The Middle Way - Faerun EA [Need Replacement]

[Tyrant]

In the game i played Edi the mapmaker started in the western isles. Despite playing Vanheim, he thought it was a bad start spot, but i don't really know why. Seems to me that starting in the middle of the map will be tough.

[Shovah32]

CB:no(already made pretender)
WH:either
Graphs:YES oh god please yes

[WSzaboPeter]

I forgot to vote for graphs and I vote NO! Thanks a lot.

[Hellboy]

So, looking at the posts, it looks like if we're going to have a blitz, it'll be Sunday afternoon. So, I'll propose Sunday 2pm EST (GMT - 5).

If it doesn't work out, that's ok, but with or without blitz, I would love to see move through these early turns quickly.

[Hellboy]

So, based on what I've seen so far, I think we're narrowing in on our settings, and I would suggest the following:

Graphs: Off
Victory Conditions: 40-51% of total province count (w/ expectation that consensus on game end will happen before reaching that point)
Magic Site Freq: 60 - I haven't heard much comment on this one, but in absence of debate, I'd go w/ this value.


PLEASE NOTE: The server is now tested, we are on track for starting tomorrow evening. If for any reason you do not expect to be able to play 1 turn/day early turns, 1 turn /2 days later turns, please pull out now. If, for example, you have great heartache w/ the proposed game settings, now is the time to withdraw. I really, really don't want to see anyone disappearing or going AI on something like turn 3.

[Hellboy]

Evilhomer said:
Is there anything wrong with placing 16 (2 water) fixed starting position (evenly spaced and all atleast decent)?

Yes we would know from start where the other starts are but not what nation, and more importantly, this will give all atleast a fair starting position.

True, but imo it would also be a pretty big advantage for those that go for a SC pretender that is available turn 1. Or any other rush based strategy, where you want to go for the early player knockouts.

[FrankTrollman]

Deleted.

[Hellboy]

FrankTrollman said:
...

It seems we have a different definition of "advantage".

Rush positions are best on small maps (10 provinces per player), and get increasingly bad on medium (15 provinces per player), or large maps (20 provinces per player).

Faerun has 424 provinces on it. At 16 players, that's still over 26 provinces per player. That's titanic. That's... very bad news for a rush position.

Even if we threw in 4 more players, it would still qualify as a map larger than "large" for the number of participants. I don't think throwing a bone to the rush positions is all that weird under the circumstances.

And I'm playing New Faith Ermor. It's not like a good showing by Helheim in the early game particularly favors me. It looks like from what we have we could throw in all the alternates, and make all the start locations fixed and known, and rush powers would still be crawling uphill on their tongue.

Heck, it's even high magic sites, so the bulge that a capitol has over a random neutral province is pretty small. The whole "I took over another country" thing isn't even all that big a deal...

-Frank

Count on Frank to get to the point...

Well, right now my knowledge of map editing is very limited, all I know how to do is #nostart, and #specstart, I really don't want to start in precisely fixed positions, and it seems like a pain to put in #nostarts everywhere but the 16 we actually want to use.

I'll look into it further tomorrow morning, and see if there's something more direct we can do.

BTW, I don't have much experience in playing w/ magic site frequency: if 60 makes many provinces just as good as capitals, that would be a good reason to lower it. I know from playing SP that 45 still leaves plenty of sites, but nonetheless I was thinking it'd be fun to have more than average # of sites. OTOH, simply having the huge map, w/ its special provinces maybe means the gem supply will be far more than adequate right off the bat.

[Hellboy]

FrankTrollman said:
Faerun has 424 provinces on it. At 16 players, that's still over 26 provinces per player. That's titanic. That's... very bad news for a rush position.

Actually, thinking more about it, isn't it the case that if you know precisely where all your neighbors are, that the # of provinces/player is irrelevant? Instead, I would think that the limiting factor would be the distance between capitals. At least if the rusher has an SC Pretender, I would think that if he is 4 provinces away, then he could arrive at your capital on turn 5 (or sooner, utilizing flying). Am I naive to look at in this fashion?

[Meglobob]

60 for magic sites for gems sounds great to me.

I have played several MP with 50 and I still have never had enough gems to do all I want.

Also 60 will make the game alot more fun.