Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Started!)
 

OK, we've got 10 players, I think we can start.

I've been curious to do this kind of game for a while. Essentially, no one may build a second fort; if you are given a fort by an event, or if you conquer an enemy fort, you must destroy it at the earliest possible opportunity and cannot recruit any units from it (except for a commander which will then destroy the fort, if you have no units in the province where the fort appeared).

I am open to suggestions on how to make the game workable under this constraint (see rule 3). Anyone with constructive criticism or ideas is welcome to post them.



Rules

Era: MA
Players: Wound up with 10.
Settings: Renaming on, Easy Research, Magic sites 55
Mods: CBM 1.6, Indy Commanders Only (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...0&postcount=42)
Diplomacy: Non-binding
Map: Streamlands (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=713433)

Other rules
1) Fighting to the last breath is expected in this game. Seriously. When you start losing, the end will come VERY swiftly. Might as well play it out.
2) No water nations.
3) Since each nation's fort is very vulnerable, none of the following spells may be cast on another player's fort for the first 20 turns:

Seeking Arrow
Hurricane
Baleful Star
Rain of Toads
Horror Seed
Leprosy
Black Death
Blight
Melancholia
Fires from Afar
Volcanic Eruption
Raging Hearts
Flames from the Sky
Locust Swarms
Beckoning
Wolven Winter
Murdering Winter
Tidal Wave

They still may be cast on non-fort provinces at any time. After that, all bets are off. I'm not sure how enforceable that is--if anyone has suggestions I would be grateful.

Hosting: Start at 24 hours, but delays will be fairly liberal.

Victory Condition: Concession by the other players

Players:
Belac.........Vanheim
Grijalva......Bandar Log
Shovah32......Abysia
Frozen Lama...Ermor
Agent Smith...Jotunheim
Veto..........Pythium
Trom..........Caelum
Don_Pablo.....Mictlan
Statttis......C'tis
Michai......Pangaea

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort
 

is Ashod allowed? if so, then Ashod please, if not, then Bandar Log,

thanks

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

I think this is one of the few situations in which I would allow Ashdod.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

I would note that Ashdod is more powerful in this situation, because most of its awesome is cap only.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

Srsly. Cap-centric nations will be extremely powerful in this setup.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

Hmm...but everything is so resource-intensive, and gold-expensive, and research would be so slow with 1 mage/turn. I could be wrong.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

They have to deal with resource-intensiveness normally anyway. Both their sacreds and the Adon (and the forge/research giant commander) are cap only already. So a 1 fort game is sort of like a normal game for Ashdod for most of its primary combat units.

Sure, they're gold expensive. Until you realize 600g of giants easily kills 1000 gold of other units. Gold expensive is solved by expanding, not building castles. You do realize that all of Ashdod's castles cost like 1400 gold, right? So prohibiting anyone from building extra castles is net-advantage: Ashdod (they can afford fewer castles), even ignoring that everything really awesome is already cap-only.

Research: They don't need any. I mean, Alt 3 is always nice, and not that hard to get to if you care. But otherwise... blessed sacred giants will just pwn.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

Alright...having looked at Ashdod again (including its PD and fort options) I have come around. It is too powerful in this situation.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

Van is taken, so could I get.. hmm..
Abysia?

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

...yeah, I've been playing around with Ashod in sp and it seems like with a doublebless Ashod would just dominate this game; their cap-only-ness is their only real weakness.

So that means I'll be going with my second choice: Bandar Log

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

i'll take MA ermor. i'd say less than 10 provs per player. maybe 7 or 8, but you could pre=place the starts so no one is insanly close.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

I would like to join as Jotunheim :)

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

i vote to increase magic sites so that people can get more troops and commanders via summons

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

May I join as pithium?

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

MA mictlan would do better than you might expect in this setup.

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

I know) you prefer to see me as mictlan? ) I can )))

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

Hello,

May I join as Caelum?
Ç:-)

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

As I see Mictlan is still available, isn't it?
Veto takes Pythium and Chris makes a compliment to Mictlan but he doesn't say he'll play it.


So I'll take Mictlan! :)

Re: MA Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Recruiting Players)
 

OK, we've got 8 players. I'm hoping for 2 more, but if we don't get them we can start with what we've got. In the meantime, let's discuss the map. I posted a few ideas below, but other suggestions are of course welcome.

Here are some map ideas:

If we get 10 players:
Bering modded to have 10 starts (92 land provinces)
Hyborian Age (90 land provinces)
Tyrande II modded to have 10 starts (82 land provinces)
Threelake (92 land provinces)

If we still have 8:
Isle of Thrones (63 land provinces)
Sha Bay (68 land provinces)

If we get 12:
The Desert Eye (108 land provinces)
Northwest Middle Earth (113 land provinces)
A Pangaean Earth (108 land provinces)

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~2 more players)
 

i vote bering

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~2 more players)
 

I'll join as C'tis.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~1 more players)
 

What about indy strenght?

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~1 more players)
 

May be indy 9?)

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~1 more players)
 

I wonder if we should use better independents or just have a house rule that says "no indy troops or mages" or something like that.

The reason I ask is because I think BI-mod was designed to improve the AI's recruiting behavior rather than balance the game. In fact, it may be unbalanced, but I'm not sure.

Thoughts?

Also, what about mercs?

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~1 more players)
 

I wanted Better Independents to prevent the wars between players to devolve into loads of indies recruited outside of forts. The game already has 2 not-really-enforceable house rules, and I hesitate to add too many.

Indies could be set high, but remember that our ability to recruit expansion parties is very limited. I wouldn't go higher than 7.

No problem with mercs, I think.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Seeking ~1 more players)
 

This game idea is interesting. I like that it avoids the mad castling that typifies the late game. Please sign me up as Eriu.

But Grijalva is correct that this makes indie mage sites even more powerful a factor in this game than they normally are. If you want to emphasize national units how about modding out sites that allow recruitment of commanders/troops?

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

That is a good point. It's partially counterbalanced by the fact that any such site would be vulnerable to conquest (if other players' scouts see a lab in your territory, that province would become a target since you couldn't fortify it). More to the point, I don't know how to make that mod. But if another player wanted to, I'd be willing to use it.

Also, if we are going with one of the maps with fixed starts (I like wraparound maps, so Bering is my personal choice), someone also should mod those out. I don't know how to do that, but I would be grateful if someone would.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Absolutely, that's one of the nice things about these settings. I was thinking more in terms of the character of one's nation. Since you can only recruit one of your national mages per turn, if you find a couple of good indie mage sites it takes away from the flavor of your nation. It also should be noted that this potentially provides a huge research boost to nation's lucky enough to find good sites.

No problem. There's actually already such a mod on the llamaserver. I can compare it to Edi's current database to make sure we're not missing any sites and, if needed, upload a new version.

I'm not a fan of wraparound maps myself but my main concern with Bering is that it's a lot of water considering there's no water nations. It does give an advantage to some nations (including my own). Frozen Lama and I are currently in a game on Threelake and I really like the map. Still has maybe a little more water provinces than would be ideal but not as bad.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Although I agree about the flavor thing, I think the balance is more important (as you can always lab up in tribal provinces, unless BI takes those away).

As to maps, I see your point about Bering. Threelake looks much better, though. I would switch my preference to that.

So current mods are: CBM 1.6, Better Independents 2.1, No Mage Sites 0.1
Current favored map: Threelake

Anything else we should do?

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Ok, I took a look at BI and Grijalva is right: aside from commanders there are a lot of units that are recruitable. In fact, since the intent is to help the AI, most good units are still recruitable. It sounds like what you had in mind for this game is no indie troops or mages at all - only indie commanders to ferry troops. Does that sound right? If so, we'll need to modify this.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

If you, or another player, could do something like that, that would be wonderful. I'm not sure about tribal mages; They aren't as unbalancingly powerful as magic-site indy mages, and everyone is likely to get the chance at them. As to indy units, I did have in mind that they would be nearly all unavailable (there's always the indy archer, but I don't think it would detract from this game to remove them too).

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Sure, I can work on the mod.

The tribal mages aren't that powerful but everyone will be recruiting them so that they can get more than the one researcher a turn from their capitol. A big part of my concern with magic sites granting mages was based on my assumption that there wouldn't be tribal mages in the game. If there were no tribal mages then you'd have some nations recruiting only their capitol mage every turn while others recruited 2 or more depending on what sites they found. I think you can have tribal mages but not sites that allow mage recruitment but if you allow sites with mages then you have to have tribal mages as well.

But I like the idea of playing essentially a no indie map: allow only recruitment of non-mage indie commanders to ferry troops (maybe scouts as well?) but no indie troops. This helps emphasize national differences (for example, everyone can't recruit indie archers).

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

I could go either way, so I will go with you. Make a mod restricting recruitment of indies to just commanders (and, I think, priests, but not scouts), and upload it, and we will use that, CBM 1.6, and the no mage sites mod.

Thanks!

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Ok, one more thing to consider is gold/resources. Without indies and with only one castle you could easily have more gold than you can use for recruitment. Obviously these settings skew towards nations with low resources troops but I think there should be some way to use gold. Increasing resources from the default is one option. We could also allow tribal mages and even magic sites with mages and have that be an outlet for gold.

Another idea is to allow players to keep captured capitol forts. This provides an additional incentive to take an enemy capitol as it unlocks your non-cap mages and gives you another fort from which to recruit troops. This also helps with the problem of the last few players having more gold than early on but still just one fort in which to spend it. At the same time, you still won't have the number of forts you typically see in the late game.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

That is one reason I could go both ways on the tribal mages. Another gold factor is that people are going to be buying a lot of PD, in lieu of fortifications/larger armies.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Thinking it over, we might be best off allowing recruitment of any indie commanders (but no indie troops) as well as leave the magic sites with mages as is, as Frozen Lama suggests. This gives a couple of options for spending gold besides in one's capitol. In particular, with only one fort I think you have to allow indie scouts since no one can afford to waste their capitol recruitment slot on a scout.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

CF2 has made me hate non-wrap maps. i am in the exact center of threelake and it sucks. i will only play a non-wrap map if it has preset starts

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Yeah, you have the one really bad start position in the game. We could probably switch the start positions around but I think it would be hard to avoid having anyone in the middle of the map.

Well, if we want a wraparound, what about Streamlands? The same number of land provinces but only half as many water provinces as Bering.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

i vote streamlands

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

I vote for streamlands

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

I'm all for the indie-less game, with exceptions for non-magic commanders and scouts...priests and tribal mages (the ones with the word "tribe" in their name) would be ok too IMO.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Attached is a modified version of CBM 1.6. Indie troops are not recruitable. Indie non-mage commanders, priests and tribal shaman are recruitable but not other indie mages. All magic sites that allow mage or troop recruitment have been removed.

It would be helpful if some test games were run using the mod to let me know if there are any problems. You will want this to be the only active mod when you create your pretender.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

nice, this will be really useful in test games too. Especially if you want to test out only national armies against each-other.

thanks

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

Streamlands is fine by me. Assuming there's no problems with Valerius's mod, we are good to go.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

I found nothing wrong in a short test game. I'm putting the game up.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Full, Organizing)
 

OK, game is up. I went with indy strength 6 and 150% resource multiplier, to make resources keep pace with gold a bit.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Send in Pretenders)
 

The indie strength and resources settings sound good.

There are some things I missed in the mod:

* I didn't mod out the brigand lair site so villains are recruitable at normal cost if you find that site
* The burgmeister guard is normal cost
* Some of the triton units are also normal cost
* I should have modded out kelp fortress

I can make adjustments to the mod by Saturday or we can just use the honor system and not recruit those units if they are available (this of course will apply anyway since there are likely other things I missed).

Also a reminder that when creating pretenders you only want this mod active, not CBM.

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Send in Pretenders)
 

Hi,

Help, I have a problem when I try to download the "CBM 1.6, Indy Commanders Only". The link at Llama doesn't work. ¿¿??
Thanks,
Ç:-)

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Send in Pretenders)
 

Trom, here is the correct link.

Belac, maybe we should put this link in the first post?

Re: Single-Castle Game: OneFort (Send in Pretenders)
 

I think we can do any indies you missed on the honor system, Valerius. Thanks for creating the mod!