"New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

Have anybody checked out the (not exactly) new Pythium? I think it has become even more powerful. The legionaires are very useful. You don't have to build Emerald Guards all the time.

Also, javelin on the hands of legionaires, who have decent protection, are quite devastating. I guess somebody is right that javelin has been improved in Dom 2.

Any similar experience?

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

Pythium really does seem overly strong compared to just about any other nation. The strat move 2 legionnaires with short swords and javelins (Principe) are in my experience by far the best national troop type (complete with standards). It would appear that traits that alone would make a nation powerful have been stacked onto Pythium.

[ December 22, 2003, 17:25: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

A side note: the usefulness of javelin has made the Sun Warriors of Mictlin very interesting. They're holy and cheap (17/14). If you could get some good bless effects for them, they would be very usable.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In my experiance these are about the only useful unit you get for expansion with Mictlan. I have generally tried them with the Earth9 to give them enough protection to get good survivability and they work ok. However inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers makes the Sun Warriors not that significant in the long term. Its the Ulm IF Templers problem only worse as Sun Warriors die easier and as you are so dependent on them early its really hard to build up numbers.

[warning feature imbalence rant ahead]

Pythium is quite remarkable compared to other races and the only explanation I can give for its all round strength is that they wanted some nations to be much better than others. I almost wrote a very sarcastic post on the topic when I was in the midst of suffering with Tien Ch'i themes and Mictlan but managed to restrain myself somewhat. I do still feel that, given the strenght of Pythium (and Arco), the answer for races like the Tien Ch'i themes and Mictlan is simply to make them better and there is alot of scope for this. Its also a powerful argument for improving the accuracy of Abysian mages as Abysia is unlikely to rival Pythium and Arco in terms of strength so why should we have to put up with such a painful, mocking, feature playing Abysia? If some races get it all (or very close) then why can't the "cripple" features in the game get a serious boost? Was it a perverse form of humour to give the race with fire magic and fire resistent troops such a low precision that this seemingly excellent combination proves irritating in practice?

Another one is the low level blood summons that require a powerful blood mage to summon one ok devil a turn. For all the difference low level blood summons make to the game they may as well have left them out. Its an odd combination the extreme caution shown with some features to make sure they arn't to powerful and the richs that the uber races get. Caelum in Dom1 was truly ridiculous. Useability imbalences is the feature that has always annoyed me most about Dominion as it has huge impact on cutting down the avaiable play options and combinations. Fortunatly its not so bad in Dom2 - chiefly because the reduction in the power fo air magicmeans you don't have to have access to air for thunder ward to be a serious contender.

Please Illwinter try to make as many as possible options fun and useful.

Aaah well not to worry. Incompetent Abysian mages and useless low level blood summons have been with us since Dom1 and its unlikely that this will change. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Cheers

Keir

[ December 22, 2003, 21:38: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In my experiance these are about the only useful unit you get for expansion with Mictlan. I have generally tried them with the Earth9 to give them enough protection to get good survivability and they work ok. However inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers makes the Sun Warriors not that significant in the long term. Its the Ulm IF Templers problem only worse as Sun Warriors die easier and as you are so dependent on them early its really hard to build up numbers.

> Snipped <

Keir </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Protection 12 is not bad, it's similar to Man's Sidhe (13) and tower guards (non-holy). Mictlan also has access to the spell "Protection". So their protection could be easily raised to 19. Not bad at all.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My low end on what is a decent Prot for HI is use Ctis City Guard with prot 14 used as arrow catchers with strat move 2 making them very useful HI. Prot 12 for a move 1 HI is pretty dodgy.

Sidhe have glamour and high def to keep them alive while Tower guard arn't very good are they? If they had a move of 2 I could think up some uses for them but as it is I ignore them as belonging to the Category of unfortunate troops. Still the only Man race I've used in Dom2 is Tuatha so I could be wrong.

My Last Mictlan try had the fountain of blood with blood 5 and water 9 to give the Sacred troops and mages a boost in both defence and offence but it didn't work. The best I have done is with earth 9 - though blood 4 makes quite a difference to offensive punch to what are still mediocre HI when blessed. The Sun Warriors have low protection for their role, they are slow strategically and tactically, you can only build a very limited number per turn in your capital *and* they are your best national unit. Problematic. However I'm still keen to work away at Mictlan every once and awhile in the hope something new will pob up - like the upcoming patch. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Your idea of protection is interesting. Lacking a cheap nature mage and with protection having an area of 1 Mass Protection is what is really needed. Mass Protection is too far away to be there when you need it early. Still definitly something to keep in mind as Mass Protection would really seriously improve the army.

Cheers

Keir

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I tend to avoid the Sun warriors entirely, and just go for a middle of expendable normal units with Jaguars on the flanks. With a fire 4/death 4/blood 4 blessing they have little trouble penetrating even independent knights, and they move fairly quickly.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

I tried a bless 9 in nature, with dominions 7 and Jaguar warriors. Works rather well. You should wait to have a significant group of jag before commiting them (so that when one unit is hit, you have fair chances that he wont be hit in the next round). Regeneration prevent afflictions, and allows them to heal when they are in jag form. You almost welcome enemies wich have bowmen, because it wounds your jag, let them transform, and they regenerate when they close in. Also with nature 9 and the 3 attacks of the jag when transformed, they butcher like mad.

try it, there is something salvageable in Mictlan http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

Fire blessed Sun Warriors are pretty effective (no problem with indy knights for example, if one uses slaves to break the charge), and the red dragon is big help in early expansion. Once that is no longer effective, blood magic will be there to fill in. In theory, that is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In my experiance these are about the only useful unit you get for expansion with Mictlan. I have generally tried them with the Earth9 to give them enough protection to get good survivability and they work ok. However inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers makes the Sun Warriors not that significant in the long term. Its the Ulm IF Templers problem only worse as Sun Warriors die easier and as you are so dependent on them early its really hard to build up numbers.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't see what you mean by "inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers". Isn't holy troop production determined by your god's dominion strength (adjusted by number of temples) rather than by the actual dominion you currently have in the province? I could have sworn I could produce 5+ holy troops on the first turn when I only have 1 dominion. In any case, I wouldn't think you would have too much trouble boosting your dominion strength in the capital early - you should get good results just from your god and sacrificing your home temple's slave income. It's later on that Mictlan starts to seriously sag in dominion - when other nations are building multiple temples and have a prophet to boot, and Mictlan is still struggling to find a province to hunt slaves in and afford enough priests to have one to hunt, one to sacrifice and usually some more to lead armies. Mictlan's priests really need to be cheaper - they are so dependent on them, far more than Marignon which gets its priests cheap.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have to admit, I don't understand either. The balance problems are well known and not seriously disputed by anyone, and Dom I/II are often played multiplayer where any balance problem has a serious effect on gameplay.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A lot of low level summons suffer from this problem - they are too much *mage time* for the effect, even if the gem/slave cost is low. Vine men almost have this problem, but some nations have cheap weak nature mages (shaman, bard, dryad) and can get around it. But there are very very few cheap weak blood mages - and no cheap Blood 2 mages. (Pandemoniac 320, Demonbred 280, Skratti 250 are typical of Blood 2 mages IIRC)

The Blood 2 summons, especially, need to give more demons, even if they also cost more slaves. I wouldn't mind seeing all low level blood summons double or triple in both cost and number of demons summoned (or, since they really need a boost, triple the number summoned for double the cost).

Or maybe add items that work like the ivy crown but for all non-commander demon summons (you get +1 or +2 demons of the same type whenever you cast a summon, this would have a bigger effect on 1 demon for 3 slave spells than on Horde from Hell or Infernal Forces) - ivy crown is another way vinemen avoid the "too much mage time" problem. Who summons vinemen without one? How about these:

Infernal Vessel
Level 2 blood, 2 construction misc item
This bowl is specially designed to attract the attention of infernal beings. When the bearer fills the vessel with sacrificial blood to summon demons he will attract more demons than usual (+1 demon summoned per attempt).

Sceptre of Hell
Level 2 blood, 2 fire, 6 construction one-handed weapon
This sceptre grants the wielder greater authority over the hosts of Hell. The wielder will be able to command more demons than usual (+25 demonic leadership), and when he summons demons from the netherworld, more demons will answer his call (+2 demons summoned per attempt). The sceptre allows the wielder to strike his foes with the fires of Hell.
Spell: Hellfire
Attack 1, Damage 10 (Armor piercing, strength not added), Defense 3, Length 2, magic

Of course they wouldn't affect commander summons.

Mictlan in particular could really benefit from some demon troops beefing up its army, but the present summons are very inefficient given the high cost of Mictlan's blood mages. But if you give them an Infernal Vessel to summon those spine devils or fiends of darkness with, they could become dangerous.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think it's so clear cut. Nobody seems to dispute that Pythium and Acroscephale are among the best nations, but I for one don't think they're so much better than the middle of the pack factions. The bottom tier factions on the other hand really are pretty bad.

IMHO multiplayer games are much less susceptible to inbalance, as players tend to adjust their diplomacy to gang up on perceived leaders. For example, I've done just fine against competent players using Pangaea in Dom 1, even despite a weak starting location.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

About the more demons -items... I think that new spells should be added for lower-level demons, always a level higher than the main ritual, which give one/two more demons per casting and cost more. I'm not sure but they might need more magic requirements too. An example for this:

Get Some Devils
fire-2, blood-3
Blood 4
Summons 2 devils.

Another way would be higher level mages summoning more devils. That is, the rituals we have now would summon 1+ devil(s), and with a mage with blood-4 you would get three devils. We would already ahve the items needed...
Because of the quite abusing pretenders one could make (research level 3 to get the effect of level 9 spell!) maybe these should be national summons. The Devil-variety for Abysia, Frost Fiend -one for Jotunheim, Storm Demons for Vanheim (even if the Jarls still start with blood-1). And maybe Dark vines- summoning for Pangaea? I'm not usre about this, though... The nations would have to START with those spells to get these spells.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">in dom2 shows a reverse tendency. The bind serpent fiend now cost only 5 slaves, but summon only one demon. As the spell was mostly of interest in dom1 because it allowed you to get 3 units per cast, one can say that in dom2 it has been somehow crippled.

If serpent fiend are deemed more powerful now (death poison), then the cost should have been raised from 8 to 12 eg, but the 3 units per cast should have remained, as this was a distinct feature of this spell compared to say fiend of darkness.

another one bite the dust...

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't see what you mean by "inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers". Isn't holy troop production determined by your god's dominion strength (adjusted by number of temples)</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thats right. The problem is if you are building say 5-7 sun warriors a turn and losing 1-3 the build up is prettty slow. As conflict grows you will lose more but your ability to build them will only ever rise a few beyond its starting level. Relatively easy to kill sacred troops that you can only build at your capitol are difficult to build up large numbers of.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I like your idea alot Chris. Adding in items that improve spells is very in keeping with Illwinters approach and adds to the flavour. Requiring you to get construction for items makes it harder to abuse multiple devil summoning by delaying it while simply increasing the amount of devils could be too powerful if you start with the spell.

cheers

Keir

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">IMHO multiplayer games are much less susceptible to inbalance, as players tend to adjust their diplomacy to gang up on perceived leaders.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think it depends very much on game environment. In an alliances allowed game of mixed experiance/skill you can win with pretty much any race played well as the enormous imbalences in game setup and diplomacy provide game tipping opportunities. No diplomacy games with everyone of a similar fairly high level of experiance/skill on the other hand is much less forgiving of weakness.

In full diplomacy games I find people are as keen to be friends with the races doing well as they are at trying to bring them down. Many players are quite happy to ally in such a way that they have little chance for victory but could well come 2nd or 3rd on the winning team. If on the other hand they take on the monster they could be crushed merclessly. Diplomacy is what decides it and diplomacising from a position of power is very effective if done well.

Cheers

Keir

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

I have only played three nations, so keep that in mind.

Why do people think Pythium is overpowered? The javelins look good on paper, but mine miss a ton or do no damage. Plus they usually only get 2 throws off, if that, before someone locks them up in melee. And, as straight melee troops they seem crappy compared to Ulm and Jotunheim, the other nations I have played with.

Along the same lines, what is the general concensus for which nations are top of the heap, middle of the pack, and bottom of the barrel in terms of power?

Thanks
olaf

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What makes Pythium strong isn't its army - which is only average. It's the mages. Communion, communion and more communion makes every mage fight at 2-3 levels above his actual power - and they're among the most powerful in the game to start with.

It may be that part of their reputation is still based on Dom I where air magic and combat summons (and especially Air Elementals) were too powerful compared to other things you could do with magic. Pythium was very well set up to take advantage of mass Air Elemental summoning. Now that this costs gems it is something to be used sparingly (although still very effective), so Pythium has to put some actual troops in the field now and risk having them get within reach of an enemy's weapons.

But they still have the cheapest researcher in the game (80 gold sacred), the cheapest communion slave in the game, one of the most powerful priests and mages in the game, strong Astral magic (you don't Magic Duel them, they Magic Duel you), good regular troops and no particular weaknesses. (Their cavalry is cold blooded but they don't rely on it - and it's also poisonous and the serpents keep fighting after their rider is killed.) Oh, and Hydras, too.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

Don't forget the gladiators. Not something used a lot, but they can make a big difference in some situations. Also, the Principe are great.

Yes, Ulmish troops have more armor, and giants are tough. But Ulmish troops are slow, have weak morale, and cost loads of resources --> slow to produce. Giants are expensive both in resources and gold, and have supply problems & increased vulnerability to spells like curse, blindness, etc.

Principe have strat move 2, good armor + tower shield, javelins, no moral problems since you got standards and good priests. Very cost effective, in both resources and gold. What's not to like?

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Man Bards 75 Gold, Marignon Initiates 60 Gold,... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

They are not sacred.

Sacred is 1/2 the upkeep cost.

A Marginon Initiate has 4 Gold Upkeep.

A Pythium has 2 1/2 upkeep. Over the course of the game (where you are churning them out and keeping them around) they are overall cheaper.

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Man Bards 75 Gold, Marignon Initiates 60 Gold,... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">80 gold sacred beats both of those. They are actually 90 gold sacred, but have priest powers, so that's OK.

Man's daughters of Avalon are level-2 Nature and 80 gold sacred, the best national researchers I can think of. Not to mention that they get Owl Quills as well.

[ January 30, 2004, 19:59: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: "New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Man Bards 75 Gold, Marignon Initiates 60 Gold,... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">80 gold sacred beats both of those. They are actually 90 gold sacred, but have priest powers, so that's OK.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh? They must have raised the cost from Dom I.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Daughters are sacred now? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

That's what I get for *just* playing the new nations/themes... well, and R'lyeh, how could you not try R'lyeh?