Happy New Map! The Twelve Domains

[Shepherd]

Just in case some of you are still looking for something to do this New Years Eve, we're releasing a new map! It's called the Twelve Domains, and it's quite a beast. 120+ regions (I stopped counting at 120), some tricks that you've not seen before here at MajorCommand, and - of course - Dragons!

Twelve Domains is our first stab at a conquest style map; a conquest map is one on which you start with just a handful (or even just one) region and you need to expand your kingdom. Expand too quickly and you exhaust your resources and leave yourself vulnerable to attack; expand too slowly and your enemies will crush you.

There are also some twists to the bonuses and a unique play feature involving the dragons, so before you play it would be wise to get a leg up by reading the Map Brief and watching the two instructional videos linked below. If you don't, you may find a great winged serpent rampaging through your kingdom.

This map was designed with slow build games in mind, with plenty of room for twelve players. While it can certainly be used for real time play, such a game might be so long as to prove infuriating, especially with a lot of players. My personal recommendation would four or more players, casual turns, and escalating (or escalite) reserves - this map all but guarantees a high troop count in the end, so you may as well make those reserves count.

With that I hope that you all enjoy your evening. When midnight strikes, don't go kissing any dragons.

Basic intro video:

How to use the Dragons:

 

[Cardinalsrule]

Happy new Map to you, too Shep!

Love this map, keep up the GREAT work!

Edit: Saw that game you just started, Shep... 3 border, brutal - lol

 

[TheGeneral]

Exciting times - more great work from a great team od guys running this site.

 

[VictorSullivan]

Ah, very nice... I rather underestimated what could be done for the gameplay of a map here.

-Sully

 

[landmine]

first i thougt it was a good map. i love it but after i learn one big tower in middle of map have so much power i really dont like it. There must be something to do about it.

 

[Incandenza]

It's a different kind of map, certainly. Maybe it'll grow on you after playing more games.

Oh, and for anyone looking to jump in on the deep end, be sure to check out the very first tournament set in the Twelve Domains:
http://www.majorcommand.com/Tournaments/Tournament.php?TournamentId=63

 

[landmine]

Oke i have play this a 8 times or so and after i love this map

It's a different kind of map, certainly. Maybe it'll grow on you after playing more games.

Oh, and for anyone looking to jump in on the deep end, be sure to check out the very first tournament set in the Twelve Domains:
http://www.majorcommand.com/Tournaments/Tournament.php?TournamentId=63

 

[theycallmesquirtle]

Possible room for improvement:

Could use a graphics tweak in Solerich Lowlands on territories Gemaedla and Naessa, it wasn't obvious to me my first couple matches that there was a cliff there, it looked like the domain had 3 borders, not one. That's the only real helpful tip I've got so far.

 

[Shepherd]

thanks squirtl, I'll check it out. Grfx tweaks are easy.

 

[diogenes]

Very pretty map! And I love the concept.

But does anyone want to share any strategies with this map? Am I wrong to think that it will largely come down to finding sneaky ways to take over Draig tower first? That is, after you first become...uh...master of your domains.

 

[mark]

Very pretty map! And I love the concept.

But does anyone want to share any strategies with this map? Am I wrong to think that it will largely come down to finding sneaky ways to take over Draig tower first? That is, after you first become...uh...master of your domains.

I am still under round 6 in all my games for this map. I didn't check every game in progress but I did scan the archived games. There is only one complete, public, casual game with more than 2 players. 37459. theycallmesquirtle won it in 11 rounds. That seems awfully fast based on the expansion I am seeing in the games I am playing.

I would love to hear theycallmesquirtle, Boyer, or Chilly comment on this game. In the meantime here's my assessment:

1. Squirtle's starting placement is supremely advantageous. Two side-by-side starting points mean that there is coordinated attack from two sides of the neutral area. I feel like, if you ever find yourself in a SP with the tower as your neutral (Ynisol, Lowands, Harshland), you should make a blitz directly at the tower. Particularly in path or unlimited reinforcement games. In this case Squirtle had Meysyd and Forgotten so it was not a forgone conclusion, but it was a major advantage.

2. Immediate AWOL of Bosse706 and his placement grouped at the bottom made him a non-factor. In particular, being grouped at the bottom for the SP made him even less a factor than most AWOLs which are treated as neutrals on other maps. He was just ignored.

3. Three-Path reinforcements allowed Squirtle to capitalize on his SPs by amassing large armies rounds more quickly than his more spread out opponents.

4. Ignoring 2/3 of your regions until round 4 isn't a good idea. That's what Boyer did and theycallme devoured him in round 6. So getting those castle bonuses seems pretty important. Of course by grabbing Boyer's castles theycallme added that many more bonuses the next round....

5. The tower didn't come into play at all unless you consider theycallmesquirtle's barricade of it from Boyer. Squirtle didn't even take it after he had cleared the board of all active players...just to see how it worked. I'm not sure if that is confidence or he just forgot about it. ;-)

I guess my point here is two fold.
1. AWOL and Starting Point on the map are much more important here than on other maps....unless you get all/most of Australia on Classic Massive.
2. We haven't seen a full 12 Domains game play out yet. RT and pre-release don't count due to lack of time to analyze the board and pre-release bugs (as evidenced in the game notes). There aren't many people who've seen the end game all the way through to see if their starting strategies worked.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on that particular game. I'd love to hear from people who beta-tested it.

 

[herweezy]

I am addicted to this map. It's all i've joined in the last week lol

 

[Shepherd]

I agree with mark in that you can get a lucky drop if your starting castles are near each other... I haven't been so lucky in my games post-test phase. However, that advantage can be easily mitigated if your opponents work together to keep you in check.

In general i like to play this map aggressively and be the first to break out into the open; I think it makes the other player's in your neck of the woods play a bit more conservatively. But I've also seen it work to sit back and let your neighbors beat each other up.

Holding and using the tower to it's full effect is tricky, but a lot of fun when it works. Just be careful that you don't pile up everything to save the tower and leave your castles undefended, right Incandenza?

 

[FLAGG]

It seems like once someone does get the tower, and have control of the dragons, it will be tough to beat him. Especially if they load up on the tower and have path reinforcement to it.

In a Game I was in one of the players, Tyles, made in interesting suggestion. What if the number of troops that one can have on the tower are limited - so it is easier for someone to be kicked off the tower, and different people to own it.

Right now the tower starts with 35 neutral. How about it is limited to ever holding more then 35 troops (like it is a small magic tower or something). That way someone that owns it can only ever put 35 troops there, and there are a couple of directions that people could come from to kick that person off.

That would make it more challenging to catch and control the all powerful dragon! Just a thought...........

Flagg

 

[Shepherd]

How about it is limited to ever holding more then 35 troops (like it is a small magic tower or something). That way someone that owns it can only ever put 35 troops there, and there are a couple of directions that people could come from to kick that person off.

My initial concern is that nobody would ever be able to hold it, and of nobody can hold it why would anybody want to take it in the first place?

Even with no cap on troops in the tower I have always seen the tower did change hands at least twice after being captured... if the collective group can't take the tower away from the first player to nab it, the other players need to figure out how to work together a bit better. This is a map in which diplomacy between the weaker domains is vital, else the dragons eat everybody!

 

[LugNut]

So after my turn controling the tower and dragons in my regions, moving armies off the dragons to fortify my other territories, the dragons will revert to full strength neutral (Gray by default)? But, if I continue to hold Draig Tower on starting my next turn, the dragons next to my castles will spawn again with the appropriate number of armies in my color (25 or 50)?

 

[theycallmesquirtle]

Mark, Here's what I've got to say about some things on the map, for one,I had played many a 1v1 before getting far into that 4 man game, so I had already tried out the dragon tower, and quite frankly it would have been suicidal to take it in a 3 man game with two high ranked and fullly competent opponents. Let's pretend it was a 3 man game and there was no AWOL person. The AWOL person essentially just became a neutrual tower, which you have present anyways in anything but a 3 man, 4 man, or 6 man game on 12 domains, so most setting WILL have that element present regardless.

I see two main strategies that I have employed to rise about 700 points on the ladder in last 4 or 5 days, playing entirely 12 domains, with a couple of real time classic evolved maps thrown in. What strategy I employ is based on my dice. I WANT to be, as Shepherd said, the first to break out (unless the domain in question is pincered between two domains owned by same player, in which case, i stockpile that domains troops on 1 border without exposing myself to a 2 front attack.). In a perfect world, I ransack the villages every game, using my faster growth rate from swift conquering of my domains to control villages worth 2 income each and expand my territory count while my opponents hide behind their barricade 6's, unable to face their larger and soon to be unstoppable enemy. Eventually income wins out, and the game is mine in most 2-4 player games like this where the dice are average or favorable.

What about then the dice turn bad? It happens to everyone, you can run from your fate but the dice will catch up someday. And when they do, pray your opponent lacks patience. To leave your domain is suicide in anything but a 1v1 in this case, you must let your opponent make the first move against the neutrual 6's (i've lost 49 troops to one of those before, and 38 another time) Those neutral 6's can sway the troop count to your favor for a large counterattack. This is of course a flat rate strategy, for I play 99% flat rate games on 12 domains, the nature of the map prevents stalemate so there is no need for 100 troop card deployments in the middle stages of the game. Now, In a 1v1 you can only wait so long before you find a string of prayer beads and get your dice ready, but cooler heads tend to prevail when backed against a wall and locked into your domain by big scary armies roaming the countryside, and with flat rate the cards tend to not be worth the taking of neutral territories. I'm not sure how escalate works out for the lower class in larger games, but I would sit on a set until they were worth something while behind my makeshift neutral wall if confronted with escalate and 4+ players and horrible dice.

The Drake tower: Suicide Tiebreaker Genius.

Taking the Drake tower says "I've already won the game, come at me bro!" at which point in anything but a 1v1, hundreds of troops descend upon your keeps or the tower from every which way. The exception to this is taking the Drake tower and leaving a 1. It's the stalemate breaker. Now everyone has to focus on the tower. I just did this in one game where I am the weakest by around 90 troops in an escalate 3 man game. Now the person following my will take the tower, but the thing is that the third person will then need to leave their nice cozy campfire in the southeast behind in order to break the drake tower, a position which player two had left 2 100 man armies next to. This means of course that player 2 must either mover their 100 man armies, or come to blows with the other powerful player. The drake tower can only be conveniently broken by the person in the west, and the one in the north. any army from the east or south must displace itself and shift the map up a bit in order to cope with this new threat, which either leads to a weak south and east or major conflict in the tower and surrounding areas. What this means for the west: battles will rage on your doorstep, sweat freely. And what of the north, where I am currently rooted down in said map? Who would attack the north when the east has been weakened to bolster the army in the center in case of any real attempt to hold this territory worth 100 income a turn guarded my a tasty one? I essentially have declared the west as the battlefield for two much stronger opponents at the cost of killing a neutral 35, with no real danger of someone holding the tower. However, we can't sit around our fires and hurl insults at one another as inactivity would lead to someone holding the tower, so the map is going to continue to shift, opening up opportunities for me to pull alongside or even to pass up my competition. And then, when I have won, I will hold the drake tower for real. For only one with supreme power could hope to gain an extra 100 income!

 

[theycallmesquirtle]

So after my turn controling the tower and dragons in my regions, moving armies off the dragons to fortify my other territories, the dragons will revert to full strength neutral (Gray by default)? But, if I continue to hold Draig Tower on starting my next turn, the dragons next to my castles will spawn again with the appropriate number of armies in my color (25 or 50)?

Correct.

 

[mark]

Mark, Here's what I've got to say about some things on the map, for one,I had played many a 1v1 before getting far into that 4 man game, so I had already tried out the dragon tower, and quite frankly it would have been suicidal to take it in a 3 man game with two high ranked and fullly competent opponents. Let's pretend it was a 3 man game and there was no AWOL person. The AWOL person essentially just became a neutrual tower, which you have present anyways in anything but a 3 man, 4 man, or 6 man game on 12 domains, so most setting WILL have that element present regardless.

Very interesting strategy. I especially like the 'hold the tower with 1'. I wish I had thought of that in one of my current games....where I took the tower from a strong player leaving myself open to attack by the other strong player. If I had fallen back maybe I would still hold my castle in the south. ;-)

Oh well, still REALLY enjoying this map even though I appear to suck at it.

 

[Shepherd]

There had been some comment recently about how the cliffs seemed to disappear in the part where they curved around, suggesting that regions were connected. It's a perspective issue - you can't see the face of a cliff if you're on the ground above it. I've redrawn some of the cliffs to better illuminate them.

Here's the catch: those of you who have already played this map will have the file loaded on your computer's cache (so the game doesn't have to download the rather large image every time you want to play). So in order to see the new version of the map, along with the new region highlights that will accompany it, you will have to clear the cache in your browser. This is done in different places in different browsers, and is usually under the Preferences or Browsing History menu options.

Hope this helps!