Sitting on the fence

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Half-assed Game idea- Assassination, Supers, Duels

Everyone needs to design an awake super-combatant. When their super dies, they lose. Any attack force must consist of their god and up to 5 national, recruitable commanders. There will be unit caps on the troop size. Say, 50 national troops. something else for Ermor. A defense force can consist of up to 10 commanders (who can be super-summons in their own right), and 100 troops, who can be summons?

Its obvious I haven't thought to hard about this. But the germ of the idea is there. It's not quite a deathmatch, but close. Keeping combats small scale in intent. Maybe allow attack forces more flexibility?

This would be best for less serious, smaller shorter games. A blitz. It can be fun to toy around with pretenders, and by restricting attack forces, we change the focus from conquests to specific battles.

[Gandalf Parker]

Alneyan said:
As the title goes, I've been thinking about taking up Dominions again, but I still need to overcome my initial inertia. So, how would you convince someone to jump back in the arena?

OK this is thread necrophilia.
Like the original poster Im trying to find my motivation to return to Dominions 3. Many of my wild ideas are in this thread. We have lots of new players. Maybe some of these ideas if they havent already been done will catch peoples eye as something they would like to see?

[Darkwind]

I thought the idea of having nations "evolve" over time into later-era counterparts would be interesting, maybe with harder-than-normal research so it didn't seem like either the eras were flying by or by the time you got to the late age, the heavier troops were useless because you were already well into the late game. It would be especially interesting with dramatic changes, such as R'lyeh EA->MA or Sauromatia->Pythium, Marverni->Man (I assume that's what Marverni turns into), etc.

I also thought it might be interesting to have one's era change by the season. So as R'lyeh, one season you could be happily playing with your Aboleths, and the next they could all be insane and trying to summon Cthulhu. The next, you could be summoning non-insane Illithids (or still stuck tryingn to summon Cthulhu). Come to think of it, what if every season (or six months, or year) players were randomly assigned to different nations? You could be happily elephant-rushing as Caelum and the next turn you could be Kailasa, on the opposite end of said rush. Or someone in a completely different area, even. All sorts of things could vary by the season, actually. Your order-3 society could turn into an effective turmoil-3 nation at the whim of the seasons. Do they even have to have the same effects? Your drain-3 could one day grant you +5% resources, +15% supplies and -14% gold. Not that randomly changing values would be a good idea . . . perhaps increasing/decreasing effect based on season? Say, in winter, growth 3 would be effectively growth 1, but order 3 would be effectively order 4.

Am I even making any sense?

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive pondered an arrangement like that. It would be an extensive download and install so it would need to be a really desirable scenario. It would end up using all of the tricks of the game.
A link to start the game with the right map and the right settings such as postexec command, stats command, log command, and a mod.
An executable to run each time the game processed a turn to check and see if its time for a change and then swap the files.
An executable to modify the mod file so it can be hot-swapped in.

And I still have to test if map image can be hot-swapped like a mod file can. That would allow some neat things also.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im not sure if this has been added to this "game variants" thread.

Some of the "hidden command switches" came up in another thread and it reminded me of a game variant. With use of --superhost and --comptrn it is possible for players to see the turn files of the AI players.

Tourist Game
A large game. Maybe on a maximum map. It could be all of an age with the extra nation slots (71 thru 94) filled in with modded nations. Or maybe a SingleAge game with all three eras in it. Two games wold run on the server. One named SuperHost which processes the turns continually. And then the post.sh could copy the turn files to the Tourist game which would run as a direct-connect server so that anyone can connect and view the turn files.

Better Spies
a version of the same game but with players and AIs. Since the player files would be password protected no one should be able to see their turns. But anyone, including the players, can view the AIs actions so it would amount to "better spying". The nicety would be in allowing other players to see the internal workings of a large MP game. (before anyone asks, the AI turns are only viewable. You cannot change the AIs actions)

Watchers Game
I had originally considered a Watcher game using the Watcher mod. But allowing tourist view of the ENTIRE game from one file didnt seem like something I create a game around. Im not sure that we could get enough players who were so confident that they would be willing to play in a no-secrets game of that type.

[Gandalf Parker]

A head-slapper comment was made by Squirrelloid in another thread.
In the event of a game using duped nations, the limit on how many nations can have the same national spell can be avoided. Since only that nation would be in the game then national spells can be declared as non-national.

The conversation got fun around the idea of a Monkey Madness Game of up to 90 nations all playing duplicate versions of Markata. Totally balanced. One huge game of Stealths vs Swarms strategies.

[chrispedersen]

I have really hoped someone could build an auction app, which would then hand off to an pretender verify.

so basically, just like dominions has a host mode where you wait and connect to a nation...

Players would be listed on the left, and across the top the nations they are bidding on.

..........Niefl..TC...Mictlan....Sauro....Kailasa
Squirrel..30.....5.....24.........20.......0
Chris..................25..................5
Dr.P......35...........05.........21.......0
Baalz.....20...........07.........25.......0


So, for example, in this instance, if everyone was happy with the bidding, the following would occur

Squirrel wins TC and pays 5 pts
Chris wins mictlan and pays 25
Dr P wins niefle and pays 35
Baalz wins sauro and pays 25

so this would get written to some records, and when they submit pretenders, they must have the bid number of points remaining (unused..)

[militarist]

I like idea about bidding for nation, which can be open or closed, in one iteration or through many, using just forum.

Like I bid 1 for Saurom
Gandalf Parker 2
Someone else 3..

At the same time we , at the same forum, bid on other nations, so it will be quite a log fast growing bidding thread for the game.



Also it wold be nice to have a game which allows you to play any nation regardless of other people choices. For example - you choose your nation, Hinnom, for example, and there can be several Hinnoms. The idea is good to motivate more players to join megagame.

This idea of Civil War is cool, btw. I'd join.

The idea of allowing to play different people the same nations would help CBM author and parents to balance the game better.

But bidding itself makes game more balanced automatically. After hard bargaining for Hinnom and Niefelheim, the nation will be inflated to the level of less popular nations in game.
I think the idea is really cool, and also will help to find players for megagames - which is not that easy now. The question is only in pretender points design control.

[Squirrelloid]

If the game host was not playing (eg, Pasha in the RAND games he runs), he could review all the pretender files to verify. Of course, this requires someone want to host the game and *not* play.

---------

Bidding would work best in a non-forum environment if its going to be active, such as IRC or other chat client. Its too tedious to bid via forum post if you need to potentially do a lot of it.

Perhaps first everyone submits a blind bid set to the organizer, who then announces the bid set after all bids are received, and then a regular auction occurs in which players can increase their bids if they like.

Some rule for what happens if you win multiple nations should be instituted - I can see choosing the nation of your choice, or being obligated to take the nation you won on which you bid the most points.

[chrispedersen]

Well, I like an app to do the bidding, and or a way to verify.
But I would be willing to not play and verify pretenders.

Actually, verifying wouldn't be tooooo difficult. catgod already has a line that says points remaining. So essentially we're looking for a version of catgod that can do one thing for us..

c:\catgod early_arco_pretender 26

which basically would output a true or false on whether the arco pretender submitted had 26 points remaining.