[Dom3] GESTALT DRAFT STARTED - WORKING ON MOD AND MAP

[DrPraetor]

GESTALT NATION DRAFT RULES
* I'm going to keep accepting anyone who wants to play, until I generate the random draft order on Monday.

* Unless we get way more players than I expect, we will each be selecting two nations from the MIDDLE ERA ONLY.

Players

• 2. DrPraetor
  3. Korwin
  4. Ancient History
  5. Frank Trollman
  1. K
  6. Archmage

Do - Endovior, Josh_Kablack or Zinegata want to play as well?

First Nation Picks

• 1. K - Bandar Log
  2. DrPraetor - Ashdod
  3. Korwin - Mictlan
  4. Ancient History - T'ien Ch'i
  5. Frank Trollman - Jotunheim
  6. Archmage - R'lyeh

Second Nation Picks

• 6. Archmage - Vanheim
  5. Frank Trollman - Man (cheap temples!)
  4. Ancient History - Pangaea (cheap temples!)
  3. Korwin - Abysia (Heat and Human Sacrifice, oh my!)
  2. DrPraetor - Caelum (Brr!)
  1. K - Marignon

* Mechanically, I will take the units, spells and gem income of the first nation and graft them onto the second nation.
Thus, your:
* starting army
* forts
* province defense
* special national features (sacrifice dom etc) - marked "secret weapon" in the list below.
* whether or not you are aquatic
Are all determined by your second nation pick.

Available Nations

• Arcoscephale - S4,EFW2,N1; secret weapon - scrying & cheap labs
  Ermor - SD3,AW1; shadow vestals; secret weapon - reanimation!
  Pythium - S4,A3,W2,F1; gem income, summons; minor cold-blood
  Man - N4,A3,W1,E1; longbows!; secret weapon - cheap temples
  Ulm - E2,F1; forge bonus!, crossbows; secret weapon - prod bonus
  Marignon - F4,S3,A1,E1; crossbows, flagellants, summons
  Mictlan - SN3,AFW2; sacreds, blood summons; minor cold-blood
  T'ien Ch'i - W3,AEFSN2; composite bows!; secret weapon - free PD
  Machaka - FEN3,D2; hunter spiders
  Agartha - E3,DFW1; sucking; secret weapon - golem power
  Abysia - B4,SF3,E1; heat; secret weapon - sacrificedom & nodeathsupply
  Caelum - A4,W3,SD1; flying & mammoths; secret weapon - flying reanimation
  C'tis - DN3,W2,S1; poison slingers; secret weapon - miasma
  Pangaea - N4,E3,B2,D1; secret weapon - vine reanimation, cheap temples
  Vanheim - AE4,B2,DF1; van!; secret weapon - sacrificedom
  Jotunheim - WDNB3,S2; giants + giant werewolves; secret weapons - giant reanimation
  Bandar Log - S4,N3,EW1; elephants + longbows + white ones + summons + blood summons; secret weapon - monkey PD (and reanimation!)[s/s]
  Shinuyama - FED3,W2; oni summons; nominally amphib
  Ashdod - D4,FES3; sacred giants!, forge bonuses, summons; secret weapons - giant reanimation
  Atlantis - W5,FWS2; amphibious, secret weapon - aquatic!
  R'lyeh - S5,W3,ED2; amphibious, void gate, secret weapon - aquatic!
  Oceania - N4,W3,EA1; sucks on land AND sea; secret weapon - aquatic!
  Eriu - A4,N3,AW1; sidhe

THE MAP - WILL BE A RANDOM MAP WITH:
14 Land Provinces + 1 Sea Province per Land Player
8 Sea Provinces + 7 Land Province per Sea Player

I WILL PLACE START LOCATIONS AROUND THE EDGE OF THE MAP, EQUALLY SPACED IN A RING. I'M NOT GOING TO EVEN PRETEND THESE WILL BE PARTICULARLY FAIR, BUT YOU GET TO DRAFT OFF OF THEM, BECAUSE GOING EARLY IN ROUND 1 IS BETTER THAN GOING EARLY IN ROUND 2.
EDIT - UNLESS ERMOR IS UNDRAFTED, OY. I'LL SNAKE-DRAFT IT.

Start Location Picks

• 4. Ancient History
  3. Korwin
  5. Frank Trollman
  2. DrPraetor
  6. Archmage
  1. K

Option One: Mixed bid-and-draft

The drafting is done in only seven rounds:

• 1 - Pick Special National Power (see list below), Pick Nation Name, Color and Flag
  
  2 - Pick First Troop (PD 20+), Pick Starting/R.E. General, Pick Recruit-everywhere Priest.
  
  3 - Pick 1st Recruit-everywhere Mage, pick First capital-only troop, pick One Spell.
  
  4 - Pick 1st Capital-only Mage, Pick Starting/R.E. Scout, pick Second Troop (PD 20+).
  
  5 - Pick 2nd Recruit-everywhere Mage, pick Third Troop(PD 1+/Starting Army), Pick One Spell.
  
  6 - Pick 2nd Capital-only Mage, Pick Misc. Commander, pick Second Capital-Only Troop.
  
  7 - Pick Pretender, Pick Fourth Troop (PD 1+/Starting Army), pick Two Spells.

Now, BEFORE THE DRAFT STARTS, each player secretly BIDS on what order they will go in a given draft.

These bids are processed in a somewhat unusual way, intended to partially idiot-proof the system. First, all the bids are normalized for each player.
(A) bids 300, 100, 200, 100, 200, 100, 0
(B) bids 10, 20, 20, 20, 20, 0, 10
(C) bids 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0
these become...

(A) bids .3, .1, .2, .1, .2, .1, 0
(B) bids .1, .2, .2, .2, .2, .0, .1
(C) bids .2, .0, .2, .2, .2, .2, 0
Then, each player is actually-charged 0.01 + the bid below theirs, with stacking ties at 0.
(Round 1) A pays 0.21 and goes first; C pays 0.11 and goes second, B pays 0.01 and goes third.
And then all the subsequent bids are renormalized so that they total what you haven't yet spent (so all of A's remaining bids are multiplied by 0.79/0.7, all of C's remaining bids are multiplied by 0.89/0.8, and Bs remaining bids are multiplied by 0.99/0.9).

(Round 2) "modified" bids are A = 0.113, B = 0.22, C = 0. C pays 0.01 to go last, A pays 0.02 to go second, and B pays 0.123 to go first

And so on.

The intent is that each player should send in a string of 7 numbers, representing (on whatever scale they want) how good they think the 7 categories are, and it should be hard to game otherwise.

Since I'm handling the bidding, my non-secret bids will be:
(Round 1) 150
(Round 2) 50
(Round 3) 150
(Round 4) 200
(Round 5) 200
(Round 6) 100
(Round 7) 150

Option Two: Gestalt Nations
Instead of all that hullabaloo, we do a Gestalt Draft. I'm mourning the gestalt D&D game I tried to start - but will not (with my weird travel schedule) be any way able to actually run .

This is much simpler. Everyone drafts a nation, in random order (their "first nation").

Then, everyone drafts a nation, in the reverse of that order (their "second nation").

Now - I take all the spells, commanders and gem income of the first nation, and add them to the second nation. TADA!

There is only one house rule - if Kaelik plays, he has to be Marverni, the Marverni druids have to get #shapechange that turns them into animals with reduced spellcasting ability, and he has to combine Marverni with a custom nation that I will add, based on the Magic of Incarnum D&D supplement.

Other than that, with (EDIT AGAIN) 1-10 players it will be Middle Era nations only, with 11+ players (/EDIT AGAIN) it will be (EDIT) MIDDLE AND (/EDIT) Late Era nations only.

Thoughts?

[Korwin]

Voted Gestalt because Gestalt.

[Username17]

I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to normalize bids. If you normalize bids, you aren't really bidding, you're just preference ordering, which is stupid. Given that as one of the options, obviously you'd want to do Gestalt instead.

-Username17

[K]

Interested, but confused.

[DSMatticus]

There is only one house rule - if Kaelik plays, he has to be Marverni, the Marverni druids have to get #shapechange that turns them into animals with reduced spellcasting ability, and he has to combine Marverni with a custom nation that I will add, based on the Magic of Incarnum D&D supplement.

I don't get it.

[Ancient History]

I wouldnae mind trying my hand at gestalt.

[Endovior]

There is only one house rule - if Kaelik plays, he has to be Marverni, the Marverni druids have to get #shapechange that turns them into animals with reduced spellcasting ability, and he has to combine Marverni with a custom nation that I will add, based on the Magic of Incarnum D&D supplement.

I don't get it.

Thread drama, related to the aforementioned (gestalt) D&D game. Praetor doesn't think Natural Spell is a valid feat, and banned it, causing Kaelik much rage. He also rated Incarnum stuff lower (for purposes of gestalting) then Kaelik thought it should be rated, causing more rage. There was too much rage for one thread, so another thread was created specifically to be filled with more. And it was.

[DrPraetor]

Frank,
It is actually a pre-configured automatic AUCTION.

Let's say each participant has 100 guilder. Before the bidding begins, each participant says, "I am willing to spend up to X% of my guilder on thing."

Then, the automatic auctioneer raises the price until you get 1 pip above X% and someone else gets whatever you wanted. You pay 1 pip above Y% which is what someone else bid.

Ah, but now you have only 100-Y guilder left! So you either have (X-Y) guilder which do nothing for the rest of the auction - in which case you might as well have spent X guilder - or you somehow distribute those (X-Y) guilder among your remaining auction positions.

In any case, I don't know what you think "preference ordering" means. Bidding is a preference ordering, regardless of whether you normalize the bids.

But Gestalt is fine by me. I'll give people a few more days to express interest and then roll up a random draft order.

[Username17]

If you bid 50 gilder of your hundred on one thing and 50 of your gilder on another thing, it is because you are willing to spend 50 on one and 50 on the other. It is not because you are willing to spend 50 on one and 25 on the other.

The entire concept of renormalizing bids is stupid and offensive. I have no idea why you keep bringing it up after absolutely everyone has told you that it is stupid, confusing, unfun, overly random, or some combination thereof. Seriously: no one fucking likes it. It's a very bad idea.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

causing Kaelik much rage.

That phrase is redundant, no matter what words precede it.

[Korwin]

Now - I take all the spells, commanders, national pretenders and gem income of the first nation, and add them to the second nation. TADA!

I asume Pretenders are added too...?

Edit:
What about nation specials, like undead summoning, blood sac. or LA Ermors dying Dom (or LA R'leys insanity).
What would happen if I gestalt LA R'ley and LA Ermor?

A little more serious, where will my nation start if I combine a Land nation and an Water nation?

[DrPraetor]

Korwin -
* You can take any pretender available to either nation. So we can have multiple Gorgons if people gestalt Saur or Pangaea from different eras, etc.

* Mechanically, I will take the units, spells and gem income of the first nation and graft them onto the second nation.
Thus, your:
* starting army
* forts
* province defense
* special national features (sacrifice dom etc)
* whether or not you are aquatic
Are all determined by your second nation pick.

So, 1st LA Ermor + 2nd LA R'lyeh would get LA Ermor's national spells and a big boost of death gem income, bolted onto LA R'lyehs dominion, recruitables, etc. (you probably wouldn't want to do this.) On the other hand, taking LA Ermor second may be an unbalancing advantage. EA Marverni + LA Ermor is probably too strong. So I'm inclined to ban LA Ermor and LA R'lyeh entirely.

We then run into limitations of the mod engine. For any aquatic 2nd-nation, any non-amphibious 1st-nation units are going to be lost (I don't even think you'll get them in coastal forts.) For any land-based 2nd-nation, any aquatic 1st-nation units are DEFINITELY going to be lost (I've tried it.) So basically, mixing aquatic and non-aquatic nations doesn't work, with a few exceptions (most Atlantis units are amphibious, so as a 1st choice it would work; MA R'lyeh likewise; EA or MA Agartha would be at-least-workable if your 2nd choice is aquatic).

Note - we will agree on a map after we know how many people are aquatic. I think the total share of water provinces should probably be about:
(# of aquatic players + 1) /
((# of players + 1) x 2)

So for 5 players, non aquatic, the map will be 1/11 provinces water.
For 5 players, two aquatic, the map will be 3/11 provinces water.

So water players have to grab 50% land to be the same size as land players, give or take. The share of provinces that players with some amphibious capacity have available will be fairly small, in the absence of any water players.

Sound fair?

Frank -
I think the problem is that you don't like idiot proofing because it robs you of the opportunity to rob idiots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi82sNbGEBE

Okay, consider the following set of reasonable bids.
(A) 25, 25, 25, 25
(B) 30, 30, 30, 10
(C) 33, 33, 33, 1
What is the result of these bids under a proposal without rescaling? Well, the draft orders would be:
C,B,A - on something everyone agreed was important
C,B,A - on something everyone agreed was important
C,B,A - " " " "
A,B,C - on something people didn't much care about.

A has wasted practically all his guilder by spreading his bids around - but B is in even worse shape. Standard bidding is a game in and of itself with complicated psychology. People can very-easily be completely screwed if they bid poorly.

Now, let's run those same #s as an auction instead.
(A) 25, 25, 25, 25
(B) 30, 30, 30, 10
(C) 33, 33, 33, 1
C bids 31 for 1st, B bids 26 for 2nd, A bids 1 for 3rd -> C,B,A
The savings are proportionally distributed among remaining bid maxima:
(A) 33, 33, 33
(B) 32, 32, 10
(C) 34, 34, 1
C bids 34 for 1st, A bids 33 for 2nd, B bids 1 for 3rd -> C,A,B

(A) 33, 33
(B) 42, 16
(C) 34, 1
B bids 35 for 1st, C bids 34 for 2nd, A bids 1 for 3rd -> B,C,A
then you get A,B,C for the last round.

C,B,A
C,A,B
B,C,A
A,B,C

The average draft order is now A = 2.25, B = 2.0, C = 1.75 - which is about as fair as you can get, all things considered.

As to the system of weighted auctioning being "unfun" - well, that's true, I'll allow. On the other hand - it only requires the selection of for-fucksakes SEVEN NUMBERS. You don't have to have fun while picking seven numbers. You don't even have to do a good job of picking seven numbers because the automatic auction system is practically idiot-proof! Just about the only mistake you can make is to bid high only in the later rounds, and even that is solvable, actually (you loop the procedure at each starting point, and average the amount each person spends, then rank by that.)

The drafting is the fun part, this is just a technical consideration on how to make the resulting draft orders as fair as possible, given differing views on how good it is to go early in different rounds of the draft.

[Winnah]

I'll play.

a few thoughts:

I don't think Ermor/R'Ley dominions are too troublesome, especially in a gestalt game. Mainly due to the fact their respective dominions will fuck over the other half of a gestalt in most instances. Even if you discount the immediate and massive disadvantage of making yourself a target in MP due to reputation.

I think subtle advantages such as temple costs and climate sclaes should be averaged out. So a Gath/Eriu gestalt would have a normal (~500?) cost for temple instead of 200 or 800, they would not like the heat as much either.

Finally, I think national heroes should be tacked on. From memory there are 6 normal and 2 multihero slots. So 2 nations with a lot of heroes will potentially miss out on a few in a gestalt, but otherwise you should be able to fill those available slots via your second nation pick.

[K]

I'm not terribly sure why people wouldn't put all their points into first recruitable troops and/or first recruitable mage. Those are the only two decisions that really matter.

[Zinegata]

What age is this anyway? Or is this an all ages no holds barred slug fest?

Edit: Nevermind, saw the bit about the number of players.

Gestalt is gonna be a bloodbath >_>

[Korwin]

Oh, BTW I'm in.

[DrPraetor]

I'm not terribly sure why people wouldn't put all their points into first recruitable troops and/or first recruitable mage. Those are the only two decisions that really matter.

Well, obviously I disagree. Those are definitely the two best areas to go all the way first. But I think going like-fifth on 1st recruitable mage and like-second on 2nd recruitable mage is actually better than the other way round.

But, disagreements of that kind are exactly why you set it up as an auction.

Anyway, we're trying the Gestalt Nations thing.

Playing:
DrPraetor
Korwin
Ancient History
Winnah

?:
Endovior
FrankTrollman
Josh_Kablack
Zinegata
K

[tenuki]

Interesting way to play.

This here look-up tool might come in handy:

http://dom3-mod-inspector.googlecode.co ... lectmods=1

It was made by the excellent people over at the dom3mods forum. My link points to the vanilla version, but it has data for a number of the more commonly used mods.

[Username17]

Okay, consider the following set of reasonable bids.
(A) 25, 25, 25, 25
(B) 30, 30, 30, 10
(C) 33, 33, 33, 1

Look, if you posit that there is nothing to do with the points you have "left over" and there is only a single bidding round, then indeed you are a goddamn idiot if you don't put all your points in one basket. Spreading points around is foolhardy, because every point allocated to a contest you don't win is lost.

However, the bid normalization crap doesn't address that issue in a way that is even remotely satisfactory. Points allocated to contests you don't win are worse than lost - they are distributed back into your other bids in a completely uncontrolled way. Once a few contests have been won, everyone else might as well be rolling dice for what they get. So unproductive is the bidding that it would seriously be better to simply skip it entirely and literally roll dice.

If you want auctions to work, there has to be multiple rounds of bidding. That is the only way it can work, because that is the only way that people have "points left over" that do something useful (get bid in the later round or rounds). If you don't do multiple rounds, it's like doing single round Prisoner's Dilemma - which is to say that everyone loses.

That being said, I would play Gestalt as long as LA Rlyeh and LA Ermor are not in the mix.

-Username17

[K]

Also, with multiple eras and only 8-10 players, the bid process is already pretty meaningless. For example, with even two eras to choose from everyone can just get a really nice Bless troop or a longbow/composite if they want to.

[DrPraetor]

K exaggerates, but I'm inclined to agree with him now that I think on it. Let me make a list.

Middle Era -
Arco - ~
Ermor - Bless, Pick 2nd!
Pythium - Magic!
Man - Longbows
Ulm - Xbows?, Forge
Marignon - Xbows?, Magic
Mictlan - Bless
T'ien Ch'i - Bows, Magic!
Machaka - ~Bless, Magic
Agartha - Sucking
Abysia - Magic!
Caelum - Magic!, Flying
C'tis - Magic, Pick 1st?
Pangaea - ~Longbows, ~Bless
Vanheim - Bless
Jotunheim - Magic, Thugs
Bandar Log - Bless, ~Bows
Shinuyama - Magic!
Ashdod - Bless!, Magic
Atlantis - Magic
R'lyeh - Magic!
Oceania - Meh
Eriu - Bless
By my accounting, the middle era has exactly 8 nations with a strong bless chassis (being generous to Machaka and Pangaea), but relatively few nations with really good bowmen - Man and T'ien Ch'i are the only nations with excellent bowmen, and then Caelum, Ulm, Marignon, Pangaea and Bandar Log are at least better than indies. Still, that is 8 and 7, so K is basically right.

So we should only go two eras for 11+ players (which we're not going to get). Also this means we don't have to worry about banning LA Ermor and LA R'lyeh since we're only using MA nations.

More on auctioning when I have the script rejiggered to work the way I think it should work - but it's unlike random numbers in that it does end up reflecting the preferences of the players, I think as fairly as can be managed.

[K]

I'll play.

[Winnah]

my participation is contingent upon the number of players

[Korwin]

Minimum = what?
Or Maximum = what?

[Archmage]

If you still want players, this gestalt thing intrigues me.