Evermore - MegaGame - Winner: AdmiralZhao!

[Evilhomer]

An easy bid system:

Each player submits a list of maximum ten nation bids, followed by a negative or positive number inside some interval, say between -30.000 and +10.000. A negative number means the population you are willing to give up, while a positive number is the bonus you want in order to play that nation.

An example: Homers list

1. LA Rlyeh -20.000
2. EA Lanka -15.000
3. MA Rlyeh -13.000
4. LA ermor -5.000
5. EA Caelum -2.000
6. LA patala -1.000
7. MA bandar Log +4.000
8. MA Jotunheim +7.000
9. MA ulm +10.000
10. EA marvereni +10.000

After that everyones bids are calculated and the winning bid is found for each nation. A winning bid is the largest negative value, or if no negative bids exist the lowest positive value. If one player wins several bids, he wins the bid with the lowest nation number on his list - the rest of the bids are removed, and the second highest bidder is found.

Example: say Homer above won the following bids

2. EA Lanka -15.000
4. LA ermor -5.000
8. MA Jotunheim +7.000

Then Homer plays EA Lanka with the starting population of 30.000-15.000= 15.000. The rest of his bid are removed, and the next highest bidder is found for LA ermor and MA Jotunheim.

*In the unlikely event two players gives the exact same bid, luck will decide between them who gets the nation.

*Players that doesnt win any bid or signs up for random nations are given a random nation among the remaining nations with the maximum pop bonus (here: +10.000).

I belive this will add a bit to the start since you are basically forced to evaluate at what price you are willing to play the stronger nations. Also the work for those setting up this game will not be that hard.

[DrPraetorious]

Homer's system would potentially work, of course, but I think that the 5000 pop/round draft worked surprisingly well, and see no reason to fiddle with it.

I can try making a wrap-around map using GIMP and then let Szumo fiddle with it. The maps are generally quite pretty, but I'm not sure how well his map-reader will deal with them.

I attached the example output of the default "Render Map" functiom fromp GIMP as a jpeg; obviously the real map would be much bigger, just for starters. My knowledge of scheme scripting is not outstanding, but I can figure out this script well enough to modify it, I believe.

- How many pixels should the map be? Square?
- What portion of the actual area should be water? What portion mountains?
- I have to add farmland, swamps and wastes as a new layer. How much of each, and should they / can they overlap with any mountains?
- What color scheme do we want?

I'm also working on a mod to add 11 custom nations to a megagame. There are more than 11 mod nations in existence so I'd like to combine and revise a bunch of them, mostly have permission from the mod authors.

[Baalz]

I was thinking about the amount of water on the map in light of how Perpetually developed. I'm feeling like the next game perhaps needs significantly less water as the two greatly dominating nations are *sharing* the water. Winning would be a certainty (rather than a high probability) if one conquered the other - without ever really having to leave the water. Water nations are at too much of an advantage underwater to be able to win without ever leaving it IMO. If we're going with 15 provinces per player it should be more like 10 water and 5 land for each water player since they really are intended to have to fight their way above water at some point for the win.

[Velusion]

Baalz said:
I was thinking about the amount of water on the map in light of how Perpetually developed. I'm feeling like the next game perhaps needs significantly less water as the two greatly dominating nations are *sharing* the water. Winning would be a certainty (rather than a high probability) if one conquered the other - without ever really having to leave the water. Water nations are at too much of an advantage underwater to be able to win without ever leaving it IMO. If we're going with 15 provinces per player it should be more like 10 water and 5 land for each water player since they really are intended to have to fight their way above water at some point for the win.

There is definitely too much water in Perp - which is my fault and is having a huge effect on the game (though to be fair no one complained about it until we started even though the map was available). The new map will have significantly less. Perp has 1000 provinces which should equate to 16.1 provinces per player. However water nations (7.5) are allocated over 21.2 water provinces per water player while land nations were allocated only 15.4 land provinces per player. Not good.

Personally I'd rather just see the ratio fairly distributed (16-15 for everyone) and see how that works. I think 10 would be way too harsh. After all there are number of land nations that can easily take and hold water provinces.

[Baalz]

Oh things are always clearer in hindsight, no worries on not thinking of everything. Perhaps 10 would be too harsh, I don't really know. My thinking was that water nations are at a significant advantage if they're allowed to stay almost completely in the water and they're (with the possible exception of EA R'yleh) at less of a disadvantage on land than any land nation is in the water so it makes more sense to force them onto land than to force land players to fight them in the water. Since land nations tend to avoid picking fights with the water nations until late game they have the leisure to cherry pick the land fights they want to engage in. The competition on land in Perpetuality seemed to be *much* stronger which I'm sure was in large part due to the province count, but part of it was just that there were more hungry players, more borders to defend, and more scheming. Ah well, I was thinking about trying to snag MA R'yleh this time around anyway, dunno what I'm complaining about. Makes sense to try it with an even count to see how that works out.

[Zaramis]

I agree with Baalz for this one..

[Velusion]

Evilhomer said:
An easy bid system:

Each player submits a list of maximum ten nation bids, followed by a negative or positive number inside some interval, say between -30.000 and +10.000. A negative number means the population you are willing to give up, while a positive number is the bonus you want in order to play that nation.

An example: Homers list

1. LA Rlyeh -20.000
2. EA Lanka -15.000
3. MA Rlyeh -13.000
4. LA ermor -5.000
5. EA Caelum -2.000
6. LA patala -1.000
7. MA bandar Log +4.000
8. MA Jotunheim +7.000
9. MA ulm +10.000
10. EA marvereni +10.000

After that everyones bids are calculated and the winning bid is found for each nation. A winning bid is the largest negative value, or if no negative bids exist the lowest positive value. If one player wins several bids, he wins the bid with the lowest nation number on his list - the rest of the bids are removed, and the second highest bidder is found.

Example: say Homer above won the following bids

2. EA Lanka -15.000
4. LA ermor -5.000
8. MA Jotunheim +7.000

Then Homer plays EA Lanka with the starting population of 30.000-15.000= 15.000. The rest of his bid are removed, and the next highest bidder is found for LA ermor and MA Jotunheim.

*In the unlikely event two players gives the exact same bid, luck will decide between them who gets the nation.

*Players that doesnt win any bid or signs up for random nations are given a random nation among the remaining nations with the maximum pop bonus (here: +10.000).

I belive this will add a bit to the start since you are basically forced to evaluate at what price you are willing to play the stronger nations. Also the work for those setting up this game will not be that hard.

This looks workable (though we will drop the .0000 at the end of every number )

What do people think of homers system?

atul's would work, but would be more work...

[Szumo]

I'd prefer something simpler tbh.
Also, this system breaks in case of LA Ermor
Not that any system based on starting pop bidding is good for LA Ermor. Perhaps LA Ermor position should be an exception that's given randomly, while all other nations are given according to bidding system?

[Evilhomer]

Ermor might not need gold to buy troops or pay upkeep. They do need gold to hire mercenaries, buy temples and fortress however. If you recall the start of perpetuality, LA ermor snatched each mercenary troop for the first turns - speeding up his expansion.

[Velusion]

Szumo said:
Also, this system breaks in case of LA Ermor
Not that any system based on starting pop bidding is good for LA Ermor. Perhaps LA Ermor position should be an exception that's given randomly, while all other nations are given according to bidding system?

I'm not sure this matters at all. You'll be bidding against other players. Unless more than one player bidding on LA Ermor thinks it is ok to play with Zero pop (which, if they think that, they are crazy) there shouldn't be a problem.