Markata Madness, all age game (killing in process)
 

Players: 5
Map: random
Age: mid
Mods: CBM 1.6, Markatala
Diplomacy/Trading: There may be no diplomacy, only insults hurled in the form of monkey feces.
Research: Normal
Indies: 9, to hopefully slow down epic markata expansion.
Magic sites: 75, to enable maximum markata thuggery.
Renaming on, all other settings default.
Victory conditions: Beat down all the other players and become King Kong, lord of all monkeys.
Exploits: Normally I would ban the use of markata, but for this game I guess I can allow it as everyone should be on equal footing.

Special rules for this game: Not that anyone would ever do otherwise anyway, but you must recruit ONLY MARKATA. Otherwise the game will be unbalanced and you will be easy prey for the other players. Also, you must raise PD in every province to 10 as fast as possible for the same reason. This is very important! You may not, at any point, recruit any mercenaries, because again they would just die and waste all your money. And finally, you must use the Markata King pretender, and he must be awake. This is to prevent op high bless strats from dominating the game.

Players:
Burnsaber
Shovah
Jarkko
Tollund
Squirrelloid

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

F*ck it. I'm in. As long as the map is small so that I don't have to witness the powergaming too long.

I mean, it's going to be like DBZ out there with all those markatas.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Yeah, I'm thinking like 5 provinces per player. Markata don't take up much space anyway, so it should still be comfortable for them. But man, is it going to be a bloodbath.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

I doubt it'll be a bloodbath, since markata are almost impossible to kill.

Although you do get crappy bandar with your PD, so I guess they provide blood.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

yeah, that's the great weakness of monkey pd. All those useless bandar your markata have to babysit. You really have to wish that QM would remove such a useless unit from the PD, but I guess that's the price you pay for the awesome that is markata pd.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Cross post quoting, but yes, and Kailasa is already done. I'd be willing to try and make the mod for this if people are serious. Also if Gandalf plays, I'm in too.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

The map would have to be slightly large. The benefits of the monkeys mean nothing on the usual sized competition maps.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Why does that matter when everyone has monkeys?

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Well, map size is certainly negotiable. But I think a 5-10 province per player map would be best. How long do you really want to have to face markata SCs? It's such a headache scripting against them since there are so few spells that can kill one.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

I find summon lamashtas to be the only effective tactic. Sure your mages die, but they can at least stand a chance at delaying the markata long enough for the turn limit to be reached.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

I tried lammashtas once, but found it to be tricky coming up with sufficient numbers of them to keep the markata busy for so long. I seem to do best when I have 10+ mages spamming living earth or something, sometimes with curse they'll actually cause an affliction or two and you may get lucky and blind one or something. You still need to spam horror marks or something to kill them, but you can at least slow down their raiding.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Shovah has pointed out that it is probably a good idea to limit pretender chassis. I tend to agree, taking a triple bless and using shrouds on your scouts would just be way too obvious a choice. So I'm thinking all pretenders should be awake rainbows, again for the sake of fair and balanced competition.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Count me in, I have a soft spot for markatas :)

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Okay, so I have been convinced to mod in a markata mage, a markata commander, and a markata pretender. Do not expect shiny new graphics, unless someone else decides to make them.

Edit: Also, all nation slots are full. Guess I'd better get this mod ready.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

In an all monkey game using the nations in the game it would be full.
But if you are going to mod a dupd-nation then we can have up to.. 90(?) players.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

90 player monkey madness! That game has to happen...

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

In fact, I actually made a Markata Hero for a WH update that never happened. (I know, totally unbalanced, but this was before CBM 1.6 completely changed the gameplay).

You could use the pure pic as the pretender and make a Markata mage by cop-pasting a wizard hat onto a regular Markata. Commander Markata could have the golden hat.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/pictu...&pictureid=280

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/pictu...&pictureid=279

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Unfortunately we quickly run into the spell slot limit with even just ~12 copies of Kailasa. Making a simple duplicated mod nation with 1 or less national spells would allow 90 players.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Oh god, you guys are trying to kill me here. I'm not feeling that energetic today, just trying to whip up something fairly simple that will work for this ;) It would be a lot of work to set up 90 copy nations so that is not happening right now. Unfortunately that means only 3 players (4 if I let someone play as lanka). Unless someone has a quick and easy way of doing this.

I can certainly make use of that sprite though burnsaber.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

copyspell is your friend.

I could probably hammer something out if i understood how the limits on national spells worked better.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

You only have to do it once. If you can duplicate a monkey nation using mod commands (copying everything) then a script can copy/paste it with new numbers many times. I can do that if you want. It would have to avoid any matches with numbers used in the other mods but in this case Im not sure how much the other mods would be needed.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Given the limits in the OP, it doesn't even need to be the full nation. Just make the relevant units.

The hardest part is going to be the national spells, since there's a limit on how many nations can share a national spell. The easy solution is to make the spells *not national*, since every nation is going to be monkeys anyway.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Well, in keeping with the theme the national spells aren't really needed anyway since you're supposed to use literally nothing but markata.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

If you can get more available nations, I'd gladly join in and take a chance at getting to play with the most powerful units available. The only question I have is if we are going to waste gems summoning things that are far less powerful than markata.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Oh still a joke game? I was looking forward to playing Markata seriously in a balanced game.
A full game of Stealth vs Swarm.
Well maybe I will add the idea to the "On The Fence" thread of game variant ideas.
I like the realization that Squirreloid said in such a game the national spells wouldnt have to be national, since that was one of the mentioned problems with the Duped-Nations variant.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Nah, no summons just monkeys.

I'm going to have to wait and get this done later when I have more time. I'm probably going to have pyg help me create copy nations so there can be more than 3 players. Anyone who wants to play go ahead and continue saying so, I will mark you down and see how many people I can squeeze in.

Also, anyone who can give me unit IDs for monkey nation heroes, I am planning on replacing all of those with markata, so knowledge of said numbers would be very handy.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Ok, first of all I absolutely must play this.

Second: Rdonj - don't use the 'base' nation, it will just complicate things. Make a bunch of mod monkey nations and use purely those. That way you don't need to know the ID of the heroes, you can simply define markata heroes for your mod nations.

Third: Gandalf - you think this is a joke? The all-powerful markata shall rule the world, one poo fling at a time!

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Let the insanity continue. Here is 87 copies of Kailasa without the national spells (87 is max because of special monster and independent nations).

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

What do you mean a joke game. This thread is SERIOUS.

Anyway, like I said, I'll work on this later.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Just make them not national...

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Yes, this would work fine. I didn't consider that before.

Ha my editing ninja'd you, or the reverse... it's all madness in this thread.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Rdonj: regarding non-markata. You need someone to forge gear for all those markata thugs!

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

I say that calling them thugs is a total understatement; there's no SC in the game who could slow a markata scout for more than a couple of turns.

What?!? Killing him? The simple thought fills me with ilarity.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Okay, here is what I'm going to do. First, you are right, the way I was just doing it was a complete waste of my time. I'll go and build the nation from scratch. Quick, easy, and then I can have pyg make 5 quadrillion copies no problem.

Second, there will be a markata mage. It was suggested that I give it a 100% chance of wesn. This can be changed, but they will probably only have 1 magic path. If you want to make them better you will have to empower them like a serious markata user. That will prevent you from empowering as many markata scout SCs, but it is a necessary evil.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Maybe 100% wesn 100%fadb? That way you can get access to all the paths without too much stupid.

Actually, in order to make *real* markata paths more likely, maybe make the secondary 10%?

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Yeah, the 10% is probably fine.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Okay, the monkey mod is almost finished. I'm just waiting on a couple sprites from sombre, I may make a hero out of the longdead markata sprite, and then I'll be done. Hopefully pyg's script can do what needs to be done here without too much difficulty.

I had to put in a priest also, because dominions more or less requires them. I'm a bit worried I may have made them too OP though, so I made them cap only. Hopefully that will prevent them from being the only unit made ever. We'll see.

Also the pretenders (Markata Kings) are pretty badass. They have a really cool special weapon, very nice stats, and even better armor than normal markata.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Attached is a mod with markata as a combined unit. Parts of it could be adapted for this game.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Here's another little bit.

Markatanana!

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

To anyone who is paying attention to this thread, this is the sprite that will be used for the markata priest :)

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Mod has been forwarded to pyg for script-working purposes.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

OK, here is 16 copies in the Middle Age with Bandar Log for company.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

There was some sort of strange bug with this version of the mod... looking into it.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Well you learn something everyday and on some days two things. Dom3 doesn't like when nations are named exactly the same. They are now boringly enumerated. I chose the high range of nation ids even though some of the default flags are the same because overwriting a default nation leaves you with the national pretenders and spells.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Three things today:) Please try this one instead.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Actually, I have made a slight alteration to the newest version of the mod that pyg has uploaded, to change the colors of the score graphs. I'm going to go ahead and attach that to the first post and start the game shortly. I'm tempted to just do a random map, but we can use a real map if anyone wants.

Note: Please check the first post and note which markatala you have been assigned before uploading a pretender. This is to cut down on confusion, provide distinct player flags, and also distinct colors for each player on the score graph. I'll give another dayish to discuss map choices and whether or not they matter.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

rdonj, I am somehow not listed. Was my cry of 'I must be in this!' not emphatic enough? Is my love for the monkeys not sincere enough? Why hast thou spurned me?

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Oops. Sorry squirrel. In my defense, I was probably either very sleepy at the time, or medicated. :P I will rectify this gross error immediately. You can be Markatala 10... that's the only remaining differentiated flag anyway.

Any thoughts on maps? Is a random map fine?

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Random map should work best because of our unique provinces/player ratio. With this kind of overopwered game, the factor of better balance on pre-made maps vs. random map is neglible.

Re: Markata Madness, all age game
 

Yeah, I agree. I'll go ahead and start the game. However we'll be using a yet different version of the mod. Pyg made some adjustments that will make the game much more aesthetically pleasing, so please download the mod from the first post again. I will also update the first post with things that have been discussed and decided upon to make the game more fair.