Armadillo - started

[llamabeast]

Just waiting on pretenders from:

GrayZ - Eriu
Dedas - Ulm
GameExtremist - Arcoscephale
llamabeast - Atlantis (bad llama!)

[lch]

Teraswaerto said:
I don't think remote attack spells are really a problem, as they have trouble breaking PD, cost more gems, and the ones like Ghost Riders and the Horror attacks leave the province in independent control.

My point was that you can find out who is putting only < 5 PD via scouts and then use the cheap Call of the * spells or the stronger ones against that province. Caelum could do Call of the Winds coupled by aerial attacks. A Ghost Riders together with "attack current province" from a scout is a winner, too. Since I'm not playing myself I don't want to tell you what to do, I just wanted to warn that 33% could be achieved easier than imagined, so maybe get the percentage higher so that it's really a clearly visible advantage.

P.S.: Oh, when you can make "hold for X turns" as a victory condition, too, then I retract my earlier statements.

[Baalz]

33% seems a small percentage to me if the thought is that whoever gets there first would win anyway, but might make for a fun, short game so long as everyone is aware that it'll probably be won by somebody leaping unexpectedly the last 10% or so in a couple turns.

[Jazzepi]

I really think it should be something above 50%.

Jazzepi

[zakna]

Id vote for the 33% or more hold for 5 turn or more
But I'm not sure about all the hold province thing. Make more sense to me to be the last pretender standing to claim godhood.

[Teraswaerto]

lch said:
A Ghost Riders together with "attack current province" from a scout is a winner, too.

Good point this, hadn't thought of it.

[Ubercat]

zakna said:
Id vote for the 33% or more hold for 5 turn or more
But I'm not sure about all the hold province thing. Make more sense to me to be the last pretender standing to claim godhood.

The problem with that is you'd reach a point where one player was obviously going to win, but he'd still have to hunt down the last survivors.

If I were one of the fugitives I'd want to concede because it would be boring, and I'd want to move on to a new game where I might have a chance.

If I were the winner I'd be just as bored, and hoping that people would concede so I'd have more time to put into a new, freshly challenging game.

If you're concerned that a quicker game like that means that the late game gets abbreviated (meaning the highest level spells never get researched and longterm strategies don't come to full fruition) then a big map with 22 players is more appropriate. I'd wager that with one of the bigger maps, even at 33% province victory, some players would get to see the fruits of their long term planning.

[Meglobob]

Hands up everyone who has managed to get 91 provinces in MP?

My hands are firmly down, I am in a game thats on turn 94 and I only have 65 provinces.

All the remaining players are determined to fight to the death, more provinces have forts than don't.

The idea of taking provinces with call of winds at this stage is utterly laughable. 3xghost riders usually fails to take a province. It takes 3hrs plus to do your orders correctly and the game looks like going on till turn 150. Its already lasted since Dom3 came out which is 9 months.

Do we want the same?

[llamabeast]

Wow. That sounds like a lot of no fun to me Meglobob. I think we don't want that.

Okay, I hereby assert that the winner will be the first to take 33% of the provinces, and hold them for 5 turns.

I don't think we can automate this victory condition, so the game won't force ue to stop playing when it's reached. But I expect we will find that it's actually too high a requirement, thinking about the logistics of taking and holding that many provinces. If there are two or three superpowers who want to keep playing beyond that, I suppose they can, but personally I doubt it will be much fun.

Right, next question (so many questions!) Does anyone have any suggestions about anything I should do to the map, e.g. place starting provinces? I'm not going to have time to think about placing 21 start provinces manually. If there's an automated way to do it though I'd be interested (what did they do for Perpetuality?). Or if anyone has time to do it manually that would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise I'll just let Dominions place people as it sees fit.

[Kristoffer O]

I'm fine with being randomly placed. I'm also fine with being nonrandomly and unfairly placed.