Mother Nature is pissed
 

Hmmm I was rereading old material such as my post on Pangean Strategy in the strategy sticky. I noticed it had wandered into a discussion of a scenario map. There dont seem to be many scenario maps. More support for the MPers than the Soloists.

Im also sparked abit due to other conversations here about the map commands. It might be fun now to reconsider a large scenario map which starts out with created AI players of nature based nations allied against the human players. Maybe call it "The Uprise of Nature" or maybe I should call it something like "Beware the coming of Global Swarming".

I was originally thinking of all 3 eras of Pangea and the 2 eras of Oceania being pre-loaded on the map as AI players (no mod involved). They would be built specifically around the best strategies for playing them with better choices for scales, pretenders, etc and some specific boosts to guide them into better AI play. They were going to be set as both AI and allied with each other. That way the game would not have them attack each other. Maybe have multiple scattered starting locations for each of them to reflect an uprising of nature. Nature temples all over the map for them to boil forth from.

Now Im looking at some of the nations which have been added since that post so long ago and Im wondering if there might not be other choices. Or maybe I should consider multiple versions like Nature vs the rise of Man, and another where some of the nature-based man nations (tree huggers?) are included.

Does any of the other nations strike any of you as a better idea? Or should I stick to the original premise?
Thoughts?

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Trying to fight all three eras of Pangaea and MA Oceania as well sounds pretty tough. You could also grant them the ability to recruit vine men, vine ogres and ivy kings, or have their various commanders domsummon animals. Giving them all 99 nature gem income in their caps might also be fun.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Hmmm Im not sure I can do those as map commands. I have considered doing a scenario zip which includes maps and mods. But that was a much more ambitius project involving multiple maps and periodic mod changes to the game as it progresses.

But the vine spells would probably be included. Or at least one of the Pangea builds would be structured supporting strong use of those spells. I havent tested whether the AI uses them.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Another cool one (scary and hard!) would be the Terror From The Deep - with all aquatics present and allied (save LA R'lyeh, I think that would be a bit much).

Then there's the Rise of Rome, which would pit 3 human players as EA Ermor, MA Ermor, and MA Pyth against EA Ulm and a slew of Van/Nief/Hel/Jotun/Ut hordes in the north.


In the nature map, most of the nations could be arrayed in what appears at first glance to be an offensive phalanx, but is in fact meant as a defensive ring around one of the Pangaea nations who starts in the back corner with Carrion Woods already active. If possible, set it so that it's considered as having been cast with 999 slaves so it's not going to be dispelled by the players. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Then there's the Giants invasion, that would be interesting, Fomoria, Niefelheim, Hinnom, Jotunheim, Ashdod, Utgard and Gath, but that would probably be too much I suppose, seven giants races!

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

I should also look at resurrecting some of my older ones. Like "WE vs THEM" which had the D.A.R.E. alliance. Dragons of Atlantis, Ermor, and Rlyeh. That was back when blue dragons could breath water though. It was a decent scenario. Three sibling dragons decided to create a pantheon (hierarchy of gods) instead of fighting for just one to survive. Ermor was in a corner tip of land with Atlantis in the ocean on one side and Rlyeh in the ocean on the other side. The two water nations were set up to obviously keep you busy while Ermor strengthened itself. Since they were allied Ermor wouldnt attack the other two. It tended to keep Ermor bottled up until you broke thru the other two and then Ermor boiled out thru the breach. Nasty game.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Lurker reporting, JimMorrisons idea seems really cool. The Rise of Rome idea that is. I've been wanting to try MP out and that scenario seems super spass!

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

True... even I play more MP than SP games, I do know the map edit commands better than the vast majority of others. If ONLY we had one of the beta testers who would have actually done beta testing on the map edit commands then they would probably be working better. HINT.


AI nature based nations have the problem of nature based summoning spells where many of these summons need food supplies. Just something to consider.



From my testing I've discovered nations which need almost zero food... such as EA Argatha and LA Ermor are quite strong for the AI.
The EA Niefelheim probably plays the most powerful late game... casting battlefield spells like: anti-magic, mass protection, mass regeneration, doom, and even the anti-SC spells like disentigrate and claws of kokytos.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Heehee. You should have seen all the commands we tested and took out. Not to mention the extensive back and forth changes to reset the caps to the new limits such as the 1500 provinces. And of course everytime you changed one thing it seemed to affect every other thing. SLAP.

But it was fun. I was the first person to get to play in mega-games. At least the server commands seemed to get a complete testing. Those were considered a hotter priority.

AI nature based nations have the problem of nature based summoning spells where many of these summons need food supplies. Just something to consider.

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Hmmm I rarely have that problem. It seemed to me that the food boost from nature magic was very charitable. And do the vine summons need food?

In my mass tests (mentioned earlier) I tended to find that Ermor usually led early in the game, Oceania in mid game, and Arcos in late game if it could last that long.

EA Agartha I havent looked at but that might be a good idea. Ermor should be easy to build a decent AI boosting strategy around. One thing I played with was giving Eater of Dead as a pretender. It does break loose eventually but a nation like Ermor would make good use of being able to follow it around sweeping up the emptied provinces. It might make an interesting game scenario.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

That reminds me of another scenario idea.
To add a Wandering Monster, on a timer, so that it enters the game later.
#computerplayer 79 4
#god 79 "Eater of the Dead"

This should put in an AI nation with lots of population and an Eater of the Dead which will start out in a tamed form. Once it eats enough of the populace it will break out across the map. Since its a nation in the game, every time you play the map it will be randomly located someplace.

Maybe also set scales and give it a strong dominion. Im not sure how that might affect things but it sounds like fun. Putting in a bunch of ally commands might also make it not attack AI's. At least until it breaks loose.

Other options for the monster might be Eater of Dreams, Eater of Gods, Hunter of Heroes but Im not sure what those are and how they operate.

Im leary of getting into details and tempting one of the experts to tell me that I totally dont understand Eater of the Dead... but Im thinking
10 dominion
3 Death scales
3 ant-magic
3 anti-luck

You could even duplicate the setup 5 or so times. Setting it as nation 79, 78, 77, 76, 75. That would give you 5 of them on timers randomly scattered all over the map. Hurry and win the game OR ELSE!

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

How I wish #startspell wasn't damaged and lost. #god only works for the starting capital. one-way provinces would have really opened doors for some interesting maps. Anyways I'll stop daydreaming.


The extra food supplies help at first, yet during big games the nature summons which eat food tend to tip the scales towards starving from my experience. The vine summons don't need food yet these only bring one or two upon each casting by the AI. The harmful AI nature summons are the several animal types which arrive in groups for each casting... if only those vine summons arrived in large groups for a higher price the AI would play better.

If those tests are easy to setup and run it would be interesting to see how the new nations play. If those tests take over an hour then it's probably not worth your time.

One problem is the human player could summon eater of the dead which makes the current eater of the dead disappear. There would also be times where it would turn independent and the AI nation would be fighting its own pretender. Ideally I would like to see a #wandering command and more official wandering creatures like eater of the dead.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

I dont know if we ever figured out what broke startspell. One-way provinces gets into way too many places in the code for movement, looking, spell-casting, retreating, AI, etc. It was one of those balancing acts against being able to do many other things instead of that one.

The #god problem I believe is tied into another of my regrets. The sequence that the game does its actions. One of my biggest regrets that we didnt fix was the ability for a server to set mods on that added nations to the game, and have them show up on the players join menu.

With servers there isnt much involved as far as my time. I can whip off a script to start 30 games, autorun them thru 100 turns, save the score files, start 30 more games. It might take a week to get relevant data it would collect until I turned it off.

Didnt we do that? That would be a modding thing? I dont really follow the modding stuff.

Which reminds me. I should reread my old scenario ideas where I groaned the lack of a #patrol command. Now that we know how to put people inside and outside of a castle with map commands I should be able to tackle some of those ideas.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Well hopefully many of the broken commands will be fixed in DOM_4. We probably won't see DOM_4 for 5 years or more, but I believe it will arrive. I estimate many of the TBS gamers will be docking on the shores of the fantasy TBS game to be released by Stardock in 2009.

Well if you do pursue this line of testing I would recommend having them all use a specific set of scales.

The #wandering command would most likely be a modding feature... unless the tag could somehow be added to a commander via map edit commands. Currently #wandering is not available.


The #patrol would be greatly appreciated by mapmakers. Good luck... it seems difficult getting attention for map edit commands.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Dom4? I know that the Illwinter devs are on a new project but I seem to remember something about it NOT being a Dominions development.

Actually thats already been licked. Its done by the sequence of commands. Assigning units, THEN castle, then more units.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Yes, I know their current project is something new... that's why it'll be at least 5 years before we see DOM_4.

Are you saying the units on top of the castle will actually PATROL... thus catching scouts, spys and assassins?? Or will they just sit on top ?

The #patrol would work for stopping sneaking armies, scouts, spys, etc., ... and thus still needed.

Re: Mother Nature is p-----
 

It doesn't fit with the code architecture. Dom3 only reads the map file once, but it regenerates the list of "allowed spells" every round.

As far as scenarios go, #onebattlespell will stand in for a lot of places I'd want to use #startspell: give each nation a signature spell of some kind that their mages can cast from researchlevel 0. You may be aware that when you #onebattlespell a spell, the unit can cast it throughout the battle normally if it has the right paths. Foodstamp mentioned that he was using this in his MoM mod to simulate the heroic special spells.

-Max

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

Modding is a workaround, unfortunately many SP gamers don't like using mods.

Re: Mother Nature is p-----
 

Not really. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I did do a couple. The initial mod for running all three eras in one game (the mega games). And one to randomize units in the game. And some of the testing for hot-swapping mods. Server commands I know, map commands I know, 3rd party softwares other than mods. But modding I mostly leave to others.

Thanks for the info though. I might venture into that sometime.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

sounds like we still need #patrol

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

True. But at least you can put castles onto a map without them being freebies. The old way and you could take them with a scout because everyone ran inside the castle. You could tax the province to death without ever bothering to try and take the castle.

Re: Mother Nature is pissed
 

The main reason for #patrol is so it's possible to create maps which prevent human players from sneaking armies and assassins during early game.


I've created several maps with one army on the outside and one on the inside. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif