Sitting on the fence

[Kristoffer O]

> how can you do public diplomacy, battle reports on the thread and so on without giving away your identity?

In game messaging. But it might be slow.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Alternatively, you could get some instant messaging/chat program that gives you a number as an identity, and allows you to assign an alias, such as Agartha.

For battle reports, you might be able to have a blog or livejournal that allows anonymous/guest posters where you can type in a name each time you post.

Personally, I like the idea somewhat of having to give away your identity to manage really quick diplomacy. There will be a cost to complete anonymity. And to encourage 'coming out', theres the whole bit about "what happens in Vegas" stays in "Vegas". The anonymity lasting simply for joining is enough to prevent a player from designing a specific counter. There could be a definite advantage to not proclaiming you've taken a slot at all- polls to keep track of numbers.

I'm not really familiar with instant messaging clients, so I don't vouch on accuracy. I think maybe IRC or ICQ just assign you a number and let you pick and change an alias to your nation. I do know there are some anonymous online chatrooms, though I haven't used any.

Alternatively, if there was a huge demand for super secret games, maybe there could be something done with a separate forum. A game could be started here, with some discussion going on, and the rest done on a forum where users have to register (to prevent spam), but doesn't display usernames.

[Gandalf Parker]

One of my game ideas was to do a mega game and assign an email box on the system for each nation. It was part of an effort to have a totally anonymous game.

[Gandalf Parker]

with a new mega game being discussed, and it being pointed out to me that I need to dig up some of my old ideas for my ghost-town of a server.. it seemed like a good time to bump this thread.

But just to make it more than a bump..
let me add fuel to the fire on the "Civil War" idea that was discussed here. Im not a modder so I have no idea how well this worked but back in the Dom2 days we had a module to do what we needed.

Nation Replacement
This mod duplicates most nations of Dominions II, and Ulm's two themes, so that the same nation can appear many times one game.
Version 0.90
Created by Endoperez.
Download mod: nation_replicas.zip

Its still available on Illwinters site

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I was thinking about, and hadn't found...
A simple mod nation- Observers.
All national units completely immobile.
10 gold, immobile l4 priests to prevent dom kill.
Custom version of the spell that lets you see everything on the map, costing one astral pearl, one astral magic required.

Still... have a few problems with this. Taking up one global slot for a noncompetitive player, for instance.

The whole point of this nation would be to allow some third party to watch the game - as might happen with a RTS tournament. Could be abused during a game, but if I only release those turns ten turns later, perhaps?

[coobe]

Best Reason to play Dominions 3 is the game itself. I need no fancy mods (except cb mod), i play dom every day for several hours and still discover new stuff

[Gandalf Parker]

This is actually about new games, not just mods.
The mod discussed was one to facilitate some of the ideas for new multiplayer games. A way to create an admin account in a game which can watch more of whats going on

Some of us have been playing the game for a couple of years longer than others and we are more willing to try some weird game settings other than the game has in its game-creation menu

[Wikd Thots]

So?
Now that you read it again, what game are you going to give us?
Your server is getting rusty.

My preferences would be

BLIND EMAIL because you know how I love a game with ore backstabbing and paranoia

MOD AI's but I see you are asking he mod experts for some suggestions there. Don't do a map for soloists with it. Do a game for us

Same as MOD AI's but mix in MEGA-GAME (all 62 nations and AIs filling to 80 players) and also HEADSTART the AI's 10 or 20 turns

Maybe your CHAOS stuff, or the one with a mod that randomly changes things all thru the game. But only if it's offered instead of the others I mentioned.\
Get on the ball G!

[llamabeast]

Wikd,

If you want to run a game you can - you're welcome to use my server. You can set it up exactly as you like, blind e-mail, whatever.

I'm not entirely sure why I say this because you're probably the most/only objectionable person on this forum, but still - if you want this stuff it is entirely possible. It would be nice to see you contribute something for a change.

[Wikd Thots]

Oh don't sound like S-Hombre. At least I never offered to do anything. I'm just prodding G to do something with his server. G knows he needs a good prod. Nobody want those blitz games anymore and a perfectly good server is going to waste.

But it might help if some other nicer talking people maybe offer G some suggestions on what THEY would like him to put on the server. Mega is covered. Emails is covered thanks to you LLamabeast. So what is still not out there for multiplay games? If we don't prod him then he will just do more maps or offer up free ideas for other people to do or diddling in Basic. The server was the only thing that (a fairly large crowd) didnt laugh at.