MP: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!

[Burnsaber]

I really don't play RND games at all, but this discussion caught my eye.

DonCorazon;

Ditto very much on all of your points. I basically just skip all games with over 12 players.

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Getting stuck with crappy, significantly weaker, nation in a RAND game is not fun. You know from the starters the game holds 0 promise for you. It's not fun the first time it happens, less fun the 2nd and gets worse for me - having had a bad luck streak with RAND nation assignment. When skill level is homogeneous there's no way to compensate for a weak nation. The nation selection element needs to be addressed.

Abot random nation selection, Gregstrom made a fine game sometime ago with quite good random nation selection. It went like this;

Each player, upon sign up, selects a nation. Once all players have selected a nation, the players are assigned RND nations from all of the nations selected by players.

Basically you likely end up with all weak nations or all strong nations depending on the first pick, but with healthy variation.

[DonCorazon]

I think smaller maps with fewer and more qualified (either by reputation, track record or whatever) players and no NAPS is a movement in the right direction.

Large games invariably lead to a number of problems.
You get the fly-by-night players with 3 posts that sign up after having a few drinks and wake up like they were next to Sade the Harpy and abandon the game. Then there is the overenthusiastic noob signed up in 10 games that will flare out half way through and collapse meteorically.

In large games also there is the sense that with 12+ nations, you can dogpile on a few and not worry about the consequences until much later. A lot of these games are just a series of regional dogpiles. I am guessing with 6 or 8 nations, while there still will be dogpiling, the paranoia of survival kicks in much earlier and just the fact there are less nations to team up with will reduce the tag-teaming, especially if the map is set up right.

Finally, smaller games/maps will lessen the late-game micro hell.

[Meglobob]

Won't smaller maps just weight the game even more in favour of the strong bless nations and giant races? Well weakening the more magic/research driven nations?

I suppose you could have easy research and high gem site % thou to help counteract that somewhat.

[Zeldor]

Meglobob:

The idea is that for smaller number of nations it's possible to pick only nations on similar level. You can pick only powerful nations for example. And with bigger map you use almost all nations, so some people get really bad nations while others get awesome.

[DonCorazon]

Oh yeah, that was the other point I meant to make - thanks Zeldor.

[PashaDawg]

Hello:

Turn 54 is out.

Deadline is Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

[PashaDawg]

A rehost of turn 54 is out. Deadline is Friday.

Please be sure to use the correct .2h file.

[PashaDawg]

Hello:

Turn 55 is out.

Deadline is Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

[PashaDawg]

Hello:

Turn 56 is out. This is with the 3.24 patch.

Deadline is Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

[PashaDawg]

Hello:

The game is crashing when I host the turn.

Any potential solutions?

Pasha