Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Whine, whine, whine, *****, *****, *****.

There are too many strategies in Dominions II, and I cannot deal with most
of them! I especially cannot deal with more than one applied at the same
time. Lets change the rules we know to something completely untested, and
hardly making any sense! Lets remove any magic strategy that has been used
against me with any success! I wanna play with knights, archers and
groundpounders, although I think that knights should lose the charge bonus,
and the attack rear command should be disabled.

Whahhh!

Guys, if you do expand quickly, you will lose the game. If you do not build
reaction forces, you will lose the game. If you do not make alliances that
benefit both parties, you will lose the game. If you do not have some
hoarding strategy you will lose the game. If you do not have a good idea
about what your opponents are doing, you will lose the game.

If you do all the above, you may still lose the game.

And if all of the above are removed, the people who are kicking your *** will
adapt, and still kick your ***. Only, Dominion II will be a lot less fun...

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Pardon me but it is certainly MORE fun with no hoarding. More possible strategies, less micromanagement. its a NO-BRAINER.

But you belong to the reactionary "nothing is broken" crowd. I'll bet you thought the VQ was dandy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

You seem to think that Illwinter have created the perfect game, perfect in all respects, in no need of tweaking/modding whatsover. Ah yes, truly, ignorance is bliss! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

By definition, someone who believes "nothing is broken" is a conservative and thus the opposite of a reactionary (someone who feels a need for change). You really ought to understand the meaning of the terms you sling.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Reactionary and conservative are quite synonymous terms.

As a quick source to back up my use of the word, here is a definition from dictionary.com:

"Characterized by reaction, especially opposition to progress or liberalism; extremely conservative."

The term you are looking for is "revolutionary" which is the opposite of "reactionary".

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Actually, Soapyfrog's use of the word was quite appropriate. See e.g. wikipedia

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

My bad. You're right. I read "revolutionary" when you actually wrote "reactionary". I really am senile today. I should just go back to bed. Either that or go load up on caffeine.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Pardon me, but 'cast black servant', 'forge fetish', 'forge clam', and
sticking the Last two on the former is no more micromanagement than any
other strategy requires. And please explain to me how _removing_ a
strategy opens up more strategies? Or are you one of the deluded fools
who think that any strategy is a garantee for success? Because in one
game, I'll end up facing someone who is hoarding at least clams and devils,
and most probably fetishes, judging from the fortified temple in each
province of hers. Oh, by the way, she also is second in provinces and
research, and has supercombatants, and a wished pretender. And you know
what? I do not intend to let her win the game.
I belong to the intersection of the 'Win with the tools you're given'
and the 'Can't stand rebels without a clue' crowds. Or so I like to
think. Care to prove me wrong in a 1x1?
I thought that the VQ was a newbie friendly pretender, and possibly
underpriced. At the time, I did not consider myself good enough to be
positive. I have fielded VQs in a MP game twice. Once after the VQ nerf
was announced, to see what the big deal is, and once after the nerf, to
win the tournament's semi-final against the most vocal anti-VQ crusader.
I have not used her since, because I find her horribly overpriced.
Certainly in no need of tweaking/modding prompted by the whine-du-jour of
clueless losers.
I am sure that explains why you are so happy with yourself. But I prefer
finding my own happiness in winning. Once again, care to play a game so
that we can both indulge?

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..
 

Multiple battles (per army) in a turn are not bad in themselves. It seems a little easy to me for a knowledgable player to use the system against gem-wielding mages. Players can always use their familiarity with the AI against others.

Labs may usually be in fortified provinces, but also consider the more common situation when people use scouts as gem carriers for large armies. It doesn't make sense to me that a mage wouldn't try to replenish his gem supply mid-turn before a major battle (having spent his gems in a magical battle). I doubt that an AI would accomplish this satisfactorily, though (but maybe worth a try). With a limited gem supply, gems may go to the wrong mages, or be distributed in insufficient numbers.

Its true that it would add a lot of micro-management. Being a veteran of dominions-PPP, I have built up quite a tolerance.

Gem generation would happen before dominion change under my system (not sure what the turn order is currently), so your number of active generators would be predictable from turn-to-turn.

An overall limit may be better in terms of micro-managing. It would, however, allow more of an all-eggs-in-one-basket type approach for the hoarder, made effective by use of domes. A simpler limit could be that any null or enemy-dominion province has a limit of one active generator.

Dominion pushing as a tool against hoarders could be interesting, might add something to the game.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Because you will use those resources with which you MUST otherwise hoard to do other interesting things that never get done because everyone is busy hoarding.

For EXAMPLE: Soul contracts invalidate huge swathes of blood summons. Most never get used becuase it is much much much more cost effective to create soul contracts.

No of course not. It's all about what you DO with it... however hoarding is a REQUIREMENT. It is something you _MUST_ do. There is no "alternate" strategy. It doesnt improve the game, it just drowns out other possible uses for your gems/slaves. It's badly balanced.

Worse, there is exactly ZERO strategy involved in hoarding. It is simple administrative work. Tedious. But sadly neccessary.

Why not simply have all magic sites double in output every 20 turns? You would get the same effect, and not have to work for it... AND nations which are inherently bad at hoarding wouldn't take it in the teeth as much.
Clearly I must fold in the face of your irrefutable logic. Touché.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

You keep saying the same thing over and over and louder and louder. Most people have moved on. I hope you dont take that to mean that you are convincing people of this "problem" you are trying to fix.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Gandalf, while your point about 'frog's persistance may be true, he also raised a valid point when he said:
Of course the same argument could be said about only summoning Bane Lords with your death gems, or Vine Ogres with nature gems (well, Fairy Queens are very nice too).

The real argument is whether a player is an optimizer (aka min-maxer), a strategist, or a RPer. Each camp vehemently expounds its views, and never will members from one camp sway those of another. Hence the perpetual bickering.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

I have to agree with that. I wish there were different Versions of soul contracts to make storm demons and demon knights. But there aren't. So I just make devils.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Yes its true there are optimal summons for all paths. however you do frequently summon other stuff too, and thats useful too... sometimes you will summon wraith lords, or demi-liches, or lamia queens. You will cast arouse hunger and ghost riders and call of the wild, etc etc. There are many useful things to put your nature and and death gems (well nature gems mostly go into fetishes if you are diligent, but still.)

The point is that while there are optimizations, they dont invalidate other strategies in the way that, say, soul contracts do. You cant compete with a soul contract in terms of regular units with any other blood summons. At least in the other arenas, the optimizations are not so blindingly obvious...

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Soapy, you've made your point, as Gandalf (and I) have tried to point out. Hammering away at it over and over again won't help further your cause, unless your intent is really that of trolling for someone to argue with.

Some people believe (fervently, or dare I say it, religiously) that SCs are too strong in the game, or that clams are unbalancing, or creature X is too cheap/expensive/strong/weak, or item Y is too cheap/expensive/strong/weak, or that feature Z is broken. And they are entitled to their opinions. But they are just that, opinions. Common courtesy (and common sense) asks that said pet opinions not be crammed down the throats of those who don't agree, since it's pointless and unpleasant.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

There are also those who feel that each thing must be balanced by another thing. If they get a pawn then I should have a pawn. But the balance in this game is a level which is difficult to see. So many feel that so much is too powerful but as long as they cannot agree on what that thing is, then they balance each other out. Its difficult to see for someone who, for example, is a summoner who feels that they have found the unbeatable summons tactic. Or the armored-units person who feels that there is no balancing strength for his armored tactic. In a summoners game, or an armored game, they may be correct (even then I feel its alittle soon to have the ultimate one). But in a game where both play together they find their tactic is not such an automatic win.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

And they become frustrated, which immediately leads them to whining on the forum. It's all so boringly, annoyingly repetitive. The gripe du jour.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Well storm demons beat the devils . A SC beats them too etc. etc. .
So soul contract hoarding doesn't ensure you a win .

With clams etc. it is the same though not so severe :
If you only convert your water gems to clams then you don't lose too much but then it is a rather slow process .

If you convert back your gained astral pearls to speedup the clamhoarding process though then you lack them for some time and are vulnerable until you start to use them .
And there are too many factors to evaluate if your clamhoarding is good enough . If the other player intead gets 1 province more as you every 1-2 turns while you get 2-3 clams more the other player has still an advantage over you because he gets more gold , gems from sites , perhaps freespawns etc. .

I thought exactly like you do a few weeks before but i think now that hoarding is not a no-brainer .

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

I agree 1 on 1 a storm demon beats a devil. The problem is that I will have 300 devils and you will have 30 storm demons...

SC I agree you can with a LOT of effort make an SC who can tank an unlimited number of devils. However of course there are more devils where they came from (for free!!) AND of course I can use anti-SC tactics against your devil-tanking SC.

Since my devil army is endless replenishable, losing it is not a crippling blow. Your SC on the other hand, well, you will have to expend those considerable resources all over again, since the devil problem wont go away just ebcuase you killed a bunch of them.

You have to kill the source... and you cant becuase they are hidden on scouts...

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

They aren't free. They just have a form of payment that rewards in the long term, rather than in the short term. Do you think it would be fair to pay 80 slaves for a single devil ? Of course not. To get many devils out of a soul contract, you consume many different kinds of resources and one which most people seem to ignore is the resource of Time.
Gem sites do not run out. Every army and summon is "endlessly replenishable". What you mean is that you have to reinvest gems. With contracts, though, you still have to reinvest Time. You don't think that's important ?

That's true ! Of course, if I kill my opponents Bane Lord army, I doubt the problem will go away, either. Unless I actually start taking his resources away from him. Now, the obvious counter-point here is that the devils don't really take a lot of resources to rebuild, other than time (actually, even that has a caveat since we haven't talked about who is leading these devils). Even then, the answer is Time. If you can summon SCs faster than his contracts can produce devils (obviously not on a 1 for 1 basis), even in the short run, you should be able to take some of his resources away from him.

Now, I am not taking a stance on whether contracts are balanced or not. I am just beginning to explore them heavily, myself. I just wanted to point out that Time, as a resource, is something that all of the investment item discussions seem to overlook.

- Kel

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Ok . But i can siege the province where the scouts are in .
And until very lategame you don't have so many soul contracts that you generate each turn 100 new devils , rather 20-50 new ones .
So killing 200-300 of your devils you need a few turns to have them again .
With staff of storm + a few air casters who cast e.g. thunderstrike + orb lightning the devils don't look too good .
And they have -50% cold resistence so ice strike and falling frost can do some damage too .


The devils are of course tough but fortunately you can ground them via storm and as a sideeffect the storm makes fire magic harder to use as well .



Most important though you have to remember the high costs of soul contracts .
80 slaves , 60 with dwarfen hammer .
A dwarfen hammer costs though 20 earthgems and the blood nations are not the best sitesearchers . Abysia and Mictlan both lack earthmagic , Mictlan lacks it total and Abysia can only get E on warlocks , then you can forge a bloodstone and earth boots for earth 3 but that takes some time .
If you don't take blood 5 on your pretender then you will need construction 6 in order to get 2 boosters to blood 5 to forge the soul contracts .
And you will use a lot of your initial blood first on the ice/arch devils normally .

So by turn 30 you have i think if you don't go only on soul contracts about 10 and produce each turn 1-2 new .
By turn 50 you have then like 20-50 soul contracts but on turn 50 the others will have other good things .
Only when you reach 100+ soul contracts at turn 70-100 they start to really get out of control .

Soul contracts are good but unless you manage to get FoTa running or find a constructionbonus site they are not really overpowered .
With forces of darkness you get 14 Fiends for 50 blood that's not bad too . A fiend of darkness has about the same combat power like a Devil .
So only after 15 turns the soul contract starts to get a higher output .
But 15 turns is a long time so the player who uses the lvl 9 blood spell instead will have more forces earlier than you .
If you can survive this then it is fine but chances are not bad that the nonhorder overwhelms you before your hoarding really pays off .

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

A lot of effort? Iron dragon with an amulet of luck and AMA.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Interesting Combo .
One question though : Doesn't the Iron dragon than trample around and so a lot of devils ignore him and march further to your mages etc. ?

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

And they can just sneak away! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
20-50 is a LOT... it really adds up. Typically you can have 20 soul contracts by turn 40 or so PLUS Ice and Arch devils, and you can be building 2-3 per turn after that.

Yes but.. I WILL have them again. With no additional expenditure of resources and no risk... so in addition to being able to do everything else I could do, i.e. equip and use SCs, I get X free devils every turn... which I think you'll agree is a significant advantage.
Certainly, that is how you kill devils!! They'll be back though...

This cost does not seem high to me... A blood nation with 10-12 provinces being hunted can easily generate upwards of 150 blood per turn. To take advantage of this you need only 2 blood 5 casters with dwarven hammers so the setup costs are not super significant... for Abysia its downright trivial, for example. I would be quite happy producing two contracts a turn until I can start wishing for blood and power. Generally this will leave enough excess blood to do other fun stuff with but if you are really diligent you can just produce more soul contracts every so often with the excess.
Yes true but actually it is much faster to empower, especially in a hard research setting, which is not so expensive considering how easy it is to accumulate blood.
Agreed Ice devils and Arch devils take precedence, since they are valuable uniques. In a normal research game playing blood nation you should have all your ice and archies by turn 25 or so, at which point you can start contracting... Although I usually break that rule and setup some contracts early, once I have a few uniques already.

You surely wont have level 9 blood before I already have a pretty nice devil factory going.
Perhaps on a small map. I agree you definitely have to make it to turn 30 or so, although having Ice Devils by turn 13 should be a nice boost to your survivability.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

I'd say Construction 9 reuires "a lot of effort" yes, considering you will have to be fighting my mile wide mass o' devils well before that.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Doubtful. That's an expenditure of 1200 to 3000 blood slaves, not counting what you spent on the devil commanders. To get 3000 slaves requires about 500-600 mage turns, which means that you had to have 15 mages hunting for the entire game to that point. That's not particularly likely when facing Abysia, but could be possible with Mictlan if they haven't worked on their dominion at all. That's also a minimum of 5 provinces used for blood hunting, with the associated loss of income. You must be playing on absolutely massive maps if you can afford to have that many provinces devoted to blod hunting. After all, 5 provinces would be a quarter of your empire on normally populated maps.

That doesn't matter if you kill them without taking losses.

If you have 10-12 provinces being hunted, then your empire must be massive, or else you won't have the gold income to keep up in your research.

Level 9 magic in one path with level 5-6 in others by turn 40 is easily doable for any nation with decent researchers.

Ice devils in turn 13 won't do you much good because they won't be equipped with anything.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Construction 9 doesn't require a lot of effort. It's easily reachable by turn 40 without sacrificing any expansion or defense for most living nations. Even Ermor can manage level 9 conjuration, level 6 alteration, level 6 construction, and level 4 enchantment by turn 45 or so.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Hm i thought Scouts can't sneak away a besieged castle not sure though .

Ice devils are nice but if you have them unequipped they are not invincible .
Abysia can't clamhoard before they research water bracelet . Your pretender could clamhoard but normally he has more important tasks like conquering provinces earlygame .
So with water bracelet and either spectres or lucky Warlocks you can clamhoard finally .

But getting the astral items early for your Ice devils if you don't trade isn't so easy .
Boots of flying + an Air resistence item can be if you have no luck with your Warlock random take a while too .

Simliar with Mictlan they lack Earth + Air magic too on their mages .

Earlygame Caelum or Vanheim can be pretty hard opponents against your devils and they may have 1-2 Airqueen SCs then too when you have e.g. 100 devils + 3-4 ice devils / arch devils .

Caelum can screw your blood hunting earlygame by false horror raiding strat , Vanheim can do similiar with this + stealthy Vans .


Bloodhunting costs you a lot because you have to use mages for this + get normally no income from the bloodhunted provinces .
So you have less research than other nations + less gold income .

A staff of storms is very common . Basically every better air nation could give you a lot of trouble if they want to wipe you out early .

The resources you invest in Soul Contract hoarding pay off but it maybe too late .

How do you defend as Abysia/Mictlan when you hord against Vanheim/Caelum/Pythium ?
Finally with the blood nations you can have just plain bad luck and neighbor ermor on the one side + have poor provinces on the other side limiting your bloodhunt abilities more than normal .

It all depends , if you survive the early-midgame your hoarding pays off but often you won't survive early-midgame .
So you will perhaps win half of your games or 1/3 with hoarding but lose the rest .

Abysia is very good at hoarding Bloodstones + Soul contracts while Mictlan is good at hoarding Soul contracts + Clams while e.g. Pythium is damn good at site searching + Clamhoarding .
Normally the different ways to hoard pay off all similiar and the nations who suck at horde are very good early-midgame then instead so they can very often compensate this by territory .

You have a lot of good points though .
What makes the Devil so special are his stats + abilities .
18 attack + 16 def make most ( or all ? ) national troops useless .
18 attack + 16 def is almost as good as a banelord early game SC or similiar .

The devil almost forces your opponent to get staffs of storm + use air magic to counter you . If he can't do this he has probably problems .

But about 1/3 of the nations can do this with little or no effort . Another 1/3 has other not too bad means like banefire ( Ctis desert tombs ) or watermagic . Bladewind and magma eruption etc. should not be tooo bad against devils too .
You are probably more mobile though so you can pick your battles easier .

There are too many different factors to think of that you can say if devils are imbalanced or not .
They are probably costwise the best summon but there has always to be 1 best thing in each area .

But earlygame you use your resources setting up your hoarding factory . So you are very vulnerable there .
Midgame airnations can still give you a good fight and lategame everyone else has other strong measures against you in fields where he is good at .

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

To me the preferred solution would be making sneaking units targetable by overland spells. While hoarding would still be quite possible, useful, and smart to do, an enemy with good and detailed intelligence could attempt to take out your production base.

I would also very much like to see an overland spell capable of castle destruction, which would open up some very interesting tactical opportunities IMO. If you made it so that the chances of success were predicated on the number of earth gems put into it against the defense rating of the castle it would also encourage people to use the high defense castles alot more.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

That role is taken by crumble.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Crumble hasn't been very effective in my experience... I was refering to a spell that would physically remove the castle, thereby removing the speedbump effect, which crumble does not do.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Crumble is damn good!!!
It damages even the troops inside the castle, and I saw a Tartarian get killed by crumble! (well it disappeared, and there was in only a crumble in that province).

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

It seems to me that almost every time im using crumble, im doing so because there's a large number of defenders inside the castle keeping me from beating down the walls. When this is the case all that seems to happen is that crumble beats down the walls but then the defender vs besieger check happens afterwards and I get the message saying the defenders are repairing the wall faster than I can beat it down and I dont actually get a chance to storm the castle. While some damage is implied in the spell description I have never seen any statistics on it, or any noticable damage when I cast it.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

The spell description tells you right out that it does 150 damage to the defense of the castle, with an additional 25 for each level of skill above 5.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

I should have been more specific, I meant the spell description implies damage is done to the units inside the castle, but I have never seen evidence of it. I am aware of the damage the spell does to the castle, but if the units inside the castle can repair better than your troops outside it becomes moot how much damage you do as the game first applies the crumble damage and then does the besieger/defender check. While it does have uses now, obviously, it would become alot more useful if it either 1) fully destroyed the castle, requiring a new one to be built, or 2) applied the damage AFTER the defender/besieger check so that if the walls were completely crumbled you would then be able to storm the castle. This is only personal preference on my part.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Am I the only one who thinks that, for a long term game, taking plenty of blood on the pretender to start with is a waste of good design points? You don't NEED to take construction 6 to get boosters in a world that allows empowerment, and blood is the one path in which it is easy to gain enough gems (slaves) to empower early on.

Unless I specifically take a pretender who starts with blood (hello, vampire queen), I think blood 0 (high path cost) or 1-3 (low path cost) is quite enough to start with. The points freed up thus can be used for something else entirely, such as a nicer SC chassis, somebody with good magic skills in the lacking national areas (perhaps even a minor bless effect or two for your sacred troops), or better scales (perhaps allowing more bloodhunting without hurting income) - and blood empowerment will still see you reach blood 5 reasonably early at the same cost as 1-3 contracts. It does mean that the devil factory will start a few rounds later, but in my mind it makes for a stronger nation in the long run. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ...if you invested the points freed up by not going blood 5 from the start wisely, that is.

If you have a good national blood commander, you can even consider empowering one of those early on for medim-high blood skill leaving your pretender free for other tasks.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Construction 6 gives you hellsword + blood thorn anyway so why empower when construction 6 is such an important goal for a blood nation anyways ?

Or you research Blood 5/6 first , use your blood for the uniques and then rush to construction 6 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

For the design points saved that you can use to boost your scales, pretender chassis, or other magic skills as I suggested? Perhaps you happened to miss that rather vital part of the empowering strategy?

Nothing in the empowering process prevents you from researching construction 6 first if that is what you want to for the items, though it might delay it if you set more people on bloodhunting duties.


The major worry would be a unique rush, if you were too late to summon the uniques because you had to spend turns and slaves on empowering your pretender. On the other hand, if you were counting on researching construction 6 before being able to summon the uniques, you should be able to get enough empowerment in the same time while focusing on blood primarily (and construction secondarily)

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

I didn't say take blood on your pretender .
Abysia just needs 2 +1 blood items on a demonbred and he can summon the Arch devils then .

Mictlan needs construction 4 anyways for SDR so you can continue to Con 6 then they can summon both Arch devils and Ice devils .


You are right though i missed your point that if you empower e.g. a demonbred to blood 4 you save time .
You have to invest iirc 45+60 blood instead of 20+20 for 2 +1 items but you save several turns .
If you want to rush to the Ice devils you are forced to take at least water 3 on your pretender though cause the only +1 items are water bracelet and robe of the sea but the latter requires W3 to forge .

So good ideas : if you take W3 on your pretender but no blood you have to pay 50+30+45 blood to empower him to get the ice devils .
So in both strats "only" about 80-100 slaves higher costs but you will be 5-15 turns earlier there as your enemy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
Thnx for sharing your strat , i learned a new lesson http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

I have added it to the original post now. Sorry that I did not make it clear. I love using empowered demonbreds to hammer flat the slaves for the soul contracts and I love to blood-empower my pretender later on to use the multipath blood spells (not only for the ice devils in a rush strategy but also for the very highlevel mass summons in an end-game strategy). No matter what, it is my firm belieft that the pretender should not have to waste his time on such mundane business as staying in a fortress hammering slaves. It is so undignified.

He should be making dwarven hammers and kicking ***. E3/W3 are, as you note, great to take on the pretender for hammer and ice devil goodness.

Re: Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and mor
 

Which pretender do you normally take ?
If you take a VQ you already have B2 so B3 only costs you 8 points and B4 16 , so 24 in total .

Similiar if you use one of the mictlan national pretenders or a warlock .

Do you take such pretenders or do you always play with a ghostking ?

Clams versus magic sites...
 

Ate too much cheese Last night and had some thoughts about clams...

Clams versus gem sites

A recent game as Atlantis got me thinking (sites 40, Old World). I conquer the seas, and use voice of tiamat to search my 15+ underwater provinces. I find a few gem sites (a smattering of earth, fire and astral), but work out I would have had a higher income (albeit solely astral) had I forged clams. I suppose it can be put down to voice of tiamat being inefficient at 40% sites, manual site searching being more worthwhile (but costing more mage time overall, and therefore more research).

A comparison of clams and magic sites:

- Magic sites are linked to provinces, clams can be passed around.

- Magic sites are spread around an empire, making it hard to defend all of them. Clams can be stockpiled in well defended provinces, and moved via the lab if threatened (and on to other commanders if available).

- Discovered magic sites can be seen with scouts and astral window-type spells, whilst total site income is known if graphs are enabled. Clams are only visible on a commander's inventory.

- Both clams and gem sites require micro-management: searching for sites, forging, placing and gem collection for clams.

- The site count of a well searched empire is proportional to its province count (times the site frequency). Clam count of a nation using hoarding strategy is proportional to the turn count.

- Magic sites are capturable. Clams are somewhat less capturable.

Two balancing factors have been suggested that should naturally limit use of clams: diplomacy and map size.

Diplomacy can't be levelled directly against clams, as they are invisible to scouting and world graphs. Clams have low costs, so they won't necessarily overly weaken a player in the short term compared to one who spent the gems on summons eg. winter wolves.

A small map size can be chosen, which should give a quicker game, and thus limit effectiveness of clams. The number of players, and aggressiveness of their respective playstyles will have as much influence on the length of the game, however.

I'm leaning towards thinking that a potential Dominions 3 should have a few more choices on the game set-up screen, beyond site frequency, indy strength and richness etc. Perhaps a choice to alter blood hunting (easy, normal, hard), and one to tweak gem generators (perhaps: Dom 2 style, limited in some way, or removed). Whether you think blood hunting and gem generators are perfectly balanced or not, they have enough effect on the game that the ability to tweak the game setup in this way may be beneficial.

Re: Clams versus magic sites...
 

What, a reasonably balanced post about clams, cheese, and wine? What is this, Usenet or Fox News? (A fair and balanced look at prostituting the political process. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

A few game options would indeed be good. Blood is definately imbalanced right now with certain game settings - Quantum's Twilight of Magic games, for instance, have sites set to 5% or 10% tops, but blood keeps rolling in. A switch to modify blood would definately be a Good Thing, as it would simply balance blood nations the same as site frequency does already. ( Not sure, but I think that modifying blood hunting by the site frequency itself might be better - if, after all, there is a very dismal amount of magic sites, people (and kings, and gods) are going to protect their virgins that much more, as the main source of magic. Alternatively, some 'patriots' will 'protect' the virgins from becoming blood sacrifices through time honored methods. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Gem generators are more complicated, as some nations are arguably much more affected then others. Atlantis, some say, lives or dies by its clams. But on the other hand - Caelum can eak out a few fire gems by fetishes that it would have a hard time getting otherwise. Hrm. No sympathy for Caelum, eh? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Machaka is another case in point - without the ability to bring in extra fire gems, it is arguably hosed.

But still - if it's a game option, then people can play around with these options, if need be avoiding games that either say "no gem generators" or "1/2 price sale on gem generators, reasonable credit". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

More ideas: local labs, gem usage, globals
 

I think with the clam thing, what I'm getting at is that I have no problem with the "1 astral income for 10 water gems" dynamic. Its their invisibility (on power screen) and uncapturability that are slightly annoying (unlike with magic sites, for instance). Perhaps the addition of a magic item counter on the Power screen could be handy.

Local Labs

One idea I had was to have a new spot in the lab, for special, "commander free" items, that would give the province or nation as a whole a boost. Perhaps you could call it the "hoard", "cache" or "items of regalia", that kind of thing (perhaps someone could think of a cool name for it). It would have some interesting properties:

1. It would act as extra, local, magic item storage (for when the main, national lab is too full, and you don't want to lose track of items on random commanders).

2. The items within it would be captured if the province was lost to the enemy. So if clams, for example, were designed to be a "cache-only" item, it would make them more capturable.

3. Items would be untransferable directly from the "stash" to the main lab, a commander would be needed to transfer them (to make it a little harder to evacuate precious items). Some "cache-only" items could be cursed once they are assigned to a cache, so that they are unremovable (perhaps a specific ritual could exist that would allow them to be moved).

4. New types of magic items would exist that would provide benefits to the province or nation when stored in a cache. They would not necessarily confer any benefit to a commander, however they would be carryable in the misc. slot. For example, items could exist that would: push dominion (such as a holy relic), affect dominion scales, give benefit to the commanders in the province (such as research or morale bonuses), or provide gem income direct to the treasury.

5. (Optional, perhaps a choice during game set-up) The number of slots available in the cache could be dependent on magic scale and/or dominion strength.
Alternatively, the number of slots could remain constant, but the number of "active" slots could be dominion dependent (the active slots would be highlighted). An active slot would be one that allowed a special item to provide benefit.
A further option could be to only allow special items to be placed in active slots, where they would continue to provide benefit even if dominion dropped afterwards.

6. A new lab-based order would exist: use cached item. The idea is that certain cached items would require interaction with a commander before they provided their benefit. For example, if fever fetishes were a cache item, they would still require a commander to "use" them before producing a fire gem (the commander being diseased in return).

Gem usage in battles

Its a pet peeve of mine that the AI sometimes disregards my spell orders, when it feels that they are "overkill", such as wrathful skies on a call of the winds. The meddling AI is basically a result of the turn sequence. It allows several battles in a turn, meaning that it is important to conserve gems between fights in the same turn, as players can exploit the turn sequence by using remote summons to run enemy armies out of gems before the main battle of the turn.
I've been trying to think up solutions to this for a while, I have a couple of (I think) new ones, based on making it easier to have gems available in each battle on the same turn:

1. The gem wallet! This is a new magic item that provides the owner with magic gems whenever he is involved in a battle. There would be a different wallet for each type of magic gem, and perhaps various size classes of wallet available at different levels of construction, producing between 1 and 5 gems in each battle. The gems would be temporary, available for that battle only, disappearing afterwards.

2. A two tier system of gem usage. Certain battlefield spells would now have a partial gem requirement. Instead of becoming used up, the gems would "grey-out", becoming unavailable for use until the next battle. I thought this would be suitable for defensive and summoning spells, such as wards, storm, the lesser elementals, and howl, and perhaps for fatigue reduction. Offensive spells, such as wrathful skies, would retain a requirement for permanent gem usage, perhaps along with partial gem use. However, I think the permanent gem usage could be restricted to 1 or 2 for most spells.

3. Blood magic. I can't see how a blood slave could be "partially" used, or that an item could produce slaves in response to a battle, so blood would require a different approach. My idea is that certain blood spells would have a "virginal blood spillage" requirement, ie. the spells would become usable once a certain number of blood slaves has been sacrificed on the battle field, by either side. This blood spillage requirement would carry over between battles that occur in the same province, in the same turn. Some spells would retain a sacrifice requirement (reinvigoration, for example), and any spell order requiring a spillage of blood would allow the blood requirement to be met, if slaves were available. A new battlefield order could be introduced: sacrifice x blood slaves, for when you want certain blood spillage requirements fulfilled, but without spell casting. An additional effect could be that certain spells grow in power in proportion to the total blood spillage.
This system would mean on overhaul of all the current battlefield blood spells, much tweakage would be needed to get the relative power level right.

National Enchantments

A quick thought: the limit of 5 globals can be a little frustrating in a large multiplayer game, it would be nice to see an option to extend the allowed globals to 10 or 15 (like the hall of fame).
My other thought was to introduce national enchantments. These would comprise any global enchantments that only affect the nation that cast them, without being clearly intended to be unique, (eg. forge of the ancients would remain a global, whilst mechanical militia would be national). Each nation would have a limit of 3 national enchantments, and they would be available for dispel as with the globals. The difference is that multiple nations would be allowed to have the same national enchantment up at the same time (I am probably thinking in terms of the minor wonders in civ 3).

Re: More ideas: local labs, gem usage, globals
 

I kind of like the idea of being able to plug magic items into a lab. I think it's much harder to make a case for hoarded items being a problem when they only work "plugged in" to a lab (which can then be conquered and despoiled). Also, you could have other nifty thematic setups (like a massive lightning rod that makes corpse men much easier to animate, or an enhancement to the castle's artillery, or ... dang it, it's time to go drink some beer)
Being able to choose the number of globals wouldn't be so bad either.