Newbie Slug Fest - Mose Hansen game - ENDED

[Grim Knight]

I am currently trying to figure out a way to work around the whole firewall issue with the server, I have posted to the Technical Support thread in the Main Forum for advice on this.

If I can get the server to work through my firewall then I would be happy to host our next game, otherwise PBEM would be fine for me as well.

Grim Knight.

[Grim Knight]

Ok, deccan tested it and was able to connect to the server hosted on my system.

So if you guys want to setup another game, I can host it.

Should we have a vote for which map and what settings to use?

Would it be better if I arbitrarily deceided on the settings?

I think a vote would be the fairest thing and then everyone who has played in this game would get input into the next game.

In case we decide to go with the vote I am going to cast mine now:

Map: Cradle of Zen (Unless more than 10 players)
Mod: Zen's Pretender Mod v1.72
Victory: Standard Victory Conditions
Sites: 50
H o F: 15
Research: Very Difficult
House Rules: Play a Nation you have never played MP before.
Indep Strength: 9
Host Speed: 24h QH
Everything Else: Leave at Default

Grim Knight

[Steerpike]

Yes I want in on this new game please.
As to the map I like the sound of Tyrande, downloading it now.
Jotunheim would be my preferred choice of nation.
Preferred magic would be normal or difficult, though not too difficult.
Indie 9 sounds cool to me.
I havn't played with Zens pretender Mod, is it good?
And maximum Game fun is essential.

[Grim Knight]

Zen's Pretender Mod makes several modifications to pretenders to make them more balanced, primarily adding a little to the under powered / under used pretender's.

I am in a game with it now and it is working out well.

Grim Knight.

[The Panther]

Count me in. I would like to claim Abysia. This was a fun game, and not just because I won (lol). I have had fun games where I lost too. And a couple of my games were really not fun at all due to some annoying players in them plus the one where I badly messed up my pretender design and am about to die.

I have never player Cradle of Zen, or even looked at the map. I did look at the map Tyrande, and it has some problems to prevent it from working properly:
1. Eight players as a maximum might be a problem.
2. The map would have to be edited to remove all starting provinces with the premade sites. It my test, I had a nation start at the province with the Chillsick Swamp, which meant all troops sitting in the capitol would eventually get diseased.
3. The map is not well balanced in that whoever starts in the left lower corner will not be near those juicy built-in sites. In particular there is a massively powerful province in the NE with FOUR splendid sites, including a devil's den. Whoever starts over that way will be given a nice boost when taking that province.

It is a georgeous map, though, and I did like it a lot. Removing most, if not all, premade sites and putting in several #nostart in a few places would made it a fine, well-balanced MP map.

As for Aduria, I have played that map before in SP and found it to be a good map.

I will therefore comment on the map choice sometime later. Also, I know exactly nothing about Zen's mods and would need time to download and study them. I would bet that my lovely GK Abysian pretender which I made this weekend no longer works under Zen's mods.

I would suggest starting a new thread, Grim, unless you want the ten people in our just-finished game here to have first dibs on slots. If all want in, then we can just play another game with the same 10 players. That would certainly be fine with me.

As for your game settings, I love the very difficult research setting. I have always thought that normal research is far too easy. I mean, the high research nations will complete all research at about turn 60! Ugh even! What's the point in that?

I have been wanting to try another very difficult research game, for I think it makes national troops far more important instead of relying mostly on summons that would then take quite a while to research.

I don't agree with standard victory settings, as it can make for an abysmally long game. Of course, everyone can always agree on a winner (or even two allied winners) like apparently happens a lot. Maybe put in a victory setting requiring half the provinces. If someone owns half the provinces, they got it won anyway and it would be just a matter of cleaning up at that point. Under such a setting, I would not have won our current game just yet, though it would be getting quite close.

[Cainehill]

I second bypassing the Tyrande map - it can be fun for SP, but is hopelessly unbalanced for MP. Panther started with a site that diseased his capital? Someone else can start with the site that allows them to recruit Pythium's Grand Thaumaturgs, as well as the gem income, as that's a site that's been placed on the map.

Also, distribution of gold provinces, resource provinces, and magic provinces isn't even. While in a sense, it's reasonable and realistic that areas close to the north pole have less population, fewer resources, etc, it really doesn't do much for whomever is unlucky enough to start there.

Might be interesting in a map that had 6-10 or more reasonable starting positions, and then people would choose whether to strike out for the gold rich coasts and plains, or the mountains and forests, or went to grab the polar wastelands because they figure on less competition, but that isn't Tyrande.

[The Panther]

Steerpike said:
Panther I bow before your superior tactics and thank you for a lesson well learned next time I will be searching frantically for magic sites from day one and watching the skies for false horrors.

Now that the game is over, I wanted to comment on this. The reason I went after you first, Steerpike, is that Arcoscephale is one of the races that can whip the false horrors from Caelum quite easily. All you have to do is research Thamauturgy first and then construction next (to get inexpensive starshine skullcaps and amulets of penetration for every single mage). With a nice pearl income from searching and clamming, you can use the sacred heart companions (with some priestesses to bless them, give them courage, and then heal everyone afterwards) or vine ogres to tank the horrors. Your back row mages will then then do mind control, paralyze, soul slay, and all the other nifty astral spells against the Caelum archers and mages, completely ignoring the mindless horrors! Light of the Northern Star is an absolute MUST spell for doing this, and it takes but one pearl to cast!

In one of my games in which I am about to die, I did this against Caelum and now have several seraphs and some bane lords (all without leadership, lol). It is not Caelum killing me, but instead is Mictlan and the devils.

Anyway, good game, Steerpike.

[PashaDawg]

No problem with not using the pretty map.

How about Aduria? The map is not too important. Very difficult magic reseach is fine, too. I'm not too particular.

I would love to get into the new game playing PANGEA. Never played it MP, and very little SP.

PASHA

[DragonFire11]

Hey, I'd like to play too! This time I will not take Ermor, thank you.

[Grim Knight]

I posted to this thread just because I want the 10 players from Last game to have first shot at the slots.

I have not played around with different victory conditions before, if there is one that allows you to set a winner for 50% of all provinces in the game that would be cool, as you say if someone gets to 50% provinces then they would most likely clearly win the game unless they only had one opponent left who had the other 50% of the provinces.

Once everyone here has had a chance to chime in, then it would be time to start a new thread for the next game.

It appears that the voting method shall be adopted, so if everyone who is interested in participating in the next game could cast a vote for any and all aspects of the MP setup that they feel strongly about, preferably in a list with each item clearly labeled and on a separate line, that would be great.

As for the map I am not too attached to any specific map, and it may be best to save the map choice for Last after we have a better idea of just how many people we are going to have in the game.

I notice I did not choose a race yet so I will call one now:

In the next game I would like to play as Marignon.

Race: Marignon

Grim Knight