Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

[mkivcs]

^ +1 What undercovergeek said

I would support Elitesix's idea although I don't think it will make a blind bit of difference to the current game as the damage is done in terms of dropped empires and loss of interest. I remember playing this kind of game years ago via snail mail and even then the role of alliances were a major sticking point. They are always going to happen and dealing with this is part of the game. However this game was setup specifically as a newbie friendly game and with hindsight maybe all players classed as experienced should have been specifically excluded from multi nation alliances at the start. The gulf between experienced and newbie in Dominions is just so great that  I can understand the frustration when you hand crafted empire gets taken apart in a nanosecond by someone who knows the exact combination of spells required to decimate your nation. Particularly if the aggressor is part of some collective.
Overall I've really enjoyed playing this game and I think without exception enjoyed the contribution of all those taking part. However the mass defections and bad feeling engendered has certainly lessened my anticipation of the next move and I think it is unfortunate that a newbie game should result in so many players no wanting to take part in a similar game again.

[JasonPratt]

i aggressively expanded in a war game?

i took indy nations faster than others?

i came to a coast and stopped and im supposed to know or care whats happening on the other side of the sea?

im supposed to have sympathy for those that got their second?

im sorry is this kerrplunk? or did i read the name on the game box wrong?

Not knowing or caring what was happening on the other side of the sea, meant you were putting yourself in place for having multiple nations teaming up to expand into your territory. Setting up a mere NAP# only means opponent agree to chivalrously warn you three turns in advance before starting hostilities (and vice versa). Which is what happened.

You didn't do anything ethically wrong, but aggressively expanding in a wargame means you had better be prepared to defeat everyone you aggressively expand into, unless you diplomatically arrange solid alliances of some sort.

Otherwise you have nothing to complain about if they decide to fight you simultaneously. Which couldn't be necessarily avoided even if the game was declared alliance free from the outset--even the AI can attack a nation with multiple competing nations. Whereas this game was declared alliance friendly from the outset (even with SVAs). Which you knew and actually discussed with other people before gamestart.

In a game with diplomacy, even if the diplo is outside the game engine per se, playing the diplomacy is important, or else playing the game so that you don't need diplomacy is important. I was going to play Gamin of Oceania as a non-diplomatic nation (partly for rp reasons and partly to help offset the huge advantages an ocean nation has compared to land nations, but also partly because an ocean nation has some chance to fight a non-diplo game in a diplo game.) Switching to Ulm in a diplo game, I pronto started looking around to decide who to make diplomatic deals with.

Your faction was the most logical one to be left standing when the music stopped, since from a pragmatic strategic perspective I could arrange more effective pressure against you than against anyone else I had contact with, and from an rp standpoint my character and nation would be more likely to go to war with a spider-worshiping deathy blood mage faction than the other alternatives. (Also in a meta sense factions like that tend on average to get targeted more quickly, so betting on an alliance against you was a good idea from that direction, too.)


Could this have been avoided in a non-alliance game? Not necessarily. You were pressuring a large number of nations at one time (call it bad luck at rolling an initial position), so at any given time odds would have been good you would have been fighting counterpushes from more than one nation, and odds would have been almost as good that more than one of those counterpushes would be moving along a similar axis of advance.

Fast and effective expansion means opening yourself up to more threats sooner, unless you're an ocean nation who can expect limited reprisal capability, or unless you luck into having only one or two nearby opponents (e.g. starting in a corner and working toward the center). Success makes you squeaky, and the squeaky wheel gets the hammer, or words to that effect.

[JasonPratt]

However this game was setup specifically as a newbie friendly game and with hindsight maybe all players classed as experienced should have been specifically excluded from multi nation alliances at the start.

Of course, being a newbie friendly game was one reason we agreed on alliances; but I did originally set up the game to specifically exclude experienced player alliances from the start: I moved experienced players (myself included) into ocean territories who were forbidden to start alliances. And I was going to play my pretender that way even though more people came back wanting alliances available to all nations including underwater ones, than spoke up in favor of it.

(Then I got put out of the game (I myself worked hard to set up) in like six turns. :) But that was okay, that's how the game works sometimes.)


The diplomatic game is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL if a game allows alliances. Right now, assuming for purposes of argument there is a 6 nation SVA (which technically there isn't, I really only know of one explicit SVA alliance between two nations despite my politicking -- but I also know that the wording of some alliances amounts to an SVA, I'm just not sure of the intentions involved), the other nations had better be ganging up pronto into their own bloc.

Does the game engine recognize an SVA win? Not at all, that's a meta-game construct of the players.

Does an SVA win mean the game is actually over? Not unless the players agree they want to move on to something else; their SVA may be an agreement to fight among each other once everyone else is down. Or they may change their minds about that later. They could even technically change their minds about it earlier, since there's nothing really to enforce an alliance or punish breaking an alliance other than the breaker being marked as untrustworthy for future games.


Also keep in mind that any long-term game can easily start to lose interest among the players who want to be doing something new with their time; and even with no alliances at all players who are being crushed will have less motivation to continue, which is entirely natural. Knowing when to tip the king (and move on to something else) is important for everyone's relative enjoyment. Just remember to set the faction to AI and send a last turn to the server, so the admin doesn't have to manually do that.


Anyway, the next large game (when I get around to it, which may be after this game finishes) will be newbie friendly in a different way: no alliances allowed at all, but the game is physically large enough (in theory anyway, there could still be unlucky placement rolls) for everyone to expand to a large power and test out things they want to try. That's the whole point of Groghawk. And I may set up a version of the map to guarantee a certain radius of provinces between each capitol. (Or ideally I may hand the reins over to someone else as I've played a lot of Dom3 recently and would like to spend time working on something else.)

On the other hand, small games can and do run faster, even though that means players also lose faster. But players are more likely to keep interest in the game over the proportionate long haul (because proportionately the haul isn't so long). We've had several smaller games set up after Groghammer for that purpose, too.

[JasonPratt]

How about this as an option?

I really would like to spend my limited free time playing/working on something other than Dom3 for a while.

So if anyone is unhappy with the game and/or has been put out of this one, I will voluntarily donate both my current games, here and at Dom of Grogs (where I'm playing Late Age Jomon, just getting into a war with C'tis, with one strong SVA ally but kind of iffy whether I'm going to be able to stop the C'tis steamroller).

The first two players who ask for them may have those games. :) I'll reset the turns to be sent to your email(s) instead.

[elitesix]

That damn goblin province defense is keeping me down...goblins have killed so many toads :(

Time to send in the big guns.... Zag'mu, Doom of the Goblins! >:(



(Apparently he likes elves too but don't worry Eriu we will keep him in check)

[byrdman57]

We aren't worried. We have special anti-grendelkin defenses.

[elitesix]

Zag'mu died horribly. He killed over half a dozen Goblin commanders, nearly a hundred Goblin troops before coming to his demise.

His sacrifice will be honored in the temples of Azag as unfortunately he did not live long enough to enter the Hall of Fame.

ooc Phobos kudos man you're putting up a stubborn capital defense.

[KingoftheScots]

So, i did something stupid yesterday. Forgot to email in my turn. And as i'm sitting on the train to work, i remember! But i won't be home before the timer ticks over, sorry for stalling a turn.

[JasonPratt]

You aren't the only player running a bit late -- I just checked. :) (Mictlan and Pythium are the other two players.)

I've postponed it by 24 hours, so you should have all afternoon and night to get it done. If you can't let me know pronto. The timer will reset to 48 hours automatically as soon as everyone posts a turn or it stales either way.

[KingoftheScots]

Just sent in both turns. Thanks a bunch!

[JasonPratt]

Whoops, Llama burped when sending my turn--haven't got it yet, and no more time to do it tonight. While I probably have time to do it tomorrow afternoon, just to be safe I'm postponing the game by 24 hours.

[Ubercat]

I just took my turn 38.

I don't know when turn 37 was processed but I never received turn 38. I happened to go to the servers game page to see where we stood and was surprised to see that it was still waiting for my turn. I had to request a turn resend. I noticed that it's still waiting for Pythium, Marignon, Eriu, Mictlan, Ulm, and Shinuyama.

If any of you are in the same boat as me and never received you turn, you should request a resend. http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Groghammer

[claes]

Whoops, Llama burped when sending my turn--haven't got it yet, and no more time to do it tonight. While I probably have time to do it tomorrow afternoon, just to be safe I'm postponing the game by 24 hours.

I didn't get the last turn either for some reason, sorry if it caused a hiccup in game.

[elitesix]

gg Phobos. mad respect man.

[Phobos]

It's not over yet.