New Kinda Noob game Starting
 

OPEN...WE HAVE JUST DECIDED TO ADD 1 MORE NATION, OCEANIA, any Noob with 7 or less games is welcome to join. just leave your name or PM me.

We have had a number of Noob games started and I have seen a lot of familiar faces in each ot them. So here we are, not really Noobs, but certainly not vets or even close to it.

I saw a game that WAS for vets that looked like fun and thought I would throw it out there and see if there was any interest.

This is for those with around 4 to 7 games under their belt.

The name of the game will be EA Weak Nations 8 players Cbm 1.6 and edm 1.1 on. Map to be determined. If you can't make your nation work, you are expected to fight to the end anyway.

Here is the list of Nations that we are allowed to play,

Abysia
Arco
Argatha
C'tis
Kailasa
Marverni
Ulm
Yomi

These are the same nations used in the vet game so I assume they know best. There is some that think that NO ONE may enter the water for any reason as there are no water nations and Argatha would get a big advantage.

First come first choice

1. Ragnars wolves Abysia (first time, shouldn't last long)
2. Zultor C;tis
3. Hylobius Ulm
4. Mockingbird Marverni
5. Attackdrone Argatha
6. Groundworm Arco
7. finalgenisis Yomi
8. Kobal2 Kailasa
9.
Anything else that sounds fun is up for discussion!!:D

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I'm up for another game so I'll join playing C'tis.

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Good, at least you get to play the nation you want this time!!

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I'll take Ulm please.

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I like the weak nations idea. Since I'm insane enough to enter another game, I'll take a shot at Marverni, if it is still open.

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I would like to give this a shot as Agartha. I have never played them in any age and they seem interesting.

Perhaps a map with small amounts of water would be best? Agartha being banned from entering the water makes them fairly unworkable, but with no other water nations in the game we should avoid maps with significant amounts of water provinces.

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I agree with attackdrone about the water.

I am sure we can find a map with the right amount of water to even the score OR we can just limit the amount of Water provinces on a map if we find one everyone wants to play....

So the short answer is you will be OK!!:up:

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Yomi, looking good

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I hadn't been intending to join another game, but this does sound like a particularly interesting mix- I love the idea of semi-noobs playing weak nations. So I guess I'm in.

I'll take Arcoscephale.

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What the hell. I'll take Hinnom.


What ?

Oh, all right. Pencil me in as Kailasa then. My invincible markata rush should make this game a short one.

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Looks like we have our group....I need to look for a map, any suggestions would be helpful.

Do we want some room to expand a little since we are playing nations we don't normally play and need to get used to, OR do we want this to be a frenzy tupe of game?

Personaly, I would like a medium map since I have NO idea what the heck I am doing with this nation.

I am shooting for the middle of the week as a start date. If anyone will be out of town or has a reason to put it off till the weekend let me know.

I am going to ask Groundworm to be CO-Admin so nothing will fall thru the cracks. While we will get together for important decisions, any delays, extensions stc either of us can make. This way I am sure one of us or both) will look at the forum a couple of times a day and of course you can PM us if need be.

Any suggestions or questions please ask.

One has come in.... Argatha, to be effective in expansion needs water, he doesn't want free run of all the seas, but a finite number I think will fill the bill. I just need help in the finite number , having never played Argatha before,

Re: New Kinda Noob game Starting
 

I'd suggest Land of Legends as a map. With 8 land nations, we'd get ~16 provinces each, Agartha would have no trouble getting its feet wet, and the map has an interesting gimmick: the central island has more magical sites than average, so getting in there nets you a) more magical gems and b) a dogpile.

ETA: although there's probably too much water in there if Agartha has free and unrestricted reign. Either we deal with it organically (by dogpiling Agartha), or by adding a 9th player as Oceania (a weak nation if I ever saw one), or, y'know, pick another map :}

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I have been wanting to try Land of Legends for awhile. Seconded as map choice.

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Land of Legends is one of my favorite maps. We could edit the map to make sea provinces poorer, there's a flag "Small Province" which reduces the number of inhabitants in a province, decreasing resources and income.

Another option is editing the map to reduce the number of sea provinces in total, 9 instead of 18 perhaps (each one larger). I'd be willing to do either, since I'm playing as Agartha, I'll just need to fire up my rusty modding skills.

The second option is preferable, because the first option does not reduce the number of magic sites in the sea.

Edit: I have the graphics done, I just need to recalculate the neighbors. Bleh I hope there's a way to not have to do this by hand.

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I'm voting for the small provinces flag option. Redoing the Province IDs and adjacency information is... tedious at best. If I remove provinces then I'll need to go through the entire province list and redo adjacency and terrain information which could take a while.

Also, reducing the number of sea provinces will leave each remaining province with way too many adjacent land provinces to be reasonable. It's pretty hideous!

Or we can add Oceania! They're pretty weak especially with no clams available in CBM.

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Hmmmmm, never thought I was opening that can of worms.

Sea provinces....we can just say Argatha can take so many (insert figure) sea provinces and can't change them around so they can 'mine' them. What they take is what they get and they better hang on to those.

Will the island in the middle be a game breaker for the person who gets it? What if we made that islan un-nappable...in other words it is like king of the hill and you can take it and hold it as long as you want, naps do NOT include that island (I kinda like that)

I can post for Oceania if you want.
I am more worried about preset starting positions (and have NO modding skills) than anything.

This is ALL of ours game, so while I may take the cvote, as long as we stick to the general premise I am game for anything that will make it better and more fun.

Last thing, I noticed in the vet game it said "NO hall of fame entry points) which I suppose that if you win this because of the nations involved you can't put your name on the wall.

I am inclined to think that may be fine for them but if I WIN this thing wirh Abysia (which I have never plaed before or even read a guide about), AND we are all NEW....I wanna put my name on the wall!! (Course I am like a 100 to 1 longshot, but a guy can dream). Modders...tell me what you can and can not do along with do you want to do it.

Last thing...thanks for the feedback!!

I will post for Oceania in the OP and in the forum and see if there is a taker either tonight or tomorrow.:up:

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I don't know how to change the Heading and get the word starting out of there

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Also, with Oceania in the game we should ensure they do not start in one of the sea provinces which is only adjacent to two others (or the horrible tiny corner sea) as this would be crippling. This can easily be done by adding a "No Start" flag to the provinces in question.

Likewise most (though not all) of the map edge provinces should be flagged as "No Start." A capital adjacent to only two other provinces would cause me to despair. Personally I would recommend balancing out exactly as many available starting provinces as the number of players to ensure even distribution throughout the map.

This would be trivial to do.

As for the center island - I suspect it will be split between several players.

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Corresponding the center island provinces can have the "many sites" flag taken out to make fixed start positioning much easier.

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With three routes to the center island, the best I can do is place 6 of 8 land nations equally close to the ports. The other two start positions will be inferior. Therefore, I second the call to modify the map to remove the center island's "Many Sites" status.

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I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, it removes the whole gimmick of the map, and starting on the island is a tough proposition without the gem boost to fend off 3+ opponents at once. On the other hand, I really have no idea how much of a difference "Many Sites" make, or whether it would shift the balance the other way round and make the central nation(s) roll over everyone else easily.

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Normally, each player would have two land neighbors, plus one more if they are one of the players on the island.

X-X-X
|.....|
X....X
|.....|
X-X-X

Opening up the island as a start position for two people results in each player having three land neighbors (the usual two plus one on the island) with each island player having three neighbors as well.

X-\../-X
|...X...|
X-..|.-X
|...X...|
X_/.\_X

The second diagram is not completely correct, but it is fairly close.

Re: New Kinda Noob game Starting
 

I'd like to join as OCE.

：）

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I have the map 98% done, so I just need to double check for errors and make sure all of the starting positions are balanced.

The changes:
A: The center island no longer has the "Many Sites" modifier.
B: Eight land and one sea starting position have been added.
C: It is unlikely that the island player will take the entire island at the start and become neighbors with six players, they'll likely have 3-4 neighbors. But if they do extremely well, they get 6 neighbors as a reward!

My criteria for the starting positions are as follows:

A: Each start has at least 4 territories between it and another starting position (Excluding the water start).

B: Each start is adjacent to at least four territories, with the following ratio:
4 adj. territories = 2 farmland + 2 forest/mountain
5 adj. territories = 1 farmland + whatever else
6 adj. territories = does not need to be adjacent to farmland.
(The water start gets four adjacent sea territories, no tiny corner sea for you!)

Edit: Here it is, the map uses the regular image file. Land of Legends: Multiplayer. Two lucky players start with only three territories between them, but each has their capital adjacent to a large farmland province. Seems all right to me.

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CBM 1.71 is released! This merges in the EDM among others (Armor Rebalance being a major one).

Buffs to EA Agartha (better provincial defense, slight heat preference), EA Arcoscephale + Abysia (Armor Rebalance means their troops have much less encumbrance, Arcos. Myrmidons are now 7 instead of 10, and Abysia sacred troops are 4 instead of 6 for example), and EA Ulm (their shamans now have a chance to get Astral magic).

Sounds good to me!

Edit: Other highlights:
-Sanguine Dousing Rods, Jade Knives, and Dwarven Hammers are now unique.
-Ring of Earth added: E4Const6, Misc slot, +1 Earth.
-Titans are less useless

Re: New Kinda Noob game Starting
 

Thanks to attackdrone for the ichy map stuff, the criteria looks good.

I'd vote to stick with CBM 1.6 + EDM 1.1 for this game and wait for CBM 1.7 to shake out a bit more first, there seems to be fairly drastic changes. We could consider throwing in the armour revamp mod on top. Otherwise if folks want to try 1.7 I'd cringe but will go along (Oh Noz big changes! Panic!). Though Agartha for sure could use the very interesting auto-darkness buff on pd

On the other hand, more good news, I heard from qm in irc that a newer CBM 1.7 with heavy nation rebalancing is being worked on.

Re: New Kinda Noob game Starting
 

GREAT JOB Attackdrone!!! The map sounds great... Question, will the starting sites be random or will they be preset? What I mean is I know they will be preset as far as the actual starting province. But, will they be random on who goes in those preset provinces?

I think we will stick with 1.6 until it is tested a little more and all the bugs shaken out. I know it helps a number of folks in here but I don't want to get 30 turns in and find a bug that makes it unplayable.

We have a person that wants to play Oceania. However, he has been around a couple of years and may be a little over our heads. What is the concensus of you guys on letting him play...

I told him NO as of the moment but could ask him agian if we want to.

You might want to PM Fingergenesis and ask about it and some other details.

When will the map be available AD?

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I: There are 8 land and 1 sea start, but it is random who gets assigned which province. What I did was simply set all provinces except those nine to be ineligible start positions (meaning this map cannot be played with more than 8+1 players). It'd be simple enough to change that again if needed.

II: 1.6cbm + 1.1edm sounds good to me!

III: The map is ready, and posted above. Here is another link.

Land of Legends MP

I am not sure if the stand-alone Armor Revamp mod is compatible with 1.6cbm and 1.1edm. There might be unit or gear conflicts. This is likely why it was all merged together into a single mod for 1.71cbm.

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I'd like to emphasize the above with some extrapolations, please do correct me if it departs from what the host intends. I've seen hosts say the above in a few games, and ideally you fight tooth and nails to the end, however we all know this is unrealistic and is sometimes (often?) ignored by some, we ask that you at least:

Please have the courtesy of giving the players a headsup to any multiple stales, going Awol (multiple stales in a row) without a heads up is in bad taste, barring actual unforeseen circumstances where you are physically unable to post on the forum (alien invasion; meteor taking out your service provider; you were tied to your bed post and left to die; emergency taking you away from internet access...etc).

Real life can (and will) interfere with your dom 3, we're all cool with this and games are often generous with postponement or sub/AI at worst, what we're not cool with is going awol with zero communication. We all know awol in many circumstances gives undue advantage to certain players and in general lowers the quality of a MP game, a heads up so that the host can delay/find sub or switch to AI goes a long way to maintaining the game quality and enjoyment of its players.

If you find others you play with in a MP game to be beneath your consideration and the 30 seconds it takes to post a heads up, you do not belong in this game (or any MP game for that matter).

We otherwise welcome anyone who can commit to the courtesy of informing the participants when they can no longer play (or require a delay) for whatever reason, hell even if you just don't feel like playing anymore.

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I think that about sums it up for the most part...

However, what I was trying to say is this, We are all new and do NOT have all the answers. One moment we are expanding smoothly and the next you run into Hinnom and you are retreating in a rush. You feel somewhat dejected that everything didn't continue to work out like you wanted.

I am not expecting you to spend a long time on your turn when your getting a azzz whoopin or are hemmed in and can't do much.

I DO expect you to continue playing (unless of an emergency, and trust me if you have a number of 'emergencies'in different games, folks will remember you)and try and put up whatever fight you can to slow down the opponent or make your small empire as hard to take as possible (hell, build a fort in every province etc).

It is just a game and real life is more important, but you do make a commitment to 6 to 12 other people who are giving their time to go as long as you can. IF you just want out, man up and say it...we can understand that as we have all felt that way and their are a number of vets who 'specialize' in taking unwinnable nations and play them as a kami-kazi, just to make your life MISERABLE (gotta love em!!) and we will try and get one.

NEVER put a password on your game PLEASE, as it really does ruin it for eeveryone else.

That is all I can think of and this isn't directed at anyone as most of us have played together since we have started. I just wanted to have my say...lol:up:

BTW, I am up at my folks (GrudgeBringer) for dinner and am using his comp..sorry I forget sometimes it doesn't show up as me.

Ragnars

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Thank you for the map mods, attackdrone- they sound fantastic!

I think someone who has been playing MP Dominions for years is a little above our heads. I'm sure we'll find someone else to play Oceania, and if not then we can just play with 8.

I'm interested in the idea of CBM 1.7, but those changes do sound drastic. Perhaps holding off for now is the better part of valor.

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Yeah, I'm not too keen on using the new CBM either. Armour Revamp changes a *lot* of things, and I'd rather not rush into an MP game on a mod I haven't had and won't have the time to play around with alone for a while to get a sense of what's what.

'sides, my monkeys already lost their clams, you want they should give up the hammers too ? :)

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Where can I get the .tga file for the map?

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Never mind, I found it. Google to the rescue!

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Still looking for one more player to take the role of Oceania. Any takers?

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only the one...

BTW I D/L Attackdrones map file....it is a RAR file (which I have no idea what that means) I just dropped it in the file with Land of Legends in my Dom map file. Is that good enough? (I REALLY do not know much about computers)

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Ragnars: you need to unpack the .rar file (I don't know what kind of system you are using, but most modern systems will activate some kind of unpacking utility automatically if you click (or double click) on a compressed file.

Once it's unpacked you should have a Landoflegends folder which will contain a .map file. The .map file should be placed in your dominions map directory.

Hopefully that was clear enough. :p

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I did double click on it and it asked me what I wanted to open it with (basically). When theat happens I never know what to do as the list they supply is pretty lame. So I just stuck it in my maps folder along with the Land of Legends map files.

If this doesn't work is there ay way it can be A ZIP FILE (Lol, I know how to hit extract):sick:

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Or bite the bullet and grab winrar (assuming you use windows or its simulators), you may run into more rar in the future:

http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR-64-b...ml?tag=mncol;2

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I don't think Windows extracts .RARs natively, only .ZIP. Look up 7-zip, it's free, tiny and super easy to use. Once it's installed, all you need to do is right-click on the file and select "Extract here".

If you're on a Mac, Google suggests RARExpander, but I'm Mac illiterate so I don't know how practical it is.

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I might be pushing the limit, I dont remember how many games Ive been in, but if its more then 7, its not by much, I would love to join the game if you guys will have me, and you can pick whichever nation I play, I need to learn how to play them all.

I'll take Oceania if thats the only one left open, I wouldn't mind trying fishmen

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Enjoy the fishes! Oceania would probably be the best choice for someone with slightly more experience anyways...

Looks like we have our ninth!

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I think you guys put this together real well with the choice of nations.

The only other nation if you wanted to add a player I think would be Tir-A-Nog.

But nine is a really good number, good luck!!

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Sounds good to me!!!

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Xanatos. Awesome. Even if you are slightly more experienced than the rest of us, you're welcome just for the name. :) Did you take it from Gargoyles, perchance?

So, now that we have our nine, when are we aiming to begin? (I always get excited about the start of a new game)

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Gargoyles, yes, and also a star wars jedi apprentice book=p

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attackdrone has helped this computer challenged person get the map installed so we are ready to roll.........

I will get the game up sometime this afternoon, OFFICIAL NAME (I shortened it) Kindanew.

As some of this have been thru this recently...NO PASSWORDS OF ANY KIND PLEASE!!!

Groundworm and I will be Co-admins so that someone will always go by the site a couple of times a day or you can PM me. Groundworm is doing this as a favor to me as he is admin in a couple of other games. He will drop by the site in case of extensions etc but PM ME if there are problems.

OK Get ready to roll guys!! If there are any last minute questions, now would probably be a good time to ask.

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this is on llamaserver?

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Yes it is on llamaserver

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I just went in and was setting up a game (for the first time) and the Cbm 1.6 comes with so many different things I am not sure which to use. The one I was going to use is CBM 1.6 indy commanders only. Any ideas? I am also going to put this on the forum and send to Groundworm as he has started a game.

Also, do I set a master Password?:confused: