Online RolePlaying Game

[Fitz]

I thought I'd drop buy and let people know about a cool online roleplaying game I found last year, and have been playing very heavily since. It's called Shadowmere, and the url is www.shadowmere.com

It's text based, turn based (1 turn every 1/2 hour, 200 max) and lets you run your own kingdom. Kingdom interaction includes trading & warfare, and it includes providsions for alliance. You have 6 different kinds of troops and some 10-15 building types. The game will be reset on April 30th, so now is the time to go check it out and see if you want to jump in when everyone is on a clean slate.

I run an alliance, Suicidal Leaders, and would be happy to accept anyone who is interested in playing into the alliance and teach you some of the aspects of the game.

This game is a lot of fun if you are interested in strategy games. I like it so much I haven't been to 'poly in about four months. I'll be around more after the reset, since I'm only going to run one kingdom instead of four. Keep your eyes open for Fitz of Burrow, and I hope ya'll will come try it out.

Especially you, MarkG.

------------------
Fitz. (n.) Old English
1. Child born out of wedlock.
2. Bastard.

[Urban Ranger]

It's it MUD-like, requiring a telnet client, or is it web-based?

[Fitz]

It's web based. Access it through your hadny dandy browser. The graphics are fairly basic, since it is technically a text game, but it's not a pain to use like the old MUD games were.

[Urban Ranger]

Okay, count me in your alliance.

I like to be one of the builders, like dwarves, minotaurs, or wood elves. Any suggestions?

[Richard Bruns]

This looks interesting. I'd like to play Minotaurs and stay peaceful if possible, at least while I learn the game. I read the help file and the compendium linked on your page. Any other tips?

Should I sign up now, or wait a few days?

[Fitz]

Wait until Thursday, unless you want to practice a little bit. With the current rules, it's very hard to remain peaceful, but that should change when they reset.

[Fitz]

UI, woodies aren't really builders. They have fantastic rangers, so they are great at all the explore functions. Dwarves in this reset were hard to play, since weapons & armor were weakened, but they should be strenthened somewhat in the next reset.

Generally, wood elves are the easiest to play the first time around, followed maybe by gnomes. however, once you start getting into the higher scores, they become somewhat harder, since neither has great defense (gnomes have good defenders, but poor overall combat skills bring that down).

Personally, I've played Gnomes (my main kingdom), Leprechauns (insanely good attackers, horrible defenders if located), Werewolves (good attack/defense, regenerate troops, poor infrastructure), and Wood Elves.

[Urban Ranger]

I meant peacefully building a country instead of going on to attacking.

What about minotaurs are they any good?
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited May 01, 2001).]

[Fitz]

Not very familiar with them. The only other race I'm really familiar with is Halflings, and I'm not up on particular tactics for them.

[Urban Ranger]

Shall we join now? Has the reset been accomplished?

[Fitz]

They are working on it as I type. So you know, in DAN, I will have two kingdoms. If you find Burrow or SLOASeeker, Private Message me.
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited May 03, 2001).]

[Urban Ranger]

How does an alliance work?

[Fitz]

First of all, that link isn't working while they're resetting the server.

Alliance come in several different kinds, but they all have some things in common:

You join an alliance by recieving an invite from another kingdom. This shows up on your status screen. They can only invite you if you are already not in an alliance.
Once you get an invite, you go to the alliance screen, and then you can accept the invitation.
You cannot attack other alliance members.
You can post (and read) a special kind of mail that can only be read by other alliance members.

The types of alliances:
Communications. Nothing special, they just allow you to use alliance mail and not attack each other by mistake.
Offensive. Allows you to take on turn to send a kingdoms map to all other alliance members. Normally, to send a map to others you have to spend one turn per person you send it to, but can send up to five at once.
Defensive (defunct). They disabled this, but may re-include it at some point, so I included it. They way it used to work was that if you were attacked, some percentage of every other alliance members troops would immediately be transferred to you. This meant that if you were weak and attacked once, you got a bunch of troops in case they tried to attack you again.

Suicidal Leaders was involved in two alliance wars last reset, so we coordinated attacks, and used mail to request trades for help. I was sending, on a regular basis, scrolls with a magic barrier to all allies at their request, and we were generally helping each other out.

I hope to get a regular trading thing organized, but don't have the time to do it myself. So far no one has stepped foward to organize it, cause it would be a little complicated.

[Richard Bruns]

By "regular trading thing", do you mean the "trade" thing that takes a turn, or an alliance trade tagging system on the Open Market?

[Fitz]

I was actually referring to the trade that takes a turn, but the OM trades with tags is a good idea too. We've never done it, which points out exactly how important it is for the alliance to have a person in charge of trading.

[Richard Bruns]

Is it possible to fix the trade so only alliance members can buy it? Otherwise we would have to do something like tag it, price it at maximum value, and make a pledge to buy only from other alliance members. We'd all end up equal on average, and we would make sure that nobody else bought the stuff. One thing that would be a big help for the alliance is to sell gold on the OM at the end of the turn in exchange for whatever you might need the next day. This means that you don't have anything for halflings to loot, and other alliance members will be able to get gold quickly, which is a big help.

I think that one effective market scam would be to sell gold and demand a lot of stuff for it, possibly even the maximum proce. Some people are often so desperate for instant cash that they would pay 100 scholars or laborers for 7000 gold. We could clean up in the long run.

When I experimented before the reset, I spent about two days fiddling with the open market before I took a turn. I was able to start out on a much better footing, with much more more cash, more useful assets, and 200 turns. Since I had zero score nobody could bother me while I waited around, so I sold all my military and didn't replace it until about turn 190. That saved a lot of maintenence in the critical startup phase. I had more than quadrupled my population and gold intake in those 200 turns.

The game seems to have some odd bugs, though. 600 laborers are only twice as fast as one laborer when they build a village.

As of the time I posted this, the shadowmere server was still down.

[Urban Ranger]

I nominate Richard to be Minister of Commerce

[Fitz]

Um, you can get away with low value trades on trades for troops or otjher things not commonly in demand because people don't check for tgem very frequently. Or you can post bunhes of the same item for people to buy at a low price. But admitedly, the best way for alliances to use the OM is for a powerful ally to buy a weaker allies stuff at high prices.

The gold for lots of items only would work earlier, I think. Later on, everyone has lots of gold, so they don't need to gain it.

Richard, if you want to play minister of commerce, we would love to have you in. The one important factor to know is the trades accepted part. Under options, anyon can set their trades accepted to a certain %, the default being improved %. Any trade items that come in under that % are lost to bpth parties nvolved, which make it important to establish numbers beforehand.

[Eternal]

How much is this like Utopia? though it sounds a little bit more like Dominion?

BTW, Utopia: http://games.swirve.com/utopia
and Dominon: http://www.kamikazegames.com/dominon
[This message has been edited by Eternal (edited May 05, 2001).]

[Richard Bruns]

quote: Um, you can get away with low value trades on trades for troops or otjher things not commonly in demand because people don't check for tgem very frequently.

So is that why someone had posted 500 laborers for 63 gold each? I must say that was quite a bargain

quote: The gold for lots of items only would work earlier, I think. Later on, everyone has lots of gold, so they don't need to gain it.

There are always new people coming in. With my first kingdom, I was stupid enough to sell food for the base price. I probably would have sold excess stuff for low prices if it meant instrant cash.

Whenever the server coes back up, I will create a Minotaur kingdom called "Ithor" I like Minotaurs; they seem to be the only race with good builders that can feed itself well and make a decent military. The biggest disadvantage seems to be the low population.

How do the mazes and traps work? What determines their number and effectiveness?

[Richard Bruns]

Well, my strategy just got shot to pieces. I was planning on sitting at zero points for a couple days, accumulating points and watching the money from my market trades to come in. But after selling every military unit I had, I noticed that the game had assigned me points! I am no doubt in striking range of dozens of bloodthirsty orcs and hungry vampires, despite the fact that I haven't taken any turns at all.

(For those not familiar with the game, players can only attack others within a certain point range. You start out at zero points, which shields you from attack and hides your existence form other kingdoms. You are supposed to be assigned points only when you build, explore, or attack. The strategy described above worked fine before the reset.)

I only had enough money to hire 20 fighters to defend my kingdom. I can't do anything else until I get ehough money to hire rangers and more laborers.

I expect Ithor to be a flaming ruin by the time I log on again.

[Fitz]

Yeah, that's one of the changes they made. It used to be that recieving a trade or posting a trade made no difference in the score. Score was only updated when you took a turn. Your planned tactic would have worked fine in the last reset.

The server is going rather slow right now, but I'm sure it'll speed up as time passes. It always does, for some reason.

[Richard Bruns]

I attempting a little market manipulation. Somebody had posted 70 fighters for 5000 gold, so I bought them and then sold my 140 fighters in lots of 47 for about 90% of the base price. I hope to make some good money. Maybe my sudden increase in value triggered the score change.

We all need to cooperate on this. If you see any super deal, buy it up and repost it at about 90% of fair value. We will probably still sell our stuff before the people who post at fair value, but can make really nice profits if we are not being undercut.

[Fitz]

Richard, I'm pretty sure everyone does this if they look at the market commonly. It's certainly worth it if you have the gold to burn.

I've never really done it because of the time involved.

[Richard Bruns]

I'm posting here because I haven't made contact with anyone from the alliance, and also because their forum system is really bad:

I used up all of my turns. This game has some really annoying irregualarities. For example, I wanted to maximize my production of villiages. I found that 600 laborers could build 2 a turn and 650 could build 3 a turn, so I figured that 650 * 4/3, or about 870 laborers would build four villiages a turn. So I saved up and bought the extra 220 laborers. Still 3 a turn. I explored some more to raise money and bought another 50 laborers, making sure that I had 10,000 left over to build the villages. Still 3 a turn. This continued until I got over 1100 laborers and was finally able to build those 4 villiages.

Similarly, extra rangers don't seem to do anything. Exploring with my 20 startup 100% rangers gives exactly the same results as exploring with 270 200% minotaur rangers. What kind of twisted math is at work here?

On a more positive note, the attacks didn't kill me. Minotaurs proved to be amazingly good at defense. Here is what happened when a vampire attacked me:

quote: Military Lost SukYa Ithor Fighters 42 1 Rangers 8 0 Clerics 5 1 Archers 76 0 Thieves 5 0 Weapons 4 0 Armor 4 0 War Machines & Laborers 1 0 You lost 1 unoccupied land to SukYa.

Note that I only had 10 100% clerics and 20 300% fighters. But the really odd thing is that despite dealing out all that damage, it counted as a loss for me. What is going on?

My biggest problem is getting enough land. My rangers only seem to find an average of three land per turn, so I spend five turns searching for land for the 14 farms I can build in a turn. How do I get enough land to grow at a decent rate?

I'm currently ranked #10 in Dan, but that probably won't last long. Here are my kingdon's stats:

quote: KINGDOM RACE GOLD Ithor minotaurs 69 TURNS USED TURNS LEFT TAX RATE 170 6 30% POPULATION MORALE FOOD 24861 123% 23229 MANA LAND UN-USED LAND 9929 387 0 WINS LOSSES 0 3 BUILDINGS FARMS GRANARIES VILLAGES BARRACKS OUTPOSTS 164 40 149 4 0 GUARD TOWERS SCHOOLS ARMORIES VAULTS CATHEDRALS 0 0 5 0 25 SMITHIES MARKET PLACES TRAINING FIELDS COLISEUMS CASTLES 0 0 0 0 0 MILITARY AND WORKERS SCHOLARS LABORERS WAR MACHINES WAR MACHINE RATING 0 1119 0 100% WEAPONS WEAPONS RATING ARMOR ARMOR RATING 226 300% 226 200% FIGHTERS FIGHTERS EXP RANGERS RANGERS EXP 238 300% 270 200% CLERICS CLERICS EXP ARCHERS ARCHERS EXP 7 128% 0 100% THIEVES THIEVES EXP ASSASSINS ASSASSINS EXP 0 100% 0 100%

What should I do next?

[Fitz]

Okay, the building for villages, farms & some others has a small curve at the beginning to make it easier to build multiple buildings. Generally assume it takes a # of laborer = to the cost of the building to build 2. to get three, you need cost x 2, etc. That's usually a pretty good guide. Like I said, villages & farms are on a curve.

Attacks, that looks like you lost (they took 1 unoccupied land), not won. If it displays a grid with building names, even if they are all zeros, they still won.

More rangers at high %, despite what it says, will not help find land. I don't know if they help find kingdoms, and % doesn't affect food (but # does). But if you explore the unknown, you need lots of rangers at good $ to get anything decent back.

Next, you have two options. Keep building and growing, then pause later to study, and do it fast, or start studying now slowly. Get good defenders. Here's the ratio of buildings you should have:

Any # of villages (15 for complete). This determines pop (2500 per complete).
Farm parts (not complete 10s) = (3)*(pop)/100/(racial food production mod).
Troops = population*(3-(racial food consumption mod))/(racial food consumption mod)
Barrracks parts= troops*2/1000

For a production 2 and consumption 1.2 (minotaur), those last few become:
Farm parts (not complete 10s) = (3)*(pop)/200.
Troops = population*(1.5)
Barrracks parts= troops*2/1000 = pop*3/1000

Which means you have max food production, and can feed all your troops.


Troops info:
Fighters (attack/defend 10/10)
Clerics (attack/defend 1/20)
Archers (attack/defend 20/1)
Rangers (attack/defend 5/5)

So, clerics defend well, archers attack well, and fighters are balanced. If you can afford to do it, you buy clerics at the end of your turn, sell for gold on the OM at the beginning, hire/buy archers, and then sell the archers at the end and hire clerics. This is the perfect rotating offense/defense, but very hard to do at the beginning.

Minotaur Base Stats (possibly modified since reset):

Fighters 300% Clerics 75% Archers 50%
Thieves 100% Rangers 200% Assassins 75%
Weapons 300% Armor 200% Warmachines 130%

Assassination ratio : 0.9
Build ratio : 1.2
Build equipment : 2
Food produced : 2
Food consumed : 1.2
Looting ratio : 0.6
Mana Production ratio : 0.6
Morale modifier : 1
Mutiny modifier : 1.25
Population modifier : 0.15
Search modifier : 0.9
Spy modifier : 0.7
Study ratio : 1

[Richard Bruns]

Then what does it take to win a battle. Last might a leprechaun attacked me, and my defenders once again dished out massive casualties with minimal losses. This time they got zero land, but the grid shoed up anyway. What does it take to win a battle? Why is it saying that I lose even though they suffer tremendouus losses and I hardly get scratched?

My biggest problem is gaining land to build on. If rangers can't get any decent amount of land for me, does that mean that attack is the only option? That stinks.

[Fitz]

If someone attacks you, attack them back. That is the fasted way to gain land, yes, and if all you are doing is counter attacking, that's there fault isn't it? Otherwise, searching for 50 turns will give you 50-200 land. You should propably focus each day on a particular task if you can, like finding land & building, or studying, or attacking, etc.

They take massive damage because you are a minotaur. You have mazes, which acts kind of like the condusion barrier spell, meaning they use up a turn but recieve a message saying their troops got lost. You also have traps, which acts like the Death Barrier spell, which means that they take additional casualties, regardless of if tehy succeed or fail in the attack. I believe the additional casualties are determined first, then the rest of their focrce is pitted against yours to determine who wins. You can readily expect there is a chance they may still win with what they have left.

At this point, you can expect that they lost troops about equal to yours due to the battle if they won, and the rest were lost to your traps.

Sometimes it can make them fail, but it isn't the greatest ability. Last reset I personally avoided attacking minotaurs like the plague though, so it works on me.

Hire Clerics, high % ones of the OM if you can, to defend. Especially if you aren't planning any attacks/counter attacks soon. And get lots. Remember, you should be aiming for your population *1.5 in total troops.

[Richard Bruns]

Ok, I decided to retaliate on the weakest attacker: a werewolf with a really low score that had only used 37 turns. I built a load of weapons and armor and got a good deal on some 500% archers on the market, so all my troops should have been around 800%-1000%. After clicking on the attack button and waiting forever for it to load, I get:

"If you attack, there is an 800% chance your troops will mutiny."

Of course I didn't attack. How am I supposed to deal with this? Why can't I even retaliate against some weak enemy that attacked me?

[Fitz]

Sorry, should have mentioned mutiny.

You get to automatically retaliate, with no chance of mutiny, a certain number of times in 24 hours. Here's how it works:

Determine, in the last twenty-four hours from the point at which you wish to make you attack, how many times they have attacked you (spell & military combined) and how many times you have attacked them (spell andd military combined). Subtract your attacks from thiers. That's how many mutiny free attacks you get.

The simplest way this works is if they attack you twice and you haven't attacked them. 24 hours from their attack time, you get two mutiny free counterattacks.

If those twenty four hours have passed, your attempt to attack them is subject to the following rules:
They cannot have been attacked more that 5 times (abuse warning).
They must be within a certain score range of you, determined by your race (mutiny warning). That score range is typically 90% of yours to 125% of yours, unless you are a vamp, werewolf, or orc.

I'm going on vacation, so keep an eye out for Galanta the Lep, who will be organizing Suicidal Leaders. I'll be back Monday May 20th.