If there is room in the game, I’d like to join. I played a little co-op multiplayer way back in early Dom 3 against some friends, so technically I have some experience, but not in any real useful competitive way.
Technically, you are right, but from a practical standpoint, my experience is that after you hit about 8 players, the game starts taking much longer to play and the likelihood of it dissolving gets much higher. I can explain if you want, but generally fatigue, player availability, etc all start creeping in and the experience suffers for it.
@Evil_Steve @Baconsoda ; evil steve, please to give him my spot if you be so kind!
Yeah I’m just going to hold back for a bit. I have Dom 5, largely to support the devs, but there’s no point playing MP Dom 5 without the alcohol, and I’m giving that a bit of a break for the time being. And Dominions in general until I can get myself together.
I’ll be happy to sub in later if the need arises.
I agree.
Yup, fair enough. I can wait for the next game, or sub in, or perhaps if enough others are interested, a second game might get organized.
I think, with the sage advice from some elders, we need 2 games (named after my favourite gangs from The Warriors):
First Cab Off the rank
GAME 1 - Baseball Furies [Early Age]
[nation select order in square brackets] Pelagia/R’lyeh/Oceania cannot be selected
tgb123 [Ermor]
evil steve [Formoria]
Kelan [Mictlan]
sharaleo [Machaka]
Otthegreat [Xibalba]
Belouski [Pan]
tylertoo [C’tis]
Baconsoda [Tien Chi]
Default settings; default throne victory? number of thrones? levels?
Apocalypse timer - how many turns?
For newbies, I’d recommend selecting a good strong race (not a blood race) with an active monster of a pretender to protect against a rush strategy on a small map while working things out? I can stand being corrected/ignored on this.
I’ll go last so that I can drop into the second game if we don’t get a couple more players
Second Cab off the Rank
GAME 2 - Lizzies [Early Age]
[nation select order in square brackets] Pelagia/R’lyeh/Oceania cannot be selected
Hetzer [Teredos]
Scott_Lufkin [Rus]
BotBaddict [Pan]
pyrhic [Sauromatia]
AStott [C’tis]
Brooski [Niefelheim]
Guildboss [Kailasa]
Akaoni [Ur]
Games are now closed. We can run a waiting list?
I’m thinking we’ll use the smaller map (Biddyn) that comes with Dom5: I think this is not aquatic friendly, so let’s leave out the true aquatic nations?
I’ll update this through the evening. First question, is everyone happy with the team they are in? Next up: random nation selections.
Steve
Ready to go, except I’m so new at this I have no idea how to actually log in and join the game
just nominate your EA nation for the moment (and fiddle with your pretender design). i haven’t set it up yet!
HE’S KEEN!
Same one I’m playing offline - Ermor
I like it. I definitely think these first games should be short in duration, like the 40 turn and the the Apolcalypse like someone mentioned earlier.
I plan on doing a turn by turn posting of my EVIL DESIGNS, possibly here, to help out the newbies, and help out myself as well by getting comments from others. Clearly this will not help me win, at all, but should add to the entertainment.
@Strato is not going to play just yet.
I nominate Early Age for the second game, and defer to the newbies to pick, first come first serve, their nations.
This is shaping up nicely, thanks for putting this together. No idea what I’ll play as (or how it all exactly works) but I’m damned excited to give it a whirl!
I will also try to post thoughts/screens/AAR type reports as I take my turns. Like @Akaoni mentioned it’s not going to work well in terms of actually winning a game, but it will be good for new players and myself alike.
I probably don’t have time for a long, drawn out mega-game like I was involved in years ago with Dom3 but if we’re talking something small and quick then I am game. That was also my first and only MP game and I haven’t played much Dominions since then so I’m very noobish on all fronts. Maybe you can fit me into the GAME 2, The Lizzies?!
Once you’ve played a MP game of Dominions, playing against the AI will feel hollow. You’ve all been warned!
Well, except A) being bad at Dominions means even hollow AI is fun and B) you can play at your own pace against the AI
Though yeah, I’m pretty excited to try out a huge game of Dominions. I’d like to see @ShivaX jump into a game, I know he would.
Further thoughts on making it a newbie and new Dominions experimentation friendly game:
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make it a Throne victory only. Have lots of level 1 and 2 thrones scattered about so everyone is in reach of one or two. Not having capitals as a victory condition may not reflect other MP games, but will serve to disincentivize taking capitals and thus keep everyone in the game right till the end. The big fights ought to happen around the thrones…so everyone can stack their scouts and watch all the fun big fights.
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short Apocalypse timer again incentivizes taking and holding thrones, and challenging people for those thrones. Disincentivizes getting bogged down in a long siege trying to take someone out.
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with Thrones as the victory, and with a short turn counter, there’s no need to take over half the map. Instead we see how many thrones you can grab in your local area before the Apocalypse comes…so there’s really no reason not to have a huge map with all of us playing together. It should be fun, or at least enlightening, for the new players to see the graphs so they can see how they’re doing vs everyone else.
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this could set up an interesting dilemma- do you rush thrones early, perhaps taking it but with losses, and then lose it to someone else coming along with a fresh army? But you could build a castle early and if you get it up you’re sitting pretty…thus incentivizing more people to rush the throne and prevent castles going up…and with slow castle building seiges shouldn’t be as futile as before…l
All these dominions talk are making me feel like I don’t know much at all. Like how do you tell which nations or pretenders are strong ones?
Anyway, I choose Tien Chi as my nation since I’m partial to Eastern mythology and I’ve been learning dominions 4 with them. They’re considered average right? At least that’s how I felt. I’m ready to get rekt!
I love EA T’ien Ch’i!
I just saw someone playing them and doing well recently. Was that @TurinTur? Or perhaps was a Let’s Play I saw.
Consider a strong bless and your Warrior of the Five Elements dual wielding warriors. They get eaten up by archers since they don’t have shields, but there are ways to use them well, like have them start behind your awesome tower shield infantry. You may not want archers in the same armies as your Warriors of 5E, though, as you may shoot up your own dudes. I haven’t reviewed the bless effects yet for Dom 5 too closely yet, but something to help them survive a bit could be fun to play with, or increase their ability to kill things fast. Perhaps one of the new Luck or Ethereal blesses. I had good luck with a Water 9 bless and Quickness with the W5E in the past, but other blesses work well too like perhaps Nature with regen and high hitpoints or recouperation (although you won’t get these together now I guess). Blesses work different now, though, where the pretender needs to be awake for some of these powerful ones, so there may be some waiting involved to get enough points to build these strong blesses in while not crippling your other scales and start.
I am not sure if others do it this way, but determining your bless (if you are set on it) determines what pretender chassis you consider. To get to the high paths of magic, you need to at least start with that path on your pretender chassis, and preferably more than 1, to get to the 9+ paths, if you choose. Otherwise, it just costs to much to get there. Also pay attention to how much new paths cost if you plan to be a bit more diverse on your pretender magic. Some of the powerful combatant pretenders are very costly to learn new magic.
Otherwise, you have a strong variety of good troops and nice national summons so a strong bless isn’t critical? either to do well with them and your mages are awesome and flexible and have you swimming in gems faster than just about anyone with your diverse paths to get searching.
I think @pyperkub said they had issues finding the MP details within a large thread.
I just figured out that you can press the the dots below an entry and Bookmark it. Then, you’ll see a Bookmark next to the thread title on the main Games page. Clicking it will jump straight to your bookmak.
Here’s the entry you’ll want to bookmark now.
Very useful!
Just want to concur with @kelan and say that I agree with all of @BotBaddict 's suggestions.
One thing - does everyone realize that this game is going to take a month or more, at the minimum? You will submit and get your turn files via email to the llamaserver.net, based on whatever game name @Evil_Steve creates. Figure a turn every day or so, or every couple days. And sometimes we have breaks because someone goes on vacation (usually some Euro guy with tons of 'holiday ’ time, gotta go on some cruise, no laptop, sorry, sucks to be you in your office cube hell… ahem.).
Just want to make everyone know what they are getting into. Early on, the turns wont take long, but later they might take an hour or more.
Oh, and I highly discourage newbies from taking a blood race (lanka, mictlan), unless you are confident in your blood hunting abilities.