Mega Age II -Kingmaker(Started)

[DrPraetorious]

Okay.

(non-construction)
Lvl 1 stays.
Lvl 2 -> Lvl 1
Lvl 3 -> Lvl 2
Lvl 4 -> Lvl 3
Lvl 5 -> Lvl 4
Lvl 6 -> Lvl 5
Other spells:
Ice Strike, Shimmering Fields, Prison of Sedna, Sea of Ice, Iron Walls, Marble Warriors, Living (whatever), Animal Horde, Dome of Flaming Death, Dome of Corruption, to level 6.

Astral Tempest, Dragon Master, Wild Growth, Unraveling, to level 7.

Flame Storm, Niefel Flames to level 8.

[baruk]

A radical idea: use normal research.

- It keeps things simple.
- Balance between rushers and turtlers is maintained.
- Boomers already balanced by popularity of rushers.

So someone might finish research before turn 50. What's the big deal? There is no "research victory" to take into account.

My take on map balance: if starting distance between capitals is large, then research should be made more difficult to compensate the rushers.
On this map, distance between capitals will be low considering no. of players divided by total no. of provinces, so research should stay at normal.

See how normal research goes for this game - if need be changes can be made for Megagame 3.

[Xietor]

research was on hard for 1st big game, and i thought it was fine.

with 900 provinces, normal research does not give the benefit to the nations that are strong in research, and aids nations who are weak in research. I definitely am not in favor of very hard research as some nations will be sure to be rushed within 3 or 4 turns.

[Zeldor]

I now really hope I get LA Agartha. No one wanted them, I did some tests and started to like them So I will kill anyone that tries to grab them from me.

[Xietor]

The map is coming along. The final map image will be made available to everyone, but not the final rgb file as the starting locations for 4 races, LA Atlantis, LA marignon, EA Ryleh, and EA oceania will be set. There is no getting around la atlantis and la marignon-they have to have specific starting spots on the coast.

All border mountains have been turned into mountains, so races that can build peg castle will be able to do so.

Additionally, i have coded provinces with 4 icons on the map to have "many magical sites." if you see the volcano, the splash of water, the stone henge, or the silo icons on a province, it has been coded for "many magical sites."

The following players still have not submitted race selections:

Llamabeast
Drake49
Cor2
Moderation
Janim

At 0000 hours on May 8(new orleans time) players who did not submit race selections will be replaced with alternates and
race assignment will begin.

If you are in the top 3 alternates, it may behoove you to send in potential picks in case you make the cut. Otherwise you will be randomly assigned a race as I have no idea what race you would have liked to play.

I will not randomly assign a water race, or a blood race that requires blood sacrifice to maintain dominion.

[Jazzepi]

Xietor said:
The map is coming along. The final map image will be made available to everyone, but not the final rgb file as the starting locations for 4 races, LA Atlantis, LA marignon, EA Ryleh, and EA oceania will be set. There is no getting around la atlantis and la marignon-they have to have specific starting spots on the coast.

All border mountains have been turned into mountains, so races that can build peg castle will be able to do so.

Additionally, i have coded provinces with 4 icons on the map to have "many magical sites." if you see the volcano, the splash of water, the stone henge, or the silo icons on a province, it has been coded for "many magical sites."

The following players still have not submitted race selections:

Llamabeast
Drake49
Cor2
Moderation
Janim

At 0000 hours on May 8(new orleans time) players who did not submit race selections will be replaced with alternates and
race assignment will begin.

If you are in the top 3 alternates, it may behoove you to send in potential picks in case you make the cut. Otherwise you will be randomly assigned a race as I have no idea what race you would have liked to play.

I will not randomly assign a water race, or a blood race that requires blood sacrifice to maintain dominion.

I would really prefer to not have any "special" provinces. There's only four of them, for how many people? It just makes certain starting locations much more valuable than others, and screws the people who aren't nearby them in the beginning.

Jazzepi

[Zeldor]

I understood there are 4 types of them and there are really many of them. If there are just 4 provinces like that I am also against it. We have enough of randomness.

[Darkwind]

If they were set equally distant to many capitals (for example, rings of capitals around each "many sites" provinces, though I doubt that's what's happening) it would work, since each nation would have a roughly equal chance of getting the province, and they'd be hot spots for warring (IE, whoever controls the province would get ganged up upon). Since I haven't seen the map yet, I can't really cast any judgement on it, but for now I support the concept, at least.

[Reay]

The last megagame was reasonably balanced with hard research. It is a large game so people can go up the research tree pretty quickly. Normal research is unbalanced for a megagame IMHO.

I survived with Machaka against Helheim because I could get Flaming Arrows before attacking. Without them I would probably have been crushed by the dual blessed Helherdlings. So very hard research is probably also unbalanced.

Hard research by mid game was starting to get unbalanced with several nations shooting up the tree. However many of these nations died out later on and I eventually caught up.

So I support Xietor in using standard hard research.

[Xietor]

the many magic sites icons can be viewed for yourselves. I did not add them to the map, they came with the random map. So there is no moving them or spacing them out.

capitals will be random though, except for 2 water races and 2 la races that require by the game mechanics set starting spots.

llamabeast will generate the 1st turn which will place 56 capitals randomly on the 56 starting spots on the map.
I will have no control over it. So yes a player may get a capital close to one, while another player may be far from them all.

But there will be starting spots that are better than others anyway. A player starting out next to dr. p niefel giants is going to be hard put to survive and he likely will
not even have time to search for magic sites. and you need to have the right level mage/paths to uncover them.

much more determinative to one's survival is a player's proximity to powerful aggressive nations played
by good players.

in any event i spent over 9 hours working on the map today and I am not inclined to undo what i just did-though most of the work was on neighbors/mountains.