Kelan
1841
That sounds like a wonderful idea!
Oh crap another cave dweller! Get out of my nice caves! :P
Kelan
1843
For maps, perhaps one of Elmokki’s maps would fit:
Plane of Rusty Nails: 143+12 provinces
Estates of Economics: 133+9 provinces
Those have lower amounts of water, but with no water nations could work well. I have no idea if those have caves, though, although the first one shipped with the game so may have been converted already to include some and updates for mountain/river passes?
I am good with Thrones or no Thrones, or perhaps just Thrones for the bonus they offer, but standard conquest victory? I am flexible there.
On the diplomacy thing, I don’t recall that one game too too well that Strato is referring to, but it can get a little quiet sometimes as it may seem advantageous to be quiet as to your plans instead of being the first to stick your neck out to scheme against someone else. Still, I don’t think it will be too much of a problem with this crew lined up for this game ;).
pyrhic
1844
Also, keep in mind this isn’t just open diplomacy, but ALL diplomacy MUST happen in the thread. Obviously, Kelan’s going to have some conversations with his buddy, but if any of those swing into diplomacy, they’ll need to transcribe it here.
Kelan
1845
Yep, sounds good. Vasan and I have actually been playing a MP game together for the past week with him as TC so that will work out well. We can use that test game for questions he may have on units and mechanics and keep discussion on this game forum only.
I fired up a quick game with the Plane of Rusty Nails map and I do not see any caves. However, there are 8-10 perfect candidates on the map that could be drawn in as caves in the big mountain ranges as the graphics for those don’t really form parts of the other provinces near them. It would be better if there was another map available that had caves all ready to go, but it wouldn’t take too long for a skilled map builder to modify this one to fit this game, I believe, although if the province numbers get all jumbled by adding new white dots, that could make it quite a job.
I could maybe give it a shot this weekend if we are still looking then for a map and see how the built in map editor works for something like that.
Kelan
1846
It looks there is a way in the Map Editor to add provinces (white dots) to a map after the fact and keep previous neighbors intact. That would work.
Anyway, this is something like I was thinking of while pulling cave graphics from the Dom 4 random map generator and pasting them into the Plane of Rusty Nails map and resizing to fit, etc. It may look better lightened up a bit for this map, but it works pretty well in the random maps that color. Also, I wonder if Illwinter or Elmokki would care if people were modifying their built in map graphics this way or not as I wouldn’t want to do anything if it wasn’t okay with them. Another option would be to just put a white dot in each mountain and call it a cave and add in a few connections if it is not a good idea to modify the graphics.
I will spoiler what I was thinking of and believe I could make one work without too much trouble and just add in 2 or 3 connections to neighboring provinces from each of the new cave ones and call it good. I am not sure on what number would work, but I could just remove some if there are too many (6-10 seems a good number). I can’t help it when a challenge like this comes up and am open to any maps… just working on something just in case :).
Map Images
[spoiler]
Note I would have to remove the extra white dots that I accidentally pasted into the map from my cave circle, but that wouldn’t be too hard.
[/spoiler]
Kelan
1848
This is where I was checking them out:
http://koti.kapsi.fi/elmokki/dom3/maplist/
Plane of Rusty Nails comes with the game too, I believe, but the link here you can browse some of the other maps Elmokki did too.
Akaoni
1849
QTHangman
Speaking for Lanka, I believe there should be less caves and more banana groves. And every province should have about 8k population, who love sending away a dozen virgins every month. Yeah, that should do it. Mictlan is with me, am I right?
Strato
1850
Yeah, the vocal element is a major facet for the success of diplomacy. People have to be willing to write what they want to and need to say. I guess the problem with the game I was thinking of is that there was a smaller number of players, and very newbie orientated. Now though there will be a mix of skills. The thread is here from the Open Diplomacy game I was talking about http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/dominions-3-multiplayer-broken-forum-newb-game.2160/ The honour system worked in that I never was tempted to PM, nor did I received a PM and thus break the rules. One issue I see is organising stealth attacks. A nation like Caelum and potentially Xibalba for instance probably needs the element of surprise in order to strike. A player will see a Mictlan army coming a mile away as a counter example. Do we maybe allow for a lag time with personal discussion so that long term plans must be made available 1-2 turns later after they develop?
Kelan
1851
Sometimes I get the feeling that someone read my AAR there and many of my strategies were removed or nerfed for Dom 4, heh. Slime, Drakes, Dragon Master all took a big hit in Dom 4 with their costs or effectiveness although I am sure they were well known too :).
Strato
1852
That was a modded game, CBM mod. I’m not sure if any of CBM changes made it into Dominions IV.
pyrhic
1853
thanks, i’ll take a look at that thread later tonite…
On the issue of coordination, i see the positive side of it - that players are going to have to chose ‘hyper-coordination’ or communication and that there are tradeoffs to be made. If pan is too large and pan needs to be dealt with, and a number of us are discussing it; Stealth nations may ‘opt-in’ and need to decide if they’re a silent partner, maintaining their element of surprise, or speak out and give comfort to the group at the possible expense of their stealthiness.
I’m against the idea of any kind of lag or back channel, as i think that becomes a slippery slope and open to accidental misuse.
pyrhic
1854
So…are we going to talk about what happened?
Kelan
1855
What happened? I see we lost our first nation if that is what you are talking about.
We had our first stale too, dont think they are related?
Which nation was it? (so I can communicate with the relevant player)
Are we going to allow players to reveal themselves once they are out of the game? I suppose I can also tell them who they were fighting etc, as long as they keep it a secret :D
Kelan
1859
Marignon was the nation that was eliminated.
Akaoni
1860
Marignon, when my scouts finally got there (which might or might not have accompanied my army), it was always besieged. I am sorry Marignon we hardly got to know you.
Now, is anyone going to talk about which nation(s) did the dirty deed?
