Black Forest - Ulm
 

Alright; I've had a few runs with the new Black Forest Theme and I have a few questions.

First of all, I love the theme. Rangers of Ulm, Wolfherds, and Ghoul Guardians are all extremly strong.

The theme has quite a few positive points, but my main question is the speed at which you can get a Vampire Count and equipment to create the hyperquick indy supercombatant.

All you need is a Horror Helmet, Pendant of Luck, Barkskin Amulet.

I've gotten a Vampire Count and that equipment at Turn 8. Albiet in order to do that you have to sacrifice some of your initial growth ( I had only 6 Provinces, including my home province ). But he is basically an additional army, and on turn 11 I had another with the same equipment. When Construction 4 rolls around you can send them to a lab and upgrade with Anti-magic amulets and then you are starting to cook with gas.

I was just wondering if this was planned. As I can see it; you can, without much effort make quite strong SC's with Black Forest at about 15, without sacrificing much in the way of any production or research.

FYI, Vampire Counts start with: Regeneration, Flying, Ethereal, Immortal, Stealth, 2 Death, 2 Blood, and cost 44 Blood Slaves

Edit: Oh yeah, for some of those without access or informational purposes. Vampires start with Life Drain, and have 0 Encumberance

[ January 13, 2004, 10:44: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

I think it has been done on purpose, as this is the start spell of Black Forest. All you need is 44 slaves and a pretender with death & blood, so no wonder the first vampire lord comes rather early.

I'm not saying its not overpowered, but it is just doubtful that IW didnt knew they handed a combo on a silver plate http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I have a question on BF Ulm : Does the storyteller "lightningrod" effect against bad events are cumulated? What I mean is, does having 5 storytellers is better in your capital than only one, if you want to be protected against Lady Misfortune?

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

I don't know, I haven't had a *single* bad effect yet in 30 turns with Order 3/Misfortune 3 with at least 1 Fortune Teller in my Capital/Castles.

I understand they handed it to us on a silver platter, I am just wondering why they gave us the combo when they were stepping away from it with Blood and Supercombatants in general.

I also don't know exactly how much beta testing they have and whether they have enough 'push to the extreme' as far as balance to see everything. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Considering how quickly they are shot out, I'm more than a little worried to have someone with Black Forest coming at me turn 8 without access to Paralyze (which Black Forest has easy access to as well) as many nations/themes do not.

Edit: Also Pocus, the Count makes thralls, which are nice free arrow fodder (if you don't have enough wolves)

[ January 13, 2004, 10:39: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

DOH! I just tried the theme once, and when I realized there were no earth mage to recruit, I just thought "How am I supposed to cast Legions of Steel? It's nigh to impossible with Iron Faith, it's even worse with Black Forest!" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

BTW, the 160 gold mage comes with stealth (+30). Wow! The regular spies are put to shame.

So finally we have a theme requiring misfortune. Any recruitable heroes? Any Black Forest-only ones? Heh, we might never know. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

The main problem I have with the theme is that you don't really get choices, you pretty much *have* to max out VC's and free allies. And use a few Ghoul Guardians against independents early...

The only question is what kind of pretender. The traditional VQ/GK seems redundant. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif A rainbow seems obvious. Pity Ulm doesn't get any "good" ones. Naga?

Your traditional units pretty much rot... or am I missing something? Only the swordsmen and rangers/villain are worth using long term. The Ghoul Guardian MR is too low to be a midgame option...

(all new themes are good, I love new themes, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou thankyou!!!! ...this one just seems very constrained to me...)

Rabe

P.S. Maybe make wolves sacred for a munchkin bless effect option? (Kidding!!)

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Well, playing with Misfortune-1 I got a unique hero on turn 3 with Black Forest Ulm! Don't remember the name but his title was Blood Count or Blood Marshal (IIRC). Basically a hero with good combat stats, Blood 2, Immortal, wields a Great Sword, comes with heavy armor, and I believe he is undead as well, with the standard undead qualities. I don't think he was ethereal.

Overall, pretty nasty customer.

I have to agree with the early supercombatant stuff. I wanted to try things out real quick before work and started a game where I used a POD with blood and death. Took two provinces and then blood hunted with both a mage I recruited on the first turn and the POD, ignoring further expansion. Had a vampire by turn 6, which was more than enough to conquer most provinces with indep lvl 3. I had 3 provinces on turn 6, and then 7 on turn 8, 10 on turn 10 (vampire took one per turn, hero noted above took the other two with the starting pikeneers. All without any special equipment on the vampire. I imagine if I had set the indep higher that would have made a bit of difference, but still, it was a no stress situation since the vampire was immortal and my domain spread fast enough that he was never in danger of permanent death. I did have to sacrifice gold income to keep unrest down (0 taxes except at capital).

Scary stuff, especially to face in a MP game. I daresay it may end up as one of the best early land grab nations.

Is this unbalancing? Well, there is still the enemy priest problem, since the vampire is undead, and then the undead-specific attack spells, but the fact that the vamp is immortal makes it tough to permanently KO if the Ulm player takes a high domain strength (esp in the first 10-20 turns).

Food for thought....

(In case anyone was wondering, I was playing a POD, death-8, blood-6(IIRC), with Order-1, Death-1 (required), Misfortune-1 (required), and Magic-1 (also required, I think). Never even recruited a fortune teller (didn't recruit much period, I just wanted to see what the summoned vampire was like)

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

The Vampire Queen seems like an obvious choice for this theme. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Fortune Tellers would be good with luck too I imagine, since you'd get lot's of good events and few, if any, bad ones.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

To me this theme seemed obvious as a sneak-army. Its one of the few nations where an entire army can be out into the field. Good leaders, infantry, archers, mages, Hmmm I dont remember about the priests. Fast wolves for flankers. Basically scouting with the ability to maybe even win if your caught.

The fact that fortune tellers can actually lessen the instance of bad luck might mean that you could push a bad-luck dominion onto another nation while lessening its affects at home?

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

If anyone is interested, I can post the "Blood Count" hero's stats when I get home later. Still thinking of new things to do with Black Forest Ulm....

and I agree, Gandalf, that it is probably the most sneaky empire of all now, or at least the most sneaky "off the shelf". ALso, while not the most powerful flankers by any means, the wolves and the wolf-herders are just such a cool idea. Looks like it is going to be a long night...

Very cohesive theme. I started the game and immediately thought "Transylvania" when I saw the unit mix.

One thing, though: I think it would be nice to get themes for the races that only have the main theme as a choice (i.e. Mictlan, Atlantis, R'leth, Arco (any others?)). That way, in MP, no one could be sure about your capabilities until they interacted with your empire in a meaningful way. Suggestions:

Mictlan seems to be loosely Aztec-based. Maybe a theme that was Inca-based with more Astral (astronomy) and less fire.

Atlantis could have a theme that included an alliance with the tritons or maybe where the Initiates of the Deep and company staged a coup and now there are more surface dweller types living in domed cities or such.

R'leth could have a theme where the Void Gate let in a Super-Vastness that took over and now the illithids are a slave race as well, and the troops have been crossbred with various horrors.

Arco, well, I don't really have any bright ideas on that one yet. Maybe some great change comes about as a result of the astrologers seeing a great calamity and that empire changed in the resultant chaos.

Sorry to get so off topic, but I think the themes are what help the immense replayability of this game. On a side note, do the computer players ever use themes?

neurosis#5
(formerly DBL227)

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

The AI uses themes, and quite often at that.

[ January 13, 2004, 18:37: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Great Ideas for more themes. I highly agree that all races should have SOME choices although we dont have to rush on that. It allows the game to grow staying ahead of player boredom. (boredom? Ive been playing Dom for 3 years. Oh well, you know what I mean)

Arco, well, I don't really have any bright ideas on that one yet. Maybe some great change comes about as a result of the astrologers seeing a great calamity and that empire changed in the resultant chaos.

Arcos seems to be the nation of choice for researchers. And it has always struck me as being also very strong in units. Pulling back on magic would take it toward the other nations which probably isnt needed.

Maybe a theme where it goes even further into research. Lots of variety in mages and sages and alchemists. But then make it so weak in units that it is FORCED to use independents alot. That would make it useful for people who want to play with magic. And useful for large-map games but probably suicide on small fast ones. It would be a niche.

Of course, someone could also mod these. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
I think some really good mods should end up being adopted as themes. That would be nice.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

BF Ulm does have national heroes, including the one mentioned below: Burkhard Nachtzehrer, the Blood Marshal. He's ethereal, can fly, is immortal, regenerates, and is a beserker. He's also got Blood 2, making him a nasty customer.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Did I miss something? The spell "Sanguine Heritage" is pre-researched. Reuqires 3 blod and 3 death to cast. But says "no desciption". My rainbow pretender discovered it for Black Forest.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">With its phalanxes, elephants and chariots, Arcoscephale reminds me a lot of the Seleucids. Maybe fast forward a couple centuries to the Parthian era? Light horse archers and ultra-heavy cataphracts with a barbarian flavor. Or, a bit later, the Persian empire, more civilized, with devout fire cultists. Or, even later, the 1001 Nights era - now that one would be cool, djinns, efreetis, mages on flying carpets and lascive houris sent to seduce enemy commanders.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

It has no description.

The Ghoul Guardians are weak in the old MR department, but that's fine since you have a astral readily availiable and casting Antimagic isn't a chore at all.

It comes with the classic 'Ulm has low MR' weakness, but when you can field twice as many troops as you could normally because you went hog wild on provinces (and thus income, and thus research) you can field massive armies frighteningly quick.

You have cheap xbows (reminding me of Marignon) in the Ranger. Ghouls don't rout (a Ulm problem) and you have more spell catchers than you can shake a stick at (with wolves/etc) You also have Pikeneers, Halberdiers, Morningstar Infantry of Ulm and Zweihanders if you are feeling 'Ulmy' and want to throw some high armored men at a situation.

Not the cheapest communion in the world, (Illuminated Ones = 80 gold, 1 Res, stealth) but pretty close. And the Fortune Tellers have 1 random, so you can have your pick of spells to cast.

Note: For my test I played on Indep 6. The effect of the Vampire Counts would be *more* pronounced on higher indeps.

[ January 13, 2004, 18:41: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The difficulty is, you don't have any good leaders (non-stealth ulm commander is best at 25 all others are only 10)so your armies will be set into many (...many,many!) small TF unlikely to go unknoticed. (I assume multiple TF easier to detect than one large...?)

It's a very interesting theme, I just fear there's only one way to play it. (Bloodblitz!)

Rabe

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

As you say, Vampire Counts gives the theme rather quick access to Vampire Counts. You are also right in presuming that the theme hasn't gone through extreme playtesting. Thats your job http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Keep posting your findings. We're listening.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Next theme is an Arcoscephale theme. It is missing descriptions, heroes and some other stuff, but they are in the works. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">huhu, from another company it would irritate me to be treated like a paying beta-tester. Now for IW, it makes me smile and a special treatment can be made http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Seriously, some of the forumers (no I'm not speaking of me) are rather good as betatesters, perhaps you should give to them the patch a week before general release (Psitticine is still around, sometime Daynarr too, but I think they have their hand rather full). On top of my head, in no particular order : Cherry, Gandalf, Keir, Apoger.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The difficulty is, you don't have any good leaders (non-stealth ulm commander is best at 25 all others are only 10)so your armies will be set into many (...many,many!) small TF unlikely to go unknoticed. (I assume multiple TF easier to detect than one large...?)

It's a very interesting theme, I just fear there's only one way to play it. (Bloodblitz!)

Rabe </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It seems to be a very powerful theme even without the Vampire counts ...

Cheap crossbow, archers. And they're all sneaky. I imagine that you can have a super-fast early expansion with them alone. You can use the simplest early strategy of a Wyrm at front (or Green Dragon if you're more risk-taking) and a whole bunch of archers behind. Some of its infantries can be even called decent!

The shortcoming is a *very* limited choice of national magic, even though most mages are very cheap. With these mages and a magical scale, your research will be fast but you still need somebody to cast the spells http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

You need the pretender to compensate. A rainbow mage is usable but in most competitive MP game, it's kinda suicidal to use it. Also, you probably want death 3 and blood 3 on your pretender, which would also tied up a lot of nation points.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

I think you are right in saying it's limited, but not totally limited. The Fortune Teller is your friend http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I think her random is only Sorcery (astral, death, nature, blood) so she in and of herself doesnt have alot of leeway. The Counts are decent (2 Death, 2 Blood) but overall they don't have very much mage variety. And I'll be the first to admit that Blood doesn't have very many combat spells.

If they did ... eh?

Also most of their mages are recruitable outside of their capital (Illuminated Ones, Member of the Second Tier) so it works well with they hyperexpansion and later the uberraiding of the theme.

I just can't seem to get past how quickly you can get a factory of the counts rolling while almost totally ignoring researching Blood. Combine it with a strong foundation of armies (again, xbows and free patroller/fodder) it seems that Black Forest was given all the cards while some nations/themes are sitting in the trailerpark watching it on TV.

I don't know how abusive the Ice Devil strategy was in Dom 1, but if the sacrifices (Getting a Pretender with Blood/Death, forced Misfortune (no big deal)) allow you to win the game then it should be addressed if not *For* Black Forest, *for* all the nation/themes that don't have an easy way to deal with Supercombatants (I.E. Paralyze, Blindness).

[ January 13, 2004, 20:51: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Just a rather odd note, shouldn't the ghoul guardians still be wearing their full plate of ulm suits? From what I understand, they died before those went out of fashion and it seems odd that undead would change their armor over time =)

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good point!

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

For the purpose of upkeep:

Thralls cost 1 gold (1/15 per turn). Wolves are free. And taking a 9-Blood 3-Death FoB makes you incredibly powerful... wolves and thralls make good patrollers to control the unrest. However... I'm thinking gypsies and witches... and bats. Bats are essential. Did gypsies and witches live in Transylvania? Or is the fortune teller a gypsy? I guess so...

Maybe this theme should have a forced misfortune scale, and a propensity for peasant revolts.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Better yet, it should be forced to have at least Misfortune 1, Death 1, and Magic 1. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Jasper is mean to the furry ears http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

If you didn't notice, it does Saber http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think this would be hard from a MP aspect (though I want to be a beta tester!) as the games take hours/days/weeks in order to complete. Logical deductions can be made and SP tests can be done, but if IW decides to do a beta testing team, they need to make sure they can find people who play (often) and who are abusive to the mechanics http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

More than a week would be needed for anything more than initial impressions. (Especially for new spells and such).

I don't mind being used as a paying beta-tester, if the game works and it doesn't crash every hour. Most companies do regardless, at least here they try hard http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 13, 2004, 22:20: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

If you want to pay to be a beta tester, try out Knights of the Old Republic by bioware, that has to be the buggiest pile of goo I have ever played...there is NO WAY that thing had more then an hour of QA...if even!


And I made a good point for once wohoo...it seemed weird the guardian ghouls were wearing normal plate. I don't really see any balance reason as high level priests are still going to make altar boys outta em http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hey, what are you two implying? I knew that! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

But still, I think national bad events would be very thematic... involving peasant uprisings, garlic farmer uprisings, silversmith uprisings, bloodslave mercy-killings by the kindly old butler who found the key to cellar door, national antiheros like Buffy appearing... the birth of daywalkers / compassionate vampire rebels, lynchings, vampires accidentally sucking the wrong blood type and dying from massive hemmoraging... those things! Floods, barbarians, earthquakes, and such tend to be much more rare in vampire-rich areas.

Any chance we'll get national events in the next patch? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

National Events would be very cool. I'd settle for exported and modifiable events however. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

There are events tied to the presence of particular creatures at the moment, such as a dragon pretender munching up a few bloodslaves.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Cool! I'd never noticed one of those happening.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's great! Arco is already one of my favs.

On a side note, I should have remembered the AI uses themes after the Last game fighting Miasma C'tis (shudder). Sometimes I have a hard time remebering which is the "main" theme!

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

About a core team of betatesters:

I know Zen that one week cant be sufficient to test all aspects of new themes, and even more if you take into account MP.

But its better than the current situation, where there is overbooked IW, and thats pretty all. The aim would be to filter out the biggest loopholes (like having the possibility of getting a vampire count at turn 8). Sure some issues would still be there, but hopefully of less importance. Old MP veterans here (Pepe Mus, George McGinn, Nagot Gick Fel (Jacques Vidal), Alexander Poger, etc.) have sufficient insight to be able to spot issues even without playing actually. Give them a themes with all the parameters attached, and they can pretty well round down what can be abusive just by looking at it.

As of now we get a patch which can have big issues or exploits, and we will have to wait some time before having it fixed (no disrespect mean to IW, they dont have 8 arms...).
I say, elect a squad of people which are on a special mailing list that IW read, and lets them debate about what a patch change before releasing it.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Alright, as I played with this more I can offer maybe a little more input (other than just the quick Counts).

Banishment should target the greatest chance of success. As of right now the Ghoul Guardians that people say are up the Gangi's without a paddle can be kept alive with even 9 MR by using the Vampires.

A Vampire Count with just an Amulet of Anti-magic will often outregenerate (and definitely out life drain) 4-5 banishments a turn from 3 Holy Priests (so I would guess they could resist 2 5 Holy Preists laying down the banishment). As the targeting is right now and with the Vampires Ability to fly, they can shotput to the rear (as close as they can get) or a flank and all banishments will target them while the Ghoul's close and mess up almost everything they find. Not to mention that with an Antimagic cast on them Ghouls resist (or have enough HP) Banishments greater than I expected.

Commanders are not an issue at all, since the best one you can recruit has 25 Leadership, you just use Indies since they are just as good and split your forces up into multiple commanders

The Rangers are like Longbowmen for Crossbows. They move 2, have good precision and are 12 gold, 8 resource. For an already resource rich Ulm you can make these by the metric ton. Also when fighting Independants you only need 1 (or possibly 2) Heavy Infantry in front and a crew of 20+ (240 Gold, 160 Resources) of the Rangers behind to mop up even Heavy Cav provinces (on Indep 6) and take minimal losses. Most rout before they ever get to look at the xbows.

In my just early tests I was able to get a Count on Turn 8 with Equipment (Construction 2, Enchantment 2) and have 8 Provinces 3 out of 5 games I played. The other 2 I placed a little off and only got 6 and 7 respectively.

Later in the game the Heavy Troops become more of a factor as you need 'mop up' crews. I haven't found the Zweihander to be very unique in this aspect (mostly because he is one slow motha).

[ January 14, 2004, 17:46: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

You can get Counts on turn 5 with a Fountain of Blood... and level 0 equipment, of you want. The unrest kinda bites you, though, with no patrollers. However, Counts beget Counts...

The Count hero gets a huge bloodhunt bonus too.

Not bothering with making mages or SDR's, never expanding, and hunting with only the Fountain and counts, I could make a count per turn by turn 22 (with an empowered count).

[ January 14, 2004, 08:27: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Yes you can http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But you sacrifice alot to do it and it's not as 'safe'.

Maybe we can give the "Beta Discussion Group" or at least IW an acceptable time frame of X conditions.

Like the Triple T (Ten Turn Test) and see what is and is not acceptable in that timeframe as far as resources (gems, gold, resources, provinces, castles, research, supercombatants, items) and potential abuse.

Because if you could get a Count by turn 5 but had 80+ unrest and no cheap patrollers (like Normal Ulm theme does, and Niefelheim Jotun) then it might be more acceptable and requires less tweaking than if you have 8 Provinces, 10~15 Unrest, 1 Count (with equipment noted below), 120 Research points, 10 Blood Slaves, 70+ Rangers of Ulm, 6 Heavy Infantry, 10 Indy "Commander", 1 turn of 2 complete on a Wizard Tower ... etc, etc by turn 8.

Edit: My main reasoning behind this is so we can bring up some of the more lackluster nations up to par with whatever the IW concept of Balance is OR tone down the nations that are above it.

[ January 14, 2004, 08:43: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">(OT - KotoR discussion)

Uh ? I've been playing it quite intensively these Last days, and had a only a couple crashes (one during a quicksave http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif , another when switching to the arcade-Ebon Hawk game). And the plot works, I haven't seen an nonworking quest or been stuck without the "necessary" item/info/etc...

That's with patch 1.01. Maybe you rather have some compatibilty problems with your hardware or drivers...

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

OT - I beat KoTOR a week ago (for PC), had 1 crash the entire game. Enjoyable game but very little replay value after you've tried each 'side'. Very linear game, but pretty http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 14, 2004, 09:53: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Black Forest Ulm is not particularly research rich. I don't see any resource bonus site in the capital. Did I miss anything? But I'm not belittling the Rangers. They're some nasty critters and very good buys.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Ywl,

I believe ulm gets a resource bonus in all of its castles above what other nations would have just for being ulm. And with standard ulm and the resource-intensive troops, I think you can understand how one might need that.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yup, 25% (IIRC) bonus in all castles.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Edit: Oops! Sorry, I read "research bonus" for "resource bonus" - never mind to the part in italics below (but read the vampire and sneaking parts, if interested):


Does Ulm get a generic research bonus? I didn't notice one. I only noticed:

* Standard Ulm has Master Smiths which research without penalty in Drain scales.

* Iron Faith Ulm doesn't have Master Smiths, and so has a harder time researching (but it still has forge bonuses - forge some research items to catch up on research).

* Black Forest Ulm requires a Magic scale of at least +1, which acts as a research bonus.


Can Black Forest and Carrion Woods sneak through desert terrain provinces? Seems like perhaps they shouldn't be able to (and it would be an interesting/balancing limitation). Maybe even plains should be hard.

Are all vampires a little too difficult to resist in general? Maybe they should have a chance to falter when trying to attack Holy units (which would be very appropriate - see any vampire film). Maybe also add a magic item or two - such as Wooden Stake - which could overcome vampiric immortality - and anti-vampire talismans to repel vampire attacks.

PvK

[ January 14, 2004, 17:48: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Anti-immortality and anti-regenerating weapons! Awesome idea! Possibly a silver weapon theme for Pythium, and wooden weapons (oak stakes and oak crossbow bolts) for elite Marignon stealthy vampire-hunter infantry. These would cause cause non-regeneratable damage in battle (or simply 3X damage to regenerating units?), and an immortal killed with them would not respawn (or else 3X damage to immortals). Holy Pyre could also get this special ability.

Also, "Holy Bible" (astral-1, con-0) and "Garlic Wreath" (nature-1, con-1) items could protect against life-drain attacks, or give a new Awe ability (Unholy Awe, like Animal Awe but affects undeads, werewolves, and unholy units, and the save is for MR rather than Morale). Or else attackers would suffer damage.

-Cherry

[ January 14, 2004, 18:06: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

This thread goes a long way toward pointing out just how much of a n00b I still am. I'd have thought that the neatest thing about Black Forest is the access to the blood/earth stuff. Is there a nation/theme that does blood/earth better?

~Aldin

ps I LOVE the idea of something that causes a fear effect vs. immortal undead.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

KOTOR has a very serious problem running on a certain bus speed of P4 motherBoards. Check the messageBoards on that website for details, there are still a very large number of people who just CANT get the game to work.

I had more success running the game on a celeron 433 with a geforce 2 then a pent4 2.4 with a geforce fx, that alone should say it all.

I ultimaly got the game to work, and perfectly at that, it was neither a hardware nor a compatibility issue, it was just a badly tested game.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I really like this idea. Adding such anti demon/vampire/undead stuff could add to the game a lot, but has to be carefully balanced.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yup, 25% (IIRC) bonus in all castles. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks... That's new. In Dom 1, the resource bonus was from the site. Right? That may be how I got the wrong impression.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Huh.
You seriously think that a normal test process for a software include testing on next year's CPU with some weird FSB speeds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif ?
Following your reasoning Dom2 itself is an awfully buggy badtested piece of cr*p : look at the Posts on "Demo non starting in W98SE", those with "6 fps on my (modern) laptop", the problems with the divergent battle replays/results across OSes, etc ...Or be serious http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Ick, a bioware fanboy ;p

Ahem...

The pentium 4 was offically released Nov 20, 2000, next years chip you say?

And the FSB issue occurs on a wide range, it appears to be linked to a chipset that was commonly used in such range. If they did any decent amount of QA this would surely of been revealed.

Even Gamespot (or gamespy...always get em confused) wrote in it's review of the game that it was unable to get the game going on TWO of its test systems, and experinced frequent crashes on the third.

There is also a well known error of the game not running right on Radeon Cards, although as I am a nvidia whore, I am not famliar with this one.

This is not however, the board to discuss such things. I suggest you take a look at the technical help forums at bioware to rest my case.

As for Dom2, from reading through those threads it seems to be software issues that are stopping Dom 2 in its tracks, where KOTOR was gapping hardware one.