Mother Nature is pissed

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

How I wish #startspell wasn't damaged and lost. #god only works for the starting capital. one-way provinces would have really opened doors for some interesting maps. Anyways I'll stop daydreaming.

Gandalf Parker said:
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?

The extra food supplies help at first, yet during big games the nature summons which eat food tend to tip the scales towards starving from my experience. The vine summons don't need food yet these only bring one or two upon each casting by the AI. The harmful AI nature summons are the several animal types which arrive in groups for each casting... if only those vine summons arrived in large groups for a higher price the AI would play better.

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

If those tests are easy to setup and run it would be interesting to see how the new nations play. If those tests take over an hour then it's probably not worth your time.

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

One problem is the human player could summon eater of the dead which makes the current eater of the dead disappear. There would also be times where it would turn independent and the AI nation would be fighting its own pretender. Ideally I would like to see a #wandering command and more official wandering creatures like eater of the dead.

[Gandalf Parker]

NTJedi said:

How I wish #startspell wasn't damaged and lost. #god only works for the starting capital. one-way provinces would have really opened doors for some interesting maps. Anyways I'll stop daydreaming.

I dont know if we ever figured out what broke startspell. One-way provinces gets into way too many places in the code for movement, looking, spell-casting, retreating, AI, etc. It was one of those balancing acts against being able to do many other things instead of that one.

The #god problem I believe is tied into another of my regrets. The sequence that the game does its actions. One of my biggest regrets that we didnt fix was the ability for a server to set mods on that added nations to the game, and have them show up on the players join menu.

If those tests are easy to setup and run it would be interesting to see how the new nations play. If those tests take over an hour then it's probably not worth your time.

With servers there isnt much involved as far as my time. I can whip off a script to start 30 games, autorun them thru 100 turns, save the score files, start 30 more games. It might take a week to get relevant data it would collect until I turned it off.

Ideally I would like to see a #wandering command and more official wandering creatures like eater of the dead.

Didnt we do that? That would be a modding thing? I dont really follow the modding stuff.

Which reminds me. I should reread my old scenario ideas where I groaned the lack of a #patrol command. Now that we know how to put people inside and outside of a castle with map commands I should be able to tackle some of those ideas.

[NTJedi]

Well hopefully many of the broken commands will be fixed in DOM_4. We probably won't see DOM_4 for 5 years or more, but I believe it will arrive. I estimate many of the TBS gamers will be docking on the shores of the fantasy TBS game to be released by Stardock in 2009.

Gandalf Parker said:
With servers there isnt much involved as far as my time. I can whip off a script to start 30 games, autorun them thru 100 turns, save the score files, start 30 more games. It might take a week to get relevant data it would collect until I turned it off.

Well if you do pursue this line of testing I would recommend having them all use a specific set of scales.

Gandalf Parker said:

Didnt we do that? That would be a modding thing? I dont really follow the modding stuff.

Which reminds me. I should reread my old scenario ideas where I groaned the lack of a #patrol command. Now that we know how to put people inside and outside of a castle with map commands I should be able to tackle some of those ideas.

The #wandering command would most likely be a modding feature... unless the tag could somehow be added to a commander via map edit commands. Currently #wandering is not available.


The #patrol would be greatly appreciated by mapmakers. Good luck... it seems difficult getting attention for map edit commands.

[Gandalf Parker]

NTJedi said:
Well hopefully many of the broken commands will be fixed in DOM_4. We probably won't see DOM_4 for 5 years or more, but I believe it will arrive. I estimate many of the TBS gamers will be docking on the shores of the fantasy TBS game to be released by Stardock in 2009.

Dom4? I know that the Illwinter devs are on a new project but I seem to remember something about it NOT being a Dominions development.

The #patrol would be greatly appreciated by mapmakers. Good luck... it seems difficult getting attention for map edit commands.

Actually thats already been licked. Its done by the sequence of commands. Assigning units, THEN castle, then more units.

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Dom4? I know that the Illwinter devs are on a new project but I seem to remember something about it NOT being a Dominions development.

Yes, I know their current project is something new... that's why it'll be at least 5 years before we see DOM_4.

Gandalf Parker said:

Actually thats already been licked. Its done by the sequence of commands. Assigning units, THEN castle, then more units.

Are you saying the units on top of the castle will actually PATROL... thus catching scouts, spys and assassins?? Or will they just sit on top ?

The #patrol would work for stopping sneaking armies, scouts, spys, etc., ... and thus still needed.

[MaxWilson]

Gandalf Parker said:
I dont know if we ever figured out what broke startspell.

It doesn't fit with the code architecture. Dom3 only reads the map file once, but it regenerates the list of "allowed spells" every round.

As far as scenarios go, #onebattlespell will stand in for a lot of places I'd want to use #startspell: give each nation a signature spell of some kind that their mages can cast from researchlevel 0. You may be aware that when you #onebattlespell a spell, the unit can cast it throughout the battle normally if it has the right paths. Foodstamp mentioned that he was using this in his MoM mod to simulate the heroic special spells.

-Max

[NTJedi]

Modding is a workaround, unfortunately many SP gamers don't like using mods.

[Gandalf Parker]

MaxWilson said:

It doesn't fit with the code architecture. Dom3 only reads the map file once, but it regenerates the list of "allowed spells" every round.

As far as scenarios go, #onebattlespell will stand in for a lot of places I'd want to use #startspell: give each nation a signature spell of some kind that their mages can cast from researchlevel 0. You may be aware that when you #onebattlespell a spell, the unit can cast it throughout the battle normally if it has the right paths. Foodstamp mentioned that he was using this in his MoM mod to simulate the heroic special spells.

-Max

Not really.
I did do a couple. The initial mod for running all three eras in one game (the mega games). And one to randomize units in the game. And some of the testing for hot-swapping mods. Server commands I know, map commands I know, 3rd party softwares other than mods. But modding I mostly leave to others.

Thanks for the info though. I might venture into that sometime.

[NTJedi]

NTJedi said:

Are you saying the units on top of the castle will actually PATROL... thus catching scouts, spys and assassins?? Or will they just sit on top ?

The #patrol would work for stopping sneaking armies, scouts, spys, etc., ... and thus still needed.

sounds like we still need #patrol

[Gandalf Parker]

True. But at least you can put castles onto a map without them being freebies. The old way and you could take them with a scout because everyone ran inside the castle. You could tax the province to death without ever bothering to try and take the castle.