newbie mp question
 

Hi Dominions Community,

after playing some dom games with the demo and reading the great multiplayer lp from matryx on somethingawful i decided that i also have to play this game in mp and ordered it immediately. After 2 1/2 weeks waiting the game finally arrived today ...
so where and how can i start playing ?!?
Thx in advance

mighty_scoop

PS: I'm really looking forward getting crushed by some pro players ;-)

Re: newbie mp question
 

There are two ways.
One is to simply browse the MP forum here and look for a game to join that starts or needs a replacement player.
(24-96 hours of time per turn to send in your turn orders).

The other is to hang out in the Dominions irc channel and hope for a blitz game (a game played complete over several hours).

I'm waiting for a blitz myself, but had no luck so far...

Re: newbie mp question
 

thx for your fast answer ...

sadly blitz games are no option for me ... don't have enough time for that ...
so i guess i have to browse the mp subforum for an open game

btw: How active is this community ... are there many games getting started in a week ?

PS: man ... i'm really really looking forward to play my first mp game ;-)

Re: newbie mp question
 

Games are started rather often but you should realize that to be successful in a MP game you should at least know the game well which is not that easy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Games for newbies are also started rather often

Re: newbie mp question
 

You should really check out some tactics in the Strategy Guide (stickied in the main forum here) and try them out in Single Player for a week or two before you head into a Multiplayer game.

The reason for that is that you might be stuck with your initial choices for months as the game goes on, and you find out you made some choices that pretty much killed your game for you before you even started.

And you want to give the players around you the best challenge you can! It's no fun for everyone else when one person is able to rush you and take you out, thus adding to their power while everyone else is busy fighting even matches.

Good luck and welcome!

Re: newbie mp question
 

Thx again for your answers ...

yep, that was what i did ... i read some race guides, read some multiplayer forum post and tried them (so far as possible) ...
i think that i'm pretty familiar with the interface and the game engine ... that's why i want to play the game now for what it was designed ... multiplayer

Re: newbie mp question
 

You might consider "subbing" for a player in an MP game.
That way you get the feel for mp with a ready-made excuse if you lose "it wasnt my choice of nation and pretender"

Re: newbie mp question
 

As fair warning:
Resist the temptation to jump into to many games at once. The Early turns go fast and won't take more than a few minutes a day, but later on if you're doing at all well it'll be easy to spend an hour or more a turn, especially if you're trying to coordinate with an ally.

Re: newbie mp question
 

The best thing you could do would be to organise your own newbie game. Experienced players tend to forget to organise newbie games, so it is really helpful when new players do it themselves. You will probably get people signing up really fast.

For examples of recent newbie game threads, check out Jotunland or Pretender's Playtime (both started by newbies), or Peccary (started by me), all on the multiplayer subforum.

You would be very welcome to use my PBEM server, which makes things pretty easy. If you are averse to PBEM, you could perhaps ask Gandalf Parker to host a network game for you, or else host one yourself if you're not behind a firewall or anything.

The community is very active, by the way. There's currently 39 games running on my server, and perhaps another 10 or more also organised from this forum. They start at a rate of perhaps 2 a week, I'd guess. But they're like buses - sometimes you have to wait a fair while, other times there's loads starting at once.