Dominions 5: Multiplayer Warriors of the Feint - 2018 Stabby-Stabby Edition

Games
603

Ha ha! The ONE WIN I have in the games in this forum is with early age Pan. in that game, I took a Treant pretender with incredibly good scales (not turmoil) and spammed out an incredible number of revellers. Stealthy guys who attack and defend with a base of 13 made my expansion really fast. An early war brought on by Abysia was defeated by centaur warriors engaging his infantry, but it took a lot to deal with all the fire elementals a later player brought in. I then focused primarily on Alteration. Swarm, Maws of Earth, and kept going till I got to Alt 9. Each Pan designated to lead troops, equipped with enough earth boosters, cast Army of Gold or Lead. I had handfuls of Maenads, but the cheap chaff I valued was the harpies free spawned from the hero. Pyrhic was my main enemy there, with his fog warriors vs my army of gold or lead. But by that time, I had killed off Abysia, Jotun, and had Arco on the ropes. Stealthy troops attacking with lots of protection, combined with harpy scouts carrying up new gems and scouting every relevant province, in some times two or more, gave me great intel.

But in LIzzies, I took Ur. And seeing how it devolved to a ‘wait and see’ quickly, I decided to attack Pan to liven things up. It turned out…poorly.

One thing I will say is that the game I am playing with milspec’s group of 13 players is that it is not a case of wait and see. They are…aggressive. My plan of getting a sleeping pretender did not turn out that well.

604

A present for you guys:

from this playthrough.

605

Evil grin. :-)

It’s an experienced group, there is a range of strategies. More than a few have settled on early expansion as key to later victory.

Can’t wait for that game to finish so we can have a proper debrief. Been enjoying reading about these games!

606

Wyld: So…I see you’re alive and out of your pen again.

Sigh.

607

MWHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA etc

608

so annoying…

609

I am debating telling you all what I have going on and telling you all to try to come get me, but that would probably be dumb… If someone calls me out, though, I may divulge my research, gem income and other tidbits of info.

610

As an aside, I was wondering if we can scrape up enough Qt3 Dominions players to form a team against @milspec’s guys. Milspecs guys are good, but have been griping about free for alls, and how unfair they are to some people.

WELL, LIFE IS UNFAIR, MATE! AND THE OZZIE/ EAST COAST MILSPEC TEAM SHOULD MEET ITS MAKER!!

Assuming, of course, we can get together a bunch of guys to do this.

611

I could be part of such a team…

612

I am not sure how it would work, but it sounds like an interesting idea. An epic 10 vs 10 fight? We would split and randomize people across the two teams, so not actually “milspec vs QT3” I don’t think (unless that’s the point?), or else I think numbers would be tough. We have 14-ish in our current game. How many more can we get from here?

No rush, would be in a few months.

Has anyone ever tried an epic A vs B large team game before?

613

Wow, I wasnt thinking this would get such an immediate response.
But in general I was thinking:
A turn a day for the first 25-30 turns.
After that, every 48 hrs
Not a disciple game, but an allied game.
Random nation nomination, based on early age, normal settings, some throne to be determined, NO GRAPHS, normal everything else? Bearing in mind I dont know how many will want to play from the Qt3side besides myself and EvilSteve, who is always Evil…
And I was actually thinking of " Milspec’s friends vs Qt3 forum" , unless we dont have enough of one or the other, or both.
It just might be the IPAs talking, but I think this idea is awesome! Like we should buff all the defaults up a couple notches awesome!

614

We’ve done large format team A vs team B before, I think. It was at least several years ago, and I remember it being quite fun!

I’d normally be all over this (as team vs team is my favourite format), but as I mentioned I’m travelling this summer and am not sure what my internet availability will be.

I do think it WILL be awesome and will follow along rooting for you guys!

If you’re desparate for a player I might be talked into joining but the chance of my staling will be much higher than normal…

615

I set up a DoTA map that some very kind QT3 person (ginserus or some name) made handsome that was a good 5 vs 5 map. But other than that it was the Orania map with the multitude of thrones that Sharaleo’s team was able to take advantage of, thats one of note.

And yes, I wont really be able to play till August.

616

1V1 team game. I’m in. I like that format too. Gets the stupid diplomacy out of the way and leaves the rest up to good old fashioned battle tactics.

Do it and the world will rise up against you, I’m sure!

617

Heh, like @Akaoni, it was probably the beer talking! Or perhaps it was too much Survivor and trying to deceive people…

I could be interested in a team game, but wouldn’t be ready immediately to start.

618

WyldeRyde3:

Marignon has fallen for THE TRAP. All those who have signed up for THE TRAP can now activate their TRAP PLANS! In order to fulfill THE TRAP obligations, please ship gems (death, nature, earth, whatever) and Blood Slaves (note to self: never take blood with an undead -3 death nation, it’s just too weird).

Bone Benches available for viewing, with free servings of defleshed shrunken heads that taste remarkably like popcorn.

Bloated cows for rampart hoisting are being prepared for your entertainment

Lem

619

Wyld: This trap sure does sound interesting, looking forward to witnessing it. And lol, didn’t you test that design first? I mean, you probably dont have many blood searchers - and even if you did, you have no population in your provinces…

Akaoni: I’d be up for your game. Is your reasoning behind no disciples to allow everyone freedom of pretender design or something else? Other than that, i would think the fringe benefits of disciples (moving armies across allies, swapping provinces, etc) would make it preferred for this sort of game. Im open to try anything, just curious…

620

So the reasoning behind no disciples was to better deal with the random nation assignment, that was it. But we can do disciples as well, I don’t have a preference.

It does sound like there is interest, but not immediately. And that is fine, since @milspec 's game is still running strong, and probably will be up to July. So I propose we leisurely figure out some things.

I was thinking of two teams, and only two teams.

Based on how many players we get interested in starting around August -September. And while I was initially thinking that milspec’s group would be one team, and we would be the other, I dont know how many qt3ers out there play Dom5 besides the handful already here.
Regardless, its important that we get an even number of players on both sides.

We could do random nation assignation, or alternate picking single nations. If we do random, but disciple, we will have to consider dropping some nations (ashen empire, MA Ctis, etc) that have such impactful dominions.

We could do disciple or not. Not sure if there is a huge advantage if one side does disciple and the other does not?

Then there is the map - probably randomly generated?
Thrones? How many, what strengths? Gold/Supplies/Sites?

Age? Here I have to confess to favoring of Early. Just more craziness to work with, rather than a lot of humans in plate (Late Era).

Example game settings to comment on:
Early Age “The War between Captain Morgan and the Bundabergs”

  • Team A has 10 players, Team B has 10 players. Disciple game, each side picks one nation at a time; the side that picks second picks both 9th and 10th at the same time (is this the fair method? I cannot remember how we did it before but it was something like this)
  • Random map of about 15 provinces per player
  • Map has magic sites at 70%, gold, supplies, recruitment at 125%, hall of heroes at max, globals at 7, score graphs…off? limited artifact construction.
  • 10 level one thrones, 5 level 2, 5 level 3 thrones. First side to get 20 thrones wins.
621

here’s some points to consider as you put this together:

the more players you have, the more likely you’ll need to go with a disciples game. I think with any more than about 4-5 a side, you’ll run into major logistical issues when it comes to things like dominion and movement - for instance, you could dom-kill your own allies, and there might not be anything they can do about it.

the larger the game, the more I’d recommend using cataclysm(with a high-turn onset, like 100+) to prevent late game stagnation.

the larger the game, the more i’d recommend going with non-delayed turns - if you’re at 10 players a side (and particularly with disciples), you can run a real risk of game fatigue if everyone can request a delay. There are ways to make this less harsh than it might seem, like allowing team leaders 3 delays each, or if each team has one designated alternate that can sub in as necessary.

i’d recommend going with a A-B-B-A-A-B picking rotation and would strongly recommend against random assignments (particularly if you’re going with disciples). A mixed disciples game might be interesting to try, something like each team is made up of 3 gods, served by any number of disciples - so one team might be (heat) 1 god and 4 heat-favoring disciples, (aquatic) 1 god and 1 oceanic disciple, and (chaotic) 1 god and 2 chaotic disciples. Teams would be free to mix their players/nations provided they had at least 1 god and no more than 3. Of course, it would be up to them to sort out the details/synergies.

If you went with this, i think having site picking at the same time would be kinda cool. So, capital site picking would go B-A-A-B-B-A, with site selections being made every 2 picks. So team A would pick a nation, then team B would respond. Then team B would pick a capital location, followed by team A. This cycle completed, Team B would pick a nation, followed by A, then A would pick a location, followed by B. You could either have the capital site bound to the nation as picked (so the locations selected would be for the nations selected), or have it randomized, or have it declared publicly only when each side finalizes. For random, you’d just set it so that each capital location selected by a team could only be claimed by the subset of the nations on that team. If you went with some sort of assignment scheme, it might be cool to allow each side to swap one capital just before game start. lots of cool stuff you could do here…

anyways, just some things off the top of my head for you to mull over…

622

I haven’t been impressed with some of the random maps lately.

They may still be the best option for a new game, but I think I will take a closer look this time before we accept one. Our current WyldRyde3 game has some very difficult province connections and areas and if I didn’t have a lot of flying troops, I would be in a very tough spot trying to get around. Even in our Furies game I had almost an entire direction cut off with mountain passes and rivers that really handcuffed me in any wars I wanted to join in on. Perhaps allow a random map, but cut down the percentage of mountain passes and rivers, if that is an option.