I played the aow2 campaign through once on MPE with no bugs. I just searched the old forums for 'mpe mod map' saw a discussion on one of Groll's maps that the map was bugged with MPE: however, the map was also having bugs without MPE, and the mapmaker suggsted to play with MPE because MPE includes bugfixes.

On balance I think the risk of using MPE is worth it, and it may even be more stable with MPE, but I don't mind that much.

Game started!
Order:
1. Southern
2. Scott
3. Mimo
4. James
5. Me

Reasoning: emperor first, the rest in TZ order based on what I could gather from the emails I've received from you so far. I assume that Scott is east-coast and James and Mimo west, with Mimo having earlier times than James. If this is incorrect I'm happy to restart it - just let me know!

Good luck, high five and enjoy!

PS - I've disabled build an adit - the ability didn't exist when the map was created. Build an outpost was disabled by swolte.

EREGION, Day 1

Let us set about restoring order! Several cities have rebelled, and without their coin the coffers are being drained.

Have fun and may the best non-Archon win. :)

Oh sorry I wasn't paying attention. I live in Ontario in Canada so that's the Eastern Time Zone

I'll restart, no problem. Worth it for such a commitment!

Could you, Mimo and Thereunto specify at what approximate time you usually play? Daytime, evenings, late night...

You're definitely overthinking this. :)

I play turns between 6 and 7 AM EST or between 8 and 9 PM EST during normal times. In Covid times, things are more flexible...

If I get a turn between 10am and 11pm I'll usually play it within a couple hours

That'll do

Hopefully I'll pick up on the nuances of SM!

OK you are all EST. James has lateish times, and he's already last. Thereunto is flexible and Mimo earlyish. We could swap the last 2 but it's not worth it, the difference seems minimal and you're both flexible. Let's continue!

How's it going?

In the meanwhile, big differences between AOW 1 and 2 that trick me every time I transition:

* no retreat and attack again in tactical! This is a very good change IMHO, just need to keep it in mind
* no endless retaliations! MPs recover at end of turn. Each retaliation burns 1/4 mps.
* watch out for 3d: you can move your troops to the wrong hex easily
* attack and defence values are x2 in AOW2
* you can't choose the heroes' upgrades, you can only choose among 3 choices

Other changes - anyone feel free to add to ease the transition:
* unit control tricks are a bit more expensive: seducers have gone up one level, charm doesn't exist anymore, dominate rarer but now you have resurrect (archons... Uh only?)
* some events alter race relations and it's not always obvious, but normally maps have a story that goes with that so try to follow the tracks and you should be good

Getting "Internal crash at 0x7eb1f2b5" for the aowsm exe

Might be better to mosey on without me for now

Races remember for a while when you loot/raze their towns, but only the current occupants of a town really care whether a particular town is being migrated. Migration also doesn't improve race relations with the new occupants.

Migration DOES possibly affect your alignment immediately, if the town would reach a new tipping point. For example, in the Meandor campaign in Shadow Magic, I necromanced a bunch of the super heroes into joining me, leaving them all as Pure Evil alignment. I had to continually migrate towns from Human to Undead in the third mission so my alignment stayed Evil enough that these heroes wouldn't bail on me; starting the migration process was enough to tip my alignment, even if I decided to "juggle" it.

Speaking of which, one of the PBEM rules is not to juggle alignments by temp migrating cities so you can hire indies.

I think that the mpe mod fixed that exploit, as cancelling a migration doesn't restore alignment anymore.

I don't think that the malus is town specific either in mpe, but always global.