Poke in the Eye
 

Hmmm I was going to bump the thread on this but realized that there wasnt one. Most of the conversation on it is in the Dom2 forum. Surprising considering the number of downloads its still getting.

So to provide some background. My map for Poke in the Eye is a fast little download because there is no image file. The info file on it Poke_Eye_v3.map uses the eye.tga (the Desert Eye map)file which is included with the game. The description on the Poke in the Eye version is...:
#description "A wraparound map with 125 provinces, 17 of these are under water.
Suitable for 8-13 insanely bored players.

Two connected continents surrounded by seas and filled with monsters.
This might be Era Zero. The world where every province might hold a
wannabe pretender trying to rally the independents to follow them.
Scout carefully."

http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Poke_Eye_v35.zip

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

more background...
I use a program (written in basic) to generate the .map fresh each time I want to. It copies the original map info of terrains and neighbors, then it runs sequentially thru the full number of provinces (125) and for each one it randomly decides to assign
A) structures (castle, lab, temple, any combo) about a 1 in 50 chance
B) for each province it randomly selects a commander from all of the units in the game (1809 as of last patch) and assigns it there, then it randomly picks another unit and assigns 2-10 bodyguards of that type, then randomly picks another unit and assigns 5 to 12 as a squad. Oh, and the commander gets random magical equipment.
C) it also randomly sets alliances between the nations (only kicks in if they are AI). Hmmm I just noticed that it only sets the first 17 (Dom2 code) so I need to fix that.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Problem:
I tried to fix the indept castle to not be so easy to take using Endoperez's wonderful tip about setting the owner to 23. Unfortuntely the early attempt made things worse by setting 23 (indept nation) as the owner of everything. You had to fight for the ownership of your home castle, and in turn one everyone died.

So Im thinking that I need to know which provinces to NOT do. That could also kill the assignment of a random army to the players (Im not sure if that was enjoyed or not).

If I set approved start locations into the map, and then add a list of those to the program saying "do not touch these" then it might work. The game could still randomly (and with some game logic) assign the home provinces of all human players. Not sure if it affects AI players tho. I would still want to give the AI players the random boost I think.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

What makes independent castles so easy to take?

If its starvation, I have an idea for that I can go into.
If its not enough defense, ditto.

Without knowing the details of the particular problem, I'll be brief.
Create a 'cauldron' commander to assign to every province and supply food. Perhaps a fortress defense bonus as well? But otherwise, a nonfunctional though highly damage resistant unit.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

AARRGGHHH
I am horrible at math. Thats why I like randoms.

If the range is 80 (0-79) for alliances. And it only needs to be named in one direction (ally 1 5 automatically does ally 5 1) then what is a good number of alliances to create?

Im not going to bother checking for dupes.

And Im thinking of just trusting to the god of randoms to insure that there is some in each age.

edited: ARRGGHH I cant do that. Then most of them will be assigned cross-ages (arly age allied with late age) which wouldnt make much sense (unless they are playing with my Single_Age mod)

Never mind. I will have to have 3 loops and its easy for me to come up with a decent range

Edited by Gandalf Parker (09/11/07 11:50 AM)

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Its an old old complaint (since Dom1?) which is the lack of a #patrol command for maps. At the moment, randomly dropping a castle in a province puts everyone inside it. That means that I can run around the map with scouts attacking castles I find to claim the province, then when I reach it with my army I can siege it with no combat. It doesnt make adding castles such a good thing.

Of course, the reason is also gone I suppose. This was back when the AI didnt build castles so giving it some to take as it expanded helped that.

Endoperez had a fix which was to drop the castle, and some units, then assign that province the ownership of a nation and every unit dropped there after that was owned by that nation. I had used it to create castles that were being seiged by player nations. But surprisingly I had never tried using the nation number for Indepts (23). That works well but now I have to skip the player nations.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

OK just to start catching up on some things...

the Poke in the Eye map has been updated to version 3.5

This gives you a VERY different game of Dominions.
The old stuff has always included...
A) You can get a new VERY different starting army.
B) Everyone else gets one also. Including Independents so scout carefully.
C) There is lots of equipment already in the game so this is alot of fun to play with a nation that has seducers.
D) There are independent owned castles and labs scattered around
E) There are random alliances which can affect the AIs.

Added to this version:
F) The independent castles defend AND patrol.
G) Your scouts can be discovered, even by independents.
H) Magic sites have also been extra-randomly scattered for some more surprises.
I) Temples have randomly sprung up. You might even get one.
J) Unrest is everywhere.

As usual for my chaotic maps, this map will be re-randomized every day. If you find the map interesting to play but it gets old, just download a new copy.

http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Poke_Eye_v35.zip

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Very cool that you have updated this, Gandalf!

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Maybe it will spark Johan abit if I mention that as far as I can figure out, I might have maxxed out everything I can possibly do with it using map commands. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Where's the image for this map?

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

It uses the eye.tga that came with the game. The "Desert Eye" map. Hence Poke in the Eye. It was a holdout from Dom2.

I keep meaning to do a fully worked map of my own and generate daily .map files in different formats for it. But if I did then it would probably be a 1500 province map.

I can also provide the code that generates it if you are interested.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Ah, I see. Sorry. I'm just trying to catalogue maps at the moment, so I'm skating through lots of threads quickly.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

OK. Mine are mostly covered on my downloads page.
http://www.dom3minions.com/downloads.htm

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Great map. Ranks up there with World of Warcraft. Been playing Pion all afternoon. Some problems though, the magic sites that are underwater don't match up. Try an underwater race and you will see what I mean... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Thats the only problem you find? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The program that generates it each day is totally random. The units dont match the terrain, the nations, or even each other. The sites dont match anything. And the allies dont make sense. Thats why I refer to them as Chaos maps.

The only thing MORE chaotic that I have found was a project I kicked off that Leif did where a program created a MOD which made random changes in every unit of the game. Random changes in armor, or hit points, or morale, etc etc.

Something abit LESS chaotic is a project I kicked off that Ballbarian did called SemiRandom. It allows players to create logical provinces and add them to a library which will randomly pick and place them onto maps. Such as a combination of province name, population type, magic sites, commanders, commander names, equipment, bodyguards, units that fit a single theme. For water maybe a province called "going to Knight School" with the "Shark Lords" magic site or "Shrine of the Shark Lords" (allows recruiting Shark Knights along with some gem income) or the "Tower of Pearls" (all that and Hydromancer). Of course logically then it would be guarded by Shark Knights and their schools of Sharks and Small Sharks. And maybe a Kelp Fortress.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Hey Gandalf, I just want to let you know that I am a HUGE fan of Semirandom. I never play an SP game without it. I ran into DrPraetorious' "Dread City of Darkness" the other day and it took 30 turns of work to bring that province down, the most fun I've had in ages! (Maxed out assassins was the only way to do it, and not easy that either due to the bane bodyguards, and by the time the commanders were attrited, there were something like 500 demons there!)

I was processing a turn as I was writing this and just had a major army utterly decimated by the "Egg of Coot" in "Blackmoor Town". At this instant I have no idea how I am going to take down this fortress!

To anyone who has not tried the SemiRandom program for single player games, I heartily recommend it.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

Cool.
Have you created a province for it yet?
Come on, there has to be some magic site or unit that has sparked an idea.

It doesnt have to be as hard-to-kill as the ones you mention. We need some variety in it or it wont serve its purpose.

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

I have given it a little bit of thought, unfortunately my mind keeps turning to ultra powerful provinces. I really should spend a few hours one day seeing if there aren't some 'cute' ideas, maybe something that will make a player notice they passed through.

That is the problem with the less than powerful provinces I find with SemiRandom. When playing SP and marauding about the map with an uber army, I often do not notice the effect of the SemiRandom provinces other than occasionally getting a magic item. It's the ones that stop me cold, that give me a fight, that I notice and that I most like.

Maybe a configuration setting could be included with SemiRandom that gives the player a choice as to the average power levels of the provinces when they are generating the map file. This way me providing a half dozen powerhouse provinces would not upset the current ratio (not that a half dozen is really that significant).

(Actually I just now made some notes for a not quite 'power house' province that a player would definitely notice if they stumbled through it.)

Re: Poke in the Eye map
 

If you search for semirand there are a number of threads where people gave ideas, but the ideas were never written up fully and included in the program.

If we could get every one of the people on these forums to do ONE province we would be setup sweet.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Just to let people know that I have not forsaken my chaos games. This map is still modified daily. Each download is good for a number of games before you start knowing where things are going to crop up. Then you can just download the next days version for a completely new experience.
WARNING: NOT FOR NEW PLAYERS

Anyway I do have some updates I will be adding to this soon.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Since I'm on a mac I can't use semirand. So I was thinking maybe you(or someone else) could run some maps through it and upload it as a "scenario package"?

Or is there a way to run it on a mac? I guess I could try and make a wrapper for it but I don't really know how to do it.

The most awesome of awesomeness would be a semirand web app where you just set the parameters on a web page, generate and download the finished map file.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

This is more about the Chaos program than SemiRand. This is... well... chaos. Did you want an online Chaotisizor?

If you want an online SemiRand (and other cool features) then thank Jack Trowell for a very very cool one
Dominions Map validator and randomizer : http://dominions.realites.org

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

That's awesome. Thanks.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

An observation: I ran into a province of High Kings. *NASTY*. I left them alone as they were in a good chokepoint and it was a long time before they finally punched through. I had a scout watching everything.

They are gluttons--they ate too much, they were starving. They pretty much killed themselves off.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Bug report:

There was a province with a Goat Sun in it, I intended to suicide an unwanted commander into it. The Goat Sun immediately runs off--it's acting like he's a unit rather than a commander and there definitely is no other commander in the group that could lead him.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Thanks for that. I do appreciate comments.

Its not actually a bug. Or at least, its not unknown. In chaos games any unit can be commander or troops or bodyguard.

LongerAnswer:
the game doesnt actually flag units as pretenders, troops, summon, etc. Every unit can be any of those. The dom3 game just uses them certain ways. But the chaos routines just picks random 1-2100 as a commander, and assigns some random 1-2100 as troops and a few 1-2100 as bodyguards. So you can have a slinger leading an army of wisps and bodyguarded by 5 monoliths.

To get it any smarter Id have to build a separate database to record each unit from 1 to 2100 and what it usually is used as.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

The problem isn't whether there was a sane commander, but whether there was anyone capable of leading them at all. There wasn't. It should ensure that all troops have commanders capable of leading them. I agree checking for usual use isn't necessary. It also doesn't check if they can eat, whether this is reasonably fixable or not I don't know.

I had another such encounter that I'm not whether it was the mod or not as my dominion (with wrath of god up) did touch the province for a little while. 18 tarrasques. Again I suicided a commander into them--18 tarraques run, there's no commander on the field. I was actually rather annoyed as I was planning on capturing those guys. With GOR they get two slots--a reinvigoration item and a luck item and they're just about steamrollers. I had a dozen munching on the enemy and only lost one out of well over 100 battles--and that one went to a spell, not to damage. No matter how big the AI army they couldn't inflict enough damage to overcome the regeneration.


I also ran into another mystery that I've seen twice now:

In the end there was one province (not their capital) flagged as Arco and one as Mictlan despite the fact these were eliminated long ago. I won by killing Ermor--and these two were still on the map at that point. All values were apparently zero in the score graph. Mictlan was also solidly under Ermor dominion for ages, Arco was under it for a fair while. (I wasn't paying enough attention to dominion and just about got dominion-killed. It's the first time I've ever had any real dominion threat from the AI.)

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Yes that type of thing pops up in chaos.

The chaos program does no decent sanity checks at all. The random selections are all numeric involving the range from zero to the maximum choices. It cant examine or judge the choices based on any criteria. The best it does is that I do kep the choices of troops and bodyguards within a a short range from the initial choice.

So it picks a commander from the full list then adds units and bodyguards from somewhere fairly close to that. All that does is make use of the order that units were added to the game. That way the units MIGHT be at least from the same nation or the same theme (lizard, undead, summons).

As to the provinces you saw, the game does do random ownership of some of the provinces. It picks provinces and randomly adds castle, temple, lab in various combinations and sometimes it randomly gives it an owner. That means that a far province might pop up as being owned/operated by Ermor even if Ermor isnt in the game. On the other hand, sometimes a far province shows up at the start of the game assigned to you. Its also worth noting that other unusual things are the random assignment of unrest and PD. Also that scattered castles have both inside and outside defenders.

Future considerations for adding to the chaos program is more random to the maps (such as colors) such as seen in numbers 31-40 of these map runs.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomizedMaps.htm
And possibly some clearing of provinces such as used in the NI maps. And maybe re-ading that scattered castles might start out under siege by a random nation in rare occurances.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Basically, chaos means that there arent many "bugs". Its meant to be an exploration of violating every standard expectation in a totally random manner. Created by a burnout for other burnouts. :target:

Its also great publicity for the use of the SemiRandom program by Ballbarian. Almost every complaint about the chaos games is fixed in SemiRand. The units are more logically assigned and the AIs have smarter god choices. Also the provinces are themed (lycanthrope village, forest of fowls, dragons dessert) use of reasonable naming, guard units, and what you can recruit based on what was guarding the province. You can even design and add your own special provinces (in fact, please do)

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Hmm... it wouldn't be that hard to make a table that said
this leader can lead the following troops.

Actually gandalf, edi's database already does this.
It tells you if troop is demon, undead or magical.
So, all you would have to do is a pretty simple case.

Check each troop type vs the table.
If troop 1 or troop2 or troop three = magic, include 1-2 std magic leaders.

If troop 1 or troop2 or troop 3 = undead, include 1-2 std undead leaders

same for demons...

Now, more spiffy would be to use tailored leaders and troops.
But also more work.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

I thought about incorporating Edi's database. Id have to port it over to text or csv each time he updates.

It would also help with other problems such as that the totally random routine also throws land units into the water and water units onto the land. This is mostly unfair for the water since most of them drown leaving very few with any specials at all.

Id probably be more motivated if SemiRand didnt solve nearly all the problems with Chaos. And the fact that Im in basically a zero-motivation phase right now (both virtual and rl)

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Bump

Great map. Fun to face more interesting indies.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Thanks.
Remember that like the other regen'd maps, this one is recreated daily on my site. So if it starts feeling old, like you already know whats in certain provinces, just download it again to get new surprises. Or if you feel that certain key locations are blocked by something too strong since that can happen sometimes when things are so totally random.

Re: Poke in the Eye
 

Thanks.
And keep in mind that like the other regen'd maps, this one is recreated daily on my site. So if it starts feeling old, like you already know whats in certain provinces, just download it again to get new surprises. Or if you feel that certain key locations are blocked by something too strong since that can happen sometimes when things are so totally random.