[PBEM game] Entwined Destiny (Over)

[Yvelina]

> The realm of Somewhere is renowned for its mastery of magic, but more mundane warfare has been discarded

Exactly... that would describe my Vanheim/Man/Pythium/Caelum (We will get one of these, I hope) perfectly after turn III

[Alneyan]

So, we have this final roster:
- Aku and Boron (I have both mails)
- Alexti and Izaqyos (I have both mails)
- CUnknown and YellowCactus (I have YellowCactus' mail)
- Dragon11 and PashaDawg (I have Pasha's mail)
- GriffinOfBuerrig and the BirthdayParty (I have Griffin's mail)
- Tuidjy and Yvelina (I have both mails)

The method to pick the order claims are made will be random, and I will be casting the dice to see who goes first.

To save some time, I was thinking of asking two or even three teams at once about their pick. The team(s) not speaking first would make other choices in case their first nation(s) of choice are already taken.

To make that clearer: let's say I mail team X, Y and Z about their nations. X claims Ulm, Y claims T'ien Ch'i and Ulm, Z claims T'ien Ch'i, Pangaea and Marignon, but wants their choice to be cancelled if someone picked Ulm before them. In this example, team X would have Ulm, team Y T'ien Ch'i (they are before team Z in the order), and team Z Pangaea.

One Last note: since the map has not been chosen as of yet, the water nations will probably be out of the game (that, and it would make nation choosing more complicated).

[Alneyan]

And the settings as of yet:

- Number of players: six teams of two players
- Map: manual placement of the teams next to each other, though the placement itself may be kept secret (if playing on a standard map).
- Independents: The usual 6 for now
- Research: To be determined
- Site frequency: The standard of 45% for now
- Hall of Fame: 15 entries
- Scores are off, but there will be comments about the nations.
- Victory condition: Last team standing (or when all teams are willing to concede to a team)
- Mod: Zen Pretenders mod 2.0, available from here. The latest change lot for the mod is available here (it is currently the latest post in the thread).

[Alneyan]

I have just sent mails to the first three teams in the order (random order as decided by the die). The first team makes a single pick, the second team picks two nations, and the third one picks three nations, with the first nation not claimed by anyone else attributed to this team. The water nations are out of the game.

Sending mails to three teams at once should make nation picking a bit faster, as I will only need four rows of mails to get that part done. In the meantime, there are still a couple of items in the settings that have not been addressed as of yet. The main one is about the map that will be played; I only made a suggestion here about Theater of War (because of its layout).

[Yvelina]

Two questions:

The standard for multiplayer games is magic ressources 50%, not 45%... I do not remember playing a 45% game, unless Yarnspinners was one. Any reason for going to 45%? 50% makes winging probabilities and the payoff of additional searches easier.

Aren't we going to use the six-leaf clover map? Theater of War or something? I cannot think of a standard map that really has six equivalent corners. No one want to play 'monkey in the middle', I hope.

(Karan)




(Craddle)

[Alneyan]

I simply thought 45% was the standard in Dominions, but it is in fact 40%. No problems with having 50% magic sites. I heard nothing about the actual map before, so I was thinking Theater of War did not particulary appeal to the players. It is indeed a very nice map for such setups, and it even comes with preset starting locations.

If we use Theater of War, one small modification may be made to the map: the connection from the mainland to the south-east isle is not as deep as the five others, for no reason I can discern (I made this connection standard in another game using the same map).

Another matter is the preset forts on this map. They have a nice garrison (though nothing to write home about if memory serves), but their presence means the province itself can be taken without a fight. Without patrolling units or PD, a mere scout would take such provinces, leaving only the garrison to take care of at a later date. Would you like to keep the forts in, or should I remove them from the .map file?

[Yvelina]

I think that the forts should be removed, or those who take Caelum or a sneaky nation will have a great advantage... they will be able to bring troops to wrestle these provinces away from the scouts.

As for fixing the connections, I have not looked at them, but what you say makes sense.

Oh, about the research... what is the reasoning against standard research? Not that we would change our race pick based on the research difficulty, or anything. But we should definitely know the setting when designing a pretender. Negative magic scales in retarded games are suicide.

[DragonFire11]

I've been a little late in reading these posts. Uber bless? Folks, how ever did ya'll learn so much about this game. Aside from Panther that is, those engineers once they build in the bugs in a system it's a good decade of leisure time to "trouble shoot" (i.e. drink beer and play games). I don't even have a clue what normal bless does -- I simply order my priests to do it b/c they have nothing better to do. Anyway, I suppose this is the normal time to trash talk and all, but I really need a victory under my belt before talking smack. Ah what the hell, we’re going to kick your collective butts!!! (Maybe. Possibly.)

[alexti]

Yvelina said:
Aren't we going to use the six-leaf clover map? Theater of War or something? I cannot think of a standard map that really has six equivalent corners. No one want to play 'monkey in the middle', I hope.

Inland is a fine map for that, everybody will 'monkey in the middle'. And it's not too big either. If we only have 6 teams = 12 players, we better stay under 120-150 province map if we don't want the game to fall apart as people will get tired of micromanagement

[The Panther]

Hey, I am not playing in this game, but I just want to applaud Alneyan for hosing Dominions games for other players. It is guys like this who make the MP community a success for all players.

Also, 6 teams of 2 is a really nifty idea. It is a nice change of pace from the standard FFA games.

As for the team draft thing, reversing order in the second round is a good plan. We do this in my scratch golf league and it really evens out the playing field for all teams. The first guy to pick will get his/her best race but then the teammate has to select from the dregs of whatever is left over. A good way to balance the teams.

I wonder if a single team will get Ermor AE/SG and Pan CW? That would be a very interesting combo indeed.

As Yvelina mentioned, Theater of War seems designed exactly for this type of game with its 6 independent leafs plus the middle for everybody to fight over. No one can really complain about bad starting positions on that map.

Anyway, good luck all and I hope you guys and gals post in this thread on the game progress plus any good battles.