Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

JK established in this thread that the casting order of ritual spells is explicitly random.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Humm, nice information, even if it seems a bit cheesy to use.

The easy way, I suppose, is just knowing that if mage a casts before mage b, he will always cast before him in the future.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I'd really put some clue into remote spellcasting ...

If you want to Ghost Ride a province and then teleport in a guy, you should be able to do that, your mages should coordinate the military action ... probably Dom2 counts of SNAFU too.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

This is wholly unrelated to the order in which magicUsers cast their spells and is utterly unfeasible as anything except hardwired sequences for certain categories of spells, and would require additional battlechecks in the turn sequence, which would result in other now available options dissappearing.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Seen you've answered to this, about the proposals about clams, contracts and such ...

It seems many ppl would like to see something changed ... and there're a lot of ideas to take from or have your own.
Should we expect something in the next patch?

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I've read all the following debate on domes and whatnot, but I still believe it would be an improvement to require mages to have the clams. It may not make a big difference, but it will make a difference. For one thing, even if the mages are as invulnerable as scouts, it is more thematically appropriate, and just looks better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But I don't think it's the case that the mages will be as safe for clam holding as scouts are. After all, you will go through some portion of the game without a dome up. And dome or no, the mages will still be vulnerable to assassins, correct?

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I don't think you have sufficiently proved a problem with vamps, clams, contracts or castling.

I think they are fine as they are.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

the thing is, there are some things in my experience that would tend to support Wendigo's claim of determinism in casting order. But Johan did say that casting order for explicitly random, so I'm a bit confused. i would love a confirmation that two mages each vying for a unique summons would each have an equal chance of getting it...

two salted herring for the dev who first confirms it

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Returning to the main topic of the thread, I thought I'd do another ROI calculation for purposes of comparison.

A typical Arco early expansion army might consist of 1 commander, 1 priestess, 16 Hypaspists and 4 Elephants. Total cost approx 800 Gold. Assume this army conquers 5 provinces with an average value of 40 Gold each, before attrition or bad luck ends its progress.

So, total income from the conquered provinces is effectively 146 gold (we lose about 54 per turn to pay maintenance on the army), which means our investment in elephants pays back in a little under six turns. That's pretty damn good; an awful lot better than you could expect in real life.

I wonder if it's unbalanced?

Mark

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Not willing to bet my neck on this, but I believe Dom2 has added a small random variable here. Random turns resolve spells/forging in backward order, going from the largest ID to the smallest. I tested this with setting 6 casters on cast monthly ritual, and scrolling turns forward - there was only two different cast resolving ques, and they mirrored each other perfectly.

So, the order wouldn't be in a real sense random, but one can't have any foreknowledge what is the order of two castings.

Of course this can be abused if you have enough resources, putting the same casting on both ends of que, nearly ensuring a positive outcome.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Well I guess it depends upon indep settings doesn't it?

Further such rates do not hold for up long either, since one will quickly meet up with other empires.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Precisely, your growth is limited to what you can conquer. You cant spend 800 gold and create a new province once you have conquered all within your reach.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

The difference is that after 5 or 10 provinces or whatever you can expand no more - it is bounded.

Pickles

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Yeah and gold income tends to decrease in the long run because a lot of nations have death scales + random events / spells .
4 elephants + 16 Hypaspists are not bad but normally with each province you conquer you will lose at least 1-2 Hypaspists or sometimes one elephant . So if you can conquer 5 provinces with this force is already good but on indeps 7-9 at least i doubt that .

And a SC can conquer those provinces without upkeep or if it is a recruitable SC ( Jotunheim ) goldwise significantly cheaper . And he doesn't lose his value mid-lategame as your hypaspists + elephants do .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

It's only bounded by the size of the map. I can apply my Elephant Investment Strategy to other players' provinces as well as independents (in fact, my ROI might increase because the defenses in such province will - on average - be weaker than, say, size 6 Indeps).

Or are we taking enemy action into account now? We certainly weren't in the previous calculations.

Mark

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Naturally not. Your clam/fetish/stone/contract-holding scouts are quite safe from enemy action unless your empire has been completely overrun.

It's already been stated that fighting is detrimental to a clam-hoarding strat.

Military expansion, on the other, requires you to fight, and fighting reqires a continual investment or resources, AND your ROI is much less sure and much harder to calculate (if it goes badly your ROI could be quite negative! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) In short military expansion is a much riskier "investment".

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I think there isn't a major problem with the way things are now, but a small tweak like clams are only equippable on mages sounds reasonable. Who could object to that? All it does is limit the extreme clamming strategy (abuse?) where you have hundreds and are making more each turn. It does nothing to discourage a moderate to heavy investment in clams.

Also, I'd like to see the life given from lifedrain capped at the user's normal hitpoint maximum and/or another magic item added that gives protection from lifedrain (soul protection pendant or the like).

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Actually, the single best solution to clam hoarding would be to make water magic useful.

For a start, they ought to eliminate the inability of casting water magic on both land and water. Make water spells unique in that they all could be cast either land or water. Excepting the auqatic or land summons, of course.

But really, why on earth can niefel flames not be cast underwater? You spend all that mage time as Atlantis getting to level 9 and can't even use it in your most powerful dominion of your home territory.

As it stands, water gems are most useful for turning into astral via clams.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

It is more like e.g. Civilization . Normally earlygame expansion is always bloody and Lasts long . Midgame it already gets better ( Roads everywhere , e.g. knights in civ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif ) and lategame it is much easier against weaker opponents ( Railroads everywhere , the best weapons in civ ) .
In earlygame fighting in enemy dominion is quite risky , especially if your opponent has an immortal pretender .
It is hard to get a huge enough superority earlygame over your opponent to win fast enough with most nations .

If you played well and made the right preparations then a lategame war can be won in about 5 turns while an earlygame war Lasts often much longer . Lategame you just have more possibilities like SCs teleported in / Huge summoned armies / lots of battlemages / Ghost riders etc. .

Sure your opponent can do this too .

So imo the "art" of clamhoarding is to always not let the gap between you and the biggest nation not become too big , try staying in the upper middle in most graphs and hoard . Then you can be quite sure that when you are ready you are probably deadly enough because you have about the same income than the largest player or only slightly less but you didn't lose much because of wars .

Rushing is always good in small games with few players but with lots of players it is too risky because there will be always one who techs . If you would e.g. play empire earth with 8 players in a true FFA and rush you will probably get 1-2 of your neighbors but one who teched will be 1-2 ages more developed than you and beat e.g. your middle age troops with musketiers .

Empire earth is a game with "hard counters" like FM_Surrignon called them but the interesting thing there is that it often doesn't work because of different tech levels http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .
Tanks e.g. improve to a new model every age there while Paks improve only every 2 ages and iirc the Last tank improvement is in era 14 , the Last one while the Last Pak improvement is in era 13 .

You got your first tank and your first pak in world war 1 era . There the pak won . In world war 2 era there was only a new tank model . This won then against the paks , narrow but it won . In modern age there was a new tank and a new pak but in the Last era again only a new tank .

I think dominions is in many ways similiar there , like Banes -> Bane lords -> Wraith lords -> Tartarians .
That makes it so entertaining i think . That every nation has an era at which it is especially strong but every nation has weaknesses too .
If you remember my long postings where i compared dominions with starcraft i had that balance in mind but starcraft lacks a real techtree . Starcraft is perhaps a bit more balanced but it is not as complex .
Dominions has another kind of balance .
I think now that the balance of dominions is even better than e.g. starcraft because it is more chesslike there . So it gets soon boring while the number of possibilities in dominions is just great .

The "negative" side is because dominions is so complex and because most ppl when they are asked about balance think first imo in a chess/starcraft system of balance tend to say when they are new dominions is imbalanced ( I have proven this often enough myself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif ) .

I agreed here too that clams are too good etc. but the longer i think about it i think i were wrong with that .
It is a good strategy but not overpowered because other strats can lead to victory as well or perhaps even better .


The only thing which i would like to see finetuning is the false horror spell . Against all troops with morale this is too long toooo powerful . I think about 10-12 of the included nations have severe difficulties defending against the common caelum false horror strat and a few have still difficulties but can defend because they can do the same or similiar ( vanheim / pythium especially ) and the 2 undead nations are here advantaged because they have enough troops + they don't rout .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Yep. It always strikes me as wrong that air spells are more useful for underwater combat than water spells are. Lightning, orb lightning, etc, can be used on land or underwater, while many of water's direct damage spells ... can't be cast underwater. That's just so wrong...

Same thing with rituals. If Voice of Apsu can be cast on a land province, from another land province, why can't it be cast on the land province from an underwater lab?

And artifacts and magic items - with the exception of the Orb of Atlantis, there are none that require more than Water-3, and 20 water gems.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

You didn't quote my entire suggestion. The idea, already begun by the devs, was to attach a drawback and additional cost to the fettishes, and not just a free infinite fire income with almost no limit or cost. My suggestion was not just to require it be on something that can actually be diseased, which is logical given the description, but to also add a chance of damage which might kill the bearer. So it would be akin to the Soul Contract, in that it doesn't Last forever, because eventually the bearer will get a heart attack or seizure and die before the fettish can be applied to someone else.

PvK

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Whether it is effective or not, I assume that's why contracts are cursed and horror mark you.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I think the best suggestion to change clams is to make it a command that has to be given to whoever is wearing it: a "use item" command that would simply make 1 asral gem/turn. That way, your little scouts sitting around wont be able to hide and use them at the same time. Yes yes, i know what some people might say: "but it wont make any difference; i can just use domes!". Well, maybe it wouldnt make a BIG difference, but i dont think anyone is asking for a big change, just a change. It would definitely make some difference in that clam hoarding wouldnt be totally indestructable like it is now, and at least an opponent would be able to do something to kill off your clam income.

Now don't get me wrong; i don't support a change, i was just expressing my opinion about which suggestion was best. Personally, i think clams are fine as they are. The main reason people use them is not that they are overpowered, but because there is little else useful to do with water gems, like Panther and Cainehill were saying.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Domes aren't totally protective as hiding is (nor Hiding is totally protective from some spells like Mind Hunt, but to cast it usually you should know that there's someone in that province, and a lone S1 mage will feeblemind your S4+ mage, even if it's S10 he'll get feebleminded).

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I've been wondering about mind hunt... How exactly does it work?

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Badly, in my SP experience.

You get the chance to kill one enemy commander (via Mind Burn or Soul Slay, whichever you've got, or Soul Slay if you've got both), but my experience is consistent with what Cohen is saying, in that the risk of being feebleminded is very high, even if you do it with a very high level astral mage. Also, I'm beginning to think Astral Projection carries with it the same kind of bogus risk.

Just had a thought - is it possible this is the same kind of bug that had been affecting magic duel? And then, is there any chance it's fixed in 2.14?

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

You need too some research in Thaumathurgy.
It casts a Soul Slay or Mind Burn (the better you've researched beetween those 2), and cast it remotely (those spells are combat spells) on an enemy commander in that province.
It checks on MR and if fails to pass the check the enemy die if you've Soul Slay.
I know this strikes too hiding unit and glamouring ones. (I had a Man Thuatha besieging one of my castles ... the map shows that Man was besieging me but no units were shown ... I went for Mind Hunt, the spell found the target but sadly failed to kill him).
But it has a very high double edge... if there's an astral mage in the target province this will feeblemind all your guys casting the spell in that province (it's not very realistic imo that a single guy 1S could feeblemind 6 S3 or S4 mages casting that spell in the same turn). In fact this spell is usually used by Arco, that has healing priestess and cheap astrologers.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Hmmm.. so ANY astral mage in the target province will ALWAYS feeblemind ALL casting mages??? That does make it sound somewhat useless...

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Well perhaps not useless but it sure does require good scouting reports.

I have seen it have a tremendous imapct on the unprepared... the suden death of an army commander just before a battle can have rather severe consequences!

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

If the enemy hasn't Astral Mages in the province this is the best spell to kill SCs without engaging them.
I killed Wraithlords and Air Queens too with that spell.

If you'ven't Astral as default and your random pick is capitol only probably you'll have problems in covering your troops.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

If you are found by an Astral mage, can you still attempt to kill one of the commanders, or is the attempt aborted?

Even if you have to avoid Astral mages to ensure a kill, this spell should be useful if you have cheap Astral mages and/or ways of curing the likely feeblemindedness. Even an Astral mage 1 should be able to cast this spell with the Astral boosting equipment, although it would be fairly expensive to forge all of them. But since the mage isn't killed, even after a failure, I guess it may pay out after some successful castings.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Usually are Pythium and Arco that use that spells.
Sometimes the nations that have 2S mages + a random pick, like Abysyan warlocks.

Usually you need a +1 S item however.

If an Astral Mage is in the targetted provinces, you'll get all your mages feebleminded AND the spellcasting will be aborted, so you can't kill anyone.

Personally I believe it's pretty weak that 1 single 1 S mage could feeblemind mages far better than him and more numberous. (according to description 1 lvl in a path means normal user, 2 lvls mean good mage in that path, 3 or more a very powerful mage of that path).

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

You should post it e.g. in patch 2.14 .
Perhaps it is a "bug" like with magic duel the open ended D6 was .
I don't think too that 1 S mage always stops all mindhunters as you described was intended .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Well, according to the spell description, it's currently working as intended.

Mind Hunt is a very useful spell, the drawback with enemy astral mages just ensures it's not one-for-all solution. Handle with care, use with caution.

And as to who can use it, I've used it playing TC while been on the receiving end by mind hunting Jots and Marignon, so I'd hardly call it "Arco only". You can ensure you aren't getting feebleminded, it's just all about intel. Using it on an army that just attacked should be quite safe since you can check the battle replay for astral mages.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Not Arco only, but they can do that massively with Astrologers, having access to both Spell Focus and Rune Smasher forging with national mages (and a +1 F ow W item)