PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

In an attempt to empirically value the Elemental Demons (i.e., Frost Fiend, Storm Demon, Demon Knight, and Devil), I created an Arco mod that gives it Blood magic. Specifically, it changes the Mystic to a Blood-2 Element-2, with the Element chosen randomly. I also switched the Priestess's Nature pick to Blood (to give a relatively cheap Blood hunter).

The results were quite gratifying. Due to still having Astrologers (see below), I researched to Construction-4 (for the SDR), then Conjuration-5 (for Acashic), and then blitzed Blood. I was quite lucky in that I had a Library in each of two adjoining provinces, but by turn 20 certainly, I was producing one of each type of Elemental Demon per turn, and generally seeing a slight increase in Blood Slaves on top of that.

For balance's sake, I really do think that the Astrologer and Heart Companion should be removed (basically, lose the Tower). Perhaps they should receive 1 of each type of Elemental gem, plus a Blood slave each turn. That puts them QUITE close to Mictlan, and CERTAINLY better troops, but they lose access to both Astral and Nature magic. I'll have to do more tests.

Another issue is that they have no way to innately increase their Blood magic (meaning, no national level-3 Blood mage, nor chance of one). If they choose to use their Pretender for this (as I did), Arco has a VERY poor selection of Pretenders to use for Blood magic.

Finally, an issue about the Prince of Death. I think, with the changes to the VQ, that the PoD is going to emerge as a new contender for her crown. While he's neither ethereal nor immortal, he has twice the base hit points, a much better Fear effect, a good base protection, a much less base cost (100 points goes a long way), and no superfluous magic (I've never heard of anyone using a SC VQ for her Blood magic).

Anyway, just some thoughts. If anyone is interested in the mod, please LMK. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Scott

[ June 11, 2004, 18:41: Message edited by: Bayushi Tasogare ]

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

If memory serves, the Prince of Death already had some notoriety as an early expansion weapon for Ulm as a zero-enc commander with good combat stats. PoD + full plate is good early, could add a better weapon (Rod of Death was strength-not-added, not too impressive; even a Sword of Sharpness would arguably be better for a physically strong pretender against ordinary troops) if you like.

Without native astral, nature, or death, but with the usual dominion rules; hm. Note that you'd only need to empower -one- blood-2 mage to blood-3 and then give him a dwarven hammer to crank out brazen vessels, athames, even armor of souls if need be, and you wouldn't need to divert slaves to maintain or expand dominion. Mictlan would have easier Crossbreeding, 'tho, for rapid reinforcement. Intriguing. If I wanted a Blood nation, I'd probably prefer this Version for the drastically reduced micromanagement (until Illwinter adds a 'sacrificers don't pool slaves' or equivalent rule, that is).

Heroes might need tweaking, but I can't remember them except for Orokestes.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True. However, before this the PoD has been completely overshadowed by the VQ. I'm simply concerned that the balance tipped too far the other way.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you have the Earth gems. Granted, this mod would have Bloodstones, but every Bloodstone could be a Vessel/Knife. You're also just tantalizingly out of reach of Earth-5 for Forge.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">s/easier// http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif The funniest thing about the various Elemental Demons is that they generally don't work very together. The Storm Demons can easily kill the others with friendly fire, the Frost Fiends and the Devils don't work well together... the best combination are Demon Knights and Devils, but then you miss out on missile troops...

I sort of made this to test out various things, but I guess it does cut down on the micromanagement.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Orokestes would be even better for the mod than he would for the base. As a general rule, I simply remove Heroes from mods, just to avoid confusion.

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's usually the case when a knee-jerk reaction occurs as a result of a public outcry of whining. This is why I feel that whenever somebody calls for a nerfing of anything, that somebody should generally be ignored. Now the VQ is a more or less completely unusable chassis by any nation that doesn't have a huge number of points to burn...and isn't available to the most noteworthy, and perhaps appropriate, of them: Ermor. Meanwhile, other options are no more attractive than they were before. Instead of more and better options, we have less. To top that off, the new patch didn't really give us anything new, contentwise. Bleh.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">She is still a perfectly useful combat pretender. She can't be easily turned into both a rainbow mage and a SC anymore, but that's not a bad thing.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm sure you must have meant to say the least appropriate here. She might be undead, but vampires don't fit in a land with no living humans.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">We got three very nice new units for desert tombs and a very nice boost to existing ones for Pangaea. Carrion woods got a good boost as well.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

On the VQ issue, I fall more in line with Norfleet: there's actually very little reason to use the VQ now. And trying to argue that an Undead Pretender is non-thematic for Ermor is really pushing it. After all, you DO have Broken Empire as the base. (OTOH, BF Ulm is the most thematic for a VQ, not Ermor.) What irritates me about the VQ is that it was ONLY removed from Ermor, and that's too much a silver bullet.

Basically, the VQ changes, in the main, were aimed at the way Norfleet (and only Norfleet) plays. With all of the changes that were made to the VQ, it was totally unnecessary to remove it from Ermor as well.

Now, having said that, I disagree with Norfleet's comment that 'no useful content' was added in the patch. Desert Tombs became much more viable with this, and Pangaea is much more robust with their Revelers. I think this is a situation where both sides are overstating their cases.

I'm going to be trying to find a 'better balance' with everything through the modding. If I find anything that seems to lead to better games in the main, I'll be sure to post it. Since I play SP, my mods will be balanced for SP... which IMO should be the focus for modding, anyway, since MP is more complex to do, requires the acquiescence of the players involved, and is the focus for the developers anyway.

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

Seems to me that VQ doesn't make much sense for Ermor to have thematically (as well as for balance reasons) because with a killer dominion, the prospects for good blood drinking are few.

VQ seemed to have too little cost for all the abilities she had, compared to other gods. The patch increased her costs, without reducing her abilities. So she wasn't nerfed, so much as given an appropriate price tag.

Seems all good to me.

Other changes also include new abilities and tweaked values. Pangaea and Desert Tombs players got some new goodies.

PvK

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Is there any reason why we shouldn't read that an overstatement from the perspective of a narrow selection process? She's still a good immortal fighting chassis with a huge list of build-in abilities. Looks good to me.

Quote:

And trying to argue that an Undead Pretender is non-thematic for Ermor is really pushing it. After all, you DO have Broken Empire as the base.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good point about Broken Empire, but they'd have to change the god selection UI to eliminate it only from the Ashen and SG themes. Seems to me there are good thematic and logical reasons from taking from them, and the perhaps unnecessary hit to Broken Empire doesn't seem to me like a big deal.

Personally, I'd rather have an unclear reason for an omitted pretender choice, than a couple of pretender choices that don't make a lot of sense (vampire queen with murderous dominion exterminating her blood sources).

Quote:

Basically, the VQ changes, in the main, were aimed at the way Norfleet (and only Norfleet) plays.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?

Quote:

I'm going to be trying to find a 'better balance' with everything through the modding. If I find anything that seems to lead to better games in the main, I'll be sure to post it. ...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Cool - looking forward to it!

PvK

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Prince of Death is good, but a poor choice for Arco (if you leave them with priestesses). They're going to pick up afflictions and the only way to fix that is with Gift of Health or a Chalice. Pick any living commander and you don't have to worry about that.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've still never heard of anyone besides Norfleet successfully using his strategies.

[ June 11, 2004, 03:47: Message edited by: Yossar ]

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">She's still very good for races who have some "free" heat/cold picks. For example, with Jotunheim I like her because she can summon ice devils without needing Water 4 or construction 6.

You can have Order 2, Sloth 1, Cold 2, Misfortune 1 with AA WWW EEE DDD BBB and dominion 5 on a Vampire Queen. For that I get an immortal, flying, erthreal, regenerating, poison and cold resistant pretender who can realisticly summon her first ice devil on turn 15-20. So she's not the hands down champ anymore? So what. There's at least 20-25 pretenders that are worse. Now she's more of a niche choice rather than a default selection. Good on the developers.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The intention was to price the VQ so that she would be as (un)viable as the liches. If you compared their costs before the VQ was a better choice than the standard- or Saurolich in almost every conceivable situation. Perhaps Liches are not very popular but they have been priced this way since dom 1 days and the VQ was added for dom 2, so our feeling was that the VQ was the pretender that was priced wrong rather than the liches. It was not a knee jerk reaction, especially since the VQ complaints emerged well before the previous patch, it was a measured response, and we didn't start fiddling with the VQ until we one day compared the lich with the VQ point by point, that was the reason for the change not the whining. We are not pavlov dogs. The removal of the VQ from Ermor is the sole instance where I might concede some part of your point, but even there it was mainly done for thematic reasons.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, the way I see it, the best comparison is with the Prince of Death. The base differences between the two post-patch is:

1) 100 points in favor of the Prince of Death.
2) 2 base Dominion in favor of the Prince of Death.
3) DDD (PoD) as opposed to DBB (VQ). If you are talking about an SC build for them, this is a point in favor of the PoD. I've never heard of an SC using Blood magic in combat.
4) The PoD has about a 2-3 pt. edge in every fighting statistic over a VQ. He also enjoys twice the base HPs of a VQ.

Now, balanced against this, you have the VQs Etherealness, Immortality, and Regeneration (there's also the Life Drain attack). If you think that's balanced, that's fine. I, personally, do not, especially since everything but the Immortality that the VQ possesses, the PoD can attain through items or spells.

As a test, I took a VQ and a PoD, and bought them up to the same level. The amount of points that took for each was:

VQ: 195
PoD: 116

Also, any further increase to Dominion (which is currently a 3) or to Death magic will favor the PoD, while an increase in Blood magic (which, for an SC, is suboptimal) favors the VQ.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, but beware of where that path leads you. Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

Then there's the question of why it was removed from ONLY Ermor. If it had been restricted farther, I'd actually have less of a problem with it. But the 'only Ermor' removal smacks of silver bulleting, which is generally not a good way to enhance game balance.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As Yossar said, I've not seen a single report of anyone but Norfleet able to win with the strategy Norfleet used.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mm. Be careful of what you wish for. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">She was altered to be be on par with the lich, a comparable immortal.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It might smack of silver bullet or whatever. Fact of the matter is Kristoffer had thought it unthematic for AE and SG for a while and decided to restrict it, and JK agreed so it was implemented.

There is an annoying tendency amongst some posters to assume that illwinter is blown about like helpless leaves by the winds of whine.

I also wish to categorically deny that illwinter is wire tapping Norfleets phone.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

Interesting comparison of VQ and PoD. Thanks Scott. It still seems to me that VQ and PoD are apple and orange choices and so one doesn't out-do the other except for a player who is already decided on one play style. PoD is a phenomenal fighter, but is not immortal. So I compare VQ to Liches, and see more combined abilities for more points. PoD is a superiority SC you try to keep alive, and may send breifly on strikes out of dominion. While VQ is a living-army-consuming defensive immortal SC, or just a middleweight but immortal SC for in-dominion defensive strikes, perhaps capitalizing on her immortality by letting her fight to the death repeatedly. Immortality and combo of strong built-in abilities is a very different thing from non-immortal but a great fighter. So again, they both look good to me, but in different ways.

Also the nature of the immortality effect (instant return with little loss on death, and recuperation effect) is very strong in itself and essentially a multiplier, which is why is gets extremely strong when combined with other abilities. I think for this consideration it makes sense for VQ to cost more and perhaps be unavailable to Ashen and SG, since they have scads of points to dump into the VQ.

Minor items:
* Built-in Ethereal for the VQ means she can wear body armor. The PoD, unless I'm missing a trick, needs to choose between body armor and no ethereal, body armor and self-cast ethereal meaning he needs to have Astral power (with its risk or cost), or wear an astral cloak which offers no protection (and requires someone else to forge it). So it doesn't seem to me like it's just something that can easily be got by the PoD with no disadvantage compared to the VQ.
* Seems to me Blood magic does have a good trick or two (or more?) for SC's, even if not commonly used.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There are plenty of thematic and literary examples of mixed-race masters and minions. The difference with Ermor and Soul Gate combined with VQ's is that the effect of one is a disaster for the other. (Extinction of life means starvation for a vampire, and traditionally, vampires' main concern is a good blood supply, so it doesn't make much sense.) There is no such conflict of interest for Jotunheim with little wizard masters, unless the wizard were afraid of tall ceilings or of getting stepped on by accident. Same with standard C'tis.

However, death and especially extinction dominions for anyone do seem contradictory for vampires, so Desert Tombs and Carrion Woods also seem like they would make less sense with a VQ. There's no really good mechanic in the god-selection GUI to make that perfect, though.

I don't really see any of this as much of a problem, though. I think a simple mod could allow VQ back in Ermor, while at the same time taking out the themes. The only thing that seemed to me like a slight problem surrounding all this was the cheap cost of the VQ when taken to extremes.

PvK

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

The VQ is still perfectly servicable as a SC in every instance of the word. Now though, it does not have the potential to be a rainbow Immortal. That is left to the Liches.

The PoD vs VQ is not an accurate depiction. Since a PoD does not have Immortality. If you take the best Lich (Sauro or Queen, depending on your perspective) you'll see that they fill the niche just as easily as the VQ did previously.

Ermor is purely thematic in not having the Vampire, I would hope that having more pretenders restricted and other pretenders added would be a desire for players of Dom2. But if not, there is no reason you have to patch at all. Everyone can refuse to patch because something/anything was changed in a way they do not like. They can also make as many mods and play games with said mods to create whatever vision of balance they have.

Also, IW does not work at the speed of light, or the speed of other's desire. This game in it's current state, with the Battle Speed fixed, has had more support than a good portion of games out there, for less money and no cost of expansions. So personally I feel they have done enough for 'me'. Whatever they do now, is just icing on the cake.

Edit: With the exception of Bug Fixes, that crop and are patched usually as soon as Illwinterly possible.

[ June 11, 2004, 17:04: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, give me a few hours and I'll have this revised to compare her to a Lich, which IMO she'll stack up better against, but I think I'd rather have the Lich. Let me do the math, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't have a problem with the reasons, unlike some others. I just have a question regarding the narrowness of the reasons. If you argue that the VQ is unthematic for AE and SG (which unfortunately hurts BE, but that's minor, since so few people seem to play BE), I feel that similar questions of 'theme' should be applied to others. Why does Pangaea, the nation of life, have access to Undead pretenders at all? And so forth. Personally, I'm all for having much more Unique pretenders, on a nation-by-nation basis.

And, if I may, I want to explain the 'silver bullet' term. To me, it means that a change was done to fix too narrow of a problem. The VQ changes, _in general_, were good and IMO necessary. It's just the 'only removed from Ermor' thing I have issues with.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Er, I don't think anything of the sort. Norfleet may, but he sounds more like sour grapes over losing his VQ strategy than anything else. I hope I'm not getting lumped in with Norfleet in general attitude towards the patch... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Er, okay, but I didn't mean to imply anything of the sort... sorry if I offended anyone. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're welcome. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Having tried to follow the whole 'VQ-Castling' debate, immortality was seen as a crutch to avoid other issues, rather than something to count on. I can see how it allows suicide uses in-dominion.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Currently doing my own comparison.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Perhaps. I see apple-and-orange as 'different but roughly equal'. I don't see much equal in PoD vs. VQ. Is Immortality THAT much more important, and hence costly? (honest question here)

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">While a good argument, it's not the reason why IW removed it from Ermor (and I believe their reasons).

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">While the PoD doesn't have Ethereal, he DOES have a base protection of 12 vs. the VQ's 0. This to me is a plus to the PoD, since in MP at least people have to be crazy not to be using magical weapons against the VQ.

And, really, with the difference in point costs, you could probably make a PoD with 'good enough' Astral magic for the same cost as a VQ without. In fact, if you look at standard 'Ermor' scales (Magic-3, Luck-3, -3 everywhere else, Dominion 10, Ermorian Castle), the VQ has 205 points left for magic. The PoD, OTOH, has 424. This allows a PoD to take Astral-6 and still have more points (234) than the VQ. Whether this is 'good enough' to prevent Magic Duel death is up to you, but I believe that's the general benchmark.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Would you mind enlightening me? I haven't tried to use Blood magic in combat yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hrm. By Rainbow Immortal, what do you mean? A Rainbow mage with Immortality? A suicide mage-combatant? Not exactly sure here.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, you're looking at it from a question of form. By form, the closest thing to a VQ is a Lich. I'm looking more from the standpoint of function. What function does it serve? The PoD and the VQ share many more functions than a Lich and a VQ.

As for the second point, the Lich Queen and the Saurolich are both heavily restricted Pretenders (to Ermor and C'tis, respectively, IIRC). The VQ is not. If the VQ had been restricted to Ulm only (e.g.), I would take the comparison a little better. My comparison of VQ to Lichdom will be to the standard Lich.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It is for me. The VQ, however, is in no way 'restricted'. IIRC, it was available to every land race before 2.12, and in 2.12 is available to 14 of 15 land races. This to me is the core of my 'issue' with the VQ in 2.12. I can't think of a single other Pretender that is available to 14 of the land races, with the sole exception being on the grounds of 'theme'. Now, if this is the start of Pretender restrictions on a wider scale, I'll be happy for it. It's just a little disconcerting at present.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Certainly they can. SP games, at least. In MP, you have to find a group of people that believe as you do to play, and Dominions II is supposed to be a MP-centered game (as, indeed, it is). This leads to the 'official' Version of the game (as in, 'latest patch with no mods') the most likely Version of the game to be played. So while I agree with your statements, I do it with the reservation that I play exclusively SP, and don't have to deal with MP issues.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Certainly, Zen. I'm not trying to be 'in IW's face' to change anything. And, really, I think my track record is that I favor the approach IW takes.

Just chalk this up to my slight annoyance that my 'VQ Blood BE Ermor' l33t strategy has been totally demolished. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That means a mage that is a rainbow (Has multiple paths) and Immortality. Previously to the patch any nations (meaning all) would not pick a Lich instead of a VQ because they had the exact same path costs and an additional path to boot. Now, the VQ can only pick 1, maybe 2 paths within any sort of reason to be built into a SC. So instead of VQ's with 2E, 3D, 1W, 3+A we will see one with just 2 of the 3 core paths of magic to do the exact same kind of damage that it did before.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I do not see it this way. A PoD is an Indy Killer first, support mage second. With the right equipment early enough, he can do very well, but he is still very prone to afflictions, very prone to death and only has 2 option of healing them. A VQ can fight within it's domain as a pure killing force that can stand to die and lose and if hurt can heal afflictions. The PoD is not so limited by Dominion only.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They all share the same weaknesses, and those liches are more combat oriented than the normal lich. But compare whatever lich you want and you'll see their basic function is different and now the VQ can't fullfill both roles, only one.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't find it to be so. It's not as if every patch that Pretenders have been removed from specific nations. What I would find disconcernting is that the Warlock and Skratti are gone and haven't made it back from sabbatical.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then those that play MP that don't agree on a Mod will have to come to an agreement or accept the fact that the Dev's changed it for a reason they felt was appropriate to do so.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry that your BE, Blood Ermor was taken down. It certainly wasn't aimed at BE and if there was a way to change Pretenders based on theme, I'm sure you would have seen a different change. Unfortunately we have to work within the parameters of the game mechanics until such time as those mechanics change.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Right. I understand this, at least. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True. I would say this combines into 'you have to be more careful with a PoD than a VQ', but I find this all well and to the good.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Agreed. I guess, to the developers, Immortality is indeed that powerful?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True enough. The Lich and the VQ are now on a much more even keel, comparatively. My only concern here is the one that IW themselves brought up; namely, that very few people play with Liches. It would seem to me that if you balance a Pretender against a Lich, they should be played at about equal frequency. Which means bad things for the VQ. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">With the removal, it's more of a question of timing. It certainly doesn't _look_ like it was done for thematic reasons. I trust IW, but other, less trusting people probably won't.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Right. But it does reduce the power of your 'well you can just mod it' argument. Considering the various other improvements in 2.12, I certainly think you'd want to mod 2.12 rather than not patch and stay at 2.11.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh I know. It was something of a facetious complaint, and it's not like I can't use a Ghost King instead to get Blood magic on my Pretender at a non-ridiculous price. It _would_ be nice to have Pretender selection on a theme basis, rather than a nation basis. I think that's a little beyond the scope of the current gamestate, though.

Anyway, the BE Blood idea is not a very good one. I just like the fact that BE Ermor has such easy access to undead patrollers. Jotunheim is almost as good, except theirs is all gem-based, and they need gems for undead commanders as well. Desert Tombs and Black Forest suffer from a death scale. BE Ermor's problem is, obviously, a lack of good Blood mages.

Ah well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Maybe I'll have to rectify that.

Scott

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Reinvigoration can be used to remove fatigue incurred from casting spells before going into melee. Bloodletting and Leech do the same thing, as well as raising the caster's hitpoints over his normal maximum. And there is Blood Vengeance too.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

True. I would say this combines into 'you have to be more careful with a PoD than a VQ', but I find this all well and to the good.

Yes, and that has it's cost in points. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I think the real consideration is not being careful (but there is a distinct lack of being careful with certain people and their VQ's, I personally see this as a flaw in their playstyle) I think the real consideration is not being surprised http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

True enough. The Lich and the VQ are now on a much more even keel, comparatively. My only concern here is the one that IW themselves brought up; namely, that very few people play with Liches. It would seem to me that if you balance a Pretender against a Lich, they should be played at about equal frequency. Which means bad things for the VQ. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Imagine it this way. Out of 100 Games, 50 people want to play with an Immortal. And out of those 50 People, 25 of them want to play with a Rainbow Mage or a Bless effect while having Immortality. The other 25 Want an Immortal SC. 25 of those people can now choose a Lich, the other 25 can choose a VQ. Previous to 2.12, all 50 chose the VQ because there was no advantage to choosing a Lich for being a Rainbow, the advantage was having a SC that could be a Rainbow.

I'm not saying that those are precise numbers of people who want Immortals, or Rainbows but based on those numbers, it seems that it wasn't the Lich's stats that were holding it back, but rather the VQ's obvious advantage. Along with Autosummoning.

With the removal, it's more of a question of timing. It certainly doesn't _look_ like it was done for thematic reasons. I trust IW, but other, less trusting people probably won't. The way IW works on things is they have a huge list of things to do, they pick the few that they can allot their time to then fix those things and everything they feel needs to be fixed with it, thematic or not. You can't fault them for doing a thorough job on the things that have their attention.

Right. But it does reduce the power of your 'well you can just mod it' argument. Considering the various other improvements in 2.12, I certainly think you'd want to mod 2.12 rather than not patch and stay at 2.11. Not really, you can just mod it if you choose to. Noone is stopping you except your desire to play with people who don't think the same way. One thing about some Dom2 players, what you'd think they would want and what they do can be totally different. Most I believe are crazy in some fashion.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I guess you don't play Marignion much. Even as a blood race, they were not allowed to use the VQ, obviously a thematic choice as Marignion ARE a blood race. Marignion cannot use any undead pretenders. I believe the Lich and Archlich are available to ALL races, even underwater ones... Except Marignion. They are the only race that could use neither the VQ or the GK... leaving them with second tier SC choices of which the best are the Virtue and the Lady of Fortune. Neither of these are comparable to a post-nerf VQ or GK. Don't feel bad for Ermor.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

[quote]Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by PvK:

Quote:

Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As Yossar said, I've not seen a single report of anyone but Norfleet able to win with the strategy Norfleet used.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But a lot of people are winning using VQ with different strategies, which only confirms that VQ was overpowered. Now VQ seems to be a niche choice, either as immortal monster-SC (but very expensive) or as a decent (and immortal) SC capable of summoning Ice Devils and undead SCs. Both cases may work well for some nations in some circumstances, but it's not automatic choice for every nation anymore.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I guess you don't play Marignion much. Even as a blood race, they were not allowed to use the VQ, obviously a thematic choice as Marignion ARE a blood race. Marignion cannot use any undead pretenders. I believe the Lich and Archlich are available to ALL races, even underwater ones... Except Marignion. They are the only race that could use neither the VQ or the GK... leaving them with second tier SC choices of which the best are the Virtue and the Lady of Fortune. Neither of these are comparable to a post-nerf VQ or GK. Don't feel bad for Ermor. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Standard Marignon (and I believe also FotF, not sure about CotS) has an undead/demon-damaging capitol site, creating the potential to spectacularly shoot yourself in the foot if you take an undead pretender and *don't* take Diabolical Faith. Also it's inappropriate for *any* Marignon theme to take an undead pretender - even DF, the whole reason they made deals with the devils was to gain power to destroy the undead.

I think it would be nice if pretender availability could be restricted by theme instead of by nation, but currently it can't, so if a Vampire Queen shouldn't want to rule AE/SG Ermor (who would she eat?), BE Ermor can't take her either; and if CW Pangaea needs undead pretender options, normal/NE Pangaea get them too.

The VQ doesn't have the same thematic problem with Desert Tombs (which, like Broken Empire, has the living side by side with the dead), but arguably does with Carrion Woods. But Ermor is often AE/SG, while Pangaea is rarely CW, so until theme-by-theme restrictions are implemented (if ever), the current arrangement is the best available fit.

Also, in response to the original question, I think the blue dragon is available to every land nation except Abysia (but, IIRC, the red dragon is available to every land nation *including* Caelum). There's an obvious thematic reason why a blue dragon, with cold immunity, powerful water magic, and frost breath, is inappropriate for either theme of Abysia. (The red dragon is just as inappropriate for Caelum and Jotunheim, and the blue dragon possibly for Machaka as well, but those are probably oversights.)

The VQ's unavailability to Ermor is just more noticeable because there has been a lot of discussion on this board of specific VQ/Ermor strategies, while nobody would really want to take a blue dragon for Abysia (or indeed, a red or blue dragon for any nation of the opposite temperature preference).

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">"Comparing apples and oranges" means that they are different things, so they can't be compared directly, so as to say an example of one is simply better than an example of the other.

Immortality is very important and unique, especially for something that can make an impact by fighting to the death. The more of an impact it can make, the more important it is. The more abilities (like drain strength and etherealness and immunity to poison and cold) it has built-in (so no loss on (un)death), the more important immortality is. The VQ gets a lot of bang for its no-risk death, and it used to get even more, when buff-giving paths were also cheap.

Quote:

While the PoD doesn't have Ethereal, he DOES have a base protection of 12 vs. the VQ's 0. This to me is a plus to the PoD, since in MP at least people have to be crazy not to be using magical weapons against the VQ.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
It's a great plus for the PoD, but the PoD still has to choose whether to use an Ethereal robe, or to stack even more protection on top of his natural skin.

People do not have to be crazy not to be using magical weapons against a VQ, because it's not easy to get magical weapons on troops, and the VQ may well be choosing the fights, anyway. What the VQ does well is wipe out most troops, especially living ones. You don't have to be crazy to use troops.

PvK

[ June 12, 2004, 05:03: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

Bah!

Since my comment about how easy it would be to give the VQ back to Broken Empire Ermor was overlooked, I went and whipped up a mod to do it, so I wouldn't have to keep hearing about it.

Sadly, it (#restrictedgod 8) doesn't work! It should be a very simple mod, but apparently Ermor is hard-coded not to allow the VQ.

Someone with enough interest to spend the time could of course duplicate the VQ for Emror stat by stat and rebuilding the sprites.

I have the patience to do the unit stats, but not to do the sprites.

I really wish there were a mod command to #borrowsprites (from unit number) - I would have done many more mods by now with that. The screenshot rebuilding technique is a discouraging amount of work just to get graphics that are already in there.

PvK

[ June 12, 2004, 16:36: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Er, okay, but I didn't mean to imply anything of the sort... sorry if I offended anyone. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Scott </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I wasn't offended, and the Norfleet comment was me trying to be funny, since I got the impression that Norfleet felt he exclusively was being targeted by illwinter. I also lumped you and Norfleet together since you were arguing the same point, more or less, and I was to lazy to separate you.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

This is a bit of a delayed response but, since no one else seems inclined to do so, I've gotta commend Illwinter on the changes made to the VQ. I positively love the new Version. She can still be made into a proper, nigh unvanquishable SC, but point costs are so prohibitive that both serial castling and dominion pushing are much, much less viable.
More importantly, relying on a VQ SC at the expense of your ability to muster or summon a proper army means there's very little you can do against a massive enemy stack marching towards your capitol, particularly if they are equipped with necromancers(Scripted to wither bones/dust to dust) or flyers(Particularly Caelians, elementals, angels, and others with magical/anti undead weapons)
Choose not to rely on a high-end SC strategy, though, and you've got a great pretender in the VQ. She still makes for a cost-effective, recuperating lower-end SC, she's still a spectacular raider, who gets to choose her own battles and achieves superb results even with relatively low path levels, she's still a better expendable defense mechanism than the Lich ever was(And she doesn't even have to teleport to get to the battlefield on time), and she's a superb addition to any army, even if she's no longer an army in her own right. I mean, a 0 encumbrance stealthy regenerating ethereal flying immortal with great combat stats and a life draining attack, how could you not find a use for that? She can fill a variety of roles, none of which really overlap those of any other SC, she has balanced strengths and weaknesses, and she gets the coolest titles.
Two thumbs up. They shoulda been up a few weeks ago, but I always assumed someone else would beat me to it.

Re: PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)
 

I agree. I like the changes in the latest patch, and think the VQ changes are a welcome and appropriate change.

PvK