Overlords - Experimental game. Concept thread - Page 3

TheDemon · #1 August 28th, 2009, 01:45 AM

One other idea I had when looking at the map manual was you could set the overlords' non-cap provs to have a certain ammount of unrest at the start of the game. They would start with only their gem income advantage but their gold income advantage would come online automatically. A bit of tax micro on the players' part. Plus, if you want, the overlords' sites can be hidden at the start of the game and would have to be discovered by searching (they would still be guaranteed).

I'm not sure if either of those are necessary at all, but the ideas jumped out at me.

As for the map, I'm thinking wraparound for sure. I'll probably crib a slice from another map and copy it a few times to make something that's more or less symetrical. With 6 overlords and 15 normals, placement might be a little tricky. I might just place overlords in some sort of equidistant pattern, mark their provs nostart, and then open a game and see where it randomly places the remaining nations.

Ideas?

Burnsaber · #2 August 28th, 2009, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDemon

As for the map, I'm thinking wraparound for sure. I'll probably crib a slice from another map and copy it a few times to make something that's more or less symetrical. With 6 overlords and 15 normals, placement might be a little tricky. I might just place overlords in some sort of equidistant pattern, mark their provs nostart, and then open a game and see where it randomly places the remaining nations.

Ideas?

I just edited a map for the Early Days game. It had some nations in prefixed start locations and other placed randomly in a choice of prefixed starting locations.

Some hints:
- Nostart overrides the command for fixed starting position, so if you mark a province as a nostart and set a nation there, you will get a crash error when you try to start the game.
- You need to keep an eye for terrains that are marked as nostart in their terrain code. That also overides any #start commands

Septimius Severus · #3 August 28th, 2009, 02:55 AM

Wouldn't it be in the interests of the normal nations helmed by the less experienced players to at least coordinate with one another in the beginning against the overlords before fighting it out amongst themselves?

Having a co-admin is a great idea, especially for games with large numbers of players. Even for smaller games, having a co-admin or at least a backup admin is great to have, just in case life gets in the way and you cannot access the Internet for some reason.

rdonj · #4 August 28th, 2009, 03:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDemon

One other idea I had when looking at the map manual was you could set the overlords' non-cap provs to have a certain ammount of unrest at the start of the game. They would start with only their gem income advantage but their gold income advantage would come online automatically. A bit of tax micro on the players' part. Plus, if you want, the overlords' sites can be hidden at the start of the game and would have to be discovered by searching (they would still be guaranteed).

I'm not sure if either of those are necessary at all, but the ideas jumped out at me.

As for the map, I'm thinking wraparound for sure. I'll probably crib a slice from another map and copy it a few times to make something that's more or less symetrical. With 6 overlords and 15 normals, placement might be a little tricky. I might just place overlords in some sort of equidistant pattern, mark their provs nostart, and then open a game and see where it randomly places the remaining nations.

Ideas?

I like the idea of unrest at the start, it will give them a less stellar start and hopefully help them from starting up too fast. I want them to start with the whole gem income though, they won't be able to use it completely for a while anyway, and I think they will need it if they get rushed.

You're right, fitting 15 would be somewhat difficult. Making a completely symmetrical map with 14 players would be doable though. Here's a basic grid style, 1s are overlords, 2s are normals.

2 2 2 2
2 1 2 1
2 1 2 1
2 1 2 1
2 2 2 2

Since it's wrap around, the left side would be adjacent to the right side... would that be acceptable? If you can get 15 in without it looking inherently unbalanced, I would find that quite satisfactory.

Septimius, that is quite possible and one of the reasons the overlords need to have significant starting advantages over the normal nations. Otherwise it would be too easy to gang up on them and take them out. Hopefully, the way they are going they will be unattractive enough targets to dissuade such an early ganging.

kianduatha · #5 August 28th, 2009, 04:02 AM

If it's wraparound, wouldn't it be better like this?

2 2 2 2
2 1 2 1
2 2 2 2
2 1 2 1
2 2 2 2
2 1 2 1

Also, what nations were you anticipating being overlords? Shinuyama, Ashdod, Tien Chi, Mictlan? uh, C'tis, Ulm, Ermor? I'm just trying to think of what possibilities are left for the chump normal nations.

rdonj · #6 August 28th, 2009, 04:28 AM

You are correct, I was thinking only horizontal wraparound, rather than complete wrap around.

Tentatively, overlords would be pythium, ashdod and jotunheim for ma, plus all water nations. In all honesty though, there don't have to be specific set overlords except for underwater. If a player felt they could do particularly well with a nation under the setup, I don't see any reason why they couldn't play them.

Also Demon, if you think it would be too much hassle to have underwater overlords in the game for mapmaking purposes, that's fine. We can just switch to ea and not bother with underwater nations for simplicity's sake.

namad · #7 August 28th, 2009, 08:03 PM

how about overlords must reach dominion amount 3 friendly in an enemy normal province to attack it?

this way it's much harder? and preaching much more effective against it?

without changing the vision or simplistic nature or etc?

rdonj · #8 August 28th, 2009, 11:07 PM

I don't know, I think it will already be fairly hard for overlords to expand into normals. I don't think adding a specific dominion quantity is altogether necessary.

rdonj · #9 August 30th, 2009, 08:02 PM

Unless anyone else has comments, I think the basic idea is set. I will wait to make certain whether there will be water overlords or not, and then I'll start a thread for a game using this concept.

TheDemon · #10 August 30th, 2009, 11:53 PM

Change "normal nations" to "normal nations or independents" in the overlords section and that should pretty much cover it. We did wonder a bit in IRC about if we should keep the gatestones. Even if the overlords can't attack caps, it might be a bit too much to have them take all the provs next door to a normal cap using the pretender rule and their gate stone early on. But maybe not.