An old Newbie ;)
 

Well I have not played Dom II for 6 months (since the Norfleet incident) and was thinking of comming back and trying a few games. Since I have not played in a while was just wondering what are the biggest changes to Dom II (sttategies, SC's, ...etc) Been sifting through the forum to get some ideas before I jump into some multi's. Also any die-hard players still around?

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

I'm still around, but I haven't played in about a month.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Who/What is/was norfleet?
I keep hearing about this and am very confused.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

One of the very best players of Dominions II. It is hard to say how good he
actually was, because, in at least one occasion, he was caught cheating. In his
defense, he cheated in a game where half a dozen players had former a pre-game
alliance against him.

Cheating or not, he had a extremely good grasp of both strategy and tactics, and
was willing to share his knowledge with newbies. Playing against him was quite
the education, and I credit him for much, if not most of my progress. He also
enjoyed heated discussions, and had an exotic Internet Identity... real or artificial.

When he was caught cheating, this community suffered a major blow. I nearly
stopped playing, many people went away from the boards, etc...

I wish he were still around. I may be the only one.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

I'm almost completely certain that his cheating was not limited to just that one game. He always had far, far more resources than anyone else did at any given point. For example, on the world map, with myself playing Arco, and him as Soul Gate Ermor, he was able to cover everything from Africa to Europe to halfway across Asia with Wizard's towers at 50 earth gems each. His research went up faster than Arco with magic 2, three sage sites, and buying 4 mystics a turn. Even the combined hording of both Arco and R'lyeh over a period of 50+ turns wasn't enough to bring down his arcane nexus for more than a single turn. I'd say he was cheating for a good six months or more.

I always found that it was much more productive to play against just about anybody else, as you knew that Norfleet was going to show up with five times the resources that you had, then smash you before you had a chance to learn how to play.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Please, GD, for the sake of the newfound tranquillity of these forums don't rekindle old arguments.

Sigh... it looks like this has already progressed into another Norfleet argument. I thought we beat the subject to death when it happened.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

You are not the only one Tuidjy . I also liked having him around for all the reasons that you listed and he was just plain fun.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Norfleet was not much fun to play against, but the dominions forums and IRC channel are a duller place since he left.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Pirate he is!

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

I played one game against Norfleet. Playing against someone who is cheating is so unfun that I cannot understand why anyone would like to have him back.

Turms

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

What makes you think he is gone? Its not like he was banned or anything. He just said goodbye and stopped using that login

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

EDIT: OOPS, wrong thread... Anyway, Norfleet spiced up the forums, and everyone had an opinion about him. He cheated, by could choose the strategies that benefitted most from it. I think/believe/hope that he would have been able to choose other working strategies if he didn't have possibility to cheat. I would like to have someone with as powerful Internet Identity, as Tuidjy said... even Norfleet himself.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Hehehe - I look forward to the day when one of the frequent posters reveal that he is in fact Norfleet. ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Can't you go look for him Who'sYourDaddy ? didn't he say at one time that he was from the Seattle area ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

I feel that cheating is wrong and bla.bla.bla. but he sure made some great posts. Some where highly informative and spoke of a deep understanding and love for the game. The ones regarding his personal opinions on off-topic stuff were weird/hilarious/scary/etc but never dull.

By the way... I wonder who is more missed: Norfleet or Stormbinder http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

You would figure that any strategy would work if you were cheating. Playing a strategy game with no resource constraints sounds kind of easy.

That being said after the post alleging the hack was made I whipped up a program and it was crazy easy to cheat. I actually don't know if illwinter fixed the holes I'm pretty much taking them on face value that they did. Although given how it worked it would seem to me that to plug it correctly would take far more work than they would be willing to spend on Dom2. This is why I like playing games now where the master password is on and every turn is archived and can be view at the end of the game (it's also fun to look at other people's stratgies ).

Did he? I did not notice but then again with Norfleet it was always a guessing game as to what was real and what was made up. That was at least half of the fun since he did it in such a fun over the top kind of way.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Does the program you are talking about require the fatherland file? If so, it is nothing to write home about: if you have the fatherland file, you can do quite a lot of editing, but you aren't supposed to have access to the file in multiplayer games. If your program works with only your nation .trn and .2h files, it is of course another story altogether.

On the topic of missing people, I must say I miss Arryn too.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Norfleet defenitely had an excellent grasp of dom2 gameplay mechanics. But I guess his desire to win consumed him and led to cheating and for that I shed no tears at his departure.

Getting back to Pirate's original question tho:
As far as I know, not much has changed in terms of gameplay. Some of the patches have changed the values of certain pretenders (the VQ point increase comes to mind). Additionally, Zen has released a series of great Balance Mods (pretenders, spells, scales) which significantly alter pretender choices and research.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

No, the fatherland file is not required to cheat. A lot of the order
verification is done in the client, and the server accepts it on faith.
It is relatively simple to find where in the .2h file the orders are, and hexedit
a simple 'Defend' into 'Build Temple' for example. By the way, wanna be
cheaters, this particular example will trigger the cheat detection.

This is the reason for which I only play games with master password on,
and most of the time keep a copy of my own turns.

As for the 'Guess who Norfleet is' game, I play it myself. No luck so far.
My current guess is 'alexti'... this should be taken as the compliment it is.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Quite correct. There is however some level of detection right now. But I fear until all verification is done by the server that holes will exist.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

I thought about crying out that it's not true, but then I've noticed that I have no proof. Yeah, I was on the forums concurrently with Norfleet for few months, I have played few games vs him, but such a shrewd person as Norflett (or me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) could foresee the circumstances and maintain 2 identities and play games as 2 persons... Come to think, I can't even be sure that Norfleet has not created multiple identities and all the people on this forum are just different Norfleet's identities http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Oh, I cannot name the posts, but that idea has been around before. Yeah, we're all Norfleet and this is just a great trap for you. But you are Norfleet as well! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif (and I am being called paranoid by my friends, great!) No, please, stop it!

By the way, I wish for another command-option for Dom3: witch-hunting!!! I think Dom2 is seriously lacking this glorious piece of mankind's history. It should cause unrest, kill population, reduce blood-hunt-possibilties for a couple of turns and have a slightly increased chance to detect any hiding stealthy female mage commander which has at least one affliction that makes her sticking out of the crowd. Oh, and there should be a good chance that a random friendly commander of any class and gender is burned at the stake as well (sort of the disband-option that everyone is wishing for, but just random)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

*Grumbles* Annoying that. Thanks for the notice! I keep all the files from the games I host, but that may be more important than I had initially thought. Hmm...

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

The worst and dumbest legit player is far better and more welcome within games then any winner who has cheated.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

And obviously a bit mad

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Same thing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

I had no chance to see the good side of Norfleet, because I did not start frequenting these boards until he left. But I played a few games against him, and whatever Petar says, I think that Norfleet presence made them quite pointless.

In one game, three nations - Caelum, Pythium, and Ulm - pooled all of our pearls together, and created an astral vortex. The next turn, Norlfeet dispelled it, just like that. It was a 500+ gem vortex. No one puts 500 gems in the first dispell, not on turn 60 or so. The game pretty much fell apart afterwards. I say kuddos to Stormbinder for setting a trap for Norfleet and catching him. I for one was getting tired of losing games and not understand how that was happening. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

And Stormbinder should be getting thanks, not insults.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

What trap was this?

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Indeed. I cannot forgive a cheater. It is not my nature. And while I enjoyed his posts as much as the next person, I must say PashaDawg more than makes up for the lost entertainment.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Hear, hear. I copped quite a lot of flak for supporting Stormbinder in the forum immediately following his success in this matter. I think Stormy had rubbed quite a few people up the wrong way, making them reluctant to give him his due credit.

But I was not entertained by Norfleet. I found his social and political outlook just too rednecked to be amusing, even if that was his intent. Also, Google revealed that some if not many of his "funny" remarks were plagiarised.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Perhaps you're referring to an ancient thread I started, entitled OT: An Existential Problem. If you take it to the extreme, every cyber-entity with which you have contact could derive from a single sapient source which, for want of a better word, we may call "Norfleet".

Gandalf tried to be helpful by bringing up the idea of using IP logs to differentiate. But that's exactly the kind of thing Norfleet would do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

As I said, games against him were no fun (though the same can be said of storm). But having such wacky personality (fake or not) on the forums/IRC gave them a more interesting flavor.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Admins of gaming worlds, moderators of forums, newsserver admins, etc etc all have experience with "You cant really make anyone go away. They will just get another IP and come back."

Like most "you cant really" arguments, they miss the point of it all. Of course we are all virtual personalities (virtual=almost as good as). Norfleet may have chosen to be a "ninja" personality or he might really be that way. When he decided to stop using Norfleet login (he wasnt IP baned by the way) then the ninja personality was gone.

If he started a new personality with the login DungBeetle and made great effort to post and play as a "paladin" personality then it doesnt really matter. And if DungBeetle slips back into the old Norfleet personae then it will be treated as a Norfleet whether its the same person or not. The effort he has to make to be virtual paladin instead of vitual ninja has handled the virtual problem. Search & Destroy vengeance on new accounts isnt needed and in fact is very counter-productive.

NORFLEET: a descriptive word.. Being a Norfleet,he Norfleeted me, that seems rather like a Norfleetish tactic, its an old left-over Norfleetism.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Hmm... thats the most intelligent thing I have ever heard said on these forums http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

I was playing alot on this FlyOrDie pool site a while ago where the moderators were incredibly ban-happy. All you needed to make a new account, though, was a new email address. So, I indulged in much amusement getting free netscape email accounts and signing up with loads of different identities. But because in one of my identities I insulted the mods a bunch, whenever they became suspicious about any of my new accounts being me, they would ban it, even if I had adopted a different personality. Kind of annoying. I mean, its not like I actually went there to play pool or anything http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

I'd be willing to bet most anything that Norfleet would be incapable of disguising his personality for very long. Whether or not his forum and IRC channel persona was the "real" Norfleet or not (meaning an accurate reflection of his real life persona) is nearly irrelevant. His behavior, while it might be described in any number of ways (which I'm not about to get into), was too consistent for too long for him to disguise it easily.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Bah. I am gone for 6 months, and still the wild speculations about my whereabouts persist. I hide nothing. I don't even have Dominions II installed. I am quite and thoroughly finished with this game, having struck the game from the hard drive 5 months ago. I have no desire to play it, I am not hiding anywhere, and I am quite satisfied with my commitments elsewhere. In fact, I'm only on this board system at all for other non-Dominions II games. MAYBE I'll be around for Dominions III. Maybe. This is doubtful.

I will make the following statements before I leave.
1. I continue to deny having deliberately cheated. I have made and used no programs for hacking Dominions II at any point in time. I concede, however, that the bulk of evidence is against this, and certainly cannot produce proof to the contrary, nor do I have any interest in wasting my time further with this matter. I am finished with Dominions II for the forseeable future.
2. I deny plagiarizing any of my viewpoints. It is entirely true that the proverbs I use to express those viewpoints are, in fact, often the creations of others. Mostly, I hear them from other people and agree with them. It's really that simple.

And last but not least, if you really want to know who my alternate identity on the board is, the answer is that I am Gandalf. Isn't it shocking? I've been giving you all these hints all this time, and yet you still don't get it. Well, there it is. I'm Gandalf. No more speculations.

I'm outta here.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Heehee. Not all that far fetched. If I did have another login it would come off of a completely different IP than this one (I have half a dozen which have nothing in common on a traceroute). And it would exist because I needed to be someone very different than "Gandalf Parker". My personae is one I cherish so if I wanted to play like Norfleet I would have wanted to do it from another name.

Actually one of the few needs Ive felt is not for this forum but there are some where "Gandalf Parker" cannot seem to ask newbie questions or even make suggestions without getting instantly razzed so... Hmmm I wont comment further on that.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Now THAT makes me paranoid... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

*In the best Shodan impersonation* Do not fret Endoperez, we are here to protect you. Now, if you would be so kind as to proceed to the First Level Conditioning Lecture? Trust us.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Which is bull****, but that's to be expected coming from you.

Of course. :roll: You just magically had 4000 gems worth of equipment by turn 20.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

As amusing as it was to have this thread somehow magically summon norfleet back from the ether realms for his parthian shot...

I do want to point out that it is quite odd how people really can't seem to let go of the subject. You do realize that Norfleet had basically nothing to do with this original thread post, don't you? PirateIAm is probably scratching his head in astonishment at the responses.

I for one am happy to just forget Norfleet and all his crimes, moving on with our own games and lives.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

The fact that he posted here proves that he regularly watches/posts on these boards.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Arryn might still watch this forum too: At least Arryn's webpage is up to date - my mapfile appeared there quite quickly and it was only announced here...
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Ummmmmm yes I am scratching my head. This was not the purpose of this thread at all.

Are there any Mods that are recommended and which are being played on multi? The last favorite map was Karan when I played. What is the popular one now? Any other server hosting other than modehansen?........tries to get thread back on topic.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

Yes pirate, there are. I posted this a bit further up in the thread but it got overwhelmed by the Norfleet frothing....

So, there you go. Zen's mods are the most popular that I have seen. Dunno about maps. Strangely I seem to end up on Aran a lot just cause I play games with fewer people and it just works out spacewise. I think there were a couple of big games on the Faerun map.

I think mosehausen closed up shop a bit ago? Could be mistaken about that. I belive that Reverend Zombie hosts a handful of games. Also, I'm an admin on Sheap's server and willing to host games there for anyone who wants them.

Re: An old Newbie ;)
 

No, mosehansen is still there, but Mose mostly isn't. The server is still at v2.14, though.