Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Out of things that can actually be modded and things needing a full remake of the engine, what would you change in dominions ?

Personnally my list is :


Making all bless comparable to see more pretender diversity :

- Air level 9 bless : 75% SR is a too situationnal and very strange bless (with this gadget bless for the not extremely powerful air magic why fire don't give 75% FR nor water 75% CR instead of their superpowers?). I think a better bless effect for air already exists and is coded as the eagle warriors ability : first round fly (would be very useful for nations with slow sacred or wanting to attack before ennemy mages buff the troops, but still not overpowered at all compared to bless affecting stats or dammage).

- Blood level 9 bless : blood curse is a joke, it should be blood vengeance instead. If blood vengeance is too powerful I would say a blood vengeance with MR negates easily instead of MR neg.


Magic power secondary effects :

- water nations are too quiet in the seas, I'd give back the water mage power to lead troops underwater ! (eventually half the defense bonus to compensate) Or perhaps give it to air mages instead.


Scales :

All usually are less interesting than order and magic.

- production (there was a thread about that) should have another interest like reducing fort construction time or price

- the maximum number of events per turn should be made in relation with map size, to balance luck with order even for big empires on big maps ; once event are checked everywhere for a nation the best should be kept if the nation has a positive luck national scale (luck is the only scale losing global power if you conquer provinces out of your scales/dominion ; your order provinces don't lose income if you add some with turmoil)

- growth is only usefull in very long games and/or for old mages nations ; an additionnal cool effect would make it more interesting in all settings ; something like a mini gift of health effect (3% of curing affliction per growth scale ? or one bonus hp for national units ?) would be a good addition IMO

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I'd like to see more variety in the cost of everything, at the moment it feels like almost everything costs about 40 points, which is really annoying when you only have 30 points left.

Production I'd like to see the income increased to about 5%, that way there would be a way to increase your income and take luck as well (currently not really an option as growth is too long term, production is too little and order pretty much means you'll take misfortune).

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I actually think Dom 2 superior in this regard - that you could buy themes and forts.

The point system is not granular enough - too often you will have 20 pts left and have to discard the build as it is not optimized or efficient.

I'd like options you can buy for points- so for example:

Buy an extra starting national scout - 5pts.
Buy an extra starting 200 gp - 5 pts.
Start with a prophet.. 5 pts.
Extra 10% HP for pretender - 5 pts
Extra +1 Atk on Pretender ... you get the idea.

---------------------------------------------------------

Second thing I'd like to see:

Make a unit creater. Allow each nation to create its own units. Give each nation unique advantages to reflect its themes.

So for example, all atlantean units have either amphibious or underwater - but underwater is free and amphibious is half cost.

All abysian units are fires resistent 25% and 50% and 100% are half cost. Additionally, all abysians get 5 pts of pd.
(whatever).

Then, have people 'buy' strength, movement, magic resistance etc - the weapon they want to use.

Each troop type would cost a number of points. The number of points you get would depend on the number of points you allocate to miliary.

So for example, out of a starting 1000 pts, abysia allocates 234 pts to troops ( a low number)

From that he creates a militia type, a flame wielding heavy infantry type, a national mage and a prophet. But thats all he has points for!

Adds almost infinite variety

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Twan:

Yeah, I would like to see much more possibilities with events, so amount of max events depends on map size. Though I don't think it is moddable. I would also want more events, especially national ones, or pretender depandant.

Other interesting thing could be increased initial armies, to lower awake pretenders or sacred strength.

I would also like an option of fast start, when you create the game check the option to divide all land between players, equally, with some armies, PD and mages recruited. I would also want to be able to give specific amount of RP to every nation, so they can divide it. Game would start then with for example 1000 rp per nation.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Won't happen for Dominions, but something like that could work for almost any kind of game if done well. Perhaps better for scifi than fantasy, though.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I agree with Endo. Too much variety in choice and unit design would make the game a 'unit design' game and _then_ a 'strategy' game. unit designs simply become the new lowest common denominator and serve no purpose but to add unneeded complexity to the game, slowing down gameplay and taking away from the strategy and diplomacy.

the game has great balance as is. something adding unnecessary complexity may appeal to some people; and perhaps some chicks dig fat sweaty guys too.

on another note, how many points is too many points leftover? I guess I make my cutoff at 15 or 20. any lower than that and you have to make scales/dominion so goofy trying to fit points as to just be stupid.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Now, I like the theoretical idea of having something to do with leftover points. However, permanent bonuses to your pretender of any kind would be a bad bad plan. Just think of the SCs you could make if you decided to focus your point expenditures on this kind of boost, instead of just using them to sop up a few spare points.

And if it gave you gold, think of what you could do to turbocharge a rush strategy; sacrifice a point of scales, and get how many extra sacreds your first few turns?

Basically, bonuses of those sorts would have to be so limited as to be clearly not worthwhile- a poor and wasteful way to spend points, as long as you have any other options whatsoever.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

My suggestion, it this was to be implemented, would be to absolutely limit it to 39 pts. Less than the cost of a scale.
No selling off scales to get more extra pts, but just a way to use up left overs.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I'd be interested in the leftover points being spent in a random way - you would be told by a message at the start of the game what they'd been converted into. You could get 20 points worth of militia, a crappy trinket item, a 10% discount on all future temples,.. stuff like that.

Of course I don't actually want anyone wasting their time coding that ;]

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Order/Turmoil - Leave as is
Production/Sloth - I really like the idea of reducing fort build times.
Hot/Cold - Leave as is
Growth/Death - Leave as is
Luck/Misfortune - Leave as is
Magic/Drain - Make the research bonus scale per step, instead of every two. 3 Magic yields a research bonus of 3, magic 2 yields +2 research etc.

Fire Bless - Leave as is
Water Bless - Leave as is
Air Bless - Charge Body instead of Lightning Resist.
Earth Bless - Leave as is
Astral Bless - Leave as is
Nature Bless - Leave as is
Death Bless - Leave as is
Blood Bless - Horror Mark whoever gets deathblow (Could be a good SC counter?)

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I like the idea of reducing fort build times too. But one of the problems with reducing fort build times is that it's already low in some cases, so decreasing a Forest Fort build from 3 turns to either 1 or 2 is too much of a benefit.

One idea for getting around this would be for the Production scale have a percent chance to shave off one turn from the build time, maybe 7% per Production scale.

So at Production 3, every turn you put towards building a fort, there's a 21% chance that instead of doing one turn of construction, you do 2.

And at Sloth 3, every turn you put towards building a fort (or temple or lab), there's a 21% chance that instead of doing one turn of construction, you do zero and make no progress.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

That way it's too strong; in Dom2, a positive magic scale was practically mandatory. But I think a better variant might be:

Make half research points count. Then the RP bonuses can be 0.5/1/1.5 and scale normally and be on par with other scales for value. (The manual/GUI says somewhere it's half a research point per scale now, but as far as I can tell, that just gets rounded up to 1/1/2.)

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

What would be the point of magic 3?

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I think he means to add up the total research for all researchers, including half points, and then round.

So 4 shamans would give:

Magic-3: 4 * 4.5 = 18
Magic-2: 4 * 4 = 16
Magic-1: 4 * 3.5 = 14
Neutral: 4 * 3 = 12
Drain-1: 4 * 2.5 = 10

etc

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Off the bat, the only changes I'd make is to the income adjustments of growth and production, change to 3% per tick instead of 2%, and double the population change effects of growth and death. Basically, make people debate whether its better to get Order for income or go elsewhere.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Order gives you income, and nothing else. It should be best for purely monetary gains, but not by as much as it currently is.

I'd like to see Growth scale's supply bonus being more meaningful. As someone pointed out, you rarely run out of supplies in Dom3. Has anyone tried playing games with suplies 75% instead of 100? I wonder if that'd do too little or too much. Too low supplies would just make the game way more annoying without adding in anything.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

My suggestions:
Air9 gives +5 Precision

I think that holy ranged troops are hard enough to mass so it wouldn't unbalance the game, and we'd see some variety in multiplayer, right ? Besides, there are many counters to archers.

Blood9: Toughness. extra max(+3, +25%) hp. Simple, thematic, fun.
So it would be either +3 hp, or +25% hp, depending on which one is higher. Little sacreds with 10 hp would actually get +30% hp. A 20 hp giant would get +5 hp.

Endoperez: Order provides...
... income
... bad event tolerance (!)(!!)(!!!)(!V)
... enables/disables certain events. It is believed that many bad events only happen in Turmoil dominion.

But ok, I see your point and I deffinitely agree that supply points are pretty useless. This highlights something more sinister - in Dominions, swarm strategies aren't effective for numerous reasons.
First, swarms of lightly armed units are... much more expensive than elite soldiers. Everyone says how resources don't matter because - sooner or later - it's gold that becomes the bottleneck. Usually you can have 2 chaff for the price of 1 elite soldier, not counting resources. Is 2:1 enough to beat elite with chaff ? Hardly !
Second, many area spells are hard counters to swarms. Each unit in a square gets damage.
(...)

People use chaff, but as arrow/lance decoys, and to keep mages safe. I think only Pangaea can afford to use Maenads offensively, and this fact alone makes it a very interesting nation. Do maenads cost gold to upkeep ? Can someone enlighten me ?

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

As I play SP, I find I have to crank supplies up to 150% just to keep AI armies from starving to death.

Air bless needs an overhaul, but if charge body is to be used, the units need to get the shock resistance anyway, because the charged unit will also take damage when the effect is triggered. Unless it has resistance, that is. The copper plate armor actually gives both 100% shockres AND charge body, but those are separate effects.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I think they don't. I remember reading something similar in the Pangaea strategy thread.

Order doesn't give you "bad event tolerance". There's enough synergy that Order 3/Misfortune 1-2 is considered safe, but nothing more. If Order only negated bad events, imagine Order 3 Luck 3 - lots of money AND only good events!

Turmoil enables some of the raiders, but IIRC unrest does the same - so even in Order 3 lands, if you have unrest you might get barbarians. I'm not sure whether knights require order or turmoil, but I think they take turmoil. Villains are probably also turmoil. These are FAR from the worst events, because you can always conquer the provinces back.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I like the original idea of the blood 9 bless but it needs some improvements, maybe an autoaffliction (or a chance of one) for the attacker.

Air bless should get a complete redesign. Maybe something fire-bless equal for ranged attack. +precision (and maybe even +arrow protection) from Lv 4 on and as Level 9 bless something like lighning damage from arrows or as alternaive an effect equal to charge-body.

fire, water, astral, nature, earth and death are fine and shouldn't be changed.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Bless that affected ranged attacks would most probably affect ranged spells as well. I don't like limiting the Air bless to just ranged units and aim, either. One Mirror Image at level 9 would be nice.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I would like to see a curse touch for Blood 9. Like the magic weapons who curse anyone they touch. I think it would be balanced.

I am scared of the mirror image for Air but now that its been nerfed shouldn't be that bad.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Pre-nerf mirror image would have been pretty damned nasty. Right now it sounds a lot better than the worthless shock resistance. It also gives a nice synergy with the air shield. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Exactly - Air Shield and mirror image combine to make something that should be pretty much like the old Mirror Image, AND it works well for the Heims. But if the Vans have Air 9, they don't have F9W9. F9A9 or W9A9 couldn't be worse that that, could they?

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Air 9 giving mirror image is pretty useless for all glamour sacreds.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

RIght !!!1 No bless should exist unless it can make Vans stronger !

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Let's see: Nations that have glamour sacreds are Vanheim (3 eras), Helheim, Tir na n'Og, Eriu. That's a whopping 6 nations out of 70 where Air bless won't give synergistic bonuses out of the bless effect, whereas now it's so weak that 0 out of those 70 are using it. If your post is an objection to changing shockres to mirror image, it's ridiculous beyond belief, especially since the glamour sacreds are already some of the best sacred units around.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I think that mirror image on sacreds could be just too good in some cases, especially on numerous sacreds. Not only all sacred mages and priests would gain mirror image, but every single flagellant or jaguar warrior. And... wait a second. It could be just impossible to render. Imagine an army of 20 Jaguar Warriors. Even if each of them has only 4 fake images, it's 100 sprites to draw, or 5x more. Now 100 jaguar warriors....One thing for sure - it would look very, very ugly.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

It was just an answer to endo, he wrote A9 as an option for Vans:

Air 9 giving mirror image is pretty useless for all glamour sacreds.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Calmon, okay. It just came out a little terse, the way you said it. No harm

B0rsuk, we're talking one mirror image per sacred (such as glamour units already have) and having A9 would have to be a tradeoff with one of the other good blesses. So unless you want to have really sucky scales, no way you get that A9F9W9 bless. I could see A9/F9 and A9/W9 being viable combos, A9/D9 on some pretenders with a suitable chassis. So some of those would perhaps be tough, but many of them also don't have that great a defense, so the mirror image will go down more easily than from the Vans, een if you can't so easily use mass archers against it due to the air shield synergy.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Mirror Image gives a set amount of those images, and I thought the bless would give one more. It wouldn't be quite as huge jump in power as it would usually be, but as it'd make the mirror image last for one hit longer I thought it could improve the units' survivability. They're already very good at not dying, so it could be good.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Mirror image as the level 9 air bless may even be usefull for glamour sacred if it's +1 mirror image, meaning ennemies have only 33% to hit the real unit in melee. But with the air shield in addition, air bless can become too powerful (like glamour units continue to be when arrow fend counters the glamour nerf).

I would prefer fly as an air bless (more original than one more offensive or defensive bonus, and making slow heavy sacred better candidates for a bless strat -living pillars or heart companion jumping in round 2 with attack:archers would be fun).

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

I thought the fact that you Air 9 would replace some other bless, and Edi seems to agree with me on his answer to b0rsuk. Any way, as for your suggestion - it can be tested easily enough, thanks to Eagle Warriors ability. Just give them hoplite armor and replace Heart Companions with Eagle Warriors.

It is also possible to make a variation of bless that uses #nextspell "Mirror Image". I think it only gives one image at air 1, so it could be used to simulate the air bless I suggested. I don't know if it stacks with inherent glamour, though.

Glamour's "enemies can't see you" effect would be nice, but unfortunately out-of-combat blesses are impossible with the current system.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

If they gained flight from A9 I would avoid that bless except in very very few circumstances. Flyers are hard to control they get suurounded and ganged. Maybe I just suck at scripting flyers.


One other minor nitpick with flyers. There are some sacreds that just don't make sence flying, the Argatha golems, or the Marginon knights would both look silly flying.

Not saying its not a good idea, just that I would play A9 bless even less than now.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

How about blessed, flying knights on attack rear ? LA C'tis has sacred charriots, right ? Is that ok ?

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Air bless and blood bless definatly need to change. Almost everyone agrees with that. There would be more pretender set up choices, and the game would be more fun, if air and blood were effective options.

We have to be carefull though. If the minor air bless of air shield stays in, but the major bless becomes something that people will want to choose, it would make Vanhiem, and Mictlan unstoppable.

I will put forward the idea of precision for the minor bless, and a small electrical AN attack for the major bless.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

True. It could be abused very easily with tramplers. Thats really scary.

Sir_Dr_D , I also thought of a shock attack but there are two other blesses that do the same thing. I like precision but its not strong enough for an Air 9 bless.

I really like the charge body idea, if it could be made to work more like armor of thorns but with shock. Meaning that charge body would hit the blessed troop as well, so why not make it only hit the unit that successfully attacked.

Re: Scales/bless changes you would like
 

Well you could say only a size 1-2 unit could fly - call it windriding or something.

I like the idea of a precision boost for air -but the implications due to the double effect - can be pretting staggering...

for example.. yavanas 12/13? +4+5 from windguide.. pretty strong.