EpikBattel - Started

[Gregstrom]

After some thought, I'm with Llamabeast on the map issue. An over-large map would be pretty bad for micromanagement. And I'd rather have an interesting game than a prefectly balanced one, too.

[Zeldor]

llamabeast:

I don't care about nearby nations, I care about getting 3 or 6 capitol neighbours. Or getting wasteland only or bad terrains. Or having 4 or 5 nations near me, while others have for example 2. And even with diplomacy the one with better starting position has diplomacy options too and will use them.

I just want to play on a fair map. I love dominions, but 95% maps are good only on SP, not MP. Twan made a great map like WoG, but it is the only one that is really good and supports MP games [except for really small maps].

[Torin]

im ok with WoG. or a Wraparaound instead of an unbalanced map. unbalanced=boring.

[llamabeast]

95% maps are good only on SP, not MP

Well, I guess that's obviously subjective. I don't think it's generally considered much of a problem, and it's not like there hasn't been many MP games going on. There are of course a few notably unbalanced maps (e.g. unmodified Parganos), which I agree should be avoided. But such problems are easily corrected - e.g. if manually placing start positions (which I recommend), you should simply choose start positions with similar numbers of neighbours. And putting one player in the middle of a load of wasteland or something would be silly, so you wouldn't do it. With Parganos I just altered a lot of the terrain so it is much fairer.

I have to agree that letting Dominions do the capital placement and using random maps both tend to lead to quite unfair positions, and aren't as good an idea.

I don't care about nearby nations, I care about getting 3 or 6 capitol neighbours. Or getting wasteland only or bad terrains. Or having 4 or 5 nations near me, while others have for example 2.

Actually you've just pretty much listed the problems which can be easily fixed by manual capital placement.

[Zeldor]

llamabeast:

It really narrows map choices. I hope Twan makes a smaller map I will take a look at new Parganos, but Crafle isn't wraparound and that alone makes it unbalanced [there is no way to have balance even with manualy placing capitols]. And with a team play [I know that is not dominions goal, but it is fun] it is even harder. You need 2 players as one place but both need enough space to expand.

P.S. Parganos would be too small for that game...

[DrPraetorious]

How many teams?

If it's six pairs and-no-water, you could use the map from allegiances 2, which is the best balance we could get without wrap-around.

Each pair of teams is arranged as spokes on a wheel, and the distances among teams and territory easily available to each team are very close to equal. But again, it has no water.

[FrozenFalcon]

We have now 12 players. Now, Zeldor seems to absolutely want to play WoG. Llamabeast, have you played the map, and can you absolutely say that it really takes months to finish, or is your estimation based on purely the province count? Because WoG does have that Victory Province.

I think that even "unbalanced" map works, there's always luck included in the game, like Llamabeast said, this is not chess. And because being in a good position gives you advantage, it also gives you diplomatical disadvantage if players find this out, because advantage makes threat and being threatening can be disadvantage.

Zeldor, if we choose Cradle of Dominion, can you play it, or are you absolutely against it? We have 12 players now, so when we get the map decided we can set a deadline for Pretenders and start playing. Of course, we need to set teams.

[llamabeast]

Nope, I haven't played the map, and the estimated time is just from map size. I guess the VP might help. It's very hard to judge how it might work out actually.

Dr P's suggestion does sound like a good third option to me. I believe they put a good deal of thought into it.

There is of course also always the possibility of making it two games - one for those who want WoG, one for those who would like a smaller map.

Just so everyone knows by the way, this degree of indecision doesn't normally happen when organising MP games. This one's been unusual because the original organiser disappeared and it's sort of been organised by committee. Generally the organiser just acts as a benevolent dictator.