Gandalf's Crazy Solo Games

[jutetrea]

Great thread, tons of good ideas. Wish I could code my way out of a paper bag.

Anyway, didn't someone mention previously a desire for timed events? i.e. turn 10 x1 occurs, turn 20 x2 occurs, etc? Any progress on that front? Would make scenario building a real possibility?

Even a simpler method - take those "caspur found the deepest cave, vamp count attacks, knights attack, barbs attack" and pre-set a bunch of those to occur first turn - with custom heroes... for example - the five heroes want to free your nation, or bogus attacks, etc.

Going to try out the poke the eye out map (like my maps to be done in 2 or 3 longish sittings).

Just have to say thanks for all the effort!

[Jack_Trowell]

You can use my online tool at http://dominions.realites.org/ to add random stuff on any existing map file.

Just create a random map that looks fine to you, and upload the .map file with the randomize and/or freater manysites options checked.

Then save the results as a new .map file in your /maps directory, and launch the game.

[reverend]

I've been trying to start a game on the MegaMap. So far, I had no luck. It seems that the creation process simply grinds to a halt, fortunately, except for the game hanging, nothing else happens.

My specs are a 'lowly' 2.6 P4 with 1 Gig RAM.

I tried generating without any AI first, so that SHOULD lessen the load a bit. Still, after 10-15 minutes, the computer is still creating the world.

Is there an easy way to maybe generate the game in textmode, so it cuts back on CPU usage?

[jutetrea]

Been playing the poke in the eye map, love it.

One thing I wish - mobs/pretenders were categorized. i.e. militia - mid infantry = lvl 0, cav and some specials = lvl 2, mages = lvl 3, nasty mobs = lvl 4, pretenders = lvl 5...or something similar depending on difficulty. Then have lvl 4s and 5s just be commanders, with the rest being troops. Make sense?

Love the idea, love the randomness, love starting out with a free commander/stuff (I like it as an RPG as well, very commander concentrated - most of the fun for me). With that being said, its kind of silly when i start with a troop of horrors or a troop of melee pretenders Or face them for that matter. I spent like 2 hours just re-creating games to see some combinations, some were super weak (mages w/o magic, some were unreal (20 free horrors/gatekeepers), and some just wierd (20 baphomats - immobile).

I tried Jack's tool once, and will be testing further. Is there a way to simulate the free commander/troops on yours Jack?

Speaking of re-creating games - is there anyway to just "re-create game" with all the same settings? Or to have a standard settings file that you can choose? For instance, I hate starting in the midst of a map and will recreate till I get near an edge (my form of cheating), but while its still only a 2 minute process to start up a new game it gets old. Any thoughts?

[Gandalf Parker]

At the moment those routines choose a random number from zero to the highest numbered unit in the game. It then makes that unit a commander, then selects another random number for what unit will be some bodyguards, and another random number for what is troops. The units in the game are not organized in any way that lets me easily select units that are leaders, or pretenders, or mages, or even water/land so the results are totally random. Anything can be a leader, anything can be a bodyguard, anything a troop, and if they drown in the first turn of the game then oh well.

To do more logical assignments, someone would need to go thru all the units in the game and make a text file of which are which so that my routines could select from it. Ive asked for it before but no one has done one.

[jutetrea]

hmm, bummer. Hopefully it will eventually come out, fun though

Gotta be unfair when i get 20 giants and a free bow of war and the AI gets a suped up mage with a slave collar

Other way around too, but then i just reload!

[Jack_Trowell]

jutetrea said:
Been playing the poke in the eye map, love it.

One thing I wish - mobs/pretenders were categorized. i.e. militia - mid infantry = lvl 0, cav and some specials = lvl 2, mages = lvl 3, nasty mobs = lvl 4, pretenders = lvl 5...or something similar depending on difficulty. Then have lvl 4s and 5s just be commanders, with the rest being troops. Make sense?

I'm waiting for Edi to complete its unit DB. With it I will be able to add many more options to my randomizer, and use appropriate units depending on the province type

Love the idea, love the randomness, love starting out with a free commander/stuff (I like it as an RPG as well, very commander concentrated - most of the fun for me). With that being said, its kind of silly when i start with a troop of horrors or a troop of melee pretenders Or face them for that matter. I spent like 2 hours just re-creating games to see some combinations, some were super weak (mages w/o magic, some were unreal (20 free horrors/gatekeepers), and some just wierd (20 baphomats - immobile).

I tried Jack's tool once, and will be testing further. Is there a way to simulate the free commander/troops on yours Jack?

As dom3 works, if you start in a province where specific units/commanders have been added, you get them.

The "No start in edited provinces" option of my randomizer is there to prevent this to happen, in order to preserve some balance.

If you want sometimes to have additionnal units at the start of the game, just uncheck this option.

Of course if you start in a province with no units added it won't change anything, but you can also start with a mictlan Priest King and 5 Sun priest as units (perfect to start a blood economy when you start using "gift of reason" on them, it happened to me once)

Speaking of re-creating games - is there anyway to just "re-create game" with all the same settings? Or to have a standard settings file that you can choose? For instance, I hate starting in the midst of a map and will recreate till I get near an edge (my form of cheating), but while its still only a 2 minute process to start up a new game it gets old. Any thoughts?

You can use the official map editor, or my online map editor, to add the "nostart" attribute to provinces you don't want to start in.

It is also possible to specify a province as starting point, but my map editor doesn't has this feature yet, you have to edit the map file manually for now

[Gandalf Parker]

This seemed the only appropriate thread for this. Two ideas came to me as I was nodding off to sleep. I had to up and make notes. Both of these are MAP commands (of course). Adding them to a map in order to get a very different game out of it.

The first idea is add a Wandering Monster (on a timer)
#computerplayer 79 4
#god 79 "Eater of the Dead"

This should put in an AI nation with lots of population and an Eater of the Dead which will start out in a tamed form. Once it eats enough of the populace it will break out across the map. Since its a nation in the game, every time you play the map it will be randomly located someplace.

Maybe also set scales and give it a strong dominion. Im not sure how that might affect things but it sounds like fun. Putting in a bunch of ally commands might also make it not attack AI's.

Other options for the monster might be Eater of Dreams, Eater of Gods, Hunter of Heroes but Im not sure what those are and how they operate.

[Gandalf Parker]

The next idea is NOT No-Indepts maps.

I can see the advantages of no-indepts in improving the AI. It removes all of the recruitable dependents from the game, but leaves the defenders so that you do have to fight your way across the map. I must admit that on really large maps the MicroManagement can get extreme later in the game. I try to make the best use of everything available to me but I cant remember them all.

So the idea is this...
I can write another one of my stupid little basic programs which will count sequentially thru the number of provinces on a large map. On each one it can randomly decide whether to remove the ability to recruit independents there. Im thinking that I would leave about 1 out of every 10 provinces.

That way I can still get some recruitables. But they would be more precious (and memorable). Of course the AI would also get them but I figure it would still limit its ability to use funds so it should still get more national units than the vanilla game. It will also help solve the problem of the AI having too much money and building tons of castles.

Im also thinking that I should drop a +resource site in each one. Each one that gets left with recruits? Or each one that gets it removed? It would boost the AIs resources at castles which should increase the AIs recruitment of elites.

One disadvantage is that in replayability. Whenever you replay the map, the game WILL re-randomize which independents are in a province, but not where. So eventaully you will have a feel for which provinces will or wont have recruitables. It would affect decisions. Of course hopefully, like with any of my programs, I will eventually setup something on the Dom3Minions site to re-randomize the .map file for a map like this and zip it up each day.

[jutetrea]

Both ideas sound pretty nice.

Can the partial no-indy maps just be done on a percentage as via Bal's program?

ex.
Mountains 10%
Plains 10%
Indy's 20% (unsure how the program works, but possibly relate the slider to a % in the script/map command?)

Big nasty god nation could even be expanded - small principalities of 1 province with VERY limited resources derived from special sites.

Pick 10-20 themed sites (vale of horrors, troll recruiting, shadow seers, etc), call them a nation, give em a themed god and let em go. They won't get far as they'll be severely handicapped, but that's actually fine. They'll be able to respond a bit more then indy's but much less then a full fledged nation since they'll be limited on site income/mages/scales/dominion.

Obviously eater of the dead is the best choice as it has its own mini-AI, but the others might work as well.

Big question - can this be done dynamically a la randomizer without messing up available nation #'s and max nations? So I guess another questions: can you randomize nations ala provinces a la map commands?

@1 Province
province name
province name
province name

@1 nation name
nation name
nation name
nation name

@1 Nation #
77
78
79


@1 God
Eater of dead
Lord of night
Eater of Gods
etc

@1 scales
beneficial scale settings
negative scale settings
neutral scale settings

@1 paths
Rainbow
Bless 1
Bless 2
Bless 3

@3 sites

@1 Indy type
@4 starting items
@5 allies