Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Well mostly that's my biggest concern atm, and what was the worst aspect of Dom2.

MP games in mid sized maps, or larger, resolved about massive spellcasting and summoned, uberequipped, supercombatants.

Not to talk of some other really overpowered spells like the Ghost Riders which enforced full cover of castles in provinces (enforcing thus watchtower as fort selection).

Are recruited armies actually important now, and will they be for the whole duration of a game, the main force of a player?

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Not that I have the game, but I can hazard a guess.
First of all, its obvious from what we were told that the usefulness of recruited armies depends on the era played; Late Era features weak mages and strong troops, while Early Era features strong mages and weak troops, (the middle one is obviously a balance of both), so the strength of recruited troops depends on chosen era.
Furthermore I read that SCs have been nerfed (including Life Draining Weapons), and I think mages got a little nerf as well, so I'd expect spells and SCs to be a bit less dominant.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Life draining weapons now only drain max. 5 points of HP per strike. Not sure they drain fatigue anymore.

The amount of supplies and money in game has increased.

Ghost Riders, no dea.

Recruited units, blessables aside...I don't know. Yes to maybe if you also count in the national summons. We'll see with time.

Also, making sleeping Pretenders seems to be the trend since you get only 350 design points in the game when you start the game.

Putting the pretender to sleep fr a year or so in game time gives you 150 points, putting it to sleep for three years gives IIRC 250 points.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Hi Cohen http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Not sure if you think the rebalances go far enough, but at least i like it the way it is in Dom3.
My impression is that it seems now quite balanced and national troops are much more useful.

You can no longer chose forts, each nation gets 4-5 types of forts, 1 for each major terrain type.
Mad castling is more difficult, iirc the fastest speed to build a fort is 4 turns.

Then gold and supply have been multiplicated with ca. 250% compared to dom2. Research cost is doubled.
Because mad castling is much harder thus research is much slower in dom3.
National troops are now very useful in the first half of the game and because of many small minor nerfs to mages and SCs national troops have now a slightly better chance to kill a SC. Also because of the higher gold income you will have at least twice as large armies as in dom2.

Some of the most important buff spells have been nerfed a bit too.
The protection spells all have now a negative resistence to one form of magic. Invulnerability only gives 25 protection and poison weakness.

Gods you often take dormant or imprisoned now for additional points. So together with the slower research they cannot be used as well as SCs as before.

Not sure if you think all those changes go far enough, but imho it seems much more balanced and fun to play than dom2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I really like the imprisonment idea, but reading through the AAR's I noticed that all the gods seemed to be imprisoned. Is there any way for an un-imprisoned god to cause a threat, or is that a useless decision?

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I would have liked if Invulnerability would have for example nullified the effects of Quickness or lowered MR or such because many SC's are going to be poison immune anyway...

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I think the AARs are making heavy use of imprisonment only because the early games didnt chance it. Only now after many games are they exploring the imprison thing more.

Super Combatants have been majroly downgraded from being something close to an exploit to being just a tactic. They are still useful, but not so overwhelmingly the obvious choice. I think that was definetly the way for Illwinter to go with it. You might still end up in games where everyone goes with SCs but if you do then its the players fault http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Of course thats not a promise that someone wont find a loophole but if they do then I think it will likely be such a specific combination of unit, equipment, and spells that it will be much easier to patch.
Just IMHO

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Supercombatants are still in play, but you wont be able to rely on them to win you large battles by themselves. Actually, even SC pretenders can get 'owned' by large enough armies. Another change to note is rewritten morale system where SC's can rout if they get hurt and didn't go berserk. Morale system is another 'SC nerf'. SC's in Dom3 serve more as support to armies then to win you wars by themselves.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Nevertheless I maintain my "We'll see" thought since I remember people saying these kind of things about how SC's aren't around in Dominions 2...

...and how wrong they were.

But ah, it's just my pessimism. My biggest concern is that all the death dominion nations have seemingly been jammed into Late Era...

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Quickness got changed a bit too.
It now only doubles melee attacks, but no longer is useful for mages. Mages only can cast 1 spell/turn even with quickness.

There are now also some new SC counters.
One really nasty one, especially for SC gods, is horror mark.
Horror mark is Thaumaturgy 1, 2 astral to cast.

Horror marks stack now. If you horror mark an enemy pretender 10 times or so, then the chance is extremely high that already in the next turn he will get attacked by a horror. And there are some cute new unique horrors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

In one blitz game QM and me both took SC gods and both had astral nations. Simultaneously we had the same idea and horror marked the enemy god.
My god was immediately horror attacked on the very next turn, QMs god 1 turn later.
Our gods got easily slaughered.

And when i called back my god he was still horror marked, so he got killed again the turn i called him back http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

Those horrors are really nasty, they have i think a good chance to beat a fully equipped AQ and the like too.

Also there are now a couple of nations who can cast gifts from heaven ... .
Maverni's druids are especially noteworthy.
They are 2e2s, 2 100% randoms that can be wesn and an additional 10% random that can also be wesn.
So with summon ep any of their druids can cast gifts from heaven, and you have a very good chance that your druids get a nature pick, so they can also do eagle eyes for "sniper" GoHs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif.

Also remember the new random system. Most nations are good in 2-4 paths and have high difficulties getting access to the other 4-6 paths.
So your gem income is lower than dom2 normally, and you are longer limited to those items you can forge (unless you trade).

AQs and the like are still scary, but they are imho no longer as good as in Dom2. Also they are now unique, so you cannot mass produce them anymore via wish.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

The only reason SCs got so much use in Dom2 is because people didnt make good use of stealth armies. Personally I loved playing against people that relied on SCs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Especially QM and Arch always abused stealth troops as well in Dom2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

There isn't such thing as immunity.
The unit may have 100% resistance - which will be lowererd by casting invulnerabilty.
Don't ask me how much, don't know off the top of my head. Expect 25-50% reduction.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Invulnerability: Poison susceptibility +100
Iron skin: Shock susceptibility +75
Stone skin: Cold susceptibility +50
Bark skin: Fire susceptibility +25

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

IS there any way to get rid of the marks ever?

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Actually I think that there wasnt a problem with SCs. Sure 1 SC can murderize a regular army easily, but even though this is a fantasy game, it is "realistic" if we can say that. Just imagine... a mighty demon with a flaming sword enters to your province, what is guarded by 15 human swordsmen. I guess that creature wouldnt have any problems killing everything what moves in seconds.
Anyways just 1 word: modding. It is possible to totally remove all SCs from the game if you want.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Don't think I like the idea of quickness not helping mages anymore. I always thought that was a cool feature.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I agree with ioticus, and it's nice to have buffs that help spellcasters in way other than keeping them alive (path boost spells are cool too) but it was kind of overpowering. Not so much on say an initiate of the deep, since they fatigue themselves over 100 really quick that often its like 4 spells in 2 rounds as opposed to 4 spells in 4 rounds, but on like a water random sea king... you could go quickness, ice strike, ice strike, ice strike, ice strike, cast spells, and he would cast a LOT of spells before he passed out. Still, I have faith they'll be enough new stuff to more than make up for it.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Hm Quickness would not be very useful now anymore anyways normally. Because Relief got changed a lot too.

Now Relief is a hard to cast battlefield wide spell that reduces your fatigue 10-20 points or so each battleround.
Relief is 5n to cast and needs 1 nature gem.

Imho this change was necessary though. Relief was just too uber and everybody tried to abuse it in Dom2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I didn't think Quickness allowing mages to cast 2 spells per round was overpowered, because it was balanced by the fact that they gained a lot of fatigue. Now that Relief was hit with a huge nerf bat, allowing Quickness to help mages would be even less powerful, but still useful and cool, IMHO.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Uh thats nasty. Stacking horror marks eh! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I admit that i am not sure neither if the quickness nerf was a good idea.
In 90% of the cases you probably won't notice much difference though because of the changed relief.

One of the classic best examples for the usefulness of quickness was imho ctis miasma.
You only scripted quickness once you had relief.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I didn't know relief got nerfed. Nerfing relief is great, it was way too powerfull, but is 5N and 1 gem maybe a little too much? Unless I'm missunderstanding, which I think I may be. Is relief now a battlefiel enchantment, basically giving everyone reinvig 10-20?

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Yes.

As for the power of quickness, I think the easiest way to tell that it was overpowered is the fact that there were very few cases any mages with water one or more did not want to cast it in every battle. Personally, I'm not a fan of 'must have' spells.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Yeah, it seems to be somehing with a diceroll. Maybe something like -3d6 fatigue each round or so. In a test fatigue went down some turns 3-5 points, sometimes like 20 points.

I think for such a powerful effect 5n 1 nature gem is not too much though. Even this relief is still powerful.

More useful for armies and SCs than for mages though i think.

But it is too early to speculate, lets simply await some MP games and if the community really doesn't like the new quickness and relief maybe they get changed in a patch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
I think that they are fine though.

Battlemages are still great. Now more mages can cast spells like magma eruption or gifts from heaven.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Ummm. QM, your point about quickness is well taken, I suppose your right, every water mage does cast it, though maybe not if your also going to cast a high gem cost spell. But the new relief sounds cool, might be good for hordes of soul slaying astrologers or maybe a big theurg communion. Have to see it in action though. I'm not sure about for SCs though... Does the new life drain also/still drain fatigue? If not it might be good i guess.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Wasn't it this way in Dom2? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif You leave your SC alone for a second and the next turn he's dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Hehe yeah.
Though little survived massive artillery attacks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

Late game was always an economic warfare because when you showed an army or a sc then the enemy tried to annilihate it with mind hunt/flames from sky/ghost riders or an own SC/Army magically moved to counter your just magically moved SC/Army.

It was simply a resource war who had more clams. Ah the good old memories http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I really like the idea of less powerful SC's and less homogenous late game nations, if I understood right the main points of this discussion. One being, even though very powerful, beating an immense professional army without getting a scratch is ridiculous even in a so called high-fantasy world.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I'm with Gandalf on this one, i never really felt SCs were overpowered. I both used and feared them moderatly. A modest nerf sounds about right to me.

Fixing the castle system indirectly affects this too. The one disadvantage of the otherwise overly usefull watch tower strategy was that it did not offer much protection against lone SCs with the right equipment.. Since the watch tower thing has been fixed people will have better forts and SCs will not be able to breach without an army, especially if regular armies are bigger, which it sounds like they will be. I'm playing a triple income game right now, and sieges are a huge issue.

I've always suspected that the popularity of SCs was partialy caused by laziness- it's much easier to set orders for a single SC than a whole army.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Well depends. Some SCs in uber equipment were able to massacre a single army. However, I think it was all good, like I said a bit earlier in this topic. It takes a long time and mana to equip that specific SC.
Some minor nerf is ok of course.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Well, nerfing lifedrain just might result in other weapons then the eternal Wraith Swords.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

I think that the lifedrain nerf was needed. It was too good, compared to the others, so they were a bit obsolete.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Yup yup. I have always liked the part of kitting SC's/Thugs with different equipment.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Somewhat OT: What about the weapon 'Life Drain'? wont it make ghost kinda useless? They already die pretty easilly except for the lifedrain property (undead kinda own ghost, IMHO), If ghosts only get make 5 hp wont they become expensive, ethereal, armour penetrating chaff? like shadows or shade beasts? On the other hand, 5 hp might be enough, since they've only got like 25...

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

That's a good question. But I think that 'Life Drain' still does the same damage but replenshes only 5 HP at max.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Fort system seems rather good tbh.
Indeed I hope some nations would have some forbidden areas for forts (like let's say Pythium or Abysya can't fortify a swamp).

Recruitable Mages have relatively been an issue, still some lucky arrows could have killed them easily.
Having big armies clashing all around, helped with some mighty creatures would be really nice.
I'll hope for a Demo to test out the changes sooner or later to. I quitted Dom2 just cause of those problems listed on my topic.

Ty for answering

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Can't see why Pythium couldn't fortify a swamp, seeing as they start with a fortified capital where they can recruit legendary swamp creatures. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Ooh, wouldn't it be really cool if some creatures were terrain specific?
For example Pythium could recruit their Hydrae only in their capital and in fortresses built on swamps.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

> seeing as they start with a fortified capital where they can recruit legendary swamp creatures

But they didn't build the city in a swamp. Most Pythians avoid the swamp as it is noxious and anyone entering it would be eaten by grue (or a hydra).

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Are Grues new pythian units, hmmm? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://www.cncreneclips.com/forum/st...cre/shifty.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

They should only appear after casting Darkness, of course.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Can you cast magic missile to dispel the darkness? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

One of my favorite DMing story:

My PCs were walking along a trail to a nasty forest, home of the uber-wizard Morkilus (of course). I mentioned that they saw a spooky grove of trees a bit off the trail. They ask in their lazy way:

"Is there anything in the grove?"

to which I answer:

"Depends if you go there or not"

"Ooh... Schroedinger's grove!"

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

LOL Thats funny.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

You know, I accidentally opened this very page twice.

"Schroedinger's grove!" - "That's funny."
Haha, yes. [close window]
"Schroedinger's grove!" - "That's funny."
Oh, just this aga-- HEY!

I thought about double-posting this on purpose, but decided against it. It'd only have worked if the second post had gone to another page, any way.

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Well, they should have known this means that the grove is empty.
If they go to the grove, then there definitely something in it, them, which means that the other option, of the grove not having anything in it, is if they don't go there, which means that the answer to the question the way they meant it is "no".

Or were you just trying to make them go there to see if there was anything there? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

Wow, people that would actually be fun to play D&D with. I tell you, I'm tempted to go back to AD&D only because of the kinds of people it would attract.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: Dom3 MP is still Supercombatant based?
 

The closest PC game I have found which matches D&D is Neverwinter Nights from Bioware. I strongly recommend buying this game for those who don't currently own a copy because the complete Diamond edition is available for $19.99 at BestBuy and Target. Even at Amazon.com it can be bought at a good price.