MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Each time I get knocked out of a game I've created, I learn something. Not something about how to play better, unfortunately, but something about the parameters of games I enjoy playing.

So here I go again. I intend to create a game on the mosehansen server (if there's room) to be played on The World map. If practical, I'll edit the .map file (as Norfleet did in his World game) to remove undesirable starting locations.

The registration procedure is as follows. Claim your nation here in this thread, and send the password you will use on your pretender to the non-playing registrar at martin.gregory@bigpond.com

State your mosehansen login ID, the nation you're playing, and the password. Martin will use this password to move you to computer control if you drop out.

EDIT: You will be deemed to have dropped out if you stale two turns in a row.

When registration closes, I'll create the game and you may upload your pretender. If anyone uploads that hasn't registered, I'll abort and repeat until we only have registered players. If anyone uses a pretender password different from the one they register, I shall hate them forever.

The turnaraound shall be 24 hours, HOF=15, research=difficult, sites=50, indeps=6, the rest default. The house rules are:

1) No Vampire Queens unless you play Black Forest Ulm;
2) Clam limit = Half the turn number (see the Orania Semiblitz thread if you don't know what this means)
3) Fortress limit = 1/3 provinces held at the time of building (rounded up)
4) No-one with a Shrapnel alias starting with N and ending with T may play. This can't be enforced, of course, so we just gotta hope ...

Current Registrations:

Ulm - Esben Mose Hansen
Abysya - Cohen
Vanheim - Stormbinder
Marignon - Yvelina
Caelum - Petar

[ June 07, 2004, 03:48: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Maybe I'll get support for this sort of game in place before it starts :-)

If you don't want Norfleet in the game, why not just say so? I think he would respect that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anyway, I would like to join as Ulm. I will play without a password, if that's allright. I trust you all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif If you abuse this trust, I'll change you real name to something nasty on my server http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Could we have another house rule? No more than 1/3 provinces with castles if you own more than 5 provinces? I really hate micromanagement.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">He has said in another thread that he may not.
A hard guy to figure out, for sure.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd really prefer it if you set a password, if for no better reason than not confusing the registrar. Past experience has also taught that no password is a Bad Idea.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heck, why not. It's early days and I've heard that "castling" leads to a boring game. I'll add it to the original post.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

World (random start locations) or modified world war scenario? I would join if it was world map (random start).

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Certainly not the scenario, so I guess it's what you want.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Just to be sure: I'll make a password, and write it down somewhere. So I will be playing Ulm, maybe using some theme, maybe not.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A question about this part. Is it really all this necessary in order to set players to AI if they drop? Setting a master password should do the same.

Btw I'm still pondering what nation to play. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's what I assumed Last time. Then I discovered that the master password cannot be used remotely, and the mosehansen server can only be accessed remotely. Trust me, I've been here before http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

I go for Abysya.

Leave score graphs enabled so we can check about the castling.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

I'll take Arco this time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Excellent houserules Zapmeister.

I was going to start a new game myself in about a week or so, with very similar rules (including rule number 4 of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ). But since you have done it already, I might as well join your game now, and will start next game of my own some other time.

I would like to take Vanheim in your game.


BTW one suggestion about possible additional houserule, if you will like it Zapmeister. How about

5. Serious players only, no game quiters. If you have some RL emmergency that would make it impossible for you to continue playing your nation, you promise to do your best to find a human sub for you, as well as give all other players as much advance warning as possible. But no quiting because you are losing or because you had a bad start. Everybody agree to play to the end, no matter bitter or sweet one.

(Of course when at the endgame everybody agree that the winner is 100% detirmined than the game does not have to be finished)

IMHO this proposed rule could be especially relivent to the huge world map that you have here.


Also maybe we could play a bit smaller map? If it's not too late and if you, as well as all other registered players would like it of course. It could be the bad luck, but only one of the world-map games that I've played so far was finished (kindof http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ), the rest were abondoned for the varaity of different reasons. And when we did fininsh it took VERY long time.


In any case, no matter if you will like these proposed additions/changes or not, I will be happy to play in your game.

[ May 25, 2004, 16:16: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">He has said in another thread that he may not.
A hard guy to figure out, for sure.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. I certanly wouldn't put it below him to try to sneak into the game where he is not wanted.

[ May 25, 2004, 16:20: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

*sigh* Vanheim seems to be very popular on this server. In our little gaming group, the only one who sometimes uses them is nice enough to leave them for me...

Well, can I have Ulm then? If I cannot be the ***** queen, I will be the vampire queen.

[edit]

Nevermind, Ulm is already taken too. Ah well... Marignon?

[ May 25, 2004, 16:51: Message edited by: Yvelina ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you had bothered to state in the original post that I was specifically not requested, instead of making the game actually sound ATTRACTIVE, I would not have snuck into your game at all. The reason I did that had nothing to do with trying to get into something where I'm not wanted in.

More importantly, I don't *WANT* to be in your silly game!

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

I would like to play Caelum.

By the way, I do not want to be seen as a whiner,
but could you guys try not to claim a race at
the end of the middle paragraph of a three page
post? It's kind of hard to see which races have
already been taken.

Something which would be even better is if the
thread originator could keep a list of the races
that have already been claimed.

Something like:

Ulm - Ebsen Mose Hansen
Abysya - Cohen
Arcocephalus - Daynarr
Vanheim - Stormbinder
Marignon - Yvelina
Caelum - Petar

If you are not on my list, shame on you. You
managed to hide your race claim real well :-p

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Delightful! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Of course I don't trust you one bit, since you already said openly that you might send your other "apprentices" (aliases) to my future games, in which I would specifically forbid you from participating, Last time we have talked on IRC. Not to mention all your other lies.

But nevertheless your current attitude pleases me, so don't forget it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Besides I think Zapmesiter did everything to prevent your lame gameplay style - limit on clams, limit on castles, no VQ. "No Norfleet" rule number 4 seems almost excessive. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif


Anyway, this is a new game thread, not another forum for discussing Norfleet, there was enough of that recently. If you want to continue this line of discussion do it somewhere else. Zen clearly indicated that he had enough of that.

[ May 25, 2004, 19:49: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Well, I hope you have fun finding out how utterly impossible it is to try and defend anything without castles, given that PD is woefully inadequate.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't want to do this one for two reasons. Firstly, I think it's a bit late to be adding more house rules at this point. Secondly, and more importantly, I don't actually think it's a good rule.

If a player is losing and has lost interest in the game, there's no point in forcing them to submit turns. They're not having fun. They're probably submitting minimal orders, possibly even just standing still waiting to be eliminated. The AI would probably do a better job.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'll decide the map when I see how many registrations there are. I hope everyone is remembering to lodge passwords with the registrar.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very pleased to have you.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK, will do. I'll edit your list into the original post, and try to keep it up to date.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

I have a question. Why is it that most games started on this server seem to have difficult, or very difficult research? This seems to affect the balance in favor of races with good troops, and to make things rather hard for races which rely primarily on their mages.

Not that I am complaining, having chosen Marignon. :-)

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think this is something that Cohen started, with his grumping about summonables and SCs, and has started to infect the general populace.

Of course, I don't feel this so much helps the problem as it does to exacerbate it, as it will be that much more difficult to research a countermeasure, and gives that much more of an advantage to the early leader of the arms race, something which I have demonstrated in Cohen's other retarded research games.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Marignon does have a small edge under these conditions: They start with Holy Pyre, an L4 evocation. It's fairly powerful against light to medium troops, and under retarded research conditions, it'll be awhile before other nations match it.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, sure. It will be almost as utterly impossible as playing the game without 500 points VQ and few hundreds of clams. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


Don't let the door hit you on the butt on your way out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ May 26, 2004, 00:45: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can't speak for most games, but I can say that I've recently started doing it because I start large, long games and would like to defer the time at which the leaders max out their research. In retrospect, making difficult research probably doesn't do much in this respect.

The game settings aren't set in stone. On a whim, I may tweak some of them when I create the game. I hope no-one minds that (let me know if you do).

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've never noticed this as an issue before (and most of the opponents I've had don't castle). In any event, everyone is in the same boat, so it's irrelevant.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You also admit to not having played very much: From my experience, I've found that if I want to torch a temple in a province lacking a castle, barring a huge army camping out in the open, that temple is torched. No questions: It's impossible to prevent unless you park a huge army over it. With castles, at least the damage level is contained. If you don't believe me, just try it: It's nearly impossible to prevent it from happening: PD available at a cost less than that of a castle will prove woefully inadequate.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, there's a few loopholes there which are a direct side effect of this: Since the castled provinces can't be jacked, you simply jack all of the opposing provinces devoid of castles...and build castles in a third of them. Since the rest are completely undefendable, somebody else will then jack them....and build castles in a third of the ones that are left. Pretty soon your entire castle census will become a giant jumbled mess as you will automatically lose of all of the noncastled provinces because they're completely undefendable.

[ May 26, 2004, 01:10: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep, which makes the game fluid as provinces are continually won and lost on both sides. Since you've never played anything but your single strategy, you wouldn't have ever seen this dynamic.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'll let you know if this actually happens after the game. I seriously doubt it, but won't be afraid to admit it if I'm wrong.

[ May 26, 2004, 01:16: Message edited by: Zapmeister ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This sounds like an inefficient, wasteful, whack-a-mole. It's very annoying, constantly redoing things you've already done. Better to do things properly and make sure it doesn't happen again, I say. More importantly, sooner or later, you'll annoy somebody into pillaging the province, making it useless. Better to properly lock the place down before you advance. It's like parking your car: You park it, set detonators, lock all the doors, raise the bLast shielding over the windows and tires, and then engage the discharge coils.

The way I play it, one party gains provinces, while the other loses them: We call the former party the "winning side", and the latter party the "losing side". It's nice and orderly.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've played lots of "strategies", although they do involve securing your property before you bother to take more. Conquering something and then not bothering to secure it for yourself is the same as conquering it for somebody else. I've played enough Tradewars to know better.

[ May 26, 2004, 01:51: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

[quote]Originally posted by Norfleet:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Yvelina:

Quote:

[qb]Not that I am complaining, having chosen Marignon. :-)

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Marignon does have a small edge under these conditions: They start with Holy Pyre, an L4 evocation. It's fairly powerful against light to medium troops, and under retarded research conditions, it'll be awhile before other nations match it. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Abysia of course also having a roughly equal edge via the Flare spell. Horrible aim, but it doesn't matter if they hit their own troops, and Flare does significant damage even to heavily armored troops when it does hit. Almost makes it desirable to take a pretender with high fire magic, and good aim. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'll let you know if this actually happens after the game. I seriously doubt it, but won't be afraid to admit it if I'm wrong. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree it'll not happen. Norf do not have a good grip on mathematics. Sure, because of territories changing hands the total perecentage of the castles _may_ increase a little. But the rule of 1/3 will always be in place for every new conquerer. There is no way the whole map will be covered by castles with this rule, it's mathematically impossible under any resonable scenario. My guess that max final percentage of the castle to not-castled provinces in our game will be 40-45% to 55-60%. And this is worst case scenario, I suspect it'll be lower than that.


Anyway, there is not much point of arguing about it now. We will see after the game. As Zap, I'll be first to admit if my predictions will be wrong, but I doubt that I'll have to.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Just an update: so far I've had to turn away Nagot, Niblet, Nunchuck Exponent, Ninny I'm NOT, Natty Natt and Nogblot.

Sorry guys, but NO EXCEPTIONS to the house rules!!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hehe.

BTW how many players are you looking for Zapmeister?

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Up to 17. But at the rate we're going, we could be playing in Aran http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Up to 17. But at the rate we're going, we could be playing in Aran http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh.

If you don't want to wait for 17 people, than with one more player (to make it seven total) we could very well play Karan ("dry" Version), if you, as well as everybody else, would like to. IMHO 7-8 is an ideal players density for Karan in MP.

It's you call of course though, I am not trying to push you.

[ May 26, 2004, 08:02: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Depends how you define "reasonable". Potentially, every province on the map could have a castle on it, but that would probably be virtually impossible without purposely trying to do that. Reasonably I couldn't see it getting much higher than 50%.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

The fact is that Norfleet is right about castles.
They're the lone way to defend a province.

If there's no castle many spells can burn your temple.
Armies can do that too, since PD isn't worthing it's cost above 10 or 15 ... and 10 or 15 means a very weak army composed of the worst of your troops.

[ May 26, 2004, 08:57: Message edited by: Cohen ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Six people have claimed nations here, but only two have submitted passwords to the registrar. So at the moment, we have but two players.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

I think I will have to drop out of this one. I already have 2 games going and my job has is asking too much from me at the moment, so one more game would be too much.

Sorry guys, maybe next time.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'll submit mine when I have designed my pretender. No worries, I won't bail out on you. But could we use another map if we're so few? Urgaia, e.g.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Well I believe we can design out pretender when map is choosen, we've to mail only the password.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Depends how you define "reasonable". Potentially, every province on the map could have a castle on it, but that would probably be virtually impossible without purposely trying to do that. Reasonably I couldn't see it getting much higher than 50%. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's my point.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nobody is talking about prohibiting all castles Cohen. You can (and should) build a strong mutually supporting network of castles, covering up to 1/3 of all your provinces (more in potentially hot spots), together with temples. (and btw who said that you have to build temples in _every_ province?) Than you'll rely on your castles backbone to retaliate against raiders and destroy them. Even loss of single not fully equiped SC is much worse for attacker than loss of 1 turn province income (and possibly temple) for you.

IMHO this would make the gameplay richer and clearly closer to what was intended by devs - instead of covering each and every province by crappy castles, you actually have to choose where to build them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif , based upon your strategical and tactical situation, your intelligence on the enemy, local resourses and your future plans. With copycated castles in every province all these points are mostly irrelivent.


Last but not least - keep in mind that everybody is in the same boat. So it would be equally easy or hard for everybody to defend/attack their territory.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

All right, password was send. I'll design and upload my pretender when it will become clear what map/settings we would be playing.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

double post

[ May 26, 2004, 19:21: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Bump.

I'm curious as to why we're not getting many players. Do people not like the house rules, or the idea of registering with a non-playing registrar?

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I personally don't like the limits on castles, especially since the nations I'd like to play are either blood nations or Ermor, and both have a higher than normal need for castles.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

I want to join as Arcoscephale.

I had trouble creating a MoseHansen account, but I will send my pwd and mosehansen id, as soon as I get it.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

All right, we seem to have 7 players now. What do you say Zapmeister, are we waiting for more or we are good to go?

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

Stormbinder, could you take it over?
I'm afraid I've totally lost interest in Dominions, and won't be playing any more, at least for a while.

Re: MP Game - Zap\'s New game with House Rules
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ouch. Sorry to hear it Zapmeister. ;(

Hopefully it's just a "burnout" stage for you and you'll return later.


All right, I suppose I can try to take over orginization-wise in this game.


With Zap gone we are back to 6 players. I propose we wait for the 7th player and than begin our game on "dry" Karan map, since based upon the current thread we will have to start our game on Christams if we are going to wait for 17 players. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

What do you think folks? Any comments/suggestions are welcome.

[ May 31, 2004, 10:00: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]