Question: Do you like score graphs in MP?

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

In theory, I like the idea of having them off and relying on "real" scouting. But in practice I can't cope with the metagame problems of not being able to see who's leading, games that should have been declared won by concession drag on forever. Graphs off can work when there is a fixed victory condition though.

Pretty much this. I don't like the dogpiling inherent in graphs-on games ("he's at war ! he's lost two provinces, it's all over for him, let's get some chunks before it's too late !!" times neighbours ), but on the other hand with graphs off it's much harder to figure out who's the big dangerous dog, and as such he more often than not they get away with being twice as big/efficient/powerful as anyone else before anyone can really understand what's going on.

I wish there were a hybrid graph setting, where you'd get the graphs (at least the dominion, army & forts ones) based on what your forces see and your scouting reports. Same for the gem graph - if you've seen the sites in a province and an opponent take it, update his graph accordingly. Maybe also an incremental research graph that would update the total each time you witness an opponent casting a new spell/new global/new forged item. You can do both of the latter by hand of course, but it's a bit of a PITA to keep your notes up to date. Possibly also an automatic, toggleable collating of graph info between players, which would share the info you have on everyone else but not yourself ?
Maybe in Dom 4...

[Gandalf Parker]

Not to stomp a useful thread, but since it was brought up...

In past discussions some good points were made about what a world like this would operate as under semi-DarkAges type settings. Some said at least part of the graphs were good, other parts were said to be too specific.

One argument I liked is that everyone would know something about who is in the lead. Not exact numbers but WHO had the biggest army, the most castles, the best magic, the highest dominion. Even if your nation did not have personal contact they would hear about such legendary nations off in the unexplored distance. But information about the least and smallest nation would require direct scouting. When meeting a new nation the only thing you would know for sure is that its not the legendary big-bad you have heard rumors about.

One hybrid that was discussed was that each turn, the server would take the scores file that the game outputs
http://game.dom3minions.com/games/St...ks/scores.html
and modify it into one that shows only WHO is in the lead in each category. And it would not give a number for how many forts or how much army. Just who is on top. Looking at the example I linked to you can easily see how that would affect strategy knowing who is the biggest worry, but not knowing who is the easy target. It would still allow dogpiling agreements

Such a hybrid score file would not be hard to do for any of the game servers. The Dom3 game has a "pre" and "post" file setting to call special instructions before and after each hosting. Usually used to do things like move the scores file to a web viewable directory. It can easily run a modification script and then move that instead on each turn. In-faile graphs would be turned off and the web file would give you the world-wide gossip.