Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not a bad idea, but full strength only in +10 for you is insane... They aren't THAT powerful! But, if it only gave full damage in your own dominion, atleast two or three candles, that would be better...
But this does not work with the population destructives. You could only kill people who believe in you. THAT would be mad!

Oh, and did you notice that Crusher-thingie? It seems constructs must be healed in labs now... Can Ulmish smiths heal them too?

Dammit, and I might not be getting the game before christmas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif This is not fair...

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">8,9,10: Are more or less the same.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The great equalizers and I never liked them. Too easy to level a stronger opponent with them. Beside that the most often used by far, Murdering winter, does cold damages, so some nations (guess what, Caelum is in the list too!) are immune to it.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I always disliked these as well, as there's no defense against them, but had never seen a game go long enough to really see them in action and so held my tongue.

I just recently have seen Murdering Winter in action, and it's every bit as bad as I suspected it would be. I can think of no viable tactic to take an opponent's castle, short of using only inherently cold resistant troops, or bringing so many I can afford the losses. :-/

Perhaps I'm daft and am missing, but the existance of such spells seems to make mundane units useless once they come out.

Oh, and it's definitely great for Caelum, Jotunheim, and Ermor. Although this may be somewhat mitigated now that there's only partial resistances.

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">8,9,10: Are more or less the same.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The great equalizers and I never liked them. Too easy to level a stronger opponent with them. Beside that the most often used by far, Murdering winter, does cold damages, so some nations (guess what, Caelum is in the list too!) are immune to it.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I always disliked these as well, as there's no defense against them, but had never seen a game go long enough to really see them in action and so held my tongue.

I just recently have seen Murdering Winter in action, and it's every bit as bad as I suspected it would be. I can think of no viable tactic to take an opponent's castle, short of using only inherently cold resistant troops, or bringing so many I can afford the losses. :-/

Perhaps I'm daft and am missing, but the existance of such spells seems to make mundane units useless once they come out.

Oh, and it's definitely great for Caelum, Jotunheim, and Ermor. Although this may be somewhat mitigated now that there's only partial resistances.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Lads, if the mod tools will be powerful enough and we can disable spells, these problems won't exist. Simply you will have the chance to disallow the disliked spells.

[ October 15, 2003, 20:33: Message edited by: Mortifer ]

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">8,9,10: Are more or less the same.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The great equalizers and I never liked them. Too easy to level a stronger opponent with them. Beside that the most often used by far, Murdering winter, does cold damages, so some nations (guess what, Caelum is in the list too!) are immune to it.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I always disliked these as well, as there's no defense against them, but had never seen a game go long enough to really see them in action and so held my tongue.

I just recently have seen Murdering Winter in action, and it's every bit as bad as I suspected it would be. I can think of no viable tactic to take an opponent's castle, short of using only inherently cold resistant troops, or bringing so many I can afford the losses. :-/

Perhaps I'm daft and am missing, but the existance of such spells seems to make mundane units useless once they come out.

Oh, and it's definitely great for Caelum, Jotunheim, and Ermor. Although this may be somewhat mitigated now that there's only partial resistances.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Lads, if the mod tools will be powerful enough and we can disable spells, these problems won't exist. Simply you will have the chance to disallow the disliked spells.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">IF...but hopefully it will have the spell disabling part.

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There are not only partial resistances, just that the spells affecting the entire battlefield only offer partial resistance. As long as you are not besieging there are domes, but when you siege this is not an option. One way to deal with this is to take out the opposing mage casting the murdering winter. After he has used murdering winter you can target him with veangeance of the dead for example.

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I typically play multiplayer, and modding individual aspects that don't fit my taste isn't really a viable option.

Besides, I don't have time to do the balancing necessary to make a good mod of Dominions.

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There are not only partial resistances, just that the spells affecting the entire battlefield only offer partial resistance. As long as you are not besieging there are domes, but when you siege this is not an option. One way to deal with this is to take out the opposing mage casting the murdering winter. After he has used murdering winter you can target him with veangeance of the dead for example.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not sure I understand what you mean... do you mean that Caelum and Jotunheim are still 100% immune to cold?

Domes are not really effective against spells like Murdering winter, unless you never move your troops. And you must beseige in order to win, and likely can't kill the responsible mage without the catch-22 of storming a castle in the first place.

The counters you mention make your opponent think a little more carefully about when to Murdering Winter, but don't really limit it's power. You can only be protected if you are static -- which is a loosing strategy in itself.

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There are not only partial resistances, just that the spells affecting the entire battlefield only offer partial resistance. As long as you are not besieging there are domes, but when you siege this is not an option. One way to deal with this is to take out the opposing mage casting the murdering winter. After he has used murdering winter you can target him with veangeance of the dead for example.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Perhaps I suffered traumatic experience with murdering winter (having been hammered by an uber caelum with this spell during 25 turns), but here is my opinion :

1. in practice you only dome provinces that you think you can hold. Perhaps 2 or 3 provinces at most will be domed. Aside that, I can assure you that you will get bLasted most often than not, either in your empire (in the 90% remaining provinces not domed), or in the provinces of your enemy.

2. the mage casting the spell must be found. There is no easy mean to do that, as generally he wont stand in the capitol (the player is not that stupid). And even if you find it, you can bet that there is some domes up (3 or more from my experience).

To end the story I started, the Caelian mage was never killed, as he was not reachable by any mean. The game ended when Caelum started to stall heavily (we dispatched his ally) and after our own ally Abysia started to vitrify his armies with Flames from the sky (and everybody else was sending leprosy, the third tactical nuke of the family)

I think that more than half of all units killed in the game were done by these 2 spells (MW and FFTS). When the game ended, most of the players were dispirited by this fact (or is all?), by the no brainer in using these spells. Even the Caelian player recognized that he used MW with distate, so powerful they were. And no, the game was not a big one, there was only 7 players, but it dragged as nobody wanted to concede (which is a good thing).

Murdering winter is level 7, that's easily reachable. With some water income, you can have a big reserve when you can cast it. Sure, you wont see many of these spells cast in small to medium games, or games ending at turn 50, but otherwise they are really detrimental to the gameplay (in the experience of our group).

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Even worse, this strategy synergizes with the underpriced Ice Devils, which are immune to the effects, and generate water gems to pay for casting Murdering Winter.

This is a very popular strategy and effective strategy; 3 out of 6 players in my current game seem to use it!

Re: Dom I Strategies which WON\'T work in Dom II
 

>Even worse, this strategy synergizes with the underpriced Ice Devils, which are immune to the effects, and generate water gems to pay for casting Murdering Winter.

I have heard that blood hunting has been altered somewhat, and that the large blood summons will be handled differently in Dom II.

Perhaps some of the testers could enlighten us about the way it works now.