Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker
So many disagreements Thank you.
But no one here is going to nibble and start up an extreme alternative game setting to PROVE the point? The surprise at how such games totally trash the usual "everyone knows" about what is great or what sucks is so much fun (which isnt really obvious unless you play outside a specific group). We could use abit more creativity around here from the same size maps and same game goals which obviously sparked the original comment. Review the games options. Think outside the menu.
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Been there done that, burned the T-shirt and sacrificed the designer.
The little group I play Dominions MP with, which mixes Dom3 veterans and newbies from the Paradox forums, experiment with settings, not to prove points, but to find out what suits us - and achieve interesting results thereby. Some things that are touted as conventional wisdom in these Shrapnel forums work as well for us, some worse, and some much worse, because our culture of diplomacy is different - and successful diplomacy is at least half the route to victory.
I would be deeply surprised if other smaller groups don't do the same on a frequent basis and don't see any reason whatsoever to tell you so on the official boards.
But we probably don't play different enough that you'd consider it proving any points.
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That said, the 11 human/7 mighty AI player game on GreeceStain that ended in a turn in the 80's or 90's when the opposition saw me and my (temporary) ally teleporting in SCs all around the capital of one of our enemies (temporarily allied against the temporar alliance of the two of us), raising a fortress in one of the provinces by magic the next turn, followed by the dominion-crushing blow of my sending 17 Juggernauts into the fortress next to his capital next turn... was pretty awesome - and not too shabbily done for a player who had 2 fortresses and less than 6 provinces to his name for most of the turns 28-42, when he was under attack by three players and all alone in the world while his troops deserted.
Who needs blood sacrifice when you have the Arcane Nexus?
-- This, incidentally, is one of those examples where giving only the bare bones of the story will cause many Shrapnel forum MP veterans who recoil in disgust or suspect incompetence on the hands of other players for not bringing down the Nexus the moment it first went up.
I assure you that it was brought down once by one half of the other players cooperating as soon as they could, and they did it when I didn't have enough astral pearls to bring it up again, only to return 15 turns later at my hands, at which point it was opposed by the other half of the players, but not by those that brought it down the first time and, diplomatically speaking, it made excellent sense at the time for everybody to act as they did both times.
In the end, the Arcane Nexus was up for almost half the game without a single armageddon being cast.
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Currently we are trying out cumulative VP games with 10-15 VP to win, 1 VP per capital, no AIs to inflate the ranks, and no shared victories. Those are, not surprisingly, interesting too, just like all the previous games we have played regardless of settings.