request for MAP testing

[Gandalf Parker]

If you are into small maps with great graphics then you might as well leave now.

Firstly is the WEvsTHEM.zip 450 land and 50 water provinces.
A harder game (hopefully) for those wanting smarter AI's. In the lower-left corner of this map there is the Deadly Atlantis Rlyeh Ermor alliance. It is Ermor sandwiched between Atantis and R'lyeh. DARE is all allied against you. To survive I highly recommend co-operation with other nations.
(Ermor, Rlyeh, and Atlantis cannot be chosen)

Or the Indeps.zip 450 land and 50 water provinces.
The Independents have begun to form their own nation WITHOUT a Pretender! They have a headstart on you and have been joined by many angry deserters from other nations so you had better get busy. Their leaderless nation must not spread further!
(Man cannot be chosen)

These are considered half done and Im trying to get motivated to finish them. Please provide pros and cons, early impressions, mid impressions, final impressions. Even if its just "blahh average"

NOTE: these are MAPs not MODs

[ March 29, 2004, 22:00: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Pirateiam]

Ok I just downloaded the WEvsTHEM. I am trying out an ARCO - Golum Cult theme - its my answer to R'lyeh and Undead. Do you have a preference on settings you want this tested at? I was planning on trying AI set to difficult. You also mentioned that you should ally with the other AI's? Did I miss something? How can you do this other than not attcking them? If you send them gems or money does that actually make a difference? It always seemed to me that they just attack you if they think your borders are weak no matter what other threats are around them.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually there have been discussions about diplomacy with the AIs. Such as sending Herald Lances to Marignon so they will destroy Ermor knowing well that the lnaces wont help them much against you later.

But on th WEvsTHEM map I meant human players. The map is designed to almost force co-op play between humans. If you are ready to test different alliances to see who would be most helpful to you in a multiplayer game then you can start the game with multiple human players and play them all at the same time. With Arco you might try Ulm as an ally (play both arcos and ulm), and maybe Caelum or Abyssia. I wouldnt recommend adding more AIs to either of these maps.

[Pirateiam]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

But on th WEvsTHEM map I meant human players. The map is designed to almost force co-op play between humans.

Ok that makes more sense. I just finished my first 8 moves on this map. Here were my settings.

All AIs set to difficult
Indep - 6
5 starting prov
normal richness
normal random
50 magic sites
everthing else standard

Other comp AI's - Marignon, Man, Ulm and T'ien

I am Arcos with Golum cult - Rainbow Archmage

First impressions:
1.) WOW this map is Huge!!!
2.) This map needs eye candy
3.) I think this is going to take months to finish lol

GP - I love the random map generator idea and I have downloaded a few from your site. I was wondering if I can take your maps and spice them up a little? You do not mind right? I have GIMP and a few other graphic programs and was about to try making a few maps.

[Gandalf Parker]

GP - I love the random map generator idea and I have downloaded a few from your site. I was wondering if I can take your maps and spice them up a little? You do not mind right? I have GIMP and a few other graphic programs and was about to try making a few maps.

No problem at all. I see the DomMap program as filling two different functions. One is generating starting ideas for people. I generate bunches of maps but only get excited when one of them has an ocean that looks like a dragon, or seems to divide itself naturally into 4 big sections. That will sparc me thinking. Unfortunately Im not too good at making it happen but I figure others will.

The other thing its good for is making the maximum huge maps so that we have some to play on since it will be rare that anyone will manually create maps to fill that niche.

One project I need to return to is changing the maps I run on my site to more random variations

[ February 28, 2004, 20:47: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[dzbabi]

I won�t be at home this week, can you plz make a screenie??

I am very curious now!

[Gandalf Parker]

New map idea for insane-size since I havent heard much on the other two.

Mazes and Monsters:
450 land and 50 water standard random created map from the DomMap program. Yet Another Basic program which will re-randomize the .map file each day on my site. The monsters will be my standard routine to add small Groups of surprise units all over the map.

The mazes part will be a new routine to randomly remove neighbor lines. Random but Im figuring in the area of about every 5th one to start with. I will tweak the routine but the goal is to create a surprising bottlenecks and chokepoints in the file. Hopefully avoiding too many that are so locked out that they cant be reached without transport spells late in the game.

Im debating also adding random neighbor commands which will do far connections ending up with a map that resembles the old Chutes and Ladders game. Maybe that will be another project later.

-- WARNING: Flu symptoms have been detected. My Posts may begin to ramble and may result in garbage. Or feverish genius. Let me know which after I fully recover.

[ March 04, 2004, 22:20: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[AztraGoth]

I downloaded them but i wont check them out until tomorow/later today (its 02:45 am and I gotta work today/tomorow), they sound awsome

To bad there is a 500 province limit...I would acually see that one dubbled or trippeled...and make a mod changeing all the units, � the strenght & � the price, but keep the income etc as it is so you would be able to have twice as many units on the battle field
I just want to see masses of little units running around killing each other....that why I like Ermor so much...it easy to scrape up a larger army constining of 1000+ longdeads (Pretty much cuz you need that many if you not using some big mean summons or other things )

[ March 05, 2004, 01:09: Message edited by: AztraGoth ]

[Gandalf Parker]

OK ready for testing: MAZES and MONSTERS
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...s/MazeMons.tga
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...s/MazeMons.map

Yeah I know thats a game of some sort but I like the name anyway. This is another epic sized map of 500 provinces (450 land and 50 water). Thats large enough to start a game with all 17 nations giving them all the maximum setting of 9 starting provinces and still have room for some expansion.

The program that makes this map is done alittle bit differently. It built an array of all of the nostart provinces, then randomly deleted a bunch of neighbor commands while adding those as nostart provinces also.

That array was used to assign random commanders with random equipment, and random forts/labs/temples. The result is that the map should contain enough lost neighbor connections to make the map rather more maze-like. More choke-points. Plus each of those may have special structures and commanders. If this goes over well I will zip the two files together and offer them. I will also setup a nightly re-write of the map file with all new randoms.

Possible changes:
I might play abit with the numbers of choke-points, structures, commanders.
I might add bodyguards and units.
I might change the map to a different one.
I might do a smaller Version (much fewer provinces)
I might add a chance of adding to a province the setting to boost the number of magic sites randomly assigned by the game but since this involves changing the terrain setting that means creating a whole new array to track.
I might lose interest and move onto something else if it looks like the only person interested in playing such a map is me.

[ March 23, 2004, 19:38: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[fahdiz]

This looks very, very cool, Gandalf - I for one will be testing this out tonight!