Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

...

...

[Karlito]

No major objections to Urraparand w/ caves. I suppose we should look at setting up some fixed start locations.

[gman8181]

No major objections to Urraparand w/ caves. I suppose we should look at setting up some fixed start locations.

Ditto

[E. Albright]

Ugh. You all hate me, don't you? Don't you?!?!?!?!! I include myself in that, of course.

I guess I'll need to go ahead and finish making sure all the connections connect to what they should. That should be done tonight.

Are we going to have our fixed-start-placer set throne provinces too? If so, we need to decide how many we want...

[gman8181]

Hmm, I'm really unfamiliar with what works well in regards to thrones vs nations because the default in a custom game is 1 lv 1 per nation... but to me I think it would be kind of nice to have at least 1 lv 3 per team...
After that I'm not sure... I don't have much any experience with multiplayer for dominions 4 so I don't know what real impact more thrones would have.

I'm thinking... too much is probably better than too few. So maybe at least 2 level 1's per nation and maybe 1 level 2 per nation?

Another thing to consider is how many victory points or whatever it's called is needed to win. Personally, I'm in favor of needing at least 2/3's to 3/4's of them to win. I'd even be okay with needing all the thrones to win just because it would prolong the game and give more of a chance for the less experienced players to potentially get to late game and toy around with things.

Edit: Of course it's possible my view is slanted by never having made it to an actual late game in Dominions 3. I've only been there through subbing and the few games where I almost made it myself usually ended prematurely due to everyone sort of disappearing, I guess due to real life reasons.
I know from reading the forums that it can get quite tedious and maybe you guys don't want to open up a possible situation where the game could get stuck in an eternal stalemate.

[E. Albright]

Well, your proposed 2 lvl 1s per nation isn't going to fly, nor your 1 lvl 2 per nation. We can't go higher than 20 lvl 1s, or 10 lvl 2s. If we were to do that maximum, plus 4 lvl 3s, we'd end up with more than 1 throne/6 provinces. That's kinda high. Try setting up a game on Urraparand with 20/10/4 - you'll find that most provinces are adjacent to at least one throne. Not all, but most... so it becomes difficult for starting provinces to avoid abutting thrones. Now, I'm adding 10 provinces to the map, but trust me when I say it won't make a huge difference. Most provinces still will be adjacent to one or more thrones.

If you try cutting that in half, you end up with something more reasonable for nation placement purposes. 10/5/2 gives you just under 1/10 throne provinces. We could probably even up that to 12/6/3 if you truly wanted to have 1 lvl 1 per nation - the extra 4 thrones wouldn't overwhelm the landscape and you'd end up with 1/9 thrones.

[gman8181]

Sorry I'm incredibly tired and started using nation and team interchangeably part way through that post. I meant at least 1 lv 2 per team and 2 lv 1's per team. Yeah, having what I "actually said" would be murder on early expansion.

The latter part of my post remains accurate though. I would like to need to own most of the thrones to win.

[E. Albright]

All right, it may still have flecks of my sanity stuck to it, but here's the map: Urraparand with Caves (155+35).

Let's get some consensus on thrones (to include if we want throne provinces tagged, or picked by the program) so we can have a comprehensive bill of modifications for our map-fixer, and maybe actually start this game by sometime next week. Ish.

[lijacote]

Another thing to consider is how many victory points or whatever it's called is needed to win. Personally, I'm in favor of needing at least 2/3's to 3/4's of them to win. I'd even be okay with needing all the thrones to win just because it would prolong the game and give more of a chance for the less experienced players to potentially get to late game and toy around with things.

That's a legitimate point of view to have, but having such a strong majority of the thrones be a requirement for victory is almost the same as eliminating throne victory altogether. If the players want a longer slog, to really get to the gritty grindy end of the game, then it's fine. I believe we've got a 14/2119/24!!! requirement in 401, and the game's now on turn 86, I believe. The leading player (Albright, incidentally) is going to have to pretty much defeat every remaining player to get a throne victory, and that's around two thirds of the throne points we've got going on. Three quarters would be even more grueling.

On the upside, the potential winner in this game wouldn't necessarily have to slog through alone.

[E. Albright]

What?

14/21?

A mere 2/3s?

401 is much, much worse than that, lijacote. It's 19/24. Based on current throne holdings, I could in theory get away with defeating a measly 2 of my remaining 4 rivals, but yeah, effectively any of us wanting to win is going to have to beat all comers. If it was just 14 points to win, I could squeak through by finishing off the squid, backstabbing Mictlan, and trying to hold the ocean like a thin blue line while ignoring the north's existence. As it stands, there's not going to be a throne victory without a fullscale invasion of the north by the south, or vice-versa - and realistically at least two more nations (to include one or both of Argatha and Scelaria) will need to be wiped off the map to securely hold enough turf to make any throne win happen. Probably three more.

A 75% victory condition - or even an 80% like 401 has - might not sound like a lot on paper - after all, it could be achieved with as few as 2/3s the thrones - but realistically, to get a nation strong enough to capture, claim, and hold that many thrones you basically need to be able to seriously overpower all the other nations. I'd say 2/3s of the points might a reasonable amount for us to use, but that's as high as I'd advise. 12/6/3 at 2/3s would be something like 22/33 - if you were lucky, you could get that with 10/21 thrones, and worst-case it's 17/21. More realistically, it'd probably be around 14/21. That'd probably mean one team dead, and one or two more on the defensive.

[gman8181]

*Insert Noncommittal Answer Here*

I don't really care much one way or another at this point. A slightly longer game is preferable to me only due to having beginners who would probably like to get to see some late game action before this ends.

... At the same time... It really doesn't matter to me on a personal level. I've seen late game a few times on Dominions 3 and meh, whatever. It's all the same to me.

[Karlito]

Both the proposed 10/5/2 or 12/6/3 split is good to me. I think 2/3 of the points is a good victory threshhold.

[E. Albright]

I asked lijacote to take a look at starting positions for us; if schedules permit that to happen, I'm hoping to finally get this started this week.

[Shadowlord]

(At this point I had concluded this was never going to start :V)

[lijacote]

I asked lijacote to take a look at starting positions for us; if schedules permit that to happen, I'm hoping to finally get this started this week.

I'll try and get this done within two days. Currently visiting my father, so I've got a lot of time on my hands... :p

[E. Albright]

It's much appreciated, lijacote...