Air vs Nature
 

Blessing Effects.

I have never found myself in a situation where I had to say to myself "Air 9 would be great on this unit". I believe that is an oversight.

With the somewhat limited use of missile weapons; the fact that most sacred units cannot be mass produced because they are capital only it means if you are going to go for a good bless effect; it needs to count.

To that end; Air got the short end of the stick. The base ability at 4+ is decent ability Air Shield 20+. It isn't the best around but it can apply to a variety of units and is semi-useful. The point I find hard to justify is Air 9 and 75% Shock.

Now, I know in Dom1 there were issues with mass Air Elementals and the superiority of air and I *do* see it's usefulness. But I what I do not see is it's cost for effect. Especially when I have an example in another bless effect that has both a resistance and an additional powerful effect. Now maybe I haven't been hit by enough massings of spring hawks with orb lightnings everywhere to justify it.

Can anyone give me examples where this ability has dramatically changed their sacred unit's survivability?

Now lets look at Nature 9. Base ability 4+ is Berserk1+ 1 point per 2 levels. At Nature 8 +3 Berserk. Berserk is an all around great ability. Even alone this is a good ability to have on sacred units and makes for a good choice. The secondary ability at Nature 9, is Regeneration and 50% Poison Resistance.

Not just one powerful effect (Regeneration) but kind of an 'extra' thrown into the mix with the Poison Resistance. This hampers one entire race's troops type of damage (Atlantis). Plus regeneration and the berserk ...

Am I wrong in my thought pattern; or do people use Air 9 consistantly and I'm just not seeing it?

Re: Air vs Nature
 

It would be useful as a counter to the famous Storm, Wrathful Skies, Shimmering Fields extended combo.

But no, I've never found myself considering an air 9 pretender for the bless effects. Now as an Orb Lightning specialist on the other hand...

Re: Air vs Nature
 

I believe spells like Wrathful Skies (I think that's the one, anyway) are worth consideration in conjunction with the bless effect.

That said, I pretty much don't find *any* bless effect worth spending up to L9, period.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Lava Warriors. Nuff said.

And some of the level 9 blessing are just fantastic. Like fire 9. Extra attack+flaming weapons.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

You use Air 9 on Abysia? Why not nature 9? You get an additional 3 Berserk, regen and poison. Most arrows/xbows are only going to berserk a Lava warrior, not kill them.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Nature doesn't fit the theme, i don't need any more berserk on them, have you ever seen massed xbows and their regeneration will be rather marginal. And 75% shock resistance is a 75% resistance against the armor piercing electric attacks.

Actualy, i use Fire 9 with abysia.

[ November 26, 2003, 20:14: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

But at 55 gold 30 resources, how many of them are you ever going to have? Not many, and fewer than if you'd used the points spent in getting to fire 9 on scales.

That's what keeps me from being terribly impressed by the bless system - it affects only a small portion of your troops.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

With Moloch, i can afford order and prod 3, growth and luck 0, heat 3 and magic 2 and take a decent castle and fire 9.

[ November 26, 2003, 20:20: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

My opinion:

The only blessing effects that I have found potent are nature and fire. And then only in certain circumstances.

Wrathful Skies is no longer as potent as before, as it hits fewer spots every round. Still very strong in large/long battles, but harder to use as a mage versus army weapon. I consider this a good thing.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Thats fire, why choose fire instead of air? There is a Titan with 3 Air to start so same point cost.

Exactly Alex, that is why I wonder at the use of other abilities. They are functionally useful. Earth gets Reinvigoration, which is good for both Sacred and Mages. Then +4 Prot, which if you pick the right race can help quite a bit. Death has fear. The only one in that same type of boat is Blood which has a good base ability +2 Str at Path 4, but Death Curse is ... bleh. Even if you use throw away units like Flaggelents or Battle Vestals, in order to curse everything.


Edit: "Exactly Alex ..."

[ November 26, 2003, 20:25: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

The Titan costs 125 points. Moloch costs 50.

Moloch is immune to Abysian Friendly Fireballs.

Titan isn't.

IMO the fire evocations are better than air evocations nowadays thanks to nerfed Orb Ligthning. And if someone says something about the precision of fire magic, i tell you that Abysians have precision of 8.

And Moloch is more in-theme with Abysia.

[ November 26, 2003, 20:26: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Then why did you say "Lava Warriors .. Nuff Said." unless you were replying to Bless effects not being useful.

I agree that some are useful and in theme. Morloch works well with Abysia if you choose to go standard. I'm not arguing that point; only the point that you couldn't do the same with Air and have it be as viable -- which is my contention.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, if you consider the Mausoleum a decent castle, and are willing to go with a dominion strenth of 4. But a few tweaks to those scales, and fire 9 is affordable for an Abyssian Moloch.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

I've never had any temptation to go Air for bless effects. What value is Air Shield 20%? None. Air Shield starts to become valuable at around 50%, IMO. Unless I aim for Air 9, I don't care about Air for blessing.

I give level-9-specific (not including cumulative bonuses) blessing effects the following rankings:

Best to worst:

Fire
Water
Nature (which goes to #1 for huge sacred units)
Earth
Air
Astral (higher for Flagellants)

Useless (or I don't understand them):

Blood
Death

So... I'd love a Fire-Water pretender for Marignon=)

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Air shield 20% is still useful for preventing friendly fire. Meaning, it might not be great when someone is aiming at the troop, but stray missiles get deflected fairly often. I use it when I know I'm going to have a lot of missile troops that I want to keep from butchering my sacred melee units (Marignon, Ulm, Man).

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I bet +4 protection from Earth 9 is about as good at increasing arrow survivability (say, for arrow-weak Flags) as 45% air shield. Plus, it's useful in many other situations as well.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think you dont understand http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
the fear effect of death is generated for each sacred unit, and around him (depending of the potency). With a good number of blessed units, like flagellant, they could scare even very high morale units.

Aside that, I never actually played very far with blessing effects, too costly to my taste (320 points minimum I think).

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Its not suprising that given my penchant for bless effect/dual bless effect (two 9's) races that I like alot more of the bless effects than most seem to.

so:

Nature - great for supercombatents but its bad for your sacred mages (think Abysia) so its often just not a choice. Also not good for Sidhe or Van as they rely on not getting hit as opposed to getting hit and then losing some defence so they get hit easier. Very good with Niefel giants.

Earth - I like Earth as I'm trying not to lose the slow to build sacred troops and I also love the re-invigoration on my mages and Super combatents. Think reinvigoration plus water9 for quickness on your sacred mages. Unfortunately there are no water/earth pretenders I'm aware of so you can't go to overboard on this one - unless you are running an Abysia death 3 race and feeling playful. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Fire - so far I've only found this good on troops who are already really good. Even then my Earth Mother Machaka race out performed my Lord of the Desert Sun Version - I didn't lose a hunter spider (lost a few riders) with earth 9. I've only tested each once so these results are not firm. I like fire but find it tricky to keep the troops alive and thats a big thing to me. Still be fun with Van.

Water - My n.1 right now. Think double speed mages who don't have to cast quickness, think Van who smash knights as they are virtually unhitable once blessed (I have even looked at a water 10 race with Vanheim) and also the extra offense really matter. The C'tis Serpent Dancers and Sidhe are more water babies who love the extra defense and attack - makes Cu Sidhe useful to. Best results I've had with Mictlan so far have been using mainly Sun Warriors with a water9 blood5 Fountain of Blood and as with Vanheim, Tuatha and Abysia your battle mages are sacred so 2x casting.

Death - low level death bless effects seem very worthwhile making the PoD with death 4-6 and something 9 a very good bless God. Serpent Dancers with fear have got alot going for them. Still working on death 9 and I'm going to start a thread soon on how to kill my mages. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Blood - I've only used this at low levels for the extra strength bonus as this can make or break troops. Death curse - seems a bit specific in its usefulness given the cost. Flagellents getting the Last laugh on super combatents, knights etc would be sorta cheery.

Astral - I've tried this with Marignon and considered it with Van but I need to find out if mirror image is canceled when you use up the Twist of Fate - anyone? Extra MR could be worthwhile for the right sacred troop as the game goes on. Dunno.

Air - On the whole I'll give this a miss for know but then air's pretty powerful so does it need strong bless effects too? Same could be said for Astral.

I'm looking at ways of combining multiple effects to change the way troops/mages operate. To me the bless effects are the biggest change in the game.

In general bless effects are good value for the races with good sacred troops and hardier to get value out of for races whose sacred troops are more borderline. I suspect that the better Bless effect races will be fairly evenly balenced compared to non-bless effects races. C'tis, Van and Machaka look the easiest to get good returns out of the ones I've tried so far with perhaps Van and C'tis being the strongest. Niefel looked good (haven't played it since I first got the demo) but somewhat tricky to play. Tuatha is decent but tricky, Mictlan highly challenging. Haven't had much success with Marignon yet but there is still more to try there. Abysia is an unusual bless effect race as the 1 strat move of the Lava Wariors is off putting while the death3 option opens up a heap of points. Abysian mages work well with bless effects and there is no reason you can't have some fun with Lava Warriors - just don't rely on them they way you can/should rely on sacred troops with other races.

I believe one of the keys to most bless effects races is to build the key sacred troops right from the start. Finding a good supporting troop to catch arrows/spells is often crucial and I generally go for strat move 2 MI costing something like 10gps/11-13 res. They aren't much good at fighting but they do their job as someone has got to die. More tricky vs players but it works a treat vs indies and its nice to be using troops that I wouldn't have bought in Dom1. If they have Javelins all the better as these seem very accurate in Dom2.

Still more races to try and gold mines to be plumbed. This is all very much preliminary thoughts and they will evolve over time and testing.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oops, my bad. I though fear was only a graduated Death trait; I didn't realize level-9 death got both Life after Death AND additional fear.

Hmmm, wait, no. The greater fear is only for undeads. So, I still think the Death-9 bonus is weak compared to others, though the cumulative effects are nice.

[ November 27, 2003, 17:00: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Air Shield 45% is Air 10, unimaginably high.

As for the naked flags... they have 9HP, protection 0. Shortbow arrows do 10 damage. So they have a 62.66% chance of dying from an arrow hit.

Chance of flagellant dying from a shortbow, according to bless effect:

No Bless: 62.66%
Air Shield 20% (Air 4): 50.13%
Air Shield 45% (Air 10): 34.46%
Protection 4 (Earth 9): 30.16%

Those come from the fourth chart here: http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=000431

For no bless or air blessing, the arrow roll has to beat the flag's roll by at least -1 for a kill, but for Earth 9, the arrow has to beat the flag by at least +3.

For longbows and crossbows, Air 10 would be more valuable, of course. Regardless, since Earth 9 allows flags to survive numerous situations in which they would normally die (not just arrows) I like it better... not worthwhile, of course, I'd want fire and blood. But still better than air.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Isn't it 80%?

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Isn't it 80%? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not according to DominionsX...

Just tested. Hey, what do you know! DominionsX is wrong, Air 10 gives Air Shield 80%. In that case, it is VERY valuable. Um, Nerfix? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Arg. I'll have to fix many things when i get to vacation...

Rigth now schoolwork is killing me...

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So you think there are issues over having enough points to make bless effects work? This was the main concern I read before the demo came out and yet when I made a related point that if the luck scale returned to how it was in Dom1 this would strangle most bless effect races - some players couldn't even begin to get where I was coming from. Given your comment perhaps you agree that bless effects races are viable or non-viable dependant on points available not simply a bit different with 120-160 less points. I was suprised that experianced players disagreed - made me feel like I'm on another planet. Not an altogether bad feeling though as I have always enjoyed travel. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I'm looking forward to seeing a revised table of air bless effects which may make a big difference on wether or not I use them with races like the Van.

Cheers

Keir

[ November 28, 2003, 00:01: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Revised Air table:

Air......Effect

4.........20% Air Shield
5.........30% Air Shield
6.........40% Air Shield
7.........50% Air Shield
8.........60% Air Shield
9.........70% Air Shield + 75% Shock Resist
10.......80% Air Shield + 75% Shock Resist

Pretty sweet at high levels, for archer races (or against archer races). Especially nice for IF Ulm, Marginon, and all races with holy mages that don't have Air magic. 10 is too expensive, though; I'd never go above 9.

-Cherry

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Not if you get Construction 4, with Air 3. Then you have a Staff of the Storms which protects all your units, not just your Sacred units.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I hadn't noticed that the dreaded Staff of Sorms is still con 4 - I guess I assumed it was going to be made con 6.

Still doesn't wipe the value of air shield though as its always been the case that archers are very counterable as the game goes on and people tend to use them, and encounter, them early. As the game goes on the lightning resistance becomes better and may make up for the declining value of the air shield. The key to the air shield is that not having to build dross archer catchers early so expansion becomes easier.

I'm going to give Air9 a go with the Van so watch out for Orb Lightning.

Many, many thanks Saber for digging all this up. You have saved us from ourselves. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

cheers

Keir

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I bet +4 protection from Earth 9 is about as good at increasing arrow survivability (say, for arrow-weak Flags) as 45% air shield. Plus, it's useful in many other situations as well. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Doubtful. Protection gives increasing returns as you get higher. I don't think it would do much for practically-naked Flags. At most they might barely survive some hits that would otherwise kill them (and have a high chance of getting an affliction).

On the other hand, 45% air shield isn't very much - what level of air do you get that at?

I think Flags need to play to their strengths and get either Fire 9, or some blood, so they can do more damage in the limited time they have. Trying to improve their survivability is a lost cause.

KoC, on the other hand, will benefit a lot from Earth 9 (both the reinvig and the prot), while they don't really need air shield except against crossbows. And reinvigoration is always nice for priest-mages. Offensive blessings aren't bad, but not as good as helping them stay alive longer because they are so expensive.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

The other advantage is that Air Shield protects your troops against friendly fire... while staff of storms renders friendly archers useless, AFAICT.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And that's how I've been using it so far mostly. Crossbows, longbows and arbalests can hurt your sacred knights while they are pursuing the routers pretty badly. Even a little bit of air shield helps with that, as they are already far away, and the missiles are not targeting them, but stray ones fall all over the place and cause damage. I might not want to go all the way with air, but 4 air is useful for your pretender as well in combat, in addition to it not really being that common on summoned mages. It's not as expensive as earth 9, yet it helps the survivability of already superior and expensive sacred troops, as well as protecting your priests/casters from stray arrows. Besides, prot 4 is not all that great against AP missiles anyway. Low % air shield might not be noticeable at close range, but in firing all the way across the field it's decent enough, as it even further reduces the chance that the odd missile that hits the square kills someone.

[ November 28, 2003, 02:24: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Just finished trying Van using the All Father with Air9 Death4. Can't say it worked well. I seemed to suffer from as many missile hits on the Van as previously (probably because my Axe/Jav were on "fire") and I missed the extra defense and offence of water9.

On the plus side when I went to war with Pythium all their archers were on target mounted (very sensible) and the air shield helped there. I found the poison cloud of the fleeing hydra hatcheling the worst part of facing Pythium.

I didn't keep playing long enough to make use of the shock resistance and my worry with it is the Van still get hit and lose their mirror image.

I'm still interested in trying both fire9 and blood4 with Van to see how this increases their offence. Might go test it out and see if I can get a blood4/water9 or Blood4/fire9 pretender.

cheers

Keir

Re: Air vs Nature
 

I still want a Water-9 Fire-9. That would be insane, but only Dead Ermor can have one, since there are no water/fire pretenders.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

I don't quite grasp the benefits or high Ratings of death blessing effect. To me, unless playing a nation with undead sacred troops, death blessing is probably the worst one. At death 4, your troops get lesser fear -4, which means that they influence one square out of 8 that surround them, and force morale check with +1 bonus for the opponent. Now, unless the sacred unit is completely surrounded, the chance of fear actually influencing the square that contains an enemy unit is pretty slim. And if you're surrounded, it won't matter anyway. Even if there are three sacred units in the square, their chance of actually scaring someone wouldn't be too good. The only thing that might help is that in prolonged battles the fear effect might begin to build up on the enemy units that Last long. Either that or you have to be really lucky with where the aura influence falls every turn.
To add to that, many other paths have much better combat spells than death if you're planning on using your pretender for combat. Summoning a couple of skeletons and dropping from exhaustion doesn't really compare with other things like blade winds and mistform. The only thing I can think of is adding it to the existing fear aura on a pretender, such as LoD or cyclops.
In short, unless your sacred units are already fearful, such as wailing ladies, or you go very high with death so as to get a significant size fear aura, which is hard, I don't see what would the benefit of fear 4 be. But, of course, I'm always open to learn something new. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ November 28, 2003, 06:18: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Try using Eagle Warriors, Valkyries and anything that has a chance of standing up to a fight. A wave of units with fear will break initial units and force back everything but the largest squads, and if you have fliers; then it usually affects commanders, if you pick the right Category that has the reserve pile.

Fear is a good effect to use in mass, for non-undead; but not really any other circumstances.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Again, in theory and without doing extensive tests:
The chance of fear effect aura falling in any of the squares surrounding the unit is 1/8. If you're using masses of troops, this means that a lot of the squares around the unit will be occupied by friendlies, meaning that the fear aura influencing those will be worthless. Of course, if they have an aura spanning 3 or 4 squares, that will start to count for something, but the aura of only one square for death 4 is not worth it, IMHO. Probability of seeing significant effects are not very good, especially when you compare it to the fact that boosting other stats with some other blessing would possibly result in more kills, and hence in at least the same effect, only more certain.

[ November 28, 2003, 07:13: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Sometimes all you need is 1 squad to break to completely turn a battle. Or if you use flyers, one commander break and the battle turns your way.

Especially if you are fighting in your own domain or used in tandem with any sort of Panic, Terror type of spells.

In theory it may seem 'weak' but in practice, it is in fact much more useful for certain races. Anything that uses their sacred units for flanking or flying units. Mach, Van, Mic, Marig are prime examples of Death 4 being useful; though it is always better at 6 or 8 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

[ November 28, 2003, 07:29: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you are right that this is how it works then Death is pretty mislery but are you sure of your explantion whereby -4 fear only hits 1 square around the unit at random? I would have thought it would automatically begin by assigning the fear affect to the square in front of the creature with fear.

Certainly hard to know for sure from practice - I look forward to confirmation on this.

cheers

Keir

[ November 28, 2003, 10:15: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have just been testing a fire9/water9 Vanheim race using the Moloch - any race that gets the Moloch can do this without having a death scale as long as its 1 click or more off center for temp.

Its a good way to play if you find battles normally take to long. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

However a caution - this is not a fast race as the sloth3 tends to delay early expansion by a turn and so on down the line. The idea is that you have ultra nasty basic troops as the game goes on. And watch out for your infantries javalins as they can be really annoying to the Van - I'm not so keen on javelins after more testing.

In my experiance super troops and mid range super combatents die rather easily in Dom2. There seem to be a heap of spells to worry about from soul slay to blindness, combustion, curse, the Machaka fever, poison effects of Hydra, and the list goes on. I lost a pile of water9/fire9 blessed Van to the heat effect of the golden Naga after having routed its army earlier tonight and an over the top prophet to a fleeing Hydra Hatchlings poison cloud. There seems to be higher perentage of pesky mages with indies than in Dom1 which is part of the difficulty.

What races other than Van can build Sacred troops at places other than their capital?

What sacred summons are there? Tomb Wyrms are unholy but thats all I can think of right now though I'm sure there other unholy undead ones. Any good sacred blood summons?

cheers

Keir

[ November 28, 2003, 10:13: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you are right that this is how it works then Death is pretty mislery but are you sure of your explantion whereby -4 fear only hits 1 square around the unit at random? I would have thought it would automatically begin by assigning the fear affect to the square in front of the creature with fear.

Certainly hard to know for sure from practice - I look forward to confirmation on this.

cheers

Keir </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, I'm basing my assumptions on the statements made by the devs in the following threads:

Lots of info on fear effect & radius in this thread:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...4;t=000294;p=2

Also some info on area effects (this time for banners, but it's still applicable):
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=000214

If I understand correctly, lesser fear -4 which you get from the death 4 blessing results only in 1 square (or maybe 2 squares, it's nt really clear) out of 8 that surround the unit being randomly selected for the effect and enemies, if present in that square, have to make a morale check while having a bonus of +1. That's why I think it's really not much. If units have intrinsic fear, which gives an area of 5, it stacks nicely with the blessing then. But death 4 blessing is IMHO a rather weak effect.

[ November 28, 2003, 11:27: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ermorian wailing ladies and juggernaut come to mind as sacred summons.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why not a death scale for Vanheim? I can see that death might be a problem with maiximum bless races if the sacred troops are resource heavy and capital only. But Vans are neither. I think death -2 and sloth -1 allows for a faster intial expansion.

Patrik

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ermorian wailing ladies and juggernaut come to mind as sacred summons. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">T'ien Ch'i Celestial Servant/Soldier and S&A Demon of Heavenly Fires/Rivers are sacred, too.

Void Gate creatures are sacred, but aren't summoned in the ordinary way.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

Angels(excluding Fallen) are sacred.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

The precision bonus from high Air magic is usually my driving factor to purchase it, but it's only in testing that I'll take Air 9.

Earth-9 is great for Pythium pretenders, because Reinvigoration works extremely well with Communion Master. Yes, it does.

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wow, it's just Marignon, I guess. Should be more, I think...

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks for putting me onto the morale thread HJ as I missed that one.

Regarding the Fear affects I'm still not sure if its a random square. The only phrase I could find is that "it spreads somewhat eratically." However I'm in a rush so please let me know if I've missed something. Working on the general principle that the developers of Dom tend to make sensible decisions I still suspect that "it spreads somewhat eratically" starting with the square directly in front of the fear unit. Where else is the scariest place to be in relation to a terrifying creature?

I might be guilty of hoping I'm right on this as I do like the idea of adding terror effects on sacred troops for alot of reasons including thematic. If it is useful at low levels it is a good way of getting an extra bless effect when you can't afford to go all the way - often the case. As it adds a new ability at low levels rather than modifying an existing one its potential for changing troop types is significant.

BTW - this is a great thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I've learnt heaps from following it and testing some of the ideas out.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Air vs Nature
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Indeed. This very line of reasoning has been puzzeling around inside my head. Part of the decision is based on the actual race for me - should a race be dieing off, roughly stable, or growing? As I see it Vanheim main theme (I really don't want to lose Valkrie) should not have a high growth rate and giving them 0 will mean there is a tendency for the race to slowly decline in numbers which feels about right. Having them actually dieing off feels a little odd to me.

However excluding thematic logic (or finding another) a death scale will definitely speed the start in return for sacrificing some long term power. If the fast start grabs enough the long term power will follow. As Van can be built anywhere, at the rate of your dominion per castle, they are one of the few Bless effect races that can consider a death scale. On the other hand if you are a little patient you will rapidly find you have pretty much as many resources as you want so its not a disaster to take the sloth instead of death - just slower.

Cheers

Keir

[ November 29, 2003, 01:30: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Air vs Nature
 

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

However excluding thematic logic (or finding another) a death scale will </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Lead straight to Hellheim with their superior Valkryie and death magic - "Ride of the Valkryie" anyone?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Keir