Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Weak as a day old kitten.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Not to mention that it would make some of the globals less pointless, like... what's that spell that gives you 5 pearls a turn by collecting solar light?

-Max

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Yes, lets set events rare and make there be absolutely no reason to take anything but misfortune 2-3...

Seriously, Luck isn't good enough as it is, lets not make it any more tempting to get points off the luck-misfortune scale.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

It appears more or less agreed that forging is one of the bigger MM causes in the game, and it was suggested to eliminate hammers... what about increasing forging costs? would not that decrease the forging rush? In this way forged itens would be more rare and you would give artifacts only to the most important units.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Increasing forging costs just makes hammers more critical. And since you can only increase costs by increasing path levels needed, also increase the need for shifting boosters around.

It's not the few high level expensive artifacts that add to MM. It's churning out the dozens of cheap ones for your thugs & mages.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

hammers allow for more forging which causes more MM. Removing them has two positive effects on managing:
1. Forging cheap stuff costs 67% more -> up to 40% less items
2. no need to find that mage with the hammer, anybody with the path can do it.

I think hammers introduce micro.

Reducing site frequency has a drastic influence, while reducing overall gem flow it makes finding specific gem types really unpredictable. I remember that game when - after searching all my provinces, 30 provs - I ended with a total of 1w! That was at 45%

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

We should try and convince the developers to provide an automatic forging command the same as we have for magic site searching. This would definitely help.

I have found increasing the gem cost of gem generators prevents them from being forged as often because it requires more gems even with the hammers. The end result is instead of having 10 mages forging gem generators the higher cost means only 3 mages or less. In some cases other summon spells are viewed as more worthy because each gem generator has a longer period of time before it's paid its own cost.


In regards to SCs... such as the Tartarians and recruitable SCs, I believe new spells should be introduced to provide strategic strategies against them. For example I created one game where I created a summon spell where the creature generated horrormarks when struck... naturally not important against an army, but very important against SCs. Also I created a long range summon spell which was a summon specific for fighting SCs and then after its arrival a horror would appear. Another spell which can be introduced for handling SCs would be twisting the internal alchemy spell into a new spell so it only sends insanity instead of the decrease in aging. Another idea spell which comes to mind is creating a spell which uses cursed luck... currently it's almost impossible to even encounter a game which will have cursed luck. These will give armies a better chance against the heavy usage of SCs during late game.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

All strategies are strategic!

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

When the number of strategies are few it's less strategic and more linear.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Hmm, I think the tartarian thing would be quite easy to fix if there were some other nonunique SCs with about equal price and power.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Does anyone really not know where all their hammers are all the time? Does anyone really move them around all that much? I mostly give hammers to mages and set those mages to permanent forge duty, unless i have something special that needs making. And, surprise surprise, they're often the only mages not researching. I've never found forging to be annoying, and equipping items is quick and straightforward.

I find figuring out which paths a mage has is more micro, and that's important for things other than crafting. (Who can site search (manual or remote), who should go with the army, forging, ritual spells, etc...). It would help if, instead of having to rename all my casters A2W2D3 and the like there was a display on the overland commander view that listed all their paths, or it would come up on mouseover.

Finally, any removal of hammers would have to address how much this straightjackets nations into using nationally available magic types for items compared to default settings.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

So, it seems to me that Tarts should be cheaper than other equivalent options because you need research in 3 schools (Thaum for GoR, Constr for boosters - often significant boosters) and gems of two types, so the current 27 (12d + 15n) pricetag is cheap because they're harder to rush. Plus you need the Chalice or GoH or other healing options.

A straight-up SC without GoR that is equivalent should probably cost more on the order of 40-50 gems. A slightly weaker but less hassle SC could cost around 30-35 gems, and could help counter the rush to tartarians (or encourage runs to it solely because its less hassle).

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

You're aware that magic paths are listed on the F1 screen, right? It's not hard to spot the only H3 priest, or to find an A2 mage, etc.

-Max

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I'm thinking more I'm looking at a territory with 20+ mages and i want to find all the ones with A4 or W3 or whatever. Figuring out which province he's in is not the hard part. And I want to be able to do it in the context of commander selection for forging/casting/moving, or army setup screen for spell scripting.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

You can click on commanders from the F1 screen and it will select them and go to their province, so I never bother right-clicking my guys to check for paths if there are a pile of them, I just hit F1 and click from there. Same for tracking down boosters or hammers, though the display IS pretty small...hammers and gate cleavers are petty indistinguishable, for example.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Hmm, the latter could probably be changed quite easily by giving hammers or cleavers a different icon.

And how about a costless useless unit with only as much slot as possible for holding stuff when the lab is full?

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

my point about hammers was more in the line of you have significantly more forging going on with them, and more than 25% nominal savings. And it makes a difference as it delays the time you forge close to 50 items/turn.

Removing hammers has effects on balance, mainly for earth and thug-reliant nations, I guess, but that is a different question altogether.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

This extract from the first post is what ppl think reduces MM w/o having serious side effect on balance/fun:
"
1. No gem gens.
Note: Efforts are being made at modding for compensating gem gen reliant nations.

2. Determine an upper limit on map sizes, # of players and reasonable victory conditions. Consensus
10-12 players, 10-15 provinces per player, 40% capital VPs victory condition.
Note. MM is in direct relation to how many provinces one controls at end game. Worst case scenario (MM wise) is 2 powers each controlling 30-40% of the map making war.
# of players and victory conditions have similar effect.

3. No Diplomacy. i.e. RAND.
Diplomacy is not directly related to MM but cutting that part of the game results in faster turn processing. Plus, it allows for different patterns of gaining victory (no alliances, NAP turtling, dog piling etc) which could be refreshing on it's own right.
"

I plan to participate in future games that follow these guidelines (1+2 for sure) and so be able to test first hand how they influence endgame MM.
Thanks for all the feedback!

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Hi, im wondering that?

Is it possible to make spells that create gem sites?

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

No.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

While this will remove one part of gem gens incurred MM (making sure the mages carrying them survive and passing them around at times) it doesn't cover the other part of MM they cause: getting to end game with tons of gems, which means you can (and so must) summon/forge/cast that much more. Plus it will encourage turtling and castling.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Hmm, I think it would solve a lot.

Gem Income is visible.
Sites can be taken over.
Sites can be limited.

And you can certainly do it.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Really? How can you do it? Enlighten me please.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Though I know almost nothing of modding, I do know random events can create magic sites (usually +gold or resources, though), and spells can cause random (or not so random events). If Random events can be added... I think you see where I am going here.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

As Illuminated One said that sites can be limited, so maybe 2 sites per province. Combines total spell made gem gens in a large game of 150 provinces = 300 gem gens total. Currently 1 player can have same amount of gem gens in late game. So in end game 100 gems from gem gens would be huge.

With number of gem gens restricted by provinces, no more turtling with gem gens. 10 provinces total 20 gem gens = sweet target tag for conquest.

IMHO hammers are the reason for late game hell. Hammers reduce cost of gem gens over 25%. At the same time they reduce baypack ratio of gem gens by 25%. In long run with hammers increase gem gen income by 35-40%. With +35% more gems 1,35*1,25=1,69 more forging with hammers. Playing nation that has natural forging bonus gem gens will skyrocket even more! So remove hammers.

With higher cost of gem gens (no hammer bonus) the cost of opportunity raises significally (also now they could be taken over). I think current gem cost for gem gens are quite ok.

Games would no longer be forging competitions, they would have more strategy (more sites on map = more tactical opportunities, scouting even more important)

-No need for hundreds of indy scouts running around.
-No need for pool gems, if the income is map based.
-No need to huge balance changes for nations that needs gem gens
-As Illuminated One said "Gem Income is visible".

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Random events can't be modded or added.

Seriously, how can spells to create sites certainly be done?

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Why are people so keen on preserving the gem generation mechanic?

From my experience playing without them it makes for a much better game, IMO. I'd like to hear why people are so reluctant to get rid of them.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

As an alternative to removing hammers, increasing the requirement to Earth-5, and thus the cost to 40 Earth gems, would have a similar effect. Only a handful of nations would be able to forge them, and those that do would have other objects competing for Earth gems. Forging a few to get a discount on really expensive items, such as Rings of Wizardry, would make them worth it, but not for mass producing the little stuff.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

You sure about that? Saving 2 gems/forging, it takes a mere 20 turns to pay off one of those, and that's assuming you never forge anything better than a 5 gem item with it. And you pay it off in 4 turns forging more hammers, who then pay themselves off in no more than 15 turns. (And did I mention the gems they're paying themselves off with don't have to be earth? You might have earth to burn, and those earth are otherwise worth at best half a gem to you - like me right now in Water Total War.)

Doing this is just going to make the disparity between the haves and have-nots even bigger. As it is now, virtually everyone has access to hammers, so everyone benefits from the ability to rapidly diversify on limited gem totals. At 40e hammers become much more limited to those nations who can amass a lot of earth, and thus other nations get correspondingly straightjacketed into national path forgings.

The only way changing hammers is at all realistic is if you make all the magic paths equally good. As I highly doubt that's going to happen...

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

People also get very, very tetchy about the changing of forge requirements for oft forged items. I think they get less tetchy about them being removed entirely tbh.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Gem gens must go. They made late-game rot. I really prefer to just use higher magic site settings.

There won't be any other acceptable way to replace gem gens. They simply must go. There won't be anything done with forging either, unless someone wants to adjust prices for ALL rituals to match new situation. And I doubt people would like to play that.

New CBM is coming. CBM with nation balance fixes. It will be whole new world, new game then. So revolution is coming.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

And Zeldor, His prophet, hath spoken the gospel, and the people found it good, and it was good.

:D

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43892

Look at the example mod in there.
It doesn't create sites, but I does change the gem income of one of sauromatia's home sites.
Remove some "super sites" (discount sites and special indies) and replace them by sites where the player can increase the gem income through his actions (or maybe pay for a discount).
(You can also create sites, not by changing the mod, but by changing the savegame files)

Well, I think you are right that they do not enhance the game as they are now. But it's the only mechanic that allows to affect your nation's economy besides the scales that you set on the very beginning.
Sure you can say that you want only battles but imo there is a much greater sense of archievement in creating and maintaining the economy that fuels your war than without it.
And then if you went down that direction (i.e. all that should be of strategic importance are battles) then I don't really see for what reason you'd want to keep the strategic map at all, since it only waters it down with luck (Ha! You underestimated me. Didn't quite expect that wrath of the sky from the air mages I found somewhere, huh?) or silly metagame stuff (Player X is known to go AI after some light raiding but Player Y makes sure whoever attacks him doesn't win the game, now, who should I attack). I guess in that case you could just give every player x rp and y gold and z gems to assign as they like before the game and then let them duke it out on some (completely) barren wastelands. That would even make for a fun game, I'm sure, but that's not for the long haul that dom3 games normally are.
So to come to a point, gem gens are broken, but I'd rather change them and see what happens instead of removing them.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I know I won't be playing in another game with gem gens.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Let me see if I'm understanding your point correctly: 4X games typically have Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate phases. Dominions has a more limited set of options for Exploit than MOM or MOO/MOO2.

1.) Site-search (costs mage time and/or gems, may permanently increase the gem-production of that province)
2.) Build forts (increases resource and gold output of that province, allows recruitment of national units)
2b.) Build labs/temples (may be necessary to allow you to exploit certain indy pop types and/or sites)
3.) Forge gem-generators

I think you're arguing that the options available to Exploit are so limited that eliminating #3 cripples the Exploit phase to the point where it's not really worth playing as a 4X game. Is that right?

-Max

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

well, building forts mostly allows recruiting of national units and pooling resources. The cost of the castle relative to the gold boost is so low as to be unnoticeable, basically.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

True in most cases, and in fact I personally DON'T build forts to increase gold income, but it is a form of Exploit that can potentially increase your gold revenues by up to 25%. The main reason it isn't done is not because the gold increase is negligible but because fort costs are so high relative to per-province income, in a normal-settings game.

I'm AFB, but IIRC building a fort gives you (baseIncome*admin/200) extra gold per turn, so you need to hold a province for (200*fortCost/(baseIncome*admin)) turns in order to show a positive cash flow. Depending on the province that may or may not be worth bothering with. From memory, here's some examples:

130 gold province, Tel City (Admin 40, 1400 gold): +26 gold. You need to hold the city for 54 turns to show a net profit.

390 gold province, Tel City (Admin 40, 1400 gold): +78 gold. You need to hold it for 18 turns to show a profit.

130 gold province, Hill Fort (Admin 20, 800 gold): +13 gold, 61 turns.

390 gold province, Hill Fort (Admin 20, 800 gold): +39 gold, 21 turns.

A 21-turn payback isn't short, but it's in line with the payback times for many buildings in other 4X games like MoM--although of course those games may go on for hundreds of turns and Dom3 usually caps out in the 80s.

Playing on smaller but richer maps (x3 or x4 and high gems) is one way of reducing micro, by effectively consolidating provinces into larger and richer metaprovinces. It tends to emphasize normal armies slightly more over summons/thugs, and it also makes fort-building a strategic option for economic development.

None of this changes the fact that Exploit plays much less of a role in Dom3 than in most 4X games--I'd actually submit that Dom3 isn't really a 4X game at all. It's mostly 2X, Expand and Exterminate, although research plays a big role and the Exterminate phase is unusually rich because of all the unit/spell variety.

-Max

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I'm so pleased at this thread. I had just posted at QT3 about thinking of giving dominions another go, but how much I hated the MM, especially from gem gens. I thinks to myself, why don't I go over and see what's going on at official dominions 3 forums, and I find this thread. I'm so pleased.

Anyhow:

1)I'll be happy to see gem gens go. Mechanics that drive players to be tedious to win stink, and an overwhelming late game gem income is bad gameplay even without tedium.

2)A mod removing gem gens does or does not currently exist? I see people in the threads recalling games without gem gens, was that simply an honor based ban?

3)If push comes to shove, it's really the fever fetish I hate.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Making gem gens "discount ignoring" like contracts/lifelong protection might also be a good compromise position. Or finagling required paths.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

You can find the unique gem gen mod here:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=699040

And as mentioned it will be integrated in CB 1.6.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Well, not exactly, although along these lines.
I think with large maps and an extremely long timeframe it should contain 4X mechanics, but it really lacks in the exploit field (but I don't think gem gens as they are now are a good replacement) - and just relying on the castles and sitesearching (I don't care so much about terminology but I'd see them as explore personally) it's better to play it as a pure "duel" game imo.
Even if your wannabe god is completely uninterested in building or shaping his empire - your gem income/magic access has a great effect on your battles. Like you're not going to use much earth magic with 5 e gems income total and many nations are just not flexible enough to really cope.

Well about castles I think the general consensus is just to build the cheapest researcher factory possible. 400 gold are much early on, but +30 gold after turn 50 isn't really much when 50 gem scs are running around.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

If you wish to reduce micromanagement by eliminating diplomacy, please don't. Limit it to ingame messages. Diplomacy is necessary for the weak nations to unite and counter the strong.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Why not just have the gems generated by clams and other items or units go to the national inventory rather than to the unit wearing the item, so as to avoid the gem MM?

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Well, there are times you want the gems on the commander in question. Ok, not so much with fever fetish, but I could see bloodstone and clams used for such a purpose. Heck, *I've* used clams for such a purpose.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

I agree that there are times you want the gems to appear on that commander, but I'd venture to say this is relatively uncommon, usually you just have a bunch of folks in your various castles holding the items to gem gen. losing that very minor tactical option would cause no balance issues that i can think of and have a pretty high return in terms of eliminating MM.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Solutions which we ourselves cannot do aren't that useful though. I mean there are many ways the problem could theoretically be solved, but I don't think identifying them all makes sense.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Yes. What I listed are 3 items that are confirmed to increase MM and can be removed w/o a serious effect on balance/fun. It doesn't mean that all game must be w/o diplo, only that those that would be w/o diplo would have less MM. Or more precisely - less time spent on chats, mails, PMs etc so that turns process considerably faster.

Gem gens, the way they are currently, just plain suck in MM respect. Perhaps if it was possible to "curse" their income so that it can't be moved from the owning mage to the lab then they'd be ok (income only for battles). As they currently are they are tedious, boring, MM intensive and cause income inflation in end game.

Smaller maps and less nations clearly reduce MM.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Of course, without diplomacy you have to spend more actual in-game time preparing to counter war from all your neighbors, not to mention relying even more heavily on managing scouts to get info you can't get from others.
(Not that you should rely entirely on diplomacy for defense, but you certainly don't guard a border with an ally as strongly as you'd have to if you didn't have a deal.)

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Usually w/o diplo one concentrates on deterrence to avoid wars. It may actually be more reliable then NAPs. As I have seen once and again that in diplo games you'd get nations dog-piling the leader while in RAND that's a rare occurrence and even when it happens you'd see 2-3 smaller nations banding as opposed to much more in diplo games. Also, when you're smaller and weaker in diplo games you may easily get to end game while in RAND it will all be over much sooner (so the whole game is much shorter as well).

I speak from personal experience of playing both game types. For me removing diplo considerably shortens turn processing.
EDIT: Again, I'm not saying diplo is bad, not fun or what not. It's perfectly viable and I'll surely play diplo game in the future. However I think that games w/o diplo require considerably less time investment.

Re: Template for reducing late game MM hell
 

Oh I should point out NI maps also greatly reduce micro, simply because there are far, far less commanders - most notably scouts you have to cycle through with n.