Dominions 3 game: Quartertodawn

Making a separate thread for this new game due to the public diplomacy, so players won’t need to sift through the mammoth Dom 3 thread to find relevant posts. This is all extracted from the other thread, please let me know if I missed anything.

Name:
Quartertodawn
Hosting: Llamaserver
Map: Dawn of Dominions by Jason Lutes, comes packaged with the game.
Players: 12.
Era: Early.
Graphs: On. Llamaserver displays stats anyways, so might as well make them available in-game.
Victory: Dawn of Dominions is a large map, so we are using cumulative VPs to determine the winner to avoid lengthy and tedious endgame scenarios. Going with 20 as the target unless there are any objections. Each capital is a VP province. You get 1 VP for each VP province you hold in the Summer of every year.
Hosting schedule: I’m thinking 48 hours for the first in-game year, then 72 hours. Better to have a slower schedule than having to give extensions constantly.
Other settings: Standard, unless someone makes a good case for changing them.
Skill level: Newbies and more experienced players both welcome. Due to the map being unbalanced, we will handicap the more experienced players by giving them a tougher starting position.
Diplomacy: Non-binding and open. That means any discussion of the game or diplomatic deals have to happen in this thread. One-to-one communication considered cheating. This is of course unenforcable in practice, but we shall have a gentleman’s agreement.
Mods: No mods due to the large amount of new players. Please make sure you update the game to the latest version though, currently that is 3.24.
Nation choice: Random according to skill level:
1: No MP experience: Vanheim, Oceania, Sauromatia, Ermor
2: Some MP experience: C’tis, Helheim, Kailasa, Agartha
3: Experienced players (if you have played more than six games and at least one endgame, OR if you have won a previous game arranged on this board): Arco, Marverni, Ulm, Caelum
When nations have been assigned I’ll allow a short period of time for trading nations - don’t want anyone stuck with a nation they hate.
Other house rules: No attacking other player’s capital provinces or provinces adjacent to that province for the first 10 turns, to give our newbies some breathing room and deter rushing. Beyond this 1-province radius you are fair game.

I would also like people to fight to the end as much as possible, and not give up on the game as soon as you suffer some setbacks. If circumstances dictate that you abandon the game, please do not turn yourself AI right away - perhaps a substitute can be found.

Roster, starting nations randomized courtesy of random.org:

New players:
Sir Digby draws Oceania - set to AI turn 47
farfrael draws Vanheim
McKnight draws Ermor
VendoViper draws Kailasa - set to AI turn 45
sharaleo draws Sauromatia

Players with some MP experience:
ThornFalconeye draws C’tis - eliminated turn 59
Evil Steve draws Helheim
Mike O’Malley draws Agartha - set to AI in turn 22, eliminated turn 33

Experienced players:
Scribble draws Ulm
dfs draws Marverni
ddtibbs draws Caelum
Juffo-Wup draws Arcoscephale

As we have five MP newbies and only four nations with an easy starting position, I made a judgement call that Kailasa was the nation with the most forgiving start location of the rest of the nations and put it in the level 1 nation pool.

Need one more player to get this going.

Pretender generation: how long will we have?

A couple days at least - as long as you need. Was hoping to start turns next week.

I’d love to join, is the final spot still free?

First game for me, so L1 skill…

You are in as #12. I will randomly assign nations and edit the first post.

Yippee!!

I am so gonna get my arse kicked…

Nations are drawn, please consult top post.

You can now start tinkering with pretender builds, deadline for submission is five days from now (20. April 12:00 GMT). I will create the game on llamaserver shortly. Make sure you have your game patched to the latest version, 3.24.

Trading nations is permitted. And on that note… I drew Ulm, which I am currently playing in a different game. I wanted to try a new nation so would be willing to trade with anyone.

edit: Also, please do not password protect your pretender. This creates problems if you drop off the face of the earth and we need to find a substitute for you.

Some advice, mainly to the newbies:

-Have a look at the map and where your nation is placed. Starting locations are fixed, you will know exactly who your neighbours are. This may impact your pretender design and early strategy.
-If you have the time, it’s not a bad idea to create an SP game on the same map with your assigned nation to test things out. Try to come up with a starting strategy that reliably gets you at least 10 provinces inside the first year.

Will be getting my new laptop tomorrow morning and I suppose I should probably buy Dominions at the same time ;)

That leaves me with a full weekend to get used to the game before this starts up. That’s plenty of time I’m sure…

That sounds like a tall order, but the game will move quite slowly so you will have some time to get your bearings.

Feel free to ask for advice.

I know but this game has the largest collection of new comers I’ve seen so far, could be a long time before another game like it comes around.

It’s not like I’m expecting to win anyway, just looking for a way to get into the game. And don’t worry I’ll definitely be asking for some of that advice later on.

While I am not playing, do feel free to ask me questions privately or in the thread as you all go. I’m hardly an expert, but I can help out in some way. I will be watching your careers with great interest.

haha, that’s commitment for you! I’m not that far ahead of you - I have owned the game for a while and played the tutorial plus a few SP games, but MP is where it is at and I have been waiting for a new game to pop up. 5 Days should be enough to catch up to me.

Also, because I have limited experience, I am not really fussed about what nation I play, so if anyone wants to trade, I am open, assuming I receive in return a nation that is still kinda newbie friendly.

Cheers! I am looking forward to this!

Game on!
Never played Vanheim (even on SP) so you guys are in for a treat. Cue some terribly misguided attempts at cunning strategies and their comically dreadful outcomes !

Do not listen to Matt, he is the pupett master, Lord of diplomacy, trying to pull our strings and play a meta game of dom 3 through us!

Paranoia slowly sets in

You’re confusing me with Mysterio. It’s cool, we’re a lot alike, it happens.

…This is very, very good advice.

It looks like either way you and I are neighbors again. If you would like Marverni, I’ll take Ulm. If you don’t want to make that trade…that’s good.

You have the two best type of combat paths in the game, air and earth.

Race to so FAM spells. Lightning/Thunderstrike combined with Mistform on some Van’s.
Don’t forget Earth spells.
Stealth is your friend.

So some quick checking up on the Dominions Wiki, mainly to find out who the hell Ermor is.

And I found out we’re not dead yet? I could have sworn Ermor was a necromancer-like race… oh well shows what I know.