|
Tagichatn posted:I made a new game: No Snek.
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2017 18:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 15:28 |
|
|
VerdantSquire posted:Have you considered using the darker green color on the plain texture here for the forests instead of the current color? It'd look like it'd make them flow into each other a lot better. I'm actually considering using a different tree sprite for the plains trees.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2017 18:53
|
|
|
A look back at No Mods No Masters After a long 93 turns, No Mods No Masters has come to a close with a MA Pangaea victory! Having taken several months off from Dominions, this marked my first game back, and it was an interesting experience. As the name suggests, this was a game running with no mods whatsoever and, somewhat more importantly, no restrictions. The long and short of this was quite a few of the most powerful MA nations in the game (and gimmick strategies – so, so many double major blesses being run) and, most notably, Ramc stealing a march on everyone else and picking up MA Ermor! As one might expect from that opening post, I went with Pangaea, a nation known to be unpleasant to fight – though due to how the game shook out, this ended up not mattering too much. I had a general idea of what to expect going in as Pangaea, as I’ve fought MA Pangaea several times, but I’d never actually played them before in any age so no real in-depth plan was made going in other than a relatively standard Pan plan. Thus, for my PG I went with a simple dormant Volla of the Bountiful Forest and only a single major and one minor bless – this would prove rather fortuitous given later events. The choice to go for maenads helped later too, though not necessarily in a direct combat role.  Starting positions & cap circles:  So, as the game began, two issues became evident in the first 5 turns. The first, and more irritating one, was that I had a touching cap circle with Ramc’s MA Ermor, a rather unpleasant position to be in. The second, and more alarming, was I also had Agartha’s Earth Serpent show up right outside my cap circle to around then as well. As I had suddenly become extremely boxed in due to rapidly worthless provinces to my south, Agartha claiming everything north of me before I had the armies to move up there (they’d been going west, and were also having to meander because there were a fair few unpleasant indies around), and the ocean to my east, aggressive action became the order of the day. The target choice became easier when I started getting my harpy scouts out, and noticed just how large Agartha had become (~19 provinces by end of the first year/beginning of second) – which was subsequently used as diplo fodder for talking with Agartha’s western and northern neighbors (Nazca and Asphodel). Ultimately this mostly fell through and both didn’t join in until near the end, but it ended up not mattering, as I utterly bulldozed through mostly unprotected provinces (his serpent died second turn in an attempted counterattack, and his actual armies had mostly been north of his cap). The war really did not take long, and I was left with far more territory than I started with, along with a second cap. As for Ermor during this time? Very early on I’d set up a NAP with Ramc, due to him probably not really wanting to fight Pan right off the bat, and me really wanting actual worthwhile provinces rather than trying to kill him and not getting much. This did not, however, stop me from being aware when Ermor’s other two neighbors (Jotunheim and Marignon) dogpiled him. In fact they dogpiled him so well they forced him straight off the continent – though he did manage to successfully set up a presence (and eventually conquer the entirety) in the ocean. He also set up BoT during this time, which would stay up all the way until Ermor was finally domkilled. This was not a terribly effective move, as if you go look at the nations on that start map you’ll notice a huge number don’t care too much, but given how long it was up it did eventually seriously cut into income. After Ermor was forced into the ocean, the game entered a fairly long period of passivity as far as I was concerned. On my borders, Nazca and Asphodel were skirmishing with each other, Jotunheim went AI, and Marignon just vanished without going AI. With both gone, and my NAP expired, it sort of fell to me to keep Ermor in the ocean – and I did so in grand style. Just as he was about to launch an assault to retake his cap, I put Sea of Ice up  . It isn’t a terribly common global, but it completely bars movement between the ocean and land, so other than the one coastal fort he’d managed to retake, he wasn’t getting back on land any time soon. Our skirmishing continued with my plan mainly just being containment while I slowly domkilled him, but after figuring out the one goddamn lvl 3 throne in the game was in the middle of the ocean, I took something of a more direct hand. That hand being another spell I’d never used before – Imprint Souls. The spell launches remote attacks on provinces consisting of crazed fanatics led by a priest, which let me both start removing his temples (and thrones) along with gaining a foothold in the ocean to attack those that had 0 pop left (and were thus immune to the spell). There was some back and forth, but eventually he threw in the towel and Ermor was domkilled shortly afterwards. By the time that was done, about the only nations that hadn’t AI’d out were myself and Sceleria, and Sceleria was on the opposite side of the map from me. I simply chewed through all the various AI provinces in between me and the thrones I needed for victory, and claimed them when I could – both thrones in the ocean were claimed by summoned Bishop Fish. In the end, a combination of destroying one neighbor, and acquiring most of his rather significant amounts of territory, and having no other one that was ever particularly in a place to challenge me, sealed the deal. Ermor’s BoT caused quite a few people to go AI (or I assume that was the cause), and while it was annoying for me, it also convinced me to move to non-gold mages ASAP. Unsurprisingly given Pangaea’s access to blood mages, this meant I went for vampires. Possessing two caps along with a few other ~10k provinces meant I could set up operations for a while even with BoT up, and as Curse of Blood was basically the only thing I was using them for, I ended up with somewhere between 20-30 lords by game end, and hundreds of normal vampires. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Mar 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2017 19:45
|
|
|
No Mods No Masters graphs Forts  Income  Gem Income  My D income was quite frankly insane, with me ending up with something like 52 D gems a month. Even considering Ermor's cap gives 15 on its own, to put it in perspective I was only drawing in ~33 N gems a month, and that included Mother of Oaks. Research  Note I'd not actually finished researching everything, I just didn't bother switching right at the end in order to speed up turns. Dominion  Army 
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2017 19:55
|
|
|
River WIP post:
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2017 23:38
|
|
|
I was shamed for putting this in the wrong thread so here you go: An AbandonAllHope retrospective! (Turn 41 win for Lemuria) Having recently risen from the grave I decided to play some good ol' Lemuria in my first game back on the horse. LA Lemuria is a terrible nation, but is very emotionally fulfilling to play, and I figured there was no better way to get back into the game than playing a nation which has no research whatsoever. Thankfully, it appears goons have finally learned that suiciding armies against Lemuria is an enormous waste of time, and no longer blindly rush them at the start of the game, meaning it is now possible to have at least some chance of doing well when you play them. As people locked in nations I began exploring my options for finding an early partner in crime to slap down BoT using my gems and their research potential. In a great stroke of luck it turns out there were no less than 3 other nations who were already considering rushing BoT, 1 of which (Naksu, leading the noble people of Atlantis) agreed to front the research if I supplied the gems. While this would not really put me ahead of nations like Pan, Ry'leh, or Atlantis, all of which (especially Ry'leh) don't give a drat about BoT and could beat the living hell out of me, it would further deter people from invading my worthless lands and give me a chance to outlast many of the short-lived empires. With my long-term strategy locked in I had one final decision to make, and what I decided upon was highly unconventional - I started with a Dormant pretender as LA Lemuria. This meant I was literally unable to summon any mages or commanders until around turn 13, in return for slightly better scales/blessing. Doing this forced me to slap a few temples down early and pray to the RNG god to treat me well and generate early freespawn commanders to keep my expansion phase rolling. While I got unlucky with events and did not end up seeing an early freespawn commander, I did get my lovely national hero on about turn 4, which served roughly the same purpose, and kept me going until I had 2 or 3 temples down and the freespawn commanders were rolling in.  Around the time BoT went up I managed to make peace with all of my neighbors, which was more or less mutually beneficial, and slam down a few indie research centers using my first summoned Lemur, my Wraith Lord national hero (a lucky strike!) and the Mercenary sage. Ry'leh stole a few border provinces, at which point I sued for peace, and he wisely agreed after I sold him an additional province, leaving my water footprint much smaller but my borders secure. At this point I was already extremely large (since Lemuria expands very well) and started forting and templing everything I could afford. I was very unfortunate with Luck events in the early game so this was only a moderate success, though I did manage to bump my effective domscore from 6 all the way to 9, giving my immortals a bit more breathing room. At this point I decided that if people weren't going to wander into the guerrilla hellscape that is Lemuria, I would take the guerrilla hellscape to them. I figured out which of my neighbors were busy fighting wars elsewhere (Mictlan and Man) and started sending wave after wave of freespawn deep into their territories, backcapping as many provinces as possible while avoiding their armies. While Mictlan was too embroiled in wars elsewhere to do much about the ~8 provinces I rapidly stole from him, Man made a valiant effort of chasing my armies around, recapping land, and occasionally trying to push into my territory. But while I would occasionally lose a small force from running into a nasty Man army, there were always hundreds more goasts streaming in from a different angle and a vicious force of immortals keeping him from making any headway into my lands without risking a single giant blob - which, considering I finally finished Rigor Mortis research, would have been disastrous within my candles. Eventually other nations realized that Man was on the ropes, and jumped on the feeding frenzy as well. He was still quite large and had big armies, but was making no headway in his wars, and eventually tapped out of the game without ever having managed to trap me in a big fight within his territory. At this point I was starting to secure several thrones. My Wraith Lord, aptly named Silly Billy, soloed an Annukaki of the Sky and his Spring Hawk retinue with the help of a Ring of Lightning, after having convinced Ragha not to challenge me for it (it was deep within my candles and he was at war with at least one other person who had spent half the game trying to convince me to attack Ragha). I jacked the throne that Man had been fighting me over from the now-floundering AI and secured a throne near the Mictlan border. Things were looking up - even though BoT went down around this time. Finally I got my first true windfall: Agartha went AI. I have no idea why Agartha went AI and I had no communication with him, but I shared a sizeable border to my north and immediately send freespawn in every direction to cap territory. Within a few turns I wrapped around the world North-to-South and was sieging forts owned by Mictlan, Agartha, and Man all at once. Lemuria is very good at sieging forts. At this point someone made a comment in IRC that Ramc (Pangaea) was close to winning the game because all the lvl 3 forts were near him. For some reason people have been putting way too many lvl 3 and 2 forts in the game making start locations even more unbalanced than normal, and this appeared to be the case in this game as well. quote:A side note - when you topend thrones like this, the game will naturally favor whoever spawned near the highest lvl thrones. This is why most thrones should be level 1! A lot of games are decided by where big thrones spawn, and this is usually because people want to include too many big splashy thrones in their games. Don't do this! It makes for lopsided games and is easily avoidable. If you ABSOLUTELY have to have tons of lvl 3 thrones, cut the lvl 1 thrones entirely, though this also screws with balance and leads to bless nations and nations with great troops having a big advantage over magic-based nations. The game doesn't look at the level of the throne when deciding how to space stuff out: it simply goes "as long as we don't put too many thrones right next to each other everything is peachy" and will happily slap all the high-lvl thrones down in a tight ring while stacking nothing but lvl 1 thrones on the opposite side of the world. Anyway, deciding it was time to finish things, I started researching teleport and sent armies toward every reasonable throne in range. Capping a lvl 1 throne behind an AI Agartha fort, I still had to steal a lvl 1 throne from Atlantis and clear a lvl 3 throne sandwiched between Pangaea and AI Man, which was ANOTHER Air 8 god with Spring Hawk retinue. Luckily Silly Billy was nearby to tank, and goasts can actually hurt spring hawks with their magic weapons, so I was able to beat both forces on the same turn with the help of several teleporting Grand Lemurs and Rigor Mortis. These would give me enough points to win, but I still had to survive the next turn - with Ramc's armies staring me down from a space away from each throne. Both forces appeared fairly small, but I took no chances and teleported in every last Grand Lemur, with bucketloads of gems, hoping to squeeze out a win no matter what he brought to the table. It turns out an attack never came, and I claimed the thrones for the win. All-in-all, I won this game because of early diplo and a good sense of timing on when to backstab a very distracted neighbor. I got lucky with my timings on invading people and made no significant mistakes the whole game - in particular I managed to avoid ever having a big fight that would cost me real resources, and constantly back-capped provinces while people tried futilely to catch my spooky spirits. BoT helped keep me competitive, though I think I would have been in about the same place if it hadn't been up, since Lemuria really does need early gold to establish a position and I was very unfortunate with Luck events for the first 20 or so turns. Lemuria is a terrible nation, but now that goons are not dead-set on suiciding into their lands I think they can actually win. I don't think anyone did anything wrong with regards to diplo with me (except the one guy trying to establish a 20 turn NAP with me on turn 36, literally 5 turns before I won the game. Don't sign NAPs on turn 36, guys). I was bullied occasionally when I overstepped my bounds but no one threw armies against my forts or fought over my already-dead lands. I just happened into a perfect storm of opportunistic targets and made the right decision each time, and won the game about as quickly as I could reasonably expect to. My research was pretty good at the end so I think I could have won a long game as well, but I was happy to close things out before it got there.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 19:50
|
|
|
AbandonAllHope graphs! Provinces - yeah i did pretty well here i like expanding  Forts - I was pretty broke, Lemuria wants to fort everything but noooope  Income  Gem Income - I actually was extremely unlucky with gem income. My death gem income was 19 on turn 37, which is atrocious considering I searched everywhere, had 15 starting D income, and was enormous.  Research - LOL seriously  Dominion - I like temples and thrones  Army Size - eh 
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 19:51
|
|
|
Hmm, mibbit appears to be dead and that what I've been using for IRC so I can't check in online atm. However, I have implemented Mukip's mountain sprites in a way that I think looks quite good: Next: mountain passes. And also trying to figure out if there's a non-awful way to get the border lines to not draw on top of mountains (but still draw on top of forests, in turn). e: On reflection, still needs work. Hrm. Better than nothing though. Corbeau fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Mar 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 20:35
|
|
|
It looks good!
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 20:57
|
|
|
Since you are bunching them up very closely, I need to add some more transparency to the edges of those mountain sprites to make them merge into each other better. They also have some lighter highlights on the edges that could be removed to help with that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 20:57
|
|
|
A readability compromise on border lines: drawing them over the mountains, at least while we've not got separate mountain-pass mountain sprites. Also drawing mountains spaced apart on a pass border. Ultimately I want to stop the border lines at the mountain sprites, but this is enough to be playable. e: Also, what do people use other than mibbit for irc? It's kind of obnoxious not having access to the IRC. Corbeau fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:08
|
|
|
Corbeau, I just want to reiterate that this is some good looking stuff.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:09
|
|
|
I honestly prefer the mountains without white lines but I might be in the minority here. Remember that when you right click a province it's going to show everywhere it leads to, so as long as there is any kind of demarcation there shouldn't be too much confusion!
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:11
|
|
|
jBrereton posted:I honestly prefer the mountains without white lines but I might be in the minority here. I hate the lines. They do, however, explain where you can and can't cross at a glance. I consider the lack to be a gigantic failing of the default dom4 map generator. However, I'll keep working on it. Ultimately there will not be lines over the mountains - I just don't know when that'll come about.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:14
|
|
|
The black lines make the mountain look as if they are transparent, though, which is weird. The white isn't much better, but it makes the mountains seem like actual solid objects in comparison.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:15
|
|
|
Is it impossible to modify the map based on heat/cold scales at the start of the game? Because it'd be mega-cool to have tropical/deciduous/evergreen forests map to hot/medium/cold scales, for example. e. I realize scales can change during the game, but five or so years in-game isn't long enough for entire biomes to naturally adapt to changed climate so you could just ignore that. Thinking about it more, though, you'd have players starting locations being affected by their own scales from turn 1, but not matching the map's biomes. Maybe not worth the effort.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:21
|
|
|
Corbeau posted:e: Also, what do people use other than mibbit for irc? It's kind of obnoxious not having access to the IRC. i use hexchat. i used to use mibbit and whatever the hell but this is a lot better now
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:24
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Is it impossible to modify the map based on heat/cold scales at the start of the game?
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:26
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Is it impossible to modify the map based on heat/cold scales at the start of the game? Because it'd be mega-cool to have tropical/deciduous/evergreen forests map to hot/medium/cold scales, for example. In the back of my mind I've long wanted to modify the map based on the nations' starting temp preference. Scales are impossible but national temp default can be done. Unfortunately that's a gigantic increase in the amount of art assets required, both hand-drawn and generated. It's very much a luxury feature.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:30
|
|
|
Yeah I'm just musing about luxury features, for sure. The maps are already looking like a huge improvement. Another thing I'd love is to make provinces shaped such that instead of donut worlds, we could have spherical worlds with elongated/apparently larger provs at the poles to ensure there's no power disparity if you're stuck there. E.g. use this as the average prov shape/size and then modify for more natural borders:  So the polar provs would border one another, but not confer the advantage that you get from being on the edge of a flat map and not having to protect yourself in one or two directions.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:35
|
|
|
The issue there is mostly making it visually presentable. Which would be totally doable... if I had access to the Dom4 engine (and knew whatever the hell it's coded in, I have no idea). My list of fantasy projects includes, among many things, "dominions but good."
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 21:53
|
|
|
Speaking as someone who once tried to write a fully spherical map generator - run, run while you still can. e: if you ever start writing that, give me a call
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 22:17
|
|
|
It's ok that the last pantokrator made the world toroidal before being eaten by horrors imo
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 22:21
|
|
|
My guess as to dom4s codebase: Cobol Alternative: Fortran
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 22:32
|
|
|
Let me make the nations for Dominions But Good when the time comes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 22:54
|
|
|
I actually wrote a program a while back that rendered a dom4 map as a sphere (even though it's not a sphere - same exact map, just an optical illusion). I used peliwyr for testing. Also, changed up how border lines work. This seems better: 
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
Keep it up Corb! E- I use kvirc for a few years and I've been very happy with it. always be closing fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Mar 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
The goal for IRC is to not have to install anything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 23:20
|
|
|
I bought mirc 7 years ago for some reason so I'm using that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 14, 2017 23:39
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:The goal for IRC is to not have to install anything. yeah this thing. how do i use irc without mibbit from my browser. i don't want to configure anything.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 00:07
|
|
|
Map generated for No Snek:
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:06
|
|
|
Corbeau posted:Map generated for No Snek: trees going off the top and bottom this is GARBAGE. scrap the whole thing how dare you
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:07
|
|
|
Where is the Gem Activated button
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:11
|
|
|
I hate you all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:13
|
|
|
Sloppy Milkshake posted:yeah this thing. how do i use irc without mibbit from my browser. i don't want to configure anything. http://cgiirc.synirc.net
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:18
|
|
|
I hope the apes started in the big forest. That is a nice map. Are you going to add little gribbly bits like stone circles and volcanoes?
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:19
|
|
|
goatface posted:I hope the apes started in the big forest. Yup, and Pangaea too. The only question is which big forest(s). There are, after all, several: (reposting the right picture because sloppy quoted my post pre-edit, because I had to regen the map due to a bug.) goatface posted:That is a nice map. Are you going to add little gribbly bits like stone circles and volcanoes? Yes. Frankly, the graphical pass is probably 25% done at best.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 01:40
|
|
|
Sloppy Milkshake posted:yeah this thing. how do i use irc without mibbit from my browser. i don't want to configure anything. i use irc cloud its easy also the mobile app and web client sync which is nice
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2017 05:15
|
|
|
Posting to verify for brainwrinkle. After faring decently in a couple of private multiplayer games, I am psychically prepared to be turned into a fine red mist in goongames when I next have an opening for a new game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2017 23:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 15:28 |
|
|
use http://webirc.synirc.net, it's far less lovely
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2017 14:25
|
|
