Gandalf's Crazy Solo Games

Actuarian · #1 January 8th, 2007, 07:32 PM

Gandalf,

I don't think I phrased my last qestion very well. To clarify, I was wondering, for these really big maps, if you change the setting for the supply, resources and gold income levels to something other than 100, and if so, why. Also, what do you generally set the independent province army strength and the magic site frequency to?

I really enjoy your random maps.I'm messing around with one of your tubular maps now. Thank you!

Gandalf Parker · #2 January 8th, 2007, 08:43 PM

I havent tried messing with supply/resource/income settings yet but I do recognize that they have the ability to create a different game with different strategies. I will probably get around to them eventually.

I sometimes set indepts higher. And sometimes even lower (which makes a VERY interesting game on a mega-map).

I do tend to set magic sites higher in my own games. I might eventually get a script done to push the magic sites to the max and beyond (read bit-binary terrain settings and up it on the map).

In case people havent noticed, I have a strong tendency to head off in any direction that the crowd isnt going. With so many options in this game, I get peeved at the impression that certain strategies are game-killers when they tend to be strong strategies only for certain game settings. So I love to explore the options and see if it might make a playable challenge.

Foodstamp · #3 January 8th, 2007, 09:19 PM

I am curious how the late era nations with special dominions perform in your massive single player games. Particularly Ermor and Rlyeh. Does Ermor go nuts? Or on these larger maps do other nations step up later in the game to take them out?

Gandalf Parker · #4 January 8th, 2007, 10:15 PM

In the super-massive test-games using all 79 nations it was Ermor in an early lead but their scales do eventually use up their people once enough ations stop their advance. In mid-game it was Oceania which always took the lead. At the end it was Arcos coming up fast if they had survived that long. I didnt run the Dom3 test games to the end altho I wish I had with at least one. I didnt know Id lose the ability to do those. Of course things vary depending on factors such as who it is that Ermor starts next to, who Arcos starts next to, Abyssia, etc. By the way, the first one out was usually Mictlan because the AI doesnt handle it well. All of this was reported to the devs for consideration.

Gandalf Parker · #5 January 10th, 2007, 07:15 PM

I think I might have found the map I wanted to put extra time into.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap...tContinent.jpg

Not only is it fairly maze-like, and has 4 oceans which tone-down the abilities of the water nations. But best of all it randomly provided the color of sea borders that I like. I tohught I was going to have to wait for the next patch to get that. So I got my land, water, land border, and water border colors.

Gandalf Parker · #6 January 10th, 2007, 07:16 PM

I think I might have found the map I wanted to put extra time into.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap...tContinent.jpg

Not only is it fairly maze-like, and has 4 oceans which tone-down the abilities of the water nations. But best of all it randomly provided the color of sea borders that I like. I tohught I was going to have to wait for the next patch to get that. So I got my land, water, land border, and water border colors.

The other maps I was considering are here.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap...ers/_index.jpg

alexti · #7 January 11th, 2007, 02:51 AM

Maze-like maps are fun, but they unfortunately makes the game against AI much easier.

I was thinking about 4D hyper-cube map with attached opposite side (sorry, can't recall how it is properly called). Idea is that on 3x3x3x3 (81 provinces) hypercube any 2 provinces will be neigbours. On larger one - 4x4x4x4 some pairs won't be neighbours any more, but it will still be very open map. It sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure how to visualise it in 2D. Ok for 3x3x3x3 map you don't really need anything complex - you just know that everything has a common border. But figuring out what borders and what not on 2D visualisation of 4x4x4x4 hypercube is non-trivial and '8' won't help much because there will be so many edges indicating connections

Gandalf Parker · #8 January 12th, 2007, 03:30 PM

You want an insane game against the AI? Try the game at the beginning of this thread
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/MegaMap.zip
with the indepts set to 3 or 1 or even zero. That way the only opponents that the AI will hit are the specials that will grant it extra magical equipment.