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i might be intrested to participate if you do a randomized game 
depends on the day tho
depends on the day tho
finally it restarts. as i said in my previews post. i want to join next round. unfortunately i can not play on mondays nor wednesday
For the moment, I would still be able to play at our regular time, but I would prefer it be done on a weekend, Sunday in particular. Unless you guys want to play on our regular day, but four hours later?
I'd also like to emphasize that my continued participation is not dependent on playing the particular game I have in mind. I just think it would be a nice variation on things.
I'd also like to emphasize that my continued participation is not dependent on playing the particular game I have in mind. I just think it would be a nice variation on things.
We could also set the game in Asia. That'd be almost a random game in and of itself, considering we never play there. If we play in Europe, it'd be fun to try MyMap.
problem with a asian game is several countrys got fairly nasty events, while others dont got any events the entire game
it could be a very good randomized game tho
it could be a very good randomized game tho
The problem with the randomized scenarios is: who will make it? Making a scenario takes time.
I don't even know how, so I think I'm off the hook. If we were to play vanilla, we'd have a pretty wide selection to choose from. Maybe we should do that?
I have at least some experience modding scenarios, so I suppose I could put something together. Depends on what you have in mind, and whether or not we're sure this is actually what we want to do.
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Oh, it can be done for sure. And it's not hard either. But it takes time, a lot of time. And it isn't very enjoyable. In fact, it's pretty damn boring.
We could sleep all of the events for Asian countries, and edit out their leaders(or not. perhaps we'd enjoy the flavor, if there aren't any real ubers). And edit their monarch files to make them even. Then some province swaps to give everyone an even start, and oiula! Oh, and we'd have to edit tech groups up, and probably move the Europeans down some tech groups.
Anyway, here's what I have in mind when I speak of a random scenario:
-Euro-centric: players will select a European, Middle Eastern, or North African country to play, named as they wish.
-All countries in that region will have the same number of provinces (I figure 3 or 4) and player countries will be given a COT in their capital. If possible, all provinces will be equal in population, manpower, and income. Not sure about trade goods.
-All historical events and leaders will be slept/removed, leaving only random leaders and events (probably taken from UMP). Monarchs would be undying and equal in stats; name them as you wish. (John proposed a pre-set number of monarchs that the player chooses where to place beforehand: ex: Each country is given a monarch with 111 and 999 stats. Player A decides King Terrible 111 will reign from 1420-1460, followed by King Great 999, and so forth)
-Culture will be uniform across all starting provinces (so I don't have to spend time balancing those things)o
-This idea just came to me as I was typing this post: each player country would have a different religion, and all provinces in the starting area outside those borders would be pagan. So Player A might choose to play as Hindu Castille, while Player B plays as Reformed Papal States. There's only 9 religions though.
-Otherwise, uniform religion. Reformation and Tordesillas events would be removed.
-All countries outside the starting zone (arbitrarily placed at Persia and the Urals to the east, the Sahara and Arabia to the south) will remain unaltered in techs, events, provinces, religion, etc. But perhaps all province cultures are changed to colonial (again, basing my modifications on UMP)?
I think that's about everything. My main problem with starting in Asia is that I think it will be tedious to mod the borders. Looking through the files, I don't think there are enough tags to break Asia up into smaller nations, so I would have to rearrange Europe and transplate some of those countries into Asia.
But the decision is up to you guys. What do you think of my idea? Do you even want a random scenario? Let me know.
-Euro-centric: players will select a European, Middle Eastern, or North African country to play, named as they wish.
-All countries in that region will have the same number of provinces (I figure 3 or 4) and player countries will be given a COT in their capital. If possible, all provinces will be equal in population, manpower, and income. Not sure about trade goods.
-All historical events and leaders will be slept/removed, leaving only random leaders and events (probably taken from UMP). Monarchs would be undying and equal in stats; name them as you wish. (John proposed a pre-set number of monarchs that the player chooses where to place beforehand: ex: Each country is given a monarch with 111 and 999 stats. Player A decides King Terrible 111 will reign from 1420-1460, followed by King Great 999, and so forth)
-Culture will be uniform across all starting provinces (so I don't have to spend time balancing those things)
o-This idea just came to me as I was typing this post: each player country would have a different religion, and all provinces in the starting area outside those borders would be pagan. So Player A might choose to play as Hindu Castille, while Player B plays as Reformed Papal States. There's only 9 religions though.
-Otherwise, uniform religion. Reformation and Tordesillas events would be removed.
-All countries outside the starting zone (arbitrarily placed at Persia and the Urals to the east, the Sahara and Arabia to the south) will remain unaltered in techs, events, provinces, religion, etc. But perhaps all province cultures are changed to colonial (again, basing my modifications on UMP)?
I think that's about everything. My main problem with starting in Asia is that I think it will be tedious to mod the borders. Looking through the files, I don't think there are enough tags to break Asia up into smaller nations, so I would have to rearrange Europe and transplate some of those countries into Asia.
But the decision is up to you guys. What do you think of my idea? Do you even want a random scenario? Let me know.
Interesting idea, regarding the religious setup. We would have to edit the religions so that the modifiers were balanced. Maybe not eactly the same, but we wouldn't want Shiite and Hindu to grant .5 morale, or for there to be a large tech disadvantage for all of the non-christian religions. Perhaps if we just scaled it all back a bit, so that the morale advantages would be something like .15, and tech penalties -5.
If we did this, perhaps it would also be wise to give all religions a major stability boost, to make it easier to cope with having to expand into so many divergent religious groups, as opposed to how it would be in a uniformly catholic Europe.
I don't know about the idea of changing provinces outside Europe to a common culture. That could make it just a little too easy to expand that way, especially for countries that border Persia or the Urals.
If we did this, perhaps it would also be wise to give all religions a major stability boost, to make it easier to cope with having to expand into so many divergent religious groups, as opposed to how it would be in a uniformly catholic Europe.
I don't know about the idea of changing provinces outside Europe to a common culture. That could make it just a little too easy to expand that way, especially for countries that border Persia or the Urals.
I think that making the map so extremely alike, with everyone having clones of the same nation, will remove much of the natural dynamics of the game. No one nation will get a profile, there will never be adequate reason to attack someone 2v1, as all powers remain in equal strength. Not like the normal game where a nation like Netherlands/Portugal never really can fight a nation like France/Austria, but still play a vital role. I fear all nations will be average at all fields, everyone has a navy, everyone is trading. Only difference will be who rolls the best dice in early game, from battles to random events (as no historical events can help you back up).
OTOH, it will be a more skill-based game, where skill is defined from actual in-game expertise as well as out-of-game diplomacy. Not so much brute force for just being the OE or Russia with a ton of cores.
OTOH, it will be a more skill-based game, where skill is defined from actual in-game expertise as well as out-of-game diplomacy. Not so much brute force for just being the OE or Russia with a ton of cores.
Differentiation will happen over time as a result of player actions. In this type of game, that difference will also be completely a result of the moves of the players instead of merely what is expected. If as the Ottoman Empire, you from 1453 go on to build a large empire on three continents, that's only the norm, but if you do it in a random game, you've done something impressive.
Perhaps there are other ways to provide differentiation as well. We could maybe allow each country a half dozen or so core provinces that would have a particular culture only they would posess, to make it less lucrative to expand into the very heart of anybody's country. If we have different religions, a la TC's idea, it would make it wiping a country off the map much less of a no brainer, so that the ones that lose out in the big continental expansions have a better chance of making it afterward as small, colonial nations.
On a more general note, regardless of what type of scenario we decide to do, how about some type of rule to make control of centers of trade a little bit more advantageous to the owner? They're very important in so far as getting up to 12 mercs a year, but after that point they often become more of a liability than an asset. The actual trade you get from a cot that you own is not much different than what you get for 5 mercs in someone else's cot. So what if we said that you can't establish more than two mercs per cot unowned by you(and perhaps three if you share a TA?)? This would make it so that owning a cot with a monopoly gives you 3-4x more income than somebody who has two mercs in your cot. Thus, control of trade rather than simply your ability to trade successfully becomes an important factor. Perhaps the free trade/protectionist slider could affect this somehow as well. Maybe as a free trade country, you can make trade agreements with other countries that allow you to have three or four mercs in each others cots. But protectionist countries wouldn't be allowed to make free trade agreements(as a compensation, perhaps they could be allowed to not allow certain other countries to have more than one merc per cot, just by saying so, with no embargo needed).
Perhaps there are other ways to provide differentiation as well. We could maybe allow each country a half dozen or so core provinces that would have a particular culture only they would posess, to make it less lucrative to expand into the very heart of anybody's country. If we have different religions, a la TC's idea, it would make it wiping a country off the map much less of a no brainer, so that the ones that lose out in the big continental expansions have a better chance of making it afterward as small, colonial nations.
On a more general note, regardless of what type of scenario we decide to do, how about some type of rule to make control of centers of trade a little bit more advantageous to the owner? They're very important in so far as getting up to 12 mercs a year, but after that point they often become more of a liability than an asset. The actual trade you get from a cot that you own is not much different than what you get for 5 mercs in someone else's cot. So what if we said that you can't establish more than two mercs per cot unowned by you(and perhaps three if you share a TA?)? This would make it so that owning a cot with a monopoly gives you 3-4x more income than somebody who has two mercs in your cot. Thus, control of trade rather than simply your ability to trade successfully becomes an important factor. Perhaps the free trade/protectionist slider could affect this somehow as well. Maybe as a free trade country, you can make trade agreements with other countries that allow you to have three or four mercs in each others cots. But protectionist countries wouldn't be allowed to make free trade agreements(as a compensation, perhaps they could be allowed to not allow certain other countries to have more than one merc per cot, just by saying so, with no embargo needed).
If we were using FTG, we could do this in a very efficient and non-rule controlled way, namely change the TE penalty for issuing an Embargo. That way, you'll have to really strike a deal with the CoT owners to get to trade there.
If every player country ends up being equal, then clearly someone hasn't been doing his job. The only thing stopping a player from becoming the scenario's Spain or OE is their own ambition and the counter-ambitions of the other players. And with the countries more or less equalized, we can easily have completely ahistorical countries carving empires out of ahistorical geographical regions with 'regional' variety. A player who picks, say, Kiev, might decide to try going to the Russian route and largely ignore his navy, while someone who plays in Britain will naturally have to. Everyone picking a completely balanced approach and politely dividing the world up amongst themselves is a possibility, I suppose, but it will be the fault of the players, not the scenario.
John said:
Not a bad idea. It won't be hard to mod, either.
I don't particularly mind the merchant idea, though. Sounds like it could get hard to keep track of, and liable to be screwed up by the AI.
Anyway, since I'm bored, have some time on my hands, and doubt we'll get many responses from the rest of the group, I'm going to go ahead and start making the map today.
tbh if you do a asia setup you should
1 rebalance religion, some are really shitty, others overpowert and they tend to be mixed in some places wich really sucks for some areas if a player starts there
2 add a culture rule to any culture so we can claim culture that not a primary culture of another player, there just to many cultures otherwise and will make killing ai & fighting over certain provinces not worth the effort
3 give latin or orthodox techgroup
4 keep the playng field to east of persia, there is no need to go beyond that as you just spread people out further
5 make sure everybody has adequate maps as the few players you know the higher techcosts will be and i think japan and few others start fairly bad on that part)
6 delete events, add monarchs & add random leaders mayby based on mt
if you do a euro setup i think we should follow tc pilot sayd
but mayby restrict us to euro+north africa, that would certainly benefit fighting
you could also just do catholic+orthodox deviding europe tc instead of having every religion possible
1 rebalance religion, some are really shitty, others overpowert and they tend to be mixed in some places wich really sucks for some areas if a player starts there
2 add a culture rule to any culture so we can claim culture that not a primary culture of another player, there just to many cultures otherwise and will make killing ai & fighting over certain provinces not worth the effort
3 give latin or orthodox techgroup
4 keep the playng field to east of persia, there is no need to go beyond that as you just spread people out further
5 make sure everybody has adequate maps as the few players you know the higher techcosts will be and i think japan and few others start fairly bad on that part)
6 delete events, add monarchs & add random leaders mayby based on mt
if you do a euro setup i think we should follow tc pilot sayd
but mayby restrict us to euro+north africa, that would certainly benefit fighting
you could also just do catholic+orthodox deviding europe tc instead of having every religion possible
When you say we should be restricted to Europe/North Africa, do you mean that will be the boundary across which no player can go? Like, no colonization into the Americas or Africa?
I realized there's still a few things left unclear at the moment, so I'm going to wait on editing the map.
First, will this focus on Asia or Europe?
-if Asia, then I'll probably take drake's suggestion that the map will end at Persia (and Golden Horde in the north)
Second, how large should the starting countries be? 3 provinces? 4? Some other number?
Personally, I would favor a Euro-centric game with countries starting with 4 provinces each.
I realized there's still a few things left unclear at the moment, so I'm going to wait on editing the map.
First, will this focus on Asia or Europe?
-if Asia, then I'll probably take drake's suggestion that the map will end at Persia (and Golden Horde in the north)
Second, how large should the starting countries be? 3 provinces? 4? Some other number?
Personally, I would favor a Euro-centric game with countries starting with 4 provinces each.
yes i did,
people on the edge have a huge advantage in a randomized game, they can expand endlessly and get additional manpower without any competition for em
people on the edge have a huge advantage in a randomized game, they can expand endlessly and get additional manpower without any competition for em