[Hrum]

Endomorphious, I wasn't trying to be Mecha Thread Cop (well, maybe I was a little - damn my fascist tendencies!). If the other guys in this game don't mind you chatting in this thread about ideas for a new game I don't either, as long as it doesn't crowd out posts about Turbocharged.

And I wasn't suggesting that you start a thread announcing a new game - obviously you do that when you've settled on a concept / format / settings you like and have decided to run the game (which it sounds like you'd prefer someone else run it). For now, in order for you to get wider readership and more suggestions beyond just those of us keeping tabs on this thread (the players, Gandalf and NTJedi, 1 or 2 lurkers out there?) you might want to have a thread in the regular area to discuss game formats so that you can 1. Refine your idea for a format you'd like to play and 2. Gauge interest among all the Dom3 players on the Shrapnel forums instead of just your friendly neighborhood Turbocharged buddies.

For my part, I like it when people think of kooky stuff to do with game formats and stuff, so I'm happy to talk stuff over, but when it comes to actualy participation in a new game, I'm kinda swamped right now and I probably won't be able to handle joining another game. I'm already in two games (the other one is a regular MP game that's deep into late game), and my work load at my non-Dom3 day job has picked up a bunch recently (damn RL taking away from Dom3 time!). Things might be different for me in a couple of months, but for now my interest is more academic - I'm happy to try and poke holes in your ideas or suggest refinements, but if the game is starting any time soon I probably won't be joining - hence you should take my opinions with a grain salt. You probably should do that anyway.

One thing I'm not clear on - were you thinking of a game with players as allies teamed up to fight against 1 or more AIs? Or an everyone for himself game that might include some AIs as well to spice things up? Or something else I'm not thinking of?

In your original idea you mentioned dominions affects (LA Ermor, etal), and you just repeated that - can I ask why you want a game composed solely (or primarily) of nations with those effects? In my experience (admittedly limited) those effects create additional tension in a game by making you want to attack the nation with that hateful dominion, or want to kill them even more than you want to kill all nations with their false dominions. All enemy dominion is naughty in the sight of and deserves to snuff it, but dominion that kills your guys, or makes the weather unnaturally cold, or spreads disease or insanity is especially naughty. However, your original game concept was - a bunch of dominions that are super toxic to each other, and noone's allowed to do anything about it other than push dominion to win.

Dominion pushes are a valid victory method, but I can't see getting that jazzed about an entire game devoted to nothing but dom pushing. I've never been on either end of a dominion push victory, so I'm pretty far from being an expert on the topic, but as I understand it if you designed a game in which the only victory method was a dominion push, everyone would build their stuff the exact same way (dom10, best scales possible, pretender awake as soon as possible) and the only deciding factors would be does someone have cheap temples (or more expensive ones), or lots of H3s for preaching or whathaveyou. If you allowed a single blood sacrificing nation in that game, I think they would win hands down. If you allowed multiple blood sacrificing nations, everyone else would get squeezed out by them.

And meanwhile, the cool dominion effects you were into aren't really coming into play. Since everyone is pumping dominion like mad, and not allowed to attack in response to the enemy dominion push, only the guy that loses the dominion push is suffering the negative dominion effects, but only for as long as it takes the victor to completely snuff the weaker guy's dominion. The loser has no recourse - this could be a long, painful, not particularly interesting way to be defeated. This sounds more like a thought experiment to be explored by you in SP if you're really curious what it'll look like (maybe I'm wrong though - maybe there are a bunch of people that would want to play this).

I think NTJedi's idea about victory points makes the game much more interesting, in that now there's territory to fight over, so there's a victory method other than pure dom push. Now the painful dominion might be pushed into the contested VP provs by Nation A, while Nation B is the one who has actually conquered the VP provinces and stands to win if he can hold them long enough. Will Nation A's dominion make it harder for Nation B to hold those VPs?

Re: You can't attack players, but you're permitted to assassinate, does that mean you can mess with the other players in any way that has no chance of resulting in you taking one of their provinces? So, remote attacks with independent forces (eg. Send Horror) are OK, but remote attacks with forces that will claim the province for you (eg. Horde from Hell, Ghost Riders) are not OK? It may be hard to make those restrictions clear to all the players, especially if you're mainly courting newish players. You could make a mod that doesn't allow the spells you don't want - that might be the cleanest way.

Re: Assassinations, you realize that sneaky units (assassins) have a chance of being found? And once found by patrollers or PD, a buff enough sneaky unit has a chance of defeating crappy PD (low levels of monkey PD, for example). Since there's a chance that your assassin could take an enemy province, wouldn't this behavior (Assneakassination? Assneakination?) be disallowed?

Re: Vet as Central Power - this sounds like you want someone to GM a game for you (sort of - not quite). I take it this vet isn't allowed to play to win, he's just there to add challenge for the newb players? Ie. he's playing OppFor. That would probably be a lot of work for that player, running this game and making trouble for the players surrounding him, his goal not victory but spiteful resistance to the last. No hope of conquest himself, his only joy being the frustration of his opponents. You might throw him a bone - his one method of victory is dom push. Make him a blood nation and this becomes a really weird Newbs vs A Single Vet scenario. Most guys probably wouldn't be into that, but there could well be a vet out there who would love it. If you find that guy, he might be your game creator, admin, oppfor all in one. Call him Pantokrator - he's not there to kill the new pretenders to godhood, just to frustrate and annoy them to ensure that whoever knocks him off his throne truly deserves to be the new god of the world. It's kinda starting to sound like an entertaining newbie game format, but the entire thing hinges on who you find to play that central role of Game Admin / Veteran "AI" Puppetmaster / OppFor.

One other random thought - if you want to de-emphasize the bless rush, what about using the mod that turns off research, and starts all nations at level 6 research in all paths? It's a mod that takes you straight to mid-game fighting; you don't recruit mages for efficient research (there is none), you just make mages that can cast the spells you want (summons, battlemages, forgers, ritual casters, etc). Since bless nations tend to have the greatest advantage early, that mod might level the playing field a bit by starting the game off at a mid-game research level.