Interminus - Game Ubderway (6/6) Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

Interminus is a game for New to Intermediate skilled players. This is an AND Game. The other thread with a similar name was the recruitment thread.

General Game Information
Name of the Game - Interminus
Network or PBEM - PBEM Llamaserver Llamaserver.net
Hosting Schedule - 28 hours first 30 turns the up to 52 hours till turn 55. short term and long term increases available upon request by PM. Whenever you need extended time please PM the Admin and Vice Admins. They will try to accommodate you. I will check my Desura PM's twice a day. So as long as you give me a day's notice your extension should be granted. If I am going to be away for a day or more I will post a message on the thread.
Number of Players - 7 or 6?
Skill level - new to intermediate
Expected Commitment Level - high
-------Game Settings-------
Age - MA
Independent Strength - 7
Research - default
Magic Sites- default
Money -default
Resources- default
Supplies- default
Random Events- default
Score Graphs - off
Hall Of Fame - 15
Re-Naming - ON -- Please do not rename in a way that gives away your identity --

Nation Selection - PM message has been sent to all players detailing process.

Map - Streamlands Z7.invisionfree.com

Mods - CBM 1.96

Victory Conditions - Take and Hold 3 Capitols for 3 consecutive turns. you must save and send the admin each of the three turns. Or consensus. The admin will poll the players via PM every 10 turns starting around turn 50. If all remaining players vote for the same nation as the winner the game will be called.

Diplomacy - Absolutely None. No-Diplo under any circumstance, no trades, no sending gold, gems, messages or items to any other player. No contact in any way or anywhere with any other player in this game about this game. All concerns related to the game (barring specific questions asked by the Admin on the Thread) to be made Via PM to Admin and also Vice Admins if we have volunteera. If you are planning to release an AAR you must wait until the game is completely over before posting any of it. If you can't do that then please don't do an AAR for this game.

If a player breaks the above rules and sends you something in game please save that turn and send it to the Admin and PM the admin about the incident.

General Rules - 1. Don't break the above rules.

4. See all rules below especially 7.

Disallowed Exploits - I will use Calahans list of banned exploits.

Admin - happyfungi
Vice Admin - Looking for someone not playing in this game.

Players are listed Alphabetically
Chelubey
Democritusparadise
_Flex_
Lucheng
Marginale
mrBiasha

Nations are listed Alphabetically
1 C'tis
2 Jotunheim
3 Machaka - mrBiasha - eliminated around turn 36
4 Tien Chi
5 Ulm
6 Vanheim

I have PM'd each player the nation selection process.

Please read the OP if anything up there is a deal breaker, the time to get out is now.

Edited by: happyfungi

1 Hall of Fame: I don't care
2 CBM1.96
3 It seems that most no-diploamcy game sets the graphs "ON". It is said that the biggest player will easily win with the graphs "OFF".
But personally, I don't mind setting the graphs "OFF", I even prefer to that.
You can set the graph off when creating the game. No score information can be seen then both ingame and on the server. However, if llamaserver goes down and recovers later, there will be a bug that turns the graph "ON" on the server. At least that's what my exprience in my two graph-off games.

Edited by: lucheng

1 15 would be ok
2 since mostly everything was fixed, we should probably take 1.96
3 I prefer OFF more

what mrbiasha said.

1. 15
2. CBM 1.96
3. Hmmm..... I abstain here.

Edited by: chelubey

sorry people due to Life Events right now I cannot commit to the game to the level it will require of me, things keep piling up and need to be done and dealt with so I prefer to leave you now than to play a half-hearted game and spoil everyone's fun.
So, sadly, I drop (yet again ) from this game, and look forward to play with you all hopefully in another one.
I appreciate the willingness to risk including newish players and hope it pays off.
Good luck to you all.

OK so adding to the old poll do we continue on and switch to a 6 player map or look for a 7th player?

I'm fine with waiting, however I'm not sure if chances are high. Game's settings are quite specific.

P.S. And I changed my mind about open/closed graphs. I'd rather vote for graphs off.

we have a majority on these

15 hof
CBM 1.96
graphs off

I am going to make an executive decision. and set this up as six player game unless it will absolutely destroy the fun for someone.
So unless someone objects I will go ahead and get a game ready using a 6 player start Streamlands map.

I will send PM's with your nations. I will not Post all the nations until the players have a day to reach me and tell me they must have seven players.

game is on llamaserver please send pretenders once ready.

nations list in OP.

Can't wait to start!

The Game is underway.

And here we go! Some giants, some vanir... It will be a tough game.

The No Diplomacy also applies to in game messaging just to be clear. Please do not communicate in any way with each other in game or out. I am sure someone just forgot, or got their games confused. Just pay attention to that main rule please.

There will be a 3 or 4 day delay starting on the 30th of dec, play should resume by Jan 2nd.

Turn 20 is done and all is well. 20 turns in 13 days excellent and no stales, excellent.

Yesterday's delay with llamaserver's processing is seemingly resolved, turn 26 took place.

Affirmative. Things are starting to get denser.

I have bumped up the hours per turn to 52 since it is turn 30. I doubt this will slow the game down much since you guys seem to plow trough your turns.

You all are awesome, 30 turns and no stales, no major mishaps, no need for subs. If all games went this well, we would have people fighting over the right to admin games..

Yes, it's a pleasure to participate in games of such kind.

Edited by: chelubey

My pretty first game on desura, is it such a common thing here that people stale ol leave without notice?

No but usually there are at least one or two stales occurring, if even just by accident, and sometimes if a war starts to go very badly some players look for a way out of finishing. People usually don't leave without notice unless they have a computer connection mishap.

I will be checking in at least one time tomorrow morning, after that I will be gone for a about 36 hours traveling. I would ask for a postponement if needed, within the next 22 hours by PM. I will then be unavailable until at least Monday 23:00 GMT 13 Jan and maybe not until Tuesday 5:00 GMT 14 Jan.

I am back now

mrbiasha wrote: My pretty first game on desura, is it such a common thing here that people stale ol leave without notice?

If you take some general game with random players, even in some medium game of like 8 players you can expect several stales and maybe 1 or two players leaving/going AI. The more "newbie" games - the higher are the chances of something like that.
If game is explicitly marked as "high commitment", admin tries to prevent that - then the chances of it drops like 2-3 times.
Truely clear, almost no-stale games require careful selection of players.

Also community affects it.

For instance when I played on shrapnelforum, I was shocked to realize that one of players decided that he doesn't get fun anymore... on like 10+th turn.
So he decided to go AI. (I don't know if admin was warned).
In the middle of the game one of players was lost, and substitute player was found. However this substitute player silently set AI after a while (he entered the war and was defeated there).
I may be not quite careful here, but I'd say that such things were quite common on shrapnel.

It is mainly because metagame standards of shrapnel games were quite loose ones.

At the same time Dom3mods had quite strict traditions of game handling, and going AI/dissapearing/stales were more rare there.

Desura looks somewhat more strict than Shrapnel in this account for me, but less "high commitment" than Dom3mods.

P.S. Although among several games I admined on Dom3mods in two "high commitment" no-diplo games there was about 4 stales in each one.
So despite all my intentions (and efforts) to totally eliminate that, I still managed to omit a lot of stale turns.

P.P.S. Maybe it makes sense to divide accident stales from careless stales.

For instance if you go home from work in the late evening, and realize that internet access is broken for some reason, you have no backup channel, and you can't afford moving back to city to some WiFi coffee bar - then you'll stale. This is accident stale.
But if you lost interest to the game, play randomly, and don't care much - this is careless stale. (What starts often happening before player drops out).

Even among the most devoted players there could be half of dozen or maybe even a dozen of cases for some medium-sized game, when accident stale can take place. Good admin will prevent that. (In aforementioned case of two Dom3mod games players were very devoted - no subs were needed, all participants were quite disciplined ones - still about 4 stales).

"Careless stales" occurances, as well as dropping out, going AI, etc - are a function of:
* game type (high commitment or casual),
* community (mentioned above),
* player skills (you can't expect unanimous high commitment from newbies even if you explain it - newbies don't know themselves yet what will be their attitude to game several months later)
* admin efforts to prevent that

Edited by: chelubey

If and when players get eliminated they can post which nation they played as and and brief account of their experience if they wish. They should not give any details about what nations they did or did not fight. It is OK to give a vague account of your experience. You can give details on your own nation and strategy, pretender build, early game and mid game strategies, bad or good luck with events, this is all fine just don't talk about any other nations specifically.

If you want to vent that three nations ended up attacking you, that is fine just don't name any of the nations or give hints as to they were.

If you don't want to post anything that is fine too.

I played Machaka. Generally being steamrolled is not something unusual for this nation, but it was really quick this time. I got an awake rainbow pretender and a good start with research though an excessive amount of magic didn't help me against my general enemy. To use it I had to deploy a proper amount of heavy infantry which was a thing I failed to do. Spiders are good, but they are good in certain situations and that was not the one. When I saw my neighbours I didn't try to adjust my strategy and so it ended badly for me. Though the standard practice of using spiders for expand worked quite well. With a good luck and a point in magic I received quite a lot of gem events, but experinced a severe problems with a death sites.

Thanks for playing mrbiasha. If you are looking for another AND game and Have dom 4 I am trying organize a game over on Dom4Mods called Interference. We still need one or two players.

Thanks for invitation. I will think it over though I'm totally new to 4 and have no proper experience with it.

I will be traveling for the next two days I so i am extending the timer a few hours in case someone may need this turn extended, i'll be back before the next turn is done,