60 Player MegaGame Discussion Thread

[Meglobob]

I like EA best for indys.

I would like very difficult research as well, there is a tendency to pass over all the lower level spells, unless your desperate, saving gems for just the high level stuff. Would be fun to use the low level spells for longer. Never played with difficult or very difficult research so no idea as to the long term consequences.

Nation selection, I really think in a mega longterm game like this a player should get a nation they really, really want to play. How about everyone gives a top 5 in order of preference?

Patching causes alot of hassle, especially with new players, also it looks like its going to be a pretty big patch so everyone will be keen to use it. Having the 2 new nations will be fun too. So I say wait for the patch. It will probably take some getting going, a game like this anyway.

Finally, what if the game does not fill up ie... all 60 nations or not taken? Leave them out or have them in as AI?

[DrPraetorious]

Peronally, I like my bidding system; but with a game like this, we'd need alternates - are the alternates stuck with the bids of whomever they replace? I suppose they'd have to be. Also, just managing the bids for 60 players would be quite a headache.

Very hard research is a real problem for certain positions which are heavily magic dependent - Pythium, Marignon, for example. I think a system of bids would help to alleviate this problem, as well as making all 60 nations viable.

The flags are easy from a modding standpoint, but I'm no good at drawring.

The other two options would require diving into the executable, I believe. For one thing, the window isn't big enough to display more than 5 globals, so you'd have to add a scrollbar to the GUI, which I don't think you can do, at least at present - so even if I code-dive I don't think I can change that.

Finally, if you're going to ban Arcane Nexus - I can add a line to disable it in the many-nations mod. Likewise, if we wanted any other mods - I suggest my blessing hotfix, which many nations (LA Ulm for example) rather need to use some of their sacred units. All it does is allow regular bless to affect undead, and it definitely works I've tested it pretty thoroughly.

I should say, given how powerful Arcane Nexus will be, and given only five slots for globals, people will fight over it, and fiercely, so it may not be needful to disable it.

[Velusion]

DrPraetorious said:
Peronally, I like my bidding system; but with a game like this, we'd need alternates - are the alternates stuck with the bids of whomever they replace? I suppose they'd have to be. Also, just managing the bids for 60 players would be quite a headache.

Yea I have my own bidding system I worked on awhile back that I considered... but really I want the setup to be rather simple. I think this game is too big to be trying out bidding on for the first time.

DrPraetorious said:
Very hard research is a real problem for certain positions which are heavily magic dependent - Pythium, Marignon, for example. I think a system of bids would help to alleviate this problem, as well as making all 60 nations viable.

Maybe just difficult then? Any more opinions on this?

DrPraetorious said:
The other two options would require diving into the executable, I believe. For one thing, the window isn't big enough to display more than 5 globals, so you'd have to add a scrollbar to the GUI, which I don't think you can do, at least at present - so even if I code-dive I don't think I can change that.

Ahhh well thats a shame - but not that huge of a deal.

DrPraetorious said:
Finally, if you're going to ban Arcane Nexus - I can add a line to disable it in the many-nations mod. Likewise, if we wanted any other mods - I suggest my blessing hotfix, which many nations (LA Ulm for example) rather need to use some of their sacred units. All it does is allow regular bless to affect undead, and it definitely works I've tested it pretty thoroughly.

I'm not opposed to mods that fix verified known bugs - provided thats all they do. There probably are a number of them.

[DrPraetorious]

The fact is, nations from different eras are not well balanced against eachother, especially at very difficult research.

You could give people larger starting armies, or you could give people big piles of initial money, more than 1 starting province, there are various things you could do but they tend to reward some nations/strategies and punish others (like having an awake SC God.)

I think a bidding system is the only robust solution - everyone is entitled to their own opinion about which nations are over or under-powered, and to vote with their wallet.

Of course, my bidding system isn't well-tested yet. I'm planning to start a bid-based game as soon as the patch comes out.

[Velusion]

DrPraetorious said:
I think a bidding system is the only robust solution - everyone is entitled to their own opinion about which nations are over or under-powered, and to vote with their wallet.

I agree, but I'm not really super-concerned with balance this game (or I would have looked into the CB). I also think that with the more players the more self-balancing (to a certain degree) the game gets. The late game is going to be crazy and unpredictable.

I guess I'm saying that I agree bidding would be a fairer way to distribute nations, but I'm more concerned with starting with little or no hassle. I'd be happy to test your bidding system in a future game though...

[Micah]

No one is going to know how strong a nation will be in this type of situation, so it will be hard to post meaningful bids, especially with the large number of nations available making it hard to be familiar with all of them.

I think putting too much effort into trying to balance something this large/ambitious the first time through is just going to end in frustration. Obviously any glaring holes should be patched up, but a point-by-point bid system isn't going to work outside of giving people the illusion of having control over what they end up with. People who play in this game are going to have to realize that things WILL be unbalanced, and deal with the problem accordingly. Diplomacy will be vital.

As for research - You're going to be stuck either hamstringing research-reliant nations early on or having everything researched very early, and I don't think there's any way to fix that without altering the geometric series equation (so low level things are still easy to research but high levels get really really hard). I think very difficult research would be the best way to keep the late game interesting though, and to me that's more important than early game (if you get blitzed and killed on turn 10 because you can't research the spells you need you've spent maybe 10 hours on the game, total...by turn 50 you've invested a lot more into the game, and since the turns take 2 hours each I'd want them to hold my attention instead of just turning into a phyrric gem-throwing contest.)

[Velusion]

What is the research gain difference between:

Normal?
Difficult?
Very Difficult?

I saw a post on it long ago, but I can't find it anymore.

Here is another question - would it be possible to mod a research level like the one Micah mentioned? "(so low level things are still easy to research but high levels get really really hard)". I doubt it is, but I thought I would ask.

[Micah]

Research costs thread:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

And the progression is not moddable afaik, that would have been a change along the lines of adding global slots which would require tweaking things the devs didn't intend to be tweaked.

[Velusion]

Also - I'll leave the Aracane Nexus choice up to the general consensus of this thread then.

I'm pretty skeptical about it being able to "self-balancing" itself in such such a large game, but if the majority here thinks it will work itself out, Its not a big deal to me.

My concern is that in the late game there will be massive amounts of gems floating around. I think it will be much, much harder to get rid of this once it goes up, and I think that the winner will most likely be the on who puts up AN and makes it stay.

[Shovah32]

I think the nexus should be banned. Even throwing it up for one turn with minimum gems(or however many are needed to overpower existing globals) would get so many gems that you could put it up with a huge boost next turn, possibly allowing you to keep it up for a while and continue to reinforce it.