online mp game vs ai
 

Hi,

after one year absence of Dominions 3 I had a demand to once again create a mighty pretender, horde some pearls, forge magic items, destroy huge enemy armies and last but not least hear that beautiful Falsobordone soundtrack again ... so i'm back to the game.
But to the topic, a friend and i want to play a game vs some computer opponents. Is there a possibility to host an online game for 2 players vs (say) 3 ai with cbm and worthy hero mod ?
I just tried to create a llamaserver game but there is no option for computer players.
Thx in advance

mighty_scoop

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

I'm afraid the only way to do it through the llamaserver is by creating, say, a 5-player game, then setting three of the players to AI.

That's not just me not bothering to implement AI players - I don't think there's any way to set such a game up from the command line (i.e. automatically).

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

Err, doesn't Gandalf have the facilities to host that sort of game?

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

Yes the Dom3Minions server is for hosting Dom3 games with full availability of all the Dom3 options you have ever seen or can dream up.

Allied AIs are usually done map commands added to the .map file. You might want to generate one or make a copy of one so you dont mess up a map you mght use later in another game.

The nation numbers can be found here.
http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/nations.txt
the map commands have a document file in your dominions doc directory. Or a quick reference version here..
http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/map_qref.txt
so in an early era game, adding these commands to the .map file
#allies 0 1
#allies 1 2
#allies 2 0
Would ally Arcos, Ulm, and Ermor so that they will not attack each other.

OR depending on how big a game, you can grab one of the always-open games on my server
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostedGames.htm
I have scripts that add randomly chosen AIs on some of them

OR you could just send me whatever settings you had for the LLamaserver game plus whatever you wanted to add, and I can setup a game for you and your friends.

There is also some writeups available on running a game on my server or any other which have some feature options listed.
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostingGames.htm

There are also more options for boosting the AIs in Dom3 games. The vanilla AI is completely random which can offer surprisingly good moves but more often surprisingly dumb ones. However there are game settings, map commands, specific maps, mods, and modded nations all of which are designed to increase the AIs performance. In fact I have yet to feel that a dom3 game using all of them at once is even playable

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

It's weird that this was posted, since my friends and I were just asking this same question. Thanks GP

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

Thanks Llamabeast, thanks Gandalf,

the dom3 community is really great !
@Gandalf the Dom3Minions Server sounds great. Is there a way for me to host a game on that server (similar to the "create a game" mask on llamaserver) ?

Greetings

mighty_scoop

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

Yes
On LLama server you use the menu to setup and run a game, but it hosts on LLama Server. And its PbEM (play by email)

On Dom3Minions there no menu, and its direct connect (more like playing solo). Other than that its the same

On Dom3Minions you use anything you have seen on any menus (like LLamas) or seen on any Dom3 game, or read in the threads, or thought up yourself. Send me an email with the settings and I will pop up a game for you on the server. Thats what the thread I posted earlier here for HostingGames was about

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

Ok, thanks again,

this was the problem. I somehow thought that it would be possible to host a game on your server in a similar way to the llamaserver. I will send you a pm with the game details.

Greetings

mighty_scoop

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

You mean something like this?
http://www.dom3minions.com/lab/MakeGame.htm
No, but if you want any of those settings included then feel free to let me know in an email to
gandalf at community.net

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

Ah yes, something like this. Is the MakeGame Mask still in work or as you wrote just a proof of concept ? It looks great and would be awesome to great a small multiplayer game vs ai.

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

No it was proof-of-concept back before LLamaServer was born. I also played around and worked out many of the things with email servers.

But the Dom3Minions didnt go those directions. Its a full-featured shell-account server. Originally it was to grant accounts to people who wanted to run games and didnt have a server. They would login with full server access and run the games from their accounts. Many of the people who ran games in the early days and later went on to run Dom servers of various types had accounts on Dom3Minions. Some server info...
http://www.dom3minions.com/ServerInfo.htm

I dont tend to give out accounts anymore. But I still wont take D3M to a full service Dom3 server. For one thing it does too many other things (domain server, email server, hosting online worlds). Altho I might one day turn back on the map generation features it had running once.

Also doing direct-connect games is not as flexible as email games for allowing just anyone to pop up a game whenever they want and walk away from it. As it is now I have nearly 100 Dom3.exe running at the same time. If people could play with game options and start games they never play there would be alot more trash cleanup needed than there is now.

Finally, I just dont like menus. Its the hacker in me. Menus are limiting. Menus and defaults automatically make me try to go outside of them. I dont even like pointing out the MakeGame.htm or saying "anything you can create on LLama's I can do as direct connect". It creates a "de facto standard" type of dom3 game which I despise. My "support" of "standard" Dom3 games is in the pre-made always-open hosted games.
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostedGames.htm

If anyone wishes a standard game to be added to that list as always available then just let me know and we can discuss it. But outside of those I would rather continually point out the many many variations that this game supports which could never be fully menuized in order to try and get people to be more creative in the dom3 games they start. Like the "Sitting on the Fence" thread mentioned here...
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostingGames.htm
Those are what I want to host. The ones that could not be run on a standard server. Come up with things you WISH could be done and challenge me.

Important Point:
I am not one to condemn anyone for not thinking like me. One of the purposes of the proof-of-concept tests and the many postings of the scripts I use (and even scripts for features people think it should have that I dont use) is to allow someone with any old computer to create a full-featured Dom3 server if they wish to. (well and to shut up some people who thought I didnt do it because I couldnt figure out how to do it) :)
I will gladly help anyone setup a Dom3 server.

Gandalf Parker

Re: online mp game vs ai
 

You can also provide the AI opponents with its own SC's if you're looking for a new challenge.