Mother Nature is pissed

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm I was rereading old material such as my post on Pangean Strategy in the strategy sticky. I noticed it had wandered into a discussion of a scenario map. There dont seem to be many scenario maps. More support for the MPers than the Soloists.

Im also sparked abit due to other conversations here about the map commands. It might be fun now to reconsider a large scenario map which starts out with created AI players of nature based nations allied against the human players. Maybe call it "The Uprise of Nature" or maybe I should call it something like "Beware the coming of Global Swarming".

I was originally thinking of all 3 eras of Pangea and the 2 eras of Oceania being pre-loaded on the map as AI players (no mod involved). They would be built specifically around the best strategies for playing them with better choices for scales, pretenders, etc and some specific boosts to guide them into better AI play. They were going to be set as both AI and allied with each other. That way the game would not have them attack each other. Maybe have multiple scattered starting locations for each of them to reflect an uprising of nature. Nature temples all over the map for them to boil forth from.

Now Im looking at some of the nations which have been added since that post so long ago and Im wondering if there might not be other choices. Or maybe I should consider multiple versions like Nature vs the rise of Man, and another where some of the nature-based man nations (tree huggers?) are included.

Does any of the other nations strike any of you as a better idea? Or should I stick to the original premise?
Thoughts?

[Sombre]

Trying to fight all three eras of Pangaea and MA Oceania as well sounds pretty tough. You could also grant them the ability to recruit vine men, vine ogres and ivy kings, or have their various commanders domsummon animals. Giving them all 99 nature gem income in their caps might also be fun.

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm Im not sure I can do those as map commands. I have considered doing a scenario zip which includes maps and mods. But that was a much more ambitius project involving multiple maps and periodic mod changes to the game as it progresses.

But the vine spells would probably be included. Or at least one of the Pangea builds would be structured supporting strong use of those spells. I havent tested whether the AI uses them.

[JimMorrison]

Another cool one (scary and hard!) would be the Terror From The Deep - with all aquatics present and allied (save LA R'lyeh, I think that would be a bit much).

Then there's the Rise of Rome, which would pit 3 human players as EA Ermor, MA Ermor, and MA Pyth against EA Ulm and a slew of Van/Nief/Hel/Jotun/Ut hordes in the north.


In the nature map, most of the nations could be arrayed in what appears at first glance to be an offensive phalanx, but is in fact meant as a defensive ring around one of the Pangaea nations who starts in the back corner with Carrion Woods already active. If possible, set it so that it's considered as having been cast with 999 slaves so it's not going to be dispelled by the players.

[Executor]

Then there's the Giants invasion, that would be interesting, Fomoria, Niefelheim, Hinnom, Jotunheim, Ashdod, Utgard and Gath, but that would probably be too much I suppose, seven giants races!

[Gandalf Parker]

I should also look at resurrecting some of my older ones. Like "WE vs THEM" which had the D.A.R.E. alliance. Dragons of Atlantis, Ermor, and Rlyeh. That was back when blue dragons could breath water though. It was a decent scenario. Three sibling dragons decided to create a pantheon (hierarchy of gods) instead of fighting for just one to survive. Ermor was in a corner tip of land with Atlantis in the ocean on one side and Rlyeh in the ocean on the other side. The two water nations were set up to obviously keep you busy while Ermor strengthened itself. Since they were allied Ermor wouldnt attack the other two. It tended to keep Ermor bottled up until you broke thru the other two and then Ermor boiled out thru the breach. Nasty game.

[Attle]

Lurker reporting, JimMorrisons idea seems really cool. The Rise of Rome idea that is. I've been wanting to try MP out and that scenario seems super spass!

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
There dont seem to be many scenario maps. More support for the MPers than the Soloists.

True... even I play more MP than SP games, I do know the map edit commands better than the vast majority of others. If ONLY we had one of the beta testers who would have actually done beta testing on the map edit commands then they would probably be working better. HINT.

Gandalf Parker said:
It might be fun now to reconsider a large scenario map which starts out with created AI players of nature based nations allied against the human players.

AI nature based nations have the problem of nature based summoning spells where many of these summons need food supplies. Just something to consider.

Gandalf Parker said:
Does any of the other nations strike any of you as a better idea? Or should I stick to the original premise?
Thoughts?

From my testing I've discovered nations which need almost zero food... such as EA Argatha and LA Ermor are quite strong for the AI.
The EA Niefelheim probably plays the most powerful late game... casting battlefield spells like: anti-magic, mass protection, mass regeneration, doom, and even the anti-SC spells like disentigrate and claws of kokytos.

[Gandalf Parker]

NTJedi said:

True... even I play more MP than SP games, I do know the map edit commands better than the vast majority of others. If ONLY we had one of the beta testers who would have actually done beta testing on the map edit commands then they would probably be working better. HINT.

Heehee. You should have seen all the commands we tested and took out. Not to mention the extensive back and forth changes to reset the caps to the new limits such as the 1500 provinces. And of course everytime you changed one thing it seemed to affect every other thing. SLAP.

But it was fun. I was the first person to get to play in mega-games. At least the server commands seemed to get a complete testing. Those were considered a hotter priority.

Gandalf Parker said:
It might be fun now to reconsider a large scenario map which starts out with created AI players of nature based nations allied against the human players.

AI nature based nations have the problem of nature based summoning spells where many of these summons need food supplies. Just something to consider.

[/quote]
Hmmm I rarely have that problem. It seemed to me that the food boost from nature magic was very charitable. And do the vine summons need food?

From my testing I've discovered nations which need almost zero food... such as EA Argatha and LA Ermor are quite strong for the AI.
The EA Niefelheim probably plays the most powerful late game... casting battlefield spells like: anti-magic, mass protection, mass regeneration, doom, and even the anti-SC spells like disentigrate and claws of kokytos.

In my mass tests (mentioned earlier) I tended to find that Ermor usually led early in the game, Oceania in mid game, and Arcos in late game if it could last that long.

EA Agartha I havent looked at but that might be a good idea. Ermor should be easy to build a decent AI boosting strategy around. One thing I played with was giving Eater of Dead as a pretender. It does break loose eventually but a nation like Ermor would make good use of being able to follow it around sweeping up the emptied provinces. It might make an interesting game scenario.

[Gandalf Parker]

That reminds me of another scenario idea.
To add a Wandering Monster, on a timer, so that it enters the game later.
#computerplayer 79 4
#god 79 "Eater of the Dead"

This should put in an AI nation with lots of population and an Eater of the Dead which will start out in a tamed form. Once it eats enough of the populace it will break out across the map. Since its a nation in the game, every time you play the map it will be randomly located someplace.

Maybe also set scales and give it a strong dominion. Im not sure how that might affect things but it sounds like fun. Putting in a bunch of ally commands might also make it not attack AI's. At least until it breaks loose.

Other options for the monster might be Eater of Dreams, Eater of Gods, Hunter of Heroes but Im not sure what those are and how they operate.

Im leary of getting into details and tempting one of the experts to tell me that I totally dont understand Eater of the Dead... but Im thinking
10 dominion
3 Death scales
3 ant-magic
3 anti-luck

You could even duplicate the setup 5 or so times. Setting it as nation 79, 78, 77, 76, 75. That would give you 5 of them on timers randomly scattered all over the map. Hurry and win the game OR ELSE!