EUIV Multiplayer VII

[Ynen]

I revert my choice to 200. 400 is just so much. We have to have some tradeoff between provinces and ideas.

[Cryers-]

Agreed, changing my vote to 200.

[Keelos Penguinos]

Yeah I had a look at what I could make, change my vote to 200.

[Pat89]

Doing completely randomised nations?

[Ynen]

We still need to vote on that. I would at least do it once in our games. Still against randomising the new world though.

[Kaiser Leonidas]

I've never played with either of them, so I don't really mind. Could be quite interesting to have everything on random... so nations, tax, and new world all randomised. Not sure how well that would work though.

[Ynen]

Randomised new world sounds cool, but its too ugly for me.

[Musthavename]

I thought I'd raise the prospect of randomised New World anyway. Random nations are something that I think would be cool to have and I'm definetly up for trying, but I'm personally against randomising the New World. As cool as it sounds, (a) people can easily find out what it's like unless we lock the save down from editting, and (b) it's a horribly ugly unbalanced mess (heck I tried it the other day and about 40% of provinces ended in one trade node, where two trade nodes had one province each). Nonetheless, it's worth raising as if anything, this is the game to try it.

[High Chunker Greens]

Starting tomorrow?

[Keelos Penguinos]

Im down for starting tomorrow, if we do, would whoever hosts it do it an hour or so early so we dont use an hour of our time setting nations up?

[Ciciro]

Im down for starting tomorrow, if we do, would whoever hosts it do it an hour or so early so we dont use an hour of our time setting nations up?

I'm not up for doing it an hour earlier. 3 hours is a long enough time as is.

[Poach]

Sort it out SP so you come with a build ready and we'll get through it quickly.

[Kaiser Leonidas]

How are we deciding where we all are on the map? Is it just first come first serve, or do we need to pick starting locations or whatever beforehand?

[Musthavename]

How are we deciding where we all are on the map? Is it just first come first serve, or do we need to pick starting locations or whatever beforehand?

Exactly, this is completely undecided and I don't see how we can start tonight without some agreement on this.

Also, I expect set up to take ages anyway, probably at least an hour. I'm not even against having a "setup" session if we convene only to hammer out all the rules and set up our nations.

Edit: Regarding the poll, 4 people have changed their vote (Kaiser, Ynen, Cryers, Keelos), meaning it currently stands at 6-5 in favour of 200.

[Pat89]

I want to join too, but I can only start from next week on.

Also, I'd vote 200 points, but the poll is closed. Many people changed their votes so might be worth recounting manually.

Regarding the questions: my opinion in red

- Where in the world can we spawn? Europe only? Europe, Levant and North Africa only? India as well? Anywhere?
Everywhere. With completely random nations.

- What tech groups can we be based on spawn locations, if there's any option based on the above?
tech groups based on location. Government type free to pick based on points, unless someone can prove that'd be way too OP.

- What religions? Cultures?
Anything you want.

- Contiguous? I don't know if the DLC allows this as standard or not. Should we require people spawn contiguous nations, or let them scatter provinces if they want to?
Contiguous. With provinces that share a coastal sea region counts as contiguous. (for example, an "English" nation can have lands on the French coast adjacent to the same sea provinces that it's English regions border)

- How many points? (Poll)
200, 400 would create an end game scenario where everyone is a big huge blob from the start.


Also, I think we should have the option enabled to create new nations on the map at a later stage. And if you completely f' up your original nation, you have to create a new (in roughly the same area?) rather than take over an existing AI nation. I think taking over an AI nation could be way more powerful than creating one with a certain point limit.

[Poach]

Well, time to try to work out a 200 point nation, then. I wanted to play a major this time round after playing Scotland last session but apparently that's off the cards now. Those of you wanting to play small nations could've just not spent all 400 points...

[Keelos Penguinos]

If were going to be missing a lot of people it might be best to postpone, missing the first session in this game is going to hit harder than past games I would imagine.

[Musthavename]

Well, time to try to work out a 200 point nation, then. I wanted to play a major this time round after playing Scotland last session but apparently that's off the cards now. Those of you wanting to play small nations could've just not spent all 400 points...

On the contary, what's fantastically appealing to me about custom nations is that it's an even playing field (or at least, as even as you can get, since geography still plays a major part). Nobody can complain that someone did better because they started with more or had better national ideas, as everyone started with the same number of points to spend. Whether we play at 200 or 400, the point is everyone is playing at that level.

Anyways, regarding moving the discussion forward, how are we deciding who goes where? Everyone is oddly silent on that. It's all well and good planning a nation but if two others want the same area as you someone's plans go out the window. I can think of several ways of doing this:

1. My previous suggestion was to divide the area up into "regions", where people choose to place their capital (with the same 1/2/3 preference rules on regions as we have been doing). People then expand outwards contiguously, possibly into other regions, with the caveat that if two players want a province, the region owner gets preference (people can work it out if neither is the region owner, coin flip would do). These "regions" could be defined by us (e.g. England, Scotland/Ireland, Netherlands, North France, South France, etc...) or by trade regions (which already approximately cut up Europe). I believe Kaiser also posted a region map somewhere in the other thread that didn't look bad. [Edit: Found it, reposting it].
2. We take a list of all players in game and randomise it. Those who come first in the random list pick a capital first. Everyone else picks subsequently in order. If we want to prevent massive overcrowding, we could say introduce a rule that you can't pick your capital within two provinces of someon elses capital. When people expand land we'll have to come up with another way to decide conflicts.
3. Nothing. We just sort it out in the lobby however we do it.

Unless people want option (3), I say we don't start till next week (as we originally said), and give people time to then nominate where they're going and actually plan their nations properly.

Kaiser's Map:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Nelon]

I think people should claim entire regions (based on that map) rather than just capitals.

Option 4, we put everyone into the Hunger Games simulator, winner chooses their region first, runner-up second, etc. It's option 2 but fun.

[Pat89]

Some ideas I had regarding creating a nation would involve being in two or more of those regions. I'm personally more in favour of a free-style type of deal. Where you more or less try to explain what area you more or less want to settle in, more or less (). For me that would for example be that I'm tempted to go for a a Crusader type nation in the Israël area (region 20, maybe bits of 19/21).