FastStart map now available
 

Trying the other end of the scale this time.
www.techno-mage.com/~dominion now has 3 files for FastStart. You need the TGA and the MAP. The YAB is optional since its the code that was used to create the MAP.

On this map every race is given 7 extra provinces besides their starting one. Almost all randoms that can be removed, have been removed. Each of the province gets a random castle but its in the more common range for castles. Each get an additional commander with troops and possibly some low level items but they are in the more common range there also.

Each of the additional provinces will have a castle, a lab, and a temple. Each of them will have a population of 10,000. Each of the additional provinces have a defence of 25 so even though there is that first round of ownership combat, most should be able to hang onto the province.

I know this is not completely fair to all of the races but I have found no way to just start them with more money, or a large gift of astral gems to start-boost magic research.

Re-playing this map will give you a new HOME province and grant all of the commanders a new roll for magic items in case you feel your race got a really bad start. Oh yeah and re-decide the native units in the extra provinces. The other things require a new map.

The files are not zipped together because if there is interest in this map then I can add it to the systems daily processes to generate a new MAP file that can be downloaded each day giving completely new locations for all of the extra provinces.

The usual payment for free items would be appreciated (some comments?)

Re: FastStart map now available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Gandalf, at any time other than right now I would be downloading your maps and trying them out, and writing comments here, but I confess that playing Dom I (even interesting variants thereof) seems a little empty to me in the context of all the improvements/additions that Dom II will involve, which we might very soon be able to mess with (I'm thinking the demo will come out sometime in the next week or so). It's funny the way it works: if Dom II wasn't coming out soon I would not notice so much the limitations of Dom I. Anyways, all that to say that I'm a fan of innovation, and so don't stop just because people have other things on their minds. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: FastStart map now available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Does a pat in the back suffice?
I always wanted to try a game with some extar initial lands (an initial kingdom), now it's a matter of finding the time to fire it which is no small issue.

Re: FastStart map now available
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Gandalf, at any time other than right now I would be downloading your maps and trying them out, and writing comments here, but I confess that playing Dom I (even interesting variants thereof) seems a little empty to me in the context of all the improvements/additions that Dom II will involve, which we might very soon be able to mess with (I'm thinking the demo will come out sometime in the next week or so). It's funny the way it works: if Dom II wasn't coming out soon I would not notice so much the limitations of Dom I. Anyways, all that to say that I'm a fan of innovation, and so don't stop just because people have other things on their minds. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">it summarize pretty well my thoughts too. Nice work Gandalf, you are gearing up for doms II with your scripts, but I have finished all my pbem of doms I now, and dont want to start a new solo games too. I'm waiting.

Re: FastStart map now available
 

Yeah it started as forcing myself back into Dom 1 getting ready for Dom 2. Then I got back into my map scripts. Finally I thought "well maybe others are trying to get back into Dom 1" so I thought Id offer them.

The scripting for Dom 2 Im not excited about yet. It seems to me that they removed what little the host was willing to fill in logically, and went toward forcing more manual creation.

With the increase of things that MUST be supplied in the map file Im not sure if outside scripts designed to create a completely new MAP file is going to be workable. But thats all doom-saying at this point. I will just have to wait for the game and hope.

Re: FastStart map now available
 

We have only forced the guessing to be where it belongs, in the random map generator. A map generator is much more qualified at guessing what borders with what and which province is a sea or a forest. It made the provinces up after all. In the end this should be much better than having Dom II making bad guesses at these things.