The Council of Wyrms

[The Panther]

Arralen said:
Remark about mapmaking
Wouldn't it have been easier to use 17 "#start" commands instead of 262 "#nostart" commands ??

When placing starting positions, did you pay attention to the terrain of the neighbouring provinces? I think you didn't ... . Some nations rely at least initially on troops build with ressources, which they might not have if everything around is plains or grass.

Map errors
wrong connections:
39 - 60
42 - 60

terrain errors:
#2 should be normal
#10 should be small
#58 should be large
#143 should be large


Magic Sites Setting
Someone said sites 50 would be a good balance with bloodhunting.

Did a test game on poor Orania map: Gives not only very few resources, but low income as well. This will limit the numbers of blood hunters.

Found myself constantly cashing in fire and earth gems just to be able to buy more mages (no bloodhunting, though).

This might result in a very gem-centric game. I would suggest sites 40 or something.

OK, I don't know anything about map making.

1. This is the first I have heard about the #start command.
2. I did look at the surrounding terrain when making the start positions. I even changed terrains in a couple of places to try to make this better. However, it is not possible to balance this unless I change dozens of terrains. Each player will simply have the luck of the draw as to whether they have plains, swamps, farm lands, etc, around their capitols. There just is not anything that can be done about it. If you are relying on resources, then you had better select productivity. If you are relying on gold, select order.
3. I have no idea how to make a province large or small.
4. I believe that blood hunting will eventually rule because the poor world does NOT reduce population. There is just as many 5K population provinces on a poor world as on a rich world. Of course, getting the blood mages is not very easy and blood can't be traded for gold, so this may balance it out.
5. I too though 50% sites might be high, but never really heard any alternatives. I did a few tests at 40%, but the difference between 40 and 50 is not significant in 20 turn tests so I could not make any conclusions.

Arralen, If you want to take a stab at fixing up the map and attaching it, I would greatly appreciate this.


There are STILL 4 pretenders I have not yet received. These are:
Caelum
Ermor
Mictlan
Ulm

Send those in ASAP. I will be back from golf at noon today (unless I get rained out). I hope to see all pretenders by then.

Panther

[PashaDawg]

Hi Panther:

When I downloaded the amended map file, it's name was:

386182-COW.map.txt

I realize that I need to delete the ".txt", but should I also change the name of the map file to "Orania.map"?

Thanks for your efforts to get this game going!

Pasha

[Huntsman]

The Panther said:

2. I did look at the surrounding terrain when making the start positions. I even changed terrains in a couple of places to try to make this better. However, it is not possible to balance this unless I change dozens of terrains. Each player will simply have the luck of the draw as to whether they have plains, swamps, farm lands, etc, around their capitols. There just is not anything that can be done about it. If you are relying on resources, then you had better select productivity. If you are relying on gold, select order.

I agree with this. If you're a resource-heavy nation then you need to plan for it with high production and admin values. Same goes for nations which need lots of gold. What happens to them if they get stuck in mountains or swamp? Just have to plan ahead, IMHO.

AS far as gems go, everybody's gonna need em, either for summons or selling so I don't see any imbalances there as we'll all have the same opportunities to get a strong gem income going. Setting it lower would probably just mean more slog, no?

[Huntsman]

PashaDawg said:
Hi Panther:

When I downloaded the amended map file, it's name was:

386182-COW.map.txt

I realize that I need to delete the ".txt", but should I also change the name of the map file to "Orania.map"?

Thanks for your efforts to get this game going!

Pasha

You can name the file anything you want. It'll show up in the game as "Council of Wyrms" anyway since that's the name that was given "inside" the .map file.

[Arralen]

file name
Do not rename the file to "orania.map" - this would overwrite the original Orania Map with our tweaked version. And it would result in a "map not found" error in the game.
Use COW.map !!!

map commands
Got the command from Illwinters PDF "Dominions II Scenario and Map Editing" :
> 6.4 #start <province nbr>
> By creating at least one start location for each player,
> every player will start at one of these locations.
in contrast to:
> 6.5 #specstart <nation nbr> <province nbr>
> Use this command to assign a specific nation to a specific
> start location. Nation nbr can be found in table 1.

With #start, the game will assign one starting location to each nation randomly, while #specstart will give fixed starting positions.
The Yalun, the Tyrande and the 'Power of the Eye (arcoeye)' map use this command. Seems to work ok.

How to make provinces nostart, large or small?
5.5 #terrain <province nbr> <terrain type>
Sets the terrain of a province. The terrain is calculated
by adding certain numbers for different terrain types or
other attributes.
1=small, 2=large, 4=sea, 8=rivers, 16=mountain,
32=swamp, 64=waste, 128=forest and 256=farm.
Not all of these can be combined, e.g. you should
not make a province that is small and large at the same
time.
Add to this 512=nostart and 1024=manySites.
A #nostart command put into the map file will be converted by the map editor automatically.


reworking the map
No way I could get that done for Monday. Next year
Sry. Family, laundry, some missing lines of code .. the usual stuff, you know ...

[The Panther]

So far, I have 2 magic-less wyrms, 11 wyrms with magic, and 1 red dragon. A quick look showed a lot of variety on the magic with only two L9 bless strategies. I am making an excel table and will ask djo to put it on the COW site when I am finished.

However, this means that I still need 3 more pretenders. I have sent an email or a PM to those missing players:

Caelum - High Priest Naresh
Ermor - Quantum Mechani
Mictlan - Shovah

If I don't hear from them soon, we may have to start looking for new players.

And thanks, Arralen, for the map info. I probably should have opened the map editing pdf file somewhere along the way. I have always been totally mystified by the province type numbers prior to now.

Now, if I can just find the time today during the baseball playoffs to make this spreadsheet. My golf game was rained out today so I do have a bit of time this morning.


Edit - Upon closer review, the human pretender was actually a dragon.

[shovah]

i sent mine in, just worried about some things after play testing. (but i have found some interesting 'strategies')

[djo]

The Panther said:
Now, if I can just find the time today during the baseball playoffs to make this spreadsheet.

As of Friday evening, I have time...

Excel is a good place to make the table. Make the file dial-up friendly in size, and I can work with it.

Are you putting themes in too? I'd like to see them. You can spot national themes via the recruit page, but is there any way to tell, say, "water cult" from the UI?

[shovah]

i like my fire+astral wyrm (usually also has 2 nature)cast body etheral+personal luck, then fire shield and astral shield, then resist magic (or anything else you want) and charge in. works best with a ring of regen and a reinvig item but can do without, i used 2 helmets with the gore attack since i was indie smashing and it worked great even on lvl 8 knight provinces

[Alneyan]

The Supreme Court of Serpentine Creatures hereby advices the one known as Djo that all special Dominion types are indicated when checking province info in your own Dominion. The information text will thus display the name of your Dominion, be it a nation specific one (id est, Spring & Autumn) or a generic one (exempli gratia, Heart of Winter).