Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

Besides the Warlock, for purely thematic purposes, shouldn't we be allowed to take the Skratti, the Gorgon, the Allfather and the Freak Lord?

Alternatively, will the mod over-ride our available pretenders/nation with the list available for the faction? In particular, forcing Vanheim to take a Vampire Queen seems a bit harsh.

b/c

Pretender

A J P V

Fountain of Blood

+ - + -

Vampire Queen

+ + + +

Lord of the Wild

- - + -

Great Black Bull

- - + -

Great White Bull

- - + -

Carrion Dragon

- - + -

Dracolich

- + - -

Bog Mummy

- + - -

Moloch

+ - - -

Lord of Fertility

- - + -

Mother of Lions

- - + -

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

Kick ***! The Sanguinarium welcome our Dr.Dr. overlords.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

Ashdod plz.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

Ashdod plz.

Edit: meme ninja'd

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

It's okay, we can be the Ashdod team, I think. I don't see anything in the rules prohibiting that. Just merge in the all-Ashdod mod. How many more Ashdods do we need?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

Welcome to the Sanguinarium Dr.

All the cheap rainbow pretenders of the 10 magic path cost have generally been excluded this game. This was partly done to protect each teams main thematic path, i.e. make it more difficult/expensive, for example, for the earth team to take blood (via vampire queen, moloch, or whatever pretenders they had) or delve into death from the start.

The Sanguinarium presented some issues though (due to Vanheim and Jotunheim primarily), and I ended up having to give them the choice of the Vampire Queen, and Bog Mummy (even though both infringe on the Supplicants death path) to make sure both nations had at least something to choose from that had some blood to start. The dracolich and the carrion Dragon, are exclusive to your teams nations but probably should've been excluded due to them having no blood. I threw them to give your a team a few more pretender choices and due to the slight death flavor of your team (they've really got 1 primary path and two secondary paths) and to give y'all at least some sort of dragon. So the only non-rainbow blood pretender (and it turns out the only pretender) available to Vanheim is the Vampire Queen. I'd like your team to stick with the available pretender choices and to go blood whenever/wherever possible to fit with your primary blood theme. So 2 Fountains of Blood, 2 Vampire Queens (or a bog Mummy and a Vampire Queen) are certainly possible.

The gorgon, being both earth and death was excluded for these reasons.

I am not using a mod for this. All thematic/scenario restrictions are self imposed, but nonetheless mandatory. There's also an issue with the Lady of Fortune and the Old Man of the Sea along this same vein on the Usurpers (delving into the water path of the merc) which may be corrected.

VFB, you can certainly take over The Children of Crom, I am sure you'll do much better job as captain than I would vs. the Dr. :) Though Ashdod has some restrictions you might not like. Hehe.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Perhaps you could consider allowing more thematic rainbow-esque mages so long as they took a certain minimum amount of their main magic path? So for example the warlock could be required to have 4-6 as a minimum blood magic amount before being allowed to take other paths. Or just require a minimum amount of main path magic in all pretenders and lift pretender restrictions altogether (though I can see how you wouldn't want to, especially after expending all that brainpower on the matter). Just a thought. Not even sure those who might want to take such a pretender would be happy with that :P Blood uses fire, water, earth, death, nature and astral in many of its spells, so blood is kind of rainbow-flavoured anyway ;)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 10/17.
 

Hmmm, the Gorgon, being both earth and nature is exclusive to Pangaea as is the Carrion Dragon which is nature and death.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

The vampire queen is essentially a gag-pretender. She's completely worthless, has a domstr of 1, and costs a huge heap of points. There's a history here that I don't want to delve into, but basically she was viewed as massively overpowered in dominions II because someone was cheating.

Since our *official* secondary path is nature, if we don't want a mod to let Vanheim have a Fountain of Blood or a Moloch*, how about a green dragon for Vanheim? My issue with these restrictions is that I don't think they'll have the desired effect - my planned list of pretender builds was all scales, both because that's what blood nations *want*, and because these pretenders are mostly pretty worthless.

* if we had a Mod, I'd take four molochs. Wouldn't that be themey, hmm?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

I'm confused as to why balance would be a concern when choosing a pretender - this game isn't about balance is it?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

@Sombre -
Well, it *is* a competitive game and I think people are still expected to have a strategy, and to play-to-win, yeah? I just don't like seeing Vanheim screwed over.

Instead, you could let everyone take whatever pretender *chassis* they want, but require that everyone's god be at least A2B1 (where A and B are the primary and secondary team paths), and require the path scores for every pretender to be A > B > any other path. This would enable us to have a red dragon with A3 (say), but seriously discourage that because it would need to shell out even more points for B5 and N4.

Alternately, a plan that I now think is stupid: add a moderately-expensive, official-path heavy pretender based on the national signature-chassis for each nation, and require everyone to take it.

For example, we could have:
Great Warlock, B3N2S1F1, domstr 3, 175 pts
Bog Mummy, B3N2D1W1, domstr 3, 250 pts
All-father, B3N2A1D1, domstr 3, 225 pts
Gorgon, B3N3E2, domstr 3, 250 pts

And boost all the path-costs to 80.

Note that these are marginally cheaper than taking B3 on the relevant deities, and a *lot* cheaper if we were then to take B7 or B8 - which we would be organically encouraged-but-not-required to do.

You could make a similar set of 175-250 pt, 8 pick domstr 3 chassis for each of the nations in play.

But this would require a lot of modding and whining while simply requiring everyone on team X to take more-blood-on-their-god-than-any-other-path is I think more fair and easier to enforce.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

I sympathize with Dr. P. Vamp Queen is unplayably bad. Heck, she's barely playable in CBM, and her cost has been *drastically* slashed.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

I originally had the Green Dragon and the Manticore over on the Sanguinarium side to give Van and Jottun more choices. I moved the Green Dragon over to the Supplicants side as I felt it more in keeping with the serpents/poison theme of the death team. But DrP, if having the Green Dragon available for Vanheim/Jotunheim will satisfy your team, that's no problem. The death team can certainly live without it.

Alternatively, as rdonj and DrP hinted, I might certainly consider allowing certain thematic rainbow pretenders for each team as well (the ones that do not conflict with the other main paths of teams) but yes you'd be restricted to a single path for simplicity sake. So a great Warlock with only blood magic would be fine by me. As would a Great Sage for the Usurpers restricted to Astral. As would a Crone with only death on the death team, etc. If we wanted to complicate it a bit further, sure you could also add some secondary path magic as well, no problem, but no other paths would be allowed on those rainbows. I did want to preserve the merc's water capability, as the Usurpers secondary path is also the main path of the merc. But if Zegc, doesn't object I see no problem. The merc is not a team strictly speaking and is not playing to win. So I have no problem with single or primary paths only on these rainbows.

So your choice guys. Green dragon or the addition of selected rainbow pretenders with magic path restrictions to all teams. If I go the second route, I'd remove the Carrion Dragon, Dracolich, and Vamp queen and any others that conflict. The Gorgon is out, not only because of the earth magic, but it is one hell of a good expander. Don't want to give DrP's team too much. :D

The pretender choices should be able to be verified fairly easily, so I am not really worried about that. As sombre noted, RPG first, balance is second. But I want people to feel comfortable.

Just to note:

There were 3 considerations I was looking for with regard to pretender choices:

1 - I wanted each team/faction to have different pretenders (no two teams should have the same pretender).

2 - I wanted these pretenders to fit in with the theme of the team.

3 - I wanted to preserve the main paths of each team as much as possible at the start hence the exclusion of the cheap (10 magic path cost) rainbows.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Green Dragon for Vanheim is fine from a balance perspective; if we're really worried about theme I think it'd be better to mod vanheim so they could take a B pretender who is actually good, but I can fully understand not wanting an extra mod.

If we had more time and will, I'd make a custom "prince" pretender for each nation, declare them all siblings and we'd mod those in:

Abysia gets the Dark Son of Rhuax, who is basically just a Moloch.
Jothunheim gets an Ice Devil (bigger and stronger than a Moloch, but not winged.)
Pangaea gets a Gorgon, but with B instead of E, and the demon tag (Daughter of the Black Hind? That's a cool name.)
Vanheim would get Loki - presumably BFA and he shapeshifts between a regular van and a winged devil.

---

Similarly, the usurpers would get four flavors of Virtue; the Supplicants of Set would get four flavors of the Prince of Death, and the Children of Chrom would get four flavors of the Lion-headed dude who causes fear, I guess (an acceptable supercombatant.)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

A lot can be done with pretenders via the map file as well. But yes, the 4th consideration was doing this without the need of any mods and from the in-game pretender set up screen.

So you and everyone else sure you don't want the rainbow pretender option (limited to one or two paths)? I sorta like that idea, but it depends on how everyone else feels, don't want to complicate anything more than necessary. But if people want those cheap rainbows that sounds like the easiest way to go.

On a side note: I do like the idea of a special commander available to each team's flagship nation or captain though. Ulm, Ermor, Abysia, and R'lyeh for instance. Each team gets one. An uber commander alligned with the main path of each team. Though unlike a pretender, a commander cannot be recalled. So it must be used wisely. But I guess the random in-game heroes pretty much answer this function to a small degree.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Love the idea of loki.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Maybe you should start a poll.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Some of those pretenders do sound cool.

Hmm, for simplicities sake, and working without a mod, in the meantime, to allow more pretenders, and to prevent high level path incursions and blesses that might occur with the Bog Mummy, Dracolich, and the like, it may be best to leave the Green Dragon on the Supplicants. And allow all the thematic rainbows where appropriate for each team. And all pretenders will simply be limited to magic in their team's primary and secondary paths.

So:

The Children of Crom would now have access to the Master Alchemist (losses Great Mother).

The Sangiunarium gains access to the Freak Lord, Great Warlock, b**ch Queen, Skratti, and Master Druid. (Loses Dracolich, Carrion Dragon, Moloch, Bog Mummy, and Vamp Queen).

The Supplicants gain access to the Crone and the Serpent King (Lose Bakemono Kunshu).

The Usurpers gain access to the Divine Emperor and Great Sage.

The AITEAM gains Arch Druid, Arch Seraph (Loses Phoenix).

Altantian Mercs gain the Aquatic (crabby) Arch Mage and Great Seer of the Deeps.

Keeps things simple, easy to verify. Most of your low level diversity will come from your regular mages, indies, and from the magic locations anyway. Higher levels in paths outside your Primary and Secondary will require either empowerment or boosters. Mercs get compensated for the water incursion of the Usurper pretender choices with an astral choice. The Monolith is the only exception to this straighforward rule on the AITEAM, as Gandalf needs an immobile pretender to choose from (but he can probably drop the astral from it).

Sound workable?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Issue is, no-one takes a rainbow and doesn't make them a rainbow. So unless you want to allow people to take a wide mix of paths, allowing them the "option" of taking a Great Warlock etc. is pretty pointless, and I'd rather just have the Green Dragon and be done with it. If Vanheims only options are vampire queen and freak lord with no non-blood magic, vanheim will take an imprisoned B4 freaklord and that's kinda boring. This is especially boring because the B-team ought to be encouraged to take a very high domstr, and use the blood sac for offensive dominion push.

If you really want to restrict us to BN on our pretenders, you need either to let us choose all the available BN non-rainbow pretenders (thus, the Green Dragon - this would be satisfactory as I said), or you need to mod the game to give us access to whatever pretender menu you think fits. Your other teams have similar issues, by the way (although I haven't looked as closely), but I'll let the team captains there make whatever case they wish to make.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Thanks for the reply DrP.

That works for me. Your team already has access to all available non-rainbows with only native N and/or B. Having the green dragon doesn't really both me as much as the bog mummy, dracolich, and such with native death. So you can have it.

So Vanheim will now have access to the following pretender choices with the rainbows in:

Green Dragon, Freak Lord (b1), Bi*ch Queen (n1, shapeshift into a quasi SC), and Master Druid (n1).

Every nations pretender choices are going to be somewhat limited without a mod. Some more than others. This was done purposely, so it takes a bit of planning and strategy on each teams part. But that is the goal and point of the themes and scenario. However with the addition of these rainbows, the situation is improved in the most extreme cases. And rainbows do still offer the benefit of a cheaper choice, even if limited to two paths like all the other gods. i.e. Taking B4 + n4 on a green dragon leaves you with 120 points left over, while, the same magic on a Freak Lord gives you 180 points left over to play around with (plus a domstr of 3 instead of 1).

I'll make the changes to the .pdf on the main post.

I think this is probably the simplest way to handle it without a mod or map edits and is easiest to remember and verify. Now if an unbiased (preferably non playing party wants to help out with a mod that does the four things I mentioned that is fine as well). ;)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Hello everybody.
I think I and Natpy will fill the first two spots in the death team.

p.s. Wow. Haven't been here for ages :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Ok, hello Ano, I'll put you all in for the Supplicants for now.

I'm updating the Teams&Themes.pdf (adding in the rainbows/making the change on the green dragon) and will upload it later tonight (I'll post a message when its been updated).

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Oh, fine. Glad to here this.
Since I'm the first time in your games, I have some questions under way.

1. Are the starts in each team random or predefined? Can we choose which nation starts where?
2. I didn't quite understand this rule:
Does it mean that if you beat PD of a castle with a VP this counts as a taken VP? Seems a bit strange. Big (and even not big) teleporting guys can easily decide this game.
3. If you are an admin of a forum, you have an access to all topics, don't you? Or is there a way to protect our part with a password or something. I don't mean to distrust you, I just don't like security holes and want to be aware of them :)
4. Can we download and test the map?

Thanks in advance! Also, thanks for organization and everything. Being an organizer myself, I understand how much work you put into this.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Hummm... And how do I do that?.. Sorry, cant find such setting in my profile.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Go to your profile -> choose "Edit Options" form the left menu -> There's a checkbox "Enable Private Messaging" under a section "Private Messaging"

Thats fine ano, let me answer your questions:

On the larger scene, which team starts where (blue, green, yellow, etc) will be determined by a random die roll.

Within each team (which is I think your question), the captain has discretion as to which of his teams nations will be placed in their slots. By default (unless the captain specifies otherwise) whatever nations are played by the noobs, will be placed in the two rearward positions at the borders of the map. So if you want certain nations in the forward positions, assign them to yourself or your leuitenant. This is done so that the most experienced players are facing the greatest danger. After you decide which nations each team member will have, if you decide you want a noob upfront instead, playing whatever nation, you can indicate that to me in your team assignment PM.

No, whoever holds the castle (if one is present) in a given VP location is said to control the VP location. Beating the province PD and any patrolling forces itself does not get you control. This is the way the game handles who owns the VP when two players are vying for the same province.
That is a natural concern, especially if I end up having to play in the game, which it looks like I might. While I have access, I never peep at any other teams forum if I am in the game. I can also remove my own permissions for your team's forums and if I had a co-admin, that person could remove my permissions without me being able to change them back. I'll check to see if there's a way to let you set a password that I wouldn't have access to, but I don't know. Its a trust thing really with any admin in a game.
I will provide a vanilla version of the .map file for testing purposes. However, this will not contain the starting locations since that won't be determined and known until the game actually starts.

If you want to test out a certain possible location, I can provide you with the #specstarts for that particular location which you can insert into the .map file or you can add the specstarts yourself using the province numbers in the doc file in the opening post.

Thanks, it has been quite a challenge, running through each nation, examining all the units of every nation, identifying common themes, looking at native gem incomes, examining every single pretender. Wheh!

Note: For those who might be interested. I had two choices when it came to deciding secondary paths for each team in this game. One was using a given paths Greatest Contributory Path (GCP I call it). For example, the path that occurs most frequently in the entire blood spell list with blood magic is Astral. The other was using the same method I chose for the main path of each team, i.e. the path most common to all or most the team's nations and having the same general theme. This included factors such as native gem income, native mage access to that path, etc. I chose the later to avoid any conflicts with the main paths of each team, and it happened to work out fairly well.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Enabled PM.

Could you clarify about the team's paths? Does it limit our pretender choices in some RP way?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Certainly. Yes, the rpg and scenario elements embodied in the primary and secondary paths and associated themes of each nation means pretender choices and initial magic path selection are limited. No two teams will have access to the same pretenders as a result. On the average, you will find that each nation will have at least 4 thematic pretender choices, some nations have more.

I have updated the NaVIITeams&Themes.pdf on the main page:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...4&d=1271757759

You can refer to it for more info on pretenders and such.

Note: I am increasing the multiples from 100 to 125 to give a slight boost to the AI, in keeping with the AI difficulty progression.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Too bad. I was sooo into Bakemono Kunshu. :(

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Septimius Severus
Thanks for your answers.
I think that a map with "#start" provinces will be fine. People may change #start to #specstart for testing purposes any time they want.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Hey Sept, I was just looking at this guy. You know I'm new and maybe a little dense, but I don't see why he should be excluded, if they want him. He's a samurai lich @ 50pts/path (so not a rainbow). Seems pretty thematic to me. Is it the 1F he comes with?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

And Shinuyama and Machaka both get a lot of fire anyway.

Also I think refusing to let team-blood take a Moloch (because it has fire magic? For Abysia only?) is over-restrictive. If you really want to restrict people to their national paths on their national pretenders, this can be done but requires a Mod.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

That is correct, same applied to the Moloch on the blood team. I've added more pretenders in, but these are blanket restrictions on pretenders (and on magic path selection for the pretender) that are not nation specific and depend on the primary and secondary paths listed for your team. This has resulted in some more or less thematic pretenders being dropped, others being added. Sorry, can't fit all the pretenders I'd like into this scheme without fooling with a mod and throwing in other restrictions.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Now if the captain of the death team for instance doesn't mind the blood team having access to the Vampire Queen for instance, who could be given enough death magic during pretender design to cast Tartarian Gate later or earlier in the game without the need for boosters or empowerment and/or forge high level death items, or the captain of the Childen of Crom doesn't mind the supplicants having a pretender such as the Bakemono kunshu, who could be given enough fire magic during pretender design to cast King of Elemental Fire and/or forge high level fire items, or any other high level fire spell once the requisite research has been completed (without the expense of boosters or empowerment), hey you guys are braver than me. I know I would mind.

:D But that is part of the explanation for the restrictions.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Things are not so straight, Septimus.
Tell me, which MA nations have easy access to F5 without needing pretender? I will answer: Marignon, Ashdod and Shinuyama. Actually even F6 is not rare and this is perfectly enough for casting King of Elemental Fire or anything fire-based. Who in the world needs Bakemono Kinshu? In my opinion, he is just a crappy pretender that is rather hard to make something valuable with. You may disable or enable him but I would never seriously think of taking him either way.
Moloch, OTOH, is a potent SC that doesn't need much gear to be effective right off the bat. And yes, I think he is very thematic for Abysia who is a fire-blood nation and although I don't want to strengthen the opponents, I don't mind them having the Moloch. Vampire Queen? I don't mind as well. Tartarian Gate can be achieved in numerous ways even with blood team's pretender restrictions and Vampire Queen is even nearly not the most effective of them.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Well I mostly wanted to give Kunshu some astral and use him as a recyclable magic dueler / forger / recurring nightmare.
He is quite crappy indeed, if absolutely awesome RP-wise, so without astral there's no reason to take him, so nevermind.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Hi,
may I join the team of Ano? (Supplicants of Set) :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

May I have a markata pretender?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Any mages would need boosters to reach level 5 or 6 anyway. Yes the Moloch is a good fighter, but my decisions were based on what is thematic for the team as a whole not specifically Abyssia. I say we stick with what we got so far, to keep things straightforward and streamlined. We can't get every single pretender in under the system, but I think we've got enough to choose from that are thematic for the team as a whole.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 13/17.
 

Hello Pablo, If ano and team have no problem, I don't see any reason why you can't join the supplicants in a noob slot. I'll pencil you in until I hear otherwise.

I am posting the BI gold version mod, the map image file (which you must have), and a vanilla version of the .map file (optional) if anyone wishes to check out connections or try out some of the starting locations. I am not putting in any starts or specstarts in this version, as where your team will be will not be known until the start. If any team desires to check out a given location (the start provinces are in the .doc file) just throw in the #starts for the nations and province locations you want (nation numbers are listed in the mapedit.pdf in the dom3 doc folder).

A few minor wording changes to the teams&themes.pdf (mostly concerning Ashdod) and looks like we may actually be able to get underway in the near future.

If you haven't signed up for the team forums yet, please stop by and register:

http://noobsvets.silverforum.net

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

I'd play, but it looks all newbie positions are taken :) ?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

You can take an alternate slot on the team of your choice, there's a good chance you might be able to get in before the game gets started if someone drops or can't be located.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

You are welcome, don_Pablo. I'm glad our team is full now.
Guys from the Supplicants of Set, please register at the HQ forums as I already posted some things that need to be discussed there.

Septimius Severus
Actually it is a matter of balance and roleplaying. If you want more balance, roleplaying will suffer and vice versa. In my opinion, though roleplaying is nice, balance is always more important because it provides an interesting game. That's only my experience and feeling, of course, and it is too early to discuss yet.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

Correct. The game has a heavy emphasis on roleplaying, balance is more a secondary goal of mine. (i.e. I don't want to see a death bless on the blood team, or a blood bless on the death team, or an astral bless on any team but the Usurpers or the merc, and so forth). It's sort of a balance between enabling possibly beneficial contributory paths on pretenders and preserving each teams advantages as much as initially possible. As it stands, with pretender magic limited to primary and secondary paths, a few pretenders namely (Bakemono Kunshu, Carrion Dragon, Vamp Queen, Dracolich and Bog Mummy) fall outside of these parameters. That's not to say they cannot be added with certain restrictions at some point, but I say the simpler the better. :D

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

Main post files updated, added map files and BI mod.

All restrictions on Ashdod have been lifted since a nature bless for COC is currently a non issue.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

Sorry. This is a harsh change that is hardly acceptable. I already built a strategy and a guide for our team and changes like this really make me lose enthusiasm. Even although it affects our opponents even more than us, I am strongly against this and have to further think if I'm going to play under such settings.

p.s. I understand a "no-rainbow" setting but not this. Sorry. A compromise between roleplaying and Dominions should be found. Also, what your pretender is for if he can do nothing?
p.p.s. It would be nice if we could stop changing rules or at least stop changing them so drastically.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

Well, he can manage some high-level rituals... Nature bless is good, too... Other than that, yes, our pretender choices do suck. : ))))

At least they are immortal!

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

Thought a bit more and decided that I can't accept these changes so if they are kept, I will leave. I joined a game with a rules clearly stated in a pdf. I liked these rules and thus joined. Yesterday pdf changed with some pretenders added, some removed etc. Ok, I could live with it but I had to change my plans a bit. Today I again find updated pdf with another, this time really harsh change, and I'm not sure what I will find tomorrow.

Once again, sorry for that.

p.s. Natpy will 99% leave either.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 14/17.
 

Let me second the notion: removing the restrictions on ashdod is a bad idea.