Mods?
 

I spend most of my time here over at the modding forum - it's my favourite aspect of Dom3 to be honest.

As a subforum it's obviously less active than this one, but I'm surprised at how few people seem to have any interest in mods.

So I'm just wondering who here uses or has tried mods? If so, which mods? Any favourites? What kind of mod would you like to see more of?

If not, why not? Had a bad experience with an unbalanced mod? Just a purist? Haven't ever tried 'em?

In case any of you haven't looked in the mod forum, I made a thread listing many of the mods over there. It's a good starting point if you want to give one a try.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&fpart=1

Re: Mods?
 

I agree with you Sombre. The quality of most of the mods for this game are so good it is almost criminal NOT to try them. I think I inadvertently started a thread like this in the mod forum but I feel the same now as I did then.

I mainly try the new nation mods. Zepath and Amos have prolly the best ones IMHO. Which isn't to say the others aren't good, because they are as well. Foodstamp has a mod he's been working on that I wish he would hurry up and release already. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I also like the Pretender mods. Nova Deus (another zepath mod) is my fave.

I've not tried any of the 'balance' mods since one man's balance is another man's 'nerf', but I may come around.

Re: Mods?
 

In other games I have used mods alot, for example GC2, however I have found Dom3 to have such depth and complexity in its vanilla form that I do not need to look at mods.

I have been playing Dom3 since Oct 06, thats nearly 6 months, also played in over a dozen MP's and some nations are still a complete mystery to me. For example, I have never played C'tis yet or Marignon or R'ylieh or even faced those nations in combat MP.

Also I keep discovering better and better strategies to try out with spells and magic items, vanilla game on its own appears to have endless possible combo's. There are still plenty high level spells I have still to cast.

So I may get around to trying peoples mods but it may be some time yet.

Several of my MP's use worthy heros mod which is good, when you get a hero, he/she/it should be special.

Re: Mods?
 

Mods beside Heroes or CB Mod (or a few others) are only useable for singleplayer.

In multiplayer its really difficult to build in nation mods. Maybe you can start an only-mod-nation game but only allow one player to get a specific mod nation doesn't seem to work. You still have the ballance problem here.

And because i hate playing Dom3 SP games i only test some nation mods for 2-3 turns and so mainly don't use mods (besides the MP mods) really much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Mods?
 

If you want your mod to be used alot, it may be a very good idea to design a mod that can be used in MP and by all nations, just like the worthy heros mod. I personally am not a fan of the cb mod and always avoid joining any MP's that use it. I think vanilla Dom3 is balanced and bandar is completely correct one mans balance is another mans nerf and if there one thing I HATE its game nerfing, destroyed lots of good games that.

Re: Mods?
 

Yeah, that's my story too. Even though I only play single-player, it still takes me a long time to finish a game. And there's so much depth in the unmodded Dom3 that I haven't really felt a need to dive into the mods.

Your work-in-progress Ulm Reborn mod is the only mod that has my interest. Partly, that's because I really like Ulm. (I'm a simple man with simple tastes, I guess.) I also like the Iron Faith theme, and I'm delighted to see it reborn in Dom3. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Gratuitous link to Sombre's "Ulm Reborn" mod:
Ulm Reborn
(currently at v0.5 and still in development)

Re: Mods?
 

I'm not a fan of the CB type mods, although I do appreciate how the CB mod is split into sections.

I definitely like the nation mods and absolutely LOVE the worthy heroes mod and want to see further additions. I essentially play most of the game just to get a few SCs and nurture them along. I get REALLY bummed if one dies off http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'd like to see more national spells, and recruiting sites as they can definitely add flavor or flesh out weak spots.

I currently use:
CB Scales
Worthy Heroes - need more heroes!
Mythological pretenders
Militia and light cav buff - even though i rarely use the troops
Healing gods - non-recup pretenders suck http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif (I'd like to see all gods with recup in vanilla, and those with recup already get regen)

Re: Mods?
 

I don't think that MP necessarily excludes new nation mods. It's true that you should probably only use Amos' nations (for example) against each other, not against vanilla sides, although you could give a stronger mod nation to a less experienced player and I doubt it would be so overpowering that he would roll over a seasoned veteran of MP. A lot of the new nations are built with balance in mind and have already undergone many changes to bring them in line with the vanilla game - furthermore, most of them aren't final versions, so unlike vanilla nations they are totally subject to further balance and gameplay improvements. What seems to be lacking a lot of the time is feedback from players to help balance the nations, especially for MP.

I see no reason why a MP game between members of an established group shouldn't make use of one or two mod nations, especially if the game is relatively short, on a small map etc. If there are some balance issues it probably isn't going to be enough to spoil the game - you can give feedback to the modder afterwards or even make some changes on the fly (provided everyone gets the latest version of the mod).

Of course I take the point about Dom3 not exactly needing new content - there are already a silly number of units and spells and whatnot, but then people seem very enthusiastic about more nations and the like being added in patches,.. so there must be desire to see new nations,..

I'm a big fan of Zepath and Amos' work too by the way. They inspired me to mod and their .dm files were a big help as I learned the ropes.

Re: Mods?
 

I tend not to use mods. Very few balance or fix mods interest me.

The mods I have used are the one that gives new flags, the ones that fill in the empty nation slots with way unbalanced nations meant to be better AI opponents, ones where people are testing new AI improvements, and the chaos mod.

Chaos mod is left over from the Dom2 programming projects. Its a program that you run that creates a mod which randomly changes a feature of every unit in the game. It was an extension by someone else of my chaos project which scattered randomly generated armies into every province (and made Johan cringe)

I would be willing to use any mod which is part of a scenario (such as working with a map) but those are still in discussion apparently.

Re: Mods?
 

Are any of those 'built for AI' nations actually available on the mod forum? I haven't seen them yet.

Re: Mods?
 

I have very little time to try and evaluate different mods. My group is currently using the heroes mod and I'm awaiting some review of the CB mod.
I have seen a lot of nation mod, and some of them seems very good and "professional". I think a solution to broad the audience could be to package a set of verified and balanced new nations into a one mod, to have a "new nations mod" package, like the wonderful races and ai mod (I don't remember the name) of space empires iv.
A very good start has been the creation of the "mod list" thread, a step further would be the joining of all the best and actively mantained in a single mod.

Re: Mods?
 

I use only the worthy heroes mod and the one fort pretty flags.

Re: Mods?
 

I plan on hosting an MP game or games to test my nation mods in MP, but haven't had the time or energy to do it yet. The way I see it, if the mod maker wants to see his mod in MP hosting the game is the least he can do.

Of course, whether or not it works will depend on if people are willing to play in a game where modded and quite possibly unbalanced nations are present.

Still, there are plenty of games being played with Helheim in them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Mods?
 

I'm going to list more combinations of mods that work together - so far I've just put up a Late Era combo. I think listing combinations of mods that work together and possibly altering a few of them to make them compatible is a better idea than combining them.

So far the mods haven't stepped on each other that much, because there are quite a lot of spaces for units etc. The main issue is nametypes, nation numbers etc, though that's fairly easily solved.

As for which mods are best,.. well it's slightly difficult to get any kind of consensus when people are reluctant to even try them. I'd say zepath's mods are the best in terms of overall presentation and they are seemingly ok in terms of vanilla balance too.

Amos has made more national mods than anyone and they are very distinctive, with plenty of eye candy. They also have good flavour and interesting gameplay concepts. The catch is that they are basically balanced only for use against each other, or for messing about in SP. That still isn't a reason not to give them a go as far as I'm concerned and I believe Amos has stated that all his nations of a certain age work together (so you can play a game with his four or so late era nations against each other). I have yet to test this and list it as a working combo though.

I can vouch that my three mod nations (one big project, two smaller) all aim for balance and gameplay and they all feature pretty good graphics too (attack sprites present and correct, right sizes etc). In the modlist I comment on other mods, but I don't have time to play and test them all.

Regarding the CB,... I'm not willing to get into it without some sort of readme explaining not the specific stat changes, but the rationale behind general changes, such as "all light cavalry decreased in cost to encourage their use - in vanilla they aren't worth using at all". I am totally onboard with a new balancing standard which strives to make 'useless' units viable picks and to ensure more variety. I've even offered to make CB balance versions of the 'top' mod nations - but first I need some kind of guide to what CB changes (again, a huge list of specific stat changes doesn't help me in this respect).

Re: Mods?
 

Heh, guess I really am an "inverted Gandalf" after all.

The only reason I play Dominions 3 because of its immense customizability. I ran quite a lot of MP games in Dominions 2 with my friends and eventually got bored with it. Each game simply takes way too much time to complete, and I find that I don't have the mental stamina to keep myself interested. When I want to play multiplayer I prefer RTS.

For me Dominions 3 is the near perfect singleplayer fantasy strategy game, an evolved Master of Magic, and I find myself spending quite a lot of time poking and prodding every aspect of the game. It's not at all unusual for me to run mods that alters all units, spells and items in fundamental ways. These days an completely unmodded game feels mind numbingly familiar and pointless.