playing ANYONE against everyone

[Baalz]

Yeah, diplomacy in general would be important. Don't want to be known as a pact breaker in a game running for 2 years.

[Xietor]

Do most of your mp games have diplomacy? The ones I play with my 3 friends are always everyone for himself. Diplomacy is considered cheating.

[quantum_mechani]

Xietor said:
Do most of your mp games have diplomacy? The ones I play with my 3 friends are always everyone for himself. Diplomacy is considered cheating.

That's the way I prefer to play, but most games/players are otherwise.

[Gandalf Parker]

In a game of purely testing strategy, then there usually isnt diplomacy. There doesnt tend to be diplomacy in chess. Also random events, random maps, any kindof luck really.

In a more role-playing game, diplomacy is part of the role playing. So is taking your lumps with random things. Yes, this is my preferred playing style. Im afraid that I got alot of the random stuff added to the game. Try not to hold that agaisnt me.

Dominions tends to be split. There are those who play their god, and there are those who consider their god just another piece in the game. Since there is no easy way to keep diplomacy out of the game, I think this one will have alot of it.

Side Note: I do have a list of hacks I did to try and create a game with no diplomacy. Blind email accounts all off of my server, watching the log and reporting any msgs between players, etc etc. It still ended up short of absolute but I might host a game like that one day down the road.

[SelfishGene]

Early Era nations are more powerful magically with better sacreds, but lack Holy, mounted Knights, and x-bows. Death is less common in the Early Era as well.

Since Magic or Sacreds > all in Dominions, in the long run, i'd say Early Era nations would be more powerful on average than LA nations. AI, though of course, do not use magic or sacreds correctly, so LA nations are probably stronger in AI hands.

[Xietor]

I would not try actively to catch anyone teaming up. It would simply be the honor system. I see no point in cheating in a game? What would be the point of winning a game you had an unfair advantage playing in?

Now there may be people at the start, that say flat out they intend to team up, and if that is the case i can live with that. Albeit no amount of good strategy can overcome 4-5 people ganging up on you.

Despite Pangaea(MA) having limited mages and gems, I could see it doing well in a big game. Its units, with berserk, are never really obsolete. And stealth never really becomes obsolete either. With the use of blood, which i do not use against the AI, you could have very powerful assassins, and the spine devil is a cheap early unit that can give certain nations fits.

[SelfishGene]

MA Ermor is very strong, probably stronger than LA Ermor now. If they had Soul Gate, i'd love them to ...um, death.

What hurts MA Ermor is finding some mage time for research.

EA Ctis is very much like MA Ermor, with just a couple more negatives and several more positives. I like MA Ctis in theory, but i've not really played them in multi in all honesty. I just like free Disease dominions .

[Xietor]

The problem i have with MA ctis, is holding water squares. You cannot buy pd, and if you hire indies they die of disease.

Obviously you could try to have a horde of undead in every square, but that gets expensive. And on land, you would like to hire some good indies, like cross bowmen. But they die of disease as well. maybe if you took a pretender that could heal, but that would be micromanaging hell.

I doubt Ctis could keep gift of health up, or get the chalice.

[jutetrea]

EA T'ien Chi

Wide range of paths, good summons and ok nats. I usually play with a chaos economy, but would think hard about going good scales for such a long term game.

I've recently started playing around with Growth/death scales at the extremes more and earlier there were posts saying death-3 has a minor long term effect. It seems noticeable, but survivable. My last FOTM was Pangaea, and growth 2 or 3 was noticeable late game as well - I could actually regen the provinces I would decimate hunting.

[Hellboy]

Gandalf Parker said:
In a game of purely testing strategy, then there usually isnt diplomacy. There doesnt tend to be diplomacy in chess. Also random events, random maps, any kindof luck really.

In a more role-playing game, diplomacy is part of the role playing. So is taking your lumps with random things. Yes, this is my preferred playing style. Im afraid that I got alot of the random stuff added to the game. Try not to hold that agaisnt me.

Dominions tends to be split. There are those who play their god, and there are those who consider their god just another piece in the game. Since there is no easy way to keep diplomacy out of the game, I think this one will have alot of it.

Side Note: I do have a list of hacks I did to try and create a game with no diplomacy. Blind email accounts all off of my server, watching the log and reporting any msgs between players, etc etc. It still ended up short of absolute but I might host a game like that one day down the road.

I just have to say that this notion that diplomacy and/or randomness somehow reduce strategy is really quite simplistic. In both cases there are many, many hard core, intense strategy games replete in both. For example, in the case of diplomacy there is the archtype Avalon Hill boardgame called "Diplomacy" where the whole point of the game is, as its name says, to make (and break) deals. This is a game that has been analyzed and studied extensively. I imagine it is quite amenable to being studied in the light of the mathematics of game theory, and I'd be willing to bet that that has been done.

Equally so with randomness, randomness in no way decreases the amount of strategy/analysis to be applied. Just ask any bridge player. Yes it is true that many classic strategy games are deterministic, but requiring a player to make his/her analyses probabilistic instead can end up with a game just as deep and just as challenging (or more so).

Edit: Hope the above doesn't come off as hostile or insulting, but I have noticed that there is a school of thought on these boards that diplomacy somehow reduces the intellectual quality or depth of the game. Seeing this, I just wanted to raise the counterargument.