Print

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

[hector13]

I wanted the Easterners

I'll take the Islanders instead then.

[lemon10]

You claim land by moving a unit over it and conquering it. It increases the tile's population to 1, which may be what you're thinking of.

Once we get 5 players, I'll go over the basics of playing the game, since the tutorial doesn't cover it all.

No, you claim land by having a owned tile adjacent to it, and then claiming it. You don't need troops in or adjacent to it (although you can't claim any land that has enemy troops in it).
You can also claim land by having a boat adjacent to it (which is the only way to claim other islands).

Having troops to start does make a pretty big tactical difference though, especially if they are stronger then spearmen.

Suggestions:
Add more iron sources.
Add rivers (which can be done by clicking on the "no river button"). You really want to add a significant amount for each portion of the map to speed up pop growth (which on a map this size is going to be massively important).
Give more mountains/hills to Islanders (for stone).
Give some close by sources of wood/stone to the Native Tribesmen.
Some bonus food on some of the coastal water tiles (otherwise there is almost literally no reason to claim any).
Give each starting player bonus pop to start (in addition to a few more tiles). With a map this large +10 might even be advisable. You may also want to give them some starting land in addition.
Do something with the top 5 tiles of the map. I would suggest removing them, but I'm not quite sure how you would go about that short of a program to edit the game code or redoing it all manually. You could also throw in some northern islands over there.
The easterners appear to have a pretty big advantage: They only have a single potential enemy, whereas everyone else starts with 2+ people that *can* attack them.

You also have to make a big decision.
A) You play with the default rules. This includes mages, endgame units, magical creatures, and some rare resources.
B) You play with the rules used in NQT's game, which I edited to take out all magical units and quite a few of the endgame stuff.
C) You play with a set of rules (also developed by me) that has some notable balance changes. Notably: Melee cavalry have speed 4, ranged cavalry are noticeably weaker (but get to keep speed 5), there are some speed 1 heavy infantry, pikemen/halberdiers get 50% better chargebreaker, and battering rams are removed and replaced by ballistas (25% siege, but are strong range 10 units).
D) You make your own set of rules, which while not very hard, seems a bit unlikley with how well you know the game.

[Squeegy]

I updated the original map in the OP. I recommend everyone take a look at it. Feel free to trade factions if you want to play a different one.

lemon, I'd like to see your balanced rules. I was just going to use NQT's, but that sounds like it has some good changes.

[lemon10]

Here you go. Note that its not compatible with the old set of rules due to the battering ram unit being removed.
E: Here is a link to your current map in progress, but with the ruleset swapped.

[Squeegy]

Yep, I know how to do that.

Would you like to play the Southerners, lemon? They're probably the most challenging faction since they start right next to where the Golden Horde will come from. It might be appropriate to have someone as familiar with the game as you face that challenge.

I understand if you're committed to too many games, however.

[Criptfeind]

I don't suppose we could get a bit of a rundown on the actual rules of the system before we formally start the game yes?

[hector13]

I think Squeegy is waiting for five players before doing that.

[Squeegy]

That is correct.

[SilverDragon]

I'll take southerners if none mind.

[lemon10]

Yep, I know how to do that.

Would you like to play the Southerners, lemon? They're probably the most challenging faction since they start right next to where the Golden Horde will come from. It might be appropriate to have someone as familiar with the game as you face that challenge.

I understand if you're committed to too many games, however.

Na, I would prefer to take a replacement slot. It's too easy if I start with everyone else. (Cockiness intensifies). It would be one thing if they had played before, but since none of them have, I would have too much of an advantage.

Not to mention that SilverDragon just claimed it.

[lemon10]

And for some tutorial stuff. Note that their is a ton of information there, but quite a bit of it is to answer questions that you will probably end up having later on.

Spoiler: Vanigo Interface Tutorial (click to show/hide)

When you start the player interface, you will see a text box asking you to paste in game XML. To go past this screen, you'll need a saved game, which the game administrator will provide. As the game progresses, the admin will produce a new save for each turn. These turns are stored in text-based XML. To load a game, copy and paste the contents of the turn file into the text box.
Once you've done this, you will be prompted to select which player you are. Once you've done so, you'll be ready to interact with the main screen:

The main screen is divided into several sections, as follows:
1: Main map. Click on tiles to select them for closer inspection. You can scroll this map by clicking on the brown frame.
2: Global buttons. The "Save Game" button produces an XML file containing your orders (more on this later). The "Players", "Resources", and "Orders" buttons brings up the player, resources and orders windows, respectively, which are described in greater detail below.
3: Basic tile information. This section of the screen shows the selected tile, its owner, and its base terrain type. To claim an unowned tile, click on the tile owner text box (which should read "Unclaimed").
4: Tile features. This section indicates the presence of rivers, roads, special resources, and tile improvements. To build a road or an improvement, click on the corresponding boxes.
5: Tile output. This box shows the expected resource output of the selected tile. This is non-interactive.
6: City information. This box shows the tile's population, and, if applicable, the name of any city present. If you want to build a city on a tile you control, click on this text box. Clicking on the box with a city already present brings up the city window (described below).
7: Army information. This box has information on any military units present in the tile, and two buttons to issue orders to your armies. Clicking on the text box brings up the armies window (described below). If you have armies present in the tile, you may order them to move around the map with the "move army" button (and then using the numpad or the on-screen arrow keys to move), and, if you have an army in an enemy's tile, you may use the "conquer" button to take it away.
8: Minimap. It's a minimap, which you are hopefully familiar with. You can click it to recenter the map.


There is little to remark on in the player window. Your total population and free population are important to keep track of, but straightforward. The lists of your cities, units, and armies are similarly self-explanatory.


This window shows your current resource stockpiles, the expected net change, and your expected stockpiles at the begining of next turn.
You can see in the lower right corner that the minimap is overlapping the resources window. This is a bug, and I'm going to fix it.


This window shows all the orders you have given for next turn. You may cancel most orders here, but army reorganization orders cannot be canceled. (This is because doing so is computationally much more difficult than you might expect.) Most reorganization orders can simply be performed in reverse, but if you order a unit or army disbanded and then change your mind, you will have to close the interface, and reload the game, so be careful with those orders.


This window is one of the most important. This is where you order units and buildings to be built. Taking things from the top, you can rename your cities by clicking on the name box, and order your cities to grow or shrink in population with the + and - buttons by the population box.
Next is the list of buildings. Every building in the game (except for a few hidden ones!) is shown here. Select them for more information on what they do and what they cost to build. Buildings in bold are currently present in the selected city, buildings in black can be built, and buildings in grey are currently unavailable because the city is too small or lacks one or more prerequisite buildings. If you want to build a building, select it from the list and click "build building".
Finally, the "raise unit" button brings up a list of units you can build at this city, and lets you select one to build.
Be aware, each city can only perform one action (raise population, lower population, build building, build unit) each turn. You can cancel the current order by clicking on it in the "current order" box.


This window is where you examine and reorganize your armies. Armies are the containers which hold your military units. You can create new empty armies with the "new army" button at any time, but they will automatically disband themselves unless you move at least one unit into them. You may have more than one army in a tile, in which case you can select one from the list of armies. You can also rename your armies by clicking on the army name box.
Armies often contain more than one unit, and the units in an army can be examined separately. After selecting a unit, you can disband it, or move it to another army in the same tile with the appropriate buttons.

After you have examined the game state, decided what you want to do, and issued the appropriate orders, click on the "save game" button on the main screen. This will bring up a text box with XML containing all the orders you have issued. Copy and paste the contents of this box into a post or PM sent to the game's administrator.

Spoiler: Basic game tutorial (click to show/hide)

If you look at a (owned) city in the admin interface, it shows you all the buildings, their cost, what they give you and what buildings/units they allow. Note that some units/buildings have more then one prerequisite.
If you create a army in the admin interface (by clicking on the box that says no armies->new army) then click on new unit, it shows you a list of all the units in the game as well as their costs (although not the buildings required to build them).

As for resources: Every tile you own produces resources each turn. A tile's resource output can be improved by building an improvement on it (which range from farms (+1 food) to mines and mana taps (which allow you to use special resources on the tile)). Improvements require that you own a city either adjacent for size 2-3 cities, or sqrt(5) of a size 4-6 city.
Land is claimed by clicking on the "Unclaimed" button (while you have at least one spare pop). Cities are built on claimed land by clicking on the "Uninhabited" button (again, while you have at least one spare pop).

You gain 1 population by consuming Population/2 food, and each population eats one food per turn (so if every population you have makes 3 food, you get 4 more population per turn, but if your average is 2 each, then you gain two). It is because of this that having higher food income is very important. E: If you have more food you grow faster and can support larger cities, which allows you a significant advantage. This is why you probably want to start near the river (since it will result in you having a faster initial growth). Cities are heavily reduce your food/pop ratio, so the more of them you have the slower you grow.

Building anything requires labor, which is gained based on the size of your cities. Size: 2,3,4,5,6 cities produce 0,1,1,2,3 labor (size 6 cities require a special building to build however). Since everything requires labor, the more labor you have, the more total production you have. More labor is also extremely important. The person with the most labor will probably win, since they are able to grow the fastest (due to having the most production), and build the most and strongest troops.

Spoiler: Answers to some FAQ's from a previous game (click to show/hide)

You get the resources for the tile your city is on, right? Can you build a city on a river? Co-ordinates imminent...

You get the resource for the tile your city is on, but you cannot build any improvement on that tile (which means that you want to avoid building a city on a tile with a special resource that requires a improvement to gather).
There are three rules for where you can build cities:
1) You must own the tile (which is irrelevant in this case).
2) It cannot be adjacent to another city.
3) It cannot be in the ocean.

So, yes, you can build it on the river.

EDIT: If you really want to get a feel for how the game plays, check out one of the completed games.
Although it will take a while, if you go either of those threads you should get all the minor notes on how the game works, a unit requires full movement points to move into a enemy city, a armies initiative is determined by the speed of the slowest unit in it), and boats can defend their own cities but never move into hostile ones, what strategies work well, what works poorly, what to avoid, and what the winners did.
Note that the longer of the two games was using a older ruleset, and there are some pretty big balance changes between that game and now (although things work fundamentally the same).

If I read it right earlier in the thread, I think the gist of it is this;

Every Pop you have eats 2 food per turn. Excess food is stored.
Once you have food equal to [Population/2], it is consumed, and you have a new pop unit.
This is all done automatically, but it's still good to have more food, for more Pop.

You got that all correct, but slightly underemphasis the importance of having more food.
Having more food isn't just good, its hugely important. The difference between 2.5 food/pop and 3 food/pop over 20 turns is 10 population, it also gives you a entire population 5 city (assuming that you put the other 5 population into getting more food/other resources) more then the person with just 2.5 food/pop.

Of course, if you put all your population into gathering food then you have no populations in your cities or gathering stone/wood/iron/ect, so you have to balance it out.

Question: how do you get more non-city population? I know it's linked to the amount of food you have but does it increase automatically? I hope I've not maxed out my expansion already...

City-population is the same as regular population. You can add one pop/turn to a city, but that uses up its action for the turn as well as requiring that you have a free pop to spare.

EDIT:
Battles are pretty simple. There is a 20X1 field, and units walk towards the enemy from their sides at their speed each turn until they get in attack range. They can't attack the very first turn they get in range (except for units with the charge ability, who get a bonus to attack on the charge), so the units that walked into range attack next turn.
Each units randomly selects an enemy unit and attacks, dealing 1Dattack-1Ddefense damage  (random number between 1 and attack minus a random number between 1 and defense).
This works out so that two units fighting one will get in between 3-4 times more attacks, so assuming the units are near equal, even a few more units will cause a significant difference.
Focusing is very random, a army won't pick the same units to fight (although they can all pick the same ones if you get lucky), and won't stick with fighting the same unit till it dies either, so how much they focus can very well decide larger battles.
Units get 1XP per turn they are in battle.

The attacker always move first, which is very important. The effect of this varies by army composition, but it often means that the defender gets the first attack.

[Pencil_Art]

And for some tutorial stuff. Note that their is a ton of information there, but quite a bit of it is to answer questions that you will probably end up having later on.

Spoiler: Vanigo Interface Tutorial (click to show/hide)

When you start the player interface, you will see a text box asking you to paste in game XML. To go past this screen, you'll need a saved game, which the game administrator will provide. As the game progresses, the admin will produce a new save for each turn. These turns are stored in text-based XML. To load a game, copy and paste the contents of the turn file into the text box.
Once you've done this, you will be prompted to select which player you are. Once you've done so, you'll be ready to interact with the main screen:

The main screen is divided into several sections, as follows:
1: Main map. Click on tiles to select them for closer inspection. You can scroll this map by clicking on the brown frame.
2: Global buttons. The "Save Game" button produces an XML file containing your orders (more on this later). The "Players", "Resources", and "Orders" buttons brings up the player, resources and orders windows, respectively, which are described in greater detail below.
3: Basic tile information. This section of the screen shows the selected tile, its owner, and its base terrain type. To claim an unowned tile, click on the tile owner text box (which should read "Unclaimed").
4: Tile features. This section indicates the presence of rivers, roads, special resources, and tile improvements. To build a road or an improvement, click on the corresponding boxes.
5: Tile output. This box shows the expected resource output of the selected tile. This is non-interactive.
6: City information. This box shows the tile's population, and, if applicable, the name of any city present. If you want to build a city on a tile you control, click on this text box. Clicking on the box with a city already present brings up the city window (described below).
7: Army information. This box has information on any military units present in the tile, and two buttons to issue orders to your armies. Clicking on the text box brings up the armies window (described below). If you have armies present in the tile, you may order them to move around the map with the "move army" button (and then using the numpad or the on-screen arrow keys to move), and, if you have an army in an enemy's tile, you may use the "conquer" button to take it away.
8: Minimap. It's a minimap, which you are hopefully familiar with. You can click it to recenter the map.


There is little to remark on in the player window. Your total population and free population are important to keep track of, but straightforward. The lists of your cities, units, and armies are similarly self-explanatory.


This window shows your current resource stockpiles, the expected net change, and your expected stockpiles at the begining of next turn.
You can see in the lower right corner that the minimap is overlapping the resources window. This is a bug, and I'm going to fix it.


This window shows all the orders you have given for next turn. You may cancel most orders here, but army reorganization orders cannot be canceled. (This is because doing so is computationally much more difficult than you might expect.) Most reorganization orders can simply be performed in reverse, but if you order a unit or army disbanded and then change your mind, you will have to close the interface, and reload the game, so be careful with those orders.


This window is one of the most important. This is where you order units and buildings to be built. Taking things from the top, you can rename your cities by clicking on the name box, and order your cities to grow or shrink in population with the + and - buttons by the population box.
Next is the list of buildings. Every building in the game (except for a few hidden ones!) is shown here. Select them for more information on what they do and what they cost to build. Buildings in bold are currently present in the selected city, buildings in black can be built, and buildings in grey are currently unavailable because the city is too small or lacks one or more prerequisite buildings. If you want to build a building, select it from the list and click "build building".
Finally, the "raise unit" button brings up a list of units you can build at this city, and lets you select one to build.
Be aware, each city can only perform one action (raise population, lower population, build building, build unit) each turn. You can cancel the current order by clicking on it in the "current order" box.


This window is where you examine and reorganize your armies. Armies are the containers which hold your military units. You can create new empty armies with the "new army" button at any time, but they will automatically disband themselves unless you move at least one unit into them. You may have more than one army in a tile, in which case you can select one from the list of armies. You can also rename your armies by clicking on the army name box.
Armies often contain more than one unit, and the units in an army can be examined separately. After selecting a unit, you can disband it, or move it to another army in the same tile with the appropriate buttons.

After you have examined the game state, decided what you want to do, and issued the appropriate orders, click on the "save game" button on the main screen. This will bring up a text box with XML containing all the orders you have issued. Copy and paste the contents of this box into a post or PM sent to the game's administrator.

Spoiler: Basic game tutorial (click to show/hide)

If you look at a (owned) city in the admin interface, it shows you all the buildings, their cost, what they give you and what buildings/units they allow. Note that some units/buildings have more then one prerequisite.
If you create a army in the admin interface (by clicking on the box that says no armies->new army) then click on new unit, it shows you a list of all the units in the game as well as their costs (although not the buildings required to build them).

As for resources: Every tile you own produces resources each turn. A tile's resource output can be improved by building an improvement on it (which range from farms (+1 food) to mines and mana taps (which allow you to use special resources on the tile)). Improvements require that you own a city either adjacent for size 2-3 cities, or sqrt(5) of a size 4-6 city.
Land is claimed by clicking on the "Unclaimed" button (while you have at least one spare pop). Cities are built on claimed land by clicking on the "Uninhabited" button (again, while you have at least one spare pop).

You gain 1 population by consuming Population/2 food, and each population eats one food per turn (so if every population you have makes 3 food, you get 4 more population per turn, but if your average is 2 each, then you gain two). It is because of this that having higher food income is very important. E: If you have more food you grow faster and can support larger cities, which allows you a significant advantage. This is why you probably want to start near the river (since it will result in you having a faster initial growth). Cities are heavily reduce your food/pop ratio, so the more of them you have the slower you grow.

Building anything requires labor, which is gained based on the size of your cities. Size: 2,3,4,5,6 cities produce 0,1,1,2,3 labor (size 6 cities require a special building to build however). Since everything requires labor, the more labor you have, the more total production you have. More labor is also extremely important. The person with the most labor will probably win, since they are able to grow the fastest (due to having the most production), and build the most and strongest troops.

Spoiler: Answers to some FAQ's from a previous game (click to show/hide)

You get the resources for the tile your city is on, right? Can you build a city on a river? Co-ordinates imminent...

You get the resource for the tile your city is on, but you cannot build any improvement on that tile (which means that you want to avoid building a city on a tile with a special resource that requires a improvement to gather).
There are three rules for where you can build cities:
1) You must own the tile (which is irrelevant in this case).
2) It cannot be adjacent to another city.
3) It cannot be in the ocean.

So, yes, you can build it on the river.

EDIT: If you really want to get a feel for how the game plays, check out one of the completed games.
Although it will take a while, if you go either of those threads you should get all the minor notes on how the game works, a unit requires full movement points to move into a enemy city, a armies initiative is determined by the speed of the slowest unit in it), and boats can defend their own cities but never move into hostile ones, what strategies work well, what works poorly, what to avoid, and what the winners did.
Note that the longer of the two games was using a older ruleset, and there are some pretty big balance changes between that game and now (although things work fundamentally the same).

If I read it right earlier in the thread, I think the gist of it is this;

Every Pop you have eats 2 food per turn. Excess food is stored.
Once you have food equal to [Population/2], it is consumed, and you have a new pop unit.
This is all done automatically, but it's still good to have more food, for more Pop.

You got that all correct, but slightly underemphasis the importance of having more food.
Having more food isn't just good, its hugely important. The difference between 2.5 food/pop and 3 food/pop over 20 turns is 10 population, it also gives you a entire population 5 city (assuming that you put the other 5 population into getting more food/other resources) more then the person with just 2.5 food/pop.

Of course, if you put all your population into gathering food then you have no populations in your cities or gathering stone/wood/iron/ect, so you have to balance it out.

Question: how do you get more non-city population? I know it's linked to the amount of food you have but does it increase automatically? I hope I've not maxed out my expansion already...

City-population is the same as regular population. You can add one pop/turn to a city, but that uses up its action for the turn as well as requiring that you have a free pop to spare.

EDIT:
Battles are pretty simple. There is a 20X1 field, and units walk towards the enemy from their sides at their speed each turn until they get in attack range. They can't attack the very first turn they get in range (except for units with the charge ability, who get a bonus to attack on the charge), so the units that walked into range attack next turn.
Each units randomly selects an enemy unit and attacks, dealing 1Dattack-1Ddefense damage  (random number between 1 and attack minus a random number between 1 and defense).
This works out so that two units fighting one will get in between 3-4 times more attacks, so assuming the units are near equal, even a few more units will cause a significant difference.
Focusing is very random, a army won't pick the same units to fight (although they can all pick the same ones if you get lucky), and won't stick with fighting the same unit till it dies either, so how much they focus can very well decide larger battles.
Units get 1XP per turn they are in battle.

The attacker always move first, which is very important. The effect of this varies by army composition, but it often means that the defender gets the first attack.

Thanks. I think I'll move my starting city two squares down, onto the river tile.

[Squeegy]

Okay, would any of the rest of you like to change your civilization's name, starting location, or color before we begin?

[SilverDragon]

I'm okay with my start position and name, but it'd be great if you could change that yellow to a less overbearing colour.

[Pencil_Art]

Thanks.