Gandalf's Crazy Solo Games

[Wish]

in my first test of the mega map you provided, Yomi has started across the southwest continent from tien chi (though still its closest on-land neighbor in an east west direction...

and the first war that I happened to partake in.... japan vs. china

also along the northern part of said continent vanhiem is duking it out with nifelhiem.

was this thing planned such that it would be relatively historically accurate?

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
If you generate a map for solo play I recommend turning the mountains to 50 or higher. It creates many "chokepoint" positions on the map which control the access to small areas.

I also recommend this for new players... the more experienced players should use 30 or less since the AI opponent lack the intelligence to effectively use chokepoints.

[Jack_Trowell]

Gandalf Parker said:
If you generate a map for solo play I recommend turning the mountains to 50 or higher. It creates many "chokepoint" positions on the map which control the access to small areas. Allowing for lots of "cut them off at the pass" tactics. At setting shigher than 50 you can get a maze.

I know : inspired by your horizontal maps that you posted before I got the game (waiting for tuxgame made me live more than 1 month without dom3 after the official release date ! At least it made me subscribre to the forums : I had been lurking since dom2) I used the random map generator to make maps with similar settings, ... but smaller.

I love maps with lots of specials and chokepoints, and I love SP.

I think in fact that our playstyles are very similar, exept that I prefer smaller maps (I like a big game sometimes, but 1500 provinces is really asking for trouble )

Just another thing oh mightly Gandalf, Lord of Eternal Games, Master of Randomness, do you think that extending my perl conversion is useful ?

I have several plans, such making the random commanders depend on the province type(s) (for exemple no random commander and units drowning in a sea province, and thematically appropriate monsters in forests/moutains, maybe an increased chance of lootable treasures in caves (more commanders and monsters with magic items), ...

But for such a project, I would need to parse the complete unit list and choose wich units could go to wich terrain type, and others hings like that.

It's not the programming by itself that worry me, it's the time to process the huge amount of raw data in dom3.

If I think the project can really be useful for the community, I could manage to get the work done. (perl programming is part of my day job, so it's not there that I will have problems)

I can also take sugggestions : I should be able to parse any information from original map files (even starting provinces if there's defined) and from there make any moddable modification wished.

Note : maybe this thread would be more appropriate in the mod/maps subforums ? What do you think ?

If others that Gandalf wish to give their opinion it will be welcome.

[Gandalf Parker]

Wish_For_Blood_Slaves said:
in my first test of the mega map you provided, Yomi has started across the southwest continent from tien chi (though still its closest on-land neighbor in an east west direction...

and the first war that I happened to partake in.... japan vs. china

also along the northern part of said continent vanhiem is duking it out with nifelhiem.

was this thing planned such that it would be relatively historically accurate?

Thats kewl. But the map I provided does not set the starting positions at all. Everything has its pros and cons (I tend to say that alot) and in this case it means that each restart will give you a very different game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Jack_Trowell said:
Just another thing oh mightly Gandalf, Lord of Eternal Games, Master of Randomness, do you think that extending my perl conversion is useful ?

Totally. Perl is also compatable to all three OS's that the game runs on. And its raw script that is fairly easy to read and edit if someone wants to. Even non-programmers can do ok editing a script like that. Im just too lazy to move off of basic to perl.

I have several plans, such making the random commanders depend on the province type(s) (for exemple no random commander and units drowning in a sea province, and thematically appropriate monsters in forests/moutains, maybe an increased chance of lootable treasures in caves (more commanders and monsters with magic items), ...

But for such a project, I would need to parse the complete unit list and choose wich units could go to wich terrain type, and others hings like that.

Been there. But the bit-math for terrains was a headache. Also logical placements needs a database. I think there are threads in the Dom2 forum where I asked if someone would be interested in going thru all of the monsters/units and assigning tags for terrain and types (woodland, avian, winged, and commander for instance). I started too but like most of my projects it nevr got finished.

It's not the programming by itself that worry me, it's the time to process the huge amount of raw data in dom3.

I can provide a raw list from the game, such as all units. But its just name and number, no data.

Note : maybe this thread would be more appropriate in the mod/maps subforums ? What do you think ?

Its ok that it started here but splitting it would be good if you want to continue the project. I tend to leave the players comments here and pursue the planning stuff in the mod/map forum. By the way, you might take a look at
http://www.dom2minions.com/SemiRandom.shtml
Or actually any of the dropped projects at
http://www.dom2minions.com

Gandalf Parker

[Actuarian]

Gandalf,

I don't think I phrased my last qestion very well. To clarify, I was wondering, for these really big maps, if you change the setting for the supply, resources and gold income levels to something other than 100, and if so, why. Also, what do you generally set the independent province army strength and the magic site frequency to?

I really enjoy your random maps.I'm messing around with one of your tubular maps now. Thank you!

[Gandalf Parker]

I havent tried messing with supply/resource/income settings yet but I do recognize that they have the ability to create a different game with different strategies. I will probably get around to them eventually.

I sometimes set indepts higher. And sometimes even lower (which makes a VERY interesting game on a mega-map).

I do tend to set magic sites higher in my own games. I might eventually get a script done to push the magic sites to the max and beyond (read bit-binary terrain settings and up it on the map).

In case people havent noticed, I have a strong tendency to head off in any direction that the crowd isnt going. With so many options in this game, I get peeved at the impression that certain strategies are game-killers when they tend to be strong strategies only for certain game settings. So I love to explore the options and see if it might make a playable challenge.

[Foodstamp]

I am curious how the late era nations with special dominions perform in your massive single player games. Particularly Ermor and Rlyeh. Does Ermor go nuts? Or on these larger maps do other nations step up later in the game to take them out?

[Gandalf Parker]

In the super-massive test-games using all 79 nations it was Ermor in an early lead but their scales do eventually use up their people once enough ations stop their advance. In mid-game it was Oceania which always took the lead. At the end it was Arcos coming up fast if they had survived that long. I didnt run the Dom3 test games to the end altho I wish I had with at least one. I didnt know Id lose the ability to do those. Of course things vary depending on factors such as who it is that Ermor starts next to, who Arcos starts next to, Abyssia, etc. By the way, the first one out was usually Mictlan because the AI doesnt handle it well. All of this was reported to the devs for consideration.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think I might have found the map I wanted to put extra time into.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap...tContinent.jpg

Not only is it fairly maze-like, and has 4 oceans which tone-down the abilities of the water nations. But best of all it randomly provided the color of sea borders that I like. I tohught I was going to have to wait for the next patch to get that. So I got my land, water, land border, and water border colors.