60 Player MegaGame Discussion Thread

[DrPraetorious]

That should work, but it'd be cleaner to cluster all the mods to each nation # in the same place.

It shouldn't take long, though.

[Gandalf Parker]

All players will have to have a copy of the mod before they can pull down their first file.

I was going to merge the mods also but I was waiting for it to include all 80 slots. Should work for the standard 60 nations though. (well except for Tir na N'og which should be in the game by the time you start)

[Morkilus]

Holy crap. I'd like to be part of this just to say that I was. In any case, I'm guessing there'll be a market for replacements. I'd definitely suggest waiting for the patch, what with some nasty bugs in the current version.

[WSzaboPeter]

I would like to play too. It would be great experience.

[djo]

This game both fascinates and scares me.

I would suggest some kind of managed nation assignment. It would be a pain to have to read through five pages of forum posts to figure out which nations were taken and which weren't (if you were one of the later sign-ups). And you know people will make honest mistakes and double-claim nations. But if you go first-come, first-serve, I would suggest you open it up on a weekend, so people who can't check the forums while at work have a chance at not being last.

If there is someone out there with too much time on their hands, they could go through all the games currently active on this forum and count up how many different active players we have. I wonder how close that number is to 60.

[llamabeast]

There're over 60, I reckon. Hard to know though. Also hard to know what proportion would be up for such a huge game. I'd be scared, although I might be tempted when the time comes.

[calmon]

I would never play this game with Arcane Nexus in the spell list. In my experience you get around ~200 astral gems in a normal full game. So count 500-600 in a big one like this. You would have enough gems to recast it for 999 in the turn after you cast it.

I can second micah, the global shouldn't be in effect in the turn cast (from manual) but up to date it works in same turn.

Utterdark on the other side isn't a real problem. 90% of the nations are affected and so nobody from them got a real advantage.
The 10% which got some advantages from utterdark will be in trouble very soon. Remember there are dozen of nation which can spend for a dispel.

[DrPraetorious]

I agree that game-balance is less important than getting this game working at all. On the other hand, it's going to be a looooong game and it'd be nice if people felt it was reasonably fair.

How's about this.

Everyone makes six choices in descending order. Players are randomly assigned their first choice until everyone is either assigned (unlikely) or everyone's first-choice is taken.
Then, players are randomly assigned second-choice positions until all the second-choice positions are taken, and so forth.
Finally, players will be assigned to remaining positions at random.

If you get your first choice, you get nothing.
If you're forced to take your second choice, you get an extra scout with richness 4 random magic items.
If you're forced to take your third choice, you ALSO get +50% of your starting army and an extra commander.
If you're forced to take your fourth choice, you get 50,000 people in your capital. Yes, LA Ermor still gets this (you can pillage them for precious money to build forts/temples and soulless, it's actually good.)
If you're forced to take your fifth choice, double your starting army (instead of +50%) and the extra commander also gets richness 4 random magic items, in addition to the scout and population.
If you're stuck with sixth choice or a random nation, also start with a loremaster with a ring of water breathing and your capital has 60,000 people in it.

I'd be willing to administer all this if-need-be - it would only require customization of the map file.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes lets get the first one going before we throw in too many things that can cause problems.

I commented in my big-game thread (which I never started) that Id expect the blitzing crowd will love early game and late game. In mid-game when it gets to be micromanaging they might decide to turn their nation over to a sub. If that nation ends up on the losing curve then at a later date when its gotten small again but has lots of research completed then the MM player might give up on it and the blitzer can get it back for all kinds of new fun.

Of course everyone is abit of blitzer and MM so there will be a variety of drop-off and return levels but I think if the game doesnt crash the server then it will probably continue to completion with many subs swapping in and out. OR a possibility is that the ebb and flow of subs might create a never-ending game where no nation stays on top long enough to be declared a winner. Scarey huh?

[Teraswaerto]

DrPraetorious,
With those bonuses I would try to get assigned the sixth choice. There's easily 6 nations I am happy playing and the bonuses you are describing are quite big.