Forseti (Open)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Another Halls of Valhalla spawn, this one has different rules than usual, so pay attention.

The map will be Edi's version of Cradle, with all independents removed. You will be using the custom balance scales and pretender mods. Not the entire CB mod- it's not up-to-date with 3.10. Worthy heroes 1.8 will be in play. All necessary files will be uploaded in a zip later.

1 Water/7 land OR 2 Water/10 Land nations
Will result in 20per/24per OR 10per/20per
Difficult Research, strength 4 independents
Middle Era
Graphs off

There will be a lot more territory than usual, but strength four should prevent hopeless starts, and should reduce the casulties for non-bless nations, helping them to keep up with the blessers. Difficult research will be in play, and indies out, so national troops will be needed more than regular.

This game is a PBEM (Play By Electronic Mail) game that will be hosted by the Llamabeast's dedicated server. I will be administering the game. No other players can see your turn- please do not use a password on your pretender. If you do use a password, be sure to send in your last turn if defeated, and switch to AI if you have to leave.

The first turn will be 48 hours.
Every turn after that will be a thirty-turn quickhost. When enough people ask/agree to it, the timer will be extended to fifty hours.

Nations Taken/Players Joined (5/7) still open...

R'lyeh: IndyPendant OR BigAndScary
T'ien Ch'i: BigAndScary OR IndyPendant
Bandar Log: FAJ
Jotunheim: Cor2
Marignon: Aethyr
Pangaea: Parcelt
Mictlan: vfb
Man: Whollaborg

[Lingchih]

I think, with the Holidays coming up, I will forswear any new games until after the New Year. That said, this seems like a very interesting game.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well, when you change my mind, check out my Halls of Valhalla thread. I don't start new games often, but when someone posts in that thread, they get a big say in the settings/mods.

Once spawned, though, I'm focused on recruiting and getting up and running- seperate threads like this won't see much change to game settings.

[Whollaborg]

I would be interested in this game. Have not decided the nation yet.

[FAJ]

I am interested in starting a new game, but I am not sure I understand the rules. What do you mean when you say all the independants are removed? What do you mean by a Halls of Valhalla spawn?

Pencil me in, though.

[PashaDawg]

Watch out for Whollaborg. He's a tough cookie!

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Whollaborg: Duly Noted. Will be glad to have you on board if you join.
FAJ:
Q: What do you mean when you say all the independants are removed?
A: IndyPendant has proviced a custom .map file. You will still have to fight independants for control of provinces- but you will be unable to recruit any units or commanders there unless you a). build a fort there or b). find a magical site there. You'll pretty much have to rely on national troops and summons.

Q: What do you mean by a Halls of Valhalla spawn?
A: Simply put, whenever I organize a game, it always starts out first in this thread:
Halls of Valhalla
I do this for several reasons
1). It gives me a convenient place to put links explaining the llamaserver and links for me to find all the games I'm managing. 2). It gives me a place to organize, hammer out settings, ask questions, answer questions and all that. I've learned that once a game is declared open, its not a good time to tinker with maps and mods and such. People are impatient to get started, and if I take too long on modifying a map, we'll lose a few. So... in HoV, I declare a game open, accept a few players, but primarily plan out the settings and options and mods for a game, taking requests. Its kinda the slow pre-game phase. When its ready to go, I create a new thread that usually gets a lot of people joining much more quickly.

If there are a lot of games already open, I tend to allow more variation in the settings, mods and all that. These games tend to take a week or more to decide the settings, let alone start. This game, Forseti, took some time while I checked out mods and maps for compatibility, and indypendant made the noIndie modification.

If there are not many new games open, then I tend to go with the 'standard' settings outlined in the first post and get things started fast. In my 'standard' games, theres no mods to download or organize. I may tweak the rules a little, such as if everyone wants graphs ON, but nothing big.

Long enough?

[parcelt]

Sounds like an interesting game, count me in! I like this map, and the difficult research.

I'll have to think a bit on what nation to play.

[IndyPendant]

Btw LP, furthering our discussion in the Elli thread ; ), I would be happy to send you two updated .map files with 7 land/1 water and 10 land/2 water starting positions preselected. --I want to keep situations like random selection causing three players to be 3 provinces away from each other, while three others have 8 provinces to the nearest neighbour, or such like that. I would try to select starting positions that would be as fair as possible, and *which* position each player gets would still be random--which both allows still considerable uncertainty and randomness, and minimizes any potential bias on my part. I would take into consideration such things as corners, expansion directions, province attributes (such as wasteland clumps, large pop and multisite specials) and so forth when I did so.

What do the rest of you think?

[Whollaborg]

PashaDawg: i am blushing

IndyPendant and the rest: presenting all the startlocs would be fair if any of the players have knowledge on those. This information adds few things into the "very early strategical phase" when one has to consider which are the priority objectives close to other nations. I'd like us to see the startlocs.

...still pondering the nation.