Re: Drain Life
 

Castles, temples, troop experience, province defense, site-searching, scout-placement, and resource-intensive units are very real investments. It can take a long, long time to build a full army of high-resource units; if they are obselete by the time you build enough for them to be a threat, then they are pointless.

Fortunately, research does not only benefit summons, it just leads to very potent (and sometimes underpriced) summons. There are also spells such as Army of Lead, Mass Protection, Antimagic, and Flaming Arrows that selectively boost recruitable units (who generally have lower MR and zero natural protection, compared to summons); spells such as Wither Bones, Curse, and Paralyze that selectively damage supercombattants or and summons; and so forth.

There are also spells that selectively help summons and supercombattants, and a lot of spells the equally hurt or help both recruits and summons. I'm not trying to start an argument or attack you, but what you just said is a widespread fallacy people have about Dominions, and I want to lay it to rest so it won't cause problems. Let's say... "Research is the only investment with progress bars and sliders" and "Some paths of research lead to powerful summons," which are both true http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But I certainly agree with that. A summon that had to be researched before being used should have advantages over troops available on day one, just as high-resource troops like heavy cavalry should have advantages over light cavalry. Assuming 15g per gem equivalence, and examining (say) Legion of Wights:

In melee combat, a wight is roughly equivalent to 15 chainmail indy heavy infantry, according to my simulation (which does not factor the cold aura).

A Legion of Wights costs 30 gems (or 450 gold).
300 indy chainmail infantry cost 3000 gold.

Wights cost 0 upkeep.
Infantry costs 200 upkeep.

Unlimited hordes of Wights can be made at a lab in a turn (assuming unlimited gems and mages).
A castle pulling 150 resources needs 20 turns to pump out one set of infantry, over which time they pull 2000 gold in salary.

Wights eat 0 food (0 leaders with 0 winebags).
Infantry eat 200 food (8 leaders with 8 winebags, or 40 gems).

Wights need 20 undead leadership (Mound King, 3 gems, 1 turn).
Infantry need 300 leadership (12 indy leaders, 12 turns, 360 gold, 168 resources, 12 food, 24 upkeep)

Wights don't rout.
Infantry do.

Wights have high MR.
Infantry have low MR.

Wights are immune to cold (murdering winter) and poison.
Infantry have no natural immunities.

Wights have 3 strat moves.
Infantry have 1.

Wights have magical weapons that can hit ethereals and cause decay, to which they are immune.
Infantry... don't, can't, and aren't.

Wights get no fatigue, and thus can fight forever, against undead hordes, or dragonflies, or other cheap chaff.
Infantry have encumbrance, stop fighting effectively after about 7 rounds, and fall asleep after 17 rounds... unless their are fatigue spells, heat and cold auras, abnormal province temperatures, or so forth.

Wights can be killed by Dust to Dust and Holy Pyre.
Infantry can be killed by Falling Frost and Foul Vapors.

Wights are vulnerable to Purgatory (Fire 6, Level 7, 60 gems, Dominion only, unlikely to kill a Wight even when hit).
Infantry are vulnerable to Burden of Time (Death 5, Level 5, 70 gems, worldwide, assured kill when hit).

... and the list goes on.


Considering that other spells can be used to selectively help or hurt either one one (though IMO they favor wights), we'll pretend that sort of balances out.

But regardless, as Huzurdaddi said, recruitables get pretty badly spanked. By a huge factor in most categories, and I tried to make the catagories fair. Is that a good thing? I'd prefer to have SOME category when recruitables have SOME clear advantage... but you can't even say availability from turn one is a clear advantage. I might get 300 HI before 1 legion of wights, but I can easily get 4 legions of wights before 4 armies of 300 HI (depending on game settings).

Anyway - I don't like that. I think a lot of summons have costs off by more than a factor of 2, and some might be too strong to have a reasonable price (Devils, IMO, are too strong for cheap low-level summons, and I think the 'too strong' and 'too cheap' parts both need slight changes).

Re: Drain Life
 

OMG.... you are.... NORFLEET!
20 Bonus Points for me for being the first one to realize it!!
It's ok to come out of the closet, I missed you!
WELCOME BACK!!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

Wights are not a really good example .
By the time you can summon them with the lvl 9 spell most of your opponents should be able to get wither bones casters .
Wither bones kills the wights really so quickly that it is not funny . Especially when cast by lamia queens or Sauromancers .The former is available to almost any nation . Eagle Eyes , Wither Bones x4 , and 1 Relief casting Lamia or Ivy King and your Wights are gone really fast .

Mech Men and the like otoh are very vulnerable to spells that target MR like nether darts etc. .

Imo the only really a bit overpowered summons are the blood summons . FoDs and Devils are uber . And the Devil is strangely the cheapest summon also . Vs the Devil only Air and Cold spells work but holy pyre and the other fire spells don't . Really problematic it gets with soul contract generated devils and with wished blood .
I think there is nothing more cost effective you can do in dominions than clamhoard and then wish for blood . Then you get decent Thugs with the devil leaders from horde to hell , good defense troops with vampires and vampire lords and good + cheap troops with the devil .

With national troops imo unfortunately the supply system is a bit broken . In SP i always play with 500% or 1000% supply multiplikator and 200% resource multiplikator .
The resources are the second unfair thing , ulm and other resource intensive nations have big problems getting lots of troops .
But some national troops that require few resources are really good also , especially the centaur warriors from pangenea and all kinds of missile units with flaming weapons .

Basically Dominions is quite balanced but because of the too serious supply + resource restrictions only resourcecheap nationals are worth being recruited . Zens spell mod does it just right , ghost riders need 6 death instead of 4 to be cast , same for wrathful skies .
If you add a supply x300-500% multiplicator then everything is fine and most national troops are worth being used also .

I always play SP with 15 or 16 impossible AIs , 200% resource multiplicator and 1000% supply multiplicator on a rather small map like karan . It is fun and very often i lose to the ai hordes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .
Even with caelum and either doing false horror spamming or thunderstrike squads i got overwhelmed until turn 40 by 3 attacking AIs .

Re: Drain Life
 

Interesting, I'll try that. There are some units that I simply never use (mainly, heavy cavalry sorts) because of resource limitations.

I sort of like starving AI troops because it feels so good to beat a huge army with a little army, but then it probably gives false feedback and reinforces weak tactics http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

I agree, that is the main issue here. Then again, I don't think its fair to compare a group of heavy infantry to some summoned troops. Most likely there will be mages on both sides, etc. But then it is really more difficult to balance. Still, I think some of the mods are really doing a good job at keeping national troops a little more viable.

Re: Drain Life
 

All I can say is "Zen rules". I think he has done a truly remarkable job with his spell mod. I wish more people would play it.
Just make a quick mod that nerfs hoarding items (and maybe life drain), use Zens spell, scale and pretender mods, play on small, crowded maps with very difficult research, and I think youll find the game quite balanced and quite fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

So it boils down to the fact that province sizes where greatly cut down in Dom2 vs. the standard Dom1 maps. I can remember getting provinces or 20k pop easily, but in Dom2 you'll have 15k pop with a grassland province (which takes a big -50% ressource hit for being grassland). Most other provs are 4k-8k size.

Less pop means less ressources and less supply. (add to that the change supply generation from castles..)

But units costs where never adjusted to fit this!

I'm running my SP games with +50% ress/richness and +200% supply and with diff research since these things are moddable and have had whole lot of fun, even with only normal AIs ... .

Re: Drain Life
 

The total amount of gold in the economy was cut to less than half the amount in Dom1, so a simple change would be to double the amount of gold produced, while leaving resources alone via a mod.

Re: Drain Life
 

Yes, Zen Rules!

Just an update. I've had a few requests to finish my mods (I don't feel right sending out betas)

I plan on doing so in the next week or so (don't quote me).

I have split the Spells mod into two sections that can easily seperate out what some might feel are unneeded changes. One section will be the actual Spells, the other will be Summons.

Look for that one soon. I also have a slight update on the Pretenders (it seems to have been widely accepted).

The reason I bring this up, is because in the Nation mod, not only do I change alot of units (I'm a little reluctant to release parts of it since Cherry modified some in the same fashion I was and don't want to detract from SC's mod).

There are certain moddable things in the game and others unmoddable. You can't make a great divergence in the gold in Dom2 because you cannot mod (and I have a feeling will not be able to in the future) fortresses. Because of this, you cannot modify the gold of the entire game without dramatically shifting the balance of castle placement for carpet castling. While you can at the same time argue that the castles can be defeated easier because of more troops, it doesn't change the "annoying" factor of dealing with an entire map of castles. I don't think making a mod that can only be played with VP's is a good way.

So in the Nation mod I have modified the supplies to 150% of normal as well as Resources. This creates a real feeling of armies clashing, while not rendering certain scales effects useless (Growth for example, could take Death 3 and still field a fairly decent army with Wineskins).

Just my thoughts. Also, rendering certain spells uncastable (like say, Drain Life) so you are required to have the item, use the slots to use the spell (Like a Standard of the Damned) really changes the dynamic of the game.

Re: Drain Life
 

Hey that sounds like the faerun game that Soapy ran. It was quite fun. Sadly I made a couple of booboo's in the mod ( Clams used fire gems and growth was too powerful ) but it worked out pretty well.