Fun little SP

[Sombre]

Attached is a screenshot from my current SP game. There's nothing amazing in the screenshot, no weird bug or silly amount of troops or anything of that nature. It's just to illustrate probably the most fun SP game I've had in dom3 so far.

Settings:
Late Era, 7 players.
Map: NI (no indy troops recruitable) Aran.
Mods: Conceptual Balance Mod Complete, Worthy Heroes, Streamers and Standards, CBM Ulm Reborn.

I'm playing as Ulm Reborn and the AIs are all 'Normal, Standard' because I started them as humans to sort out their settings and then switched to AI. I staled (did nothing but hit end turn) for the first 4 turns of the game to make fighting the AI more challenging. This is all stuff I do often, although usually I don't set up the AI nations, I just stick them on impossible.

The game has been a blast. Lagging four turns behind I was under attack pretty much before I'd even grabbed the provinces around my castle. Utgard were doing very well from the get go and decided to tangle with me, resulting in 6 or so turns of nasty fighting between us. My PD was worthless against them, so I ended up playing musical chairs with a big force of jotun huskarls and woodsmen, chasing them with my only real army, a squad of Neugeboren Guard. By cranking out drain immune white priests I'd managed to catch up the average AI nations in research, but I was increasingly having to use my whities to support my troops and smite away at giants.

Although with high resource cost high prot troops I had something of a disadvantage against giants, the penitent (flagellents) I was spawning made up for it and I managed to see them off, finally. By this point they were no longer running away with the game and both tienchi and regular Ulm had risen up to their level. That's when regular Ulm decided to attack me, just as all my armies moved over to throw the utgard scum out. I'm now fighting a war on two fronts, am basically totally surrounded and having to use my researchers, the white priests, to bail out my armies from total destruction. Hoch-Hammers and Black Templars have been my saving grace, tearing up jotuns and ghoul guardians alike. At this point I took the screenie. You can see it looks like a civil war between Ulm and myself, because we have very similar flags.

I just thought I'd share about this great SP game I'm having. Eventually it might turn into a tedious mess, at which point I'll drop it, but for now it's pretty damn exciting.

Anyone else got awesome little SP games on the go?

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, I'm trying out EA C'tis for the first time ever. They're a fun nation, but the absolute best part is that I'm playing on the world map from http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/maps.html. Taking over South America while Ulm devours Asia and Helheim sits in Africa (I've decided that Eyes of God is a great global). It all feels very fun, and I've moved up to conquer Texas and Colorado while Ulm is pouring down over the land bridge at me. Highly recommended map.

-Max

[Managarm]

At this moment I'm also playing SP games and never used mods before... Now I've tried Sombre's mod setup (Concep Balance/Worthy Heroes/S'n'S) alongside with NI_Cradle_fix.map and I had plenty of fun with them!!

Definitively the No Indies (NI) map versions are a must! Yes, those are challenging but it's rewarding to live and die by your own troops without the help of external outsiders...
Like Max I'm also playing EA C'Tis (best Death/Nature Nation) and I wish I could recruit some archers for ranged support. Luckily, there's always light at the end of the tunnel: A small squad of summoned Firbolgs eqquiped with Black Bows Of Botulf will do the job.

I have no idea in map file scripting, but having a look to the NI versions of the maps I found that the only difference is the following lines for each province at the bottom of the map file:
#setland XX
#poptype 89

Is there anything else required for converting standard maps into NI equivalents?

I also processed some NI maps using Jack Trowell's Dominions Map validator and randomizer with default settings for an extra spicy touch.
Unfortunately the results were a bit confusing: one of the Nations started in a province crowded with Longdeads and a couple of Bane Lords replacing the Nation's starting default commanders...
Does somebody know if this interesting online tool works properly?

Forgive me if I'm not posting in the right place, although these comments (maybe) will be useful for other players whom tend to only read the main forum (like me)...

Extra thanks to Sombre for sharing his SP mod setup and also for the very handy and updated mod list. I quickly found all the required mods thanksgiving to it!

[Sombre]

No problem.

I almost always play on NI maps because I get sick of the AI sending armies made mostly of indy troops at me. I think they play better with no indies and the SP game is more challenging as well as interesting. You can still get some cool indy troops via special sites too and finding them is even more of a bonus.

As a point of interest I actually lost that game the screenshot was from. I eventually just got swamped by hordes of Tienchi cavalry archers - they killed off all my freespawn then outnumbered and broke down my elites. That's only the second time I've ever lost in SP dominions. I'm currently working to make Ulm Reborn a little less underpowered at the suggestion of others.

And to answer your question, yes that's all you need to do to make a map NI. If you set the poptype beyond the numbers in the game (like 89, 90 etc) then the province gets defenders but no recruitables. you just need to do it for every province, or at least the ones you don't want to be able to recruit in.