60 Player MegaGame Discussion Thread

[Gandalf Parker]

mivayan said:
A fellow in the irc channel thought you might run into the cap on how many units and commanders can exist. I think that's a point. The cap is some ridicilous number, but still. Perhaps banning LA ermor and rlyeh would help with that, since they tend to have more units than many other nations combined.

Most of the limits in the game were tweaked based on me doing things that Johan never thoiught that anyone would ever try and do. The maximums on sizes in maps were made smaller, packet transmissions larger, and maximums on things like units and commanders vastly increased.

I ran many test games with a few human players and the rest AIs. One of them is still running.
http://www.dom3minions.com/games/PvK...ia/scores.html

But this is a game no one has done yet so we dont know what will happen. I expect it will be on a linux server in text mode. I recommend that the map be downloaded by everyone instead of having the server send it on the first turn. And I recommend rotating backups on each pre-exec

[BigDisAwesome]

if you decide to use a flagmod, someone should throw together one that is super simple to tell who is who. it could only have black text on white background, and just say "EA Abysia", just the age and nation.

[Ironhawk]

Arcane Nexus doesnt bother me.

Utterdark should be banned. With 40+ players you would think that it could be dispelled... but if it cant? or people dont orgnaize properly? Then Utterdark player wins without needing to capture any territory.

I vote against a bidding system. Too complicated with this many people. Just do first come first serve and keep the post updated.

[Velusion]

Ironhawk said:
Utterdark should be banned. With 40+ players you would think that it could be dispelled... but if it cant? or people dont orgnaize properly? Then Utterdark player wins without needing to capture any territory.

Yea, I'm worried about this one too... however at least everyone has an immediate need to dispel it - where as arcane nexus doesn't directly hurt anyone.

Also, unlike Arcane Nexus, it isn't directly helped by the number of players. If you think Utterdark should be banned here, wouldn't it be reasonable to ban it in any sized game?

What does everyone else think?

[Jazzepi]

I really don't think you should be banning *any* spell (besides that one summon that summons the wrong creature). There's no reason why Utterdark is any more threatening than Arcane Nexus. I believe in the market of ideas, if people find a spell threatening enough, then they should be able to band together to dispel it. If they can't, then they deserve to lose.

Think of the amount of resources that 59 nations could put together versus 1.

Jazzepi

[jutetrea]

Correct me if I'm wrong please:

AN creates a gem imbalance, more players = more gem income = greater chance of popping it back up reinforced. Starting a cycle where eventually its hypothetically impossible to dispel.

Utterdark just hits gold (not gems right?) so even though it pretty much sucks for everyone, over time they should be able to gang the caster.

IMO no ban on utterdark

[Gandalf Parker]

There is a link to the map on the first post. It looks like plenty of water and looks like at least a 1000 province map. If all 60 nations played then that would be 16 provinces each. 60*16=960

[Micah]

Nexus would only be a problem because the turn order is bugged, at least for Corruption. Globals aren't supposed to go into effect until after the rituals phase is over, so nexus shouldn't generate income the turn it is cast according to the book, but it will (I believe) in practice, although how much will depend on where in the random casting order it ends up. So if people were routinely spending 600 non-astral gems/turn on rituals it would be a safe cast, although it would be 1200 if you figure in alchemy since you won't get pearls from it (you get half the gems spent, and on average will collect from half of the spells cast the same turn as nexus because of random cast order. 150*2*2) I BELIEVE forging DOES happen before rituals, so the nexus caster won't be collecting from forging on turn 1, just rituals. This seems like it could happen late-game on a 1000 province map, although it is a huge chunk of gems.

I think a better solution would be to up the base cost of it, maybe to 300 pearls so that there's actually some strategy going into the gem economy equation. It'll be hard to make a profit with it if it's that hard to cast. If people can't get their stuff together to dispel it, well, they brought the loss upon themselves then, no?

[Velusion]

I just tested the flag mod - it seems to work so that fixes that problem.

[Ironhawk]

jutetrea said:
Utterdark just hits gold (not gems right?)

If you've never actually been on the recieving end of Utterdark then you arent really in a position to vote on it.