The Gaming Den

The current map isn't very wraparoundy when I look at it. It just looks like the regular small divide. The one Mister_Sinister linked to is the same map (small divide), except it's actually wraparound with the proper connections. We have hosted a game with it before, so it should be on llamaserver already, except I can't find it. It disappeared into the ether, I guess.

When I tried to upload it again, the server asserted a map with the same filename already existed on the server.

OH! I get it. Nevermind. I'm being stupid.

Llamaserver wrote:This is a modification of the Small Divide map by elmokki. I did not make this map - I just modified it slightly. The link is to the original map.

That is why it did not look wraparoundy to me. I was redownloading the original. Lol.

You had the right map selected on llamaserver all along, but to download the actual map as a player you'll need to use Mister_Sinister's link, not the one in the llamaserver description.

Noted. I have done so, and the server knows which map we're using.

Therefore, people need to email their pretenders to dennoobstwoelectricboogaloo at llamaserver dot com.

Edit: I see Ashdod has already done this!

I'll send mine in once I'm done wrestling with Java Swing.

I'll send mine after get home from trying to code in SQL / PL SQL for a database project...

Drago0661 wrote:I'll send mine after get home from trying to code in SQL / PL SQL for a database project...

I'm not sure which of us has it worse at the moment. Me with my Inception JPanels or you with yelling at your database to make it do things.

Everyone around here is a programmer, I swear. My latest programming nightmare temporarily ended at 2:00 today, when I got to stop worrying about LISP-like languages.

Seriously, I will gratefully take your JPanels if you make people who think LISP syntax is a good idea go away.

DSMatticus wrote:Everyone around here is a programmer, I swear.

If it makes you feel any better, I am not a programmer!

I will be at work functionally all weekend (3x 12-hour shifts) and will therefore most likely start the game on Sunday evening assuming that all the pretenders have been submitted. This is my routine work schedule, so odds are I'm going to need extensions come weekends, but otherwise we'll start with 24-hour turns and make adjustments from there.

And yes, I realize that is probably the exact opposite of everyone else's schedule, but this is why I'm interested in the PBEM format in general.

DSMatticus wrote:Everyone around here is a programmer, I swear. My latest programming nightmare temporarily ended at 2:00 today, when I got to stop worrying about LISP-like languages.

Seriously, I will gratefully take your JPanels if you make people who think LISP syntax is a good idea go away.

I only wish I could.

Weeaboo, goddess of Shinuyama uploaded

Does anyone know if there's a minimum value for regeneration? Like, 1 HP per round regardless of max HP or regeneration percentage?

I'm pretty sure you'll always get 1HP out of it. I'm also pretty sure it rounds up in the most generous way possible, so 10% of 11 HP = 2 HP regen (which is why you always get at least 1 HP out of it).

If you're asking specifically in the context of a Mictlan bless, make sure you have F9 first. F9 F9 F9. I cannot stress that enough. It matters less what you do after F9, but F9. F9. W9 is possibly okay too, but really, F9. And both is crazy, but pretty expensive for a cap-only sacred so I don't think I'd recommend it.

DSM is right about regen, and about the blesses. F9 really is very good. As for a Nature bless - don't bother, seriously. Unless your guys have 20+ hp, there's almost no benefit derived from regen, even if you do get Gift of Health up for some reason.

The thing to remember with Middle Age Mictlan is that you are not a blood faction and while your magical diversity is amazing individual mages don't have very many magic points on them. That means that to research at an acceptable speed, you need to put up a lot of forts so you can crank out 5 or 6 little mages each turn. Fortunately, your Mictlan Priests are shockingly cost-efficient researchers, and your Nahuatl are actually amazingly powerful combat mages in the mid-late game.

Because you need forts, and you have recruit-anywhere sacreds, you need a lot of gold, and since you don't do blood you do need to be able to keep recruiting. So you don't want to tank your scales. You also benefit a lot from luck scales because your national heroes are really good and you can use almost all the random gems you'll receive. Plus, you can't afford Drain and really want to get Magic 1 if you can.

So while you do need some kind of bless to make your jaguar warriors and your sacred summons worthwhile, I wouldn't recommend going crazy on it. Trying to get Order, Luck, or Magic going is probably more important than getting that 4th minor bless or that second major.

(EDIT: I used an F9A4 phoenix, personally. I felt like the F9 did what I wanted it to do, although my troops did fail against the abysian heavy infantry. Also the Air bless was completely useless since none of my enemies fielded archers, but then I had taken that path for the forging anyway.)

Hm. I feel like trying something a little different with my Ashdod pretender. How essential do you think E9 is for Ashdod?

DSMatticus wrote:Hm. I feel like trying something a little different with my Ashdod pretender. How essential do you think E9 is for Ashdod?

If your sacreds aren't naked (and have shields and/or helmets), then I would consider E9 pretty much essential. You also have to consider what your sacreds do - if they have high Att and Str, a Fire bless is less relevant, if they have low HP, a Nature bless is not very good, etc.

From what I know of Ashdod, I would say E/N is probably your best bet - I'm not sure what would work better.

Mister wrote:From what I know of Ashdod, I would say E/N is probably your best bet - I'm not sure what would work better.

E/N is what I did last time; E9N4, to be precise. Goes very well with the sacred giants and the thuggable adons. But it's expensive, and I'm wondering about buying up to growth 3 and luck 1. Then again, this is a fairly small map, so I'm not sure growth will offer big returns. Hm... I could probably take the productivity hit to buy some luck; my giants are too big to really benefit from productivity (only going to get 1 or 2 a turn no matter what I do). But is luck even useful? What are Ashdod's heroes like? The gems luck tends to drop aren't especially useful to Ashdod (nature, elementals). Fire and earth are usable, at least. Bah! Too many factors.

This is a 6 player game, with new players, where no one had the good sense to ban Ashdod, just get E9 N4-6 and stomp people. Scales should be order 3, no sloth, magic 1 and whatever you have to do with misfortune and death. Seriously, the only way anyone who isn't you or R'lyeh even has a chance of winning this game is if they all gang up on you immediately or you mess up spectacularly.

Akula wrote:This is a 6 player game, with new players, where no one had the good sense to ban Ashdod, just get E9 N4-6 and stomp people. Scales should be order 3, no sloth, magic 1 and whatever you have to do with misfortune and death. Seriously, the only way anyone who isn't you or R'lyeh even has a chance of winning this game is if they all gang up on you immediately or you mess up spectacularly.

Everytime I have played any era of Gath I have had my armies smacked down thoroughly and mostly survived through the fact that I had allies to cover my weakness. If anyone thinks I'm going to steamroll the game, I'll swap over to my second pick (Ermor, wasn't it?). But so far my record with the uber-1337 sacred giants is 0-2.

Edit: Though, in both of those cases I was mostly fighting Caelum. Caelum is apparently my kryptonite. And there is no Caelum here.

Gath is a late era faction, which means it has to compete against some seriosuly badass national armies. Things like iceclad atlanteans with str-drain glaives, armored crossbowmen, and ghouls with sacred-slaying polearms. Ashdod's capital-only giants are individually more powerful and they are up against generally less exciting enemy armies. That said, I don't think they're unbeatable or anything.

As for whether E9 is necessary, it depends. There's definitely no other bless as good for leveraging your sacred giants, but you probably don't really NEED a heavy bless at all. From a quick look at the roster it seems like your build-anywhere dudes can hold their own against most of the militaries in this particular game, so if you wanted to focus more on magic diversity or scales to generate gold for more awesome recuirt-anywhere mages I wouldn't blame you. the E bless is also handy for thugs and sacred mages though so I'd strongly consider it.

Fun fact on Luck scales by the way-- the gems that it spits out are dependant on what your other scales are. If you're getting swamped with Nature gems it's probably because you've been running Growth scales. If you run Death scales you'll find a lot more death gems in your random events. Also if you prioritize conquering swamps and wastelands.

EDIT: I was able to get two heroes to show up for Ashdod in a test game. Both were old giants with stats not particularly better than the equivalent recruitable but with nice paths. There's an E4H2 who starts outfitted like your sacreds, and an E1F1S4H2 who starts naked. There should be a third one but I can't seem to get him.

EDIT: third one is a pretty unexciting F4H2 berserker. Nice for getting you a Flame Helmet I suppose.

The E9 is awesome, but most of my playing with Ashdod, my zanzummites have carried me. So getting more gold, more forts, and more zanzummites is a very tempting idea. But at the same time, I think my current build + not getting economically destroyed by Caelum will get me all the zanzummites I need.

Edit: and yeah, Gath isn't very exciting, and I haven't really played them MP at all. I was just using Gath to refer to the Hinnom-Ashdod-Gath lineage, since in the files each faction is just called early_gath or mid_gath or late_gath.

As a general rule...

Non-giants will generally get more mileage out of a F9 bless, maybe backed up by W9.

Fire 9 really increases their offensive abilities, and W9 essentially doubles their fire-damage attacks.

Giants are better off with an E9, N4 bless. Giants are going to be outnumbered. Hence, they're going to be hit in combat. The only way to not die as a giant is to get more Protection (E9), heal what few damage does get past your defenses (N4), and reinvigorate so that your troops don't fatigue out before the battle is over (also Earth).

If you're just planning to bless your sacred mages however, Earth is usually all you need for the reinvig and maybe Astral for the MR bonuses. Air casters who can thug should also consider N4, as Mistform + Regen is very, very good.

With pretenders submitted, I am prepared to start the game sometime on Sunday, May 20th, probably at around 10 PM EST (3 AM GMT) since that is when I get home from work. If that is not a problem for anyone I will begin things tomorrow and we will proceed with 24-hour turns.

If it is a problem I can delay starting the game until some suitable time on Monday.

So I started the game, but I realized I had accidentally submitted the wrong version of my pretender. Since I'm sure no one actually did jack in the two minutes after starting the game, I reset it, made sure I submitted the right pretender, and started it again.

Therefore, if you have two emails about the game starting and giving you your first turn file, that's why.