Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Finished
 

If your favorite part of Dominions is the mid-game then this game might be just what you're looking for. By removing all magic above level 6 (and all globals) the traditional end-game is eliminated. By removing the need the need for site searching (all sites are revealed when you take control of a province), and most research, the game very quickly moves from expansion to mid-game.

If you think you may be interested, download the attached mod (includes CBM 1.6) and fire up a test game. You'll find expansion is a breeze with most spells through level 6 available from turn 1. Of course the problem won't be indies ... but other players who have access to the same level of magic.


Era: MA
Banned nations: All water nations, Ashdod and Jotunheim (recruitable SCs in a game without SCs), Ermor and Pan (free spawn issues in a game without battlefield clearing magic).
Number of players: Around 8 (depends on the response)
Map: TBD (approx. 12 provs/player)
Starting provinces: 3
Hosting: 24 hours until turn 20, 48 hours until turn 40, 72 hours thereafter
HoF: 15
Other settings default


Details

Spells: There is no magic above level 6. All spells from levels 6 and below have been been made level 0 and are available immediately. The only exceptions to this are remote attack/movement spells which are assigned to level 3 (this is the only reason to research at all). Mists of Deception is also banned. In addition, all globals are banned.

Magic sites: 30%+ Conj./Blood and all Constr. sites are banned. Other than that everything is a level 0 site - meaning there is no need for site searching. This also means you may have a good supply of gems of a type your national mages can't use - keep this in mind when designing your pretender.

Magic Items: All level 2-6 magic items are forgeable from turn 1. In the previous game Squirrelloid discovered a problem in that if a random event chose a level 2-6 magic item the player wouldn't receive anything since there were no longer any items at those levels. So a selection of weaker unique magic items has been assigned to those levels so that the player receives something from the event (note all these items have 65F65A forging cost so no point in trying to research Constr. so you can forge them). Here is the list of items if you are interested.

Mages: Mages are very important in this game. While small numbers won't be able to take out armies by themselves, as in a normal late game, masses of them will inflict considerable damage on the battlefield. And without a need for research there's no reason not to mass them. In this game mages are meant for fighting. This of course impacts what you choose to recruit since you don't care about getting the most efficient researcher.

Blood magic: We will be using the blood magic nerfs from Squirrelloid's balance mod. This increases the price of most blood summons. Additionally, Jade Knives, Soul Contracts and Lifelong Protections have been eliminated. And some spells have been removed for this game. But keep in mind that the opportunity cost of blood hunting that exists in a normal game isn't an issue with no research to be done. If you are not at war, there's no reason not to have every blood mage blood hunting (aside from a few for summoning and forging). The best thing to do if you are thinking about playing a blood nation is to load up the mod and look at what's available and what it costs.

Armies: Troops, both recruited and summoned, will be relevant throughout. You don't have to worry that master enslave will obsolete your well-balanced army or that Flames from the Sky will incinerate them. Thugs will have a role in this game but the only SCs you are likely to encounter are opposing pretenders.

Misc. changes: Naiad warriors cost increased; Machakan spider forms have upkeep cost.


Players

Abysia - Fantomen
C'tis - Squirrelloid
Caelum - Graeme Dice
Eriu - zlefin
Pythium - BigandScary
Shinuyama - Dark Kitty
Ulm - LDiCesare
Vanheim - Valerius

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Am I expected to defend my title as BL? Because I was considering playing a different nation =)

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

No, feel free to switch. It's the player defending their title - not the nation. :)

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I'll play as Pythium.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Caelum for me.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Pretty good response this time around! Maybe halving the number of unusual settings worked. ;)

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I'll take Ctis, which should be quite different from BL.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

That is very different. One thing is for sure: any nation without recruitable healers or a pretender with that ability should fear the miasma more than usual since there won't be any way to obtain healing.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

bwahahahaha

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Interesting, I'll play Abysia.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Good to have a powerful blood nation on board. But please do look over blood magic carefully, even if you're familiar with Squirrelloid's mod, since there are some differences. Don't want there to be any nasty surprises (one that pertains to Aby is that there is no Send Horror - though Send Lesser Horror is available).

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Yeah, I've looked at it. No jade knives, no vampires, no contracts and no send horror. Quite a nerf, but I think it's all good and necessary changes. Like you say the settings compensates in that blood becomes more viable from the start.

The world shall BURN!!!

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

LDiCesare has confirmed that he will play Ulm so Mictlan is now available for anyone in the mood for a double bless.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

So we've got 6 players. We can play with that but I think it's worth waiting a couple more days to try to get 8. Also, this is a holiday weekend in the U.S. (through Monday), which may impact some players.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

First try. Inverted tower (4 air, illusionists) just near my capital. Wow.
The sites will make for more magic diversity.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Yeah, it will be a big change. You'll find sites early on that you normally wouldn't until later (like most people, I suspect, I eventually search my provinces for every path except sometimes blood - but it takes time).

It does fit in with the idea of speeding right to the mid-game, when you have managed to search all paths. But mainly it removes one of the many conditions I had last game in the hope of the game having a broader appeal.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I would like to join as Shinuyama

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Ok, we just need one more player!

So, let's assume we'll get 8 players. Any map suggestions?

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

this looks interesting, i'm gonna poke around the mod and see what nation i'd like to try; but i think i'll join (though if someone more definite comes along, feel free to go with them instead)

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

No worries; we haven't decided on a map yet so it's easy enough to add another player.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I ran a batch of random maps. These six seemed the most promising. Any opinions on the attached options?

Edit: these are all 125 prov maps and would work fine for 8-9 players.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I guess 2 or 3 (more rivers)

I was looking at maps on llamaserver yesterday : the Hyborian Age and Europe seemed nice, altough a bit big compared to what you wanted (unfortunately there was no link for Europe)

If we have 8 players with ~12 provinces each, maybe Aran could do?

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

aran is an awful map.

Middle Earth is 106 provinces though, which is ~12/player. I've wanted to play a game on that map for awhile. And iirc it has very few water provinces.

Random maps are bad because they only have border mtns (no real mtn provinces). So unless you want to massage some .map files...

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I don't like the maps because they have water provinces. 6 would be my best bet from a quick look.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

My concern with those is that they have too many water provinces

I considered Aran based on the number of provinces (I've never played it MP) but I don't think it's balanced.

Middle Earth could work on the lower end of the provs/player scale but I've got to say I just don't like the look of that map. It's tough on my eyes.

No problem. We can do basic edits like creating real mountain provs or changing prov connections, or even extract portions of a larger map like with Cradle in ThreeFort.

Though I'm the most anti-water nation player I know, I like having a few water provinces as features to break up the terrain. Would you prefer no water provinces at all or that they just be single provinces, not two or three together?

BTW, I don't think the random map generator makes rivers impassable - they are just decorative features. But I could edit the map file to make them impassable.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

I was thinking about more provinces with higher incomes actually but I think you're right, they must be only decorative. It would be nice to have a map with some impassable obstacles though (not necessarily that you modded yourself, surely there is plenty of maps which already have some)

I usually like maps with water but since most people don't seem to like them and since I have the only "water-capable" nation so far, I guess we can find a map without water (may I ask for one water province though, to make a pond for my kappas? :p)

EDIT : how about Ringworm or Six Lands then? No sea, pretty balanced...

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Zero water province is the best for me. If not, preferably not too many clusters, and no more than 2 provinces together.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Ok, I tried to incorporate the suggestions: have some water provinces so that water summons/troops can be obtained but no more than two together.

I cut off the right side of elmokki's Land of Milk and Honey map and eliminated most of the water provinces. There's only five: two sets of 2 and 1 by itself.

It should be around 100 provinces.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Looks ok. So are we ready?

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Yeah, I figure no objections means everyone is ok with it. I've had very little time for Dominions today but I'll fix up the map ASAP (have to redo the province connections, etc.) and setup the game. Hopefully zlefin is in; if not, then we start with 7 players.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

i'll take eriu.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Recruit
 

Great, so we've got 8 players.

Ok everyone, I've attached the map to the first post. This version doesn't have fixed start locations. Please let me know if you notice any problems when testing it.

Also, see the JPEG on the first post to view proposed start locations.

I'll set up the game on the llamaserver shortly with a placeholder map.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Closed
 

The game is ready to accept pretenders.

You can ignore the fact that Cradle is listed as the map. I'll swap this out for the real map before we begin.

So, any suggestions regarding the proposed start locations let me know.

BTW, I did make some small changes to the map. I added an extra bridge on the upper left of the map so there would be another access point to the upper landmass. I also added a second bridge to the larger island. Click on any of the provinces with harbors to see where they connect to.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Closed
 

Even though I dislike water provinces, 50 and 32 should be linked considering they touch each other. It's quite distrubing visually that they are not.
I also have one issue with the map, I can't zoom out far enough to see it whole. I don't know how to change that. I managed to get it smaller changing the defaultmapzoom in the .map file, but then it would gladly ignore it and revert to full size...
17 should not be a start province. 3 neighbour provinces is really aweful.
21 is too near 7 for them both to be start provinces. It means a flying god can go from one to the other and try to dom-kill the opponent on turn 1, which is a bit mean. Whereas 54 is far from all other starting places, and therefore pretty safe. 98 is also pretty much isolated, having only one not-so-near neighbour.
Is lack of connection between 20 and 26 made on purpose? Can be explained by mountains, but not obvious at all.
Here is a proposal.
I drew black borders to show the Voronoi diagrams of the starting positions (i.e. what's inside your border is nearer your capital than anyone else) and the number of provinces inside one's "natural borders".
I think that this shows well that 17 and 21 are not good starting positions:
Proposed map on the left, my proposal on the right:
http://a.imageshack.us/img715/6289/m...voronoi.th.png http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/8...y3final.th.png
It's far from perfect. The central nations have more room due to not being able to hide in a corner, but the corners are more evenly divided (no lone nation in the north), so I think it should be more balanced. There's also less disparity in terms of number of neighbours to the capital.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Closed
 

Wow! Now that's some testing!

Definitely an error.

I've noticed the same thing with the ringworld style maps. I don't know any way around it, though I guess I could add blank space on the right and left of the map to have it zoom out properly.

That's an error as well.

I like your changes and am inclined to accept them wholesale. BTW, I did think the one bad spot was the start right in the middle. I thought about dropping some mountains in there to isolate it a bit.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no need to site search or research - Closed
 

Good work LDiCesare! Much better!

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

LDiCesare, thanks for the map fixes. All changes have been made and the map has been uploaded to the server.

There is also a new zip file attached to the first post. It contains the same tga as previously, a map file without fixed starts (uploaded this to the server as well in case someone else finds it useful), a map file with the 8 fixed starts, and also a more zoom friendly alternative tga.

Adding space to the width of the map was successful in restoring the ability to fully zoom out and see the entire map at once. The quirk here is that adding space to the left of the map messes up all the province locations (my guess is that the xy coordinates are read from the top left of the map) so you need to add all the space on the right side of the map. This actually works fine with this map as we can just extend the ocean. If you want to use this version rename milkandhoney3.tga to something different like milkandhoney3old.tga and then rename milkandhoney3zoom.tga to milkandhoney3.tga - no guarantees but this worked fine when I tested it.

So now that we've got the map uploaded I set the game to start once all pretenders are in.

Reminder: when designing your pretenders keep in mind that we are starting with 3 provinces so you'll have some extra gems, gold and resources from turn 1 (well, no guarantee on the gems part).

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

Three pretenders to go. How about we aim to start by the end of Friday? It would be nice to have this game rolling by the weekend.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

oh yeah, i need a pretender for this game, lalala

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

Sorry for dragging the turn out, I'm having some kind of problem with the game crashing when opening this turn. Probably some map or mod thing, I'll solve it tonight.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

Open message to the stinking lizards of C'tis:
How dare you invade lands near the Holy Country of Ulm?
Such arrogance shall not be tolerated! Begone, lizards, or suffer!

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

Strike at us at your peril. We suggest you look in other directions for open provinces. An attack on our lands will merit swift and sure retaliation.

If you have something of value to offer, a trade might be possible, but we do not simply surrender that which we've justly claimed.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

Provinces just next our capital are ours and that's not negotiable.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Send pretenders!
 

Its completely negotiable. You can be reasonable, or you can die.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Running
 

I noticed Pythium's turn wasn't in a couple of minutes before hosting so I delayed hosting by 12 hours.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Running
 

Thank you. I thought I got it in in time, but that may have just been through your help.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Running
 

Well, this is unfortunate. No one is interested in peace. Oh well.

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Running
 

Partly this is the game settings: no need for site searching, little need for research and no globals to aim for certainly encourage early fighting (this is deliberate). The first version of this game actually encouraged early fights even more since there was no expansion phase or fort building (all preset).

The other thing is that Caelum and I are actually exceeding our combined allotment of provinces, making the northern and southern edges of the map even tighter.

Expansion was certainly diffferent than a normal game. While Blade Wind once again underwhelmed, Magma Eruption didn't disappoint. Always nice to soften up charging elephants with a couple of castings before they reach your skinshifters. :)

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Running
 

I have to go out of town and may not be back until saturday evening, could you delay if needed?

Re: Battleground - CBM, max lvl 6 magic, no site search/research - Running
 

Sure. If I see your turn isn't in as hosting approaches I'll add time to the clock.