Re: Message from Abysia
 

Oh, no worries there. I don't think there's a known perfect strategy for Go yet, and Go is a 2-player game with no hidden information and at most 361 legal moves from any legal state.

Dominions offers up to 21 players, has mostly hidden information, and has a far higher branching factor combined with a degree of deliberate measure-countermeasure in (that is, there are specific counters to different approaches... but exploiting the counters has opportunity cost. Pure minimax says you're screwed.)

Dominions offers a fair bit of variability, but when you're dealing with armies of 400+, the law of averages is going to come into play. It's mostly the random events hitting early that can make a huge difference (imagine the 1500 free gold + an item event at the start... or losing 99.9% of the population of your capital to the Ancient Presence event), and IIRC some events are restricted as to how soon they can happen, and that probability can be reduced on game creation.

Randomness frustrates me more in Diablo (farming monsters for item drops is tedious) and Nethack (which is pretty much the embodiment of 'arbitrary'). Here, I would be annoyed if an SC died to a randomly lucky arrow or Soul Slay... but it does mean that it's actually possible to counter SCs without resorting to SCs oneself, and that's probably a good thing.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

There is a nice proof that the person that goes first should always win. Unfortunately, there is no way to know how.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Ah, Real Life. In Real Life, one doesn't get to skip over hours of boredom simply to get to the interesting bits. Why does Dominions allow one to skip forward an entire month in seconds via the turn mechanism? For that matter, Real Life doesn't have graphics options to speed things up - why does Dominions? People (and not-people) are _dying_ and getting _maimed_ in those battles, why should the player be able to fast forward through their suffering??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

For that matter - does this mean that we can look forward to Babies Crying, Inlaws, and Nagging Spouses ("Zeus, when_ are you going to finally clean up Thebes?") in Dominions 4?

Re: Message from Abysia
 

> Ah, Real Life. In Real Life, one doesn't get to skip over hours of boredom simply to get to the interesting bits. Why does Dominions allow one to skip forward an entire month in seconds via the turn mechanism? For that matter, Real Life doesn't have graphics options to speed things up - why does Dominions? People (and not-people) are _dying_ and getting _maimed_ in those battles, why should the player be able to fast forward through their suffering???

My real life has splendid graphics and i accidentally skipped this month http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

> For that matter - does this mean that we can look forward to Babies Crying, Inlaws, and Nagging Spouses ("Zeus, when_ are you going to finally clean up Thebes?") in Dominions 4?

Dominions 4 - Infant Gods. Ares still in dipers attacking Afrodite with a fork

Re: Message from Abysia
 

You mean you're not having any fun sending those feeble old wrecks to the front lines, ahead of the pikemen to slow down a cavalry charge? You either have no sense of humor, or are just a soft excuse for a pretender god bent on the destruction of the world for your glory.

An aside: I immediately sent that joke of a mercenary Madame Fortuna into the front lines when she hired on with a feeble mind. Then I realized my commander had was feebleminded immediately after the battle. Off he goes to the front! It happened again. I then read the text for this slave collar that was being passed down. Oops.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

It's the best solution if you don't want to or can't deal with old age. To be honest, I wouldn't agree that it's a disadvantage, apart from in the early game. For any blood nation, research construction and a relatively cheap (10 blood slaves) item is available which negates ageing alltogether. Given that old age is payment for increased abilities or lower than normal value, this is going to give you a cheap, powerful or otherwise advantaged mage which you can ignore the downside of. In other words, you just became slightly more powerful than everyone else.
You could even build a strategy around this. Consider the crone or other pretenders who get a points or abilities break because of old age. Select imprisoned for maximum goodness, and bank on getting one of the age negating spells or items before your pretender breaks free. You can then prevent old age from ever affecting your pretender, thus effectively giving you free points.
It's down to playing style really. Some people are going to rule out nations with older mages because it doesn't suit their style. Others will embrace them and find ways to deal with the ageing problem or even turn it to their advantage.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Wasn't that based on Rolemaster? The only game to include critical hit tables for chair legs?

Started an EA game up with Abysia. To be honest, it's not too bad. Great troops (especially burning one's) and the apprentices are good enough for research and blood hunt, especially once you can build lanterns.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
From what I hear it's the new events which are to be most feared, like the Inland Revenue demanding back taxes for all this land you apparently own, and Health and Safety preventing research because of the fire risks in the lab...

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Personnally I'm not against the aging system but I think making global mod commands to change it would be a good idea to please everyone(something like #longlives [x years] adding for all characters x years to the old age limit, or #allyounger [x years] reducing all start ages by a number of years).

Anyway mods will probably be done to change max ages, even if the modding stay manual, but giving a command like #allyounger would make more players use a soft version of the age system instead of using the "10000 years max mod" that will very probably be made.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Age system is a good idea for the gestion of effect like burden of time. It is silly than near-immortel creature like the illithid are equally affected than simple human. Age system is a good solution for this problem's type.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Ok, as I mentioned above I was playing a MA Agartha game. I had Growth +1, and my only land opponent (after knocking of Machaka) is Jotunheim, with Death 3.

To date, around 3 - 4 years (I need to check), I have had exactly 2 mages contract disease in my dominion, and 2 others get exactly 1 wound each (neither was disease or feeblemindedness). That was out of at least 16 mages.

I have also sent an army of ~10 mages through Jotunheim's death 3 dominon in the war. They all died in a large attack from Jotunheim, but prior to that 4 got diseased, another 2 got wounds, and none were feeble minded.

So, to recap, I lost 5 to disease (1 got feeblemindedness at the same time, so I think that counts more), 1 to feeblemindedness, and 4 got non-debilitating wounds. Keeping in mind that I have another 10+ turns of use after a mage gets diseased, I don't think it is that bad at all.

It could be that growth scale help. I know death scale really hurts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Precisely. Death scale is no longer 'no brainer' to pick when you play a nation that has commanders/units with old age. Growth scale makes big difference.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I love the old age system, actually. I am playing MA Agartha, and I have two diseased mages, one of which is feeble-minded. So, I "retired" them with a title (Lord [name], Master Mage) and retired them to a "nursing home" province. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

One thing I would like to see is for units to "upgrade" due to old age (eg, hastati -> principes -> triarri being the most common one). Especially for those Polypal Spawns to grow into Aboleths (envisions a couple "missed" decay spells to "force grow" some Mind Lords). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Like I mentioned before, this is a strategy game, not a roleplaying game.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Oh, I think it's a little column a, a little column b, Kissblade. There are definitely RPG qualities at work here and people can enjoy it in a variety of ways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I like the upgrade with age idea. Only applies to some units, obviously, but there are enough obvious upgrade paths in the descriptions that it's worth thinking about.

Even mages: Daughter -> Mother -> Crone?
Obviously balance would have to be considered. Might make more sense if only old and experienced units upgraded?

How about a nation that couldn't recruit its top mages, but had to wait for the lower tier ones to age? And hope they didn't die or get crippled first.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

The more roleplaying elements the better.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I think the old age idea is used as more of a game mechanic to balance the power level of certain units than for roleplay though it fits nicely in both aspects.

I like it.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Ah yes - yet another bloody way to have to pay expensive upkeep on troops because you don't dismiss them from service when they become crippled & useless. Nifty. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I don't know if I quite *like* the new old age thing, but:

1. It can be countered with spells and items, different units are effected differently, etc. which adds strategic depth.

2. Some nations suffer from it more than others, which means it's a balance consideration, AND it's thematic that R'lyeh or some such has one up on the puny humans.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

The old age itself isn't that bad, but it's one rather unbalanced factor in the game. Best solution to solve the problem is to take a nation with long living mages like Yomi. It's just a shame that my favorite nation (which was never one of the top dogs) has been degraded this badly.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Problem is that those old, feebleminded mages tend to often have map movements of one - guess incontinence makes it difficult to travel fast. In dom2, I often saw where it would take 10 turns or more to drag useless troops (and "free" militia) to a valid front line to get them killed off. Given that _every_ turn you have to find that army and update orders, since there's no pathfinding or waypoint mechanism, it's a royal PITA.

And I have another gripe about the age system - following up in new post.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

It also has (presumably) unforeseen consequences such as making EA Arco's philosophers a very dubious choice now. Yes, their research rate is high, _but_ they start old. Priestess's start with a good 30 years to go before hitting old age.

So, let's see - why would I want to recruit philosophers who die of old age, instead of priestesses? And yes, I noticed this in my very first game : philosophers were dropping like flies from age.

Secondary side effect of aging : a quick test makes it look like _all_ units have Christmas birthdays, ie, all units age in Late Winter. So - want to buy a mage on the cusp of old age? Buy him/her in early spring to have more time before aging. And don't _EVER_ buy in mid-winter, or you may be bitter. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Did you perchance take Death scale? I usualy take 1 Growth or neutral growth with early Arco and I have yet to see significant amounts of Philosophers to die. I recruit them early on because they can give a significant research edge.

They become less attractive to me when you hit the point where your Mystics can do something else than shoot Fire Flies and forge Enchanted Pikes anyway, but that might just be me.

The only one with whom I had serious old age problems was Abysia. Now, those fellas could use some extra five years before they hit old age. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

Re: Old Age, Senility, Bitterness
 

Ah, joy - just got my copy of Dom3, and have yet another source of bitterness about the Aging mechanism, and the manual which is supposedly worth five dollars.

Perhaps it was senility that led the manual to have no mention of Aging, Old Age, etc, in the index or table of contents? A major new mechanic in the game, and no bloody mention of it?!? There's been talk here on the forums about various things having an influence on aging - magic paths, growth scales, etc....

And yet, looking in those sections of the manual, there STILL isn't any god-forsaken mention of aging or the influences of Growth/Death scales or Nature/Death magic paths.

Before I was disgruntled, now I'd color myself a subtle shade of pissed.

(Not even to mention the school of design that led the Age stat to be displayed via ... Fatigue! It's even worse than putting Size "behind" HPs. Hmmm, I better check.... Whew! I thought maybe a new Sanity stat had been added onto
Move, or maybe Precision now displayed Upkeep, or Attack Skill displayed Moral Alignment. *mutter*)

Re: Old Age, Senility, Bitterness
 

So that's where it is displayed. I wondered about that myself. It ought to be moved under HP or somesuch.

Re: Old Age, Senility, Bitterness
 

I like the age thing a lot. It adds a lot of flavor and some interesting mechanics and it makes Death scales matter in small games where depopulation isn't an issue. Abysia is a country that really has no issues with aging except in the very beginning. It's a simple and cheap ritual to decrease age by 10 years. In fact in my latest game I got a blood mage down to zero years old. Was hoping he'd go negative but it seems you're capped at zero. Sadly the graphic didn't change into that of an infant but hey. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Old Age, Senility, Bitterness
 

Anathemants can't cast Rejuvenation.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

whoa am i the only one that saw a potentially lame tatic with this?


I asumed slave collar would be destroyed when the wearer died. Make a bunch put them on crappy commanders have them attack the turn before your army and hopefully feeblemind varius mages???


Or where you giving poeple the collars?

Re: Message from Abysia
 

It's about equaly lame as passing that shapeshifting amulet to others.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I really like the old age system. I am now playing as Pythium, with +3 growth, and I have had at least 70 very old mages (starting age is 60/50) and so far maybe 5 have died of old age, and another 4 are diseased. And remember, diseased mages can still work until they die!

I don't have any problem with the aging system. A growth +1 scale is sufficient protection, normally.

Re: Old Age, Senility, Bitterness
 

As you may have guessed, it's mentioned lightly under the unit stats area of the manual. However, no significant explanation is garnered =\.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Sounds like an awesome and funny tactic to me. No, I didn't give anyone the collar, it was passed on from Madame Fortuna to the other commanders of Ulm. It's not a "cheesy" tactic either; we all know what fantasy RPGers do when they find a new item, and "identifying" it is not the answer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif To all who face me in the future... beware the army of feembleminded scouts! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Oh, Theonlystd hasn't been around to see how badly people could attempt to sabotage the Deathmatch, I see. Suffice it to say that against evil human opponents, you should -not- send a commander you don't mind becoming diseased, feebleminded, cursed, blinded, or doomed to becoming a werewolf.

I think it's hard to beat the anecdote where a player had multiple Demonbred mages, all with one Eye of Aiming (Abysian mages having notoriously aim; must be the heat distortions). One died in battle, another picked up the Eye... and blinded himself by swapping it for his remaining good eye.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

That's diseased, feebleminded, cursed, blinded and doomed to become a werewolf.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Actually its diseased, feebleminded, cursed, blinded, Horror_Marked, and/or doomed to become a werewolf.


Fixed

Re: Message from Abysia
 

swap horror mark and doomed around =). You cannot horror mark someone to be a werewolf hehe ...

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Never played Mp.


Sp id usually send someone in there who was cheap to hopefully maim a powerful Ai opponent so i had an idea what it would be like in mp.


And ahahhahahh replaces his only good eye with another one...

Re: Message from Abysia
 

About those shoes:

Yes, they stop aging. But do they prevent old people from getting diseases?

if that wouldn't be the case, Abysian mages start at around 55 with old age beginning at 35 and you would need to cast rejunevation twice to get them out of old age and would need to construct those shoes. Oh, and you would propably need to boost blood magic as reju is blood 4.

Over 30 bloodslaves just to get one mage that won't die of old age? Sounds not like a good deal to me.

But I did Illwinter injustice with me starting this thread, because Abysia still rocks if you focus on demonbred instead of anathemas for early expansion. They might be a bit weaker in fire magic and a bit less (un)holy, but they fly and have a long lifespan, so there's definitly a reason to use them (never used them in dom 2 because anathema were just better for my purposes)

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Whenever I used those boots that stop aging, I never saw that commander get affliction from old age including disease.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I played LA Man yesterday and Umor, those guys sure get aging problems. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img] I took 1 or 2 Growth and the mages kept dying. It's propably to offset their amazing troops.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

The more I think about it, the more I think aging is a great concept in this game. Think about all the horrible things that can happen to you in this game and in myth: Barbarians pillaging, vampires, catching a crippling disease, losing your daughters to the local warlock apprentic, being forced into slavery by sea nymphs (maybe that's not too bad...) Through history, fantastic and realistic literature has always illustrated man's fear of those things, but aging has always been prevalent. The Greeks were practically obsessed with it. So I don't mind having this in the game, and without it I wouldn't get that cool Decay effect where my troops age rapidly. The first time I saw that happen (after attacking some TC troops for some reason..? I loled.

I always liked the old Ultima IV and D&D description for the Haste spells, where you took a year of age for casting the spell as a side effect. Anyone know if this happens in the game? It would be a great touch if it did.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

I think aging also took care of the tactic of heavily defended labs with eternally improving mages that were such a game definition of games with large maps, long running games.

Also for mega-equiped last-forever super combatants (altho not as much) but it can affect your leaders so that they arent eternally improving. It abit of a realistic "use them while they are young" situation now.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Apparently so, though I'm not sure if that's intentional. Then again, if the chance of affliction is age dependent it may just be that the mages are stuck with a miniscule chance of an affliction.Either way, I haven't seen a mage (or pretender) develop an affliction through age once they're wearing the boots.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Yeap, this is totally true. This way it is more balanced, especially because mage spamming was very annoying in Doms 2. Well we can still spam mages sadly [that is why I've mentioned that mages should be extremely expensive], but now we can also loose them because of the aging system. It is pretty cool imo. Anyways this is my subjective opinion, especially about the mage spamming part, since probably many players never had a problem with that.

Re: Message from Abysia
 

Well, I just had my first experience with an age-susceptible kingdom and I have to agree aging is overdone. I was playing Marignon, no growth/death, and those Witch hunters were dropping like flies. First, it really clashed with my concept of Marignon. I'd always assumed the initiate/hunter/Grand Master business was one of those youth-adult-old man contrasts and it certainly doesn't feel right for all competent witch hunters to be doddering old men with a life expectancy of four of five year preaching from the pulpit. Second, it made Witch Hunters almost useless - if I'm going to put up with aging, I'm normally going to do it only for relatively rare particular issues, like a critical combat or a site search team, or if I can manage some treatment, and I'll just go ahead and get a Grand Master then. Third, it's just too weird that Witch Hunters age and die as fast as High Inquisitors, who really *are* supposed to be doddering old men. Simarily, it was odd for my Tien Chi S&A Celestial Masters to die so fast if they could make it to 300. If it takes them that long to get old, it should take a little longer to actually die than for a normal human.

In real life aging is an exponential process and the chance of death doubles every x years, where x is relatively constant for a given species (it's 8 years for humans). I figure the base chance of dying should be about 100/(years to get old), or about 2%/year for a human. It should double every (years to get old)/6 years (8 for a human, assuming a start around 50) So a full formula would be 100/years to get old)*2^(age-(years to get old).