The Masterized Game / Evolutive mod concept
Tests have shown that most changes made in a mod during a game take effect immediatly (the known exception being spell moding). So a mod can be used to create worldwide events (changing things like the gold per population or scales effects) or base stats of units / nations during a game.
It's also very simple to create a scenario with a fantom nation (in a province not linked with the rest of the map) that can be used by a game master to be informed (ie the nation can have stealthy 100 spies on all provinces), to recieve money (the gm nation being the bank you pay for things like upgrading your nationals troops), or to organize events like special invasions (using units modded to be able to teleport themselves out of the unreachable province) etc...
Of course, the game mod wouldn't be changed each turn but something like one time per game year (12 trns) or 1/2 real weeks.
The features of a masterized/evolutive mod game may include :
* buying upgrades for your nation each year (better stats, weaponry or new special abilities for national troops, or even making new kind of troops recruitable, changing buildable castle/terrain, changing gem production of your sites, etc...)
* buying infos from the gm spies (or any other info system, ie the gm may spread rumors in a newsletter)
* random or scenarized worldwide events each year (ie like the "week of..." in the HoMM serie there may be a "year of" system, for example in the year of magic the magic scale effects may be doubled)
* neutral factions / special monsters played by the GM and eventually bribable by the players (ie imagine some dragons controlled by the gm nation, raiding random provinces each turn unless the players corrupt them)
* etc... etc...
Of course all this will come with some flaws like... the need of a gm sufficiently competent (and crazy) to organize that, and able to stay neutral, all players having to download/replace a mod on a regular basis (with possible unknown bugs related to mod evolution or players forgeting to upgrade their version), and the possible balance issues related to upgrades (of course the prices system should be well thought). But all in all the incredible potential of masterized games worth to take some risks IMO.
For the moment my idea is just theorical, I'm not planning to host this kind of game in a near future, but the possibilities of Dom 3 in this area just amaze me.
And you... Would you be interested by a game with a GM using a fantom nation and an evolutive mod ? Is there someone here planning to try to organize this kind of game ?
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