Two Newb Questions

[elxaime]

Hi -

By way of background: my cousin was a big D2 fan and decided to evangelize his extended family to play D3 together. Nine of us now have copies of the game (my uncle, a brother, three cousins, two nieces, and a nephew - hehe). I am going to create the game for PBEM. Aside from my cousin, we are all newbs and learning the game for the first time. We plan to play RP style and for fun and use the Glory of the Gods multiplayer version map. Here are my questions:

1. The game victory conditions are winner-take-all, but since we are playing this RP-style among only family (e.g. competitive but not cut-throat) I am trying to figure out how to create victory conditions that will maximize the chance all the players will remain involved and we don't end up with seven nations wiped out early and only two playing on. In other words, I would like to find a way to have the game play out Kingmaker style, where even though you have one winner the players all are in it till the end, rather than Risk style, where you end up always with two slugging it out.

Can anyone suggest themed rules they have developed for fun, RP-style games that I can modify and use for ours? And is it a good idea to use cumulative VP conditions? These seem likeliest to avoid people getting wiped out too soon.

2. As far as where the nations start out on the multi-player map, is there any way to designate where the nations will have their starting province? I think it would be fun to have desert nations start in a desert, cold nations in the icy north, etc, but it seems the game always places nations randomly. Is there any way I can modify the game set-up to place nations in a specific province?

Thanks for any help with these questions. This is an amazing game, but it takes awhile to play and I am trying to figure out how to maximize the fun.

[zepath]

On the first point, try setting up your game with the "Victory Points" condition for victory. Select the button that assigns one point to each national capital and then use the slider to set the required number of victory points to win to something like 20. You can then use the other three sliders to set the number of provinces on the map (randomly chosen) that will be worth one, two, or three victory points. I would recommend setting these sliders to 9, 4, and 2 respectively. These settings will require any of your players to sieze a total of 20 victory points to win. Each of your capitals will be worth 1 point and there will be a total of 24 ther points out there in independent provinces. This should encourage you all to fight over the victory points rather than try to destroy one another completely.

On your second point, yes. You can change a .map file to assign specific starting locations. Check out the mapping guide .pdf in the /dom3/docs/ folder for more info. If you would like an example of such a map, my Uropia map uses those commands to set nations in their "appropriate" places on a map resembling Europe. You can find the map in the Maps & Mods sub-forum.

[Gandalf Parker]

There are some maps that have starting places set. The new "Dawn of Dominions" does I think.

And how many family do you have? You might start a game with a large map, let everyone choose their nations and then put in all the other nations as AI's. Make the goal of the game to cooperate and beat all the AI's.

[Ironhawk]

zepath said:
On the first point, try setting up your game with the "Victory Points" condition for victory. Select the button that assigns one point to each national capital...

Actually if your intent is to keep players in the game then I would recommend not having capital VPs. The capital is the heart of any empire and if you lose yours you are basically out of the game. By not placing a VP in the capital you reduce the incentive to capture it.

[zepath]

Ironhawk is certainly right.

[elxaime]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions.

[Endoperez]

There are two kinds of VP in the game now. The normal VP condition is met when someone (anyone) controls the required number of VPs, even if for a turn. Several well-timed stealth-attacks could win the game.

In a cumulative VP game, the number of VPs will increase by one for every VP province controlled in midsummer. The more victorypoints one controls, the more points he gets, but even if he loses some of his VPs he might have a chance ofwinning if he is too far ahead. Surprise attacks in early summer can still win the game, but more often it just gives one player an advantage instead of instant win.


As far as starting locations go:
The game does try to give nations spesific starting provinces. I don't think it can recognize desert areas, though, so starting or neighbouring province(s) of the preferred terrain should be enough. Ulm prefers mountains and/or forests, at least, and Pangaea forests, etc. I'm not sure how often the nations start in provinces of their preferred terrain, but I guess it would be pretty often.

The starting sites can be pre-set as well. this is done by editing the .map file (or copying it and editing the copy). Map editing manual in \Dominions 3\doc has details about the process, but it basically consists of one
#specstart <nation nbr> <province
nbr>
line for every nation. Nation numbers are in the end of the map editing manual, not in the mod manual.

[HoneyBadger]

I like to use huge maps, 1500 provinces are a given. Also setting gold, resources, and supplies to 50, and independent provinces to 9, really slows the game down. It also promotes careful strategy and makes each unit just a tiny bit more personal. If people are playing water nations (my favorite), make sure they're separated into different smaller bodies of water with one very large ocean to compete in. That way you don't get any of that land-vs-water nonsense. Everybody should have their own territory, infact, as that will promote competition in the wider world while reducing land-grabbing-out-of-necessity. If there are specific provinces which earn VP then make sure they are very well-guarded. Learn to create and modify maps, and program VP provinces to be guarded by dragons, cyclopes, krakens, etc. Not 500 krakens, mind you! but a respectible force that will take a dedicated, concerted effort to take, hopefully extending the capturing nation's resources to the point where it becomes interesting to see whether or not that nation can hold on to the province. That way, you may see more bargaining (diplomacy in action) and long-term planning, which should invest peoples' interest more than not, and the more interested everyone is in the outcome of the game, the less chance everyone will end up in front of the television, instead.

[llamabeast]

1500 provinces! Wow. Unless your family are very (very very) keen, that might overwhelm them a bit. Something like 15 provinces each seems to be the norm.

[PDF]

If your group is 10-12 players I'd suggest the Dawn map/scenario also, it's a very nice map and nations are "thematically" placed. The only problem would be that some nations have a rough start (Caelum mostly) due to bad (and intended) initial placement.

As for victory conditions I'd suggest a team game (with fixed teams) so players have to concern with their allies'survival and not only focus on killing enemies, and either "simple" VPs (with at least 10 VP provinces to prevent easy rush from flyers/stealthy troops/teleporters) or 70-80% provinces for a given team. To keep track of # of provinces held you could use the --scoredump flag so you'll have a quantitative report of provinces controlled by each nation.

Just my 0.015 € (that's US 2 cents approx )