Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Not so much, because high astral is far better than high blood, particularly if you aren't a blood nation. As for the gem producing,.. I think that's CBM only.

From what you describe the oracle there is an imprisoned standard S4 one, right? I don't think the pearl income or the astral when it wakes up is going to be significant. Still better than a blood fountain though.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

you're being a solo gamer totalitarian. however it is a falsifiable hypothesis that solo gamers need the game balanced for them like MP gamers do. The fact that solo gamers don't MP has just axiomatically disproven that hypothesis. MP gamers have some sort of (slightly ambiguous) reference point for balancing nations in MP. What is the SP reference point of balance?

P.S. I'm just being antagonistic because you pointed out the situated nature of knowledge, and then went on to use it for your own purposes of arguing for a situated point of view.:)

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

no. reread my post. I specifically stated it was an awake oracle. the off-the-bat pearl income can pay HUGE dividends when it can be used to quickly bootstrap another gem income for a nation that has natural access to that path but no natural income. Additionally, The Oracle can have at least one path which the nation doesn't have that can be served by the pearl income to build up an economy of; aside from the astral paths and income of the oracle.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

No. There's no need to reread your post.

Do you mean by using the astral search spell? I'd think in the early game you're much better off manually searching with those native astral mages.

It's an interesting tradeoff in CBM. You lose a lot of scale points by taking it awake and gain,... pearl income. Not the most useful thing in the early game, but certainly nice to have a stash of them to rock that first dispel or to use for magic duels, power of the spheres etc. The research you gain is negligible so I'm sort of discounting that.

The second path doesn't make sense to me. How is the awake oracle going to use it in the early game? If it isn't, I would think a sleeping oracle would be better. It definitely sounds like a build that could have problems with early aggression. No SC pretender, no sacreds,... so who is this with? Caelum? Bandar?

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

It's just a bad event. A rare one, I think. I've seen it a few times when playing with Broken Empire Ermor, since the data typo made it contingent on their Principes. Annoying, but it's supposed to be in the game and supposed to be correct. Some people had reported that event as buggy, which is why I checked the data references when I proofread the code. That's how it got caught.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

That's nice, Gandalf. And probably even true.

But does it actually have any relevance to Hinnom's power?
I do play mostly SP. Hinnom is unbalanced. I'm not that good a player, but it's not even fun using it against the AI. You can just roll over them.

And it's not even that useful as an uber AI opponent, since the AI doesn't do well with it's strengths. Hinnom is all about SCs and small groups of tough troops. The AI can't build or script SCs, won't use small efficient groups of troops, but just throws a mish-mash of recruits together and sends them out. If you give it a decent bless, half time it won't bother blessing the troops or sending out sacreds in the first place.
About the only thing that really helps the AI is the good PD.
The AI just isn't good at using nations like Hinnom, so why is it a problem to balance it for MP? To me it looks like the changes will help keep it from being easy for SP, while not crippling the AI anymore than it already is. Do you think Hinnom is particularly good for SP as it is? Are there different changes you'd suggest?

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Shame it doesn't give you a bunch of blood slaves as well. Oh well.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Gandalf's post added more to the discussion than yours just did (or mine for that matter).

(Sorry. Couldn't resist. :) )

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

not the astral search spell... the normal site search spells. The pearls can be alchemized to become anything they need to be. I know... laugh laugh because alchemy suxxor... But used in this fashion it is paying large dividends because a nation can increase its per turn gem income by a factor of two in the early portions of the game and can increase its per game income maybe by 25-50% (depending on the length of the game, short games would see higher percents) since it allows gem income to ramp up very quickly.

This works best with a nation that:
1. Can make do without an SC pretender
2. Don't need a bless
3. have no astral mages...
4. no astral income
5. at least one mage that can site search a path that the nation does not have income in. (i.e. good natural diversity. i.e. five natural paths)
6. uses good scales and needs high dom (maybe combined with weak priests, thus making high dom more necessary?)

Essentially, this is only another option for very specific nations that might have gone with an Enchantress, but where the nation has enough natural diversity that the Rainbow's benefits might be superceded by what an Oracle can offer. In these situations the Oracle will provide at least equivalent scales, better dominion, and an (even higher than Enchantress) natural income of Pearls. The main benefit comes from the much higher dominion.

For nations: Shinuyama is a good nation because they already have access to 5 paths naturally, mages with paths but no gems, and lots of good mix ups. All they need is Astral and Air and something they can alchemize early on to start searching out Water and Air (and of course using the pearls themselves for Astral) to be complete.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Zeldor I have played Hinnom/Gath in something like 9 mp games.
I've been playing Dominions since its inception. Perhaps I am completely unskilled. But I simply do not find Hinnom to be the game breaker you portray it to be. Strong yes. Top Ten yes. Beyond any other nation.. no.

You posit that Hinnoom and Niefel are beyond any other nation.
But that just doesn't square with objective reality. LA Ermor, LA Ryalla are much bigger problems.

I believe I can reliably beat a person of equal skill playing hinnom with many different nations - I don't think its even particularly challenging. Lanka, Mictlan,LA Mictlan, LA ermor, Sauromatia, to name a few.

By the way - I am not a competent player with ulm - but I'd be interested in seeing how the the ulm new stop sacred would work again hinnom / Niefle.

And the Size difference makes a *huge* difference. It stops the chariots from trampling some of Fomorias units, some of Niefles, and elephants - which includes the arcosephale nations, the bandar log nations, and independent elephants - not to mention Caelum's mammoths.

I have no problem if hinnom is nerfed (hopefully in a thematic sense). But to my mind the biggest problem is the strength of the starting army.

But I'd much rather see some of the weak races boosted a little.
Yomi, if it had just a few problems fixed (mostly having to do with magic paths)- could just blow Niefle out of the water.

Change the precision of those yomi flame throwing units from 8 to 11, and increase the prcision of the throw flames to +4 and you'd see Niefle.. go down in flames.. literally.

And its not that unbalancing as you're talking about 3 ammo units......

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I use oracles or blood fountains on roughtly half my builds.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Sorry if that was unclear. That was in reference to Epaminondas.
It does tend to be hard for solo players to see the reasons behind such strong opinions based on how a nation does in a few mp games.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I think the event on the Blood Fountain was just that it was already in the game, but was not working correctly. So it was fixed.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Probably not too well, since EA Ulm doesn't have any units with that ability.

Elephants and mammoths are size 6, so hinnom chariots could never trample them. Niefel giants are size 5 and I don't believe size 6 hinnom chariots could beat them via trampling - size 6 vs size 5 and they're quite a lot worse, particularly against cold aura blessed units that are 1 to a square.

That would be a pretty major boost, changing flames from inaccurate spray to laser precise magic missiles.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I agree with Sombre on that. Possibly I fail to see the thematicness of Onis shooting so precise fires.

Was he an SC? Maybe a Seraph? :D

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Some people play multi-age.

FWIW, in test games I found that the MA Ulm "sacred" troop (well, their weapons are sacred, sort of), in moderate numbers, is quite capable of killing off a fully decked-out Malik SC from Ashdod. Fatigue kills SCs.

-Max

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I would keep the imprecision of Throw Flames but boost the base precision of the Oni troops somewhat, on the theory that they're immortal and have had ages to practice throwing flames at peasants.

-Max

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And give them AOE 1 or 3. It is flame thrower after all.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I think it's a more like a fire dart actually ;) (not that I say that Yomi shouldn't deserve some boost at some point :) )

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

*cough* Ashdod is "unbalanced" too. Admittedly, any nation which can produce thugs and SCs is "unbalanced" against the AI once you get to that stage, but Ashdod with an E10N6 bless is pretty ridiculous too. A single E10N6 Adon can take pretty much any indy province except knights, elephants, or barbarians all on his own even before you research Body Ethereal. He's almost impossible for indies to damage, regenerates, and has 0 enc. (Add in some Ahimans to take down elephants and knights.) You can be taking 4 provinces/turn around later winter of the first year, constrained mostly by geography. Ashdods best researchers aren't quite as good as LA Agartha, even post-Agarthan nerf, but they're sacred (and high-research if you feel like saving points w/ Drain). Ashdod has a forge bonus for equipping SCs and native earth/death/fire income, so making a Shadow Brand + Shield of Gleaming Gold for every Adon is eminently possible once you hit Const-6. The AI has no way to stop SCs, and it's impossible to lose quickly enough to not get SCs... I think Ashdod is the first nation I've tried where I have never lost a game to the AI even in the learning phase. (Ashdod's national summons aren't even really an issue here because the game is over before you get them--but E10N6 Dirge For The Dead is amazing for the price.)

I don't think this says anything per se about whether Ashdod is overpowered in general (SCs are a known problem for the AI) but in SP it's kind of sick.

-Max

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Yes, Ashdod needs a nerf too, but I think the devs know this. They are just looking for more info on how over-powered Ashdod is. Your post should help.

thanks

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Yomi needs a big boost. Personally I agree. I'd rather see the area of effect increase, rather than the precision - but I don't think that happens.

But the precision algorithm is seriously whacked. Routinely you will hit something 30degrees or 45 degrees away from where you were aiming. I'm not an archer. Never have been, never will be.
But I can damn sure do better than a 45 degree variance. Routinely.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Keep in mind that that would basically be like giving them aoe crossbows that can't be stopped by shields. I don't think that would be terribly fair, especially after you got wind guide researched and your opponent realized that arrow fend won't stop the flames anymore.

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They are fire based, so anything immune to fire won't be affected. Fire drake has this ability for ages, and no one thinks too highly of it.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

That's because fire drakes cost a lot of gems, and losing that many gems isn't fun. But I think they're underrated, personally. Look at it this way, what if all Aka-oni could cast the fireball spell, for no fatigue, 3 times in every battle. Would that be fair?

Personally I would favor the precision boost. They would be pretty worthwhile with a bit better precision without being 25 gold mini-mages with limited immortality.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I don't know if I'm advocating for a nerf or not. Part of the fun of strategy games is identifying the "best" strategies and getting to exploit them: in this case it was pretty obvious that a good bless benefits Ashdod way more than an SC pretender because they already have recruitable SCs, and almost everything else follows from there. I might just be advocating that if you play with Ashdod, you will need to create custom "Super Impossible" AIs to play against (give them lots of extra gems, research bonus, etc.) in order to make it fun. "Nerfing," to me, is more about MP and I don't have any data on how Ashdod plays in MP. I suspect they're going to be gold-hungry, and will have a little bit of trouble getting early research started because Adonim take a couple of turns to recruit until you get Resources up (thus preventing you from recruiting *two* mages). The single-Adon expansion parties are also a little brittle and perhaps susceptible to ambush. Somehow, people manage to stave off Niefelheim, and with no cold aura I expect an Ashdod rush to be less frightening than Niefelheim but perhaps on par with Lanka or Helheim.

-Max

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Recruitable anywhere, at that. I think Yomi could use a boost but making Throw Flames AoE would be huge. I should probably do it for the AI in my games, though, just for fun and flavor. :) I already gave them furs to boost their Prot to 10 (and Encumbrance to 5).

-Max

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I mostly play Ashdod, and they are very powerful in contrast to some A.I. nations. However, I usually play with the $$ and resources at 75% of normal, and the giants are expensive in that case. I can't recruit my biggest guys until I have captured the provinces surrounding my home city, and by then I am usually expanding with mercs and AOR chaff. That suggests to me that the easiest and most balanced way to nerf Ashdod is to increase their big units initial price in resources/money. That way the player must make an early game choice between a SC strategy, or a more conventional strategy. A good player could still be very successful with Ashdod even so, since they have some excellent units otherwise. Their scouts are giants, and they can be outfitted with a crown of command (50 command) an ethereal robe, a skeleton necklace (skeleton spam) a decent weapon, a magic boosting item, and boots of the behemoth (trample) to go with their army of 50 woodsmen each and literally wreak special-ops havoc behind enemy lines. Don't even get me started on how dangerous their Uber-mages are (the 400 gold guys) with their guaranteed level 3 magic + 1, 80 unit leadership, and 50 HP....

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

IIRC they are already AoE. I was just advocating making the AoE larger. This is one of the reasons that I think Yomi is advocated to be played wrong. Even so, yomi still has mage path problems. Aka... switch yomi's national mage to a2, or give them a demonic precision spell equivalent to windguide.. and you'd see a quantum improvement.

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No, they're not naturally AoE, they're just 8 ap damage to a single target. They would, however, be far better if they could reliably get precision increasing spells cast on them. So making Dai Oni have a higher chace at A2 or the national precision spell could be useful. But I'm almost not sure it's worth it for only three shots anyway.

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Eh, Yomi is fine the way it is. Once you realize that it's all about the Dai-Oni (one of the best forging/ritual/combat casting units in the game - don't waste your time trying to turn it into an SC), and that all the other commanders/units are only there to support and protect it, Yomi is a powerhouse. Even the seemingly pathetic 1 Air comes in brutally handy (I'll just mention Rain of Stones for one thing).

But since I'm playing LA R'lyeh at the moment, that's the most troubling 'nerf' I see. R'lyeh "free-spawn" cost up-keep? Huge news to me - I totally did not think so (although I'd been wondering why my upkeep budget has been so high - didn't think I'd had that many Starspawn and mindflayers on the payroll)!

Do all of LA R'lyeh's "free" spawn cost upkeep? If so, how much? If not all, which ones?

And I can totally see how the new change will cripple them badly. Instant starvation and disease on a massive scale. No money at all (as it is, I haven't bought a new mage Starspawn in months, as my upkeep has been consuming well over 50% of my income for some time now - upkeep for so-called free-spawn?). Will your fanatics desert?

"Well, we do like the Dreams, but we like getting paid more, Cthulu F'taghn (just not any time soon)."

Rather than wiping out their population, I think a better "nerf" for R'lyeh would be tweaking their magic paths. Decrease their Astral and increase their Water? Or how about this - change their Earth random to Fire (or even Air)? Yeah, that will give them easier access to all those "acid" type crossover spells, but will eliminate their native ability to forge Crystal Amulets and Shields - without those two boosters (outside of Pretender forging), their goes their 'first turn' Master Enslave. That, or some other tweak to their current crazy Astral ability should be the way to go.

Just making their Dominion more deadly will just make them into another Mictlan, meaning a race that will have to contain their crappy dominion to a limited area (outside of which they'll presumably try to play like MA R'lyeh), but without the ability to blood-sacrifice and what not.

It will ruin all the insane fun that is LA R'lyeh!

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Some of the R'lyeh freespawn cost money, some don't. I think the only ones that cost anything are the same ones you can recruit from coastal castles, as is common for various summoned things that are also available for recruitment (trolls, Yaksha/Yakshini for MA/LA Bandar, etc).

This just in:
* Ujigami, Mori-no-kami, Kenzoku.

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All non-void freespawn (those mad *** ones) cost money. They do not cost much, from 1/15 to 2/15 per turn, but it multiplies. No they are not the ones you can recruit from coastal provinces.

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I like Twobits ideas. Rising the killerdom at Ermor's level seems to be a little unthematic, tweaking their strong paths goes better to me. Also, we don't really have a nation heavy on acid spells and wouldn't it be temathic with these alien monstrosities? :)

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Yomi isn't fine the way it is.

Once you've realized that it's "all about the Dai-Oni", you're free to start to question why that is, or why it should be, all about a single Capital-only commander unit. If nothing else, that's boring, and Yomi's too cool thematically to be built around a single, boring, tactic-I won't bother to call it a strategy, strategies are complex, overarching plans, that require a bunch of elements to come together and work.

Yomi might be "fine" in the sense that it's possible to win a game or two with them, but there's not a whole lot of different ways to do that. The Dai-Oni, just for one narrow example, looks like an SC and walks like an SC. Either they should *be* SCable, or there should be good SC access for this Nation. Big giant demon kings in Samurai armour *not* being good SC chassis is rather confusing and frustrating for anyone trying to play them. Their Oni generals don't even make top-of-the-line thugs.

Yomi's also not "fine" in the sense that they're a demon Nation with no demon summons. There's just something wrong about that. I don't think they even get demon heroes, just some psycho cannibal human guy. Maybe they do, but nothing too special.

Surely, it's reasonable to expect that there have to be other types of demons wherever the Yomi demons come from, and it's just as reasonable to expect that they could be either brought to the surface with applicable rituals, or bribed to fight for Yomi with gems-however you want to imagine the process works. Or occasionally, a unique demon crawls through the Yomi "gate".

It's a really cool Nation, with great graphics, interesting types of demons, and a fun part of history and mythology to draw ideas from, but it's just not where it should be, in terms of gameplay.

It's the exact same situation with EA Aboleths. They have 1 fantastic unit-that's also not SCable-a few ok but not spectacular units, and the rest are marginal. And they don't have *any* National summons, which again is strange, considering that they're a very unique Astral Nation.

They don't even get the Void Gate, like the rest of R'lyeh, which would go a looong way towards making them competitive. I know it's not quite "thematic" for them to have it, but it wouldn't sacrifice the theme to give them some sort of "proto-void", or something.

For that matter, both of these Nations remind me of R'lyeh, without the Void Gate, except that both R'lyeh MA and LA get better recruits than Aboleths.

Oh and I'll second Tifone's idea, I'd love to see an "acid nation", but if it's going on a Vanilla Nation, I'd like to see it applied to Aboleths, who are even more monstrous.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Just out of curiosity, why don't people think Dai Oni make good SCs? Their stats are fairly decent and they have the ability to cast summon earthpower, soul vortex, and phoenix pyre all naturally. I admit I don't have much experience with SCs but isn't that a fairly strong combination?

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AFAIK people do think they are. They have, as you said, nice stats, and are very self buffable and fully equippable.
But they are middle game SCs... very expensive and you can't use them early without researching buffs and better weapons (armor!) for them - unlike Jarls i.e., they don't have an inbuild aura that kills people of whatever.
In the early game, you just get a big, expensive and encumbered guy with a big knife to hit one enemy a turn while getting swarmed.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Their main problem out of the box is the horrible armor they have. Its not the prot, its the encumbrance. That is pretty easy to fix though. Other than that I don't really get it either.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I think Dai Onis are *meant* to be the best recruitable SCs in the game, but they fail on several counts.

In addition to the bad armour, they've got low research ability, and they're capital only-which is an issue for them, unlike Niefelheim, who can mass-produce regular Niefel Jotuns. A high bless with Yomi isn't worth considering, because you have no sacred recruits, and no really good sacred National summons. It's an expensive trial to SC them, and while you're doing that, other Nations are beating you in research and with their own sacred troops and SCs.

If Yomi had a sacred recruitable demon, then I think they'd be much more SC worthy, but since they don't, it becomes much less cost effective to give them the bless they need, and they can't forge well enough, early enough, to make up the lack.

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I've never understood why the Kuro-Onis at least weren't sacred. What would be really great, though probably OPed, would be if the Aka-Onis, Ao-Onis, Onis, and Kuro-Onis were all sacred. Yomi is one nation that could benefit immensely from an Air or Astral bless. Air for the shield, and Astral for the MR to resist banishments.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

autocast soulvortex would solve a lot of problem.. it would also give a new one: then the Dai-oni would be terribly overpowered :D

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Or maybe we're all failing at playing it correctly, like trying to play Pangaea as Ulm, and we should try some different ways. :confused:

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

In Japanese folklore, onies are feared instead of worshiped, so making them sacred do not make sense. I prefer give them priest spells like unholy pretection to boost their mr. And giving Dai-Oni a Wraith sword(or"wraith katana")or +3 Reinvigoration may make them better in early game but not overpowered.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Regarding the R'lyeh pop-kill:

The dreamland was originally intended to kill population, in the sense that people fell asleep and quit working, succumbing to the dream-lure of the void.

I don't remember if there was a dreamland theme in dom2, but the early mechanic was similar to that of ermor. With a slight change of mechanics all pop-kill dominions got reduced by a factor of 10. Ermor was recently fixed, but apparently R'lyeh was forgotten. Thinking about the possible effect it would have we decided not to go the full length and went for a factor of 5 instead. Since this has not been tested since the release of dom3 (although we did play with it before the release and the change in mechanics) we are a bit uncertain about the effects, especially combined with the freespawns and their upkeep. Input on how the reinstated pop-kill works out will be appreciated.

Feel free to discuss possible effects now already, but we will probably not make any further changes until we have actual experience to back up opinions.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

What I think is maybe Dai-Onis and oni troops should in fact remain a good mid-game option, and be unefficent in early game. I don't expecially feel the need of another nation with early SCs or strong sacreds. IMHO Yomi lacks a decent early option anyway, except some raiding potential with the bandits, and the massable bakemonos...

HoneyBadger:

Don't all the acid spells not work underwater? How could it be an advantage for Aboleths?

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Kristoffer O:

1. R'lyeh - popkill may be a good idea for them, but I'd also like to see improved mechanics of fighting between water and land, that is much easier invasion of water nation. If that happened R'lyeh should surely get better recruitment at land forts and something to do with their aquatic freespawn [now you have to starve them in low-pop province].

2. How about Demon Gate for Yomi? You know, smth like R'lyeh has, but with demons :) Maybe also Angelic Gate [like enochian rituals] for some other nations?

3. Any progress on Vanarus or EA/LA MAchaka? :) [or 3-pack of new nations as Christmas gift for us? :)]

4. Maybe some new cool items and spells? Pocket Lab? Spell creating temples?

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

For yomi, I think some small change like giving the demon troops another point of MR (to help against banish-spamming) would help. Perhaps regen on their ghost forms would help as well.

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I suggest giving samurai armor less encumberance, which would help both Dai Oni and Jomon infantry. Jomon also could use some improving of their summons, like Seduction for Kitsune, but I am again repeating myself:)
Really can't wait to see the nice new features for these races that are coming with this patch:)

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

Samurai Armor with lower encumberance would just help the balancing (maybe), but not surely thematicness. Ever tried, or even seen, wearing an ancient samurai armor? :)

On another note, I think it would be a mistake by the devs to start abusing the concept of the gates for many nations. Surely it is entertaining (I came up some time ago with the idea of a dinosaur gate like in Verne, and iirc someone before me with that too) and while it could help the early game of Yomi, and even be quite temathic with the "coming from netherworld" idea, I think going further would just add unbalance to the game... and be probably quite naive.

Re: Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!
 

I agree with Tifone, the gate is just right as a bit of Ryleh-only weirdness. If everyone and their brother has a gate, it makes it not nearly so neat.