family vs family, the rematch
 

We just finished a two-vs-two game:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...&fpart=all

It was fun! I think we need a smaller map next time, but the basic concept of two-vs-two is great because:

1. It's a hot war the whole way, not a race. We didn't experience 50 or 100 turns of hoarding, racing for research, and conquering independents, but instead 15 turns of conquering independents followed by 35 turns of brutal combat. Whee!

2. It gave me an opportunity to chat with my partner a lot while planning our strategies, trading gold, gems, items, and intelligence. This made it more of a social occasion instead of a lonely hobby.


So, my partner and I are interested in another two-vs-two game. Please privately find a partner and agree to team up before you post to this thread.

I won't necessarily agree to play against whoever posts first or anything -- maybe I'll change my mind or something.

Does anybody know of a wrap-around map with only about 100 provinces? Or some other kind of map where there is a high chance that all enemies can reach each other?

Regards,

Zooko

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Hey Zooko. I would be interested in playing against you with my son as partner. It could be a family affair: Father and son vs two brothers! I have not talked to him, but I think he would be highly interested. The problem is that we are using the same CD key and would require a third party host (like Alneyan perhaps) to get around this problem. Or I could order another copy of Dom, but I was waiting for Dom 3.

As for the map, there are some smaller maps that are not wraparound. Using a third party as host, this is not a problem as the teams could be pre-placed on the map. This would work well, I believe.

I like the Zen mods too.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I could handle the hosting, so long as you do not mind PBEM and do not expect to be able to play several turns a day (I can usually run a turn in late morning or early afternoon GMT, some days in the afternoon, and in the evenings everyday).

Creating a specific map does not really require to have a third party host though: if you want the capitals to be known to all players, it only requires a public .map file made for this game. If you would prefer to keep the location of the capitals a secret, you would need someone to set up the game for you (and you would not get to see the .map file).

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I don't understand the problem about the CD key, or how third-party hosting helps.

I prefer TCP connection and the option of doing several turns a day.

Last time I hosted it on my server, which worked nicely. Even though I guess the CD key on my server is the same as the CD key on my laptop (which I used to play my turns).

It would be nice to have someone place the capitols for us without telling us.

Thanks for the offer of hosting and capitol-placing, Alneyan.

There is a map called Chandrea a.k.a. Dunken Donut that seems okay. It is 102 provinces, wrap-around, 17 water provinces. It seems like water movement is very important strategically, so perhaps we should agree at the start whether water-nations and water-movement themes should be allowed or not.

What do you think of that map?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

The problem of the key is that Panther and Tauren are currently using the same key, but are no longer playing on the same computer (they used to, but I believe this is no longer the case). Having a PBEM hosting would allow the host to validate one of their turns with my own key; otherwise, one of them will not be able to play.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Bleah.

What if one of them ran the host on the same computer as they played from? Would that avoid the problem?

But anyway, I'm willing to try PBEM. It would be cool if the server that sent the .trn files out could send my .trn file to both my brother and me and send his .trn file to both him and me.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

One of the early patches prevented two players from using the same CD key on two different computers, which was a HUGE pain to me. Since my son and I do not live together, we cannot make our respective moves from the same computer, no matter who hosts. A third party like Alneyan can use his own CD key to validate one of our moves, thus allowing it to work.

Also, I cannot commit to making more than one turn a day, for I have a job and many other things going on in my life. The advantage of the email system is that the moves host at the same time each day, so you don't have to constantly be checking if a turn is up or not. Also, it is far easier to recover from problems using email and games thus die much less often.

Interesting idea about the turn files. Looking at your partners position would surely make the coordination far mor robust. I can't see any reason why not to do that in a 2v2 game.

I have not looked at the map you suggested. Where can it be downloaded?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Okay, I'm convinced. If Alneyan will host for us that would be very nice.

The map named Chandrea is available from this site:

http://www.dominions-2.org/index.htm

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

A PBEM game is indeed very unlikely to crash: even a major game bug can be recovered by rolling back one turn (or a few turns if it is really major), and I haven't heard of any such bug. I also have the fatherland files and the turn files backed on one mail, so a computer crash would not be enough to crash one of my PBEM games (and even if I were to disappear, Gandalf Parker could give you access to my mail, allowing the game to still go on).

Turn files can be sent to both players; that was my plan (and what I do in the Entwined Destiny game, where six teams of two players fight it out), and it is actually less work for me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (Though separate mails only take a few more seconds per turn) You could also not set up any password, making it easier to browse the files of your team.

The map is available on Arryn's site I think: www.dominions-2.org

I should learn to type faster. Either that, or I should be less verbose. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

What sort of manual placement would you like? The two teams starting near each other, several provinces away from the other side? The four capitals making a sort of square? (X provinces between all four capitals)

I can also keep the .map file a secret, so you wouldn't know where the enemy capitals are located, though you could expect them to be at the other end of the map. But with a warparound map, they could come from any direction, so you would still have to watch out for the other team.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Hm. A wrap-around map is a torus. I.e., a donut. I'm picturing a donut in my head and trying to think of a fair way to place two teams of two. One way is to put them all in a row, i.e. all four capitols lie in a single line which is either horizontal or vertical. The order wouldn't matter as long as all four were in the same line.

The other would be, as you say, a square with a capitol at each corner. Again, which capitol was at which corner wouldn't make any difference.

Is that right?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

P.S. In both of these cases, the order doesn't matter but the spacing does! The line is fair as long as every capitol is equidistant from its two neighbors. The square is fair as long as the distance from each capitol to each of its two neighbors is equal to half of the length of the world.

Unless I'm confused.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Now that I have checked Chandrea, it appears that doing a balanced manual placement would be nigh impossible: there is one main island and a few isles, so everyone would probably have to start on the main island. Do you have any idea about how to put the players with this sort of map?

The square is probably the best (a line could be a problem, as you could only reach two capitals, and not the three of them), though I do not see how to make it work on Chandrea (it works well on a map like Inland though, but Inland has 150 provinces). Perhaps I could remove some of the provinces of Inland... Hmm.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

If it were in a line and partners were not adjacent to one another, then each person would be adjacent to his enemies and not to his partner, which would be fine.

If partners *were* adjacent to each other, then each person would be adjacent to his partner and to one of his enemies. That would be interesting, too.

Maybe some of us will play water nations? :-)

--Z

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Looks like a cool map.

So, I was thinking that for choosing nations, we could have one team randomly get the first pick, and then the next team picks both of theirs, and then finally the first team picks again. I think that would be quite fair no matter who gets the first pick.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Hmm, a row might work out on that map, but I think everyone would have to start on the main island for it to work, so you would start very close to the other team. Then again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If nation waters are used (one per team I gather?), it may be easier to set up manual placement: the land player on the mainland, the water player in the sea, and half the land/sea away from the other team.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

The_Tauren13 -- your idea for fair nation choosing is to avoid conflicts when both teams want the same nation, right?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Yeah, thats the idea, as you cant have 2 players playing the same nation in 1 game.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Okay, I guess that protocol will work for me. The map suggests 40% magic sites, and a house rule banning the building of fortresses on bridges. I don't really like house rules in general, but I don't know if there's some really good reason for that one. What do you think?

So I propose:

Ind Str 9
Magic Sites 40
Hall of Fame size 15

And let's use all the latest Zen Conceptual Balance mods!

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Nah that seems like a cheesy house rule. I guess I can see why, but I dont think it would be a problem. I thought that the whole point bridges were separate provinces was so you could hold the choke points easier.

15 HoF for only 4 players? Seems a bit large. Im not a big fan of SCs and so, as a result, Im not a big fan of the 15 HoF everyone uses. But if you want it that way im ok; its not like it makes that big of a difference. All of Zen's mods? The spells, scales, artifacts, and pretenders? Sounds awesome!

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I wasn't even thinking of SCs! I just like having lots of heroes. :-)

But I'm perfectly happy to have any other setting for HoF. Currently I propose:

* all known Zen's balance mods
* Ind Str 9

everything else default

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Sounds cool, I havent gotten to try out zens spell mod yet, but Ive been wanting to. Indy strength 9 works for me.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Okay, who goes first on nation choice? I volunteer to go first on nation choice!

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

If you want the order to be random, Panther and Tauren go first (I just did an odd/even cast).

*Editing to get the Typo Fairy out of this post*

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Okay! Go ahead and announce one of your nations, then. :-)

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Jotunheim

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

So.. now you pick both of yours

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Which Zen's balance mods are we using, again? I just looked at his site:

http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen

and it looks like the current ones are:

Pretender Gods 2.0
Spells 1.8
Scales 1.2

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Those are the three mods I downloaded. Too bad he does not have the item mod done, as that one would be really nice to nerf the much-too-cheap artifacts like life drain and clams. Though, on a small map playing a 2v2, I don't think that hoarding clams would be a winning strategy.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Yes, I think many of the alleged balance problems in Dom2 disappear when you play on a small map with only two teams...

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

So, uh, how about those nations? Any time now...

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I'll ping my partner. He's been unresponsive recently.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

He's having trouble downloading and installing the map.

We'll keep you posted.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I'm alive. Prefer not more than one turn per day. Like the 48 hours quikhost set-up used with Zook last game.
Sorry about the latency, has to do with distracting real life stuff ;-p.

Chandrea?
 

OKay, so Chandrea?
Nations?
Sorry so late!

Re: Chandrea?
 

Tauren has announced Jotunheim. arc and zooko are supposed to announce their nations now. That requires us to make up our minds...

Re: Chandrea?
 

Sorry for interrupting your thread, but since you are thinking about using my Chandrea map:

I have a revised version of Chandrea almost ready - if you are interested, you can have the files right away as they are currently! I will be reachable for the next couple of hours. However, the revision requires a revised .tga file as well (a concern if you are using a slow internet connection).

The changes so far are:

- 3 fixed neighborships
- the big water province with the logo has been split into two, limiting water movement a bit
- bridges are kept as small provinces, but their neighborship is limited to land provinces now
- terrain changes: one more swamp and waste each instaid of plains
- defaultmapzoom added
- every city now has a feudal population
- every city now has an Iron Mine, Otzburg has a mine of superior Iron
- starting positions are restricted to the cities for land dwellers


The second and third tries to reduce the importance of water movement a little bit.

The last two address the problem that there are simply not enough resources on all those large farmland cities. (Note that starting locations will ignore the large/farmland flag, but will have the added iron mine.)

So if you want the revised files, use the private messaging of this board to tell me an email address where I should send the files to (5MB) since I cannot put them on a server myself.

----

As for placing: I did not follow your discussion closely but wrap around west-east is far smaller than north-south, so horizontally placing allies might be sensible... Note further that the big island is somewhat divided by the mountains, I am currently thinking of dividng it even more...

---

...please post your feedback about my map in the map thread, linked in my signature below!

Re: Chandrea?
 

I am certainly interested in using the updated map file. We will not be getting this game started soon anyway. So, it you want to finish it and post the file here in the forum, I will download it and look it over.

Thanks for all your work on the map.

Panther

Re: Chandrea?
 

On another note, perhaps you could suggest two starting points Chazar? I have trouble seeing how a wrap-around map plays, so that may be better for the players.

Re: Chandrea?
 

Yes, arc has finals this week, and I have a product beta this week...

Re: Chandrea?
 

Sure, no problem. My problem is my PhD Thesis, which needs to be finished real soon, which delays my work on the map. My main problem therefore is the lack of time for testplaying...

However, I am considering the following further things before releasing it:

* Cities are the key of this map, especially if playing with victory points (two per city, one per many site province, 38 total - should help dominion kills, BTW). So in addition to boost defense by feudal poptype, I am thinking about adding one or two mage commanders to each city.

* I am pretty unsure about the sailing routes. The shipping lines are there to connect the islands for nations that cannot cross water easily, but the shipping lines also improve the capabilites of flyers greatly. Not sure if I should add or remove some shipping lines

As for the starting locations: The map was intended for crowded 6-10 player games. Using the cities as starting provinces spreads things out neatly, since capitals are never placed adjacent. I will ask my friends who did a 4 player game about suitable starting locations for a team game...
(maybe I should erase this post so that I do not clutter your game thread and place it into the map thread were it belongs...)

Its nice to know that someone is using the stuff one has done! Have fun with it and tell me were it needs tweaking. PM me when you are going to start in the case that I could not manage to finish it by then...

Re: Chandrea?
 

Well, I think arc will be ready to play again soon, because I believe he said that he had an exam Friday, and it is now Saturday. We'll see!

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Well??? Are we going to actually play this game or just talk about it?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I dunno -- I'm waiting on my brother.

I'll give him a call.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Okay, my brother is finally read to make a strategy with me. We'll get back to you soon.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Well, what's the hold up? Are we gonna' play or what? ;-)

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I grabbed the new version of Chandrea. Which are we playing with? What's the server IP, and port number?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Okay, arc is playing Caelum and I'm playing C'tis.

:-)

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Where'd you get this new version of the map?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I will take Vanheim. I will also email our host for the particulars. We do all have to be sure and use the same map version.

Looks like we are using all of the finished three zen mods, which is good. What are the other settings?

I would vote for graphs off. Other than that I don't care much. Maybe hard research and 50% sites and 9 indies too. HoF 10? Whatever, just let us know...