POLL: How Do You Play?

[Atreidi]

Folket said:
When I create a game I often choose victory conditions that I will be able to finish. Like capturing three AI capitals.

Most games I play I just play a couple of turn to try a multiplayer build. But I did not count those.

Doing that wont let you experience the middle late game, which in my opinion is were th fun is

[Panpiper]

In the minds of those who do not finish most of their games, as is the case with myself, once victory is certain, you have already won. There is little point to playing through to the end if it is simply a matter of micromanaging the logistics of it. I do not care to put up with the truly daunting amount of button clicking when there is no longer any challenge.

Someone made the suggestion of allowing you to turn on the AI switch for your empire just to let the game run it's course at that point. That sounds to me like a darn good idea.

[Atreidi]

Panpiper said:
Someone made the suggestion of allowing you to turn on the AI switch for your empire just to let the game run it's course at that point. That sounds to me like a darn good idea.

Can the AI be trusted with your game? I've seen big AI-controlled nations go down the drain by another smaller one :S what if in the end it is not a for sure victory... :S

[Meglobob]

It would be great if you could turn AI control on and off for your nation. Let it do the donkey work, you the god mastermind it all from time to time.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think the devs liked the idea also. Particularly I pushed for it as a host switch as another option to handle players suddenly having to take a break.

But if I remember the conversation there is something about going AI which makes changes that are almost impossible to undo afterward. Too much rewrite and moving around of code to get it.

On the other hand, I have kindof done it in some games. Overfill certain provinces building queues. Set everyone for re-occurring actions so that they will at least do something. Then host for a few turns, rinse, repeat. It gets me to the next important change to the game (usually a magic research that Im in a hurry for)

[Frostmourne27]

jutetrea said:
...
6. Add short mini-movies for a victory, or even one of those dynamic text based things - "name of god" defeats x,y,z and goes off to do 1,2,3 possibly determined by the random god name, paths, or type of victory. As it stands now victory is pretty much anti-climatic. Possibly make it so there are "rare" combos depending on pretender chassis, paths, victory type (possibly the aforementioned stats as well).
...

I really like that, especailly a text-based one. It would give a reason to actually finish large single player games, especially when the outcome is clear only towards the end. Won't help games where I put up the nexus on turn 35 and then realize the computer will never dispel it, but if it's just a matter of pushing through the last few provinces to the computers capital, it'd be a great incentive. Ideally, make it moddable, so people could add to the list of possibilities...

How much code would that take? It wouldn't be a whole lot, would it? Especailly if it were based on your god, and NOT his actions, since that would require logging them, and I don't believe the game tacks previous turns to any great extent...

[Atreidi]

jutetrea said:
6. Add short mini-movies for a victory, or even one of those dynamic text based things - "name of god" defeats x,y,z and goes off to do 1,2,3 possibly determined by the random god name, paths, or type of victory. As it stands now victory is pretty much anti-climatic. Possibly make it so there are "rare" combos depending on pretender chassis, paths, victory type (possibly the aforementioned stats as well).

Im with you

[Gandalf Parker]

Frostmourne27 said:
How much code would that take? It wouldn't be a whole lot, would it? Especailly if it were based on your god, and NOT his actions, since that would require logging them, and I don't believe the game tacks previous turns to any great extent...

I have to admit that this is one of the few suggestions Ive seen that seems like it could happen. It probably wouldnt take much to have the "end of game" line in the code jump to something that plays a movie thats in the Dom3 directory. And it wouldnt bog down the game since the heavy piece (the movie) would be separate.

PLEASE NOTE! I have said that its a good idea BEFORE I fell to my bad habit.

Hmmmmmmmm (I understand that some people have started hating it when the see me start a Hmmmmm section). We could do something without waiting for the devs if we wanted to.
If logging is turned on the the log file does announce the end of game. It looks like this....
checkcrc: /home/domgames/dominions3/savedgames/bl_selectmen/late_ctis.2h
checkcrc done. len 157609 crc 31424 readcrc 31424
get 2h data for player 60
The true God has ascended!

A view of the directory shows the other player files, and the last date that player turned one in. Such as (linux version)
-rw-r--r-- 1 domgames domgames 4432 2007-08-10 19:51 late_agartha.2h
-rw-r--r-- 1 domgames domgames 2945 2007-08-23 14:41 late_arcoscephale.2h
-rw-r--r-- 1 domgames domgames 12508 2007-08-27 12:39 late_jomon.2h

The scores file can give the final count of provinces, armies, and how many turns the game ran.

Althogether it would be pretty easy to write something that said In the Spring of the 20th year of the Ascension Wars, the god of C'tis is recognized as the ONE TRUE GOD having defeated Agartha followed by Arcoscephale and finally Jomon.

Your icon for running the game can check to see if there has been a win, then do all that (postexec switch).
Host servers could do something like that pretty easily and make a webpage out of it.
With some of the tools on my server (ImageMagick) I could even select images, add text, create animation, and save off a movie based on all of the info. I think I can get the image number of the god the player chose. And the titles if I grab it from the very first log in each game. But the name of the god seems the hardest to get.

[jutetrea]

That would be good, but could it be taken a step further.

Can the status of the god or even better the initial stats of the god be checked? Chassis type?

Have it do a quick mad libs check relating to the paths, xp lvl and chassis just for flavor text. Possibly using phrases from a file relating to the random god titles you get at pretender creation.

I would assume it could be coded similar to how the random titles are generated in the first place.

Example
John, god of everything, mover of mountaints, cyclops, 9e4n

0-3e = a,b,c (title, generic action, final action)
4-6e = d,e,f
7-9e = g,h,i
4-6n = j,k,l
cyclops = m,n,o

Titles are similar to creation titles but more volume or even just adjectives.
generic actions would just be aggressive verbs or small phrases
and final actions would be closure verbs or small phrases.

There's got to be some sort of mad lib program out there where you can create lists to the choices or link to other data.