Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I see that patch 3.10 was released yesterday. I'm downloading now, but won't get a chance to take for a test drive until late tonight, primarily because of my addictions to food, clothing and shelter and the time I have to dedicate to acquiring the means.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I'm a junky to food too. Does someone know how I could aquire my drugs without having to play only when 'good people' sleep ?

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

These new sites will only be available to newly created games, right? *salivates*

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I really like magic sites. Among the coolest thing in this game me thinks.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Woo-Hoo is right, this game is awesome.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

In case anyone was wondering, there are 140 new sites...

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

The game says 3.09 not 3.10 on the Mac Patch. It also says the patch fails when patching on the Mac but it actually works.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Okay, its offical, this is a free expansion, not a mere patch.

If only all developers were as giving as Illwinter.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

If they keep patching like this, who needs Dominions IV? And if Illwinter were to
put a seal of approval on 20 mods or so, and thus created a Later Era, who
would needs extension packs?

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I have to fully concur with Meglobob on that sentiment. This is beyond great for one of my personal favorite games ever!

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Any database files which name and detail all the magic sites? The best I've been able to find is Gandalfs name list yet it doesn't tell anything about what the magic sites provide.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

To celebrate this day I will play some ABBA, eat some Swedish food and put my Casablanca tape in the VCR. The only better news I could get out of Sweden today is notification of my nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. (I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, although seeing how KO and company live there they might put in a good word for me. I'll split the prize money.)

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Don't forget to pay a visit to your local IKEA store.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Not yet. I'm working on the v 3.10 Dom3DB and most of the sites are in, but I don't know terrain masks, levels and the special percentage chances for them. Praetorious has done a hex dump of the sites, but I need it translated to the kind of form that he did the last time.

I haven't had time to add all new units yet and I've had to backcheck several old ones due to the visibility of powers that were previously not so. I also need.

You'll get the DB soon enough, but it requires work. Most of the beta group has had the new patch only for a little over a week and I didn't have a chance to start seriously working on it until Friday. Patience.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

When you upgrade to 3.10 what happens to your existing games, are they still supported?

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Single player? Yes, no problems.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Wow. This patch is really something else. The new and revised nations are really interesting, especially MA Mictlan. It's a new spin on my favorite nation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Poor Hydras they got crushed. At 250 gold they weren't a good buy anyway so I guess it is not a great loss.

The 175 gold Hydras in CB 1.1 OTOH were a solid buy and now (well once CB 1.1 gets updated) they will be a poor choice.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Hydras seem incredibly powerful to me... I've been rolling over level 9 indeps easily with no bless or support with 10-15 of them and have only lost 1 ~30 turns into a SP game. Sure the 6 hp per head thing seems weak at first, but it means that the most damage a single hit can do is to kill 1 head! They laugh off heavy cavalry charges because of this.

They strike me as really good meat shields, what am I missing?

Thanks indeed.
 

As if I haven't lost enough sleep to this game already. :p Guess I won't be sleeping that much tonight...

Good to see that MA Mictlan got reworked -- they seemed a bit lost and confused, compared to EA/LA.

As for Hydras... heh, nine lives isn't only good for heavy cavalry charges, but also instant-death spells and the like.

Modding tweaks as well... hm. Out of demented curiosity, one might wonder whether the "monster autonomously wanders from province to province" behavior of the Unfettered Eater of the Dead is tied to number of base unit type, name of base unit type, or a property that theoretically could be applied to other monsters. If I were rather drunk, a 'Monster Island' map with numerous autonomous daikaiju might be entertaining. More seriously, wandering hordes of barbarians or undead would be very thematic for some maps, even if 'horde' has to be simulated via in-battle autosummons of some kind.

Re: Thanks indeed.
 

Let me be the first to post that stonebeings with stone swords are wrking as inteded:
Stonesword Gargoyle

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Here are the changes, as I understand them:

Negative:
1) The total offensive power is lower as the lesser heads use weak poison.
2) As a fight goes on the new Hydra gets less and less offensive power (assuming that the fight is not going well )
3) their total HP were reduced from 72 to 64 (6*4 lesser heads +4 0 greater head) ... maybe the original Hydra has 64 HP? I don't recall but I think it was 72.
4) The protection on the 1st 24 hp was reduced from 13 to 8

Positive:
1) no one hit can kill them
2) lots of shape changes seems to keep afflictions for affecting them
3) the change very thematic

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

That mostly seems correct. Except no 4(!) hits can kill them, not just 1.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

You could simply say they take a minimum of 9 hits to kill. Against certain enemies and spells that makes them very effective.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Hydras have 6 hp per head, 100 regen for those heads. The main body has 40 hp and 30% (12 hp) regen. That's a total of 88 HP. That makes them immensely durable when used in groups. The weak poison from each hit stacks up every time it hits, so unless a hydra gets swarmed and annihilated immediately, its opponents are going to die of poison very quickly.

In one of my games, I have Fomorian giants with a N10 bless (20% regen = 13 hp per round) and my stack of 20 blessed Fomorians had their hands full dealing with a mere half dozen Sauromatian hydras and their support chaff. The reason being that they were taking nearly as much damage from poison every round as they were regenerating AND they were getting the damage from the blows as well.

The SC hydras, when fixed, are going to be begging for a F9W9 bless.

Oh, and Serpent Cult has a hydra special hero. In place of the Great Head weapon it has something called Immortal Head and the bugger is sacred. Draw your own conclusions...

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I think that there are 4 lesser heads ( each with 2 attacks ) and 1 greater head. So that's 5 hits to kill, and 64 HP.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

No. The way it works is

4x Lesser Heads, Great Head
3x Lesser Heads, Lesser Head, Great Head
3x Lesser Heads, Great Head
2x Lesser Heads, Lesser Head, Great Head
2x Lesser Heads, Great Head
1x Lesser Heads, Lesser Head, Great Head
1x Lesser Heads, Great Head
Lesser Head, Great Head
Great Head

That's 9 forms total, 8x 6 hp + 1x 40 hp = 88 total. I should know what I'm talking about, since the hydras are all updated into the DB already.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Pretty sweet event. Got 2 of these in a row in a test game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

http://tapsa.mybox.fi/event.jpg

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

New events too ! And I was thinking they all went to honolulu this summer...How evil from me. I'm going to whip myself.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

That event is not new, afaik. It's just pretty damned rare. I think I got it with v3.08 once. Of course, I could be remembering wrong.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Yeah, that one's not new.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

So you mean they really went to Honolulu ?
I should have waited before wacking myself...

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Oh, there are new events all right. Such as the one where an underwater nation gains an Amber Clan mage and sea stags from an event and others. I just haven't seen any of the new ones yet.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I only had about 2 hours to play last night, and I spent the evening starting a bunch of new games for short test runs on the new and revised nations.

MA T'ien Chin looks very interesting. The Formian Giants also look imposing. Didn't encounter any new sites or events because I never went more than 5 or 6 turns in a game.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I don't think that's a hero, but rather their Conj 9 national summon, Daughter of Typhon... 30 nature gems, N5D2. Description implies uniqueness.

If you could get that for free it would be rather imbalancing.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Ah, a summons, well, that makes more sense. I've just been modding the units to be recruitable so I can add them to the DB quickly, but this one's unique all right. It's got 9 or 12 hp per single head, the immortal head has somewhere around 60 and is, well, immortal. So once summoned, that thing must be killed out of dominion or it will stay around and come back to haunt you again. It's sacred, so if you put some nasty bless on it, it becomes a rampaging horror the likes of what you've never seen...

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Just want to say thank you to the developers for the excellent patch. Didn't had much time to actually play the game, but just looking at the new nations (and the revisioning of a few of the old ones) has got me very excited.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Is it possible for the new hydras to regrow heads during combat? Do they get their lost heads back for next month?

Otherwise it seems like once you reduced a hydra (or Hydra) to one head it would stay that way (although Hydra might reappear with all her heads if she dies in friendly dominion).

What bless do you put on a sacred hydra anyway? Surely not Regen... fire seems pointless when you do most of your damage by poison cloud... death might or might not work on poison cloud damage. Water or earth maybe.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Well, if you were a really sadist but not really an optimizer, you could use a B9 blessing -- provided that killing individual heads triggers the oh-so-irritating Death Curse. It's almost certainly not optimal, but it might be funny. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The affliction chance from death blessing also probably affects poison-cloud damage, so that might also be entertaining.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

It wouldn't trigger it, the killing of the heads I mean.

As for the bless, I'd say W9F9. You don't do most of your damage by poison cloud at all. You do it by the 9 or less poison bites you attack with every turn. When each of these gets a bonus to hit and does extra fire damage and you get to attack 1.5 times per round,.... well that would be nasty.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Twist fate: once, or once per head?

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

They get there heads back next month. They do not regrow during combat.

Once.

Just with a W9 bless the hydras are awesome. They seem very vulnerable to archer fire due to low hps but after be killed multiple times of course. You after mainly use the small hydras because there cheap 35gps, with a few proper hydras.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I guess that makes sense. Too bad.

I'd go W9F9 then.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Each one of the Hydra monsters has the first (i.e. full 9 heads) monster as firstshape, so after the combat is over they revert back to that. If Daughter of Typhon dies in friendly Dominion, she should come back and then revert to her firstshape. Though one must admit that that particular bit needs a bit of testing.

Why wouldn't it? Every time one of the forms is killed, it just changes shape to a new one, which could count as a kill. Unless kill count is tied to unique id numbers, of course.

Yes. Most of the damage is from the bites plus the poison from the bites (added each time it hits) and you get the bonus poison damage from the poison cloud as well. It becomes rather brutal in short order.

Once, I would think. After all, twist fate protects from the first hit, not first hit for each different form.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Well I could be wrong because I haven't tested it, but I don't think the game counts shifting to a second form as a kill. I mean there are plenty of units that shift to a second form and logically speaking don't die, such as jaguar warriors, elementals etc.

Now it's possible the second form code isn't logical and it does count as a kill, or the hydra uses some new kind of code, but my best guess is still that the units don't die, don't count as kills and don't trigger the blood vengeance until they run out of forms or some insta death thing happens.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Playing necropolis mod I discovered you could have a negative number of lost soldiers. This is strange as they just definitively change shape.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Negative losses are possible if you charm/enslave; negative losses in one category with a net loss of zero can occur if living units die and get turned to Soulless by the Ankh, sah. Haven't fiddled with shapeshifters, 'tho.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

In a test game I'm running for the serpent cult the Hydras keep losing their sacred status when wounded in battle. Is this a bug or WAD?

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

Known bug, check the shortlist.

Re: Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available
 

I've also released a quickfix mod that fixes the SC sacred hydras. Here are the details, and the download.