Faerun MA PBEM (Calmon/Ermor Wins)

[calmon]

Amhazair, try out a new game folder and copy only the .trn file in this folder and start this.

[Amhazair]

I feel so stupid... I must have been very tired last night, cause I never once thought to try what 'redo turn from the start' would have as effect.... that worked fine.

I still think weird things went on, but hey, at least I can play again.

[Amhazair]

I owe all of you my apologies. I was planning to get back home earlier today and play my turn, but there are several foreign visitors staying here at my sisters place for my wedding, and we've been having such tremendous fun (at the wedding, before the wedding and after the wedding) that I just had to stay a bit longer. (Especially this Swiss girl that's staying here has me quite intrested )I'll be getting home tomorrow evening instead. (wich would be within 24 hours)

[Hellboy]

Hey everyone,

I was just considering hosting a new PBEM on Hadrian's altered Faerun map. His changes look sensible, and I've played a number of turns SP, and it still looks good, but before I take the plunge I wanted to ask the experts.

So, is Faerun a reasonable map for MP?

[calmon]

So far i could say its fun to play on it. A litte bit too huge maybe. You should try to play with a max set of players.

The starting provinces seems to be a little random. There are players set very next to in very desertlike areas. There should be a center of players around the big farm provinces in western faerun and fewer players in the eastern part which is really wild and population poor.

I found some bugs on the map but don't know who is responsible for it:

for example northern thay (land 307), some good features in this province and very well defended. You need dozens of troops to conquer it. The 4 features should worth all the work.
But because someone forgot to set a #killfeatures before the feature list, the better half of the features don't exist and the province isn't worth all the troops needed to conquer it.

-- Northern Thay
#land 307
#nostart 307
#lab
#feature "Catacombs"
#feature "Graveyard of the Damned"
#feature "Marble Mausoleum"
#feature "Halls of the Dead"
#commander "Lich"
#comname "Szass Tam"
#clearmagic
#mag_death 6
...

[Hellboy]

calmon said:
So far i could say its fun to play on it. A litte bit too huge maybe. You should try to play with a max set of players.

The starting provinces seems to be a little random. There are players set very next to in very desertlike areas. There should be a center of players around the big farm provinces in western faerun and fewer players in the eastern part which is really wild and population poor.

I don't have any experience in editing maps, but just from looking at the file, it seems that the only functionality you have within the map is prohibiting (or not) a specific province from being a starting location.

I saw Dr. Praetorius has a fair site script that he's done - maybe something like that could be done to influence placement in the way you describe.

I found some bugs on the map but don't know who is responsible for it:
...
But because someone forgot to set a #killfeatures before the feature list,
...

It's easy to go through the map, and make sure all the specials have the #killfeatures line. Have you found any other bugs that don't involve #killfeatures?

Hadrian_II said:
about the map: the Victory Locations are mostly guarded well. If you don't like that you might use the normal faerun map. I designed the Victory Locations to be hard to get, maybe they are a bit too heavy defended. My armies of man lost a battle against a VP defending army (25 Knights are harder to kill than they look).

At least what I've seen from SP so far, I like. I think it is great if some of these special locations are around quite a while, before they can be taken out.

What might be a problem is, that lots of the Victory Points are in the Northwest of the map, so you should set the needed VPs to win high enough or the players there will have an advantage.

Did you end up by going with 30 VPs, as you say in your opening note? And from what you've seen of the game so far does it look like you have enough?

[Hadrian_II]

Terrel said:
I don't have any experience in editing maps, but just from looking at the file, it seems that the only functionality you have within the map is prohibiting (or not) a specific province from being a starting location.

If you open the map in the editor, you can see that a lot of the provinces already have nostart.

Terrel said:
It's easy to go through the map, and make sure all the specials have the #killfeatures line. Have you found any other bugs that don't involve #killfeatures?

I'd only put the #killfeatures in provinces that have multiple good sites, so that the other provinces still might get random sites.

Terrel said:
Did you end up by going with 30 VPs, as you say in your opening note? And from what you've seen of the game so far does it look like you have enough?

Yes we are playing with 30VPs needed to win, and we are now in turn 28 and most VPs my scouts can see are still untaken.

[Sandman]

I'd say that some of the victory point provinces are too well guarded. You can't take them without crippling yourself in the process.

[Sandman]

How is the game going for everyone?

This turn, the brave archers and mages of T'ien Ch'i delivered a stinging defeat to R'lyeh, slaying dozens of illithids in the process. Meanwhile, Shinuyama is taking a long time to die, being attacked by Ulm, Machaka AND Mictlan, with the blood-worshippers currently sieging the goblin capital.

[Amhazair]

Bah, Shinuyama was saved by an unexpectedly powerful ghost king (blame my inexperience) a couple of rooky mistakes and a stale turn, but my armies should get going now and trample the lowly goblins under our iron-shod boots.

Ulm is marching the road to destiny now!

(Well done though Dimaz, you're certainly causing some trouble)