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Ermor
Playing Ulm. Steel Faith. Against Ermor (those undead guys).
Some of the provinces I'm taking over have only a few hundred population. How do I get the population back up? Or can't I? I don't have growth domain, so.... |
Re: Ermor
Too bad for you.
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Re: Ermor
By design, Ermor has a dominion that kills off the population very quickly, leaving them worthless in terms of gold income and supply. That's one of their main strengths, since they don't need either. Growth scale wouldn't help you much - it's only 0.2% growth per turn per tick, so it's only noticeable in provinces with high population base. In other words, you are stuck with it. Here is a guide that might help you in dealing with Ermor as a novice player (it's for Doms I, but many things will still apply).
http://illwinter.com/defeat_ermor.html [ November 15, 2003, 21:42: Message edited by: HJ ] |
Re: Ermor
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Now we dont have counter when Ermor kills the pop, we cannot remove curse, and the curse spell is so cheap, Ermor cannot defend against turn undead..etc. Frankly, some things are totally unbalanced. |
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I would enjoy having, say, an item and/or spell that protects against getting cursed, and a costly way to remove a curse, but I don't think curses are unbalanced, because they just make afflictions more likely. That is actually an interesting counter-balance to super-combattants. The reason I'd like protection or (especially) removal options is just for roleplaying and my preferred play style of trying to keep experienced fighters alive. I also enjoy the lack of easy ways to repopulate provinces for similar reasons - it's an interesting effect that adds flavor, and part of the interest is that it is hard to undo. I suppose it would be interesting if there were some difficult/rare ways to do this, perhaps by relocating population rather than making people appear out of thin air, or slowly through high-level nature magic or something (there is already Wish, Growth Scale, and I thought some nature spells). If it becomes relatively easy or common, though, it would reduce the uniqueness of that element of play. As for defending undead, I assume by "Turn Undead" you mean Banishment, which is resisted by magic resistance, which can be strengthened by Antimagic, or (I think) the dark blessings, no? Again, this too seems like one of the more interesting and colorful aspects of the game (that summoning and banishing are both relatively easy for certain units, rather than unbalanced. Of course, I am still (after several SP games) much closer to the "wow, look at all these neat things" stage of analysis than the "competetive MP guru" stage. PvK |
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You are using a somewhat different definition of "unbalanced". Consider the simple game of rock-paper-scissors. Would you say that the game is unbalanced? "Paper has no defense against scissors!"
Returning to the discussion at hand, each nation has strengths and weaknesses - there's nothing wrong with that, in fact that's what makes this game so interesting. That said, there *are* balance issues in the game, but they are complex enough that most of them will take a while to be certain of. The two that seem obvious to me are that a) combat pretenders in general are probably underpriced for their relative benefits, and b) the blood economy is more boost-able than the magic/gold economies, which makes a bigger difference now that both of the latter have been scaled down. Compared to those, other balance issues seem quite minor to me, but your mileage may vary. |
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I agree that population killing domains and curse are the two things that bother me the most about this game but hey we can always beg counters to them in Dominions 3. Sammual |
Re: Ermor
Yeah, a growth domain would not help you. Unfortunately, in Dominions there is no minimum growth in a growth domain, and the maximal growth rate is .7% (or a doubling time of roughly 100 turns) so you can never regrow population in low-population provinces. By turn 40, if you started with a pop-300 province on turn 1, and had a growth-3 scale, you'd have 390 people. And that's assuming you can increase population in increments of less than 10 people, which I'm not really sure about... if the minimal increment is 10, then you can never increase population in a province with less than 1430 people, unless there's some randomness thrown in.
A lot of people seem to want more growth possibilities, but the developers are gloomy pessimists who like to dwell in dark, apocalyptic worlds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Which is nice because it brings interesting Blood and Death spells, but unfortunate in terms of curing battle afflictions and regrowing population. But maybe a base pop. growth slider will be added, or the scale effects will be adjustable with mods, or a minimum population growth per turn will be added (to abstract immigration) - with a minimum of 10 pop/turn/growth scale, your +3 growth, 300 pop province would hit 1470 by turn 40! -Cherry P.S. I also think that population should flow from province to province based on population happiness, which would be a combination of unrest, taxes, and scales... where growth, order, neutral heat, low unrest, high defense, fortresses, temples, and low taxes all increase happiness, and patrols prevent emigration. Death domains, taxes, blood-hunting, and patrols would still decrease population, but half the reduction would be to death, and half would be due to emigration. [ November 15, 2003, 23:36: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
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I would like to see ways to reduce the chance of getting cursed (item) and/or ways of removing it (Wish or other high powered spell) but I like curse as a SC defense. Sammual |
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If a minimum population growth is set, it should be 1 pop/turn/scale at max. Keep in mind at .2% a growth scale a +1 growth only gives +1 pop/turn with 500 people, so if the min was set above +1 pop/turn/scale there'd be no growth advantage for large provinces.
Person summoning spells and curse curing spells are fine with me as long as they are made really really REALLY expensive. I shudder at the consequences of mass castings of pop raising spells combined with 200% patrol. If it was made too cheap pop raising spells would just bring back patrol. And in mp at least ermor's population killing is unbalanced against it more than for it, what with how every human player doesn't want to see valuable lands destroyed and will work together against ermor. Curse curing is nice for doing rp stuff but in practice a cheap curse cure would make supercombatants even more important. Curse is effectively an anti-supercombantant spell: against anything weaker you're better off using magic that just kills it rather than trying to make it acquire battle injuries. An item that protects would just become standard for sc's so that might not be a great idea. Note that the curing of battle wounds + the variety of magic for forging makes arcoscephale perfect for setting up supercombatants in my opinion. Wish doing either would work fine. And paper is clearly the unbalanced one. Rock never even has a chance. |
Re: Ermor
I haven't tried it (in Dom I, let alone II), but a reading of the strings in the Dom I binary suggests to me that you could wish for "population", "people", "populace", "peasants", or "commoners". It would certainly make more sense than wishing for "death" or "to die".
It may generate a message of the form "Suddenly a whole bunch of people appeared in {province name}." |
Re: Ermor
Yes, it was mentioned in an earlier thread that it was possible to get extra population with a wish.
PvK |
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You can defend yourself pretty easily vs Ermor's Dominion: invest more desing points in your own dominion, build temples & preach. You will only have porblems with curse if you put all your eggs in one basket, and if you do so you are playing lotery & deserve it. If you still insist on doing so at least have the sense of developing one of the multiple ways to cure afflictions. Ermor can defend itself vs banishment with MR pumping spells & unholy prayers (if these still exist in Dom II). Lesser undead like soulless will still die in droves, but being a meat shield to take the hits from your better troops is part of their job anyway. |
Re: Ermor
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Now we dont have counter when Ermor kills the pop, we cannot remove curse, and the curse spell is so cheap, Ermor cannot defend against turn undead..etc. Frankly, some things are totally unbalanced. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I tend to agree with you on this. Curse is a low level spell, and there is no spell like remove curse. Why? It is a pain to play against Ermor, since it is totally wiping out the population of the provinces. We cannot summon/conjure/create population. Why? It is hellish hard to remove battle afflictions. [In some cases it is impossible.] Why? It is way to easy to 'get some' battle afflictions.... Seriously these things should be changed. Every tactics must have some counter tactics, it is a "key part" of all strategy games, this is very true! This has nothing to do with the "generic rock-paper-scissors" game type. |
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Dominions already lets you romp around with supercombatants -- especially the AI does, since it's not particularly clued about pulling out the counters. Curse happens to be one of those counters.
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Re: Ermor
How is that a part of strategy then?
Sounds like someone marched their army into a desert and is asking why there are no farms to burn down and pillage to feed their troops. I consider Ermor like difficult terrain that you can't tackle head on; like you do with other things. Which is good. |
Re: Ermor
Curse increases your chance of getting Battle Afflictions.
Most units die before getting a Battle Affliction. Super Combatants and Jotun are the only things hurt badly by curse. If Battle Afflictions bother you play Arcoscephale, research Enchantment 5 and empower a caster to Nature 5 and cast Gift of Health, or research Conjuration 8 empower a caster to Nature 5 and summon a Faerie Queen. Sammual |
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Curse is a low level spell, and there is no spell like remove curse. Why? It is a pain to play against Ermor, since it is totally wiping out the population of the provinces. We cannot summon/conjure/create population. Why? It is hellish hard to remove battle afflictions. [In some cases it is impossible.] Why? It is way to easy to 'get some' battle afflictions.... Seriously these things should be changed. Every tactics must have some counter tactics, it is a "key part" of all strategy games, this is very true! This has nothing to do with the "generic rock-paper-scissors" game type. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Curses will not win your games, cursing is a defensive and longterm tactic to hurt opponents. Most MP players do not seem to consider curses or afflictions as unbalancing. Curses are only a real limiting factor to players that concentrate significant effort to maximise one or a few units. Making curses counterable would make supercombatants both harder to deal with and the players using them less cautious. The same goes for afflictions. I am not sure that unbalanced is even an applicable term for single player games, frustrating yes, but unbalanced? Why do you say it is too easy to get afflictions? Why should it be harder? In what way is the loss represented by getting cursed or gaining an affliction a less acceptable loss then other permanent losses such as loosing a unit. If you view your army as the combined strength of the units in it, getting the limp affliction on your Ice Devil Nycafor is not much different from loosing a lava warrior. Both represent a loss of total combat capability, why is one unbalanced and not the other? People die in war. Population growth in games often give rise to cheesy tactics, where players first minimise taxes in order to max pop then raise the taxes as soon as it hits its growth shelf, or herd their population around their planets/cities like Texas Longhorns. Dominions is not a serf breeding simulation, many 4X strategy games are, that doesn't mean that Dominions II need follow suit. Is there any particular reason you think that population should grow more abundantly other than that it does in most other games? Population loss is as much a weakness as a strength for Ermor. Dominions is a conservative game, meddling by centralised power structures results in damage that will only very slowly recover, social engineering doesnt work, the evil empire must be stopped before it destroys the world etc. Also what wendigo said. |
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I'm not exactly one for realism in fantasy wargames, but I do understand the strategical elements of imbalance. The atom bomb is (currently) unbalanced in the real world- the potential ramifications of how it's unbalanced is a political discussion belonging to an entirely different sort of forum.
Unrecoverable curse and horror mark, IMHO, are fine. Neither one is tremendously disabling. I do think that recovery from battle afflictions could be slightly more available, as with population growth, but this is only because these things make sense to me in the overall worldview (war kills stuff, populations still increase globally because that's what happens). People get hurt, but then get better. Maybe it's just because I live in an age where overpopulation and advanced medicine are taken for granted. |
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Of course, the simplest solution to the original posters problem is to play against another nation rather than Ermor.
It's also really beginning to bother me that so many posters run up against an aspect of Dominions they don't like or agree with, and announce "this is broken" or "this must be fixed" or describe the tactic as "abuse", without any explanation or rational argument. C'mon people, the designers have obviously spent thousands of hours designing/playing this game, and things are like they are for good reasons. If you do honestly think something ought to be changed, lets hear your analysis - Illwinter also has a great track record in responding to the wishes of the player community - when the community provides a well-reasoned argument. |
Re: Ermor
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[ November 16, 2003, 21:31: Message edited by: HJ ] |
Re: Ermor
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Curse is a low level spell, and there is no spell like remove curse. Why? It is a pain to play against Ermor, since it is totally wiping out the population of the provinces. We cannot summon/conjure/create population. Why? It is hellish hard to remove battle afflictions. [In some cases it is impossible.] Why? It is way to easy to 'get some' battle afflictions.... Seriously these things should be changed. Every tactics must have some counter tactics, it is a "key part" of all strategy games, this is very true! This has nothing to do with the "generic rock-paper-scissors" game type. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Curses will not win your games, cursing is a defensive and longterm tactic to hurt opponents. Most MP players do not seem to consider curses or afflictions as unbalancing. Curses are only a real limiting factor to players that concentrate significant effort to maximise one or a few units. Making curses counterable would make supercombatants both harder to deal with and the players using them less cautious. The same goes for afflictions. I am not sure that unbalanced is even an applicable term for single player games, frustrating yes, but unbalanced? Why do you say it is too easy to get afflictions? Why should it be harder? In what way is the loss represented by getting cursed or gaining an affliction a less acceptable loss then other permanent losses such as loosing a unit. If you view your army as the combined strength of the units in it, getting the limp affliction on your Ice Devil Nycafor is not much different from loosing a lava warrior. Both represent a loss of total combat capability, why is one unbalanced and not the other? People die in war. Population growth in games often give rise to cheesy tactics, where players first minimise taxes in order to max pop then raise the taxes as soon as it hits its growth shelf, or herd their population around their planets/cities like Texas Longhorns. Dominions is not a serf breeding simulation, many 4X strategy games are, that doesn't mean that Dominions II need follow suit. Is there any particular reason you think that population should grow more abundantly other than that it does in most other games? Population loss is as much a weakness as a strength for Ermor. Dominions is a conservative game, meddling by centralised power structures results in damage that will only very slowly recover, social engineering doesnt work, the evil empire must be stopped before it destroys the world etc. Also what wendigo said. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have no problems with curse and/or Ermor. I have only 1 complaint: the supercombattants. It is kinda ridicolous that you can massacre whole armies with 1 unit. Yes, yes this is a fantasy game, but still, this is ruining a part of the game. The problem is..that I see no way to do anything about it. You get a strong unit, equip it with godly stuff, and voila: you have your own killing machine.......I don't like this. In SP, you can abuse this easily, since the AI won't make SCs. [At least I haven't seen one in the demo before turn 40.] In MP you are FORCED to use them, since your oppoment will use them as well...I am really pissed about this. |
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You are 'forced to use an SC in MP'? Added to that is the obligatory 'if you want to be competative'. I still disagree, there are enough ways to master the SCs that I don't think I'll worry about them too much...
Of course some of it is the map size and the number of opponents. If the map is big enough so that you probably won't run into the SC early its easier to not use one, I've not found my expansion to be hampered when not using a SC anyway, usually the boost you get in research and earlier summons makes up for the conqurering abilities of the SC. Also I don't see why you can't play a game with random opponents as it is. All you have to do is to randomize them yourself. Of course you'll still know who your up against from the start, but you'll be forced into playing against whatever nations are chosen. You could also ask a wife, roomate, child, ... to randomly pick the oppostion for you I suppose. Yes its a bit more cumbersome, but it is emminently doable http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
Re: Ermor
You can wish for population, or my personal fav..'priestess'....slap a GoR on her and you have your own affliction healing machine for any race
[ November 18, 2003, 07:16: Message edited by: Dekent ] |
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