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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
A possible solution is to limit the amount of points available for scales (and dominion) based on the pretender chosen. This is an extention of the pooled points, but its tied onto each pretender so that you can further try to balance the combatants vs. the mages.
Or you can just make the design costs of pretenders higher, or give some pretenders lesser (or greater) costs for certain scales. Or you can specify a minimum amount of magic that a pretender must take (again this is like the pooled points approach, but it allows a little greater flexibility in how to not underspend the points). There are a lot of ways to address this problem, of course in MP if you have a good group you can all agree on limits or restrictions before hand, though I figure that takes alot of fun out of it (short of handicapping players). |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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*Edit: perhaps not a bad idea with 'earmarked' (is this a swedish expression or is it viable in english as well) design points * </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Earmarked is an English expression as well. I would LOVE to see this added. Sammual |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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2) It has the only dome that can actually Last through a barrage of province-crippling spells (not including dome of corruption but it is partly astral, too). Every other dome either dissolves from successful hits or doesn't stop spells. 3) The transportation spells, even if nerfed, are still damn useful. 4) Acashic Record. Good luck finding enough astral sites with astral lvl 1 mages without this spell. 5) Astral just got plenty o' more power spells, Strands of Arcane Power, anyone? (ok I admit games are usually too short to get one off but there's always the danger as research is faster nowadays). 6) I hate seeing my expensive sacred units going down to massed Soul Slays. +1mr for astral lvl 4 actually seems like a rather good deal (can't recall the actual opposition number for magic resistance tests anymore [12?] but I recall every point above 10 helps a bunch). 7) The items, 'nuff said. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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2) It has the only dome that can actually Last through a barrage of province-crippling spells (not including dome of corruption but it is partly astral, too). Every other dome either dissolves from successful hits or doesn't stop spells. 3) The transportation spells, even if nerfed, are still damn useful. 4) Acashic Record. Good luck finding enough astral sites with astral lvl 1 mages without this spell. 5) Astral just got plenty o' more power spells, Strands of Arcane Power, anyone? (ok I admit games are usually too short to get one off but there's always the danger as research is faster nowadays). 6) I hate seeing my expensive sacred units going down to massed Soul Slays. +1mr for astral lvl 4 actually seems like a rather good deal (can't recall the actual opposition number for magic resistance tests anymore [12?] but I recall every point above 10 helps a bunch). 7) The items, 'nuff said. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1) Agree. 2) Not really. The "Dome of Arcane Warding" has time limit. Other domes are good enough. You can stack one dome over another - can we still do it in Dom2? 3) Yes. But it's not so overpowerful anymore. "Farey Trod" seems to be better than "Gateway" now. Also, Death gets the "Stygina Paths" for travelling (Thaumatury 8). The level 9 "Astral Travel" is good but well, it's level 9. 4) Why? How about "Astral Probing" - only Evocation 2? "Acashic Record" has a very high gem cost. It is only useful when you know there are more than one uncovered sites (not the case in Dom2?). 5) I think "Strands of Arcane Power" is the reason to avoid Astral? It seems to be just a massive "Mind Duel" and only one Astral mage will survive without a feeble mind. So, only an Astral King or Queen could afford casting it. 6) Useful. But give them Lesser Fear (Death 4), Regeneration (Nature 9), Protection +4 (Earth 4) are not bad deal neither. 7) What items? I find the most useful items in Earth and Nature paths - "Boot of the Behemoth", "Ring of Regeneration". I find both Nature and Death are also hugely upgraded. I haven't had enough time check on Blood yet. Astral is good but I don't really find it overwhemingly so. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I think prot +4 is earth 9, otherwise you just get reinvigoration. And 4 in any other magic gives small boosts to the combat of sacred troops...but if they keep getting soul slayed that doesn't really matter anyway.
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
Having designed a few gods and struggled to get any worthwhile bless bonuses at all... hmm.
Going from 8 to 9 is insanely expensive, even for gods that start at level 2 in something. It makes strong blessings only accessible to nations that get free design points (Caelum, Jotun, Abyssia, Ermor), or cripple themselves. I think setting the big bonus at level 8 and starting the incremental bonus at level 3 would be more interesting... plus... it would make rainbow mages much more fun. -Cherry |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I have, so far, found two games in which Bless effects were tremendously useful:
1. Ulm "Iron Faith" theme. Quality Black Templars buffed with Earth and Fire bonuses. I often mowed through strong independent armies with a quarter of the forces they had. 2. Jotunheim's "Nieflheim" theme. Those giants are *begging* for bless bonuses. In general, I like to delay creating a prophet until I can field an army of quality troops; changing the number of magic levels I take to accomodate certain bless effects is minor in relation to the bonuses, even if it's only *one* army that gets the effects. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
Trying to stick to the subject title.
I've only tested intensively with Ulm and Jotun. Without too many holy units, Ulm can't benefit too much from the bless effect. The "Iron Faith" is a possibility but I don't find it impressive. But for Jotun, it's significant. The blessed Jotun Woodmen are very powerful. Jotun Scout is sacred, stealthy and cheap enough (50 gp). Being commanders, you can recruit them at any castle. You could, in theory, use them an a stealthy army. You will need a stealthy priest but that can be done by prophetize you first Jotun Scout. And of course, if you used the Niefelheim theme, the Niefel giants would be even more terrifying while blessed. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
Wow, simultaneous post about the exact same thing. Somebody's been eating their telepathic Wheaties...
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Not to mention, you're just saying that because you Ph3@r my 1337 all-level-3 rainbow mage=) -Cherry P.S. As it stands now, I doubt anyone would ever, under any circumstance, pick level 10 in anything, even though you get an increment there. But if the big bonus was dropped to level 8, and increments were made even, you might increase the big bonus again at level 10... and still nobody would ever use it, but at least they would gaze at it wistfully. -Cherry [ October 29, 2003, 17:57: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I think 3 and 8 would be good, so 5 blood/fire is old bless (much more reasonable). Generally if i go for magic i get 3 at most in any given Category...and at 8 the powerful effects would still be expensive but not quite so bad. As it is it takes ALL your spare points almost to get a lvl 9 magic, and with sacred troops dependent on your dominion strength you'd need to take negative scales to get enough dominion to build many.
EDIT: Oooh....+8 str. Now that would be a worthy blessing indeed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif [ October 29, 2003, 18:43: Message edited by: LordArioch ] |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Not to mention, you're just saying that because you Ph3@r my 1337 all-level-3 rainbow mage=) -Cherry >snipped< -Cherry </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Noby would EVER want level 9 - that's the point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . Level 9 is too expensive even for magic-loving players. Lowering the first bonus level to 3 would make it very easy to get bonus. Some pretenders have their basic magic start at 3! It could be good but it will change the game balance a lot though it's not necessarily bad. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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There are a couple of downsides however to doing this manually via scenario creation: Capitol locations are public knowledge, and the super randomization of province income/resources means some of the players will almost certainly get screwed badly. Plus it's a pain in the *** to get everything setup and make sure you avoid typos. It would be really cool if the game could handle this... The mechanics behind it is fairly simple, although the GUI would take some work. I'm imagining something like this: Players log onto the game host, and then draft a given number of provinces in random order, with the order reversting each time through. Players then secretly select one of their provinces as their capitol, and spend a given amount of gold and resources on troops and leaders, with a settable max number of starting leaders. A settable amount of research points could then be distributed as desired, and a settable number of turns of gem income could be used for rituals and forging. A game would then be created based upon all of these values, with the sum value of each players provinces roughly balanced within a settable range. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
[On the topic of varrying bless effects]
I suggest bonuses starting at +1 for level 3, and then increasing by one ever level after that. The special bonus effects would kick in at level 6. This would be a more convincing incentive to have higher magic skill levels. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I think they (update:they = the bless bonuses) are too expensive, but can be a lot of fun for single player.
Maybe in special cases they could be worthwhile - Jotun's Niefelhem special and Nature 9 is expensive but potent. 150 gold gives you a monstrous Niefel Giant who when blessed gets Beserk +3 (+3 attack and protection, 99 morale, -3 defense), 50% poison resistant (nice if you have a Green Dragon pretender) and regenerates 15+ points a round. Almost like a supercombatant from the start, so you can get a pretty quick start. But your economy or magic will take a beating getting this, so for a longer game you may get outproduced. Why doesn't the dominion candles in a province affect the blessing affect? If a god's power is so strong in a province that it is altering the weather and such, you'd think that his followers there would get increased power. Maybe the effective starting magic skills could be modified by dominion strength in that location. So a 9 Nature god has his troop blessed in a neutral province, and they get bonuses like he was a 9 Nature pretender. But for each candle, they get a 10% effective starting magic bonus - so the same 9 Nature would count as a 14 Nature in a 5 candle province, and whooping 18 in a 10 candle. A 10 candle dominion with a 9 magic pretender is not very likely until very end game, and even then, only effective in your lands so not too overpowering (especially since in the late game, you probably had to seriously hurt your economy to get the 9 magic pretender). Makes the bonuses at least be an endgame perk, and creates another reason to maintain your dominion in your lands (which a lot of the time is not very important as long as your neighbor isn't Ermor). [ October 29, 2003, 21:33: Message edited by: geo981010 ] |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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There are a couple of downsides however to doing this manually via scenario creation: Capitol locations are public knowledge, and the super randomization of province income/resources means some of the players will almost certainly get screwed badly. Plus it's a pain in the *** to get everything setup and make sure you avoid typos. It would be really cool if the game could handle this... The mechanics behind it is fairly simple, although the GUI would take some work. I'm imagining something like this: Players log onto the game host, and then draft a given number of provinces in random order, with the order reversting each time through. Players then secretly select one of their provinces as their capitol, and spend a given amount of gold and resources on troops and leaders, with a settable max number of starting leaders. A settable amount of research points could then be distributed as desired, and a settable number of turns of gem income could be used for rituals and forging. A game would then be created based upon all of these values, with the sum value of each players provinces roughly balanced within a settable range. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This would not be all that hard to do in a map editor. All the needed commands are supported when creating a senerio. Sammual |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Sammual |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I admit it, I'm still not certain that in an MP game I'd have any incentive to go over level 4 magic... and that, just for site-searching/construction. Bless effects are neat, but I hardly ever had any sacred troops in Doms 1, so...
Yeah. Starting at 3, incrementing every level, and getting a big bonus at 6 sounds pretty crazy to me, but starting at 3, incrementing every other level, and getting a big bonus at 8 still wouldn't convince me to buy a magic-rich god. So maybe somewhere in between... otherwise, making cheap sacred units more common might make taking magic a better bargain. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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It's more a matter of "What's between incrementing every level, and incrementing every other level, without being confusing." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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I think it is good the game has so many preferred ways to play. It actually strikes me as a good sign of balance that people feel so polarized on this issue, as odd as that might sound. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Also, as Psitticine mentioned, high magic levels can be very powerful on the battlefield. Most spells increase in effectiveness with higher power, and all battlefield spells decrease in fatigue cost. Even level 4 can have a dramatic impact on a battle - and that's without gems, communion or booster spells. On larger maps, this effect is weakened, because your god in general is less important - you only have one of him, while scales affect all your provinces. This is the kind of scaling issue that can't really be fixed by tweaks to the game system - maps with more and/or richer provinces will always tend to favor positive scales more than smaller, poorer maps. In that respect, I like the nerfing of positive scales compared to Dom I - it may lead to an incentive to put more points into the pretender himself, which I think will make things more interesting. Yes, there is certainly a possibility that in some cases it will lead to god vs. god battles that can decide the whole outcome of a war. But I prefer that to the case where gods rarely appear on the battlefield at all, or even play a significant role (except through their dominion). I personally would favor changing the bless system so it was based on magic and dominion strength. Let's say bonuses would start at level 6, with big bonuses at level 11 or so - but the level in question is your magic level plus your dominion strength in the current province. So if you have more than 2 candles, it would be easier to get strong bless effects; but if you have weak dominion, no dominion or (worst of all) hostile dominion, your bless effects would be weaker than presently, possibly even suppressed entirely in a strong enough dominion of a hostile God. It never made sense to me that blessing was independent of dominion; with the new bless effects it makes even less sense than it does for a "generic" blessing. Of course, with big bonuses at level 11, an archmage's blessing would be really killer in a 9-candle dominion. But I think that would be appropriate - only a fool fights in a 9-candle hostile dominion anyway. Especially if their God, prophet or (with this system) sacred troops are on the battlefield. For dominion levels that are more reasonable for a battlefield (I'd say no more than 4 - above that you really should be trying to preach around the area before pushing the border any further), you'd need at least 7 to get a big bonus. Even more importantly (IMO), every level of magic can improve your bless effects on at least some potential battlefields. For example, the God I'm currently using in single player (titles in my sig) is a Lord of the Desert Sun with Fire 4, Earth 4, Nature 4. I remember that I had spent most of my points and had Fire 4, Earth 3, Nature 4 with a few points to spend, and it was just enough to get either Fire 5 or Earth 4. I took Earth 4 because of the bless effect - none at 3, a big jump at 4. Although I think it's cool to sometimes take a path for its bless effect, I don't think it should be that "chunky". I certainly would have taken Fire 5, Earth 3, Nature 4 if the bless system had been something like I am proposing (or anything else that rewards every level of magic, instead of only rewarding certain numbered levels). |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
If the blessings need to be improved to be desirable I think it is better to lower magic cost rather than starting off blessings at lower levels. The blessings start of 4 for a reason, to encourage players to give their pretenders a decent magic score.
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
It may be too much work, but I would like to see the cost per level be relative to the intial cost to add the path. in pseudo code it would look like=
"cost per lvl"=(("cost of 1st level"/10)+4)+"cost of Last level" Using the above formula a pretender with an initial magic level of 3 (the highest default level on any pretender) can reach level 10 for 112 points just short of what it would take to purchase a level 3 order scale. On the other hand it would take the same pretender over 360 points to reach level 10 in other magic paths. The nice thing is this makes the archmage classes a little more attractive, and keeps people from selecting a wyrm and loading it up with magic-- a strategy I expect will become popular if an across the board reduction in magic cost takes place. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
can someone repost the complete blessing effects list that a beta posted somewhere? I cant find it again.
tia |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
You could have found it at Dom X...
Anyway: Bless Effects In Dominions II, the effect of bless is dependent on the starting magic of your pretender. You get first batch of powers at magic level 4, and the first batch power is updated at magic levels 6,8 and 10, except for the air shield effect. You get a second batch power at magic level 9. The effects are initial, empowering or dying makes no diffrence to the bless effects. None - Morale +3 Fire 4 - Attack Skill +2 Fire 6 - Attack Skill +3 Fire 8 - Attack Skill +4 Fire 9 - Flaming Weapons Fire 10 - Attack Skill +5 Air 4 - Air Shield (20%) Air 5 - Air Shield (25%) Air 6 - Air Shield (30%) Air 7 - Air Shield (35%) Air 8 - Air Shield (40%) Air 9 - Shock resistance (75%) Air 10 - Air Shield (45%) Water 4 - Defense Skill +2 Water 6 - Defense Skill +3 Water 8 - Defense Skill +4 Water 9 - Quickness (50%) Water 10 - Defense Skill +5 Earth 4 - Reinvigoration 2 Earth 6 - Reinvigoration 3 Earth 8 - Reinvigoration 4 Earth 9 - Armor value +4 Earth 10 - Reinvigoration 5 Astral 4 - Magic Resistance +1 (Max 18) Astral 6 - Magic Resistance +2 Astral 8 - Magic Resistance +3 Astral 9 - Twist Fate (protection from first hit) Astral 10 - Magic Resistance +4 Death 4 - Lesser Fear Death 6 - Lesser Fear Death 8 - Lesser Fear Death 9 - Life after Death, Fear (Undead beings only) Death 10 - Lesser Fear Nature 4 - Berserk +1 Nature 6 - Berserk +2 Nature 8 - Berserk +3 Nature 9 - Regeneration, Poison Resistance (50%) Nature 10 - Berserk +4 Blood 4 - Strength +2 Blood 6 - Strength +3 Blood 8 - Strength +4 Blood 9 - Death Curse Blood 10 - Strength +5 BTW, if somebody knows the numerical values of the Lesser Fear/Fear blessing, could you please tell me those values? [ October 30, 2003, 11:40: Message edited by: Nerfix ] |
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I suspect simply lowering the cost of magic won't help this issue, but instead free up more points to be spent on scales/castle, and an increased diversification in magic skills. Even halving the cost of magic would not convince me to get more than level 4 in anything, except possibly a 6 on a pretender that started with 3. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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No wonder Sphinx and Fountains got so popular... |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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I suspect simply lowering the cost of magic won't help this issue, but instead free up more points to be spent on scales/castle, and an increased diversification in magic skills. Even halving the cost of magic would not convince me to get more than level 4 in anything, except possibly a 6 on a pretender that started with 3. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The main problem, it seems to me, is the increasingly higher cost of higher magic levels - it's O(n^2), which is really painful. Getting a couple of extra levels is not that bad, but you reach a point where each level costs as much as a scale, which is quite a lot. High levels of magic are useless for site searching too. Hmm, I just had an idea to reward high levels of magic - what if high level mages automatically search every province they enter with their skill level minus 5? That way a fire 9 god would automatically know when there is a fire site present - he wouldn't need to take a month searching. This seems appropriate for the Lord of Every Flame. Another option would be auto-searching based on dominion and god's magic skills, but that would be even more powerful, so an auto-search based on presence would probably be a better first step. Even so, it still seems that high levels of magic go up in cost too fast. Why not a flat 10 per additional level of magic (after the first for paths you don't already have)? Or 10 + 2/level above base? |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
The other possibility would be to have the cost per level decrease as the level increases. If it were cheaper to go from 4 to 10 then from 1 to 4, people would be more likely to specialize. I'd probable suggest making the total cost to get to 10 a 120 points with two-thirds cost being the levels from 1-4.
Another formula that might work would be a flat rate per level equal to the starting path cost with a minimum cost of 10. In other words an archmage would pay 10 points for every level; a molch would pay 10 points for every fire level, but 80 points for every non-fire level. Like my earlier suggestion this boosts the mages and makes it more cost effective to increase a pretender starting path than to add four levels of air. (unless you have a mage type pretender). |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I like this idea of having auto search at your level minus xxx.
As much as I have tried, I have not found that investing 200 design points to get 9 or 10 in a magic scale was a good bet. Perhaps the demo limitations bias my results, perhaps not. A pro argument for high magic levels : the scales dont give much now, far less than in doms I. We have perhaps the bad habit to value them too much. What is worth 120 design points now? (for growth +3, a 30.000 pop province, it is a meager +180 pop a turn, and +6% income IIRC). Perhaps it is worth to invest them in a high magic level. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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Maybe Ashen Empire, Soul Gates or Carrion Woods can afford to take 12 negative scales and have the points to get a powerful bless. But most nations can't. Either Gods that are skilled in paths of magic need a higher base skill (this would help A LOT for reaching high levels, because it would reduce the cost for each level by 8 and make you have to buy fewer levels - if the Father of Serpents started with Nature 3, Death 2 instead of Nature 2, Death 1 it would probably have saved over 150 points), or the costs to increase magic levels for Gods need to be sharply reduced (say, half as much per level except for the first level). Obviously the second proposal would also benefit archmages while the first would not (except for archmages that start out with one path, like Frost Father or Arch Druid). It's not that I don't want to take stronger magic on my God at setup; it's that I can't afford to, even with few or no positive scales and a points-cheap castle. I don't like this, because I really like the idea of Gods having more powerful magic (and the bless system that ties into it). So why do they start with less magic skill than mortal mages? Although I posted earlier that I'd like to see bless effects start lower, I'm recanting that position: what I really want is to see it become more affordable to have a magically powerful God. A magically mediocre God with good bless effects isn't nearly as much fun as a magically awesome God with good bless effects (even if I have to go up against stronger enemy Gods as well). If this spells the demise of the no-magic, scale-pushing Wyrm, I won't shed any tears. I always thought it was a boring (though effective) choice in Dom I, both to play as and against. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
How many gems does it take to empower a pretender the Last few scales to reach level nine, during play?
Does using the various power-boosting magic items in the game contribute to the bless effect? Because those make it relatively easy to gain a raw +1 to +3 power in various fields. PvK |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
I believe the bless effects are hard wired to your starting spell picks. Otherwise it would be too easy to cheese I think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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As another example for Abysia, IMHO you'd be clearly better off taking 4 Fire, 3 Air on a Moloch, which would also cost less -- despite Moloch's path cost of 70. I agree everyone has their own style of play, but would you really take a Fire 9 Pretender in a multiplayer game? |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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As another example for Abysia, IMHO you'd be clearly better off taking 4 Fire, 3 Air on a Moloch, which would also cost less -- despite Moloch's path cost of 70. I agree everyone has their own style of play, but would you really take a Fire 9 Pretender in a multiplayer game? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I was able to get Fortified City, 3 Order & Prod and i didn't have to take the death scale. If you don't take the minors, you only get +3 Morale... Why not? I don't consider 3 Order & Prod, Fortified City and non-negative Growth that bad. Fear the Blessed Units of Flaming Death. [ October 30, 2003, 12:48: Message edited by: Nerfix ] |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
Yes, bless effects are solely based on starting values. You cannot change them, by death empowerment or items.
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Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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I don't like negative scales, usually take the 60-point Fortress, take a lot of magical power, and still manage to tweak the scales into a mildly benifical state. I agree completely that larger maps will tilt that balance so that the scales have more importance, but that would just make me aim for 6 or 7 in my primary path instead of 9 or 10. |
Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
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</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually it's more complex than that - it's (power you are moving to - base power in that path for that form) * 8. I wasn't quite clear in my earlier post - it's the cumulative cost to achieve a higher magic level that is O(n^2). For example, if you start with power 2 in a given path: level 2 costs 0 level 3 costs 8, total 8 level 4 costs 16, total 24 level 5 costs 24, total 48 level 6 costs 32, total 80 level 7 costs 40, total 120 level 8 costs 48, total 168 level 9 costs 56, total 224 level 10 costs 64, total 288 You see how level 9 costs twice as much as level 7? And that's if you start at level 2. Many things don't start with any paths above level 1 (great mother, phoenix, frost father, arch druid), and of course some don't start with any above level 0 (archmages, wyrm, manticore). Few god forms start with a path at level 3. Liches, maybe moloch and PoD, maybe the immobiles. Quote:
I'd like to see a cheap form with base level 3 in a given path (even if it was physically weak). That would at least make it practical to get a high level of that one path. But I can't think of any forms that meet that condition, other than the immobile ones. (Liches have level 3, IIRC, but have a base cost over 100.) Quote:
I just think the high-level bless effects are cool, but the cost of reaching level 9 is prohibitive unless your form starts with 4+. No god form that I know of starts with more than 3. Thus the problem. As an example, suppose we wanted to design a god whose bless effect would duplicate the Dom I bless effect. This requires Fire 6, Blood 6. I don't know of any form that starts with skill in fire and blood, so we will have to build one of them up from zero. Let's take the Fountain of Blood - it costs 0 and has a new path cost of 40, I don't think we can do better than that. It starts with Blood 3 (one of the few forms that starts with 3 power in a path), so it will only cost us 48 points to raise that to 6. Fire 6 will cost us 200 points, so we've just spent half our points. That's not too bad - except that it's for an immobile pretender. Anything else would have been more expensive - a Moloch, for instance, has a base cost of 75, new path cost of 50 and starts with only Fire 2, so overall it would have cost us an extra 117 points (a total of 365). Maybe it's just my expectations - I thought the intent of the new bless system was to make blessings more varied and more useful, not just more varied (and frequently less useful, unless you invest a lot in god magic). Furthermore I don't like the idea that a god with a 100 point base cost needs to have another 50 or 60 points spent on his magic skills so he will be as powerful as a mortal mage. Most of the titan/demigod forms cost 100+ for 2 or 2/1 (and their physical stats aren't that impressive, although they can generally manage to stay alive on the battlefield). And archmages have an even harder time reaching higher magic levels, because they start with 0 in everything (or everything but one). I just don't want to see a situation where only Abysia, Caelum and Ermor can afford to take strong magic and strong blessings. |
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