2 minutes to do a turn or up to several hours depending on where you are in the game

Usually we are all wishing we were in more games as you can be in 4 games taking 20 minutes a day or even less and then gradually you have two or three games in the several hour a turn stage and you are screwed.

Hard to predict too. You never know when you start a game whether you will get eliminated early, or kept in a smaller marginal postion all game or have a globe spanning massive empire with several constant campaigns.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

[quote]
atul said:
Eh, the more I think about it the more I think that an auction is probably not feasible as it would take too long.

I think I'll just fall back on the way it was done last time - though I might increase the bonus if you get a random selection (say 15% more pop than the last selected nation - so you will get a bonus of about 30-35%).

If anyone has any suggestions on how to perform nation selection that would take no longer than week I'd be interested.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

If you want an auction that can be done in set amount of time, but which can be a bit burdensome for organizer, how about some variation of Dutch auction?

Everyone submits their nation bids. The organizer starts on monday with some ridicilously low amount of cap population / design points / whatever manna, say 25%. Every bidder with a bid to some nation with 25% or manna gets the nation, with exact bids roll the dice. Come tuesday, the result of monday is published and taken nations are removed from the list. On tuesday, the cutoff is at say 50% of the standard, wednesday 75%, thursday 100%, friday 125% and on saturday organizer performs a lottery of remaining nations with some manna bonus.

It could be ruled that you can't bid two nations with same percentile, and your favorite is considered the one with less good stuff. Also, say, bidding in 5% increments. Also (and this is important), bids can be revised daily with bids above yesterday's cutoff, so you can adapt to situation. EDIT: and in case it wasn't apparent, all bids are hidden before the cutoff line is reached, after which won nation and winner are published.

So, as an example:

On monday, I feel no nation is worth less than 25% points, however I submit my original bidding scheme, say:
LA Ermor 45% (decided on tuesday)
Lanka 55% (decided on wednesday)
Sauromatia 85% (thursday)
MA Man 90% (also, thursday, I get this only if Sauromatia goes to someone else)

Come tuesday's cutoff line, I notice both Ermor and Lanka gone, and not to me. Oh well, I still have Sauromatia and Man as bidding options, so I don't need to react.

Wednesday, I notice every nation I've bidded for is already taken by someone else (I had no outstanding bids below 75% line), and I tire of my life, so I submit the following line:
MA Ulm 80%
MA Agartha 85%
Shinuama 90%
EA Marverni 95%
Which I all win. However, since only one nation per player, I get MA Ulm since that was my lowest bid.

Obviously that's quite a work load for organizer for he has to organize everyone's bids and update them almost daily. Bids should be able to be given in advance in case not everyone has time to sit daily on the 'net, but that does increase the work.

Anyway, that's a form of auction you could pull off in a week. I'm not sure how well it'd work, or what to use as a stick/carrot (LA Ermor probably won't mind the pop loss), or whether it'd be manageable. The previous system did work, though.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

Or hell, you could always just do a random draw. I'm thinking that it's so much of a pain to even wrap my brain around these auctions and such that I'd rather just have a nation assigned to me.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

Well, Velusion and I are the ones who administered the auction http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

My end of it wasn't hard to do at all, I just had to read a list of 80 lines. I don't know how difficult it was for Velusion to coordinate the actual bids, but I'd be happy to handle it if it was a pain.

And anyone who doesn't want to take part in the draft could get a random nation, so they should be happy as well.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

An easy bid system:

Each player submits a list of maximum ten nation bids, followed by a negative or positive number inside some interval, say between -30.000 and +10.000. A negative number means the population you are willing to give up, while a positive number is the bonus you want in order to play that nation.

An example: Homers list

1. LA Rlyeh -20.000
2. EA Lanka -15.000
3. MA Rlyeh -13.000
4. LA ermor -5.000
5. EA Caelum -2.000
6. LA patala -1.000
7. MA bandar Log +4.000
8. MA Jotunheim +7.000
9. MA ulm +10.000
10. EA marvereni +10.000

After that everyones bids are calculated and the winning bid is found for each nation. A winning bid is the largest negative value, or if no negative bids exist the lowest positive value. If one player wins several bids, he wins the bid with the lowest nation number on his list - the rest of the bids are removed, and the second highest bidder is found.

Example: say Homer above won the following bids

2. EA Lanka -15.000
4. LA ermor -5.000
8. MA Jotunheim +7.000

Then Homer plays EA Lanka with the starting population of 30.000-15.000= 15.000. The rest of his bid are removed, and the next highest bidder is found for LA ermor and MA Jotunheim.

*In the unlikely event two players gives the exact same bid, luck will decide between them who gets the nation.

*Players that doesnt win any bid or signs up for random nations are given a random nation among the remaining nations with the maximum pop bonus (here: +10.000).

I belive this will add a bit to the start since you are basically forced to evaluate at what price you are willing to play the stronger nations. Also the work for those setting up this game will not be that hard.

Re: Placeholder for new Megagame - Evermore
 

Homer's system would potentially work, of course, but I think that the 5000 pop/round draft worked surprisingly well, and see no reason to fiddle with it.

I can try making a wrap-around map using GIMP and then let Szumo fiddle with it. The maps are generally quite pretty, but I'm not sure how well his map-reader will deal with them.

I attached the example output of the default "Render Map" functiom fromp GIMP as a jpeg; obviously the real map would be much bigger, just for starters. My knowledge of scheme scripting is not outstanding, but I can figure out this script well enough to modify it, I believe.

- How many pixels should the map be? Square?
- What portion of the actual area should be water? What portion mountains?
- I have to add farmland, swamps and wastes as a new layer. How much of each, and should they / can they overlap with any mountains?
- What color scheme do we want?

I'm also working on a mod to add 11 custom nations to a megagame. There are more than 11 mod nations in existence so I'd like to combine and revise a bunch of them, mostly have permission from the mod authors.