Bay 12 Games Forum

Other Projects => Other Games => Play With Your Buddies => Topic started by: E. Albright on April 05, 2014, 08:00:21 pm

Title: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on April 05, 2014, 08:00:21 pm
GAME NAME: Bay12GamesRound404 (http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound404)
MAP: Urraparand with custom caves and fixed starts (http://rapidshare.com/share/DFC42C5FE760CD896CBFF37AA2EABEAC)
MOD: N/A
ERA: MA
Thrones: 12/6/3; 22/33 to win
Disciples: 4x3
Time Allowance: 36h
HOF: 15
Magic sites: 50%
Renaming
Limited artifact forging
Score graphs: Off

PLAYERS:
Team 1 (C'tis/Agartha/R'lyeh) (claimed 22/33 thrones on turn 64):Team 2 (Ulm/Jotunheim/Asphodel):Team 3 (Arcoscephale/T'ien C'hi/Marignon):Team 4 (Pythium/Sceleria/Bandar Log):
Spoiler: Previous rounds (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Standard info on Dominions 4 for the uninitiated (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: How does PBEM work? (click to show/hide)

Useful links:
Dom4 forums on Desura (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum)
Link to Edi's Dom4 Database (http://www.llamaserver.net/edi/dom4/dom4_db/dom4_db_403.zip)
An archived snapshot of the Dom3 wiki (http://web.archive.org/web/20130118162532/http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Main_Page): Yes, it's still relevant, and it hasn't been replaced yet, so... It has loads of useful information, including strategy guides. Keep in mind that while a lot of this information is still very useful and valid, a lot of it is entirely out-of-date.

Llama Server (http://llamaserver.net/): the automatic hosting server for our game.
Llama Server's map and mod browser (http://www.llamaserver.net/createDom4Game.cgi) (Yes, it's not really a browser, but you can browse the maps and mods here)

Shamelessly stolen from Akhier the Dragon hearted who stole it from ScriptWolf who stole if from Il Palazzo :P ( with his say so* ), and scantly updated for Dom4 by the latest OP.

*referring to the orignator known as Il Palazzo in reference to the original theft by the one known as ScriptWolf, the OP does not claim any legitimacy or sanction for this latest theft until approval is or is not given in the future.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04: interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: E. Albright on April 05, 2014, 08:13:01 pm
So there was some interest expressed in doing a Disciple game. Current general idea is 3x3, 4x3, or 3x4, with play to start sometime after the 4.05 patch rolls out. I'm not looking at targeting any particular skill level, as team play should let experienced players shore up and mentor relative neophytes. So far, the following people have expressed at least tentative interest:

E. Albright - Advanced (ish)
Karlito - Advanced (ish)
Shadowgandor - Begintermediate (ish)
USEC_OFFICER - Begintermediate (ish)
gman8181 - Begintermediate (ish)
Culise - Begintermediate (ish)
Frumple - Beginner
Denzi - Beginner
Shadowlord - Beginner
GP Trixie - Beginner
lavenders2 - Beginner
Twiggie - Beginner

(The experience levels are wild estimates based on very little, so if you feel I've pegged you wrong, by all means please correct me. I hesitate to call myself Advanced, as this would be my 7th MP DomX game (6th excluding duels, 5th if we exclude B12R2 that I had to drop out of at/around turn 20), but the shoe probably fits.)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04: interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Mindmaker on April 05, 2014, 08:19:18 pm
Beginner's alright.
I know a lot of theory, but most of it is untested and I have no multiplayer experience.

I'll be away from the 12th to the 21st or 22nd. So if the game doesn't start before then I'd be in.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04: interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Frumple on April 05, 2014, 08:25:50 pm
Yeah, I'd probably fit best as a beginner. As with MM, I've mucked about with theory and whatnot plenty (and played bunches of single player, for what little that's worth), but never actually got around to giving a MP game a go and I've got a number of habits that I know are massively suboptimal play, ha.

As I noted in the mainline thread, me joining in would be contingent on team members potentially having to take over for me until a sub could come in, or something along those lines. I'm coming up to the beginning of an active job search period and all that entails, and things could get frisky for me in regards to computer time. I'm fairly sure I'll manage, but I'm not 100% certain I'll actually have computer access the whole period, so... yeah. Planning for backup would be a good idea.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Karlito on April 06, 2014, 01:26:47 am
Yeah, I'm interested. I suppose I'm somewhat advanced, at least in the small pond that is the league of Bay12 dominions players, though I haven't faired too well in either of the previous Dom4 games.

I'd push for early or middle era, simply for the larger pool of nations to choose from.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Denzi on April 06, 2014, 01:31:10 am
I'd be interested, though I'm 100% beginner. Are you going to be using Llama server for this?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: E. Albright on April 06, 2014, 02:06:48 am
Yep. Anything else would involve more work for me than I'm comfortable with at the moment.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Shadowlord on April 06, 2014, 03:58:57 am
I might be interested. At the moment I'm very much a beginner (no MP games yet, signed up for round 4.03).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Mindmaker on April 06, 2014, 06:34:16 am
Any clue what era we'll be playing yet?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Neonivek on April 06, 2014, 03:56:32 pm
Edited: Deleted
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 06, 2014, 05:56:06 pm
I think I'm more of a beginner than an intermediate player, honestly. I know my theory, and I can play the early game fairly well, but I have no clue how to design a good pretender, nor what to research and any of that other end game stuff. Beginner/Intermediate, maybe?

Quote from: Mindmaker on April 06, 2014, 06:34:16 am
Any clue what era we'll be playing yet?

No clue. I'm pretty fine with any age, honestly. Maybe MA, so that I can yell CAW CAW at people some more?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: GP Trixie on April 06, 2014, 06:19:07 pm
I'm pretty interested too. I guess I'm a begginer too as I never did a multiplayer game before.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: E. Albright on April 06, 2014, 06:44:21 pm
Given that we're probably at least two weeks from starting play, and that I'd prefer 1-4 more players (and I would love to not be the most experienced player involved), I'm not too worried about nailing down era yet. I'll throw up a poll when we get closer.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Karlito on April 06, 2014, 07:37:03 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on April 06, 2014, 06:44:21 pm
Given that we're probably at least two weeks from starting play, and that I'd prefer 1-4 more players (and I would love to not be the most experienced player involved), I'm not too worried about nailing down era yet. I'll throw up a poll when we get closer.

Hey, I think you skipped right over my signup post.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: E. Albright on April 06, 2014, 08:53:17 pm
I am many things, but consistently observant is not several of them. Fikst.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: gman8181 on April 06, 2014, 10:42:10 pm
Oh, I want in! Haven't gotten to play a round of Dominions 4 yet. It's just sitting there on my screen mocking me.

I'm pretty new to multiplayer. Only played I think 4 or 5 games by now, all here on this forum. Pretty sure... two?... were sub games which I almost don't count because you miss out on the whole early game.

So maybe beginner/intermediate.

Edit:
Preferred nations for each age:
EA - Ermor
MA - Pythium
LA - Marignon
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on April 06, 2014, 11:07:51 pm
Any idea on how you're going to do the nation selection? With as many as 3x4 people it's unlikely everyone can just pick what they want. A few systems I've seen in use:
#1 each team of players gets a number, then the teams pick a nation in order: 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 etc..
#2 same as above but with a twist: 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1 etc..

Some games (none of them disciple) have used a system where each player picks 3-5 nations they want to play in order of preference.
Player A wants to play Pan-Ulm-Shin
Player B wants to play Pan-Aby-Shin
Neither player gets their first pick (Pan) since it's contested. Both would get their second pick since in my limited example they're not contested by other players. Their third pick wouldn't matter since they already got their second pick.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: E. Albright on April 06, 2014, 11:16:04 pm
That's a good point. We absolutely can't do free-for-all in a team game if we're being fair, not least because nation selection needs to be a collaborative conversation within each team. I'm thinking a round-robin draft (e.g., your #2) seems like the best route, or else a blend of that with your second example where teams provide prioritized slates and we go from there. We'll need to have a conversation, certainly. And since we're already up to 10 players out of a practical max of 12, we probably need to start think about it sooner than later...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 07, 2014, 01:03:46 am
I'm tentativelly signing up. I'm not sure if I will be able to afford distractions by the time it starts, or if distractions are what I'll need.

I'm advanced as far as the know-how of the inner workings of the game go. I'm sliding towards beginner when it comes to actual performance, judging by my last couple of games.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: lavenders2 on April 07, 2014, 01:52:28 am
Signing up here (if there is a slot left), but not very sure if I will be able to go through with it so if someone else really wants my spot I will give it away.

I am very new to the game, have played single player a bit and the tutorial of course, but no multi games yet.

No preference on race/era since I haven't played enough to know what I like.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Boksi on April 07, 2014, 02:35:47 am
Aw man, I've been wanting to play a disciples game for quite some time, but there's no way I'll have enough time to do it. I'm already playing two games :(
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Denzi on April 07, 2014, 03:33:56 am
Honestly I don't care what nation I play as I only know like... two in the slightest. I'd just need someone to give me an idea of what to build for dominion/pretender for whatever nation will fit our theme. Heck I'd play an aquatic nation if it'd help, those sound fun.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-recruitment
Post by: Culise on April 07, 2014, 09:50:28 am
I am so in.  As far as capability is concerned, I am fair-to-middling on the theory, but I'm absolutely terrible at implementation.  EA or MA work well for me; I'll probably go with T'ien Ch'i if permitted, preferably disciple rather than pretender, and I'll put together some alternates as well depending on era and the new nations (still holding out for EA Rus).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 07, 2014, 03:46:36 pm
Okay, well, we have 12 volunteers. Lavenders, given your reservations I'm going to give precedence to Culise and note you as a standby.

As for hashing out details, we need to decide on team size and era before we start worrying about team breakdown. We have 3 players claiming (relatively) advanced expertise, so that kinda points to 3x4, but we could still do 4x3 if we have strong enthusiasm for that. Only having 3 teams will presumably make for a faster game, though. The matter of era also needs decided. I'll go ahead and pollute this pristine thread with a poll...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Mindmaker on April 07, 2014, 04:21:10 pm
Tricky.
I'd like to hear about the diplomacy before I vote.
1v1v1 has the risk of two teams ganging up on another.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Culise on April 07, 2014, 04:26:41 pm
Indeed.  I voted four teams for that reason - you might end up with 3v1 if one team completely botches their diplomacy (in which case it simply reduces to a 3-team game), but 2v2 is possible as well.  I like MA, but EA is just as fine for me.  LA is fun in a "gradual inevitable death of the world" sense, but doesn't have as many players.   

I don't really want to displace anyone, though.  I'd rather have lavenders2 receive first option on the slot before me. 
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 07, 2014, 04:32:40 pm
I will admit that the professed relative experience did weigh in my judgement, Culise. You two can hash it out, and whatever you decide goes, but half our pool are beginners and it's going to be tricky to spread around what experience we have - especially if we end up doing four teams and not three. I know it's kinda cold to come right out and say it, but I do want a well-balanced game for everyone's sake. But you two come to a conclusion that doesn't involve you both deferring (:P), and I'll go with it.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Mindmaker on April 07, 2014, 04:51:46 pm
Well I went for three teams. Let's hope for the best.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 07, 2014, 05:06:51 pm
In addition to the fact that three player games are simply terrible (the winners simply being the first two to agree on ganging up on the third), I think it'll be easier to get a pretender design to work with smaller teams.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Shadowgandor on April 08, 2014, 04:22:43 am
I'd like to join if I still can. I'm a beginner I think, maybe begintermediate :P I'd prefer LA or MA over EA, but that's because I love MA and LA death nations
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 08, 2014, 04:51:29 am
Your expression of interest in the other thread already had you on the list. As to nation choice, that'll have to be a discussion with your teammates, especially if by a "death" nation you mean a freespawn undead nation...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Shadowgandor on April 08, 2014, 05:15:34 am
freespawn doesn't work as a disciple nation I think. It can still work though, Lemuria's summons are great for example :)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Twiggie on April 08, 2014, 05:26:03 am
Would like to register my interest in playing. I'm a beginner. At work atm, will read more thoroughly when I finish
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on April 08, 2014, 06:36:21 am
In a disciple game, lemuria/ermor as a pretender will get their freespawn. And their disciples get the popkill, not a good god to worship.
As disciples they don't get the freespawn or their popkill. I guess there's a potentially effective gimmicky game to played by utilizing a mix of indies and their crazy D income/national summons. A very finicky strategy considering you can't recruit almost anything worth the gold it costs. It's probably ok if you can get the lemuria/ermor player survive to really leverage those summons. Which of course means that there's probably two to a dozen N9 dragons stomping right at their face from the start.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Frumple on April 08, 2014, 11:35:39 am
Heh. Iirc, lemuria can get their first consul on turn... three? And then another something like every 2-3 turns later, more or less forever.* I'm not sure how many it would take to murder an unkitted, mostly spell-less, dragon, but I doubt it would be many.

Ermor would be screwed, though. They've got arguably better casters (in terms of gem efficiency, iirc.), but what they don't have is a zero research, half cost, self-blessing might-as-well-be-a-wraith lord.

*To which one asks, naturally, "But research!" to which the lemurian responds, "A dozen wraith lords on your front door by turn 25. Good luck!" Alternately: Indie researchers.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Twiggie on April 08, 2014, 01:47:32 pm
Awh, looks like I'm too late
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 08, 2014, 01:59:21 pm
Guys, I'm backing off. Can't afford the time commitment after all. Have fun.
I haven't voted in the poll, for the record.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 08, 2014, 02:30:17 pm
 :'(

Understood. Perhaps another time.

Lavenders, you're bumped up to playing, so you and Culise shall have to forgo the pleasure of a deference duel.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Mindmaker on April 08, 2014, 02:38:06 pm
Aww that's too bad.
Would have loved to play with my fellow countryman.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Culise on April 08, 2014, 02:40:04 pm
Ah, a shame.  I was somewhat hoping we'd hit 15 players so we could have an excuse for a 5x3 game. ^_^
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: tompliss on April 08, 2014, 02:55:52 pm
Well, I wouldn't mind playing to get to a 15 players game, but then we would mostly have beginners :/
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 08, 2014, 11:04:40 pm
Well, I hadn't expected 4.05 for at least another week, but here it is. We have one player on the list who can't play until the 20th; are we okay with waiting two more weeks, but going ahead with planning and such in the mean time?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Mindmaker on April 09, 2014, 03:11:19 am
With 20th being the asbolute minimum, since we'll probably be driving back home at the 21st and then I'll have to return to Vienna, which might be the 22nd.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 09, 2014, 03:19:09 am
I'm personally okay with it, but I have ulterior motives: I expect to be bludgeoned to irrelevancy in one of the games I'm playing over course of the next two weeks, so at that point I'll "only" be playing two games. Ish.

Here's a question, though: will you have internet access such that you can plot, scheme, plan, and work out logistical details with your team prior to getting home, or will you be incommunicado and we'll have to do all that (which could be somewhat involved and time-consuming, under the circumstances) after the 20th/22nd?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Mindmaker on April 09, 2014, 09:45:22 am
Well my uncle supposedly has internet so I guess I could take a look every now and then, but I can't say how much time that will be altogether, between visiting all relatives and such.

Edit:
Well apparently the whole thing is going to take a day longer.
And I have too much work and too much on my head right now.
I'll have to drop out.

I won't be applying for any games until I have that all sorted out.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 09, 2014, 05:21:43 pm
Sorry to hear that. Well, there will be more games down the road, and if no one starts one up when you've time and computer access, you can always start your own.


So we have an open slot again. Twiggie? Tompliss? One of you two want to step up? Even though Llamaserver is on hold right now pending bugfixes, we can still work through the planning before it comes back up...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Mindmaker on April 09, 2014, 05:42:03 pm
Wouldn't want to start one up as a no-experience guy, but you're right, there will always be some more games.
I just would have liked to play in this one.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: tompliss on April 10, 2014, 01:40:19 am
Well, you just have to pray llamaserver stays down for two weeks :D
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: lavenders2 on April 10, 2014, 03:37:39 am
Quote from: tompliss on April 10, 2014, 01:40:19 am
Well, you just have to pray llamaserver stays down for two weeks :D

Yup :(
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 10, 2014, 08:58:06 am
Good news!
Quote from: llamabeast
Johan has given me a quick fix which hopefully will overcome the crash bug. However I'm unlikely to have time to implement it until Saturday, so that's the current ETA. Sorry to keep you waiting.

How are we planning to divy up the teams exactly?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 10:45:56 am
My preliminary proposal based on the claimed experience levels was:

T1:
E. Albright (A)
Frumple (B)
Shadowlord (B)

T2:
Karlito (A)
Denzi (B)
GP Trixie (B)

T3:
USEC_OFFICER (I)
Culise (I)
lavenders2 (B)

T4:
gman8181 (I)
Shadowgandor (I)
Twiggie (B)

Thoughts?

[Edit: oh, and the poll's a foregone conclusion w/o needing any more votes, even if we were to assume we had one retracted/nullified. MA wins, and 4x3 wins, so 4x3 MA shall be era and team size.]
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): interest check/pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 10, 2014, 10:48:20 am
Sounds good to me.

*Goes to high-five Culise and Lavenders.*
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning (need one more player)
Post by: Culise on April 10, 2014, 11:15:35 am
I've no objections. ^_^
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning (need one more player)
Post by: Twiggie on April 10, 2014, 01:02:12 pm
dibs? :>
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning (need one more player)
Post by: Shadowlord on April 10, 2014, 02:52:50 pm
How are we doing nation selection? (I'd prefer MA Ulm, for example, but we have a lot of people)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning (need one more player)
Post by: Karlito on April 10, 2014, 05:46:13 pm
Team division by fiat certainly is the easiest way. That looks fine by me.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning (need one more player)
Post by: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 06:35:06 pm
Twiggie has the slot and is provisionally assigned to team 4.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 07:12:31 pm
For nation selection, I'd propose a modification of something Delta discussed on the prior page. Each team would prepare a slate of nations - let's say 15? - in a preference-ranked list. The lists would then be compared for each rank, and if a team has picked a nation that's still free and no one else drafted during that round, they get it. If it's taken or another team also sought it, they don't get a nation that round. Drafting continues until all teams have 3 nations. E.g.:

Ex 1:
Team 1: A, B, C, D, E, F
Team 2: B, C, D, E, F, G
-> T1 = A, E, F; T2 = B, C, D

Ex 2:
T1: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, X, Y, Z
T2: B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, M, L, K, P, Q, R
T3: B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, X, Y, Z
T4: F, E, D, C, B, A, J, I, H, K, L, M, X, Y, Z
-> T1 = A, B, C; T2 = M, P, Q; T3 = K, X, Y; T4 = F, E, J

Pros:
Cons:

We could also just do a by-team round-robin draft. E.g., the 1st team picks, then 2,3,4,4,3,2,1,1,2,3,4 for some random initial ordering of 1 ,2, 3, and 4.

Pros:
Cons:
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 10, 2014, 07:22:59 pm
Start a poll? I'd prefer the round-robin draft.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 07:28:56 pm
Poll is up. You're not allowed to pick choice three unless you actually propose an alternative.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 07:36:10 pm
Oh, another idea I'd like to submit for consideration. I'd like to suggest private intra-team diplomacy but public inter-team diplomacy. Thoughts?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 10, 2014, 07:42:56 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 07:36:10 pm
Oh, another idea I'd like to submit for consideration. I'd like to suggest private intra-team diplomacy but public inter-team diplomacy. Thoughts?

I'd rather keep inter-team diplomacy private, or as private as these things get. It keeps a bit of excitement and mystery to the whole thing.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Shadowlord on April 10, 2014, 08:20:30 pm
Maybe I shouldn't have joined. If we're going to get thrown into random nations I'm not going to have any idea what I'm doing.

(Do scales even apply to disciples? This is confusing. It sounds like disciples' scales have no effect so we would be setting them to maximum negative for as many points as possible, but the pretender's scales would apply to us.)

Edit: I didn't vote because both options make me go D:, but I can't think of any better ideas at the moment, mostly because my experience with the game is limited to so few nations and I've only won it in SP as one nation.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 08:25:30 pm
You'll not get random nations. Even if we were to do the less-predictable simultaneous draft (which, while possessed of certain merits, is probably not a flawless choice for very raw beginners, I will grudgingly admit) you'd have a choice between at least three options on your team. To give yourself better choices... vote for round-robin in the poll.


Only the pretender gets to buy scales and a bless. The disciples get a smaller pool of points to buy paths for their disciple unit. It's a good idea to try starting a disciple game with both a pretender and disciple as human to see first-hand how that plays out if you've never done so before.


Also, don't worry about your inexperience. You'll be playing with more experienced teammates (you'd be on my team under the provisional division), so if you're not experienced with a nation you'll have resources to get advice from.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 10, 2014, 08:27:09 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on April 10, 2014, 08:20:30 pm
(Do scales even apply to disciples? This is confusing. It sounds like disciples' scales have no effect so we would be setting them to maximum negative for as many points as possible, but the pretender's scales would apply to us.)

Disciples have no scales in their creation screen, just magic and Disciple chassis/creature/whatever you want to call it. So it's only the pretender who has worry about that kind of stuff, as well as awake, imprisoned, etc. Note that Disciples always arrive one section before their Head God, so if I set my Pretender to dormant (or whatever the second option is) then your Disciple will start out awake. I'm probably making it more complicated than it is, but as a Disciple all you have to worry about is what magic paths would be most useful for your nation.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Shadowlord on April 10, 2014, 08:44:41 pm
Ah, thanks for the clarifications.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: lavenders2 on April 11, 2014, 01:35:37 am
Quote from: E. Albright on April 10, 2014, 07:36:10 pm
Oh, another idea I'd like to submit for consideration. I'd like to suggest private intra-team diplomacy but public inter-team diplomacy. Thoughts?

Intra-team diplomacy should be kept private.
I don't mind about inter-team diplomacy. Private sounds pretty cool though.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: tompliss on April 11, 2014, 01:43:22 am
Guys, if you need any non-partial party to set up the game (especially for nation selecting), I'm here.

But I think the "by-team round-robin draft" is better, because you get to really select nations you want, even if the last round takes place after many choices.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Denzi on April 11, 2014, 07:55:15 am
Alternative to make this simpler to organize. (Simpler than trying to get twelve people online at the same time, or comparing 12 different lists). Each team gets a team captain(The most experienced member, preferably) and the team comes up with a 'game plan' and some alternatives of what they want to look for as far as nations go. Then you'll only have to get each captain online to pick the nations their team wants. This is especially useful for us beginners who don't know the Ermor from Atlantis. We also need team names. Can't go without Team names. I nominate Team 2 as Team SuperAwesome. and I'm fine with just about anything nation-wise. I'm going to be without internet/computer this weekend, but I'll be back monday to try discussing things. We got plenty of time fortunately(?) thanks to 4.05 being so crashy.

Also this has the benefit of each team having a 'theme' basically, instead of us being a bunch of mish-mash nations that might not compliment.

P.S: Checked the post, no reason not to have Karlito as our captain since me and Trixie are both beginners. Also Trixie, Karlito. What is the best way to get in touch with you two? Steam? Skype? Forum mail? (Please no)

Edit: As far as diplomacy goes I'd prefer us to not talk about that at all out of game publicly. Having our actions made aware of makes back stabbing harder, and back stabbing is fun in strategy games.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 11, 2014, 10:00:14 am
The round-robin wouldn't require 12 people on at once, nor would the simultaneous draft (and it'd be at worst 4 lists). Both could be done asynchronously. In either case, each team would plot and scheme together, and then either make the monster draft list or (what appears more likely, and not unreasonably so) shoot a couple messages back and forth before making the team's pick in a round-robin draft. The idea is very much to work together to come up with a cohesive team, but there's no need to reduce the teams to autocratic captains to manage that, nor for all of us to be online at once - especially since we have time to kill. We can roll through a drafting process over a day or two.


Right now I'm leaning for calling this vote for round-robin, given that at least a plurality of support looks to be leaning that way (a plurality since I'm leaning to regret my vote against it, upon reconsidering our demographics). Barring a massive outcry for the alternative and/or a compelling 3rd way before tonight, round robin will win by default at that point, and we can begin scheming and moving forward.

Are we all good with the provisional teams? Speak now, or...

[edit:
Quote from: Denzi on April 11, 2014, 07:55:15 am
Edit: As far as diplomacy goes I'd prefer us to not talk about that at all out of game publicly. Having our actions made aware of makes back stabbing harder, and back stabbing is fun in strategy games.

Yes and no. Private diplomacy doesn't make backstabbing easier, it just fosters trust between players/teams and makes collaboration easier. You can backstab just as readily with public diplomacy, it's just harder to have coordinated sneak attacks/offensives. Public diplomacy makes coordinated backstabbing trickier and more subtle to arrange, and strongly discourages sharing of tactical plans. It doesn't eliminate skulduggery, it complicates it. However, if the majority follows the trends of the vocal first responders on the subject, this will be irrelevant, because early consensus looks to be against it.]
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Frumple on April 11, 2014, 12:20:16 pm
Hnnyeah, m'fine with th'provisional teams. Nation choice wise, I... don't really have a preference. Not exactly picky when it comes to nations...

Communication is a question, yes. I'd probably be best with some form of IRC or steam, or PMs. Got skype, but no microphone and I've used the program all of once.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Culise on April 11, 2014, 12:44:44 pm
There is one thing I like about public diplomacy, when it comes to games for new players.  It gives new players a chance to see what's ordinarily going on behind the curtains when it's done by veterans.  They can see how the veteran players negotiate, what sorts of things are negotiated about or bartered in these games, get a feel for how vets who understand the game play define the relative values of certain things like gems or provinces, and so forth.  That said, with so many new players and the consequent distribution of new-to-old being spread across multiple teams, I think private diplomacy will work just as well. 
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Denzi on April 11, 2014, 02:35:24 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on April 11, 2014, 10:00:14 am
autocratic captains

Wasn't saying we should have the captains determine what their team is playing but rather the team figure out what they want to play and the captains try to get that to happen.

Fine with the teams too
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on April 11, 2014, 03:03:23 pm
You guys should probably do most inter-team diplomacy through specific diplomats (most likely the team captains). It's a lot easier to keep track of things when there are four people talking instead of twelve. Whether it's public or private, it keeps things simple when you know who you have to contact whether it's for trade or more intricate scheming.

A few disciple games have had the problem where left hand doesn't know what the right one is doing. At best a failed gameplan, at worst some forum drama.

And definitely have a team discussion or two before you make nation picks. I prefer IRC (or some other IM software) for realtime communication, email works in the absence of that. Forum PM software here isn't really conductive to discussions about game strategy if you ask me. But whatever works for you guys.

The way I've done it in my few disciple matches (all used roundrobin method) is that we discussed some general strategy we'd like to take. Then we all thought of two or more nations we'd like to play in accordance with the discussed gameplan so that if we didn't get our primary pick, we had a well thought backup ready. In my specific case, we wanted Grade-A thugs, so we were gunning for Jotunheim but were willing to settle for Vanheim or Eriu if things didn't go our way.

Some things to consider while making teamwide nation choices:
-Magic diversity: you can get three nations' worth of paths for rituals/forging, use them
-Recruitable or feasibly summonable thug/SC's
-Can you get a bless that benefits everyone?
-More general national synergies: 1-gem forging goes well with thugging, sloth nations work well together, as do production nations.
-Can you do meaningful resource pooling (might go together with synergies): can you get more bang for buck if you pool gems/gold/gear to a single player? Ulm is probably resource locked so it can finance others first fort, or Bandar Log can gather useless gems of his teammates to have twice as many Gandharvas for example.

Oh, and one more tip: Having a Cold/Heat 2-3 pretender and Heat-0 disciples, the pretender can take 80-120 almost 'free' points by taking heat-0. You can put that to other scales or a stronger bless. It might not be immediately obvious so I thought I'd mention it here. It's not mandatory but certainly something worth looking into. You're only weakening one nation out of three while getting more income/research/luck/bless as a team to compensate.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 11, 2014, 07:27:36 pm
All right, it looks like the vocal majority is for private diplomacy. I suppose we need not add complexity given that this is a first or second MP game for a lot of us. Speaking for my team, we'll be doing diplomacy through one player (not necessarily me, but not necessarily not) for the sake of maintaining clear communication, but I'll be insistent on having the non-diplomats see what's being discussed for both instructional purposes and situational awareness.

I'm going to leave the question of nation selection open over the weekend, but with a strong presumption that we're going to do a round-robin draft. Our teams are fixed, so go ahead and start trying to come up with team strategies. We'll pick the map based on the nations we end up with; i.e., if we have 4 water nations, Argatha, and Ermor, we're gonna want a very different map than if we're all landlubbers.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 12, 2014, 09:30:11 am
Will team nations have grouped starting locations? I'd personally prefer it that way so the more experienced can support the less experienced in an early war if necessary.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 12, 2014, 10:16:11 am
I'm open to clustered starts if there's no popular opinion against them.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: lijacote on April 12, 2014, 10:20:40 am
My experience with clustered starts that it is by no means a guarantee you'll spawn together. In the Disciples game I played, we had clustered starts, and despite that a couple of nations were completely isolated from their team mates. They were rapidly eaten up, skewing the balance of power very... unfairly, for lack of a better word. I'd suggest placing the starts manually, if that hasn't already been thought of, even though that involves a bit of effort.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 12, 2014, 10:28:21 am
I'm open to that, too, once we get to the point where we've picked a map and such.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: lavenders2 on April 14, 2014, 03:43:05 am
WARNING: I am taking a trip to Brisbane on Wednesday 8am EAST and coming back on Monday so during then I wont be able to do anything that requires me to be on Dominions.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 14, 2014, 07:29:55 am
I'm skeptical that we'll be ready to start playing in a week. I'm open to being proven wrong, but we have enough mucking about left to do that being ready in around a week sounds like the low end of things. So that should not be a problem.
Have the teams deliberated to the point where they have a clear vision of how they'd go about drafting nations? I mean, I know mine is still indecisive, but where do the other three stand? Are we close enough that we should fix a time (tomorrow? Wednesday? 1 January 2016?) as to when we'll start drafting?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 14, 2014, 11:49:40 am
I haven't had too much communication with my team, but i've been sleeping off the effects of a week of graveyard shifts, so hopefully we can put something together soonish.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 14, 2014, 04:03:35 pm
We're working on it. We have some top picks set down but still working on the backups.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Denzi on April 14, 2014, 05:29:15 pm
I haven't even had time to look at nations yet, so there is that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 17, 2014, 03:32:48 am
Team 1 has a rough approximation of a draft strategy, which will no doubt fly straight out the window as soon as the draft starts, but we can at least pretend we're ready to go. How are the other teams looking?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 17, 2014, 04:37:50 pm
More or less the same place.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 17, 2014, 11:49:55 pm
Sooooooooooo... Teams 1 and 4 are done-ish... that still leaves Teams 2 and 3 to report their progress...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 18, 2014, 02:09:16 am
Team 2 will hopefully be getting their plan together this weekend.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 18, 2014, 08:47:17 pm
USEC_OFFICER? Culise? How is Team 3 looking?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 19, 2014, 12:44:51 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on April 18, 2014, 08:47:17 pm
USEC_OFFICER? Culise? How is Team 3 looking?

I... have no idea, honestly. We talked for a bit but that was a while ago and I haven't heard anything since.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 19, 2014, 01:59:32 pm
D'ya think you can get a rough notion of what might work by the start of this coming week?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Culise on April 21, 2014, 09:42:36 am
Quote from: USEC_OFFICER on April 19, 2014, 12:44:51 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on April 18, 2014, 08:47:17 pm
USEC_OFFICER? Culise? How is Team 3 looking?

I... have no idea, honestly. We talked for a bit but that was a while ago and I haven't heard anything since.
I think we worked out a general possibility for two of the three. 
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 21, 2014, 09:44:40 am
Quote from: Culise on April 21, 2014, 09:42:36 am
I think we worked out a general possibility for two of the three.

In other words we'll just go with the flow, I believe. Or at least that's the vibe I'm getting.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 21, 2014, 10:32:31 am
Well, then, if all four teams are approximately ready (Karlito? Team 2 ready-ish as anticipated?), we can go ahead and start drafting nations. It'll take a bit to get through this, so we might as well start sooner than later. I generated a random sequence on random.org, and this is the draft order: 3, 1, 2, 4. So what that means is we'll pick nations as follows:

3, 1, 2, 4, 4, 2, 1, 3, 3, 1, 2, 4

Team 1: C'tis/Argatha/R'lyeh
Team 2: Ulm/Jotunheim/Asphodel
Team 3: Arcoscephale/T'ien C'hi/Marignon
Team 4: Pythium/Sceleria/Bandar Log

Team captains can just post their pick as a reply. I'll check in and update this when I can, but as soon as one captain has made a choice for their team, the next should be able to go ahead and deliberate and/or pick. Take as long as you need, but if you don't need to, you don't have to wait for any formal acknowledgement.

Team 3, is USEC_OFFICER or Culise going to take point?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 21, 2014, 04:58:28 pm
Yeah, I think we're good to go.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Denzi on April 21, 2014, 06:11:33 pm
Yeah! I'm excited and can not wait :)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 21, 2014, 06:21:51 pm
General consensus among Team Three is that we're going with Arcoscephale for our first pick.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 21, 2014, 06:32:16 pm
Team One drafts C'tis.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 21, 2014, 07:48:04 pm
Ulm for Team Two.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 21, 2014, 08:00:32 pm
Team 4 - Pythium and Sceleria
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 21, 2014, 08:13:27 pm
Dang, this draft order does not love me.

Jotunheim
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 21, 2014, 08:25:54 pm
How does C'tis disease causing dominion function in a disciple game?
I'd presume nonfunctional as a disciple nation but functional as a pretender nation?

I'm similarly curious in regards to Acro's scrying dominion (that is middle ages right?)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 21, 2014, 08:31:18 pm
I think the general rule is that dominion effects only work when the nation with the effect is the Pretender, and they only work for that nation.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 21, 2014, 09:05:27 pm
It's only effective for the pretender's dominion, yeah, but if it's anything effect that manifests from the dominion itself, it'll work for the whole alliance, regardless of whether the particular nation exploiting the effect is a disciple or the pretender. The only pseudo-exception to this is EA/LA Mictlan's "doesn't spread" dominion feature; they don't spread as disciple or pretender, but their teammates spread the team's dominion as normal, so I suppose that's more like an effect (or lack thereof) of Mictlan's temples rather than their dominion. Aside from that, though, if it's the pretender's dominion, it'll affect everyone on their team. Scryers scrye, toxic dominion kills, freespawn spawns, void insanity voids sanity, miasma miases, and golemcrafters craft golems.

Speaking of which, Team One takes Argatha for our second pick.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 21, 2014, 09:32:43 pm
Team Three is going to nab T'ein C'hi for now. Still waiting on our third member for our final pick, sorry about that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 21, 2014, 09:35:24 pm
Hmm interesting. Yes, I'm pretty sure LA R'lyeh as a pretender will have disciples spreading insanity dominion (and suffering from it) while not obtaining any freespawn like a disciple of say Lemuria which would get along with death dominion.

Now though, I'm curious if your third pick will also be a cold blooded nation in which case, I am guessing C'tis is your pretender nation :).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 21, 2014, 10:20:46 pm
That's true, I'd forgotten that alone among the freespawn nations, R'lyeh gives its disciples all the bad and none of the good.

Oh, and you do recall that since we're talking "Golem Cult" Argatha and not "Pale Ones" Argatha, we're talking a human nation with cold-blooded auxiliaries (and the handy-though-not-overpowering Golem Crafter dominion effect), not a cold-blooded nation per se?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 22, 2014, 08:54:17 am
Team Three's final pick is ready! We'll take Marignon, please!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 22, 2014, 09:17:45 am
Team 1 will round ourselves off with R'lyeh.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 22, 2014, 12:07:58 pm
Asphodel
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 22, 2014, 05:16:53 pm
Bandar
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 22, 2014, 05:39:57 pm
Team 1: C'tis/Argatha/R'lyeh
Team 2: Ulm/Jotunheim/Asphodel
Team 3: Arcoscephale/T'ien C'hi/Marignon
Team 4: Pythium/Sceleria/Bandar Log

Well, with that decided, the next order of business is picking a map. We have 1.5 water nations, one cave dweller, and one forest-heavy nation. Aside from that, I don't see clear deciding factors for map selection outside of the more general matters of size, layout, and aesthetics.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: gman8181 on April 22, 2014, 06:45:58 pm
Personally, a larger wraparound map sounds nice to me. As a disciple game with many newer players involved, I think it would be a good thing if the game lasted a little longer so people get to experiment a bit more with late game tactics. Especially now that research takes longer, it couldn't hurt too much to have a little more space.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Culise on April 22, 2014, 09:25:27 pm
I agree; a larger wraparound map would likely be a good way to extend the game.  It may also be worth considering game options concurrently with the map.  We probably don't need to muck around with value multipliers (income, resource, supply), starting provinces, or independents' strength, but for other things:

Site Frequency: We get percent values from 0-75% in increments of 5, but a simple "none/low/medium/high" may suffice.  Basically determines gem income, with certain sites giving special recruitment options or other effects, for good or for ill.  High site frequency means magic gems coming out of the wazoo and ritual spam everywhere; low site frequency means that players have to be much more sparing with spells, and increases the relative value of capitals (since factions always get a starting income of gems via capital sites)
Random events: Rare or Common?  On the one hand, common events are more entertaining, but on the other hand, there have been players who have literally died due to poor starting options and a bad opening random event (low dominion + dominion-lowering event = third-turn dom-kill).  Even neglecting that, early events can have significant knock-on effects.  It's never fun to get crippled early not because of anything you did, but because the RNG decided to rain on your parade.
Story Events: Do we want these more complex event chains? 
Score Graphs: On or off?  Llamaserver displays values turn by turn anyways, so it may be pointless to turn them off, but we can run on the honour system, no?  Oh, but keeping it on also makes it more difficult for players to run away with the game, while keeping it off converts a thorough scout network from a very good idea to absolutely critical. 
Hall of Fame Entries:: 5, 10, or 15.  Getting into the Hall of Fame gives commanders special bonuses (which they keep even if they leave after), so more slots means more bonuses for more players.  Fewer slots cranks up the competition for those bonuses. 
Limited Unique Artifact Forging Rate: If on, you can only make one unique artifact per turn, mitigating the importance of any race to Construction 8. 
Research Speed: Standard is probably fine here, but we can also use this to accelerate or decelerate the game. 
Thrones of Ascension: This can wait until we have a map, so we know the province count.  I'd like to have at least one throne per player for three thrones per team, and also a good mix of thrones of all levels, but on the other hand, a throne next to your capital can really choke your expansion in the early game, especially now that they're smarter as well as stronger. 
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 22, 2014, 10:36:47 pm
I'd say default magic site frequency (40), common events, no story events, score graphs on (I prefer off actually, but llamaserver makes that choice pointless) score graphs hidden but revealable by spies, 15 Hall of Fame slots, and I have no preference wrt artifact rates.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: lijacote on April 22, 2014, 10:41:44 pm
Quote from: Karlito on April 22, 2014, 10:36:47 pm
score graphs on (I prefer off actually, but llamaserver makes that choice pointless)

That's no longer true. If you disable score graphs, you no longer have access to the stats.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Denzi on April 23, 2014, 12:20:39 am
Site Frequency: Standard or atleast within a few points of standard.
Random Events: Common, since I believe that is the normal frequency. Part of the game is dealing with the hand you are dealt and given the fact we will have our nations hand-placed near each other on the map, it should not be a problem for a team to help it's own members out.
Story Events: This sounds like it might be fun, but is it really? Do we get to make any choices in the story events? If we have no say in what happens then I'll just say no to the story events for now.
Score Graphs: n/a
Hall of Fame Entries: n/a
Limited Unique Artifact Forging Rate: n/a
Research Speed: Standard Speed
Thrones of Ascension: I'd like for us to have 4 or 5 thrones per a team personally, but 3 could probably work just as well. Probably should ignore my opinion on this
Thrones of Ascension Points to Win: I believe this is an option on llamaserver, I'd like to have a throne victory require something like 75% of the thrones on the map, so it'll work like a domination victory in other games.

Friendly Nation distance: I think when the nations get placed we should aim to have the teams placed within 3 provinces of eachother (such that there are three neutral provinces between a team's nations)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Shadowlord on April 23, 2014, 12:51:10 am
I think story events are not really intended for use in serious multiplayer games, and are still somewhat experimental, if I'm remembering what the changelog said correctly.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 23, 2014, 07:02:40 am
My preferences:

Site Frequency: 50 (standard + 10): looking at our lineups, we're magic-heavy as far as nations go. Round 401 has MA w/50, and it's seemed reasonable to me.
Random Events: Common. IIRC disastrous events are generally disallowed for the very first few turns, and as Denzi points out, we're not alone. Setting it to Rare also makes Misfortune/Luck less significant, and weights scale choices even more heavily towards Order, which is kinda tedious.
Story Events: Off. They're fun, and you do get to make choices, but they can crippling or overpowering. It's too much randomness.
Score Graphs: Off. It makes recon much more meaningful, and allows some of the sneakier stuff added in Dom4 to be more significant.
Hall of Fame Entries: 15. By midgame it's not uncommon for the first slots to be locked up by a couple of monsterous units.
Limited Unique Artifact Forging Rate: On. This makes research blowouts slightly less insurmountable.
Research Speed: Standard Speed.
Thrones of Ascension: Depends on the map. But as long as it's a fairly large map, we shouldn't be seeing people with thrones adjacent to their capitals.
Thrones of Ascension Points to Win: Depends on the number of thrones.

Map size: I'd lean towards 120-160 (10-13 provinces/player). Past that, the game can really drag on. Remember, we have spell ranges now so even with thrones it can be rough to capture all of a big map w/o a painful slog.
Map composition: Since we have one properly aquatic nation, a minimum of 1/12 sea provinces. We have an amphibian nation and a semi-(amphibious)-undead nation, too, so it might do well to double that. We also have a cave nation, so we ideally would have at least 1/24 caves, more if they're all spread out. We also need a reasonable amount of forests, probably NLT 1/12 and preferably noticeably more.

I'd personally vote Peliwyr (127+18, NSEW wrap) or Leaking Lands (124+11, EW wrap). If the consensus is that we really want a substantially larger map, maybe Fantomagoria? It's NSEW wrap, and closer to 20 per player with 172 + 60 water, though it would be better with another fully aquatic nation. It also is very short on caves, with probably less than 5 for the whole map, but that's still better than most of its size, and if we're having someone make fixed starting positions they could probably convert a few of the mountains into caves - the caves already on the map are pretty much mountains with the cave flag set, anyway.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Denzi on April 23, 2014, 07:33:12 am
I've always though that maps like Valanis look really cool and offer some interesting interactions. It's 142 Land with 21 Sea. Would just be cool to fight it out on a floating island thinger.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 23, 2014, 08:25:29 am
Valanis is a nice map. No question there. And it meets pretty much all my terrain and size "wants". I'd be okay with it, personally. However, it's not wraparound, so there are "edge" provinces and you can be required to slog from one side of the map to another. Which I think some of our players might find objectionable. I'd say it's certainly worth including for consideration, though.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Frumple on April 23, 2014, 07:28:58 pm
I personally prefer non-wrap maps to wrap, m'self, heh. Wraparound gives me a lil'bit of a headache. Left is right, up is down, etc., etc.

Re: Map settings: I'd also be throwing in for higher than base site frequency ('cause that makes things more interesting) and common events (ditto). In the event of a catastrophic early event, maybe there'd be room for one or two mulligan chances -- basically, if someone gets event wrecked on turn three, we restart or roll back a turn (if that's possible and changes event RNG).

I'd kinda' vote for score graphs on, given the amount of beginners we have... it'd take a little pressure off micromanaging scouting and whatnot. On the other tentacle, low-experience folks have a harder time meaningfully interpreting the graph info, so it might be just as much of a boon to leave 'em off. Big advantage for team two, though, in that case... recruitable flying scouts are glorious.

Definitely 10 or 15 hall of fame slots and limited artifact forging. Not really an opinion on anything else. So long as renaming is on by default for something like this, heh.

Map wise, I wouldn't exactly mind Valanis, though sweet zeus would that put the tentacled dudes in a position. Though, can I make the request any non-default maps recommended come with a link, so we can look at it? Search can find it fairly quickly, but it saves a little time.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Karlito on April 23, 2014, 07:41:10 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on April 23, 2014, 08:25:29 am
Valanis is a nice map. No question there. And it meets pretty much all my terrain and size "wants". I'd be okay with it, personally. However, it's not wraparound, so there are "edge" provinces and you can be required to slog from one side of the map to another. Which I think some of our players might find objectionable. I'd say it's certainly worth including for consideration, though.

My objection to non-wrap around maps is that someone inevitably gets stuck in the middle, which is maybe less of a consideration if we're going to define starting locations and cluster teams together. Anyway, I do prefer ones that wrap around in just one direction, as opposed to both, which makes me favorably inclined toward Leaking Land.

EDIT: We could always use a randomly generated map. They aren't too bad in dominions 4.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 23, 2014, 08:24:23 pm
Fantomagoria (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/fantomagoria-wraparound-173-land-59-sea)
Leaking Land (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/leaking-land-12411-horizontal-wrap)
Peliwyr (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/peliwyr-12718-wraparound)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: lavenders2 on April 25, 2014, 03:35:38 am
Leaking land sounds good.
Second preference is Peliwyr (the artwork on that map is fantastic)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: Shadowlord on April 25, 2014, 06:30:09 am
At least some of the adjacent provinces on leaking land don't seem to be connected properly. It's very bizarre. (Up north) I was testing some stuff when I noticed it - I didn't expand very far so I don't know how extensive the problem is.

Just plain green provinces adjacent to each other that should be connected by all appearances, but there's no way to move between them.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): pre-planning
Post by: E. Albright on April 26, 2014, 09:59:33 am
I suppose I should just post a poll for the map. Current contenders are Valanis, Peliwyr, Leaking Lands, Fantomagoria, or a random map [Edit: Or the dark horse mentioned in the next paragraph]. Any I'm missing? 

I'll add that if people wanted a slightly larger wrap-around map that's reasonably aesthetically pleasing and also has an underworld, I had recently started adding some caves into the mountain ranges of Urraparand; it's notably larger at 155+35, with 10 of that 155 being the new caves, but it is an option. It's a somewhat painful WIP, because there's no easy way to add provinces to an existing map (the Map Editor LIES!), but if there was interest I could twist my arm and finish the wretched thing...

Edit: Behold, the thing itself. Cave provinces span the regions enclosed by the grey-brown borders; all but one are centered on a mountain range, and all have visible entrances on the map.
Spoiler: Urraparand, with caves (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on April 27, 2014, 01:55:59 pm
Soooo... the map poll has been up for over a day and we're sitting at three votes and no comments...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: gman8181 on April 27, 2014, 02:01:51 pm
Meh, I like the larger size of Valanis but I want a wraparound of which Leaking Lands has the only vote so far. I was kind of waiting to see if any other wraparounds got votes to make my decision.

I guess regardless, I'll try and make a decision sometime later today.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: Culise on April 27, 2014, 11:26:38 pm
My inclination is to go for larger sizes as well, but with only one underwater nation, it might not be the best idea.  I voted for Urraparand with caves, but it is worth noting that 155+35 outputs 35 provinces for R'yleh and 14 and a bit for the land-dwellers.  As such, I would have no objection to a tweaked random map or Valanis as well, but we can only vote for one map, so Urraparand is it. ^_^
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: Karlito on April 27, 2014, 11:28:33 pm
I think I'll try to generate up some example maps tomorrow. They aren't the prettiest, but the control we can get over province numbers is a strong plus.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on April 28, 2014, 01:00:21 am
The way Urraparand is laid out, if you wanted to pick a sort of map where a lonely UW nation was not going to "get" all the oceans just by virtue of being UW, that would be it. There's 35 sea provinces but of them, not a single one isn't coastal. Most border one or two sea provinces, so if there's a hard-to-clear indy province, expansion can slow to a crawl. Additionally, while the sea wraps NS, it doesn't wrap EW. This combined with ritual ranges make for an ocean which is not easy for a sea nation to hold for itself - moving from one end of the ocean to the other would take at least 16 turns if there was no portaging performed. The UW nation still can turtle, but most of the sea provinces are bordered by four or more land provinces, so turtling invites being preached into oblivion - though that's less of a threat in a disciple game. I've played this map as Atlantis for MP - 35 UW provinces are a lot for a game with a single UW nation, but it's hardly 35 reserved for them, and it's a lot more precarious for them to hold than a lot of maps' oceans...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on April 29, 2014, 11:44:19 am
So, um, we're still at 7/12 voted. I went for the current leader, Urraparand w/caves, but I'm not strictly wed to it - and not just because us using it means I have to finish checking neighbor connections for 190 provinces. Do we have any further input, or votes from those who haven't weighed in?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: Shadowlord on April 29, 2014, 01:36:34 pm
I voted for it. It looked good (and I wanted to vote against leakinglands).

The round one (Valanis?) looked pretty but it looked like the water was basically all connected and divided the center of the map, which could have been bad strategically since there is only one water nation.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on April 29, 2014, 01:55:18 pm
The water splits the map, but there are three fords that landlubbers can use to go to/from the north from/to the south. Still, in Round 401, there has been a pretty sharp strategic divide into "affairs of the north" and "affairs of the south"...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: Karlito on April 29, 2014, 06:13:17 pm
No major objections to Urraparand w/ caves. I suppose we should look at setting up some fixed start locations.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: gman8181 on April 29, 2014, 06:18:18 pm
Quote from: Karlito on April 29, 2014, 06:13:17 pm
No major objections to Urraparand w/ caves. I suppose we should look at setting up some fixed start locations.
Ditto
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on April 29, 2014, 07:15:21 pm
Ugh. You all hate me, don't you? Don't you?!?!?!?!! I include myself in that, of course.

I guess I'll need to go ahead and finish making sure all the connections connect to what they should. That should be done tonight.

Are we going to have our fixed-start-placer set throne provinces too? If so, we need to decide how many we want...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: gman8181 on April 29, 2014, 07:45:09 pm
Hmm, I'm really unfamiliar with what works well in regards to thrones vs nations because the default in a custom game is 1 lv 1 per nation... but to me I think it would be kind of nice to have at least 1 lv 3 per team...
After that I'm not sure... I don't have much any experience with multiplayer for dominions 4 so I don't know what real impact more thrones would have.

I'm thinking... too much is probably better than too few. So maybe at least 2 level 1's per nation and maybe 1 level 2 per nation?

Another thing to consider is how many victory points or whatever it's called is needed to win. Personally, I'm in favor of needing at least 2/3's to 3/4's of them to win. I'd even be okay with needing all the thrones to win just because it would prolong the game and give more of a chance for the less experienced players to potentially get to late game and toy around with things.

Edit: Of course it's possible my view is slanted by never having made it to an actual late game in Dominions 3. I've only been there through subbing and the few games where I almost made it myself usually ended prematurely due to everyone sort of disappearing, I guess due to real life reasons.
I know from reading the forums that it can get quite tedious and maybe you guys don't want to open up a possible situation where the game could get stuck in an eternal stalemate.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on April 29, 2014, 10:30:29 pm
Well, your proposed 2 lvl 1s per nation isn't going to fly, nor your 1 lvl 2 per nation. We can't go higher than 20 lvl 1s, or 10 lvl 2s. If we were to do that maximum, plus 4 lvl 3s, we'd end up with more than 1 throne/6 provinces. That's kinda high. Try setting up a game on Urraparand with 20/10/4 - you'll find that most provinces are adjacent to at least one throne. Not all, but most... so it becomes difficult for starting provinces to avoid abutting thrones. Now, I'm adding 10 provinces to the map, but trust me when I say it won't make a huge difference. Most provinces still will be adjacent to one or more thrones.

If you try cutting that in half, you end up with something more reasonable for nation placement purposes. 10/5/2 gives you just under 1/10 throne provinces. We could probably even up that to 12/6/3 if you truly wanted to have 1 lvl 1 per nation - the extra 4 thrones wouldn't overwhelm the landscape and you'd end up with 1/9 thrones.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: gman8181 on April 29, 2014, 11:04:30 pm
Sorry I'm incredibly tired and started using nation and team interchangeably part way through that post. I meant at least 1 lv 2 per team and 2 lv 1's per team. Yeah, having what I "actually said" would be murder on early expansion.

The latter part of my post remains accurate though. I would like to need to own most of the thrones to win.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on May 01, 2014, 09:26:45 pm
All right, it may still have flecks of my sanity stuck to it, but here's the map: Urraparand with Caves (155+35) (http://rapidshare.com/share/B35EF3F48C3F13945F4B9B53289F7DBE).

Let's get some consensus on thrones (to include if we want throne provinces tagged, or picked by the program) so we can have a comprehensive bill of modifications for our map-fixer, and maybe actually start this game by sometime next week. Ish.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: lijacote on May 02, 2014, 03:57:19 pm
Quote
Another thing to consider is how many victory points or whatever it's called is needed to win. Personally, I'm in favor of needing at least 2/3's to 3/4's of them to win. I'd even be okay with needing all the thrones to win just because it would prolong the game and give more of a chance for the less experienced players to potentially get to late game and toy around with things.

That's a legitimate point of view to have, but having such a strong majority of the thrones be a requirement for victory is almost the same as eliminating throne victory altogether. If the players want a longer slog, to really get to the gritty grindy end of the game, then it's fine. I believe we've got a 14/2119/24!!! requirement in 401, and the game's now on turn 86, I believe. The leading player (Albright, incidentally) is going to have to pretty much defeat every remaining player to get a throne victory, and that's around two thirds of the throne points we've got going on. Three quarters would be even more grueling.

On the upside, the potential winner in this game wouldn't necessarily have to slog through alone.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on May 02, 2014, 04:42:03 pm
What?

14/21?

A mere 2/3s?

401 is much, much worse than that, lijacote. It's 19/24. Based on current throne holdings, I could in theory get away with defeating a measly 2 of my remaining 4 rivals, but yeah, effectively any of us wanting to win is going to have to beat all comers. If it was just 14 points to win, I could squeak through by finishing off the squid, backstabbing Mictlan, and trying to hold the ocean like a thin blue line while ignoring the north's existence. As it stands, there's not going to be a throne victory without a fullscale invasion of the north by the south, or vice-versa - and realistically at least two more nations (to include one or both of Argatha and Scelaria) will need to be wiped off the map to securely hold enough turf to make any throne win happen. Probably three more.

A 75% victory condition - or even an 80% like 401 has - might not sound like a lot on paper - after all, it could be achieved with as few as 2/3s the thrones - but realistically, to get a nation strong enough to capture, claim, and hold that many thrones you basically need to be able to seriously overpower all the other nations. I'd say 2/3s of the points might a reasonable amount for us to use, but that's as high as I'd advise. 12/6/3 at 2/3s would be something like 22/33 - if you were lucky, you could get that with 10/21 thrones, and worst-case it's 17/21. More realistically, it'd probably be around 14/21. That'd probably mean one team dead, and one or two more on the defensive.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: gman8181 on May 02, 2014, 10:22:10 pm
*Insert Noncommittal Answer Here*

I don't really care much one way or another at this point. A slightly longer game is preferable to me only due to having beginners who would probably like to get to see some late game action before this ends.

... At the same time... It really doesn't matter to me on a personal level. I've seen late game a few times on Dominions 3 and meh, whatever. It's all the same to me.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: Karlito on May 03, 2014, 12:31:52 pm
Both the proposed 10/5/2 or 12/6/3 split is good to me. I think 2/3 of the points is a good victory threshhold.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on May 04, 2014, 09:13:50 pm
I asked lijacote to take a look at starting positions for us; if schedules permit that to happen, I'm hoping to finally get this started this week.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: Shadowlord on May 04, 2014, 10:02:42 pm
(At this point I had concluded this was never going to start :V)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: lijacote on May 05, 2014, 09:08:10 am
Quote from: E. Albright on May 04, 2014, 09:13:50 pm
I asked lijacote to take a look at starting positions for us; if schedules permit that to happen, I'm hoping to finally get this started this week.

I'll try and get this done within two days. Currently visiting my father, so I've got a lot of time on my hands... :p
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on May 05, 2014, 10:20:44 am
It's much appreciated, lijacote...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on May 05, 2014, 09:52:02 pm
USEC_OFFICER, if your clever ploy was to somehow make us all drag our heels, not start, and generally stall until 4.06 rolled out so you could switch to the new and improved Caelum, you may have succeeded:

Quote from: DOM4 Change Log
2014-05-05 14:16:42 +0200
Version 4.06

Edit: Bah, it turns out 4.06 will be a beta patch, with release being 4.06x or 4.07. False alarm, false alarm...

Edit 2: That's actually good, though; it makes it more likely that the patch will include the unnamed-but-alluded-to new nation - the one in addition to Ragha, I mean..
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 06, 2014, 12:04:07 pm
Ugh... You know what? I'm sorry but can you drop me? I'm just not terribly enthusiastic about this now, and I'm pretty sure that I'll just hold everyone up in the future. Sorry about this.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: E. Albright on May 06, 2014, 06:19:10 pm
Better you bail out now than in two or three weeks. ;) Another time, then.


Culise and lavenders2, if we can get someone to sub in, do you expect to be able to carry on with the nations you have?


More generally, I thank everyone for their patience, and it looks like we're almost ready to go. I'm currently hashing out starting positions with our kindly uninvolved party, lijacote, so if we can get a replacement for USEC_OFFICER we should be able to start by the end of the week...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 06, 2014, 07:17:23 pm
Yeah... I dunno, I've just been feeling rather shitty recently... Sorry about that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: tompliss on May 07, 2014, 03:31:34 am
If you guys don't mind a beginner to take over USEC's place, I think I could try and handle that.
Mind you, I haven't played Arcoscephale/T'ien C'hi/Marignon (or even against them) in a multiplayer game.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 07, 2014, 10:03:25 am
One word: Communions. It doesn't matter which nation we're talking about, all three of them are based around it. Other than that you're on your own.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: E. Albright on May 07, 2014, 10:51:17 am
Close to a plan for starting positions. As a matter of fairness, since I know what they'll be, I'm planning on posting a map once they're settled. There will be a couple of slight changes to the map as previously put out as well, aimed at increasing connectivity.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: E. Albright on May 07, 2014, 05:07:40 pm
I'll post the actual map files tonight, and look to set up the game on Llamaserver, but to get any last-minute screams of bloody murder out of the way ASAP, I'll post an image showing the starting locations lijacote signed off on as "as fair as we're likely to get":

Spoiler: Provisional start locations (click to show/hide)

Note that since this image was created, the cave in the upper left corner has been significantly expanded to have an exit coming out on the peninsula on the south side of the sea below it. This provides an all-weather north-south passageway to encourage free exchange of goods, services, and ideas, and nothing else.

Considerations:

Re: 2,  all nations are 2 away from at least one ally.
Re: 3, there's only one hostile nation pair with a non-seasonal land path of less than four (Pythium and Asphodel).
Re: 4, all but one nation has 4 neighbors (Ulm has 5), and all nations are in terrain that allows roads (though most needed their mountains converted to border mountains for this purpose).
Re: 5, this is probably the biggest issue of these. All I can say is that we tried, and this was the best we could come up with. The "open" sea was always going to be a problem with only 1.5 (maybe 1.75) seafaring nations. Every team is by some block of land where they can expand a decent amount before meeting a (terrestrial) neighbor. These blocks have been balanced roughly, and alternate layouts have been considered. If anything seems completely unacceptable, don't hesitate to say so, but we couldn't see a clearly better setup.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: Karlito on May 07, 2014, 06:09:43 pm
I'll probably have some comments once the map files are up so I don't have to try and imagine the wrap-around, but hopefully any small advantages in starting position will be countered by the politics of the game.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: E. Albright on May 07, 2014, 10:14:53 pm
Map files for the fixed-start-and-such version is up; get it here (http://rapidshare.com/share/DFC42C5FE760CD896CBFF37AA2EABEAC). In addition to the aforementioned cave a "river" connection was added between 142 and 134 (coastal provinces directly south of R'lyeh) to make that peninsula slightly more accessible to BL/Sc/Py.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): waffling about maps
Post by: lavenders2 on May 08, 2014, 03:27:38 am
Quote from: E. Albright on May 06, 2014, 06:19:10 pm
Better you bail out now than in two or three weeks. ;) Another time, then.


Culise and lavenders2, if we can get someone to sub in, do you expect to be able to carry on with the nations you have?


More generally, I thank everyone for their patience, and it looks like we're almost ready to go. I'm currently hashing out starting positions with our kindly uninvolved party, lijacote, so if we can get a replacement for USEC_OFFICER we should be able to start by the end of the week...

Yeah I am happy to stay as the nation I am.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: Culise on May 08, 2014, 09:48:36 am
I'm afraid I should probably drop out as well.  Sorry.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: E. Albright on May 08, 2014, 11:37:05 am
Well, Margrave over in the 401 thread stated they'd be interested in subbing in for Marignon, so as long as lavenders isn't Mari, and tompliss is willing to come on board as the third nation, Team 3 has three players and they're not all beginners. So it appears the game can go on?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: E. Albright on May 08, 2014, 11:51:04 am
Barring serious objections to the map and its starting positions, I'm going to have the game up on Llamaserver and ready for pretender submissions by tonight.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): looking for a sub (still pregame)
Post by: Culise on May 08, 2014, 11:53:56 am
Quote from: E. Albright on May 08, 2014, 11:37:05 am
Well, Margrave over in the 401 thread stated they'd be interested in subbing in for Marignon, so as long as lavenders isn't Mari, and tompliss is willing to come on board as the third nation, Team 3 has three players and they're not all beginners. So it appears the game can go on?
Yeah, I think Margrave, lavenders, and tompliss can probably make a good team, which is why I dropped now.  lavenders is Marignon, but I'm sure the three can work something out.  I'm sorry about dropping out, but until Friday next week at a bare minimum, I'm going to have trouble getting on a computer from which I can submit turns regularly. 
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): about to start
Post by: E. Albright on May 08, 2014, 08:50:28 pm
Zee game iz afoot! Link here: Bay12GamesRound404 (http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound404).

Ideally, I'd like to see all teams submitted so we can start playing by the start of next week, but that still gives us the weekend for last minute "oh-crap-were-we-supposed-to-be-synergizing-designs?"-ing. The thread's first post has been updated to reflect game settings, but they're what we discussed previously...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: tompliss on May 08, 2014, 11:20:44 pm
By the way, little wuestion about the map : wrapping EW and NS ?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: lijacote on May 09, 2014, 03:24:33 am
It wraps all around.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: tompliss on May 09, 2014, 04:56:21 am
Ok, good. I was kind of worried about T'ien's position, otherwise :-°
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Shadowlord on May 10, 2014, 04:48:35 pm
I take it this is going to take a while (we only have two submissions so far).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 10, 2014, 05:10:57 pm
Well, I asked for people to try to get it done by the end of the weekend, so I expect a lot of people to wait until the end of the weekend. The whole "critical mass" thing is a pretty big deal; once the deadline (which unfortunately isn't a hard deadline) looms and more other people have submitted, the procrastinators will follow suit.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 11, 2014, 08:26:34 pm
Someone submitted a pretender for Abysia. Has someone here made a last minute change-of-plans (which I suppose could be acceptable, since Abysia's not claimed), or is this an interloper I need to delete?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 12, 2014, 01:12:30 pm
Status update:

Overall pretender/disciple submission: 9/12

Team 1: 3/3
Team 2: 3/3
Team 3: 1/3 (TC)
Team 4: 2/3 (Pythium, Sceleria)

Soon, soon...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Karlito on May 12, 2014, 03:35:15 pm
I'll try and kick the rest of my team into gear.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Denzi on May 12, 2014, 07:36:48 pm
Yeah sorry everyone, I had a busy week last week and never really got a chance to final plans in my team. I'll try to get things done with my team as soon as I can. Again I apologize.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Karlito on May 12, 2014, 08:25:59 pm
And Jotunheim has assured me that the Pretender will be in once it's morning in Europe, whenever that is.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 14, 2014, 09:05:20 am
Just need pretenders from Arco, Marignon, and Bandar Log...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Karlito on May 14, 2014, 03:39:15 pm
Hey, so you probably need to know that Jotunheim (GP_Trixie) is the pretender god, with Ulm (Karlito), and Asphodel (Denzi) as the disciples. I mean, you didn't actually need to know the players, but I figure we might as well reveal that information.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 14, 2014, 04:03:49 pm
Well, I do eventually need to know who pretenders are to set teams, so thanks, yes.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Margrave on May 14, 2014, 07:36:29 pm
To explain the hold-up I've been trying to contact lavenders2 and confirm a pretender selection and final team format. I figured that I shouldn't fix the pretender design until I get an okay from all team members. I'm still hoping he contacts me soon.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: gman8181 on May 15, 2014, 05:21:19 pm
I sent out a PM. Not sure what's going on and work has kept me busy so I apologize for just getting around to it.

Also Pythium (that's me) is the pretender nation for our team.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 17, 2014, 10:41:39 am
What's the status, everyone? Aside from another interloper (Vanheim this teim) showing up for me to delete, I mean? Any word on where our last three outstanding pretenders sit? I have a fond - albeit perhaps unrealistic - dream of starting this weekend...

Oh, and would I be correct in assuming that Arco is team three's pretender?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: gman8181 on May 17, 2014, 11:54:53 am
I didn't get any response to the pm I sent out to my team. Just FYI, Shadowgandor is the missing player in question for Bandar.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 17, 2014, 12:10:48 pm
Jesus, you're still not set up?

I'm a bit less pressed for time these days, so give us a shout if you need a replacement.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Margrave on May 17, 2014, 03:06:27 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on May 17, 2014, 10:41:39 am
Oh, and would I be correct in assuming that Arco is team three's pretender?
You are correct there, Arco is the pretender but we still haven't heard anything at all from lavenders2. A week is a long time but I'll leave that up to everyone else if they want a sub to replace them. We mostly have the game plan in place(albeit a really rough one) but I still would rather not submit until we have a consensus from a full team.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 17, 2014, 03:19:31 pm
Quote from: Margrave on May 17, 2014, 03:06:27 pm
You are correct there, Arco is the pretender but we still haven't heard anything at all from lavenders2. A week is a long time but I'll leave that up to everyone else if they want a sub to replace them. We mostly have the game plan in place(albeit a really rough one) but I still would rather not submit until we have a consensus from a full team.

...

If you need a sub I could jump back in. My time is freer now, and since you already have a rough plan things should go a lot smoother. Honestly I think that a lot of the problem with Culise/Lavenders/Me is that none of us were experienced, so were all rather hesitant about planning. Or at least I was, I'm probably wrong or something. Either way I'm here and willing to sub in if needed.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 17, 2014, 04:07:50 pm
Well, we have two AWOLs and two volunteers, though if they step it it'll wreck havoc on my careful (yet probably ultimately futile) efforts to balance the teams. If the two teams in question want to cut their losses and dole out Il Palazzo and USEC_OFFICER, I'm completely fine with that. More than "fine", really. I'll put the final decision with Teams 3 and 4, but it would be soooooo nice to finally start this thing...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Karlito on May 17, 2014, 05:27:25 pm
My fear of Palazzo is about balanced out with my desire to finally crush him once and for all (hahahaha!), so I think I'm fine with whatever starts the game soonest.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 17, 2014, 05:29:58 pm
Allow me to be slightly less passive. If we haven't heard from our AWOLs in a week now, I very strongly encourage their teams to avail themselves to the available subs. I'd say Il Palazzo to team 3 and USEC_OFFICER back to team 4, but I don't know if Il Palazzo wants to play Bandar Log again. However, I would like to start playing by Monday. That would be Nice. So if the teams want to wait longer for their missing players, I'd say we could wait the weekend, then sub, but at this point I'd rather just sub now, and unless there are strong objections that's the course I'd prefer we take.

(Hey, I did say slightly less passive.)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: gman8181 on May 17, 2014, 07:22:35 pm
I'm not sure how we'd set this up then... I'm not exactly that experienced or good at Dominions and only moved myself into the leadership role on my team out of sheer necessity of me being the only one who had some semblance of a plan. That said, I don't really know what would be fairest with Palazzo involved. If he were to join my team, I'd certainly prefer for him to take the role of pretender and have myself moved down to a disciple, which would change things up a bit.

Edit:
Bandar is part of team 4 not team 3. I'm okay with playing Bandar and having the other player go in as Pythium if that helps. I'm actually pretty fond of Bandar anyway.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Karlito on May 17, 2014, 07:25:35 pm
Or not, you know. Use whichever nation that gives you the most advantage in the role of pretender. I'm "Team Captain" or whatever for good ol' #2, but Ulm is but a lowly disciple nation.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 17, 2014, 07:58:31 pm
Oops, right, BL IS team 3, not team 4. I had my numbers backwards. USEC_OFFICER to team 3, and Il Palazzo to team 4. And yeah, like Karlito said, "team captain" is an ill-defined, amorphous metarole; there need be no corrospondence between pretenders and team leaders/spokepeople/stratergizers/whipping boys/what-have-yous. Each team is quite free to arrange that however they feel fit. Likewise with who plays which of your nations - if you need to switch that up prior to starting, just lemme know and I'll switch the national email addresses as needed.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: gman8181 on May 18, 2014, 09:13:08 am
Shadowgandor just replied today saying he's still interested in playing and will have his pretender submitted by Monday.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Margrave on May 18, 2014, 10:04:46 am
Then we have an opening still, basically whomever wants it the most gets it as far as I am concerned.

Shoot me and tompliss a PM when you get the chance, possible teammate, so we can finalize plans and sort out who is Marge or Arco.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 18, 2014, 11:04:56 am
I'm willing to give the spot to USEC_OFFICER, but then again he might say the same thing. How about you guys decide which one is better to keep the skill/experience balance.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 18, 2014, 12:46:48 pm
Well, by that principle, it should be USEC_OFFICER, since team 3 would be the only team without a "beginner". At this point, though, I don't care so much that I'd use that as a deciding factor. So either one. If I have to be decisive, I'll say USEC_OFFICER since I already trotted out experience balance as a decision criterion. But if I don't have to be decisive, either of you two is fine with me so long as we can get started.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: tompliss on May 18, 2014, 12:59:40 pm
Am I not a beginner ? Because everytime I send read the report of my turns in my current games, I feel like one .... c:
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 18, 2014, 01:04:31 pm
Well, you weren't here for the initial declaration of experience levels, and I know this isn't your first MP game, so you'd probably be lumped - perhaps unjustly - into the amorphous, hedging category I referred to as "begintermediate".

Seriously, I'm good with either, though if all y'all need a villain for the piece, I'll accept that role as admin and call for USEC_OFFICER based on sketchy "experience balance" justifications.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 18, 2014, 03:41:07 pm
Yay? I'm definitely not going to say no to jumping back on Team 3... I guess I'll wait for my teammates to contact me then? I have no idea what nation I'm playing or what the plan is, so... *shrug*
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 18, 2014, 03:56:01 pm
You're Marignon or Arco; which of the two TBD once you contact Margrave and tompliss:

Quote from: Margrave on May 18, 2014, 10:04:46 am
Shoot me and tompliss a PM when you get the chance, possible teammate, so we can finalize plans and sort out who is Marge or Arco.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 18, 2014, 03:57:48 pm
Wrong team. You're getting 3 and 4 confused again. 3 is Acropolis, T'ien C'hi and Margaveasfasdflaskdf. The Spanish Inquisition Guys. And we're already sorta in contact perhaps maybe. We'll see.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 19, 2014, 04:52:56 pm
Is it looking like we'll be able to get the last three pretenders submitted today?

[Edit: just Arco and BL left to go...]
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 20, 2014, 10:15:56 am
Sorry, not enough time for me to get it in yesterday. It'll be in today for sure though.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: gman8181 on May 20, 2014, 10:21:16 am
Bandar Log was supposedly going to be submitted by Monday. If it's not in by Wednesday, I'm going to say we just bring in Palazzo. I'm worried that this trend of being late will carry over into the actual game with submitting turns.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 11:59:47 am
Yeah, that worries me too, and I wholeheartedly support your proposed solution.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 20, 2014, 02:56:31 pm
Well, Acropolis is finally in the game. Yay?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: tompliss on May 20, 2014, 03:06:55 pm
Quote from: llamaserver
Team 3:
Marignon
T'ien Ch'i

Not yet assigned to a team:
Arcoscephale
... ???
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 03:13:29 pm
It's not automatic, tompliss. C'mon, guys, it hasn't even been 20 minutes.  :'(
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): submitting pretenders
Post by: tompliss on May 20, 2014, 03:15:17 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 03:13:29 pm
It's not automatic, tompliss. C'mon, guys, it hasn't even been 20 minutes.  :'(
Well, you did it too quickly the other times, I though it was automatic c:
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 03:21:51 pm
Turn one should be in yer inboxes. Good luck, and have fun!

Edit: 6/12 players started adjacent to a throne. So much for "good luck". To include Scelaria next to two. Um. Let me know if you feel that requires a restart.

Otherwise, our pretenders:
C'tis' Casu Fragizu, the Most High, Princess of the Rock, the Divine Shepherd, Patron of Artisans
Jotunheim's The Great and Powerful Trixie, the Old Old One, Lord of Insects, the Symbol of Unification, Lord of Inventions
Arco's Omodamos, the Earth Monster, the Vessel of Might, the Unshakable, Prince of Eloquence
Pythium's Adversary Jim, Father of Gods, He who is at the Center, August Lord, Lord of the Spheres, King of Terror, Creator of the Calendar
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on May 20, 2014, 05:55:59 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 03:21:51 pm
  • Ulm's Voldemort, the Hammer of The Great and Powerful Trixie

Whoops, that was not the dude I wanted to send in. Don't think there's too much of a difference, except for the name (which is obviously the most important part).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: lijacote on May 20, 2014, 06:13:29 pm
Hammer and anvil! How cool.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 06:41:09 pm
Breath and Fist isn't a bad pair, either.

Most Important Follower is totally phoned in, though. Even considered in isolation, that just seems uncreative. I can only assume it sounds a lot more impressive in the original Ermorian.

Casu Fragizu's disciples sound like they're squabbling: "I saw Her first!" "Yeah? Well, I'm the one who tells people about Her first!" "Mooooooooooom! Eagle's picking on Me!"
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on May 20, 2014, 06:48:59 pm
If "He who Saw God First" didn't shatter the minds of lesser beings in the original r'ylehian...

Because that's arguably worse than "Most Important Follower". At least that is something with a degree of substance. Moobah apparently just got there first and started bragging.

... as the ninjaedit alludes to.

Maybe it's not talking about actually seeing her first, but rather seeing substantial blackmail material first. It would make more sense, in that case. Less "I saw it first", more "I got dirt first, all you scrubs step off".
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 20, 2014, 07:03:11 pm
I dunno, aside from the very real sense in which it just sounds like Moobah is calling dibs, "He Who Saw God First" at least sounds auspicious. Most Important Follower is just so... descriptive.

(And thus began the first holy war on Urraparand, when the foul priests of Casu Fragizu slandered the great prophet Mars and called His Most Holy and Jacobean Title "descriptive"...)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Twiggie on May 21, 2014, 06:05:35 am
Was out yesterday so I missed all this. Are we doing a time limit on turns?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on May 21, 2014, 06:21:03 am
Yessss... 24 hours, at the moment. You can check the game page (http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound404) for when the next due time is.

Do note that Albright can extend turns and whatnot, but especially early we kinda' wanna' keep things skippy while there's not really much to do that takes time.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Twiggie on May 21, 2014, 07:05:57 am
Ok I shall be more vigilant re checking turns. Will do it as soon as I get home from work.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on May 21, 2014, 07:43:36 am
Well it's the first turn, so it's normal to take some time to process it (especially because we weren't warned before this one).
Is the delay 24 hours exactly, or 26-28 so sending the 2h early one day doesn't mess with the next day ?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on May 21, 2014, 08:13:23 am
Huh?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 21, 2014, 08:22:09 am
He basically asks whether quickhost is on or not. It's usually on by default, so the deadline is not set at any given time of day, but rather it's 24(or whatever) hours after the previous turn has been processed.

I always find it useful to set the hosting period to something a few hours longer than a simple multiplication of 24h, as it helps some people deal with the deadline drift - most people have jobs/other commitments, so there's always a set range of hours during which they can play; if you leave it at 24h, they may find that one day they can do their turn after work, while a few days later they might not be home before deadline.
Setting it to something like n*24+6h helps offset this problem.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on May 21, 2014, 08:24:44 am
Quote from: Il Palazzo on May 21, 2014, 08:22:09 am
most people have jobs/other commitments, so there's always a set range of hours during which they can play; if you leave it at 24h, they may find that one day they can do their turn after work, while a few days later they might not be home before deadline.
Setting it to something like n*24+6h helps offset this problem.
Exactly that.
But nothing about quickhost. I love quickhost. Let it on ! c:
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 21, 2014, 11:54:35 am
I agree with Il Palazzo entirely on this point and am pre-emptively setting hosting to 30h (as I'd kinda meant to do so anyway), so y'all get an extra 6h. Which is good, since we're at T-4h and still only have half the turns in...  :o
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on May 21, 2014, 12:13:27 pm
There was mote than a day left, you know ?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 21, 2014, 12:46:33 pm
Huh? That's, um, interesting. It was listed in admin options as 24h host time; maybe it defaulted to 48h for turn 1? Well, now there's six more hours on top of what there already was, so host time is 0217 GMT Friday.

(No one should feel obligated to use all that time, though.)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on May 22, 2014, 08:14:57 pm
Round 4.02 is looking for a replacement player to play LA Caelum on turn 74. It's probably the final war of the game. Five nations, 3v2. Lots of stuff going around. Good chance to see some lategame action, I guess?
If interested, inquire within:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134792.msg5303299
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on May 23, 2014, 01:23:08 am
Can we get a 6 hour extension? I probably need one for Sunday too due to not being home for 24 hours
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 23, 2014, 01:58:31 am
Pushed 6h to 2200 GMT.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on May 23, 2014, 08:35:59 pm
Ah, turn 2 and our first stale. This is going to be some game, I can tell already.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on May 23, 2014, 11:11:16 pm
So... we going to do something about that or is the game going on as usual?

It is sort of a big deal this early.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 23, 2014, 11:14:42 pm
Who is Marignon?

(Sorry I didn't catch it. I'm usually more paranoid about this, though of course I shouldn't have to be...)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on May 24, 2014, 12:07:12 pm
Hardly your fault for not catching the stale. Not really something anyone would be looking out for this early.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 24, 2014, 04:26:35 pm
Well, I'm not really willing to consider a rollback if I haven't been asked for one by the nation in question. If Marignon feels a rollback is necessary, I can delay the hosting and we can roll back (though given the potential for disaster with rollbacks, I'm not even vaguely enthusiastic about a rollback with 12 moving parts). But if they don't think one is - or don't even discuss it - I'm not going to unilaterally act on that.

Regardless, I will make a nervous tally in my ledger. A stale on turn 2 is disheartening.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on May 24, 2014, 06:14:28 pm
Even though turn 3 hasn't been done yet, I probably require a 24h extend for turn 4. Maybe I manage to do it Sunday eve but better safe than sorry.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 24, 2014, 10:49:06 pm
Turn 3 hosting delayed 12h so Asphodel didn't follow Marignon's lead.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 26, 2014, 10:45:21 am
Extended 12h for BL; it's not the 24 requested, but turn 3 also took an extra 8-12h; still, lemme know if you need more time.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on May 26, 2014, 12:12:27 pm
Thanks! I needed that :)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on May 29, 2014, 03:41:55 pm
Could I get a 36 hour extension? 24 might be enough but better safe than sorry. I'm in a busy period at the moment, sorry!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 30, 2014, 02:28:21 am
Pushed 36h per request. Try to find the time to get the turn done and turned in before that, but if ya can't, ya can't.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on May 30, 2014, 06:26:54 pm
I'm going to try to get a turn in tonight but I'm not seeing myself being able to do much strategic thinking the next couple days. Dealing with a big mold allergy reaction... thing. Last time this happened I wasn't able to do tons of active cognitive thought for nearly a week. Would there be a way for me to pass my turns to someone else for a little while? I might be preempting this and might not actually go zombie from this, but I'd rather have things planned out now than go blank and disappear tomorrow.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on May 30, 2014, 08:48:21 pm
If I'm not mistaken, the game admin has a feature that allows him to reassign an empire to another email address. He can probably reassign it back to you once you've recovered. (It's usually used when someone drops out of a game, to bring in a successor)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 30, 2014, 10:31:58 pm
Yes, if you can't keep playing, a sub can be set on a temporary or permanent basis. If we have a willing sub.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on May 30, 2014, 10:53:23 pm
Denzi told me he was going to try and get a friend to fill in for a few turns.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on May 31, 2014, 06:37:39 am
Denzi asked me to fill things in for him for a few turns while he's recovering, I said I would see what I could do. I just drop my email by E. Albright right?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on May 31, 2014, 09:22:01 am
I just realized that, this game being what this game is, I don't actually know whether Denzi is Jot or Asph. Lemme know and I'll make the change, though it will be a few hours as I'm off to look at strange "three-dimensional" objects for the rest of the day...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on May 31, 2014, 10:10:35 am
I'm Asphodel. I'm hoping to feel better tomorrow but I'm sure I'll be fine on monday. Thanks for understanding guys.

Edit: If there is anything I need to do specifically give me a PM on the forum
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 02, 2014, 06:06:11 pm
Alright, I'm feeling much better now. Will PM Albright to get asphodel sent back to me. Thanks everyone!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on June 02, 2014, 11:37:11 pm
No problem. Hope I managed to help out somewhat by subbing in.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 03, 2014, 06:55:07 pm
I was going to comment on how little forum chatter this game has generated in its first year (almost done!), but it occurred to me that this is like as not because it's a disciple game and we all have our teammates' ears to talk off...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 03, 2014, 08:21:00 pm
That's certainly the case on this end. It's nice to actually be able to discuss strategy in a straightforward way with people for a change.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 05, 2014, 07:30:57 pm
Still scratching my head about the magic site Chitterpalm Oasis. I don't even recruit Markata as Bandar very often. I'm struggling desperately to think of any reason a person would recruit unarmed Markata from a magic site except as a horrible joke. Good thing it at least gives a water gem as well otherwise I'd just be annoyed.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on June 05, 2014, 07:47:01 pm
I dunno. I could think of several situations to use them. They're size-1 grunts with pretty good defense and low gold costs. Throw on some buffs, fix their morale with Sermons of Courage/Rage of the Cornered Rat, cast Iron Bane and they can do some respectable damage. Probably best against things like giants and cavalry to leverage their size-1 compactness, but they're not 100% crap. Just... 75% crap. What did you expect for 5 gold?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on June 05, 2014, 10:56:19 pm
Doesn't flaming arrows and a strength buff actually make then vaguely vicious ranged critters? Five gold for sticks and stones isn't the worst deal in the game, methinks. Plus yeah, against large critters they can tear things down due to the stacked def penalties. Have to do something to fix the moral (which USEC mentions), but if you can get that you can kinda' wreck, say, Jotuns (hint hint).

They ablate like crazy, though, and obviously once you reach the point anything battlefield wide -- or even just large AoE -- starts hitting the ground they're worse than useless, but until then...

E: Also, we're about 3 hours out and three folks haven't submitted yet... maybe a short extension?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 05, 2014, 11:13:35 pm
Quote from: Frumple on June 05, 2014, 10:56:19 pm
E: Also, we're about 3 hours out and three folks haven't submitted yet... maybe a short extension?

Yeah sometimes I forget that I'm in a different time zone and don't have as much time as I think I do. Turn's in, sorry about the wait.

Edit: Huh, yeah rage of the cornered rat is an interesting spell. Never noticed it prior to just now but I might try it some time as Bandar. Still, moot point as Pythium. I'm unlikely to really do anything with them as this nation.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on June 05, 2014, 11:32:00 pm
Nah... nah. You and me -- we should set aside, say, 1k gold, then pick a province and smash 1k worth of lobo guards into 1k worth of markata and see what's left standing. Just for the hell of it. For extra lulz, I'll bet 5 water gems the markata win, if you're up for it.

Anyone else that has 5 gold troops could join in, I guess.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 05, 2014, 11:38:24 pm
Quote from: Frumple on June 05, 2014, 11:32:00 pm
Nah... nah. You and me -- we should set aside, say, 1k gold, then pick a province and smash 1k worth of lobo guards into 1k worth of markata and see what's left standing. Just for the hell of it.

Anyone else that has 5 gold troops could join in, I guess.

Haha. Then we can do it again after with both of us buffing them with Cheat Fate, Luck and Body Ethereal.  :P
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 06, 2014, 02:04:07 am
And by the way, even without buffs, they should be very cost effective against helmet-less ennemies : Stick & Stone does blunt damage, wich is doubled in case of head-shot. And as it's ranged, they're not penalized by the size, in term of chances to hit the head of, say, giants.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on June 06, 2014, 09:23:38 am
Flinging shit Sticks & Stones use the creature's strength to determine range, correct? So if you buffed them with Strength of the Giants suddenly you've got two shots per markata and could do some serious damage. Who cares about precision when you can blot out the sun?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 06, 2014, 09:32:48 am
Yeap, and yeap.

Also, enlarge may help them. I think str increase is a side effect.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 06, 2014, 03:42:26 pm
Marignon, status? We're right around 14h past original host time; is further extension needed?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 08, 2014, 09:59:13 pm
Bunch of stales, possibly due to the llamaserver being down. Would have mentioned something earlier, but i forgot what day it was and thought there was another 24 hours on the deadline.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 08, 2014, 10:14:08 pm
I was at a party all day and got back late but I'm pretty sure my turn still got in.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on June 08, 2014, 10:37:21 pm
Mm... how many of us actually staled? I had submitted my turn while the server was down, so far as I could tell, but it ended up getting through anyway before the next turn was processed. If there's several that lost time due to the server, should we be considering a rollback of some sort?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 08, 2014, 11:01:03 pm
Asphodel, Bandar Log, and Scelaria staled. I'd say that's enough to justify a rollback. So here's how this needs to work: first and foremost, everyone delete the current (turn 15) .trn file if they have it - and if they jumped the gun like me and already produced a .2h file, delete that too. Second, I'll initiate the rollback. At that point, it'll list everyone as needing to submit their turns. But. BUT. Asphodel, Bandar Log, and Scelaria are the only three who need to, and indeed, the other nine of us WILL NOT submit .2h files. The server has our old .2h files, and will use them, but we'll all see if any of us re-submit them. For the three that staled, it's honor system that you're not going to look at the new turn to optimize your performance, though we're early enough in the game that that's not much of an issue. Once our three stales have submitted, I'll force-host. This may take a while, because I'm going to be off the grid tomorrow. Don't expect this before tomorrow night. Once that happens, we'll all double-check that we deleted the turn 15 files we have right now - ESPECIALLY .2h files!!! - and download the new turn 15 .trn file. Then, and only then, we'll proceed like nothing happened.

If it seems like I'm making a big deal out of this, it's for a reason. Submitting files based on the current turn 15 after we roll back will do Very Bad Things. So we have to make very, very sure we get rid of them. As long as we do that, though, rolling back is smooth and easy.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Twiggie on June 09, 2014, 01:23:17 am
Sorry, I played but got distracted and didn't send. I can just send my existing 2h right? So I will do that when I get in from work in ~10h
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on June 09, 2014, 08:26:25 am
Sorry about that, I've missed the deadline regardless of the server outage. Completely forgot about it :P Thanks for the rollback!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on June 10, 2014, 07:46:41 am
When are we going to continue?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 10, 2014, 07:56:11 am
Well, we rollbacked from turn 15 to 14. The server tells us that we're now at turn 15 again, so the turn apparently have been processed correctly (the staling logs shows everybody good for turn 14). Anyway, I don't know about you, but I didn't receive my new turn 15 file, so I didn't play.

Have you guys received your turn 15 file (the one after the rollback) ?
If not, we should request a massive resend, so everybody sees that there is a new turn to play ^^
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 10, 2014, 08:06:23 am
I didn't receive mine, no. All you have to do is click "Request turn resend" on the bottom of the page.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on June 10, 2014, 08:08:32 am
Yeah, I still haven't received the new turn 15, as well.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on June 10, 2014, 12:25:54 pm
Could we get a 24h extension. I'm working until late tonight and might be too tired to do my turn before the deadline. Also might help others that have missed the email
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 10, 2014, 12:37:19 pm
Yeah, I did my turn only after requesting a resend. I've had that happen enough on normal turns (and Llamaserver normally doesn't hiccup like that in particular after a rollback) that I didn't think anything of it, but I probably should have. I'm going to resend to everyone who doesn't have a turn in already, and extend 24h.

If you see this and still don't have a turn, go to the bottom of the game page and request another resend (http://www.llamaserver.net/doAdminAction.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound404&action=resend) yourself.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Culise on June 10, 2014, 12:48:28 pm
Quote from: gman8181 on June 05, 2014, 07:30:57 pm
Still scratching my head about the magic site Chitterpalm Oasis. I don't even recruit Markata as Bandar very often. I'm struggling desperately to think of any reason a person would recruit unarmed Markata from a magic site except as a horrible joke. Good thing it at least gives a water gem as well otherwise I'd just be annoyed.
They make decent chaff - they're cheap and eminently expendable.  You throw them in front of your army, and let them soak up enemy evocations while your valuable troops get into range. 
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on June 10, 2014, 01:16:53 pm
Quote from: tompliss on June 10, 2014, 07:56:11 am
Anyway, I don't know about you, but I didn't receive my new turn 15 file, so I didn't play.

Have you guys received your turn 15 file (the one after the rollback) ?
If not, we should request a massive resend, so everybody sees that there is a new turn to play ^^

Quote
[other people saying they didn't receive a turn]

Quote from: E. Albright on June 10, 2014, 12:37:19 pm
Yeah, I did my turn only after requesting a resend. I've had that happen enough on normal turns (and Llamaserver normally doesn't hiccup like that in particular after a rollback) that I didn't think anything of it, but I probably should have.

I received mine at 5:39 PM (us eastern time) yesterday. Was I the only one who received theirs normally without requiring a resend?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Margrave on June 10, 2014, 01:31:09 pm
I got my turn normally.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on June 10, 2014, 03:30:49 pm
I didnt :p
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 11, 2014, 02:49:12 am
Thought I had already done this turn but seems I havn't. I've got like three or four turn 15s in my inbox... I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to this tonight either though. Is there any chance I could get an extension until around 4PM Mountain time? I think that is 10PM GMT isn't it? I'm sorry about this!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 11, 2014, 02:52:18 am
Quote from: Denzi on June 11, 2014, 02:49:12 am
I've got like three or four turn 15s in my inbox
Well, I sent a massive resend (to everyone who didn't send their 2h file), and E. Albright did it too. So if you had it normally, it's at least 3 turn files :D
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on June 11, 2014, 02:58:08 am
Plus the original one which got rolled back.

Also: So, Denzi, you must be Asphodel. If Margrave is Arcoscephale (I'm Agartha) then everyone whose nation's name started with an A got their email normally after the rollback...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 11, 2014, 03:04:03 am
The Triple A will win !
(except they're not in the same team)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 11, 2014, 03:53:11 am
Quote from: Denzi on June 11, 2014, 02:49:12 am
I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to this tonight either though. Is there any chance I could get an extension until around 4PM Mountain time? I think that is 10PM GMT isn't it? I'm sorry about this!

Unless I'm quite confused and you mean you need it pushed back to 2200GMT on Thursday, host time is already later than what you were asking for. Current host time is 9:38 PM MST on Wednesday. I'll still go ahead and knock it back three hours just in case to make sure you have time to respond if you need more time than that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on June 11, 2014, 09:50:41 am
Quote from: Shadowlord on June 11, 2014, 02:58:08 am
Also: So, Denzi, you must be Asphodel. If Margrave is Arcoscephale (I'm Agartha) then everyone whose nation's name started with an A got their email normally after the rollback...

Nope. I'm Arcoscephale and I don't remember getting my email normally.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on June 11, 2014, 10:07:39 pm
Well, there goes that theory then!  :P
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on June 12, 2014, 06:21:49 am
I'm pretty much can't complete my turn today, so can I get a 24h extension? That would be absolutely wonderful.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 12, 2014, 12:10:37 pm
Pushed to 0442 GMT Saturday.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 13, 2014, 08:31:15 pm
Seems like a lot of people need extensions. Maybe give another 12 hours per turn just to make less work for yourself?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 13, 2014, 10:19:02 pm
I'll push it up to 36h on the next turn and see how that goes.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 14, 2014, 02:37:34 am
Next turn is due in less than 1,5 hour, and Asphodel hasn't submitted his turn :(
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on June 14, 2014, 03:02:50 pm
Hey, heads up. I'm going to be disappearing from the forums for a while, and I have no idea how long. And since I'm also not going to be able to do Doms stuff... I don't know. I have no idea how long I'm going to be gone, so do whatever. Maybe find a temp sub or something, it's up to you. I honestly don't care too much.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 14, 2014, 06:02:14 pm
Quote from: tompliss on June 14, 2014, 02:37:34 am
Next turn is due in less than 1,5 hour, and Asphodel hasn't submitted his turn :(
Generally do my turns right before bed as I'm fairly busy when I'm working on a day, still got it in just fine though.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 14, 2014, 08:24:20 pm
Do we have any potential subs for Arco lurking around? I'll drop a delay on hosting while we sort this out...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 14, 2014, 08:35:44 pm
It's probably worth contacting Il Palazzo. Team 3 sure has had membership problems, eh?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 15, 2014, 02:40:08 am
I sent a message to most of the players that wanted to play here in the first place.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 15, 2014, 03:51:14 am
Yeah, alright I can jump in. Just send me a who is who and what's the situation and whatnot.

I'll forward my email to E.Albright.

edit: and my turn's in.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 15, 2014, 06:53:51 pm
Spies in my capital... I wouldn't advise that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 17, 2014, 12:25:01 pm
[...]
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 17, 2014, 07:17:28 pm
Dang, that is some nice events right there. Enjoy your growth while it lasts, moochers.

Spoiler: For those of you following along at home (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 19, 2014, 01:48:11 am
Do we want to explicitly identify who's who on every team? I'm perfectly happy not knowing (as knowing encourages metagaming), but the subject has been broached. If there's not a clear consensus, I can set the poll to let us vote on it.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 19, 2014, 01:53:28 am
I don't really mind (as most of us are in multiple games here, it could, even unintentionally, lead to unnecessary tensions).
but hey, I'm not my team's diplomat :)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 19, 2014, 02:07:22 am
It was I who asked.
To be frank, I was still a bit confused as to how this whole teams malarkey is supposed to work.
For a while, it seemed tempting from the role-playing(as well as inbox-spamming prevention) standpoint to have a system where only the gods communicate which each other diplomatically, relaying then the information to their disciples.
But now I'm beginning to see that it'd cut off 2/3rds of the players from actual diplomacy, and strain the player standing in for the god in diplomacy, as writing PMs can be time consuming.

I'm thinking now it's better to just treat the team as one unit, and send all correspondence to all players simultainously.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 19, 2014, 10:13:48 am
I've already revealed who's who on my team, and I bet if I combed the thread, I could identify 90% of the rest of you through hints.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 19, 2014, 10:26:56 am
And that's... 3 scouts and 2 spies in my capital caught in one turn. Those raptors totally paid for themselves when they caught the spies alone.

Edit: Oh and also, a gift from the Theurgs of Pythium...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Subscribe today for a mere 50 gold per month and get all the latest predictions on:
* MAJOR EVENTS
* TRAFFIC
* WEATHER

(Disclaimer: There are no guarantees that Pythium's Theurgs can realistically predict all incoming major events but we promise to give you the best service of any Middle Age Nation around!)
(Disclaimer 2: That was actually from last month, so let's say 2 months time not 3.)


Okay serious stuff now.

I'm going on a small 3 day trip. The place I'm staying should have wifi but on the off chance there is a problem, I'd appreciate if the host could just keep a watch on things should an extension be needed.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 19, 2014, 11:58:31 pm
Work suddenly shifted my schedule and I'm not really going to be able to do a turn until... I want to say Saturday sometime after 6PM Mountain time. Will literally be coming home at midnight tomorrow and heading to bed, then heading back to work until later. Could I get an extension until Saturday at near-midnight? I think that would be like 5 or 6AM GMT on Sunday?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 20, 2014, 02:26:32 am
Pushed 16h to 0802 GMT.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 21, 2014, 10:11:33 pm
Pushed a further 12h in deference to gman8181, per their implicit request above.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 21, 2014, 11:39:22 pm
Thanks. Turn's in.

Edit:

Interesting.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Twiggie on June 22, 2014, 04:57:11 pm
Can I get an extend to 6pm gmt / 7pm bst?

Having trouble with email attachments and I need to go to bed...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on June 22, 2014, 06:58:54 pm
Yeaaahhh, weather has kinda' made my situation a little unstable. Tornado touched down nearby, was without power for ~6 hours, storm's rolling back in, not sure how well things are going to go. Don't think I'll need an extension, but if an eye could be kept on things...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 22, 2014, 07:15:19 pm
I'll push it back 8h.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 25, 2014, 04:34:21 am
Got home from work and my net went wonky then down. I know the turn is due in an hour or so but I simply can not get the turn done tonight. Could I get a 12h delay so I can do my turn when I wake up?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on June 25, 2014, 06:49:33 am
It appears to be 7 hours away.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 25, 2014, 02:22:29 pm
A quick adjustment of the deadline is in order, else Denzi stalls. Failing that, let us prepare for a possible rollback - i.e., do not play the new turn.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 25, 2014, 02:45:23 pm
Literally just went to turn my turn in and the game cycled over to the new turn. Only have about an hour until work then I won't be home until around midnight mountain time.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 25, 2014, 04:00:54 pm
I feel your pain. I did the postponement last night w/o seeing your request for 12h, so I only pushed 8h onto the deadline... and then didn't remember to follow up until literally one minute before host time. Had I been in an area with better data connectivity that might still have been enough (the server did get the postponement before it hosted; unfortunately, the hosting appears to have already been queued at that point because it took me 2m to submit the request given the poor connection), but alas, it was not.

Admin takeaway lessons: 12h extensions are more reasonable than 8h extensions, or more generally, err on the side of caution; check early and check often; etc.

Rollback incoming. As Il Palazzo said, don't do anything with the current new turn, and only Denzi needs to submit the "old" turn once the rollback propagates.

Again, apologies to everyone for the inconvenience.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on June 25, 2014, 04:14:12 pm
Oh wow, my turn 25 was just sent seconds after the reroll. My turn 25 was rejected, but does it still contain my previous turn?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 25, 2014, 04:17:58 pm
Yeah, the server will still have the turn 24 you sent in before. Just make sure you get rid of the old turn 25 files before preparing a new turn. [/nag]

Edit: Did you send in a turn 24 afterwards? Because the server says you did. If you didn't, that's slightly worrisome, and you might want to resubmit your previous turn 24 .2h to be safe. This of course assumes you' made an innocent mistake, or the server is behaving oddly because of the timing of your turn 25 submission. If you're engaging in nefarious shenanigans, the target of the hypothetical shenanigans can compare the visible effects of your orders between the Turn 25 That Never Happened and the forthcoming turn 25, and we can break out disapproving glares, sanctions, etc. as appropriate.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 25, 2014, 09:44:13 pm
The patch broke StR, so we probably need to delay until a quickfix patch comes out to correct that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 26, 2014, 12:41:43 am
Sent my 2h in
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 26, 2014, 01:22:49 am
Dully noted. ATM, Llamaserver has no email access so no hosting is possible. Beyond that, I'm inclined to wait on a fix for StR, and probably will do so barring loud outcry from you lot.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on June 26, 2014, 02:31:20 am
I had resend my turn, no worries! ^^
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on June 26, 2014, 02:32:38 am
Fine with me Albright, just whenever you go to resume the game please toss out an admin message to all of us. I don't check this thread as often as I check my e-mail.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 26, 2014, 04:06:21 am
StR fix has been pushed out; I'll still wait a bit to give Llamaserver a chance to patch it...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 26, 2014, 04:43:24 pm
Patience pays off. 4.07b did not entirely fix the StR bug - it only did so for the first turn. Postponement continuing.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on June 27, 2014, 10:44:19 am
"This is just a reminder to submit your turn for Agartha in the game Bay12GamesRound404, since the turn'll be hosting in around 12 hours."

I thought we were on a rollback and weren't submitting turns?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on June 27, 2014, 12:16:32 pm
You'll always receive this message, as it is compeltely automated.
The patch also delayed the turn a bit, as we needed to wait for that 4.07c version.

Other than that, the weird thing is that Denzi doesn't seem to have sent his 2h file, and he's the only one that NEEDS to be sent ^^" oh yeah, right, I misread the player list :/
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 27, 2014, 12:16:56 pm
We are, and we aren't. The server doesn't care. Don't worry, we should be starting back up presently, as 4.07c came out 8h ago. I'll quickhost in ~4h just to be extra paranoid.

Also, Asphodel was our staler, and Asphodel has a turn in.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 28, 2014, 03:51:46 pm
Wow, look at this trooper.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 28, 2014, 05:35:34 pm
Can I get a 6h extension please?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 28, 2014, 07:25:29 pm
Ugh hydras just don't play nice with other people at all. Thought the hold and attack would offset collateral a bit more than it did.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 28, 2014, 08:29:37 pm
Hosting postponed to 1700-ish GMT.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 29, 2014, 04:27:34 am
Okay, so... in the short-term this is kinda honor-system since it's not easy for your opponents to spot, but... everyone who has a StR commander on repeat-build needs to de-select them as soon as they're finished and then re-select them. 4.07c fixed the StR bug as best it could, but it couldn't deal with current building queues. So if you just had an StR commander (on repeat) finish building this turn, yet when you look in your build queue you see that the next one is conveniently slated to be finished next round, too, you're this PSA's target audience. No exploiting this, please; cancel and restart recruitment for any outstanding StR commanders you're recruiting, and from there the game will work as intended.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on June 29, 2014, 05:36:20 pm
Throne of Gaia is driving me crazy. I just took back that province >:(.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on June 29, 2014, 05:43:46 pm
Yeeeeees, let the hate flow through you.

I read the event was bugged in 4.05, such that the attacks would continue forever instead of timing out in half a year or whatever. I wonder if the recent patches fixed that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 29, 2014, 07:55:49 pm
Yeah, they did. They put a hard (but variable) limit on its duration, instead of the prior "X% per turn to end" (where X was something between 5 and 20, but always miserable). It's now 4-6 turns of happy fun time with your forest friends.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on June 30, 2014, 02:39:00 pm
Pushed hosting 12h since we were at T-1h and had two nations outstanding.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 01, 2014, 12:16:09 am
Hosting due in 3h with Asphodel still outstanding; I'm pushing another 12h.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 01, 2014, 12:36:51 am
It's appreciated. Haven't heard from Denzi in the last day or so, but I'm sure he'll get the turn in when he can.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on July 01, 2014, 03:30:42 pm
Can I get a 24h extension? I might be able to do it 24 hours from now on, but just to be sure.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 01, 2014, 04:23:13 pm
Extended to ~20:00 GMT Thursday.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on July 01, 2014, 06:04:50 pm
The postponement does not appear to have worked, but neither do turn emails, etc.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on July 04, 2014, 08:05:13 am
Is Asphodel still alive? Did anyone hear from him?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 04, 2014, 01:15:03 pm
Speaking as the person imposing hosting postponements, the last sign of life I saw was the prior turn submission. These have been unsolicited extensions.

[E: I'm going to drop another 12h on it pre-emptively so I can ignore my phone for the rest of the day.]
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 05, 2014, 12:57:14 pm
Have Asphodel's teammates heard from Denzi?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 05, 2014, 01:35:05 pm
Not recently. I'll try to contact him after work today.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on July 06, 2014, 01:24:29 am
Sorry I have not been able to get online, only up right now because I have a rare moment before bed. Basically have been stuck in a work/sleep spiral and only just now remembered this... I should be able to submit a turn by 11pm mountain time tomorrow, the 6th that is. If you would rather find a sub I understand. Sorry for the delay.

If you see me on steam tomorrow Karlito feel free to nudge me for things.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 07, 2014, 11:41:46 pm
Gonna need a twelve hour extension, at least. The time to do a turn right is getting up there, and the Dwarf Fortress release kind of wrecked my planning time tonight. :P
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on July 08, 2014, 01:47:30 am
I was wondering why HTTP 500 errors were back. Now, I know c:
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on July 08, 2014, 04:17:27 am
Oh, so that's why the forums are falling over.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on July 08, 2014, 04:27:43 am
Well :
Quote
Most Online Today: 2427. Most Online Ever: 2427 (Today at 08:31:30)
Previous best was for the release of DF2012, and it caused the same crashes :)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 12, 2014, 03:10:40 pm
...and we're back to wondering after Asphodel...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on July 12, 2014, 07:49:01 pm
Sorry, submitting right now. Had another wonderous 'Oh you work until midnight tonight, then come in at 10AM tomorrow' days, so didn't have any time to even get a post in. Just a shower and sleep.

Edit: And it's in.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 12, 2014, 09:07:58 pm
Ahahaha! I think this was the best turn of Dominions I've had, ever.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:09:30 pm
 :-\

I've been stuck with low income provinces this entire game. I didn't realize looking at the map originally that this would happen but there's really only so much I can do with the income I've been given.  I mean honestly, I have growth 3 and order 3 and I was still constantly short on money. :(

Let's see; I had about 13 provinces before and of those, like 9 were either swamp, wasteland or the nice but situationally useless mountains.

Sigh, no point dwelling on it now.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on July 13, 2014, 12:16:00 pm
Have your allies not been supporting you (if they've been getting more income)?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 13, 2014, 12:18:36 pm
Quote from: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:09:30 pm
I mean honestly, I have growth 3 and order 3 and I was still constantly short on money. :(

You guys also have heat 3 and sloth 3, which almost completely negates the income bonus you get from order and growth.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:28:31 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on July 13, 2014, 12:16:00 pm
Have your allies not been supporting you (if they've been getting more income)?

I did get some monetary support from them but for the most part they didn't fare too much better in that regard.

Sceleria was more or less as poor as I was for the duration of the game and Bandar would be hard pressed to offer monetary support to two starved nations while simultaneously sending troops to fend off attacks.

Quote from: Karlito on July 13, 2014, 12:18:36 pm
Quote from: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:09:30 pm
I mean honestly, I have growth 3 and order 3 and I was still constantly short on money. :(

You guys also have heat 3 and sloth 3, which almost completely negates the income bonus you get from order and growth.

Eh, true but I think you'll find soon enough if you win the war that there really wasn't much to gain in regards to income provinces.

Edit: And I'm still pretty sure that would be a net positive modifier for income right?
Well yeah only a measly +3% though. I suppose that's pretty minuscule for a bonus.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 13, 2014, 12:34:20 pm
Quote from: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:28:31 pm
Edit: And I'm still pretty sure that would be a net positive modifier for income right?
Comes out to just +3% if you're a human nation. More in the winter maybe, if the heat ever goes down. I've actually got a few things to say about the effectiveness of your team's gold spending, but I'll save it for the AAR I'm putting together.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:43:17 pm
Quote from: Karlito on July 13, 2014, 12:34:20 pm
I've actually got a few things to say about the effectiveness of your team's gold spending, but I'll save it for the AAR I'm putting together.

=P Our team is all beginner/intermediate players, so there might have been some mistakes made. I think I spent almost all my money on legionnaires and theurgs though which is pretty typical for Pythium. Some gladiators too because I think they're good for defending around forts and some raptors/seraphs initially for patrol and research but I think I used them pretty effectively in combat.

Honestly, I think the last battle I had went decently all things considered. If I had a couple more mages, I think most of those minotaurs would have died from fatigue.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on July 14, 2014, 04:46:45 pm
Thanks for being so helpful with extensions. Saved me a couple times when I've been at work.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 14, 2014, 06:39:41 pm
Quote from: gman8181 on July 13, 2014, 12:09:30 pm
Let's see; I had about 13 provinces before and of those, like 9 were either swamp, wasteland or the nice but situationally useless mountains.

Well, if you really must have a silver lining, and are willing to scrap the bottom of the barrel to find it, at least all those wastelands and swamps aren't endlessly subjected to playdates with Jotunheim's buddies from the Throne of Gaia...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on July 14, 2014, 06:41:49 pm
Actually....
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 14, 2014, 06:54:12 pm
If I could go back and unclaim that Throne I totally would.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on July 14, 2014, 09:48:33 pm
If I could take off and nuke that throne from orbit I totally would. (Even if it is laying siege to our enemies' forts and cutting their empire in half for us)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 16, 2014, 07:19:31 pm
Huh, I didn't realize until today that when you lose control of a province you also lose control of the Throne in that province.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on July 23, 2014, 01:05:00 pm
Am I the only one thinking it's funyn that the people who live in swamp are healthy ? :/
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on July 23, 2014, 05:28:30 pm
The secret is swamp milk, made from olms and chilled in the void between realities. It makes the most amazing cheese in the world.

Side effects may include disease, insanity, ossification of flesh, spontaneous cerebral consumption, uncomfortable bleeding, remote lobotomy, injury, sleeplessness, dysentery, chlamydia, and death. Please consult the definitely not an illithid behind the curtain before use.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 25, 2014, 07:29:23 am
Are we good with 36h turns? I know most of us seem to be getting them in okay, but at the same time, it's been a while since we've had a turn I haven't extended at least a few hours, and most have been 12-24h. I'd prefer not to stretch the turns beyond 36h, but I'd also prefer to not need to keep quite so close an eye on deadlines...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on July 25, 2014, 08:13:54 am
36 hours is good, as it keeps the turn close to a simple day, with a margin big enough for players who can't send a turn one particular day :D
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on July 25, 2014, 08:58:51 am
The effictiveness of assassinations is absurd, compared to the effort required to counter them.

oh, and 36 is a-ok.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 25, 2014, 03:46:03 pm
So, does anyone know the technical details of how globals work in a disciple game? Like I would expect the just enacted Gift of Health to affect all the allied nations because they share the same dominion (is this the case?), but if I (just for example) cast Mechanical Militia, would Jotunheim and Asphodel's provinces also get the effect?

EDIT:
Spoiler: Also (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 25, 2014, 06:21:01 pm
That's odd. I'd expect Mechanical Militia to - GoH benefits everyone, as does Riches From Beneath, Nature's Bounty, the Forge - but a quick test with Debug Mod shows it doesn't. Only the nation casting MM gets the effect. Likewise Fata Morgana. But Haunted Woods and Guardians of the Deep? Those work fine for everyone. I get the idea it may be a mechanical thing where FM and MM are adding to the national PD roster, whereas GotD just spawns a certain (dom-based?) number of units per battle, and of course HW is purely reactive. Gemgens only benefit the caster. Strands of Arcane Power only benefit the caster, though like other attack spells they at least don't hurt teammates. So yeah, it's kinda inconsistent, but most of the time the whole team gets the effect.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on July 28, 2014, 03:34:52 am
Quote from: Changelog
2014-07-27 23:55:41 +0200
Fata morgana affects team mates too
Fata morgana PD only works in friendly dominion
Mechanical Militia and Guardinas of the Deep affects team mates too

So, next patch, anyway...


BL, status? We're right around 20h past initial host time...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on July 29, 2014, 12:28:07 am
I know you're doing it most turns anyway, but I'll almost certainly need a 4-6 hour bump on this one. Didn't finish it tonight, and I'll be asleep/working until right up to the deadline.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on July 30, 2014, 08:23:58 am
Kaesar dead from retreating into enemy territory... poor TC. Poor old lady. RIP hagman of the delicious brains ;_;7
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on July 30, 2014, 08:41:48 am
Oh ? :(  (I didn't see the turn yet, I'm at work)
Well, I love the previous turn, where he killed 6 or 7 assassins in a row, using only 2 gems (which were unnecessary). :/
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 01, 2014, 05:33:36 pm
BL, status? I'm pushing another 12h in the mean time...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on August 02, 2014, 03:58:27 am
Oh sorry i can do it in about 2.5h. Ive been completely sucked in by dota2 and The sims 2 :p
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on August 02, 2014, 10:52:15 am
I probably won't have easy access to the Internet this weekend, so I might not do the turn until Monday.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 02, 2014, 04:57:08 pm
I'll go ahead and kick it back 24h in anticipation of that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on August 06, 2014, 09:22:32 pm
Hey, has anyone else had success casting scrying spells? I'm getting the success messages alright, but haven't generated any scouting information. I've done it before... I dunno, feebleminded commanders can't use stone spheres?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 07, 2014, 01:47:00 am
FWIW, per JK, we're "a couple of days or a week" from a new patch, which amongst other things promises to finally put an end to the ongoing consequences of Karlito's Folly.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on August 07, 2014, 07:58:52 am
Awww... I've kind of grown fond of it. Makes for an interesting environment.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 07, 2014, 08:16:59 am
The 13th nation certainly has made this game unique.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on August 07, 2014, 10:33:48 am
Hey guys, sorry for the delay but I won't be able to do a turn for the next 24h. If you could give me a 40h extension, that'd be great. If I'm still alive that is :p
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on August 08, 2014, 01:38:24 am
Alright, sorry for the abrupt warning but I'm going to be camping on Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday. I'll be trying to fit a turn in when I stop at home this morning but depending on how late it is I might not have time
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 08, 2014, 09:02:48 pm
Extension granted through Sunday night; though I'm not thrilled about week-long turns, we haven't been keeping a break-neck pace since the start, or even before it. Which again, doesn't thrill me, and my lenience and desire to avoid stales at all costs are to blame.

If I may take off my wet noodle admin hat for a moment, and put on my exasperated admin hat, getting turns done earlier makes it less likely things will come up at the last minute.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 09, 2014, 07:20:05 pm
I'm going on a trip from Monday - Friday. Should have internet at the places I'm staying so it's not a big deal but there will be several lengthy commutes involved where I might not be able to submit turns.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 09, 2014, 11:10:46 pm
Try to give me a heads-up if you know in advance you'll miss a deadline, but I don't anticipate being unable to drop extensions w/o prompting.

(Having said that, it would be good if we could knock out the next 10 turns or so w/o extensions -there's a lot of wars in late stages, and as an act of basic human kindness to the players on the losing side, it would be far better if we didn't drag those out any more than we already have.)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 11, 2014, 05:39:39 am
Patch is up. Don't know when Llamaserver is going to update, though, or if there could be major instability issues lurking in the wings. E.g., I've already seen some talk of crashes from Transform.

[Edit: OMG, you can transform into high-MR, 2-enc full-slot 106hp Giant Sorcerers? 66hp Giant Shaman? Yeti Shaman? Forest Troll Seitheberenders? Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

(You can get 66hp 3-hand-2-head-1-misc-rest-normal Ettin, too, but I wanna say you used to be able to get those, and that result seems really rare in any case.)

I mean, the other things are super-nifty - especially the odd-but-interesting bit where there seems to be some terrain dependency (beyond just land/sea, I mean) in Transform outcomes  - but the powergamer in me is drooling over those.]

[Edit2: and yeah, Transform is kinda något gick fely.]

[Edit3: and hmm, Scepter of Dragons is... interesting. Huh. +1 Dragon Master. Huh.]
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on August 11, 2014, 07:24:37 am
Quote from: E. Albright on August 11, 2014, 05:39:39 am
Edit2: and yeah, Transform is kinda något gick fely.
I've seen Ohlmann testing it. There are some nice potential results, but some bugs, too. I don't know whether llama will put it on his server right now, with all the crash potential ...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 11, 2014, 07:31:29 am
Aye, I'm kinda testing it too, mostly because I've gone agog over Transform, and the crashes keep happening in a predictable (albeit confusing and not evidently consistent) manner, so playing with Transform almost necessitates trying to isolate why it's breaking.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 11, 2014, 11:16:38 am
I'm pushing hosting 36h to give Llamaserver a chance to update. If you're one of the three who hasn't submitted their turn, it's my understanding that if you submit before patching Llamaserver will use your .trn if it quickhosts, and will consider it when deciding to quickhost. So if all three of you submit 4.07 turns prior to the new host time, we'll immediately quickhost. If any of you submit 4.10 turns, or someone who's already submitted a turn resubmits after patching, quickhosting will not happen unless LS updates before the host deadline.

As a general aside, don't cast Transform. Nagot gick fel happens a lot after transformations, sometimes. There'll probably be another patch fixing that soon.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on August 11, 2014, 12:06:01 pm
I sent a revised turn 5 hours ago, and I think Steam had just autopatched before I launched Dom4 (it says 6:40 AM and I sent the 2h at 7:07 am). The llamaserver didn't email me back to acknowledge receipt of the 2h file, I assume either because it didn't recognize the version or because it's being updated.

Edit: It sent two acknowledgements a couple hours after I posted.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 13, 2014, 01:24:51 am
Denzi, status on Asphodel? We're 8h from the current host time, and I'm really not looking to push it back any further than the around-a-week that it's already been...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on August 13, 2014, 02:14:02 am
Sorry, just remembered this thing. Not going to be able to really continue on in any reliable sense. That Camping trip turned into a broken jaw on the first evening. Right now I'm lucky I am feeling well enough to make a post, but I don't think I could concentrate long enough to do a turn. I'm sorry.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 13, 2014, 02:19:12 am
I'll drop another 24h delay while we try to figure out what to do, then. Are we going to need to find a sub, and if so, do we have any [ossible ones skulking around?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Denzi on August 13, 2014, 02:19:46 am
Probably. Cag might take over, I'll try to contact him. Sorry about this guys.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on August 13, 2014, 03:51:41 am
I'll take over for Denzi, but I won't be able to complete a turn until at least later tonight (this post is posted on 10am, basically GMT time). Sorry to hear about the broken jaw, hope you get better soon.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 13, 2014, 09:18:51 pm
Ugh. I dont have the map downloaded on my laptop and the link won't let me download the file anymore.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on August 13, 2014, 09:27:48 pm
I just zipped up the map and tga, and tossed it into my dropbox folder for you: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26452959/urapparand-with-caves-fixed-starts.zip
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 13, 2014, 10:08:02 pm
Thanks I appreciate it.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 15, 2014, 12:03:41 pm
It's still 5h before the current hosting deadline with just Margrave still out, but I'm pushing it back 24h. Not sure how much 'net access I'm gonna have over the next day...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 16, 2014, 04:32:56 pm
Thanks for subbing in for Arco, Il Palazzo. I halfway wanna apologize for the assassins, and I halfway wanna make petulant comments about them being payback for the Ninja Turtles in 3.15. Regardless, again, thanks for helming Arco for half the game.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Il Palazzo on August 16, 2014, 06:13:30 pm
No problemo. I apologise for failing to pose more of a threat to your three-headed steamroller.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on August 16, 2014, 06:17:30 pm
Weel, let's say you weren't really helped, with that team-mate...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on August 17, 2014, 11:44:30 am
This seems to happen very often when people type my name for the first time, but my name in the OP is spelled wrong. Doesn't quite matter at the moment, but yeah.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 18, 2014, 10:07:39 am
Mari? BL? Status?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Margrave on August 18, 2014, 06:21:52 pm
I apologize for the delays, my internet has been giving me TREMENDOUS shit and I have only just really fixed it.

Hopefully forever. Regardless I imagine you soon won't have to kick around ol' Margie for too much longer.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 19, 2014, 06:59:29 am
[E] Shadowgandor? We're right around 50h past the original hosting deadline... should we expect your turn?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on August 19, 2014, 08:10:53 am
I thought Shadowgandor was BL...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 19, 2014, 08:28:48 am
Quote from: Karlito on August 19, 2014, 08:10:53 am
I thought Shadowgandor was BL...

Yep. Twiggie was Sceleria and Shadow is BL.

Honestly my team is pretty much dead anyway. I'm pretty sure he just threw all his mages into that attack and lost most of them. So... yeah.

I'll keep playing just because I still have a decent amount of mages but I honestly stopped talking with my team a while back.

Maybe just send me his turn and I'll set Bandar AI.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowgandor on August 19, 2014, 08:33:07 am
Sorry I've missed the turn email! Been really busy and barely at home lately. Setting me to AI is fine, although I could do it myself tomorrow.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 19, 2014, 08:42:42 am
I'll go ahead and set BL to gman8181.

Gman, I thought I had your email buried in my inbox, but I can't find it, so if you could just send me it I'll go ahead and get this taken care of...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 19, 2014, 08:56:39 am
Sent you it. I'll take care of things in approximately 10 hours from now when I have access to my Dominions computer.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 19, 2014, 09:15:58 am
Done. I'll stick an extra 6h extension on to make sure we're not cutting things too close.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 19, 2014, 08:34:57 pm
Alright, I set Bandar to AI but I'll keep playing Pythium.

Honestly I'd rather have an AI teammate for like 3 turns than have to play out Bandar's dying last breath in addition to Pythium's so we'll see how this goes.

Edit: Err maybe I didn't. Weird, I got new turn files where neither one shows any of my actions having been done... Well whatever. I'm tired, I'll figure it out tomorrow.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on August 19, 2014, 10:19:53 pm
Dat arena fight. More than a little drawn out, but kinda' amazing.

E: Ah, in other news, I'm getting wisdom teeth pulled day after tomorrow -- 21st. Having never gone through the process before, but having somewhat of a history of not reacting too well to painkillers, I have no idea how lucid I'm going to be afterwards. M'hoping I'll be cogent enough to deal, but if not, it might worth it for someone to puppet me for a turn or so. I'd say extend if it's coming up on the deadline and it looks like I'm not going to make it, but I'd kinda' rather keep things jumping as much as possible...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on August 19, 2014, 10:49:16 pm
I'm sure someone else will be late with their turn as well. :V
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 20, 2014, 10:27:03 am
Oh dang. The reason the orders didn't go through is because of the "CD Key Violation". It thinks it's two different people playing with my bought copy of the game instead of just one person playing multiple nations :P.

I guess I just need someone else who's not currently playing to turn them AI ::).

Sorry about this, I completely forgot that was a possibility. Maybe shadowgandor can come back just for a turn haha...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on August 20, 2014, 10:37:29 am
The admin of the game on llamaserver shoould be able to turn him into AI, I think
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on August 20, 2014, 10:52:23 am
Alright, I'd prefer getting his yummy gems first for my final solo stand but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few :P.

In other words, that works for me if it keeps the game moving faster.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 20, 2014, 12:04:04 pm
Ha, ha, tompliss. Spoken like someone who's never clicked on the "Set a player to AI" admin option on Llamaserver. It can't be done automatically; someone has to go in and set it manually. Shadowgandor would be the best candidate, obviously, but any uninvolved party can do it. So pretty much I need a disinterested volunteer.

Gman, I regret to inform you that even if you could submit the turn, the AI would start playing that turn and ignore your attempts to plunder its riches. ;) :P
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 20, 2014, 04:40:23 pm
Shadowgandor has graciously agreed to lobotomize Bandar Log in around 24h. An extension of that length has therefore been granted, but I strongly encourage everyone to get their turns in sooner.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on August 21, 2014, 06:51:50 pm
Llamaserver is not acknowledging receipt of my turn; I first sent it over last night, and then twice more this afternoon. I've had it lag out on me before, so hopefully it'll fix itself eventually.

Further, I'm going to be out-of-town for the weekend, but will probably have internet access, though I'll likely be swimming in the ocean rather than constantly checking my email or the forums.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on August 21, 2014, 07:10:32 pm
Here's some info about the server:
Quote from: llamabeast
Hi all, I am on holiday this week in Cornwall, a part of England where there is virtually no phone reception at all. I've just driven to a relatively big town to check emails and it seems that the llamaserver is down (as always happens when I go away!). My best guess is that one of my housemates accidentally unplugged it (I haven't completed the transfer to a hosted server yet).
I've texted my most reliable housemate to ask him to turn it back on, so hopefully service will be resumed this evening when he gets back from work. If not it will be Saturday, when I get back to Cambridge.

Many apologies to everyone for this! Also if someone could please repost this to Desura that would be much appreciated.
source (http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=2381)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 24, 2014, 04:23:45 pm
FYI, all turns are in - we're just waiting for Llamaserver to get caught up on processing.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on August 25, 2014, 08:41:19 pm
Hmmm, looks like the replay bug is alive and well in our game.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on August 25, 2014, 08:51:36 pm
Replay bug?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on August 25, 2014, 08:56:27 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on August 25, 2014, 08:51:36 pm
Replay bug?

The battle result as shown in the message screen and as plays out in the video replay differ from each other. It happens sometimes, it's existed for a long time and during the development of the series specific instances of it have been fixed. People generally notice it if they win or lose a fight they shouldn't have, but it can be more subtle.

The result shown in the message screen is the 'true' result, just so you know.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 27, 2014, 11:54:42 am
Margrave, status?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Margrave on August 27, 2014, 01:12:56 pm
Apologies, due to tiredness or general stupidity I sent in the .trn file and never bothered to check afterward. I'll send it once I get home.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on August 28, 2014, 04:37:49 pm
Just a heads up, I'm heading on a plane starting tomorrow, and prolly won't be available for a 24 hours. I have sent in my current turn, but if things turn hairy, and I don't get a turn in for next, that's the reason.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 28, 2014, 05:18:10 pm
Duly noted. I'll delay next turn a bit w/o question (or grumbling under my breath) if you're still outstanding come host-time.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on August 30, 2014, 03:46:08 am
Yeah, might need an extention. I want to consult with my team members before making any moves, and I spent the last 24 hours in transit more or less.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on August 30, 2014, 12:19:29 pm
I'll drop 24h onto the host-time.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Ragnoff on August 31, 2014, 09:23:24 am
Sub needed for TC in 4.07 if anyone is interested. I am another player in the game (Ulm)

Holds important territory and has good research, turtled much of the game. Not a dominate power but should be something there to play with. Sitting on the only lvl 3 throne, so important even if it would be hard to win.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Margrave on September 05, 2014, 08:14:27 pm
And not with a bang, but a whimper does Marge go out.

I am immensely disappointed that they didn't cast flaming arrows and delayed curse of stones so late.
Would it have mattered? No.

Going AI to everyones relief I'm sure. Good luck teams.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 09:11:45 pm
I was wondering how long it would take before your troops charged out of the fort in desperation. A few changes to your orders and you could've done a lot more damage. As it is, you mainly killed only summons that I can replace in a single turn at negligible cost. I have to say, I was expecting a lot more fireworks, more powerful spells. Of course, considering everyone was starving to death in your castle, except, apparently, Innocent, one can't expect too much out of them, I suppose.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 05, 2014, 09:53:58 pm
Thanks for playing, Margrave. You may have ended with a whimper, but you were a terrifying, writhing mass of crossbows and fireballs for most of the game.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Margrave on September 06, 2014, 09:01:49 am
Quote from: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 09:11:45 pm
I was wondering how long it would take before your troops charged out of the fort in desperation. A few changes to your orders and you could've done a lot more damage. As it is, you mainly killed only summons that I can replace in a single turn at negligible cost. I have to say, I was expecting a lot more fireworks, more powerful spells. Of course, considering everyone was starving to death in your castle, except, apparently, Innocent, one can't expect too much out of them, I suppose.

The morale hit due to starvation was what ended it so quickly, the knights barely got a chance to fight and the mages only cast a few rounds of spells before everybody got the fuck out of there.

That and I used to have double that on the field but I had no money to pay for them, so they slowly drained away. Aaaand I think I may have left them in their "defend castle" layout. Oops.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on September 06, 2014, 11:34:50 am
Quote from: Margrave on September 06, 2014, 09:01:49 am
That and I used to have double that on the field but I had no money to pay for them, so they slowly drained away.

Sorry about that, but I didn't see any reason to actually charge your castle early in the siege and give you a fair fight. No need to take unnecessary losses, after all.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 06, 2014, 01:52:59 pm
Quote from: Margrave on September 06, 2014, 09:01:49 am
The morale hit due to starvation was what ended it so quickly, the knights barely got a chance to fight and the mages only cast a few rounds of spells before everybody got the fuck out of there.

Your lumber construct actually saw to it that the Knights and the last squad of crossbows fought on after the general rout - I think the construct outlasted the knights, so they at least got themselves a proper last stand.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 08, 2014, 08:35:31 pm
Gman, you magnificent bastard. One of my scouts eats two mind hunts and dies and suddenly forge is gone. Beautiful. I tip my shiny turtleshell hat to you.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on September 08, 2014, 08:44:27 pm
Haha, gotta do something with that rather nice capital astral gem income and recruitable S4 mages.

At any rate I suppose it's just me poking the giant outside my door by this point. That particular poke just happened to hit where it hurt. :P
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on September 09, 2014, 03:08:46 pm
Just dropping this in here for now. Just in case, a five hour extension would be nice. I planned to finish and submit my turn today, but ended up busy.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 09, 2014, 03:47:24 pm
Hosting pushed 6h.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 10, 2014, 10:32:19 am
* Moobah plays a dirge on the coral bagpipes for the fallen T'ien Ch'i.

Cheers to tompliss, yeah. You were so prickly we ended up domkilling you instead of trying to dig you out.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: tompliss on September 10, 2014, 10:33:41 am
I found out you were domkilling me too late : I have been recruiting H2 priests only for the last 6 months D:
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 11, 2014, 09:21:12 pm
Karlito, it didn't look like you were gonna make it so I gave you another 12. Will that be enough?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 11, 2014, 10:23:57 pm
Well yes, since the turn's processed by now. Thanks for watching out as always.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on September 11, 2014, 10:39:45 pm
Well it was swell but I'm done. Going AI. (Eh one more province, forget the AI, I'll watch it go)

See you all in another match hopefully :D.

Someone post here if you make one (or see one) that way I know to join ;).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 12, 2014, 12:23:39 am
Well, now that we're effectively down to 2 "players", I'll try and share some public knowledge stuff in the thread (like big battles, once we get some). Might start posting entries from my partly-written AAR as well. Starts on turn 22 and details the conquest of Sceleria, and such.

But first off, what are you even trying to do here, R'lyeh?
(http://i.imgur.com/RZEbvZN.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/EadqgLx.png)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 12, 2014, 12:56:40 am
Giving some of my poor, overworked starspawn a vacation.

E: Also, before I forget, I'm getting more teeth yanked out come monday morning. As before, I may be in a bit of a drug/pain/blood addled haze for a day or three afterwards, so keeping an eye on R'yleh's submissions and the deadline would be appreciated. Hopefully won't come to an extension, but when you're fairly copiously bleeding out the gum line some things become somewhat less of a priority.

E2: And a hearty salute to Pythium and company. Y'all held out quite long against pretty rough odds.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 13, 2014, 07:10:20 pm
Heh, so I've been brainstorming ways to deal with squids, but so far all I've come up with is "be Agartha and have Marble Oracles".
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 13, 2014, 08:37:17 pm
Honestly, it's one of the best solutions out there.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 13, 2014, 08:38:23 pm
Certainly wouldn't hurt, anyway. Could offer quite a number of other suggestions, but, uh. Not during the game :V
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on September 14, 2014, 02:00:00 pm
I hate asking for another one, but it looks like I might need a 12 hour extension. I always seem to run into issues balancing my life around weekends.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: gman8181 on September 14, 2014, 02:58:48 pm
Aww that priest name was hurtful :(.

Don't be mad you paid the price for killing me.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 16, 2014, 01:00:36 am
I like another 24 hours for the turn please. Got an exam Wednesday morning, so I don't really have time to lay plans to avert my downfall.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 17, 2014, 01:13:35 pm
Sorry, but could I get another 6 hours? Can't get to it until the evening.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 19, 2014, 03:10:51 pm
Hrm. Just noticed we're three hours out from Ulm stalling. Maybe a short push back, just in case?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 19, 2014, 03:24:23 pm
Yeah, I'm about to drop another 12h on it. Karlito, will that be enough, or has something come up that'll require a third extension?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 19, 2014, 08:30:41 pm
Oh, what a week! Thanks for the extensions, I had some computer problems last night.

EDIT: Blah, should have just sent the thing in two days ago when I did my initial pass on the orders, since I made no changes just now.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on September 19, 2014, 09:55:15 pm
If you sent it in, the server doesn't appear to have noticed.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 19, 2014, 10:42:27 pm
Quote from: Karlito on September 19, 2014, 08:30:41 pm
Oh, what a week!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: chaoticag on September 20, 2014, 12:56:02 pm
Getting caught up in homework and birthdays and nephews and nieces this weekend. Can I have an extra six hours? It gives me time to work on and submit my turn tomorrow night.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 20, 2014, 04:57:34 pm
Yeah, no worries.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on September 20, 2014, 08:08:35 pm
I'm not going to have a chance to actually finish my turn until sometime tomorrow either, for that matter.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: E. Albright on September 20, 2014, 11:11:17 pm
I went ahead and pushed it back to ~midnight EST.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 21, 2014, 09:18:47 pm
Well, uh.

That was sudden. More thoughts later, but... congrats, folks? Good show, everyone.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 09:27:33 pm
Well, we knew we were claiming the thrones we were holding, and winning Real Soon Now if nobody stopped us, but we kept planning as if we weren't going to win, just in case.

For me, I half-expected our foes would suddenly spring a secret plan to liberate the thrones just in the nick of time.

(And yet I had sent a Marble Oracle towards Ulm's forts and armies with no clearer strategic goal than "scare the bejeezus out of them," and evidently was so successful that Ulm focused all his attention on killing said Marble Oracle by kitting out a teleporting dual-hammer-wielding murder-angel, utterly neglecting the thrones that we were taking or had already taken, by all appearances)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Frumple on September 21, 2014, 09:35:38 pm
To my vague embarrassment, I hadn't even connected the dots that we were actively sitting on enough thrones to win. I thought we were going to have to pry another one or two out to be able to claim an ascension victory :-[
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 09:49:06 pm
Quote from: Frumple on September 21, 2014, 09:35:38 pm
To my vague embarrassment, I hadn't even connected the dots that we were actively sitting on enough thrones to win. I thought we were going to have to pry another one or two out to be able to claim an ascension victory :-[
Me neither, heh. Losing the forest for the trees I guess. I thought I was doing pretty well to had retaken the thrones that I did. I was sort of looking forward to an endless end-game slog.

Quote from: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 09:27:33 pm
Ulm focused all his attention on killing said Marble Oracle by kitting out a teleporting dual-hammer-wielding murder-angel, utterly neglecting the thrones that we were taking or had already taken, by all appearances)
I'd been sitting on that guy for a few turns actually, as soon as that oracle appeared the first time. Swapping out the boots took five seconds, and not anything approaching all my attention.

But dang, those score graphs. We pretty apparently lost before we even started to fight.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): game in progress
Post by: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:02:08 pm
We used some magical spying spells to look at your score graphs before we went to war, too. When you cast the const-7 Forge spell is about when I massively accelerated my research to catch up to you in construction, and as soon as I hit const-8, I made an artifact every turn until the end of the game. (Also made a bunch of research boosting items for Frumple to help him with his research too, at the same time I was speeding up mine)

(The score graphs saying you still had more research than us overall, which is interesting)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 21, 2014, 10:06:36 pm
Aye, well played, all.  :)

I didn't realize victory was in our grasp until three turns ago, at which point I recruited the Royal Odors and moved them onto our "Toxic Six" throne trio (Abundance (+2 Sloth, 3pts), Misfortune (+1 Mis, 2pts), and Autumn (+1 Death, 1pt)). We'd had those three for 20-50 turns, but we were holding out to claim them until the eleventh hour for fairly obvious reasons.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:08:24 pm
Quote from: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 09:49:06 pm
I'd been sitting on that guy for a few turns actually, as soon as that oracle appeared the first time. Swapping out the boots took five seconds, and not anything approaching all my attention.

Ah, well, that's better then. Hiding from the artillery until the MO got closer?

BTW, did you lack the casters or research needed to make golems? Those would've been immune to both VoTD and mind hunt.

Asphodel, I believe, had the silver throne, which had astral mages, and one of you three held the golden throne until we took it, which also did as well. (I had the third one in the group - taken from Mari - and mine were crafting and researching for the most part, since I didn't need golems since you hadn't engaged my MOs with guardians)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 21, 2014, 10:14:12 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:02:08 pm
We used some magical spying spells to look at your score graphs before we went to war, too.
Honestly, we were kinda' terrified when we did those akashic record casts... or at least I was. Especially in the face of forge being up,* the graphs weren't leaning nearly as strongly in our favor. We were expecting some kind of unholy horde of discount cost, full-kit SCs/thugs rampaging around our everything. Gods know a skratti (or three) with a waterbreathing ring and some middling kit would have made R'yleh's life considerably more miserable.

*That lich getting sniped was probably the biggest play of our collective conflict, imo, even if it didn't directly involve us though it's worth noting there was something like five Vengeances of the Dead and more mindhunts dropping on the province the turn it died, beyond the ones that gman cast >_> also, yes, boibe was me. Every time :3
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 10:19:17 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:08:24 pm
Ah, well, that's better then. Hiding from the artillery until the MO got closer?
If you continued to chase my priests around those swamps, you would have run into him. Wasn't going to show my hand after the target disappeared.

Quote
BTW, did you lack the casters or research needed to make golems? Those would've been immune to both VoTD and mind hunt.
Gem income. My research was out the wazoo as you saw (hundred+ smiths, dozens of skull mentors), and I could boost to pretty much anything (ring of wizardry, staff of elemental mastery, every other relevant booster). I held the Silver Throne for much of the early game, so I had plenty of those guys. If I had C'tis gem income (like, holy shit, how is it that high?), things would have been different.

Golems also have the problem of magic duel vulnerability, and after that mindhunt blast wiped out Thuella, I was mainly focued on killing the squid armies. Had a massive underwater counter offensive (probably doomed to failure) ready to fire off in a turn or two.


Exposing my Disciple and losing forge was a really stupid move. I guess I grew complacent in the face of victory (over Team 2).
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 21, 2014, 10:28:30 pm
I was scared by the graphs Akashic Record showed us. The turn after we saw them I think I blew 120d on Skull Mentors - which was something like 2/3s or 3/4s our team's Death reserves. Our Dominion lead was impressive (Throne of the Pantokrator OP pls nurf), but I kept waiting for the inevitable moment when Jotulmdel did what we'd been dreading from pretty much right after the draft ended, which is to say start putting a 100g temple in every single Jotulmdel province on the map via the (relinquish)/(build+relinquish) two-turn two-step.

Karlito: Magic Duel doesn't effect (and can't be cast by) Mindless units as of Dom4.

As for gems, 23f7a20w24e34s19d17n6b (plus two slavehunting provinces). That was from sitesearching starting around the end of year one, and continuing up until the end, with all three of us covering down to search each other's territories. Plus it was also me holding the majority of our team's land provinces for tax purposes (110% after miasma for me vs. 50% for the squids or salamanders). And I had Arco and Mari's capitals, so that helped.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: gman8181 on September 21, 2014, 10:29:50 pm
Wow, I knew going into Dominions 4 that the throne mechanic sped up the process of victory but I honest wasn't expecting things to end this quickly after my defeat.

Congrats to all who made it to the end game. Wish I could have been there myself.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 21, 2014, 10:31:50 pm
Golems are immune to magic dual, actually. They're mindless, heh. Gah, ninja'd.

It's good to know my nuisanceing was working, though. R'lyeh's armies and basic battleground force was easily the weakest of the three of us, despite that army size chart (several hundred lobos will do that, but they're generally not really anything but (very, very good) HP walls). I was actively avoiding major confrontation with Ulm's armies, because I was expecting to get torn into a thousand shiny pieces if I engaged. Well, until the end, but the group that had almost finished coming together had several hundred lobos and a good twenty or so (all at-least effectively 2S, due to a banner of northern lights) casters so I was feelin' frisky.

Though some lucky (ish, since it was about all that was interesting under the waves) indies did mean I had a good chunk of the freakishly nasty shark tritons waiting for anything that came down to play. Well, any non-SCs... some SCs, too -- 10 gold berserkers with three attacks is just ridiculous. If those things could get on land they'd steamroll quite a lot of critters.

... though thuella definitely wasn't my first mind hunt kill, heh. I was actually peppering you guys with VotD and mind hunt for most of the last turns of gman >_>

E: Though the both the gem income and plain income graphs are somewhat misleading, I guess. We were all swapping gems and gold around pretty regularly -- I was streaming everything that wasn't astral and air (which I was mostly breaking into pearls, heh) into Arga and C'tis for most of the game, with some breaks for spreading voice of tiamat and whatnot around.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:33:55 pm
Did you folks have much trouble with boars over there, Karlito?
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: chaoticag on September 21, 2014, 10:34:35 pm
I still feel that Asphodel was a poor fit for me, and it was one of Denzi's first time playing. Still, good game everyone. Wish I could have been something of a challenge rather than someone to trounce.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 10:37:13 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:33:55 pm
Did you folks have much trouble with boars over there, Karlito?
I certainly did.

E:
Quote from: Frumple on September 21, 2014, 10:31:50 pm
E: Though the both the gem income and plain income graphs are somewhat misleading, I guess. We were all swapping gems and gold around pretty regularly -- I was streaming everything that wasn't astral and air (which I was mostly breaking into pearls, heh) into Arga and C'tis for most of the game, with some breaks for spreading voice of tiamat and whatnot around.
Quote from: E. Albright on September 21, 2014, 10:28:30 pm
That was from sitesearching starting around the end of year one, and continuing up until the end, with all three of us covering down to search each other's territories.
You don't think you were the only ones doing that sort of thing, do you?  :P I will say that coordination on our team did really break down in the last 10-15 turns, for whatever reason. Time zone differences certainly didn't help.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 21, 2014, 10:56:14 pm
A few thoughts, ramble style. Some obvious, some not; some aimed at me, some aimed at not-me.

PD1, always. :P

Assassins are strong. Really, really strong. Like, "OMG assassins OP pls nurf" strong. The C'tisian assassin corps almost single-handedly won the war against Arco proper; around maybe turn 34 or 36 or so Il Palazzo marched an army of ~200 hoplites of various breeds protecting 48 commanders (44 mages, including the pretender) onto a border fort I'd captured from him; when he left 8 or 9 turns later (fort still unbreached and now full of howling wolves), there were only 20 left, and I think I'd lost one assassin. Sure, I lost 5 the next turn to tompliss' disciple, but Empoisoners with a 5-gem Cons-0 skellie amulet (or their big brothers who also had a 5-gem cons-2 Handful of Acorns) routinely slaughtered strong mages with 3-4 solid bodyguards.

Intel is king. I think we had visibility on every map square at the end. We recruited a LOT of scouts over the course of the game. That made a huge difference.

We had a pretty high overhead in terms of coordination. My PM inbox was at about 20 pages when we started the draft for this, and I've been on Bay12 since 2006. It's now just under 60 pages, and I'd say 95% of that is team chatter from this game. Still, it made us a lot more organized, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We interacted a lot, constantly sent each other gold and gems (I really should have been sending Agartha more, in fact... :-\), etc. etc. etc.

Um. Lost my train of thought. Lemme post this while I go look for it...

Quote from: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 10:37:13 pm
Quote from: Shadowlord on September 21, 2014, 10:33:55 pm
Did you folks have much trouble with boars over there, Karlito?
I certainly did.

I think I had 14 over the course of the game. Casting Vengeful Water on the last turn was immensely satisfying since I got to see 3 of the blasted things that had dodged Frumple's kind Mind Hunt sweeps get turned into soggy piles of pulp.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 11:00:03 pm
Heheh, the first thing I said to my teammates was that coordination and cooperation would win the game, and I was clearly right about that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 21, 2014, 11:21:30 pm
Oh, one thing about the gems: on the last turn, when I claimed Abundance and Misfortune, my income went up 12 from just those two (1f1a1w1e6s1n1d). So there definitely was that.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 21, 2014, 11:35:09 pm
Here, I cropped out the last turn and sketched rough fit curves over your graph and mine.

Spoiler: gems (click to show/hide)

You've got that inflection point there, and good on you for doing whatever you did to make that happen.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 21, 2014, 11:43:57 pm
That first big jump was my 55n-or-so Mother Oak that I honestly didn't think I'd hold long enough to make my investment back. I think the profit on that by the time Asphodel finally stole it was probably over 200n.

The rest of it was just very vigorous and continuous site searching on our parts. At that point the war with Arco had turned, so we could actually start searching even though we were still fighting and had site searchers dodging enemy armies.

Hmm, maybe I should dig up those turns and look. That actually is a pretty big jump, and only half that initial bit is the Oak.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 22, 2014, 12:11:46 am
Mm... while I'm thinking about it, some thoughts on breaking R'lyeh, from my perspective of things, since it was talked about earlier.

Probably the biggest thing with R'yleh is that they have one absolutely tremendous weakness -- they're incredibly dependent on their capital. Primarily because of their caster starspawn, which is their number one bottleneck for force projection -- even with recruiting one every turn I could, gold and other situations allowing, I had all of fourteen total by the end game. Without those, my best recruit (which frankly feels freakishly overpriced, for what it is) caster is 2S, without boosters, and that's a 1/4th random. You can do some battlecasting with that (especially if you get around to using communions in conjunction with the much more easily massed star children), but when it comes to forging, mobility, and astral artillery rituals they're basically junk -- can't even forge boosters for themselves. Slave mages... aren't worth talking about. If r'yleh is seriously recruiting those, there's good odds they've already lost :P That's hyperbole, but... only mildly. They really are incredibly terrible, especially for their cost.

So there's two things out of that -- if you can stop the capital from recruiting (either by siege or unrest), or kill those caster starspawn, you effectively cripple R'lyeh. Them being underwater makes either of those harder, but there's a lot that can be done. For Jotulmdel, dropping a crap ton of blights (Alt-4, 2E1D -- might have required a death empowerment, but probably would have been worth it) on my capital would have murdered me -- I had also spent every turn since seeing the earth king dreading the beginning of an unending earth attack barrage (and expecting to have to teleport my everything out, but even that would be a notable victory for opposing forces). Anything in general that bumped unrest or caused assassination attempts, if it could reach underwater, would have been nasty, to say nothing about just biting the bullet and loading up a (few) commander(s) with waterbreathing and MR boosting kit and setting them to siege.

Other stuff: You basically have to make R'lyeh fight for the water. If they're not keeping raiding or invasion down, they are -- as Jotulmdel probably noticed -- free to drop astral artillery all day and use the nasty raiding potential of well positioned UW provinces to wreck all sorts of havoc. Skratti or Carrion Lords would probably have been ideal for this: One with a waterbreathing ring, maybe a fire brand and vine shield, would have been a threat. Two or three, with one (maybe with a booster, or just carrying the appropriate item) doing something like casting friendly currents or some buffs on the other(s), would have managed to cut a path through a great number of my provinces and possibly a couple of the larger armies.*

Other bit of advice would be MR kit -- for the love of zeus, if R'lyeh has reached soul-slay mind hunt, MR kit. That was another consistent surprise, I'm guessing brought on by gem income limitations? But stacked up MR would have made a serious difference. Is how you make an astral ritual spamming R'lyeh (or anyone, really) uneconomical and effectively win the war against them off the battlefield (on it, too, to a large extent, but especially off it).

Another niche possibility is hitting supply -- pillaging when you raid, dropping any ritual spells you can spare that kill population or shift the scales to cause supply hits, that sort of thing. R'lyeh's armies are incredibly supply hungry, and it's very easy to push them over the starvation point (and from there, hit their morale in battle and send them running).

The mindless thing is also a pretty big deal, though hard to exploit for a while. Golems are the big late-game weakness, but if you can squeeze out the gems and casters for it, earlier stuff like gift-of-reason'd Crusher Constructions (with some mindless troops, probably) are very possible and pretty capable of no-selling quite a lot of what R'lyeh brings to the table.

... anyway, that's most of the $0.10 I can recall off the top of my head, when it's approaching midnight. Raiding, stop the caster starspawn, if you have earth attack and blight (or a anything like them) abuse the buggery out of them (incidentally, the beginnings for a dedicated blight (and eventually, raging hearts, among whatever else could be scraped together) assault on Jotulmdel's lands was probably going to kick off within a turn or two), and MR boosting equipment. That's about it.

*It's an aside, but the overall lack of skratti kinda' surprised me. Did notice some being used against gman's group, but I was expecting them to be everywhere -- they're very solid thug/minor SCs and ridiculously good for raiding via the wolf form.

E: And ah, part of that jump was also me turning over some provinces, apparently -- you can see r'lyeh's income drop during the same period. Shy of half, but not by too terribly much.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 12:13:02 am
Final graphs, for those who don't have access to them:

Spoiler: Provinces (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Forts (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Income (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Gem Income (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Research (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Dominion (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Army Size (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 12:17:04 am
Quote from: Frumple on September 22, 2014, 12:11:46 am
gift-of-reason'd Crusher Constructions

You can GoR mindless units in Dom4 too???  (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 12:19:52 am
Divine Name (https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/?page=spell&panes=spell+928@20@5&pathS=1&itemtype=7&spellq=divine). Thaum-7 vs. Thaum-4, so it's not really an early solution, but yeah, it's possible.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 22, 2014, 12:21:13 am
... I, uh. I'm actually not sure. Lemme' go check, I may have been forgetting a change :P

*checks* Yeah, sorry, sorry. GoR doesn't work.

Divine name would work, but that's way further up the research list. About as easy to just have golems.

E: Annnd, ninja'd. Right.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 12:34:07 am
One small thing I can freely say now is that way back when I captured the Throne of the Pantokrator from Arco I spent the next 6-10 turns or so in absolute terror of the TC army next door. My troops were weak, starving, and in the case of the indy auxiliaries, disease-ridden even before the lack of food was factored in, and it took ages for me to solve those problems. They were also cut off from resupply by the huge Arco army I'd mentioned upthread. I had 35 Pale One PD to try to bolster my wretched army, but TC's 200-ish troop garrison probably still could have pushed them over with a (well-sharpened Roc) feather. After we managed to build a lab for wineskins, cast Gift of Health, and finally brought up reinforcements, that all changed, but for a long time we were sitting there trying to look a lot tougher than we really were and hoping TC wouldn't call our bluff. Honestly, had Team Arco probed the throne and then inevitably overran it, their war effort would probably gone a lot better.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: chaoticag on September 22, 2014, 12:52:45 am
Well, I've got some time before I got to get going, but I figure I can do a more proper breakdown now that I'm no longer late for class.

Where to start with Asphodel... I think I ought to preface this with saying that I'm not by any means a great Dominions player, I only really know a few nations, and even then, I mostly know some Ulmish strategies at this age and in the early age, so anything I say is prolly not so much reflective of my nation so much as reflective of my blindspots.

First of all, I think Asphodel suffers for lacking it's defining feature, the Carion Woods Dominion. Asphodel's troops are very gold heavy, rather than resource heavy, so chaffing them out with some freespawn, particularly piercing resistant freespawn, would have gone a long way towards making their army more effective. The only other option for getting those units was awakening manikins from their carrion mage-priests.

Secondly... I never figured out how to handle my nature mages, and for a big chunk of the time, that was the defining feature of my nation. I had some adepts of silver, and at some point, some adepts of gold, but to break it down, I really did not have the gem income to support that. My predecessor probably didn't see the value of gem income, or was too busy expanding to do something micromanagy, and to be fair, you can do well into the midgame without a proper gem income, especially in a disciples game. But there were wastes and mountains and forrests and swamps without much other than a gem search spell cast on them. Usually nature, and I had no idea what to do with that income. Most of the mages I inherited turned out to be 1N1D which was terrible for research, and I guess they could have used a booster or something... maybe worst comes to worst, you hand them a war bow and have them cast eagle eyes?

I guess the next pitfall I ran into was finding the army niches for asphodel. Their troops are heavy up front gold cost and low resource cost. I don't think having them in a team with Ulm and Jotenheim was a good idea, since I'd never use up my resources before I run out of gold. Then I'd likely end up doing something stupid with them and get them killed, since I counted on them being more survivable than they were. Every berserker killed was 40 gold down the drain, while wearing some pretty...questionable armor.

My fault though, each army should have had a mage priest to mass enchant them with bark skin, and make them live. I probably hired too many, and should have had them charge in from the flanks rather than acting as the linchpin of my armies.

Lastly, my disciple... was actually pretty good, so it was a solid piece of design there. Good path diversity, but eventually, the surest way to kill her became nightmaring her against too many units to kill in a 50 turn limit. Losing that path diversity was pretty bad.

In terms of things done well... it looked like there was solid expansion early on, though I wasn't involved in that. I put an effort to have more forts set up. That might have been more questionable, but I needed more mages. Did some solid site searching for what was a game 40 turns in, hired some better mages with better paths rather than depend on the cheapest I could muster, even if it meant a smaller army. I started off communicating well with the team, but I should have been more proactive about it. At the very least, when dealing with people across the world, I should make a point to at least send a message over the PM system here from time to time.

It's been an interesting experience, and thanks guys for having me. (Asphodel wouldn't have been my first choice though)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 01:15:09 am
I've never played Asphodel competitively, but had I been in your shoes, I'd've spent ideal emeralds summoning national mages to spawn more manikins.

We'd actually considered trying to pick up Asphodel as one of our nations in place of either Agartha or R'lyeh. The biggest appeal for them as a disciple is that while they're weaker than normal because they have to summon their chaff manually... 100g temples for your team. That's huge.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: chaoticag on September 22, 2014, 01:19:29 am
I ended up spamming the hell out of those, yeah. And I did end up using those national mages, but I think I was wondering whether their mage turns could have been used else where. Still my bad for not quite looking into them as I should have.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Shadowlord on September 22, 2014, 01:22:43 am
I think Gift of Health made a huge difference. It enabled us to use (or continue using) troops which were vulnerable to our disease aura. Before we had GoH up, for example, I was using longbowmen and magma children, and on the trip out of our dominion into Mariland up to 30% of them were catching diseases, which could eventually cause a significant loss of combat effectiveness.

Once GoH was up and we had spread our dominion to the areas we had our troops in, it cured anyone who caught a disease and even cured old age ailments (although not all at once - old guys could get 4 afflictions at once and only heal them one or two per month), making large armies of non-mindless non-coldblooded units much more viable.

I also only lost a handful of longbowmen and a bunch of disposable magma children in the final battle(s) taking down Mari, I believe. At the time I thought that minimizing casualties would be likely to ensure future success, but I didn't realize we'd win without my armies having to fight any more major battles at all after that. (I saw actual battles going on with R'lyeh's armies, of course, but R'lyeh hit in the middle of enemy territory, including Ulmish territory)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 22, 2014, 01:25:09 am
Yeah... if for some reason you do end up playing disciple Asphodel again in the future, chao my best advice is to convert most/all of your spare nature income into carrion centaurs -- like, as soon as you get the income for it, you set one of your casters (eventually, more than one) to cast carrion centaur monthly and never stop (note: Regular asphodel probably wants to do this, too). It takes a bit longer to reach critical mass, but after a point all of those centaurs set to awaken manikins generates freakishly huge, MA Ermor/LA Lemuria levels of notably-better-than-longdead-against-most-things chaff. And then you lead them with Carrion Lords (or black dryads, in a pinch) to do priesty/battlecasty (poison can be fun, in this case) stuff, probably use minotaurs for shock troops and centaurs/longbowmen for ranged support, all that nice stuff. Without the domkill, they're basically nature sceleria, with the same sort of desire to spam reanimation chaff like crazy.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 01:37:45 am
Quote from: chaoticag on September 22, 2014, 12:52:45 am
I don't think having them in a team with Ulm and Jotenheim was a good idea,
Asphodel wasn't a nation that we planned on picking up at the outset. Denzi wanted to do something with undead (that was the one criteria I was given to make a selection), and they were pretty much what was left. Our early tests showed that Ulm couldn't possibly spent its excess gold before it ran out of resources (this was true only until I discovered a wealth of recruitable indy mages midgame), so it seemed like a decent fit.

Quote from: Frumple on September 22, 2014, 01:25:09 am
Yeah... if for some reason you do end up playing disciple Asphodel again in the future, chao my best advice is to convert most/all of your spare nature income into carrion centaurs -- like, as soon as you get the income for it, you set one of your casters (eventually, more than one) to cast carrion centaur monthly and never stop (note: Regular asphodel probably wants to do this, too). It takes a bit longer to reach critical mass, but after a point all of those centaurs set to awaken manikins generates freakishly huge, MA Ermor/LA Lemuria levels of notably-better-than-longdead-against-most-things chaff. And then you lead them with Carrion Lords (or black dryads, in a pinch) to do priesty/battlecasty (poison can be fun, in this case) stuff, probably use minotaurs for shock troops and centaurs/longbowmen for ranged support, all that nice stuff. Without the domkill, they're basically nature sceleria, with the same sort of desire to spam reanimation chaff like crazy.
I did try to push Denzi in this direction initially, but I guess the reanimation machine never really got all the way up to its full potential. I did end up sitting on a huge pile of Asphodel's 'unwanted' nature gems for quite a while, and never really did anything useful with them.

Final thoughts for Ulm will have to wait until I can sleep on them.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 07:03:32 am
Huh. The thread was locked. Did I do that? I mean, it's easy enough to do, even on accident, so I suppose I might have...
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 10:20:55 am
I think the first thing I want to comment on is that Ulm's starting position was really good, like, if we were going to repeat this exact same game I would recommend moving it. Mountain province with 5 neighbors? Two of those neighbors are caves, and two are forests? This meant that about a year into the game, I pulled every single smith I had out of the capital to head to my secondary fort near Sceleria, and still had over 400 resources per turn at my capital, so then I had two forts that could churn out blacksteel infantry, and I never wanted for what are supposed to be difficult to amass troops. Also, I lucked out and probably the two best magic sites I found during the game: Conjurer's Circle and Citadel of the Lore Masters were both in provinces adjacent to my capital.

We've already discussed the gem-income gap, but ultimately I think what killed me was that I was playing the wrong game. Before this my Dom4 end-game experience was zero, but my Dom3 late-game experience was, well I wouldn't call it plentiful, but I'd been there before and I knew what it was about. However, I'd read the 4.01 AARs and was probably expecting a similar sort of late-game slog, not thinking at all about how the drastically different throne settings changed things.

If you look at the score graphs, you'll notice Jotunheim and Asphodel collapsing at the end, but Ulm was holding strong. My income was still increasing, my research was supreme, and though I failed to take the lesson of Voldemort's death to heart and some gems had been wasted on SC projects, the armies of Ulm were completely undefeated in the field, and the squids were declining engagement. My recruited lore masters and assembled boosters meant I had access to at least 4 in every magic path, and I'd snagged all the best artifacts. In a few turns I'd start opening the gates of Tartarus, and I unlocked Wish on the final turn. With the Orb of Atlantis and various other items I'd be sending an army into the sea to begin my counter-offensive. It was clear in the last five turns that we weren't winning, but I at least, certainly wasn't losing, or so my thinking went. That's why I was so caught off-guard when the throne blitz worked, and the game ended when it did.

Ultimately, the team went into the game with a fairly casual attitude, we certainly picked nations more for fun or a desire to experiment with a game mechanic than for a serious competitive play- our initial plan involved drafting Arcoscephale and Scerleria, and I actually submitted the wrong disciple to the server, but I think Voldy's path choices ended up being superior to what I initially had planned. I'm sure we succeeded in having a fun time, and though I ultimately couldn't deal with the larger problems, I really relished finding solutions to the smaller scale ones- I think I actually cackled out loud when I was picking out the gear for Fortitude, the construct-shattering angel, and seeing him work out as he did was so satisfying. Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to take a break from Dominions for a few weeks at least, and I'd definitely play another disciples game in the future.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: chaoticag on September 22, 2014, 10:39:23 am
Same here. I've been in one other before though, and the worst thing that can happen is when your team's communication falls apart. This really should be the take away from all Disciples game, how well you do is related to how well you communicate. And nothing sucks worse than being on a team where the most experienced member misses out on a whole third of their turns.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Shadowlord on September 22, 2014, 10:45:33 am
I had a site which let me recruit Lore Masters and Sages two provinces from my capital as well, but it was the Throne of Knowledge, I believe.

(I was about 3 turns away from getting Wish myself when the game ended, and we had a site that would have reduced the casting cost, and a plan to use it to print gems)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 06:10:32 pm
Quote from: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 10:20:55 am
I think the first thing I want to comment on is that Ulm's starting position was really good, like, if we were going to repeat this exact same game I would recommend moving it.

I actually would like to hear some opinions on the starting positions. lijicote and I worked them out, but were not 100% happy with what we ended up with, though we pretty much agreed we'd done about as well as we could for what we had. I would say that we gave Ulm the best start on the map though. We were kinda forced into it by our various restrictions, but yeah. We also agreed that we were probably giving your team the best starting position as well.

Quote from: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 10:20:55 am
We've already discussed the gem-income gap, but ultimately I think what killed me was that I was playing the wrong game. Before this my Dom4 end-game experience was zero, but my Dom3 late-game experience was, well I wouldn't call it plentiful, but I'd been there before and I knew what it was about. However, I'd read the 4.01 AARs and was probably expecting a similar sort of late-game slog, not thinking at all about how the drastically different throne settings changed things.

I agree with the first part, but not with the second. Because...

Quote from: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 10:20:55 am
That's why I was so caught off-guard when the throne blitz worked, and the game ended when it did.

I really don't think it's accurate to call what we did at the end a blitz. When we went to war with you, we held 18 Ascension points, though only 11 were claimed. We proceeded to attack your borders in a steady, methodical fashion, and captured several thrones in the process. We claimed 8 points on the last turn, sure, but 7 of the 8 we'd held for 15+ turns - one for 50+.

Really, it wasn't the different victory conditions that made things so different here. The conditions were actually pretty similar, and in both endgames, it was down to two "teams", with each holding roughly half the thrones. It was the map that made the big difference. Our teams shared very long, porous borders on a wraparound map, so there was much less of a safe heartland like there ended up being on Valanis - and also, mostly by coincidence, on Valanis most of the thrones weren't near the shared border. So yeah, I'd say the big difference wasn't the victory conditions, it was the geography.

Also, I'd argue out that the score graphs were actually showing that you were losing, just not in terms of the more straightforward military sense. This got hidden by the disciple-game quirk/bug whereby a defeated pretender's dominion doesn't disappear when they lose, but we'd figured if we didn't win by thrones we'd've Domkilled you. This was one reason Asphodel was bearing the brunt of our aggression, though the other was that they simply were the most vulnerable. The full brunt of our temples and thrones was being blunted rather drastically by Py's slowly-crumbling wall of faith, but it was pretty obscene.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Karlito on September 22, 2014, 06:21:56 pm
Quote from: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 06:10:32 pm
Also, I'd argue out that the score graphs were actually showing that you were losing, just not in terms of the more straightforward military sense.

My point (even if I'm not the best at expressing it) was that I never felt like I was losing, even if two-seconds of  rational analysis would say otherwise.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 07:47:38 pm
Ah, fair enough. I actually agree with you; rationally, when we saw the score graphs and looked closely at the maps, we could tell we were winning, but casually looking at the map, the artifact list, the periodic SCs and doomstacks of IB casters, and the research chart, it was an effort to convince myself that was actually true.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: GP Trixie on September 23, 2014, 01:26:29 pm
Late game was pretty hard for me as Jotun. I never managed to reasearch anything else than blood to a serious level. Having no real mages under 200 gold and no sacred mage hurts. And the only real mage outside the capital are slow to recruit.

So the plan was to summon as much as ice devils as possible. This part went ok with a small blood economy of 3-4 provinces. My big problem was the transitioning to something else. I managed to get a bit higher in blood and got some ice devils. But I couldn't expend my blood economy enough to get serious things going. My gold income remained pretty low for the whole game and getting slow to recruit and getting the blood economy to run was to slow.

The only decent thing I had were the few SC I managed to equip with the stuff ulm sent me. They did manage to raid quite well before they were stopped with that mind hunt thing. In the end I'm not sure if the way I played them is really the best way to play Jotun.

Anyway it was fun playing with you all.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 23, 2014, 03:01:48 pm
I've been under the impression that your forest-recruit vaetti hags are pretty awesome at cost-effective researching. I can imagine that battlemagic would be an issue however.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 23, 2014, 06:10:14 pm
SPEAKING OF AAR, ahahahahahaha!

Have a thing (http://www.upl.co/uploads/B12-Game-41411513538.zip). It's a zip file with three .html files, which contain a near-total* compilation of the PMs passed around our team during this game. Fair warning, it's kinda' lengthy -- ~3.5 megs of .html once unzipped (only ~.4 zipped up, so the download itself should be painless), split between a pre-game and two game PM threads. Counting extra stuff (poster names, reply buttons, quotes, sigs and whatnot), it comes out to 530 pages and 219,468 words in libreoffice. Well, all that before EA helpfully pointed out I was missing a bit, so now there's an extra file and more stuff.

... we apparently wrote a novel between the three of us >_>

I don't think I've seen something like this for a Dominions game before, and given that this whole thing was originally something of a new player's game, I figured there might be someone involved (and probably folks that weren't, too) that would be interested in seeing how we did our communication and planning and whatnot. And if nothing else, boggle at the monolithic majesty that is the burgeoning girth of the total communication of one team involved in a ~six months long Dominions disciple game.

*I didn't think to nab permission from the other folks we talked to to repost what they PMed, so they're (mostly -- I think one or two slipped through, so my apologies for that) not included, though I do have the diplo stuff I saw saved if the folks involved are alright with them being posted.

Quote from: GP Trixie on September 23, 2014, 01:26:29 pm
Late game was pretty hard for me as Jotun. I never managed to reasearch anything else than blood to a serious level. Having no real mages under 200 gold and no sacred mage hurts. And the only real mage outside the capital are slow to recruit.
Vaetti hags are totally real mages :P

Spoiler: Vaetti hag gushing (click to show/hide)

And yeah, if I haven't said it yet, I had a blast playing with y'all, team mates and opponents alike.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 24, 2014, 07:08:02 am
Ha! And unsurprisingly, all conversation is stopped by Frumple's Great Wall of Text! :P

But anywhey, it was a good game, and I really enjoyed playing with everyone. As the aforementioned Great Wall suggests, it was a higher commitment game than a non-disciple game, but still, I think this may have been my favorite MP Dominions game to date. Yes, out of all seven of them. ;) I've always really enjoyed the collaborative and diplomatic aspects of Dominions - as is probably obvious to people who have been in games with me - so this just amplified that markedly. I'd definitely play disciple matches in the future, and honestly think I'd prefer them - a lot of the fun was scheming, plotting, and stratergizing with my teammates, so the extra engagement it took didn't feel like a burden at all.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 24, 2014, 02:50:57 pm
Personally I'm a bit weary of the issues brought about by the generally higher playercount. Seems you had some too unless I'm mixing my Bay12 threads.

I suppose that for me the golden middle is the occasional disciple-duel. 2-6 player teams, two teams. You get your team chatter but the player count tends to not be too high, which tends to mean less stales, postponements and the like. There's also the generally fast paced duel game play that's quite enjoyable every once in a while.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 24, 2014, 03:46:03 pm
Actually, no, I disagree. I quite dislike duels, as they pretty much forgo diplomacy altogether - even a team game lacks diplomacy (and sneaky tricks) if there's only two teams. I'd say 12 players is about the smallest I'd want for a disciple game, unless we were doing 2-person teams - and that'd be a very different sort of game than 3+ teams.

We did have some of the typical issue of burnout or distraction, mostly from the inexperienced players who probably didn't know what they were getting into, but that can be "solved" by playing with more experienced players. You can still get plenty of burnouts, delays, and stales with 2-6 players, you've just reduced the odds by having fewer candidates to do it. In the end, it all comes down to the players.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 24, 2014, 03:57:59 pm
I play the odds as best I can :P

True enough I suppose. Of course I'm biased by having a recent bad experience with a big game and being in a place in life where I can't probably commit to another long, big game. I don't mind the idea of a 16 player FFA or disciple, I just haven't seen any play out with the kind of success rate I'd enjoy myself. But that's probably something that needs a little time. Get a bit more non-newbie players into the community, make sure everyone knows what they're getting into. I'd like to think it's not impossible to get a good large-ish MP going.

Either way, for now I'm going with small and safe. 7-10 players, nice mix of diplomacy and expedient gameplay. Fits my mood and circumstances.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Twiggie on September 25, 2014, 02:03:11 am
Quote from: E. Albright on September 22, 2014, 06:10:32 pm
I actually would like to hear some opinions on the starting positions.

I (Sceleria (oh, remember them?)), was not a huge fan of my starting position, though I think most of that came down to me being new to the game. I had a lot of trouble getting any money since the closest plains were cut off by a t3 throne and a knights province, which I had a bit of trouble getting through. The other side (the enemy side, which I was more focused on) was entirely swamp, forest and hills, so I had a lot of trouble moving my troops around.

I suspect I should have put a lot less effort into grand thaumaturgs, and more into more castles. I'm also not sure what I was supposed to do against Ulm's armies, as their line infantry were just better than mine and they have units that go through undead like butter.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: chaoticag on September 25, 2014, 02:36:50 am
Running up against ulm tends to be especially bad as Scaleria. Their most useful units tend to be their shadow vestals, especially with a nature bless. Which Ulm's Sorta Sacred units cut through like butter. Ulm's weakness comes from their low magic resistance though, so enough mages might have turned the tide if they had any kind of battle magic.

It also looks like lately, having non-ideal terrain is becoming more a norm than an exception.

Another thing Scaleria should keep in mind is their vestals are sneaky units. That's pretty powerful, since they can bypass armies and wreck havok behind enemy lines.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 25, 2014, 04:59:30 am
It does take some research to get stealthy commanders or stealth gear for your existing commanders. Good thing to keep in mind from midgame onwards though. People probably don't expect Sceleria to pull off stealthy manoeuvres. And yeah, answer to Ulm's armies is to throw some MR negate spells at them. Sceleria can pull off plenty of such D evocations to make short work of low MR armies. Ulm certainly has the advantage if you lacked those spells.

As for terrain, from what I've read it seems to be a bigger problem in older maps since the movement rules apparently got changed somewhat in the dom3->4 transition. Most of my games have been pretty manageable as far as terrain types go, but then I've played mostly newer maps and I've never played Dom3 so I don't specifically know what, if anything, I'm missing. I just know that there's a very real difference between MM1 and MM2+.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Twiggie on September 25, 2014, 06:21:34 am
I'm looking to do some more SP practice, does anyone know how I can set up an autosave so I can savescum? losing large forces unexpectedly in the early game because I don't know what I'm doing kinda sucks...

and thanks for the tips :p
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 25, 2014, 06:31:11 am
Since you've played MP you should know where your .trn/.2h files are. I would assume that copying those somewhere else and later pasting them back would let you savescum, can't verify as I've never tried it myself.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 25, 2014, 06:39:05 am
Autosave, no, but you can manually copy the turn file off somewhere else and replace the active one if something too terrible screws up, as per delta's ninjaing. I guess you could theoretically automate it if you were some kind of coding guru, but there's nothing I'm aware of in the game itself that allows for that sort of thing.

I guess alternatively you could make something like a two player disciple game on llamaserver where both players are you and rollback as necessary. I have no idea what llamaserver's opinion on that sort of thing is, though.

As for something like sceleria vs ulm, I'd personally probably be aiming for something along the lines of drowning them in undead. Early-ish second fort set to monthly recruit reanimators, splash enchantment to pick up your base 1d animation spells, bring along plenty of plain thaums. Ulm's troops two biggest weaknesses are their MR and their encumbrance, and if you can keep them fighting until they all fatigue out, you win.

Alternately, aim for conj 5 and ghost grip -- as noted, Ulm's junk has relatively terrible encumbrance, so a half dozen plain thaums spamming ghost grip is a good way to neuter their troops. Can do the same thing with stellar cascades with a bit more research -- 5-6 thaums following around a grand thaum set to power of the stars/northern lights/pass out. Bit gem heavy, but if you've got the construction for it, banner of northern lights works even better. Can also do something similar with tiny communions... actually, little five thaum communions set to spam raise dead could put out a lot of chaff, especially with a minor earth bless. They can even self bless...

Also sceleria has cheap assassins and plenty of 1D :V
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: gman8181 on September 25, 2014, 07:01:18 am
Interesting read Frumple, thanks for that.

Twiggie, I honestly think a lot of the advice I gave initially could have helped you play the nation more effective and should be explored a bit more even in single player if you're interested in the nation. As was mentioned shadow vestals are very good in almost all situations (although admittedly Ulm's units seemed a more than effective counter against them). Additionally, I really think having devoted more of your priests to "reanimate" (shift a; I think) longdead horsemen would have made a very significant tactical difference against the enemy. They don't cost any gold barring the initial investment in the reanimating priest and give lots of upkeep free, good moral, decent fighting units that probably would have allowed you to push off an enemy more effectively.

Also, I'm not sure how your evo, thaug research was doing towards the end but some castings of nether darts would have been quite effective against low magic resistance Ulm and communions followed by clouds of death would have been even more powerful as they would have synergy with your undead (cloud of death doesn't affect undead units). I really wasn't sure why even up until the end you didn't at least reanimate some longdead warriors, soulless or ghouls to hold the fortresses.

Admittedly I didn't keep pushing the point after initially suggesting it but it might have been a more effective use of gold until more provinces and forts were acquired to pump out legionnaires.
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Frumple on September 25, 2014, 07:55:03 am
... actually, starting up a quick test game showed that sceleria skelliespam assassins are actually better at it than most would be. They occasionally pop out the national longdead, which is... pretty nice. I guess you'd see similar advantages with other nations with unique longdead... can only guess C'tis was putting out bone lizards. Which is nice, the abnormal longdead tend to be straight up upgrades.

N1's also really easy to find. Go go mighty boning assassins, now with extra vine tentacles!
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: E. Albright on September 25, 2014, 03:12:07 pm
Quote from: Frumple on September 25, 2014, 07:55:03 am
... actually, starting up a quick test game showed that sceleria skelliespam assassins are actually better at it than most would be. They occasionally pop out the national longdead, which is... pretty nice. I guess you'd see similar advantages with other nations with unique longdead... can only guess C'tis was putting out bone lizards.

Yup, I got lizards. Scelaria's would have been better in a couple other senses as well: mine were cap only, and were casters. So I had to put my capital on full-time assassin recruitment (which isn't bad for MA C'tis in terms of opportunity cost, as those assassins are their only cap-only mage), and once my assassins went off-script they'd cast a lot of more-fatiguing spells - usually still just undead summons, but 1 soulless for 20+ fatigue < 1 longdead for 5 fatigue flat. (OTOH, I could have mixed it up and given them nature gems to cast Swarm when I thought they'd fight harsher foes, so there is that...)
Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.04 (Disciples!): Post-game AAR
Post by: Vrky on September 30, 2014, 04:26:30 pm
Looking forward to reading AAR. Game is fun but also hard to master, especially magic system and research. I always get lost in it and just research randomly which is a shame.