PBEM game "Not Stupid But Slow": Running

[Alneyan]

Yellow Cactus: thanks for reminding me to ask about the game Version! I could do either 2.12 or 2.13, and so do not care much either way. While 2.13 fixes some bugs (including cheating options), it also brings a couple of problems from what I heard (Alchemists' Stone and one other magic item).

Ighalli: I would have no problem with having a Blood nation in here.

You can start to email Pretender files, unless you feel that a map change will force you to change your Pretender design, or even to switch nations.

Speaking of the map, with the other matter brought up by Deccan, there is also the small size of Desert Eye that will become a problem. We are currently eight players (assuming both Yellow Cactus and Ighalli join in), which is probably a bit too crowded for Desert Eye. Karan might do the trick here; it should have enough provinces for Atlantis, and enough for land-based nations. As usual, feel free to comment on the map and/or to suggest others.

Lastly, here goes the current settings as discussed during this thread. My apologises for forgetting to update the first post previously.

- A PBEM game hosted by myself (not TCP/IP)
- Turnaround is set to 48 hours, and will run every 24 hours if everyone gets their files in before this moment. The turns should more or less run at the same hour of the day (as much as real life and Murphy's laws will allow).
- Independent Strength: 9 (as asked by En Forcer)
- Magic Research: Very Difficult
- Magic site frequency: 50
- Map: to be determined (Desert Eye? Karan? Another?)
- Version: either 2.12 or 2.13, depending on the preferred Version of most players.
- All else set as default

The current players are:
- Boron: Ermoria
- Deccan: Man
- Enforcer: Pangaea
- Graeme Dice: Pythium
- Ighalli: Abysia
- Vicious Love: Atlantis
- Yellow Cactus: Ulm
- Myself: Arcoscephale

[Ighalli]

I'd prefer to play with v2.13. My pretender is in the mail!

[Alneyan]

If someone does not know my mail address (it should be displayed publicly in my profile), it is alneyan AT yahoo DOT fr (replace AT with @ and DOT with .)

If you would like to receive a notification when I receive your turn, I will be setting up a separate mail for this purpose. It will enable me to make an automated answer when I receive a mail on this address, and so you will know whether your mail has been received or not much more quickly. And if you do not wish to use this mail, you will only have to keep on using my regular mail address.

This mail will be available on [email protected] (no need for spam protection here; spammers will only get more spam in return), but there will be no other difference with my standard mail.

Edit: However, the subject of these notification mails cannot be changed, and will be "Yahoo - Message d'Absence" (Away Message). Grr.

[Vicious Love]

Ighalli said:
I'd like to join as Abysia unless the consensus is that blood nations are off limits here.

I just realized site frequency is still at 50(10 above normal, if I'm not mistaken). Methinks it's settled; With ordinary gem abundances, blood nations won't have an edge. At least, no more than an infinitesimal edge.
True, Mictlan can(Sort of) get by by only researching one path(Plus construction up to 4, for those sweet, sweet contracts), but they'll still need alteration/enchantment to make use of their summoned SCs, evocation and thaumaturgy(Or conjuration) for searching, and a bunch of other paths to exploit the full versatility of their priest-mages. And Abysia without evocation is hardly Abysia at all.
When all's said and done, I suspect Caelum and Ulm both need research far less than most blood nations.

[En Forcer]

I will be sending my pretender shortly. So far you guys are doing just fine figuring out the map. I'll go with whatever gets picked. No need to change or adjust my pretender.

All Hail CONIFEROUS! King of Berries!

[Blofeld]

Hello

Is it not too late to jump on board with Marignon?

[Alneyan]

Hello Blofeld, and welcome! It is not too late to join the game, as long as you do not mind our company. Feel free to bring up any suggestion or comment you may have about the map as well; this particular detail hasn't been decided yet.

On the matter of the game Version, we currently have two votes in favour of 2.13, and none for 2.12. So it would seem like we are going with 2.13 (if you are playing games using the 2.12 Version, you should be able to setup both the 2.12 and the 2.13 Version with the same installation of Dominions).

[Blofeld]

OK, I sent my pretender. Karan map seems OK to me. I don't recommend Parganos - it looks pretty and has nice chokepoints but suffers from the same problems as Cradle.

[YellowCactus]

Assume I know nothing of computerizing....
What steps will I take to set up 2.13 without over-writing 2.12?
-Yc

[Alneyan]

The following steps should enable you to use both the 2.12 Version and the 2.13 patch.

1) Download the 2.13 patch.
2) Copy and paste your dom2.exe file that can be found in the Dominions 2 directory (C:\dominions2 by default). It will give you a second file called "Copy of Dom2.exe" (I am not positive about the "Copy of" part, since I am using a French translation of Windows).
3) Rename the "Copy of Dom2.exe" file in "Dom2_212.exe" (or any file name you would like).
4) Run the patch file ("dompatch213.exe") and apply it to your Dominions directory (which should be found automatically).
5) The patch will make changes to the original "Dom2.exe" file, which will effectively be patched to the 2.13 Version. The other executable file ("dom2_212.exe" in this example) remains unaffected however, and will be used when playing 2.12 games.

The 2.12 and 2.13 Versions should be close enough to be comptabible with each other. However, there will be problems with combat replays should you use the "wrong" Version in a game, but hopefully nothing more than that (at least, Shrapnel says so on the download page for the patch).