SP benchmark

[legowarrior]

See this is why I play with victory points. A lot of victory points, but still, it means that I can stop the game without crushing all in my path.

[parone]

not a bad idea, lego. i also like bbz's idea of smaller games that are actually finishable.

mostly, i start a game with an idea, see if it works, then lose interest. i think MP has absolutely ruined SP for me.

[rdonj]

Glory of the gods is *way* too big for me to play on. In SP I stick generally to maps that are 200 provinces or less. And 200 is TOO BIG for me to finish. I don't think I've ever conquered more than half of Shahrivar, which is a mere 165 provinces. Anyway. Right now I have an SP game on Riverlands (235 provinces) where I own ~80 provinces and am basically invulnerable, so I've largely given up on that game. It will take a while to win, but I have 0 possibility of losing at this point and literally thousands of gems and blood slaves sitting around that I'm too lazy to use. This is with Sylvania, which I consider a very slow nation in SP. I've also got a game on a 60 province map in about mid year 3 where there's only 16 enemy provinces left and I'll win eventually, but I probably won't finish it for a while because I'll be artificially delaying the computer's demise. And I recently won a game conquering everything on sixlands (90 provinces) in year 5 or 6, despite at one point basically not playing for something like a year trying to let the AIs advance a little because I had been crushing AIs left and right for most of the game and wanted more of a challenge for my armies. Sadly I didn't get it. (I also was waiting for them to attack me, which is something of a house rule I have for fighting the AI, I always wait for them to attack first. It could be noted that I waited until year 3 to attack any AIs in that game as a result of that rule)

A 480 province map like glory of the gods I would never, ever finish. The multiplayer version would be pretty similar to riverlands, except I hate all of the mapmove 1 terrain on that map so I'd probably give it up earlier :P

[samoht]

I have the save file on an old computer of mine of the huge version of Glory of the Gods where I was playing LA Ermor. Sooooo much micromanagement. I found that I was only able to play a couple turns a day before I had to do something else. Never finished it, but I think I owned about half the map (including under water) by the time I moved on to something else.

From a RPing perspective I really like Glory of the Gods, whichever size.

[Knai]

Originally Posted by legowarrior

See this is why I play with victory points. A lot of victory points, but still, it means that I can stop the game without crushing all in my path.

What I find works is playing with victory points, where each capital is worth 1, and everything else is worth 0, and all capitals must be captured. Granted, I pretty much only use SP for testing at this point anyways, but I remember that being somewhat fun.

[Makinus]

I play exclusively SP games since Dom2 (tried a 2 or 3 MP games but my RL schedule is inimical to MP playing), i normally like to play maps with 150-200 provinces and max AIs for the era. To be able to finish the games i do something like Knai does, with all capitals worth 1 VP, but i set that you only neet 7 VPs for victory, as i imagine that if i manage to knock out 6 AIs i´m probably unbeatable anyway, and it gives a chance that one of the strong AI empries (MA or LA Ernor for example) will beat me to the victory...

I also made a rule that i only attack an AI if attacked first...