I dunno, guys...
 

but that Dominions II forum is really beginning to grow. By scanning the Posts, it sure looks like that might be a game I would like. I think I hear it calling me. I see a lot of SE4 players posting there. Would you SE4 folks mind to post your thoughts on Dom II? I'm downloading the demo now. I'd also like to know how much better/different the full game is over the demo.

Slick.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Yippee! We got more defectors!

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Traitor! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Don't worry, they will be back once SE5 comes out...

The game has some really poor design decisions that make it not much fun to me... stuff like missile combat being poorly implemented (you mean my archers can't figure out how to aim at that single giant, and instead will pelt the ground for 100s of yards around him with arrows for no good reason?), a good chance of your units breaking morale and running away when they are handily winning the battle, the lack of empire-wide management, the lack of meaningful infrastructure development, etc. Not to the mention the lack of customization options during gameplay... The game just doesn't seem very polished... Sure, it has a ton of spells and items and whatnot, but the gameplay is lacking... It is certainly not as bad as Dominions I was though... Maybe Dominions III will be a good game.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Hurray for Slick!

I believe there are two main differences between SE and Dominions:
- Dominions offers much more varied options than vanilla SE, since you will never have an easy access to all the interesting spells/items, and you cannot reach an optimal Pretender able to do everything either (so no such thing as the Clone).
- Where SE focuses on economics, via colonisation, building facilities and improving your economy, Dominions revolves around fighting. Early in the game, you will be facing independents, and later on your fellow players, and conquering provinces is mandatory to have an economical growth of any sort. Consequently, Dominions has far fewer buildings available, and they do not directly improve your economy.

That's a very short summary, as you were probably not asking for a lecture on the differences between Dominions and SE.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Try checking this thread out:

Compaired to SEIV

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I think they have more in common than first appearance. Anyone who likes the fact that it took them years to explore their own strategies for (either game) would do themselves a favor to at least take a look at the demo for (the other game)

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I bought Dominions II, but not Dominions I. It never grew on me, probably for most of the reasons Fyron mentions above. It's not a bad game, it just never worked for me.

Edit - SE IV is much better IMO.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Indeed not!


Easy, big guys. I'm not defecting. There is no way I'll stop playing SE4. There is no harm in playing other games as well from time to time. It's just that I noticed one day when I clicked on "Who's Online" that there were a lot of people in the Dom II forum. Since then I check periodically and now the Dom II crowd seems to be growing quick. Could be a flash in the pan, could be a game worth getting. Thanks for the input. I'll check out the demo.

Slick. (here to stay)

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

First impression from the demo: I guess I need to spend some time on the learning curve, but so far, there isn't much action. Maybe I'll put in some time later. For now, I got some planets to invade.

Slick.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I've been playing Dominions I and II for over a year (bought both), and am still loving them. Of course, it hasn't prevented me from continuing to play (and mod) SE4.

They are similar and different, and Fryon demonstrates that not every SE4 fan will love Dominions. Personally, I find it easier to say mean things about SE4 than D2, but I think both are great.

My one main gripe with D2 was the one Fryon mentioned first. They seem to have implemented pretty close to my suggestion for how to fix that issue, in a patch I assume Fryon hasn't tried. Friendly fire and wild missile dispersion is now much more under control than it was.

I like the morale system, and think it works well except for the case where someone tries to use only super-fighters with weak troops that get wiped out.

I also quite like the "infrastructure" system and find it interesting.

Fryon's "lack of customization" comment is only true if you expect the same kind of customization as in SE4. Personally, I find the "customization" in Dominions II quite rich and interesting. Certainly the characters in D2 can become at least as unique and interesting and storied as the ships in SE4.

Saying D2 isn't a good game is just Fryon's typical trademarked "egocentric truth" mode of expression. Of course everyone can dislike certain elements of a game, or the whole thing, but to say it's not a good game is trolling. Heaps of us have been enjoying the heck out of it. For every game, some people love it and some hate it. Both of these games have been loved by many. Give the demo a shot and see if you like it or not.

PvK

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

That is good to hear. Of course, never having purchased the game, I am not privvy to patches...

All I am saying is that the extremes need smoothing out... too often my troops would begin to flee and run to different territories after having routed the enemy... When you have won or are about to win, half of your troops should never begin to flee.

I was refering to the lack of ability to choose what your troops have... Who is to say that I can't train troops with slightly less than optimal equipment to save time and money? Why does every soldier have to have the exactly specified equipment? Why can't I give a particular soldier better equipment if I can afford it? Sure, I can train overall inferior or superior troops, but the grades come in big chunks (in terms of abilities), without any option to go into the middle ground...

Slick asked for the opinions of others on the game, I posted mine. Due to the nature of this medium of communication, it should be assumed that pretty much anything posted is an opinion. Thus, it is pointless and a waste of time to type "in my opinion" in every sentence... There is no "egocentric truth" present. There is no assumption that because something is true for me, it is true for others... There is merely the expression of my opinion of the game. Are you saying that a positive assessment is not an "egocentric truth," but a negative one is?

Saying that it is not a good game for various valid reasons is not trolling in any way. Trolling would be posting something like, "Dominions 2 sucks." And that is it. "It is not a good game" is the same statement as "I do not like it." Why else would you not like a game than you believe it is not a good game? Other people enjoy the game and would say that it is a good game. This does not mean I have to lie and say it is a good game when I certainly do not think that it is. It would be entirely pointless to have a discussion forum if nobody ever posted a contrary opinion... Posting a negative assessment is not trolling by any measure of the word.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif It amazes me how you could have such a negative opinion of a game that you never purchased - and that you didn't mention that in your response. That fact certainly is important to me. My fault, I guess I didn't ask for opinions from people who owned the game. But thanks for the opinion anyway. From what I have played so far, the jury is still out. Looks to me like there is a lot of the game I have yet to experience. I'll give the demo a fair shot, even if that means a steep learning curve.

Slick.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Well I would only have purchased it if I had a positive impression from the demo... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif While not having the full game precludes one from experiencing everything, the demo is good enough to get a grasp on the fundamentals of the game.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Hmm? I never played the demo so I don't know how it is different. But in the game, for Ulm for example, you get to choose whether to build infantry with chainmail (lighter, less resource intensive) or plate (heavier, more resource intensive), and you get to choose whether they carry mauls, morningstars, flails etc.

If anything, the problem with national troops is not that you can't choose how to outfit them, it's that it doesn't matter how you outfit them except in the very early game, because after that they will all get owned by magic and summons and supercombatants no matter what gear they have.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I'm pretty sure Fyron was looking for a finer level of control than that, perhaps training in boot camp for 4 months instead of 6, say.

But if the details get stomped out by the big beasties, I suppose it dosen't really matter in most games.

If you were trying for a more conventional tech mod/map, with little to no magic available, I imagine the fine training detail would be useful though.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Imperator Fyron said:
...You may stick to that opinion, and I would agree it could be a good heuristic to include in a morale system. I wouldn't object to such a change, but personally, I don't find myself wishing for such a change. It seems to me that the player gets a much more omniscient view than soldiers on a battlefield would have. There are plenty of actual examples of real battles where some elements have retreated at the wrong moment. Part of what I appreciate in a morale system is the contribution of unpredictable and sometimes illogical effects. Even if unpredictable and with many causes, I find the system works quite well for my tastes in most situations.

Well, the designers decided to say that, and I at least don't mind playing within some limits to my choices, especially since the provided choices were carefully chosen and tend to leave many choices, and interesting limitations. If everyone could tweak their weapons without limits, some of the interesting differences between nations would be lost. Which is not to say I wouldn't enjoy a little more freedom to tweak things. I would, and I do enjoy using the many choices there are. Some nations have more than others - I like playing with all of Ulm's various equipment combos, for instance, which are rather subtle.

However, to answer the question "who's to say..." well, the designers did decide to limit the choices, and I think the limits are interesting, and reasonable, and I think they add flavor. If you are a wizard (or whatever) studying the greatest magic secrets, and making a gambit for godhood, you may not have the time, interest, inclination, nor the folly (...), to spend your time trying to insist that the warrior culture you have selected suddenly change its doctrine to suit your petty fancies about the ultimate equipment to use. It's not likely to be efficient to try to rule the world from Shogunate Japan, by starting out trying to convince the samurai they should forget swords and use hatchets, or even bokken, even if Miyamoto Musashi would approve! Or if you are that kind of god, then you choose the nation to rule to match your tastes, perhaps one that has a mix of the various equipment types you like. There are tons to choose from, and after over a year of play, I haven't even tried all of them yet.

However, if you really want to tweak your equipment, and aren't satisfied with any of the dozens of nations and themes available, you can make or modify one using the mod commands. In single player or with a GM, you could even do it during play. You could add equipment variations to your heart's content.

No, I just felt you were overstating, and making assertions that could just as easily be expressed as opinions, to a degree that it seemed to me probably exceeded your actual knowledge of the other players' thorough enjoyment of the game.

What? Not at all, and that's exactly the distinction I was making. You need to add "for my tastes" or "to/for me" to the end of the first one, or else you are suggesting that it's not a good game for others in general.

I don't understand how you could seriously suggest that.

There are NO games that everyone likes, but that doesn't mean there are no good games. However there are some games that are so broadly disliked, that it may make sense to call them bad games in general.

For instance, you don't see me objecting when you say MOO3 is a bad game. However, even though I don't like GalCiv or Civ3 myself, because they aren't my kinds of games, I do think there are many players who have enjoyed them a lot, so I wouldn't call them bad games outright (or at least, I'd want to know more about them before I said so, except I don't 'cause I know enough to know I wouldn't like them).

However, taking a game that many players like very strongly and just calling it a bad game, and making statements like ""It is not a good game" is the same statement as "I do not like it"" seems to me like just causing needless confusion and annoyance and mostly wasting people's time. Writing your opinion more clearly could avoid that. Either you can really use this information, or you're just being difficult.

Egad. I never said you should lie or that you had to call it a good game. Just seems to me that the way you overstated your opinion was overstated in a way which would tend to mislead people who weren't familiar with what seems to be your style. You seem to think everyone should know that when you write "It is not a good game" you mean what others mean when they say "I do not like it." I guess I should make something like that a macro, instead of writing "Fryon's typical trademarked "egocentric truth" mode of expression"? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

PvK

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

The players who say things like that tend to be exaggerating, or playing certain styles of games. As in SE4, if you play low-magic sites and/or slow research rate, or if you play smaller maps or use an early conflict strategy, the mortal troops can be very important. Conversely, if you play with big maps, lots of magic sites, fast research, and/or wait till you have all the most powerful magic before starting to fight seriously, etc., then the magic can dominate and make mortal units seem fairly unimportant.

Many of the D2 forum posters though tend to get fixated and opinionated and will post massively overstated and often contradictory opinions about something being super-great or super-lame or broken or the best thing or whatever, because something worked well or badly in a specific instance. Generally, they just don't have enough experience and are used to simpler games that are much easier to analyze.

PvK

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Ouch. It's one thing to claim that something is super-great in the sense that it's a guaranteed game winner. No one seriously claims that. On the other hand, as Zen's pretender and spell balance mods have indicated, there are clearly things (pretender chassis, SC chassis, battlefield spells) that are super-great in the sense that they render competing options of roughly equal resource costs / difficulty of obtaining invalid because choosing the super-great thing is such a no-brainer, in the same way that in stock SEIV choosing the beserker trait is a no-brainer (and that you've tried to address in your own balance mod).

I'm ok with your statement that the usefulness / uselessness of national troops depends heavily on game settings, but it would be nice if the army buffer spells were easier and less expensive to cast and resistance wards could stack properly.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I bought the game. It is a fun demo, but the game itself lacks a lot of the control that we enjoy in SEIV. I do hope the developers for Dominions take note of this lack of control and build in some master que and other unit managment and construction tools. Then again there are those who will argue that the game is better playd on the micro-managment level.

For me, having to tell each and every province what to do each and every turn was way to much. A master build que, or unit managment tools would have been god sends.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

i DL the demo. while i think its a good game for people like us that dont seem to give a rats *** about graphics......at this time i dont feel its worth the price ive seen it going for. when i drops down to 20 bucks ill pick it due to the replay value. either way if it cost the same as SE id be playing SE over D2 any day. but like i said when price drops and im out of eye candy games (FPS) ill pick it up and enjoy my time consuming non eye candy game.
Emperor Fritsch the Underpayed

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Now you guys have got me curious, and I'm downloading the demo for Dom2. Unfortunately, it's going to take about 6 hours to download on my crappy dialup internet! Ah well, more time to play SEIV in the meantime! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I definately believe that its a game for SOME people. Thats why I dont recommend the game, I strongly recommend the demo. IF you can get past the learning curve, and be intrigued by the strange way of balancing the game, then buy it and I can pretty much gaurantee that it will live for years on your harddrive. Well worth the price.

As for comparisons to the demo, much of what is said might come in perspective if you were to compare it with the SEIV demo. No patches, no mods, nothing other than the starting races and files. ick

The developers are grat about using player suggestions. And they have butted up against many that were good ideas but just couldnt be put in. But they have already announced Dom3. Until then Id love to see some of the creativity here be aimed toward Dom2.

The balance thing is interesting and sparks alot of fire. people saying its broke but cant agree on what is broke if they havent really tackled learning the whole game. Instead of a unit-to-unit balance like chess, or a rock-paper-scissors balance on unit level like many deep strategy games, they do a rock-paper-scissors balance at nation level with very deep strategy layers. VERY difficult to balance but I love what it does to a game. When I play any nation I know that certain nations I come up against I will have a big advantage, and others I will need to get very defensive or change tactics for.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I remember when I first played Dom2 for the very first time (SP of course) in December Last year. I picked Tien Chi (cos it's China and I'm Chinese), picked a sage as a pretender (cos it would be sort of thematic).

On the very first turn, I recruited a Prince General, and spent the next few turns recruiting a sizable army of archers and footmen, going for the fairly starndard pike-and-bow setup, and equipping my Prince General with a good assortment of early equipment. I didn't attack my first independent province until well past turn 10, and when I did, because of the big size of my army, I won handily and felt quite pleased with myself.

Over the next several turns, I conquered more independent provinces easily and spent a lot of gold building up provincial defense (PD). My empire consisted of like four or five provinces and PD built up to at least level 20 in each and I was quite happy.

Then I met AI Marignon after turn 20 or so, and I was shocked that he had about a dozen provinces. He came after me with multiple armies that tore through my PD like they were tissue paper, and attacked my capital with his own Pretender, a fire 9 Phoenix, and his fire darts dropped my own footmen and archers like flies while my puny human sage cowered in fear. His crossbowmen took down my footmen in droves while my archers seemed to be able to barely scratch his swordsmen and Marignon took my capital at about turn 25 or so.

After that, I was thinking that this game sucked and didn't touch it for another four or five months. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

That reminds me of my own first Dominions 2 game (I went with a Great Sage, standard T'ien Ch'i, but actually expanded like mad with archers alone. Can you guess I love Man?). I had to leave this game though, as I couldn't connect to the server via TCP/IP any more, but the end result wouldn't have been pretty.

Out of idle curiosity PvK:
Do you believe any GM could be lured in organising one such game for Dominions? Or yourself? *Hint hint*

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I've been trying the demo lately.

Took me a while to get the first game started, and I promptly got myself killed against the first independent province.

Then I got wounded to uselessness on the next attempt.

Still slogging up the learning curve for the interface, I started to toss other people into battle instead of me...
Worked a little, but the easy AIs started swarming over the hill before I got more than a handful of provinces.

Finally, one on one I got my army marching... The territory I had was useless for production, and in short order, I had 1000's of gold that I couldn't spend as fast as it came in. Hiring mercenaries for more than they asked for, and then throwing them across the map was the name of the game.

Having sent myself and my little smithy guys around searching for treasure while my three armies (two mercs) went stomping to the west for fun and profit, I was making piles of gems and even more money that I couldn't spend.

When I encountered the enemy, I stomped through his empty territories and ganged up on big red X's which I'd recently figured out meant enemy concentrations.
I tried out the defenses, and tossed up 30-35 on four or five provinces near the front lines.
Once I saw what it did, I boosted that to 50-60. (did I mention that I couldn't spend the money I was making as fast as it came in?)

I basically stormed the enemy with conventional forces and was just now managing to gather enough cavalry to form an attack force.

I managed to forge a few trivial magic items, but they never got to see combat use, before I broke through and closed the noose around the enemy home province.

Even without magic, the battles were decent.

-----

Some comments/questions:
This game could use a tutorial, to lead you through a couple turns and a battle on a tiny map, say.

How does production work? Is there anywhere can I see the progress being made on the multi-turn buildtime units?

Is it possible to move units without a leader between friendly provinces? If not, why do these military warriors need a priest or other guy to hold their hands?

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

If you have too much gold and too little resources for production, then you haven't spent enough gold building fortresses. Provinces don't get access to their full resource allocation unless there is a fortress in it. Plains, farmlands have the least resources but are the best for gold. Mountains have the most resources. Fortresses also suck resources from neigboring provinces, so a fortress in a mountain province surrounded by other mountain provinces has mega-resources.

I guess that you were playing Ulm which has decent xbowmen for Provincial Defense. However, in MP game, massed missile fire can be dealt with relatively easily and any flying enemies will carve up missile troops. Ulm is generally considered the weakest of the nations.

And no, all units need a leader type to lead them and can't move by themselves. They will rout if they are left on the battlefield without a leader. That's just the way the game works I guess.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I haven't made it over the "hump" yet. By that I mean I haven't been able to put together a coherent empire before I got frustrated with things and restarted. Total time spent on the learning curve so far is about 4 hrs. The jury is still out, but so far I'm a little less than impressed enough to buy the full game. I think it will take a little more playing time before I have a clue what is really going on. Thanks Deccan for that info. I have gone thru the "walkthru" and read some of the write-ups but still have yet to put it all together.

Some of my complete unknowns (who, what, when, where, how, why):
- placement of troops for battle,
- "scripting" - I'm guessing this is a term referring to what you want your little warriors to do in battle vis-a-vis SE4 strategies
- what to apply my research to. I'm thinking this is a combination of discovering what my empire is good at, reading the spell lists and applying the research to get the best spells for my empire. I have done neither of these yet.
- and probably about a year's worth of other things that I don't even know about yet.

I guess I should start posting in the D2 forum, but I trust you guys here a little more for now. BTW, who are the gurus in the D2 forum? I'm thinking I could search for Posts by them.

I started lurking here almost a year before I registered in April '02 and I noticed that SJ was most knowledgeable and helpful to newbies so I searched for and read hundreds of his Posts. I never thanked you for that, SJ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image.../beerglass.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image.../beerglass.gif, but you really turned me on to SE4 unknowingly by answering other people's questions. Those where the same questions I had, of course.

Slick.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Same here. I have a slow dialup connection also. I'm getting a transfer rate of 2.6 KB/sec and it will take 6.5 hours or so to download. For some reason, whenever I download something, the rate is faster at first, like 4 KB/sec and it gradually gets slower and slower. 60 MB demo file... I think I'll just leave it downloading overnight and it should be done by morning.

Speaking of demos, I remember the original SE4 demo, Version 0.51. It was so exciting to get that demo after many months of waiting! When was that, like 4 years ago? The A.I.'s didn't know how to put ships into fleets and they always attacked one ship at a time...

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I guess the biggest Dom2 guru would be Zen but he isn't always around. But nothing beats having the developers themselves answer your questions on the Dom2 forums, which they often do (though sometimes they forget what they put into the code http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

Some of your questions:

- Placements of troops.

Whatever makes common sense I suppose. If you have missile troops and your enemy does not, you want to put them way back and slightly to one side (to avoid them firing over the heads of your own troops) and have your melee tanks (heavy infantry types) on hold and attack orders to maximize the number of shots your own troops get off before engagement. If your enemy has missile troops and you do not, you want your troops as front as possible to engage their archers quickly and so forth.

Placement of mages depends heavily on what spells you want them to cast and the ranges of those spells.

- Scripting

This is sort of like SEIV strategies for normal troops. But it is most important for mages because you can control the first 5 spells that they cast using this. After that, the combat AI chooses for you.

- Research

Like you said, it all depends on what your overall strategy will be and what nation you're playing. When I first started playing Dom2, I thought that combat spells did very little compared to troops. I mean, give me a troop of longbows over a couple of mages casting fire flies any day, and the troop of longbowmen will be a lot less expensive.

But later in the game, you'll see spells like "Blade Wind" (chews through massed concentrations of low armored troops, like most missile troops, shockingly fast), "Wrathful Skies" (destroys any conventional army just like that, really) etc.


I think that when you get into Dom2, one mindset that you need to get rid of is to think about creating an empire in the way that you create an empire in SEIV. Really, Dom2 is all about pure offense so provinces change hands all the time. The only really essential province is your capital because that is where your capital-only mages can be recruited. There are no safe backwater provinces in Dom2, so don't get upset when you lose a bunch of provinces in a single turn. You just take them back.

Forget too about shepherding your people to a safe and prosperous future. By the time the game ends, the world will likely be a bLasted, depopulated landscape filled with all manner of undead, monsters and other weird things.

Also, luck and chance plays a bigger role in Dom2 than in SEIV. If you're not comfortable with that, then Dom2 isn't your game. Random placement of magic sites, which nation you start next to, random events, what independent mages you find to recruit etc. has a huge impact on the game. In one MP game, my lab burned down on turn 4 which set me back a whole lot due to the cost of rebuilding. In one current MP game as Ermor (who has no money), my temple burned down twice!! within the first ten turns. It was incredibly demoralizing.

The graphics in Dom2 may be crappy, but the battle replays, when you have lots of high-end summons, and all sorts of battle magic, and super combatants carrying powerful artifacts, can be incredibly entertaining to watch. Pulling off cool spell combos with the right kinds of troops is really very satisfying.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Here are some screenshots from the Dom2 forums to whet your appetites a bit. Hope you don't mind.

Here are a couple of pictures from one current MP game I'm playing as Machaka. This is Mictlan's army invading my capital, composed of unique blood summons, Ice Devils and Arch Devils leading devils, imps and frost fiends into combat.

[image]http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/310946-lament001.JPG[/image]

Here is my defending army, led by mages, Bane Lords, Firbolgs, composed mostly of mechanical men, with some Fall Bears, wights, hunter spiders etc.

[image]http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/download.php?Number=310949[/image]

Here is a picture in which the Fire Storm battle spell gets used. This was my first MP game, but I got killed very early. This battle was between two other players.

[image]http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/304522-FireStorm.jpg[/image]

Edit: Heh? Image tags don't work in this forum?

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

They normally do. However, they may have been disabled due to the massive size of the images... It is generally bad to place such large images in a post, due to the way they will screw up page formatting and whatnot. Best to upload smaller images to display in the thread, and make them links to the large images...

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

No, the tag is img, not image http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Hmm... the Instant UBB Code feature inserts this:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>[image]URL[/image] </pre><hr />
Which is highly confusing...

Either way, the point about the size of the images stands.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

[plug]Yes, if you want to do that, play the Fantasy Empires Mod for SE4 Gold! [/plug]

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Try changing image to URL
Id much rather click on the URL for an image than have to see it each time I view a thread

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I expect someone might GM a game allowing players to fiddle with equipment during play. Nagot Gick Fel is GM'ing another experimental game I'm playing in at the moment (a "Killer/Paranoia" type game), and of course Gandalf has infinite free time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I wouldn't have time for anything except perhaps creating mods where players could alter their units, without adding new graphics, say before play rather than during play. My computers are all behind NAT firewalls so I'd have to do PBEM rather than TCP/IP I think, anyway.

But even that could be cool. I could make up some guidelines for players to request changes to national units within certain limits, and then everyone could play the game with a customized nation.

Hmm... that does sound like fun... hmmm... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

PvK

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Setting the guidelines seem the hardest part to me (besides having the time to do it); I know I would be hard put to draw the line between "sure, go ahead" and "would you like a free casting of the Wish spell every turn on top of that?".

I am quite fond of PBEM myself, both as a player and as a host. Having your turns delivered in your mail is so convenient for the lazy player (myself included), and PBEM allows for a more flexible schedule, while being much easier to set up. If only my mail server bounced when it fails to deliver a message to my address.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Yeah, there would probably be some players who would say they just wanted an extra Infantry of Ulm who carried a hand axe and shield, while others would want Mictlan to have Pythian Principes. Which brings us back to the answer why it is nice that there are thematic limits on choices, so it's not just a munchkinfest of everyone wanting and getting the best of everything.

So the GM and his system should come up with balances, which is of course tricky.

PvK

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

I see me mentioned but I lost the thread of the conversation. Is this the "mod on the fly" idea? A web form for selecting all of the game variants then writing the game files?

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

It would be the "change your own nation" mod, either before game creation, or even during the course of the game. A silly example: you could have a military revolution, leading to a more elitist military, or the opposite, where your whole military collapses.

For changes at game start, it would be either customisation, or something looking somewhat like a new theme, or a variation on an existing theme.

Re: I dunno, guys...
 

Ya, either a point system, or a bunch of GM judgement would be needed, but the idea would be you could ask for at the beginning, or develop during play, some tweaks to your units, such as adding Black Templar recruitable leaders, and/or some of the Black Forest infantry unit types to Ulm, or whatever.

PvK