Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running

[Thanatus del Dragos]

I killed everything except the collossal head in Tien Chi's 210 site. Damn, that bastard is tough.

[Doo]

Originally Posted by Hrum

Endomorphious, I think you really should make a new thread for this game idea..... .....but I don't want to fill this thread up with stuff that isn't relevant to Turbocharged.

I'll create a thread in the main forum page, the idea being that SP players don't look at the MP page.

I've been watching Mauxe fight a few battles against Abysia and it seems to me Mauxe is pushing them slowly back. After Mauxe broke the siege on his fort the war seems to have been fought over open ground, I believe Mauxe is soon to be sieging an Abysian fort soon.

[Mauxe]

I should update more...sorry. Just so busy here.

I am slowly, slowly pushing south. I had a brief few turns where I was putting out teleport fires a bit. Now I am staring at a fortress with something big staring back... I think it is a colossal head but I don't recall exactly. It scares me though.
I have some good men in a province adjacent but I was working on a few items before I moved in. Still, I may be ready to bust through in the next turn....

[endomorphious]

Hrum I'm hesitant to make a thread creating a new game since I haven't a clue as to how to host/modify/setup/run a MP game. I'm not even a very adept player. Seriously, seriously weak in making workable thugs/SC's for example. Formulating long term plans another major weakness.

However, I really would like to play another MP game and I think the original idea above would be fun and require people to bypass the typical massive bless rushes that I see mentioned all the time in mp forum.

I don't know enough about the various ages and empires to suggest ones that would be both theme appropriate and fun to play.

Concept: Mixed ages empires that feature strong dominion effects. (ie. MA C'tis, LA Ermor, LA R'yleh) I would appreciate input suggestions and reasons for other empires to be included. There would be NO physical combat between player empires, except for victory point provinces. Chicanery of every other sort allowed, and expected. (Bodyguards should get hazard pay!)Diplomacy encouraged. Magic sites set to high. Expect magical battles to keep those Globals active. SemiRand independents. Perhaps one single uber power AI central power to gang up on?(Or alternatively, an experienced vet running the AI central power, but he would not attack. He would play the political mastermind, the spider in the web if you will.

[Hrum]

Endomorphious, I wasn't trying to be Mecha Thread Cop (well, maybe I was a little - damn my fascist tendencies!). If the other guys in this game don't mind you chatting in this thread about ideas for a new game I don't either, as long as it doesn't crowd out posts about Turbocharged.

And I wasn't suggesting that you start a thread announcing a new game - obviously you do that when you've settled on a concept / format / settings you like and have decided to run the game (which it sounds like you'd prefer someone else run it). For now, in order for you to get wider readership and more suggestions beyond just those of us keeping tabs on this thread (the players, Gandalf and NTJedi, 1 or 2 lurkers out there?) you might want to have a thread in the regular area to discuss game formats so that you can 1. Refine your idea for a format you'd like to play and 2. Gauge interest among all the Dom3 players on the Shrapnel forums instead of just your friendly neighborhood Turbocharged buddies.

For my part, I like it when people think of kooky stuff to do with game formats and stuff, so I'm happy to talk stuff over, but when it comes to actualy participation in a new game, I'm kinda swamped right now and I probably won't be able to handle joining another game. I'm already in two games (the other one is a regular MP game that's deep into late game), and my work load at my non-Dom3 day job has picked up a bunch recently (damn RL taking away from Dom3 time!). Things might be different for me in a couple of months, but for now my interest is more academic - I'm happy to try and poke holes in your ideas or suggest refinements, but if the game is starting any time soon I probably won't be joining - hence you should take my opinions with a grain salt. You probably should do that anyway.

One thing I'm not clear on - were you thinking of a game with players as allies teamed up to fight against 1 or more AIs? Or an everyone for himself game that might include some AIs as well to spice things up? Or something else I'm not thinking of?

In your original idea you mentioned dominions affects (LA Ermor, etal), and you just repeated that - can I ask why you want a game composed solely (or primarily) of nations with those effects? In my experience (admittedly limited) those effects create additional tension in a game by making you want to attack the nation with that hateful dominion, or want to kill them even more than you want to kill all nations with their false dominions. All enemy dominion is naughty in the sight of and deserves to snuff it, but dominion that kills your guys, or makes the weather unnaturally cold, or spreads disease or insanity is especially naughty. However, your original game concept was - a bunch of dominions that are super toxic to each other, and noone's allowed to do anything about it other than push dominion to win.

Dominion pushes are a valid victory method, but I can't see getting that jazzed about an entire game devoted to nothing but dom pushing. I've never been on either end of a dominion push victory, so I'm pretty far from being an expert on the topic, but as I understand it if you designed a game in which the only victory method was a dominion push, everyone would build their stuff the exact same way (dom10, best scales possible, pretender awake as soon as possible) and the only deciding factors would be does someone have cheap temples (or more expensive ones), or lots of H3s for preaching or whathaveyou. If you allowed a single blood sacrificing nation in that game, I think they would win hands down. If you allowed multiple blood sacrificing nations, everyone else would get squeezed out by them.

And meanwhile, the cool dominion effects you were into aren't really coming into play. Since everyone is pumping dominion like mad, and not allowed to attack in response to the enemy dominion push, only the guy that loses the dominion push is suffering the negative dominion effects, but only for as long as it takes the victor to completely snuff the weaker guy's dominion. The loser has no recourse - this could be a long, painful, not particularly interesting way to be defeated. This sounds more like a thought experiment to be explored by you in SP if you're really curious what it'll look like (maybe I'm wrong though - maybe there are a bunch of people that would want to play this).

I think NTJedi's idea about victory points makes the game much more interesting, in that now there's territory to fight over, so there's a victory method other than pure dom push. Now the painful dominion might be pushed into the contested VP provs by Nation A, while Nation B is the one who has actually conquered the VP provinces and stands to win if he can hold them long enough. Will Nation A's dominion make it harder for Nation B to hold those VPs?

Re: You can't attack players, but you're permitted to assassinate, does that mean you can mess with the other players in any way that has no chance of resulting in you taking one of their provinces? So, remote attacks with independent forces (eg. Send Horror) are OK, but remote attacks with forces that will claim the province for you (eg. Horde from Hell, Ghost Riders) are not OK? It may be hard to make those restrictions clear to all the players, especially if you're mainly courting newish players. You could make a mod that doesn't allow the spells you don't want - that might be the cleanest way.

Re: Assassinations, you realize that sneaky units (assassins) have a chance of being found? And once found by patrollers or PD, a buff enough sneaky unit has a chance of defeating crappy PD (low levels of monkey PD, for example). Since there's a chance that your assassin could take an enemy province, wouldn't this behavior (Assneakassination? Assneakination?) be disallowed?

Re: Vet as Central Power - this sounds like you want someone to GM a game for you (sort of - not quite). I take it this vet isn't allowed to play to win, he's just there to add challenge for the newb players? Ie. he's playing OppFor. That would probably be a lot of work for that player, running this game and making trouble for the players surrounding him, his goal not victory but spiteful resistance to the last. No hope of conquest himself, his only joy being the frustration of his opponents. You might throw him a bone - his one method of victory is dom push. Make him a blood nation and this becomes a really weird Newbs vs A Single Vet scenario. Most guys probably wouldn't be into that, but there could well be a vet out there who would love it. If you find that guy, he might be your game creator, admin, oppfor all in one. Call him Pantokrator - he's not there to kill the new pretenders to godhood, just to frustrate and annoy them to ensure that whoever knocks him off his throne truly deserves to be the new god of the world. It's kinda starting to sound like an entertaining newbie game format, but the entire thing hinges on who you find to play that central role of Game Admin / Veteran "AI" Puppetmaster / OppFor.

One other random thought - if you want to de-emphasize the bless rush, what about using the mod that turns off research, and starts all nations at level 6 research in all paths? It's a mod that takes you straight to mid-game fighting; you don't recruit mages for efficient research (there is none), you just make mages that can cast the spells you want (summons, battlemages, forgers, ritual casters, etc). Since bless nations tend to have the greatest advantage early, that mod might level the playing field a bit by starting the game off at a mid-game research level.

[endomorphious]

Originally Posted by Hrum

Endomorphious, I wasn't trying to be Mecha Thread Cop (well, maybe I was a little - damn my fascist tendencies!). If the other guys in this game don't mind you chatting in this thread about ideas for a new game I don't either, as long as it doesn't crowd out posts about Turbocharged

And I wasn't suggesting that you start a thread announcing a new game - obviously you do that when you've settled on a concept / format / settings you like and have decided to run the game (which it sounds like you'd prefer someone else run it). For now, in order for you to get wider readership and more suggestions beyond just those of us keeping tabs on this thread (the players, Gandalf and NTJedi, 1 or 2 lurkers out there?) you might want to have a thread in the regular area to discuss game formats so that you can 1. Refine your idea for a format you'd like to play and 2. Gauge interest among all the Dom3 players on the Shrapnel forums instead of just your friendly neighborhood Turbocharged buddies.

For my part, I like it when people think of kooky stuff to do with game formats and stuff, so I'm happy to talk stuff over, but when it comes to actualy participation in a new game, I'm kinda swamped right now and I probably won't be able to handle joining another game. I'm already in two games (the other one is a regular MP game that's deep into late game), and my work load at my non-Dom3 day job has picked up a bunch recently (damn RL taking away from Dom3 time!). Things might be different for me in a couple of months, but for now my interest is more academic - I'm happy to try and poke holes in your ideas or suggest refinements, but if the game is starting any time soon I probably won't be joining - hence you should take my opinions with a grain salt. You probably should do that anyway.

One thing I'm not clear on - were you thinking of a game with players as allies teamed up to fight against 1 or more AIs? Or an everyone for himself game that might include some AIs as well to spice things up? Or something else I'm not thinking of?

In your original idea you mentioned dominions affects (LA Ermor, etal), and you just repeated that - can I ask why you want a game composed solely (or primarily) of nations with those effects? In my experience (admittedly limited) those effects create additional tension in a game by making you want to attack the nation with that hateful dominion, or want to kill them even more than you want to kill all nations with their false dominions. All enemy dominion is naughty in the sight of and deserves to snuff it, but dominion that kills your guys, or makes the weather unnaturally cold, or spreads disease or insanity is especially naughty. However, your original game concept was - a bunch of dominions that are super toxic to each other, and noone's allowed to do anything about it other than push dominion to win.

Dominion pushes are a valid victory method, but I can't see getting that jazzed about an entire game devoted to nothing but dom pushing. I've never been on either end of a dominion push victory, so I'm pretty far from being an expert on the topic, but as I understand it if you designed a game in which the only victory method was a dominion push, everyone would build their stuff the exact same way (dom10, best scales possible, pretender awake as soon as possible) and the only deciding factors would be does someone have cheap temples (or more expensive ones), or lots of H3s for preaching or whathaveyou. If you allowed a single blood sacrificing nation in that game, I think they would win hands down. If you allowed multiple blood sacrificing nations, everyone else would get squeezed out by them.

And meanwhile, the cool dominion effects you were into aren't really coming into play. Since everyone is pumping dominion like mad, and not allowed to attack in response to the enemy dominion push, only the guy that loses the dominion push is suffering the negative dominion effects, but only for as long as it takes the victor to completely snuff the weaker guy's dominion. The loser has no recourse - this could be a long, painful, not particularly interesting way to be defeated. This sounds more like a thought experiment to be explored by you in SP if you're really curious what it'll look like (maybe I'm wrong though - maybe there are a bunch of people that would want to play this).

I think NTJedi's idea about victory points makes the game much more interesting, in that now there's territory to fight over, so there's a victory method other than pure dom push. Now the painful dominion might be pushed into the contested VP provs by Nation A, while Nation B is the one who has actually conquered the VP provinces and stands to win if he can hold them long enough. Will Nation A's dominion make it harder for Nation B to hold those VPs?

Re: You can't attack players, but you're permitted to assassinate, does that mean you can mess with the other players in any way that has no chance of resulting in you taking one of their provinces? So, remote attacks with independent forces (eg. Send Horror) are OK, but remote attacks with forces that will claim the province for you (eg. Horde from Hell, Ghost Riders) are not OK? It may be hard to make those restrictions clear to all the players, especially if you're mainly courting newish players. You could make a mod that doesn't allow the spells you don't want - that might be the cleanest way.

Re: Assassinations, you realize that sneaky units (assassins) have a chance of being found? And once found by patrollers or PD, a buff enough sneaky unit has a chance of defeating crappy PD (low levels of monkey PD, for example). Since there's a chance that your assassin could take an enemy province, wouldn't this behavior (Assneakassination? Assneakination?) be disallowed?

Re: Vet as Central Power - this sounds like you want someone to GM a game for you (sort of - not quite). I take it this vet isn't allowed to play to win, he's just there to add challenge for the newb players? Ie. he's playing OppFor. That would probably be a lot of work for that player, running this game and making trouble for the players surrounding him, his goal not victory but spiteful resistance to the last. No hope of conquest himself, his only joy being the frustration of his opponents. You might throw him a bone - his one method of victory is dom push. Make him a blood nation and this becomes a really weird Newbs vs A Single Vet scenario. Most guys probably wouldn't be into that, but there could well be a vet out there who would love it. If you find that guy, he might be your game creator, admin, oppfor all in one. Call him Pantokrator - he's not there to kill the new pretenders to godhood, just to frustrate and annoy them to ensure that whoever knocks him off his throne truly deserves to be the new god of the world. It's kinda starting to sound like an entertaining newbie game format, but the entire thing hinges on who you find to play that central role of Game Admin / Veteran "AI" Puppetmaster / OppFor.

One other random thought - if you want to de-emphasize the bless rush, what about using the mod that turns off research, and starts all nations at level 6 research in all paths? It's a mod that takes you straight to mid-game fighting; you don't recruit mages for efficient research (there is none), you just make mages that can cast the spells you want (summons, battlemages, forgers, ritual casters, etc). Since bless nations tend to have the greatest advantage early, that mod might level the playing field a bit by starting the game off at a mid-game research level.

Responses are in response to each paragraph in order.

Perish the thought Hrum. Never took a negative connotation from your comments yet.

I am tossing it out into this group of folks for a kind of feasibility study. After all we obviously don't mind odd setups with the turbocharged concept. I did toss out the idea once already with a post. However, it was not fleshed out and got zero,zip,zilch interest. If I can flesh it out some more at least initially with your guys help I may generate a bit more interest.

I don't see critical mass generating on this game starting anytime soon.

The game as I'm conceptualizing it is each player for himself, a few independents toughened as in this game, and possibly the toughened central Power.

I was playing an MA_Ctis game in SP because I just love their gold production bonus under high dominion and was sick of playing games where I was a broke joke. Then I began to read up on strategies and saw that MA_Ctis and the other dominion effect empires are much hated in MP. So the concept of creating a game where they could get a chance to bring their dominion effects into play without worrying about mad blessed giant rushes occured to me.

Don't have any experience on dominion pushes it was just a brainstorming idea to further maximize a strategy that doesnt seem to get much of a fair shot in MP. I can take it or leave it in the game creation. But, I would like other more experienced players to weigh in on how dominion push victories would work/play out in such a game. You maybe correct on the blood nations. LA_Ermor maybe the only exception and only as the large Central power.

I'd attempt this in SP mode with all AI's just to see it in action but I haven't the foggiest clue on how to mod things. I barely comprehend the game as created.

I also really like NTJedi's idea of victory points. I'd further make those locations even more enticing by somehow bulking them up. Either, key choke points, gold bonus, or max magic site frequency, perhaps if possible modifying cost/resource of useful units. 1gp/1rp crossbowmen? Or, is that just a programming nightmare for the poor sap whos gonna actually craft this game.

I've conceptualized this game in my mind as a kind of real life political struggle amongst loosely allied conquered nations of LA_Ermor. They see the path that Ermor is going down and want to break free of that certain death sentence. The only ones who are making a fair attempt are those with strong dominion effects of their own. But, as in real life political allies don't necessarily mean best buds. No overt physical troop attacks. Magic and assassination is fair game even if it nets you an enemy territory. I'd keep research the same so that globals would become necessary and coveted. With high magic resources I expect to see ALOT of spell spam and dueling globals.
On that note should wish be banned, do you think?

Your summation of the Pantokrator is exactly what I was thinking, if not so elegantly laid out. Perhaps a puppetmaster victory condition that if no one holds X number of victory points say by turn 101 then he wins. This would give a master manipulator the chance to meddle with others for the sheer fun of it, AND help him achieve his victory condition. He sees Kingdom A is gonna fall soon if something doesnt change so he sends Kingdom A 100 gems 10k gold...bam kingdom a is kicking Kingdom B and C's butt.
Perhaps give the Pantokrator two of the assassin capable heroes if there is a mod that does that.

[endomorphious]

New turn up.

[Mauxe]

I am doing a little dance down here trying to get myself geared up to take on this giant head. Once I can take this fortress I hope to have a much better foothold on Abysia's lands....

[Doo]

My attempt at attacking some underwater provinces was terribly poor...

On the up side Atlantis knows I want war so it might shift some focus onto me

Next turn up.

[endomorphious]

Ok update I am sieging two atlantis forts on my northern most border. I may take one next turn. But he has his entire sea area to recruit defenders/attackers from so Im in for a vicious struggle if i don't pull out some fancy tricks soon. I'm so severly hampered by gold. Really, really underestimated that variable from my SP experience. One strong force from him would ruin my day as he ransacked my weak undefended provinces. My death gem income is also very sadly lacking in comparison to my other games as is my expansion. Ahh well it is at least more fun :}

I am trading water and fire gems at 3:1 for death gems if anyone has spares. I now have leviathan and I plan on spamming it along with construction of fear inducing magic items to pillage undefended water provinces. Depending how those trades go, if anyone is in the position to cast a counter to Atlantis maelstrom i can/will donate up to a 100 gems to it. I really don't want them with that benefit for too long.

anyone who can make wall shaker or other seige bonus items? I can trade earth boots, dwarven hammers, or crystal coins.