Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

[JasonPratt]

The triumph theme from the Space Battleship Yamato live action movie just started playing while I was reading this.

Heh.  ;D

Let's see, what would be the simpler nation for Bison to play out of who's left over... um... Abyssia, I guess? No, blood slave magic is unlike other magic... Underwater is simple at first but then gets very wacky trying to get out of the water...

That leaves over Caelum. They're a pretty straightforward air-affinity faction with the nice strategic and tactical flight advantage. Their only real disadvantage is that they tend to be weak and expensive as troops, so they need buffing. (There's a reason newbies were avoiding them all this time. ;) )


Bison for Caelum then; Phobos for Shinuyama; PsiSoldier for freaking R'lyeh!

Heck guys, with three more players we'd have the whole faction list set up! -- and after all we might as well put the other two water factions in so we stand some kind of chance against R'lyeh has someone to play with!

[JasonPratt]

Note: we're pretty danged cramped for Westeros right now (and could be more by the end of the week), so don't anyone load the Westeros 1.2 map unless you just want to use it for your own purposes later (because it's very nifty after all).

However, if a bunch of people pipe up about wanting to stay on the Westeros map, that would certainly simplify things as we move into the final pre-game days! Remember, you won't have much room to expand and grow before meeting other players, so at the very least be prepared to be put out of the game early and/or to do lots of diplomacy early!

(i.e., a cramped map is significantly less newbie friendly!)

[Bison]

So...what's the barney steps to creating and submitting a pretender?

[Philippe]

And assuming anything is still open, where do you send an e-mail to sign up?

[byrdman57]

So...what's the barney steps to creating and submitting a pretender?

To create the pretender go to the 'game tools' menu and there is an option to create a pretender god. Choose your age and nation, and then you can design your god. Once that's done there will be a file in the folder 'C:/wherever you installed it/dominions3/savedgames/newlords.' The file should be 'mid_caelum_0.2h' (if you make more than one for Caelum it will save all of them and you'll have to keep track of which order you made them). Then you simply mail that file to pretenders[at]llamaserver[dot]net. The name of the game, 'Groghammer' has to be the subject line of the email.

As far as how to make a good pretender, the manual has some suggestions for each nation. Also, I'm sure someone could point you to a guide online. One thing that's helpful is to hop into a single player game and just take a look at the units that you can create. Think about what magic your guys have already and you can pick magics that you can't otherwise get. Also look at your sacred units (they have a candelabra in their stats) and about which bless effects would help them.

[byrdman57]

And assuming anything is still open, where do you send an e-mail to sign up?

Just post here with the nation you want, PM JasonPratt your email address, and then submit your pretender.

It looks like Abysia (fire and demons), and two underwater nations, Oceania and Atlantis, are all that's left.

[JasonPratt]

Bison,

Byrd's short instructions are good; but here's more detail.

Step 0.) Install the game, make sure it's patched to version 3.28.

Step 1.) Download the balance mod from the link on the very first post. Unzip those files into your "mod" folder in your main Dom3 folder.

Step 2.) Run Dom 3.

Step 3.) From the main menu, click on "preferences" and "mod preferences" to make sure the balance mod is not only installed but enabled. If it doesn't read as "enabled" click the text, make sure that changes it over to "enabled". IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE GETTING TO THIS POINT DON'T GO FURTHER! -- ASK FOR MORE HELP!! (Creating a pretender without the balance mod enabled will probably lead your game to "fix" your pretender for you on the first turn, which probably won't be expedient for you.)

Step 4.) Go back to the main menu, click the button for game tools. Click create a new pretender. Choose "Middle Age" and then "Caelum", your assigned faction -- you'll read a bit about them, click on past the flavor text.

Step 5.) You should be on the pretender creation screen now. The game will automatically choose a random chassis for you, but you can use any other base model available to MA Caelum. (Everyone has some standard options, most factions have a unique option or two, every faction shares some special options with a few other factions.)

WARNING: DO NOT ASSIGN A PASSWORD TO YOUR PRETENDER!! No one can hack your pretender because we're using Llamaserver, so it isn't necessary; whereas if you have to drop for catastrophic reasons and can't or don't provide your password I won't be able to set your pretender to AI.


Step 6.) At this point... um... I guess go to the body menu, right click on all the various options, read about them, choose one that seems awesome? -- you should probably try to fit your strategy to a pretender rather than vice versa as a new player. (I haven't played CoE3, so I don't know how similar the process is here; someone else can help with that maybe.)

Step 7.) Decide if you want your pretender to be unavailable for one year or three years; you'll get extra buy point if you do, and his dominion effects will still work, but you won't be able to actively use him/her/it for fighting or casting or research or whatever until that time is up. (Pretenders can randomly come into play within a range plus or minus a few seasons, btw.) For a completely first time player, I recommend your pretender be available from the start.

Step 8.) Decide what's going to be more important to you, your pretender's dominion effects or your magic skilz. This will tell you where you ought to go next on the menu to spend points. The stronger the dominion effects the weaker the pretender will be at magic generally. However, you can also take crippling dominion effects to boost up your magic or to boost other dominion effects. (None of this is set in stone until you save your pretender, so feel free to tweak around.) For technical reasons I'm going to say in your case go to the dominion effects first.

Step 8.1.) The number of candles affects how people in a territory are loyal to you, and this effect spreads over time. It's the basic "dominion" mechanic, and mostly provides benefits to you and your troops (especially your holy troops) and problems for your enemies. If you left-click the scales, that increases good effects in your dominion, right clicking the scales increases bad effects (but grants you more points to spend elsewhere). The heat/cold scales are usually bad either way, but Caelum is coldish, so definitely click them over to cold first thing: you'll actually get paid extra points for avoiding problems! (This is why I said you should go to dominions first, even if you want to focus on pretender magic instead.)

Step 8.2.) Your pretender will start with a path or two (or maybe even three) already bought for you (maybe with a rare exception of none??) You cannot unbuy those paths for points, and buying new paths may be expensive to start with depending on what pretender you use. (Chassis which are designed as strong multi-class mages tend to have cheap buy-ins for magic paths. Supercombatant pretenders tend to be very expensive buying new paths.) Each step on a path costs more than the previous one, except (usually) for the very first step in a new path. So if your pretender is a rainbowmage chassis, he may only pay 10 to open up the fire magic path, and the next step costs 8 and then 12 and then 24 or whatever. (The pay is standardized and the chart is given in the instructions manual, although the balance mod may tweak this.) A Green Dragon will probably cost 80 points to open up the fire path, though!--but after that the cost for steps in the path goes back to the standard.

Note that whatever extent you start at in a path counts as zero cost in the game engine, so any further steps along such a path will be regarded by the game as cheap as if you had just opened the path! So a Red Dragon will start out with four fire steps already, and the fifth step will be dirt cheap, making it easy for this chassis to get to step 10 (or 9, I forget offhand how far you can go, but it's one of those. Few if any spells require more than six steps in a path, but your strength affects things like how exhausted you get throwing spells, or not rather.) A great sage (a rainbow chassis who doesn't start with fire) would pay quite a bit on the other hand to get to the fifth fire step if he has to buy the first step, and a Green Dragon or a Cyclops (something that costs a lot for a new path) would pay even more due to the steep new-path entrance fee.

(I may have the details slightly wrong, being at the office right now, but the principles should be right.)


Step 9.) Once you've twiddled with your dominion and magic points as far as you want, save your pretender (and give it a name). Unfortunately you can never reload this pretender again for tweaking so if you want to try a variation you'll have to start over! Also, the game doesn't save your pretender according to the name you gave, but according to the age and faction, so your first one will save (in the "newlords" folder) as {middle_caelum_0.2h}. Your next one will be 1.2h, same age and nation; and so forth. Make a note which one is which because there's no way to tell again otherwise! (In-game you can start a new game in middle Caelum and any pretenders you've generated for that age and faction will be available for you to choose by name, but for multiplayer it doesn't work that easy. Sorry.)

Step 10.) Use your email account (and send me which email account you're using, please, so I can switch you to AI if you drop) to email your chosen pretender as an attached file (out of the "newlords" folder) to pretenders@llamaserver.com, using "Groghammer" (no quotes) by itself in the title of the email. Depending on server load, you should get a email ping back soon letting you know the server received and validated it.

If you change your mind, you can send a new pretender this way any time before the game starts, as many times as you want. (The server will send a note that it looks like you've replaced your pretender, just in case that wasn't your intention.)


After that, it's just a matter of saving the .trn files sent to you in a folder you'll create in your dom3/savegames folder, specifically for this game, and sending back the new .2h files you'll generate when you play and end a turn.

[JasonPratt]

And assuming anything is still open, where do you send an e-mail to sign up?

You can send it to my email at compuserve, or use the forum pmail. I have buttons for each under my avatar for every post. (Most people have used the pmail so far, but it doesn't matter.)

[JasonPratt]

It occurs to me that with at least one underwater nation in the game now (and the super-evil crazy one at that), I should ask if one or more of the more experienced players wants to volunteer to switch with R'yleh or another underwater nation, with the understanding that such a nation will be playing contra mundum, "against the world", with no expectation of alliances.

This may help balance the game better.


Edited to add: since PsiSoldier seems to be relatively experienced, it would make sense for him to keep R'yleh (playing with the contra mundum house rule handicap of course).

I had chosen the monkey swarm because they're a fiddly team for newbies (so I wouldn't be taking a simpler more early-solid nation), and because they would force me to exercise on some gameplay portions I tend to neglect. However, I'm willing to take Oceana (mythical Greek underwater), with the same contra mundum handicap, leaving Bandar-Log open for a new player in the final days. (On the balance Oceana would be more difficult, especially sharing the water with R'yleh! ::)--though Bandar won't be easy!) I'll go ahead and set that up in fact, and boot Bandar from the list (so someone else can claim them).

[Philippe]

Ok.  I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'll play Abysia.

[Bison]

OK Thanks guys.  Jason I'll PM you a email shortly.

[JasonPratt]

This was originally a list of submission statuses, but I've updated here.

[undercovergeek]

blimey - this grew - ive only been away a day!

unless theres a 'westeros or im not playing' outcry - i think id go with a bigger map

excellent to see so many players here

looking forward to getting this one under way?

deadline the 12th did you say JP?

[elitesix]

Jason, I think there may some bug with my browser or the forum b/c I've pm'ed you three times with my email but he sent message doesnt show up in my sent box (though it says it was sent).

What's your email?

[JasonPratt]

Re: the deadline.

What that means is that sometime Friday I'm going to close entry to new players by setting the number of slots to the current player list (for example I'll drop it from 23 to 21), and then tell the forum to auto-start once everyone has sent in their pretenders.

In practice, the last person to send a pretender is the one to blame for starting any later; this player will be punished by not having the option to revise his pretender before gamestart. (Not really a punishment, the boat just sails once he gets on. ;) )

If we pick up a final two players (Bandar Log, and either Atlantis or whichever land faction an experienced player is willing to give up for Atlantis), I'll kick the auto-start in gear.