Mictlan
 

<assaulting stance to get information mode ON>

Why would they summon their new national summons when they can always cranck out Devils?

<assaulting stance to get information mode OFF>

Re: Mictlan
 

What are the national summons for Mictlan?

Re: Mictlan
 

Lots of things with complex mesoamerican names. Tlaloque and Onaqui pop into my mind first.

Re: Mictlan
 

Those are Aztec/Mayan names.

TLALOC, the rain deity, belonged to another most memorable and universal cult of ancient Mexico.The name may be Aztec, but the idea of a storm god especially identified with mountaintop shrines and life-giving rain was certainly as old as Teotihuacan. The primary temple of this major deity was located atop Mt. Tlaloc, where human victims were sacrificed to fertilize water-rocks within the sacred enclosure. In Tenochtitlan another Tlaloc temple shared the platform atop the dual Main Pyramid, a symbolic mountain.

Re: Mictlan
 

I'd prefer that a nation have more possible strategies, not fewer.

Re: Mictlan
 

> Why would they summon their new national summons when they can always cranck out Devils?

Devils might be nerfed. Tzitzimitl star demons might be powerful. Or they might just be more fun. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mictlan
 

That might be a satisfying answer. http://www.cncreneclips.com/forum/st...cre/shifty.gif

Re: Mictlan
 

Well the issue with most national troops is 'most' summoned creatures are usually a better long_term package. Most nations have national summons which have an expense of initial gold cost, food supplies, and gold upkeep.
Now compare this against 'most' summoned units which have an expense of initial gem cost... and that's it. Not to mention some summoned creatures are significantly stronger and more likely to survive horror attacks, SC's, ghost riders and other such nasty enemies.
I play mostly large maps of 200 or more provinces and my experience is the national troops for most nations are only needed during the very beginning unless using some F9 / W9 setup.

*** One suggestion I have for making national troops more popular throughout the game is by having their existence within a province increase the population. Don't do the increase by percentage or gamers will just be dropping the national troops in grassland areas... each soldier should increase population by 10 per turn, thus provinces destroyed by death can be reborn. Soldiers are known to socialize with local ladies unless it's Ermor of course.
-- hope this helps

Re: Mictlan
 

You know, there should be a way to "upgrade" the national troops. Example regular national swordsman -> veteran national swordsman -> elite national swordsman. Thats 1/2/3 levels. Now, as they reach a new level, they gonna be more powerful and get better equipments. I have no idea, that how could this be implented with the Doms 3. engine. However there is an easier way. Add them as summons maybe. Like Abysia level 2 national troops would be a level 3 fire spell, level 3 national troops would be a level 5 fire spell.
If these things can be modded [I think yes], this is actually a good idea for the modders.

Re: Mictlan
 

Experience already does this, to a limited extent. The difference between a group of troops with two stars experience (about the most you generally see) and a green group is pretty major; still, the difference between those two-star troops and, say, a pack of lamias or wights is even bigger. Perhaps that's as should be, however. National troops are useful until you've researched the ability to do something better - that research represents an additional cost.

I wonder, actually, if things might be more differentiated by concentrating the summons into a small number of schools. Right now, every school except Evocation and Thaumaturgy gives you a way of putting together an army that will stomp any hired army (in the case of Alteration, that army is assembled on the battlefield), so almost no matter how you research you're going to quickly render your national troops obsolete. If all these spells were moved into one or two schools, then unless you researched those schools, you'd have to rely on your hired guys. These would probably be buffed by the spells or items that *are* in the schools you researched; your buffed hires would be going against the enemy's unbuffed summons, and it might still be a good match.

This could even make an interesting mod...

Re: Mictlan
 

What if they could be recruited just as normal? Say, Pythium could have older and more skilled legionaires. Historically, the Alae Legionaire and Velites were accompanied by more skilled Principes, Hastati and Triarii - which already exist.

I still think all summoned units with high stats should start with one or two stars of experience, and their stats should be lowered accordingly. This would help to make national units actually close the cap instead of getting a very small headstart in the beginning.

Re: Mictlan
 

Hm I dont know, but national troops should "do good" in endgame somehow. The only way to make it..to add new national troops not just monsters as late game summons. Well imho.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mictlan
 

Would it count if nations had more recruitable sc type troops? Maybe they cost 1000 gold (or more) apiece so you don't start recruiting them until late game when you have tons of gold.

Of course, the other national troops would still become worthless.

Re: Mictlan
 

Wouldn't help, because summons need no upkeep.

Re: Mictlan
 

I agree the upkeep percentage from 1000 gold would be quite high even being sacred.

Most summoned units have multiple advantages over national troops. Some of these include:
Never flee in battle
Never needs food
No gold upkeep
More powerful

Ways national troops can be improved:
1) Allow most nations to have their national troops increase population for whatever province they reside.
2) Allow national troops to be upgraded making their gold/food upkeep more acceptable. one example listed by: DominionsFAN
3) Allow some method for national troops to be upgraded with gems.
4) Allow national troops to provide increased morale, defense and attack for province defense... seems logical their presence within the province would have this effect. Perhaps for this bonus to work the national troops would have to be equal to the province defense, thus 10 PD would need 10 national troops for the bonus.

Re: Mictlan
 

What about making higher level summons require more than 1 command slot? Is that possible? It would make sense, as those monsters would take more concentration to control...

Another possibility is making some national troops specifically designed for late game (higher Magic Resistance, maybe some special abilities...) , but their stats & higher cost make them useless vs. early game indies.

A final possibility is making buffs that affect only recruited troops, but not summoned ones.

Re: Mictlan
 

Just make national troops better. Give them more cool abilities. The best national troops (Vans, Jotuns, Pangaeans) all have multiple great abilities, whilst human troops only have a few stat increments here and there.

For example, why not give all mundane humans doubled experience to represent their flexibility? And yes, they can get ten stars.

Re: Mictlan
 

excellent suggestions I will add those to the list:

Most summoned units have multiple advantages over national troops. Some of these include:
Never flee in battle
Never needs food
No gold upkeep
More powerful

Ways national troops can be improved:
1) Allow most nations to have their national troops increase population for whatever province they reside.
2) Allow national troops to be upgraded making their gold/food upkeep more acceptable. one example listed by: DominionsFAN
3) Allow some method for national troops to be upgraded with gems.
4) Allow national troops to provide increased morale, defense and attack for province defense... seems logical their presence within the province would have this effect. Perhaps for this bonus to work the national troops would have to be equal to the province defense, thus 10 PD would need 10 national troops for the bonus.
5) Providing national troops with increased statistics by receiving faster experience upgrades and the ability to receive higher experience thus 10 stars instead of 5 stars. as suggested by Sandman

Re: Mictlan
 

Guys, that wont work. Basic national troops cant be much better, that would imbalance the early-mid game summons. Minor basic national troop upgrades wont help, so its not necessary at all. Like I said, imho the only way to "play" with national troops in mid/late game is to add mid [call it level 2] / high [call it level 3] national troop summons. That way the basic "vanilla" [level 1] national troops would be obsolete in mid game, and the mid game national troops coming from summons [level 2] would be obsolete in the end game, when the player would be able to summon level 3 national troops. I think this is the best way, in fact Im gonna try to do this in my mod. I am pretty sure that this is doable somehow with modding.

Re: Mictlan
 

It depends on the nature of the improvement. Some abilities don't matter in the early game, but become good later on.

For example, if you were to give magical weapons to all Ulmish troops, it wouldn't really affect the early game, but it would make Ulm perform far better in the late game, with a lot of ethereal creatures in play.

Re: Mictlan
 

How about adding some of the features the summoned units are called for the national units?

Light infantries could have some terrain survival traits and elite units could have minor resistance to elements or magic, and some of the units could have magic weapons. Say, a Knight of the Chalice might have a magic sword that has an AoE 1 attack that damages undead and demons as an addition, and 25% fire resistance.

Maybe all sacred 'knightly' units could have weapons that do anti-undead/demon damage. A KotC or Black Templar could take on a Devil and actually whoop it's barb-tailed rear.

Temple Guards, who are admitedly good now, could have a 25% shock resistance slightly stronger weapons than regular caelian weapons.

Same goes for other nations. Saber Cherry (IIRC) had a mod which gave the heavier Ulmish unit a 25% Fire/Shock/Cold resistance and slightly improved MR along with other tweaks. If I remember correctly their weapons were also considered magical which propably helped a lot against ethereal units.

And so on. These are just some minor suggestions, and shouldn't be by any mean restricted to just the nations I mentioned.

Re: Mictlan
 

Hey, guys. This is Scott Hebert. I can't remember my old account at all, so I made a new one.

I can say, though, that this discrepancy between 'normal' and summoned creatures is _the_ reason I stopped playing Dominions II, and the main reason I am not preordering Dominions 3. I do not like the idea of having the mid- to late-game be nothing but 'Hmm, what do I want my 50 bajillion mages to do this turn?'

As for ways to 'improve' normal troops?

1) Remove upkeep entirely from the game. As others have (rightly) pointed out, until Summons and Normals are playing in the same ballpark, Summons will be superior. This is one way to fix that issue.

2) Make summoned units have a gem upkeep. This is the other side of the coin. If all summoned units had, say, an upkeep of 1/5 their cost in gems, you wouldn't see nearly as many of them. At that point, they would be used as a supplement to existing forces, not the sole source of a troop base.

Personally, I'm all for the second option. This fits with the current conventions of this game type, as well as the literature. (Devils want continuous sacrifices!) This also would help even the field with combat summons, who could be costed appropriately so as to offer trade-offs with 'permanent' summons.

About the only 'issue' this might have is to push the game further towards SCdom, which could be mitigated in other ways.

But really. Please, do something about this.

Re: Mictlan
 

A gem upkeep could work. Some weaker creatures could have vastly lesser gem cost though. Like 1/10. Or 1/15.

Some creatures could of course have a very high gem cost...

Re: Mictlan
 

excellent suggestions I will add to the list... not sure if Illwinter has time, but hopefully the list will help:

Most summoned units have multiple advantages over national troops. Some of these include:
Never flee in battle
Never needs food
No gold upkeep
More powerful

Ways national troops can be improved:
1) Allow most nations to have their national troops increase population for whatever province they reside. suggested by NTJedi
2) Allow national troops to be upgraded making their gold/food upkeep more acceptable. suggested by: DominionsFAN
3) Allow some method for national troops to be upgraded with gems. suggested by NTJedi
4) Allow national troops to provide increased morale, defense and attack for province defense... seems logical their presence within the province would have this effect. Perhaps for this bonus to work the national troops would have to be equal to the province defense, thus 10 PD would need 10 national troops for the bonus. suggested by NTJedi
5) Providing national troops with increased statistics by receiving faster experience upgrades and the ability to receive higher experience thus 10 stars instead of 5 stars. suggested by Sandman
6) Providing summoned troops with a gem upkeep making national troops more feasible. suggested by VedalkenBear
7) Add additional national troops which can be summoned from spells specific for each nation. suggested by: DominionsFAN
8) Remove gold upkeep which helps balance cost between the summoned and national units. suggested by VedalkenBear
9) Provide improved/unique bonuses for national troops such as 25% resistances or other traits. suggested by Nerfix

Re: Mictlan
 

Other possibilities:

Another line of research, along the lines of Construction only affecting the recruited troops. "Armament" perhaps? It could work in any number of ways, including:

Allowing new buildings : Example, at Armament 2 Ulm could build a "Mithril Forge" that gave +1 attack + damage plus affects ethereal units. Some buildings might be cheap, some expensive, perhaps on a nation by nation basis.

Allowing the choice of a new ability for nationals : Armament 2, Ulm gets to choose between Enhanced Black Steel Weaponry or EBS Armor. Weaponry gives an effect as per above, Armor gives a 25% resistance to elements.

Give a new category of spells, "National" like Global, only each nation can only have say, 2 national spells up, each giving a certain effect to the recruited troops.

Sadly, these certainly can't be fit into Dom3. It's a shame really - most suggestions are either bandaids, or wouldn't fit Dom2/3 (though perhaps IllWinter has been doing things none of us has thought of to remedy the situation).

One thing that allowed games like MoM to have national troops that remained viable against high powered summonings was the unit enchantments - but you'd need a stack / unit mechanism that Dominions, with individual troops, doesn't have, whereas certain MoM enchantments were quite effective with differing troops. Halflings sucked - but having the most individual troops possible in the unit meant a few enchantments got extra oomph on them. Berserkers similarly were candidates for enchantments, being tough and having a thrown weapon in addition to melee, so they could attack flyers.

Ah well - have to wait and see.

Re: Mictlan
 

Maybe we should get Shrapnel to just go ahead and create another forum for Dominions 4. I know Ive got a few things Id post there.

Re: Mictlan
 

Hoburgs are size 1, and all AoE spell target more Hoburgs than humans. Of course, as there is no hoburg nation, it is hard to get enough of them for that to matter. Better example of that in Dominions would be Iron Woods Jotunheim - one could buy only Jotun, but there would be only one giant per grid, and many spells would be wasted. Mixing some Vaetti into them could triple the number of units affected.

There are no offensive AoE buff spells in Dom2, though. Strength of Giants give a little more strength, and Weapons of Shrapness helps a little against heavy armor, but I don't remember anything else with AoE. Body Ethereal and Luck are very short-ranged, and the better versions (Battle Fortune, and the Air spell Mist Warriors or whatever) already affect the whole battlefield. I'd like to see more AoE spells that give units offensive power.

Re: Mictlan
 

I agree with the above posts, that buffs for national troops would solve everything (or a gem upkeep for summons). Maybe spells could be added that affect entire squads, regardless of unit position. Overall, I think more and better buff spells for recruited soldiers only would make them much better.

Re: Mictlan
 

There is no race more conservative and less flexible than the human race.

Re: Mictlan
 

And I do like that. Dominions is one of the very few games where magic can actually decide the outcome of a battle. If you take the Age of Wonders games, magic is absolutely useless without troops to work with. I much prefer the Dominions model.

I hate the second option. I'd go for the first long before the second, which only manages to reduce the number of viable tactics. Of course, the best choice is to simply increase the amount of gold in the world to the point where you can buy both mages and troops in the same turn.

Re: Mictlan
 

more suggestions added to the list... most likely too late for the suggestions since DOM_3 is in the final stages, but I will list them anyway:

Most summoned units have multiple advantages over national troops. Some of these include:
Never flee in battle
Never needs food
No gold upkeep
More powerful

Ways national troops can be improved:
1) Allow most nations to have their national troops increase population for whatever province they reside. suggested by NTJedi
2) Allow national troops to be upgraded making their gold/food upkeep more acceptable. suggested by: DominionsFAN
3) Allow some method for national troops to be upgraded with gems. suggested by NTJedi
4) Allow national troops to provide increased morale, defense and attack for province defense... seems logical their presence within the province would have this effect. Perhaps for this bonus to work the national troops would have to be equal to the province defense, thus 10 PD would need 10 national troops for the bonus. suggested by NTJedi
5) Providing national troops with increased statistics by receiving faster experience upgrades and the ability to receive higher experience thus 10 stars instead of 5 stars. suggested by Sandman
6) Providing summoned troops with a gem upkeep making national troops more feasible. suggested by VedalkenBear
7) Add additional national troops which can be summoned from spells specific for each nation. suggested by: DominionsFAN
8) Remove gold upkeep which helps balance cost between the summoned and national units. suggested by VedalkenBear
9) Provide improved/unique bonuses for national troops such as 25% resistances or other traits. suggested by Nerfix
10) Allow new research path which improves statistics of national troops. suggested by Cainehill
11) Allow new buildings such as an Armory, Forge, etc. where national troops can be made stronger. suggested by Cainehill
12) New national spells (like global) which are casted to improve existing national troops. suggested by Cainehill

Re: Mictlan
 

Could you edit your first post where you made this list instead of spamming the thread?

Re: Mictlan
 

actually he might want to post it to a new thread that has a subject title more eye-catching to the devs

Re: Mictlan
 

I see quite a few complaints about summons being too powerful vs. national troops. Here's a suggestion: Set site frequency to 20 or 25 or even lower and research to very difficult and national troops are suddenly a lot more valuable for a lot longer. At least it is this way in Dom2, and I don't see why it shouldn't be so in Dom3 either. If there is an overall slight improvement in nationals along the lines of the CB mod, all that much better.

People are used to playing Dominions with normal research and sites at 40 or more, which means that on any halfway large map you're quickly inundated with more gems than you know what to do with and there's no incentive to use anything but summoned troops.

Edi

Re: Mictlan
 

If that's true, then why are humans the dominant species in the Dominions universe?

Re: Mictlan
 

Working on mostly historical bases off of what he teaches in real life would tend to make that likely. And for balance purposes I think that humans tend to be the default that everything else is measured off of. Just my thoughts on it

Re: Mictlan
 

Then why not give some of these abilities to national troops? In dom2, only the 'no upkeep' isn't on at least one troop. (if you count pop killing nations summons, they have no upkeep)

All of the new abilities you've suggested are cool, but I'd be just as happy to see them on summons as well.

Re: Mictlan
 

Because tolerant cultures with a more hippie outlook than the human race allow themselves to be swallowed and destroyed by intolerant, simpleminded and conservative humans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mictlan
 

Also, humans breed like rabbits.

Re: Mictlan
 

Kristoffer O said:That won't work in your world. Vanir aren't hippies, Pangaeans might be hippies but they go berserk in the end (Carrion Woods), Jotun are anything but hippies (although Rimtursar might've been), Caelians are nerds (except Harabs, who are goths) and the "tolerance" of the water nations is arguable at best. Atlantians, the better of the bunch, only enslave humans to have someone else to tell them of their wonderful future, while the Starspawn "tolerance" only produces cheap cannon-fodder.

The only hippies in DomII are the Abysians and the Tuatha. The Tuatha retreat to another plane instead of enslaving the humans, and Abysians were clearly smoking when the first humanbreds came to be. In their defense, they got into bad company. Of course, their "friends" got themselves banished once there were some horned kids running around, and are probably still gathering spousal support. That doesn't sound like the typical female, though... Ah, now I know why there are no Incubi in Dominions! That also explains why Abysians need to collect all those pure maidens, as well! Some spousal support, there!

C'tissians are even worse, though. Not only are they herbivores enamoured with both life and death (veggie-hippie-goths!), they have severe skin problems! They already enslaved one race of intolerant and conservative carnivores, though, so I wouldn't want to miss with them.

Re: Mictlan
 

Judging from new pictures C'tis shamans are hippies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Mictlan
 

I personally like the theme of Dominions regarding national troops and summons. You start the war relying on your nationals, but things slowly (or not so slowly) escalate to the point where common people have little business being in the battlefield - except as a diversion. Some feeling of apocalyptic grandeur or such.

Anyway, remembering the same complains from threads along the years, I got the impression that the main beef of people was that while the beginning featured a varied group of distict nations, the end-game devolved into armies of identical groups of summons. I dunno whether the increased number of tweaks, new beasts and spells already addresses that thing, but...

...one of the things leading to the identical summons seemed to be the ease of empowerment of magic paths. Get one blood random, start hunting, empower, turn Man into a blood nation. Get a death random, begin site scrying, empower, suddenly Marignon fields Tartarians. And so on.

We already have lists of each nation's favoured magic paths. How about a couple of disfavoured paths for each? Double (or triple) the empowerment cost of disfavoured paths for all nation's mages as the general resentment of the magic in question makes it tough to improve on (hard blood magic for many nations, hard fire magic for mages living in flammable forest cities, I dare you to research air magic underwater, etc), lessen the empowerment cost of favoured paths. Make it harder to get high levels in all of the paths deemed "useful", and not all nations start bringing in an army after army of Tartarians, devils, abominations, wished SCs and tarrasques.

Obviously I haven't thought this one through, the idea just occured to me.

Re: Mictlan
 

Actually, the identical composition of the armies is my biggest grieve. Maybe the national summons can spice things up, or then they become just another high-level powerfull magic summons.

....which are, in the worst case, not used because it's just too profitable to churn out demons.

Re: Mictlan
 

Yeah its a shame, I mean even in Doms 2. we had 1000+ units, and basically only a "few" were used in the late game. I think there should be much more viable units for endgame tactics. Hell even the national troops should stand a chance in the endgame. Why is the player forced to use a few summoning spells in the late game? I think it would be much more fun to play with more summonings spells -> much more equally strong endgame beasts, also high level national troops would be good as well. I think these things can be modded in Doms 3. It will be hard work, but if the player can "change" the summoning spells, it is doable. [I meant to change a specific summoning spell like 1. to summon an other monster, not the original one. 2. give the spell a new required level & gemcost]

Re: Mictlan
 

If national troops, which require absolutely no research, are still viable when level 9 spells are being cast, then you have a bigger problem with game balance. That problem being that the research wasn't worth the cost.

Have you ever even read the modding manual? Everything you describe is already possible.

Re: Mictlan
 

Well I wasnt modding in Doms 2. and I wasnt looking at the modding manual at all.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Btw Graeme you misunderstood me! If you read back a bit, I mentioned, that these new high level national troops should be summoned.

Re: Mictlan
 

Well I personally feel national troops should exist within most of the game. Since most national troops do not compare or equal the power behind most summoned troops I believe the national troops should provide a different use within the game.

Instead of weakening summoned units maybe Illwinter has planned a way to make national troops provide some other bonus(es) to other aspects of the game. This way national troops will be used beyond early stages of the game.

One suggestion I listed was that national troops would provide a special bonus to province defense when national troops equal the province defense... thus gamers would be interested in buying national troops throughout the game.

Re: Mictlan
 

Again : an "armanent" school of "magic" to research could allow better, beefier, troops. Imagine : Ulm researches "Black Volcanic Steel Armor" for its troops. Caelum researches "Mechanically Winged Holy Wingless" or "Dirigible Mastodons".

Hell, shut up wolf, write your own game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mictlan
 

This is where I bank my hope on national summons.

They are similiar to national troops, require reseach and are hopefuly competive with other magic boogies.

Re: Mictlan
 

I think national summons gonna be monsters, not troops equipped with armor/weapons. Anyways lets wait and see! .. but Im gonna implent my ideas to my total conversion mod for sure. I think its gonna be neat.