MP Game - "Throne Of Heavens", veterans and experienced players only (full)

Stormbinder · #1 July 31st, 2004, 12:56 AM

Greetings All.

The purpose of this announcement is to organize a long, epic and fun Dominions 2 game with challenging, interesting and friendly group of players. The game will have several carefully designed house rules to prevent standard "cheese" and exploits, and to increase the fun for all participating players.

Only serious Dom2 players may apply. That means those who are reasonably sure that they can keep up with game schedule as the game progress and turns will take longer, and those who don't quit the moment things go wrong for them and who generally determined to stick to the end, no matter if it is sweet one or bitter one. If due to some RL emergency you will have to abandon the game, you promise to try to give other fellow players as advanced warning as possible and you will do your best to find a human sub for your nation. The goal is to avoid AWOL players as well as AI nations in this game.

Here are the rules of the game:

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1. The “Throne Of Heavens” is no-newbies game, sorry. Only experienced and veteran Dom2 MP players are allowed to join.

2. The settings will be set to Indep 7, Magic 50, HOF15, Score Graphs Off, Renaming allowed.

3. We will play on either Zen's Cradle of Dominion or Karan map, depending on the number of players and the MP public opinion on Zen's Cradle, which some people are trying right now.

4. The total number of players will be 6-8 for Karan map, 8-10 for Zen's Cradle of Dominion.

5. The house rules will be:

5.1 No massive clams hoarding. Each nation is allowed to have only 20 clams max. This purpose of this rule is to give each nation ability to get nice additional astral income, if they will choose to follow this path, while preventing possible severe imbalances at the end game, where some nations could get 200 astral gem income per turn from clams alone, and chaincast Wishes spells, et cetera.

5.2 No VQ pretenders allowed.

5.3 No Ermor nation allowed.

5.4 No "madcastling" in this game.

This rule is intentionally left informal. A lot of people, me including, think that the strategy of covering your entire territory with 300gp castles/temples makes game mindboglingly boring for other players and is very "cheesy". I've thought of several ideas how to formulate this rule in hard terms (percentage of territory, limit on how often you can build castles, limit on total number of castles, prohibiting Watchtowers and Mausoleums, etc...). However they all either require constant counting and bookkeeping, which is annoying, or may not be very efficient.

So at the end I've decided to put it simple:

If you do not know how to play without "madcastling", and/or intend to madcastle in this game, please do NOT join it.

I will not give exact definition in numbers of what "madcastling" is, but you all know what I mean.

Generally if you have castles in more than half of you provinces, especially in the beginning and in the middle of the game, than you are likely to be madcastling. Again, this is just a general rule for your convenience, but I've decided to rely on players good faith and common sense here, rather than force everybody to count their castles.

6. The game will run on 24h quickhost. Later in the game we may switch it to 48h quickhost, if the players would prefer to run it this way once the things will get really hot.

7. Some additional information:

The writing of AARs and in-character interactions though diplomacy thread and though other in-game and out-of-game channels are encouraged. However it is not a requirement by any means, there will be no RPG police here.

But if you want to use your imagination and add nice RPG flavor while playing your nation and your ruler, and/or write AAR after the game, you are most welcome to do it in the "Throne Of Heavens" game.

Diplomacy and trade communications between players through emails, IRC channels, forum threads, or other means are fully allowed.

For cheating in his previous games, Norfleet is Banned from joining this game.

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Please keep in mind that this is not a thread for discussion of house rules. If you have some questions or some comments about the rules of this game, you are most welcome to send them to me in PM, and I'll do my best to address your questions or your concerns. But I do not want this thread to become swarmed with discussions about Clams, Madcastling, etc. There are dozens of threads dedicated specifically to these controversial topics, but this is not one of them. Thank you for your understanding.

Please post the nation of your choice here if you have read the rules and interested in joining.

With best regards,
Stormbinder

[ August 06, 2004, 16:24: Message edited by: Zen ]

Cohen · #2 July 31st, 2004, 01:36 AM

I claim my favorite nation,

Abysya.

Well unless you don't consider me a newbye

quantum_mechani · #3 July 31st, 2004, 02:05 AM

I'm not sure why VQs are still outlawed, the nerf made them about middle of the pack, IMO.

Anyway, I think I will give Pangaea a try.

Stormbinder · #4 July 31st, 2004, 02:58 AM

I will play Vanheim.

major^3 · #5 July 31st, 2004, 05:08 AM

i call mary

Zapmeister · #6 July 31st, 2004, 05:36 AM

Put me down for Machaka

tinkthank · #7 July 31st, 2004, 10:35 AM

I think I am still a newbie, so I guess I will wait with joining for a sec and until RL issues get settled. Just one question: Was that serious about cheating and Norfleet? I mean, how can one possibly cheat in this game, you can't hack it, can you?? And there is this "cheat protection", whatever that means?

Norfleet · #8 July 31st, 2004, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tinkthank:
I think I am still a newbie, so I guess I will wait with joining for a sec and until RL issues get settled. Just one question: Was that serious about cheating and Norfleet? I mean, how can one possibly cheat in this game, you can't hack it, can you?? And there is this "cheat protection", whatever that means?

That's a totally unrelated issue. Storm is just endlessly harping about the fact that I entered another one of his games under an alias, and there's an entire piss-and-moanfest attached to the entire matter that I'm not interested in recounting. The short Version is that he likes to call this "cheating", even though it has nothing to do with actual cheats.

Suffice it to say that we've mutually Banned each other from any games we start.

[ July 31, 2004, 09:56: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

tinkthank · #9 July 31st, 2004, 11:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:
Originally posted by tinkthank:
I think I am still a newbie, so I guess I will wait with joining for a sec and until RL issues get settled. Just one question: Was that serious about cheating and Norfleet? I mean, how can one possibly cheat in this game, you can't hack it, can you?? And there is this "cheat protection", whatever that means?

That's a totally unrelated issue. Storm is just endlessly harping about the fact that I entered another one of his games under an alias, and there's an entire piss-and-moanfest attached to the entire matter that I'm not interested in recounting. The short Version is that he likes to call this "cheating", even though it has nothing to do with actual cheats.

Suffice it to say that we've mutually Banned each other from any games we start.

Ah right, ok. Well hm, odd. I couldn't really imagine you cheating (in a more direct sense of "cheating"). Since you are such an obvious veteran, I can imagine that entering a game under an alias would actually make sense, even if this does give you an "advantage" (since otherwise people will probably be like: "Watch out for Norfleet!"), because you must get sick and tired of being ganged up upon. (No one is ever frightened of me -- kind of nice, actually!)

Stormbinder · #10 July 31st, 2004, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tinkthank:
I think I am still a newbie, so I guess I will wait with joining for a sec and until RL issues get settled. Just one question: Was that serious about cheating and Norfleet? I mean, how can one possibly cheat in this game, you can't hack it, can you?? And there is this "cheat protection", whatever that means?

Yes, I was very serious. Don't pay attention to what Norf wrote below, it is total nonsense. Entering the game under alias has nothing to do with his cheating. For the details on this whole ugly issue you may search the forums, there were several huge threads related to it not too long ago. However this thread is not a place for discussing it. Suffice to say that we "didn't ban each other" of course. The Norfeet is Banned by at least three forum regulars, who orginize MP games here, from all future games as the result of his cheating.

Any future discussion of this topic will have to take place somewhere else. This thread is for the recruitment of new players for Throne of Heavens game and for nothing else. Thank you.

Regards,
Stormbinder

[ July 31, 2004, 10:26: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]