Righto!
Create your Pretender. In-game, go to ‘Game Tools’ and open user data directory. It will be something like:
C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Dominions5
There will be a savedgames folder which will contain a ‘newlords’ folder, which is where all your pretender files for all games are saved. Find the *.2h pretender file that matches your nation and era. Make sure you choose the right one if you have been playing test games, or delete all your test games first. ie:
Email that *.2h file to pretenders @llamaserver.net, using the name of the game as the subject header (QT3Furies or QT3Lizzies in this case)
You should recieve an acknowledgement if everything went fine.
When the game starts, you will receive *.trn files from llamaserver. Create a folder in your Dom5 savegames folder matching the game name (again QT3Furies or QT3Lizzies) and save the *.trn file to that folder.
When you launch Dom5 hit “Continue Old Game” and you will see the game in the list and be able to play the current turn.
Once you complete your turn, hit End Turn as normal. The game will create a *.2h file in the save game folder.
Email this file to turns @llamaserver.net, no subject header necessary, llamaserver will know from the contents of the 2h file what to do with it.
Rinse repeat. Do youself a favour and manually rename all you old *.trn files so you don’t overwrite them and can go back in time to review stuff. You will end up with something like this in the folder:
So to recap:
- Create Pretender
- Email Pretender *.2h file to pretenders @llamaserver.net with game name as subject header
- Create savegame folder
- Save incoming *.trn files to savegame folder
- play turn
- Email created *.2h file in savegame folder to turns @llamaserver.net
- Rename *.trn files to keep a record
It’s a bit manual, but to the best of my knowledge, nobody has knocked together an automation tool/script/front end to manage it. Kinda surprises me given the Dom community, but it’s beyond my level of expertise.
Edit - for the record, I don’t explicitly keep a copy of all my generated *.2h files, since it is less common for me to want to review my orders, vs general world intel/battle replays. YMMV either way, you will always have a copy of trn and 2h files in your email anyway, presuming you don’t clear them there.