11p very large (TURN 69)

[DrPraetorious]

SERVER INFO:
IP addr: 160.39.37.168
Port: 11145
Game name: 390mp

By my clock, the blitz should begin 2 hours and 15 minutes after this posting. I'd be satisfied to get 10 turns in, but we'll keep going until people want to call it a day.

This is a final testrun before I try to run a tournament.

I'll post login info and we'll upload pretenders and blitz, say, Sunday? Time is negotiable. By blitz I mean - we do several turns (as many as we can manage, really) and then switch to a 24h quickhost. After a few weeks I'll lengthen the host interval or turn it off entirely.

The map is slightly larger than I'd planned at 390 provinces. It has 11 start locations, none of them underwater. The following table shows the remoteness (total pathlength to all other start locations) of each start location:

-- remotness,170,98
-- remotness,272,91
-- remotness,370,80
-- remotness,3,95
-- remotness,118,87
-- remotness,234,100
-- remotness,236,84
-- remotness,360,104
-- remotness,88,107
-- remotness,349,96
-- remotness,65,82

The map itself was generated by Paradoxbringer's map gen and then slightly modified by hand. Frank Trollman drew most of the sprites.

Do people want to try special provinces again, or no? I can add them back easily enough (no fortresses this time) but I'll see if people want them. If there are special provinces, they'll each be worth an extra VP.

Settings:
Late era.
Gold: 125%, Supplies: 125%, renaming allowed, hall of fame 15, site frequency 45, 1 VP/capital (VP required will be 6, or 15 accumulated, or more if I add special provinces with VP in them).

Each player begins with a small additional army of low-quality independents:
commander x 1 (34)
commander x 1 (35)
priest x 1 (240)
scout x 1 (426)
light infantry x 15 (29)
archer x 15 (33)
heavy infantry x 10 (38)
light cavalry x 10 (26)

These additional forces are meant to blunt the impact of various sorts of early ill-luck, and also to make "face hugging" a little bit harder. I'm not 100% sure if this is a good idea - feedback appreciated.

Positions:
TNDP - T'ien Ch'i
Baalz - Ulm
StrictlyRockers - Caelum
JayThomas - Agartha
EvilHomer - Marignon
Shmonik - Arco

eliminated:
*CPU Controlled* (was WSZP) - Man
*CPU Controlled* (was Shovah32 and Folket) - Patala
*Dead* (was Wikd Toths) - Abyssia
*Dead* (was Catquiet) - Utgard
*Dead* (was Reverend Zombie) - Mictlan

So far everyone either supports or is indifferent to the bigger starting armies; I see slightly more in favor of special provinces than opposed. Unless there's a clear consensus in favor I will leave them out.

ON SCEHDULING -
How do people feel about 10AM EDT? That ought to be 2PM in London, but we've got funky daylight savings time now so it might be 1PM in London, not sure.

ON MODS -
Unless Baalz complains about being unable to bless ghoul guardians, I will not run the blessing hotfix.

If he does, I'll add the blessing hotfix (and everyone will need to download it, but it's real small.) I've gone ahead and added it to the attachment since it's a handy file to have in any case.

I have a blessing hotfix mod that enables Ulm to bless Ghoul Guardians (also enables blessing of the crypt thing, a few other sacred undead units that show up for non-Ermor.) The only thing it does is remove the no-undead tag from the blessing spells. Should I add it? If Baalz thinks he wants to bless his ghoul guardians I'll definitely add it - otherwise I'd just as soon avoid the hassle.

I *will* be running that mod for the tournament games, unless the issue is addressed in the main executable by that time.

[Baalz]

I've been wanting to give LA Ulm a try.

[GameExtremist]

Sounds pretty grand : )

LA Arcoscephale please.

[WSzaboPeter]

Greetings, LA Man please. Good luck and have fun.
I think those special forces are a great idea, but I vote against special provinces.
I think I could or should give a try to Ermor, Ashen Empire, but in other LA games it's banned, and usually (due to bad D2 experience) people tend to gang up on Ermor. Anyway if you think it's okay to be with Ermor then I should be with them.

[Ighalli]

So, is the game starting Sunday or being played out then? I'd love to play as Pangaea, but I'm busy for the whole day Sunday. To me 390 provinces and blitz seem mutually exclusive, so I don't quite understand what's going on.

[WSzaboPeter]

I think by blitz in this case we understand that we play the first few turns as fast as possible, then switch to something like 24h quick host.

[StrictlyRockers]

LA Caelum please. Looking forward to starting with blitz session on Sunday.

SR

[Reverend Zombie]

DrPraetorious said:
This is a final testrun before I try to run a tournament.

The map is slightly larger than I'd planned at 390 provinces. It has 11 start locations, none of them underwater.

I'm not sure about the other tests you have been running, but this seems to imply there may not be underwater nations allowed in the tournament--is that correct?

[DrPraetorious]

RevZom - half of the maps will have two water starts, the other half will have no water starts.

ParadoxBringer's mapgen doesn't have revised ocean placement capability yet - which makes it very difficult to make a map which is, say, 20% water with all the water in one place.

Once his mapgen can do that (which the next version should be able to do) I'll be able to add water starts to half the maps.

[Reverend Zombie]

DrPraetorious said:
RevZom - half of the maps will have two water starts, the other half will have no water starts.

Cool, thanks for replying!