PBEM game: The first step (Running)

[Alneyan]

As usual, I have settled on a wonderfully unimaginative title for my game ("A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step").

So, this game is intended for new players to get their feet wet; for this purpose, a new player is someone having not played in multiplayer at all, or just a little (started a game, played with a friend, and so on). There will be a few "seasoned" players, who will answer questions and give a few hints to the other players (but certainly not a perfect strategy).

The game will be played in the Play-by-email format (PBEM), where turns are sent in mails; more specifically, the host (myself here) will send .trn files, the players will play their turns as usual, and send back their order (.2h) file.

The following players have expressed interest in joining the game as players:
- RibbonBlue: Man
- Sushiboat: Ermor
- BigDaddy: Pythium
- Agrajag: Jotunheim
- CyborgMoses: Machaka
- Molog: Pangaea
- Enforcer: Arcoscephale
- Schmonk: Marignon

If you have already made up your Pretenders, feel free to start sending them to me. They can be found in the newlords directory: if your nation is Ermor, the Pretender fille will be ermor.2h . My address is alneyan[AT]fastmail[DOT]co.uk (replace [AT] and [DOT] by @ and . respectively).

The seasoned advisers:
- Quantum_Mechani
- Ironhawk

Settings for the game will be fairly standard, along those lines:
- Map: Likely Inland (comes with the game), as it is a rather small map, and it does not have any corner.
- Strength of independents: 6, the level where independents are no longer push-overs, but aren't too deadly yet.
- Research level: Standard research
- Hall of Fame entries: 15
- Magic site frequency: 45 or so
- Renaming is on
- Graphs are likely to be on, allowing all players to see how well they are doing compared to the other nations.
- Turn-around: 48 hours, with the turns running as soon as all turn files are in.
- Mods: A tricky one. Enabling mods for a first game may be contradictory, but a mod such as Zen Pretenders Balance could be interesting, as it reduces the gap in power between all Pretender choices (making poor choices less of a problem). Zen Pretenders is attached to this mod, along with a readme file listing all changes made by the mod.

[sushiboat]

Please put me down for Ermor.

I haven't tried Zen's Pretenders Balance mod yet, but using it would be fine with me.

[Agrajag]

Im thinking about joining (I havent actually played an MP game yet), can someone explain to me how PBEM works and what will I need to do?
Im not 100% sure I'll join since Im not a huge fan of MP, but it might be a good way to improve my skills.
Thank you.

[Alneyan]

I have given a short summary for now about PBEM; I believe there is a slightly more detailed part in the MP guide. Basically, you will have to create a Pretender, send it to me, and off we go; to play the actual turns, you will put a .trn file into a game directory (any game directory actually), play a turn as usual, and send back one file (the .2h file).

Once I get all the files from the player, another turn will run, and will be sent to everyone, and so on.

[Agrajag]

If that's all there is to it, great!
I'd like to try my luck as Jotunheim.
I haven't tried the Balance Mod, but I don't mind turning it on if everyone wants it.

[RibbonBlue]

Alneyan, where I do I get the balance mod? Also, each time I get a turn file, do I remove the old one?

[Alneyan]

Looks like I screwed up: I used a wrong Pretender file for Arcoscephale. Do not worry however, as I can correct that fairly easily; starting positions will be different, however, but nothing else will change.

No turn for Arcoscephale (obviously) or Machaka: those two nations should submit their turn file using the new turn files I will send them in a few minutes, though it is not needed. I hope this mail problem will be solved soon, one way or another: it will be very annoying otherwise. Cyberg Moses: if you still don't get this turn, please let me know, and I will ready a FTP for your turn files.

[En Forcer]

Okay. That's better. The turn came in just fine.

As far as guessing my pretender? Well, it was goofed up because I got the test file which had a Statue with high astral. Obviously, this is no longer the case...

[CyborgMoses]

I'm afraid that I still haven't recieved anything. Sorry about the trouble.

[Alneyan]

URL to the file forwarded in private.