Perpetuality - 62 Player MegaGame (Finished!)
 

<font color="#2315dd">Perpetuality </font>

We ended the game due to the unit limit. If the patch comes out soon that fixes that we might restart.

It was probably a three way tie between MA Agartha/LA Ermor/LA R'lyeh... but other nations might have been able to catch up!

Perpetuality Status Page http://67.66.187.69/dominions3/stats...e=perpetuality

Perpetuality Trading House http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...amp;PHPSESSID=

A History of Perpetuality http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&amp;fpart=1

Latest Scores.html file http://67.66.187.69/dominions3/Perpetuality_Scores.html

Game Type: TCP/IP (static server)
Speed: 24 hours per host for the first 18 turns moving to 48 hours per host until around turn 70+ in which it moves to 72.
Quickhost: enabled.
Era: Middle (this is for indy strength)
Players: 62 (all era nations combined into one). Spots that go unfilled will be filled with a random Mighty AI.
Map: 16.1 provinces per player pre-generated map. The map image is attached to this post. It is highly recommended you download and extract the .tga file to your Dominions3\Maps folder before the game starts.
Research Speed Difficult
Victory Conditions: 650 out of 1000 (~65%) provinces controlled, or the surrendering of all other players (the latter is much more likey).
Graphs: On
Hall of Fame: 15
Renaming: On
Magic Site Frequency: 40
Masterpass: There will be one
Mods: We will be using the mega-mod.
Start Time: Started.
Length: If you aren’t eliminated this game might last a very long time. Be prepared!
Patch Level: We will use 3.08.

How the Nations Were awarded:
1st Seed: After the deadline I will award nations based on the player's first choice. If multiple players desire the same nation I will randomly select the player that is assigned the nation.
2nd Seed: We repeat the last step with those players that still have not been awarded nations and still have preferences. Players who are awarded a second seed get a 5% population increase in their capital.
3rd Seed: Repeat the Second Seed except the award is 10% population increase in their capital.
4th, 5th, 6th, etc Seed: Continue until there are no more conflicts, awarding and additional 5% per each seed.
Last Seed: On the seed where there are no more conflicts the final preferred nations are awarded and all the remaining players (those that ran out of preferences or never provided any) are randomly assigned the remaining nations. Whatever Seed level this ends up being is the population bonus all the remaining players will get. The seed cap limit will be 10 (i.e. 150% pop bonus).

Final Vote Tally:
Should we ban Utterdark? 16 Yes, 30 No
Should we ban Arcane Nexus? 41 Yes, 9 No
What should the research speed be? 26 Difficult, 21 Very Difficult
What age should the indys be? 11 Early, 22 Middle, 2 Late

There will be NO (Zero, Zip, Zilch) delays for absences until we are down to 15 or less players. I highly recommend you ask around and find a temporary substitute if you plan on being gone for an extended time.

Due to the number of players I will be rather ruthless in enforcing the stale rule. No one will stale more than twice in a row before they are replaced or put on AI unless they let me know beforehand. If you let me know you will be gone you will not be replaced but the game will not be held up for you.

Next steps:

1) Download the map (if you haven't already) attached this forum thread. Extract the map (perpetuality.tga) from the zip file and place it in your dominions3/maps folder.

2) Download the Mega-age mod here: http://67.66.187.69/dominions3/mega-age.zip

You will need to extract these files/folders to your dominions3/mods folder. You will then be able to enable/disable the mod via the dom3 game menu &gt; Preferences. You do not need to enable this mod to upload pretenders.

3) Connect to the following location to play the game:
IP: 67.66.187.69
Port: 15151

EA Arcoscephale - Manuk
EA Ermor - Digress (%5)
EA Ulm - Davegg (%20)
EA Marverni - vfb (%10)
EA Sauromatia - LeSquide
EA TienChi - Vathmoth
EA Mictlan - Methel
EA Abysia - Ramiro (%10)
EA Caelum - Terawaerto (%5)
EA C'tis - RamsHead
EA Pangaea - Szumo (%10)
EA Agartha - Foodstamp (%10)
EA Tir na O'og - Meglobob
EA Vanheim - Stricklyrockers (replaced by Quantem_Mechani)
EA Helheim - BigDisAwesome
EA Niefelheim - Honeybadger
EA Kailasa - Shuma
EA Yomi - thraveboy (%20)
EA Atlantis - cupido2 (%20)
EA R'lyeh - Yucky (%20)
EA Oceania - Amhazair
MA Arcoscephale - Smonk
MA Ermor - LoloMo
MA Pythium - Zoshan
MA Man - Dr. Praetorious (%15)
MA Ulm - Cor (%20)
MA Marignon - Fal
MA Mictlan - Wikd Thots (%20)
MA Tien Chi - Tichy (%5)
MA Machaka - Reay (%5)
MA Agartha - atul (%20)
MA Abysia - FAJ
MA Caelum - BolognaRamp (%20)
MA C'tis - Xietor (%5)
MA Pangaea - Hadrian_II
MA Vanheim - GrayZ (%5)
MA Jotunheim - solo
MA Bander Log - Hurst
MA Shinuyama - Saint Dude (%5)
MA Atlantis - PheasantPlucker (%20)
MA R'lyeh - Salamander8
MA Oceania - Tyrant
LA Arcoscephale - Sleet (%5)
LA Ermor - Velusion
LA Man - tibbs
LA Ulm - CelestialGoblyn (%5)
LA Marignon - Catquiet
LA Mictlan - Baalz
LA Tien Chi - jutetrea (%10)
LA Jomon - Fate (Replaced by Shuma)
LA Agartha - Shovah32
LA Abysia - Stelteck (%20)
LA Caelum - Kydorias (%5)
LA C'tis - Arameyan
LA Pangaea - Lingchih
LA Midgard - Jazzepi (%20)
LA Utgard - Xox (%5)
LA Patala - Morkilus (%20)
LA Atlantis - FrankTrollman (%20)
LA R'lyeh - Evilhomer
EA Lanka - K (Replaced by Meglobob)
MA Erdi - Hiddenmist

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Sign me up!

I vote to BAN Arcane Nexus and BAN Utterdark

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Feel free to post whatever you want here... but sign-ups are only "certified" once I receive (via email or PM) your nation preference list (even if you don't have a preference) and your password.

Also you can change your preferences at any time before
Friday May 11th.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Got it!

5% population increase affects only income in that city correct? No effects on resources, etc?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I think population only affects income.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I would like to sign up. Can you please place me as the last possible seed? I will play *anything* that people don't want to play.

Jazzepi

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I'll need your password.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Sent!

Jazzepi

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Sent PM.

I vote in favor of banning any global people campaign to ban. I don't believe they are balanced or intended for games of this size.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

e-mail sent with list, votes, passwords, etc

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Is there any chance of taking out the gem-producer items? The end game of this thing is going to be flat-out retarded if they're left in. I can reasonably see someone having in excess of 1000 clams by the end of the game, and that's just not fun. The thought of a half-ton of fever fetishes makes me weep. If they're taken out the game will actually be about taking territory and finding magic sites, not who can clam-whore the best.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I thought I read somewhere that there was a limit to how many gem producing items you could have now?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I had about 80 or so clams in Undertow without running into any problems (and that was with 3.06)

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

FS - I didn't think there was an artificial limit.

I don't know about removing them... but I'd be up for say... doubling the cost via a mod if the general consensus in this thread is that they are too powerful in this sized game.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

As this is a grand experiment, I'm tempted to "let the chips fall where they may" and not disallow anything.

I mean, if a dude casts the Arcane Nexus, they are asking for every remaining nation to send every assassination spell they can cast at that dude's provinces in order to kill the guy that cast the global (thus dropping it). You may have the gems for that turn, but what are you going to do with them when you have no commanders in your entire empire?

Natural selection and a glut of savvy players will curb even the most potentially abusive thing you can think of, and at the end of the day the ability to make a clam every turn is every bit one of Oceania's special powers as Abysia's ability to make a blood hunter every turn.

That being the case, I'd like to argue for no mods other than the ones to make the game possible. Let's not nerf nations because of what might happen before we even figure out what this play environment does to the game. Speculations are nice and everything, but lets actually get some testing in before we radically alter how the game plays.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

You can't very well counter the "abusive tactic" of clamming because no one can tell it's happening. It doesn't show up in the score graphs (unlike Nexus).

I'm not concerned with Oceania making a clam every turn so much as everyone making 10 of the damn things every turn. It will introduce disgusting amounts of power creep into the late-game, and will also likely be a mandatory strategy that every nation has to follow if they're trying to win. Mandatory strategy + power creep + micromanagement = bad. Wish should not be something that you can cast 5 times/turn.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Blood hunting doesn't show up in the graphs either. I'm doing 500 blood slaves at turn 40 in one game now. This game will obviously go 100+ turns and a successful blood nation can easily do 2000-3000 slaves per turn at that point (probably more). So if you want to ban/nerf clams you probalby should ban/nerf blood nations aswell for the same reason.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Blood magic has an ongoing cost in mage time and lost income, and scales with the number of provinces you own, along with gold and gem income. You still give up something for those slaves (3000 slaves in a turn drains an entire capital province's worth of population from your empire every month, on top of the mage time and unrest costs). Blood is really damn good, but it's not really put at an abnormal advantage just because of a large map or a long game (I think it's slightly disadvantaged by a long game because of the population drain, actually). If you want to debate that Blood is unbalanced in general that's a different point.

Clams do not have an ongoing cost aside from needing warm bodies, and scale with game LENGTH. A clam you make on turn 10 will have pumped out 90 pearls by turn 100. I can't think of many other amazingly good uses for water gems, either, so it's not like you give up an opportunity for kickass summons or item forging when you invest in a clam instead (the water queens are amazing, but since there are only 3 of them between 60 nations they're not going to make much of a dent on overall gem consumption)

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Blood is not at all disadvantaged by a long game. Not at all. Yes you may lose some pop and get a bit of unrest (less income) but with 3000 slaves/turn your a monster. And a blood hunter is a 1 time investment just like a clam (mage ca 150 gp +1 sang dousing rod (5 slaves)). And just like a clam it will pay of the more turns it is allowed to hunt. And if you nerf/remove clams you will have to do the same to blood stones and fever fetishes, and you will end up hurting some nations alot because of this.

(do note that my argument is not to nerf blood, simply do not nerf anything).

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I dont think blood hunting and clamming are so comparable. An enemy can see and stop blood hunting with attacks and remote spells. You need to protect each blood hunting province from remote attack. The amount of effort to make blood hunting unbalanced can be matched by others to thwart it, but using clams isn't exactly hard, or easy to stop. That, and I would rather have a player have 1000 slaves than 1000 pearls.

Fever fetishes require a lot of micromanagment, and massive amounts of fire gems arn't quite as devestating as pearls, or even slaves.

I am for the limiting of clams. (Or, if someone could make a mod that makes them work like fever fetishs, but produce pearls instead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif)

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

you can't compare 1000 slaves against 1000 astral pearls. Getting 1000 slaves are A LOT easier than getting 1000 astral pearls from clams. And I dunno how you intend to stop blood hunting going on in protected castle provinces. And what about blood stones ? they are atleast as good as clams (tho only a few nations can make them)

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Let's not over analyze this game too much. A lot of the tactics being mentioned usually lead to victories in standard large games, yet people are not banning them from there.

It is true that in a game of this size, it is going to have an even larger impact, but if you do get rid of things like clam hording, blood hunting etc, players are still going to find and use the most efficient means possible to exploit the massive map size.

Out of the gate, nations are going to benefit from this map, should they be banned too? Let's not go overboard with banning things. I can understand Arcane Nexus, because beyond the initial effort, it is pretty much game breaking after that. But clam hording and blood hunting are going to take lots of micromanagement, lots of commanders recruited and equipped to facilitate.

A thousand commanders not doing anything but producing pearls is at the very worst going to be a late game sight, and if someone is able to devote the resources and man power to that endeavor, the game is probably already close to over anyway.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Just to clarify, Im not arguing for a ban on blood nations =). In fact i don't want anything banned (well AN i don't really care about).

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

id like to join, and i will mail you my preferences soon.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

How can you refuse a game like this?

Sleepless nights, stressful evenings, lukewarm pizza's hurriedly gulped up in front of the computer, half of your time at work spent pondering potential strategies instead of working... where do I sign?

I'll send a mail with nation preferences and votes as soon as I decide what I'd like to play.


P.S. I'm slightly in favor of limiting gem producing items in some way (perhaps imposing a maximum number you can own of turn number*x or by making them more expensive or something), but I'm not terribly fussed about it either. After all, someone will probably win this game.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Sign me up please.

I vote in favor of Nexus ban, against Utterdark ban, and for Difficult research. I'll vote on era later.

Thanks for hosting V!

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I'm anti-banning. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I just signed in !!

Stelteck.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Keep in mind this will be the only game like this for dom3, so consider this a sort of test game.

If I find aspects that I think significantly make this sort of game less fun we will get rid of it for the next megagame. For those people that think something is unbalanced/unfun I invite you to join this game and prove your point. If you succeed you have my permission to then mercilessly mock those who disagreed with you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Micah - Personally I totally agree with you. I find clam hording to be a remarkably unfun part of late large dom3 games. So much so that I generally don't pursue that path myself even though it gives great advantages.

Unfortunately though clams have always been a central aspect to late dom3 and dom2 games. The established players are used to this and accept it - some even like it. I don't think there will be much traction for changing this, especially since this sort of game is so unknown.

I will say that with the victory conditions there will be a fine line between over-hording and normal hording. %65 of the provinces is what's needed to win, so if a player sits too much on his *** without expanding he will fall behind. Turtling will not work in this game IMHO. You might be making a bazillion pearls a turn but if somoene on the other side of the world is expanding much quicker you are wasting your time.

That said, I'm sure the winner will have some trick going on - like Utterdark, Arcane Nexus or Clam Whoreding.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Sign me up

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Not to go too far off topic, but has anybody given thought to possible anti-clam strategies? Assuming the clams are being held in a (multiple) dome protected province with a nasty army patrolling for assassins, is there any way to cause casualties to the clam holders? Assuming, of course, that you know they're there.

How about in-game ways to limit the production of clams? Astral Corruption comes to mind, anything else that is hostile to clam hoarding? With (very) hard research I guess there would be a lot of clams forged before AC could be a possibility....

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I removed a couple players from the list who forgot to send me their passwords. Once I get them they will be added back! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Just for the record: You realize that the settings of this game strongly encourage bless strategies, right? Are you sure you dont want to add a house rule about blesses?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Which settings specifically?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Hard research I imagine. I may join the game, not sure, the idea of crazy marathon turns later on scares me...

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Blood hunting and clams both have the same counter: kill the person doing it. Assassination spells, kill spells, straight battles, and the like all hurt the clammer. If you have 60 clams, then you have 60 leaders who can be killed and who will drop their clams.

As for bless strategies, they actually aren't encouraged by these settings. Bless strategies all fail in the late game, and with a game this size there will be a late game. The fact that your dominion is a hellscape because you set it on fire for a high bless means that on turn 100 you've missed out on building a lot of troops and mages.

But once again, I have to ask: why ban anything? Don't you want someone to actually win this thing?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

You don't need to take terrible scales for a useful bless. Nations like C'tis will do badly with hard research.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

How do you assasinate commanders in a multi-domed, castled province with a large patrolling army?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Kill the army?

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I think that banning Arcane Nexus is a good idea, since the benefit is clear and relative easy to achieve it and has no real downside (other then a lot of people will hate you).
In the other hand banning Utterdark or other globals, heavy bless and other things will lead to the simple fact that nations with better troops will win. Let's imagine the extreme, that we manage to ban every "cheesy" mean to win... So someone with Arcoscephale and a bargain pretender focused on armored elephants starts near T'ien Ch'i Spring and Atumn. By the time he will research with very hard or hard conjuration or other magic to deal with the Elephants he will be raw meat. But then let's ban armored elephants too? I hope you get my point where does this goes.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

If you can kill the army guarding the clam factory you have to defeat the clamming player before (or does someone put such things on his border?)

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

I don't understand what you mean? If you cannot kill his army, then what does it matter that he is gem hording? He has already beat you.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

What if the army is nowhere near the border? What if he has NAPs with his neighbours ect.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Why would he need to keep all clams in one place? Stick them on scouts and sneak around if the carriers being killed starts to be a problem. Well, it would be micromanagement hell...

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

The settings favor blessing for follow reasons:

1) Hard/Very Hard Research: Blesses work from turn 1. Hard research means that all magic-heavy nations will be very vulnerable to attack for like all of the early game.

2) Low Magic Sites: Even if you do bust your butt and get research done, what good is it when you dont have any gems to cast those spells or summon those units?

3) Map Size: Poor scales can be easily balanced if you constantly expand. A map of this size makes that easier. Not to mention the number of players means there will always be a nice weak neighbor to be found.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Even low level battle magic(acid bolt, magma bolts ect) can have a fairly big effect on most blessed troops and dosnt take long for a magic based nation to reach

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Technically this is incorrect. He isn't hording gems, he is hording clams and probably spending the gems produced by the clams freely to kill your army... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

map size i would say works against bless. The scales.. um scale with the number of provinces you own. Even if you take a lot of ground, you have a weaker base with poor scales.

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

Agree. But the prospect many nations having researched all of the paths in the end game is too unappetizing to me. I'm sort of rooting for Hard research though instead of Very Hard...

Not sure this will be much of a factor in this large/chaotic a game. In theory yes, but I'm not really worried. Besides I don't think 40 is that low.

Can't agree here. As you said it should "balance" out. Heavy blesses will get more provinces due to expansions while the others should have better scales in thier provinces to counter this. IMHO I doubt map-size really makes that much of a differnce.

While I do think in theory the bless nations should do a little better than they already do, I'd rather wait to see what the actual results are. If the top 5 nations at the end are all heavy bless nations I'll consider a house rule for next game - but from what I've seen in larger games bless nations don't exactly end up winning that much more than normal ones. (i.e. http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...mp;PHPSESSID=)

I also think you'll have a lot of players expecting this and building their magic-nations to try and survive a bless rush (i.e. Awake Pretender)

Besides... I shudder at the thought of trying to come up with a balanced "bless" House Rule that most people would agree on. more likely I'd just start a never-ending argument...

Re: Perpetuality - The 60 Player MegaGame (Signup)
 

In general I agree with Ironhawk. LA nations generally have better stock troops (armor), while EA nations generally have better/higher access to magic. Limiting sites to 40 on top of heavy research will make it difficult.

On the other hand, it is a test game and we'll see if LA nations or bless nations just instantly dominate and then can continue to compete vs those magic nations who survive.

All EA nations should gang up on the LA nations anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif After they stomp the nastiest bless nations.

By the way, when will nation selection occur?