Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

[Bison]

I have powers.   Super powers.

[Huw the Poo]

I love your new avatar by the way, Bison.

[undercovergeek]

Funniest thing I read today was a guy who researched for ever for a great doom bringing sword - his pretender had no arms!

[LongBlade]

By popular demand I'm going to make this thread a sticky.

Anyone looking for a game is welcome to post here and it looks like you guys are doing a great job of shepherding folks to games that are getting underway.

Keep up the good work!

[JasonPratt]

IT

BEGINS

NOW


(or whenever W8 gets around to submitting his pretender, whichever comes first)

[Huw the Poo]

It's on!  OK people, form an orderly queue and wait your turn to be squished.  Thanks.

[undercovergeek]

It's on!  OK people, form an orderly queue and wait your turn to be squished.  Thanks.

im f****** giant spiders man!!!! you dont stand a chance!

[Huw the Poo]

We have lots of shoes...

[JasonPratt]

Okay, having released the Llamaserver to autostart (after reducing the expected players to 21 -- meaning anyone could slip in and snipe the final slot out from under W8, by the way, at the risk of being booted out of the game ;) ) -- what can players expect now?

EXPECT 0.) Nothing at all to happen until W8 submits his pretender. If that doesn't happen by Monday night, without further word from W8, I'll probably reduce the game to 20 players and kick the autostart in gear that way.

EXPECT 1.) An email will arrive from the server to the account you emailed your pretender to the server. This email will have an attachment with a .trn extension.

Download that attachment to the folder you made in the "savegame" Dom3 folder, which you named "Groghammer" or something like that. (e.g. in your "savegame" folder you should create another folder named "Groghammer" or anything without spaces you'll know refers to this game. THERE MUST BE NO SPACES IN THAT FOLDER'S NAME, or Dom3 won't recognize it.)

Load up Dom3, click "play a game" (not "create a new game"), and you should find "Groghammer" (or whatever you named your folder) as one of the current games. Click on it to select, and then "ok". It will say Middle Age {your faction here} turn 1, or something like that. Click on that text, or "cancel" if you don't want to play yet.

Dom3 will load the Faerun map, and also enable the balance mod you installed (along with any graphics mods) if for some reason you unenabled it before game start.


EXPECT 2.) Only two "messages" off the bat, the same messages everyone gets the first turn of every game, about the Wheel of Time turning and other preplot things like that.

If you see a third message that someone tried to cheat with a pretender, that probably means the person created his pretender without enabling the balance mod first. The game will try to "fix" your pretender to comply with the balance mod rules (whoever "you" or "you all" are). You should check your pretender pronto, including your scales and dominion (since the game seems more likely to change those to make the cost fit the balance mod criteria). If you're okay with the changes, we'll continue on. If not, or if for various reasons you can't figure out what changed (your pretender's asleep and you had a weak dominion to start with so your scales aren't fully in play yet anyway), we'll have to restart the game. Drop a note here pronto and let me know.


EXPECT 3.) A decent starting position with at least four neighboring territories. (Turn on your "neighbors" filter in the map controls to be sure. On this map that's a good idea for default anyway, because gateways and ports and presumed trading routes may lead to non-obvious neighbors.) The map designer tried to turn off all the bad-start provinces, but he may have missed one, who knows. With a group this large I'm inclined to say just suck it up and deal with it, but you can try complaining here and see what happens. ;)

You probably won't be next door to another faction, but I can't promise that. If so, well, you'll have to be diplomatic or really creative out of the gate, won't you?

In other games, the questions of what the little "crowns" on the maps meant arose. Those are victory points, which for our other two Groghead games mean nothing at all; but here, you have to take and hold 14 of them to win. (Or to force a final epic allied confrontation or something like that, if the remaining players want to keep trying.)

For this game, the only victory points are at faction capitols, and you can always see victory points on the map even if you have no other knowledge of the territory details; so wherever you see a little crown, that's a captiol. Avoid it or try to conquer it as you see fit. :)


EXPECT 4.) Not a lot of diplomacy to begin with. This map was chosen to provide room for players to test and grow a bit first, it might be a whole game year before you see anyone. Don't feel bad if people don't talk to you yet. Unless of course you've already privately arranged pre-game alliances among yourselves (for thematic reasons or whatever) in which case sure feel bad if your allies are just ignoring you. And maybe also feel suspicious. :)


EXPECT 5.) A special game delay from Sunday through Monday, since I won't be in a position to play after Saturday until Monday night. We might be able to get a few turns in by Saturday night, but once I go to bed I won't be able to play a turn until Monday night.

If you need an extension, too, at any time, let me know immediately. Don't wait too long if you can help it!


EXPECT 6.) The first turn to have a 48 hour default in any case. This gives me time to set a new default time, which will be... 48 hours. :) But the first game turn is always automatically 48 hours.

[JasonPratt]

It's on!  OK people, form an orderly queue and wait your turn to be squished.  Thanks.

im f****** giant spiders man!!!! you dont stand a chance!

Giant zulu spiders. With zulu witches. And Zulus.

I'm unsure if that's quite as unstoppable as FREAKING GIANT WEREWOLVES, but I'm going to be safe and bet "yes". :)

[JasonPratt]

It's on!  OK people, form an orderly queue and wait your turn to be squished. pelt W8 until he submits his pretender. Thanks.

Fixed that for you. :)

[W8taminute]

I just sent my pretender in per Jason's instructions given in the third post of this thread. 

[undercovergeek]

jason thanks for your help through all of this - have a great game everyone

[W8taminute]

I just received my first turn!!  That was fast.  Now please excuse me while I hungrily fire up the game and see what's what.    ;D

[undercovergeek]

I just received my first turn!!  That was fast.  Now please excuse me while I hungrily fire up the game and see what's what.    ;D

just confirming no 'pretender fix' message - well done all