Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree with everything you said, except that Last line, which is just plain wrong. WRONG!!! I just played a game with Jotunheim, and they can get good blessings too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree with everything you said, except that Last line, which is just plain wrong. WRONG!!! I just played a game with Jotunheim, and they can get good blessings too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And anyway, one could argue that the blessings are another balance between nations, so there is no need to 'make' all nations have equal access to becoming a blessed nation. Though it does seem as though some nations (Marginon?) should get a special pretender that is more geared toward heavy blessings.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's 441 if you accidentally add 81 because it is 1 AM and you've just spent 3+ hours trying to moderate a busy, busy board. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

IOW, just a silly mistake on my part. I'm not sure what exactly I did there.

I'm not sure what else to add (and excuse me for snipping your post; I'm not trying to ignore your points - I'm just not coming up with anything to say that I haven't said already.)

I think you make some intelligent comments; all I can say is that, FWIW, the blessing system has played very well for me. I hope they don't tinker too much with it for exactly the same reasons you hope they do: I don't want the game to lose any flavor or variety and the blessing scheme is one of my very favorite parts.

The best solution to things like this is usually to allow people their choice in the matter. A good idea might be to have a system where players could set how expensive magical power is to suit their own tastes. The problem there, however, lies in the UI: that choice would need to be made before or during god design, and yet the game and its settings are chosen after the god design is completed.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

After more play and reading JO's thoughts on lowering the cost, I am starting to wonder about what that would do. The prices do seem out of whack in the demo and don't seem worth it, even if it is fun sometimes. But with the full Version I can think of some pretty nasty combos, so I'd like to wait to hack that out to see how it balances then.

First off - Ermor. Played by someone well (hi Pepe!), Ermor is already likely going to have 4+ magic in most everything and will tailor the bless bonuses to make some really nasty Knights right off the bat. Ermor gets almost 1000 points to play with for the pretender, so if it is cheap to get 9 in a path Ermor will be able to do it multiple times. Ermor with 9 water (quickness, +4 defense), 9 fire (flaming weapons, +4 attack) and 9 astral (+3 MR, Twist Fate), plus the minor bonuses would make very scary Knights of the S.

Next up - what about the Shroud of the Battle Saint on a supercombatant (or prophet supercombatant)? Construction 4 with Astral 1, it gives a constant bless with all the bonuses. So with a little tweaking I imagine we'll see some aggressive options to get all these bless bonuses on Ice Devils (Regeneration, Reinvig, + defense) and such. Ermor will likely be the first one to abuse this, and in this case the lower dominion from the cost of getting 9 level magic skills will allow better slave hunting. And a Prophet combat Bane in the second turn would be able to take many indy provinces by himself, especially in the third turn when he gets on the HoF and gets a special ability.

If you want to play risky, the shroud could be for your pretender - regenerating, impossibly armored+reinvig, etc etc Cyclops or Great Mother at a very, very early stage. Take some risks, but when most people are barely researching and still tossing lowend troops, you could make a early kill (just get him out of the foreign dominion quick or pump dominion yourself) or at least get a large head start.

Mostly conjecture until the game ships, however...

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Pretender Gods cannot be blessed by any means in Dominions II.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">?

Pretender Gods are permanently blessed arn't they? Ok maybe you don't call it blessing per se, but they have the benefits of their magic paths non the less.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">?

Pretender Gods are permanently blessed arn't they? Ok maybe you don't call it blessing per se, but they have the benefits of their magic paths non the less. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No they aren't permanently blessed. And every mage gets those secondary bonuses from magic paths.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Well my point is what's the difference between being blessed and getting the benefits anyway?

I guess the benefits could be different, but I didn't think so from what I saw on my thug pretenders with berzerking and added defense...

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

What exactly does the Blood 9 blessing "blood curse" do?

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's 441 if you accidentally add 81 because it is 1 AM and you've just spent 3+ hours trying to moderate a busy, busy board. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

IOW, just a silly mistake on my part. I'm not sure what exactly I did there.

I'm not sure what else to add (and excuse me for snipping your post; I'm not trying to ignore your points - I'm just not coming up with anything to say that I haven't said already.)

I think you make some intelligent comments; all I can say is that, FWIW, the blessing system has played very well for me. I hope they don't tinker too much with it for exactly the same reasons you hope they do: I don't want the game to lose any flavor or variety and the blessing scheme is one of my very favorite parts.

The best solution to things like this is usually to allow people their choice in the matter. A good idea might be to have a system where players could set how expensive magical power is to suit their own tastes. The problem there, however, lies in the UI: that choice would need to be made before or during god design, and yet the game and its settings are chosen after the god design is completed. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have a quick fix for that: instead of capping god designs at 500 points, just have each god record its total point value. Then when you start a game you would set the maximum point value of gods that are allowed in that game.

So if I want to see more powerful magic and blessings on everyone I could play with 600 or 700 point gods.

Of course, this would probably go better if the suggestion to record multiple gods per nation (in the newlords folder) were implemented.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Over 500 points... hmm, that wouldn't change much, if points were still better spent on scales than magic. IMO.

I think making magic cheaper is the best solution. Though some of the other ones (like adding dominion strength to path strength, or starting bonuses at 3/8 rather than 4/9, or giving a bonus every level rather than every two levels, or putting in more low-level holy troops) are also good alone, or in additon to cheaper magic.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Another side effect of increasing points is to devalue points as a whole. This hurts the nations that take more disadvantages. Though it is arguable that those nations need to lose some of their edge.

I'd rather see pretenders come with *minimun* levels of required magic that you pick. Its one way to force up the magic on some pretenders. That is a pretender may start with 2 in fire and 1 in astral, but have a requirement to have a total of 8 picks in magic. You can decide where to put the other 5 picks...

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, but that's variable depending on map size and nation.

It seems to me that most gods can't afford strong magic even if they don't care much about scales.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think all magic should be cheaper - I think high level magic should be cheaper. I'd just like to see magic costs rise less steeply with magic level.

I already posted the current curve. What if we instead made magic cost per level (4 + 4*(level above base))? Then for a god who starts with 2 power in a path we have:

power 2, cost 0
power 3, cost 8, total 8
power 4, cost 12, total 20
power 5, cost 16, total 36
power 6, cost 20, total 56
power 7, cost 24, total 80
power 8, cost 28, total 108
power 9, cost 32, total 140
power 10, cost 36, total 176

High levels of power in a path are still expensive, but not ludicrously expensive. In particular if your god starts out with 2 in a path (few start with more than 2), reaching 9 is about as expensive as taking one scale to +3. The relative importance of a level 9 blessing and a +3 scale is hard to quantify, but under the current system one level 9 (in a path that you start out fairly strong in) costs almost as much as two +3 scales. That's what makes it look like high magic levels aren't worth it.

Note that with this rewrite of the cost system, level 7 (from a base of 2) costs as much as level 6 under the old system. Level 9 under the new system costs about halfway between the old level 7 and 8.

If you started with one level 2 and one level 1, you could raise them to 9 and 9 for 316 - which is a lot of points, but you could do it if you weren't doing much of anything else (a lot of god forms cost a base of 100 or so, and you'd probably like to have a castle other than watchtower too.) There's no question that this would be powerful for a nation that had good sacred troops. Would it be more powerful than spending 300 points on scales (say, Order 3 Prod 2 Luck 2, or Order 2 Prod 2 Luck 1 Magic 2)? Depends on the nation, map, nearby opponents... without positive scales, will you even be able to afford a lot of priests and sacred troops? Or supply them once you have them? A strong bless won't help you much in early expansion; a strong mage God might; Order and Productivity are guaranteed to.


This is of course neglecting the nations that get free design points (Abysia, Caelum, Jotunheim, Ashen Empire/Soul Gates/Carrion Woods). But as I already posted, I want strong magic and blessings to be viable for nations that can't afford to take a lot of negative scales.

Some point-costing themes introduce a new sacred troop (Iron Faith and Desert Tombs come to mind). What's the point of getting those if you can't get a strong blessing to go with them?

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Hi all,

I play multi-player and I'm fairly excited about some of the bless potential. My understanding about mulit-player is that a quick start hides a multitude of sins and a berserk one is the greatest of blessings. If bless and high levels of magic can help you get you an insanely quick start most of the rest will flow from that. I have sacrificed long term power left, right, and center in a number of different mutli-player environments with great success and if taking nature 9 can turn my Niefel giants into early game supercombatents then yeehaaa! Did somone mention re-invigoration for blessed mages?!!!! Err, thats sounds pretty tempting to me.

The question really is how many races can make use of high magic/bless to good effect - I suspect many races will, like Chris's Machaka, take minor advantage of this feature and a few major. Looking forward to finding out.

I really appreciated Nyanarr's feedback and found the details and analysis thoughtful and useful - thanks. I also appreciate the value of not losing troops and find the thought of enhanced wardens well worth looking at.

So will I be playing with high magic to utilise bless in mutli-player - I imagine so. I played blood 9 Fountain of Blood in Dom I to get my first Ice Devil on turn 8 or 9 as Caelum so its not like there's no precedent. Sure I wouldn't try quite the same approach in Dom II but there should be others that are competitive. I wonder about water and increased defence for Van.

re starting with multipule provinces.

A poster said you can with the map editor - which I had assumed since you can do it in Dom I by editing the map at the start. I'm hoping people will setup balenced scenario's and then play them. All my Dom I game had preset starting positions as Stars taught me the importance of this. Hopefully this will be easier than in Dom I but even if its not its worth taking a bit of extra time at the start over a game which you will invest vast amounts of time in.

cheers

Keir

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Hey George, good to see you back old bud!

I am not as sure as you are regarding the uberness of a Bless strategy for Ermor, for the following reasons:

-Unlike live nations Ermor cannot really concentrate its recruiting onto the sacred troops (I am assuming this part stays as in Dom I) as it stays fixed: Ermor gets 0-2 knights per turn in each fort with a temple in normal richness settings, which certainly limits the number of unholy knights it can field when coupled with its income troubles.

-Unholy knights do not heal now!, so their 6 HPs can only take them so far.

-Wither bones: Fielding units of undead elites is always a risky business, there's no spell of comparable power to threaten live sacred troops.

I do agree with you regarding the Shroud though, that thing is extremely cheap & potentially unballancing with the current blessings.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Shroud replaces your standard armor and prevents you from wearing armor (AFAIK there is nothing with two body slots). It provides no protection (IIRC) unless you have Earth 9, and then it provides a measly 4.

If you can cast Invulnerability this is less of an issue, but many things can't cast Invulnerability (Ice Devils for example).

If you want to make a supercombatant, I think making it your prophet is probably a better option than the Shroud for getting bless effects.

Unless it's your god - but I've heard the Shroud doesn't work on gods. (Haven't tested it though.)


Also, the standard theme for Ermor is no longer Ashen Empire. Ashen Empire may well cost points, which will cut into Dom I Ermor's traditional ton of points. And undead are vulnerable to various countermeasures (even relatively tough ones like Tomb Wyrms - which are hard to get).

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

Was the shroud changed? It gave 5 prot in Dominions I.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh, I didn't know that.

In any case, 5 is probably lower than your standard armor (except maybe for mages), and certainly lower than other armors you could probably forge.

I don't think the Shroud will be too good. Few gods are going to have a bless effect stronger than Dom I's.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

The Shroud no longer works on Pretenders! Used to in Dom1 - maybe the description should note that?

The shroud would still be great for some supercombatants though, especially for Ice Devils. Their base armor of 15, up to 20 in the cold, so the armor effect is icing. Getting regeneration, Beserk + 3, 50% poison res, and possibly other bonuses too (reinvig seems like a good choice and a Great Mother allows this) and you have a supercombatant that only takes 5 gems of equipment. I hacked a map and made an Ice Devils (I got Nycafor) with just the shroud, and he was really nasty even with the new tweaks to reduce supercombatants.

Ermor, well we'll have to see about. If Ashen Empire costs them enough so they have a slighly similar number of design points available, then they won't be too bad. If not, an Ermor Shrouded Ice Devil (or similar) would still be ridiculous. I forgot about the lack of healing for the undead Knights, though I wonder if undead creation rates were affected because of that (seem to get more with C'tis undead kings, not sure on dominion creation effects at all).I guess there is a lot of unknowns with Ermor right now...

But anyway, I still think that lowering the incremental costs of magic paths will be tricky (and may not be needed). You can't just blindly grab specials and expect them to pay off, but some of them may be powerful enough and will likely be abusable already. Two more weeks until the full Version!

I can't wait to play Pythium with an Earth +4 mage, too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ November 01, 2003, 19:41: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

After a lot of playtime with the demo I have had a change of mind. The Bless effects can be very powerfull as they are and changing the levels you get them at might make them too powerfull at the highest levels.

On the other hand has anyone EVER played with magic 10 in ANY skill? There is not enough incentive to do so. If the bless effects did not get verry cool powers at level 9 I would NEVER take higher than level 4 in any magic skill to start. I would like to see a formula for the cost of magic skills that was a bit less steep. The cost for levels 2 - 4 are fine but 5+ is a bit much, and adding the 9th and 10th level is just painfull.

Sammual

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have a quick fix for that: instead of capping god designs at 500 points, just have each god record its total point value. Then when you start a game you would set the maximum point value of gods that are allowed in that game.

So if I want to see more powerful magic and blessings on everyone I could play with 600 or 700 point gods.

Of course, this would probably go better if the suggestion to record multiple gods per nation (in the newlords folder) were implemented. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I like that idea. Possibly one setting for max. points allowed in the game and another for setting the proportion that needs to be for scales vs. Pretender magic? You could set up some very interesting games that way.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

(long)

I was not aware of the revisions to the Dominions 1 blessing effect until I read this thread, in particular Nerfix's breakdown of the modifiers. Playing the demo I have had only one pretender that was successful with the blessing effects, this pretender was a red dragon leading Ulm with the Iron Faith Theme. I must admit that the black templars are devastating with flaming weapons. However, late game it remains to be seen how effective a potent blessing pretender will be.

As pointed out in Chris Byler's post the cost of creating the potent blessing pretender are very high. For my Ulmite pretender I had to take significant negatives in the drain (-2) and misfortune scales (-3),if I recall correctly. The misfortune was partly balanced out by the strong order scale (+3). However, I was shall we say magically challenged and R'leyh in particular caused my nation fits.

I have noticed that the Dominion increasing effect of purchasing temples increases the number of holy troops that you can have. This observation made me wonder if it would be appropriate to have the pretender's blessing effect increase if additional magical empowerment is performed. I think the gem cost alone would balance things. Lastly, I noticed that rival AI pretenders frequently had one magical area in the 9+ range to obtain the greater blessing benenfits.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think that it would equalize things too much, as everybody would in the end get the same bonuses, and therefore diminish the variability inherent in the present system. Furthermore, it would make the sacrifices that you have to make while creating a pretender unneccessary, as you can always make up for it later. This way it's deterministic, and either you sacrifice the points to get a good bless or you don't, but there's no going back - a tradeoff that you have to live with. Also, it would put too much focus on empowering your pretender, as opposed to doing other things with the gems.

[ November 06, 2003, 23:49: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I disagree - your approach seems too deterministic. There are many things late game to pump gems into, powerful summons, global enchantments, even some of the more powerful battle spells. And thus there would still be tradeoffs late game as opposed to a one time only decision at the start of the game - maybe that approach suits you but for myself, no thanks.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I wouldn't quite describe extra protection for Ice Devils as icing. Close to essential in a province with heat scale as they can melt away before even feeble opponents and there will be tough stuff around by the time you can summon one. I agree the Shroud is a damn good idea - especially for the earth 9, nature 9 earth mother option of Jotun. The Ice Devil has alot of slots and with a limit on how many Ice Devil's you can use I would fill alot-to-almost all of the slots. With regeneration and a Wraith Sword the ability to recover HP's should be quite remarkable.

The reinvigorated sacred Pythium mages could be insane http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I want to try with Abysia, I have always had a prejudice against the Romans, but I don't think that side of the design will be anywhere near as impressive as Pythiums uses.

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To me it seems that everybody would be getting the same bless bonuses later on, and therefore blur alot of things that make each game distinct now. In addition, it would diminish the incentive to try out new pretenders with different sets of bless effects.

I guess we'll have to agree that we disagree on this.

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

I'm glad this thread is still active - it's been fun!

Seems like the blessings are starting to be appreciated, and maybe only some tweaking should be done. Niefel is pretty nasty as long as you can keep things cold, and I've been having a lot of fun with the 9 Earth 4 Nature Sacred Serpent Pythium. I think that is a very good starting race, and the Serpent mages are really suited for to win a research war. Not as powerful as Arch Theurgs, but are recuitable anywhere, much cheaper (3 holy, 3 magics plus 1 random for only 190 GP), and half upkeep from holy. +magic scale and you will be Foul Vapouring by turn 10, and Beserking Hydras and SMs are immune to boot.

One area I don't think anyone has argued for though - Level 10 magics. Cost from raising 9 to 10:
80 - (initial magic strength * 8)

And what do you get? +1 Attack/Defense/Reinvig/etc! There effects are totally not worth that cost, and the highest spell only requires level 9 to cast, so I can't see this being anything but a trap for newbies to sink points into.

How about a second bonus for getting +10? There are some good potential specials that would be viable: Fire Shield, Charge Body, Water Shield, Stoneskin, Luck, Life Stealing Attack, Barkskin, Harm effect on hits, etc. OK, some of these would need balancing, but give me a reason to try a +10 pretender!

[ November 08, 2003, 02:53: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

Re: Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have asked for the same thing. There is NOTHING worth the points to take level 10.
I would like to see the cost drasticly lowered or the 10th level made worth it.

Sammual