Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Spells that allowed summons to bolster an indy - or whoever the resident happened to be.

Aka. Ermor attacked by Ctis? A Spell or spells that anyone could cast that would bolster the province defense- a remote summons of some kind.

Re: Things I'd like to see pXXIV
 

That's not bad...the option to improve independent PD might be useful, and would definitely be realistic, since Nations have been doing that all throughout history, and as late as the US aiding Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Panama, etc. Places where we don't take over the country, but do send soldiers, money, goods, arms, officers, intelligence, and experience.

Gandalf might be the one to ask about the specifics of how this might work? I think he worked in military logistics.

Re: Things I'd like to see pXXIV
 

There are spells that will attack a province but not automatically make you the owner if they win. So in a way that can "bolster" a province altho it will knock out the original owner..

In my solo games I often send gold, gems, or magic items to an AI. For example, if I am up against Ermor with masses of undead. My scouts discover who is on the other side of Ermor. Then I send them lots of weapons that do extra damage vs undead such as Herald Lances. It helps that nation stand up to Ermor and provide a squeeze. However, once Ermor is taken the fact that they have Herald Lances will not cause me too much of a problem when it comes to taking them out.

Re: Things I'd like to see pXXIV
 

I'd like to see more nation-specific spells! They wouldn't have to be better than some other similar spell, but it adds some flavor to the teams. It's fun to play around with national summons etc.

Balance can always be dealth with, but fun requires fodder! ;D

By the same token I'd like to see some more pretenders and magic sites for the underwater teams, and that pretenders in general are looked over. As it is now quite a few of them are never worth using, which is a shame.

Another suggestiong which I am a bit unsure of: Province defense could to some degree deal with unrest. Their job is to patrol the province, so maybe ever 10 points of pd could remove 1 point of unrest or something? : /

Have heavy armor looked over: As it stands now (at least as far as I can tell) heavy armor is strong early game, but you can't really buy that many armored troops since they cost such absurd amounts of resources. Then later on, when you have a fairly large force of armored warriors they've already become obsolete because the enemy is using stronger, cheaper soldiers with army of gold (or similar protection spells) cast on them. They are unencumbered and almost as well protected.

Wouldn't it be nice to have some spells that enchant heavy armor, giving them various abilities. Poison barbs perhaps, or a blinding shine that lowers enemy attack skill.

Maybe this has been discussed somewhere else but... why can't you break down magic items into their component materials? There might be a structural loss (forge for 5, regain 3 when you break it down), but I bet everyone has tons of useless magic items sitting around in their laboratory at certain points in the game.

Re: Things I'd like to see pXXIV
 

Not a bad list of things to want. In particular I totally agree with wanting more national spells. I know its rough with just one person coming up with all of those, and Kristoffer has done a fantastic job above and beyond what full teams of developers have accomplished in other games. But I do feel that the later nations have a ton of such spells while older ones go t only a few. And that there is a definate tendency to fill the Conjuration spells with nationals instead of spreading it out abit.

Which pretenders are never worth using?
Keep in mind that there is:
never worth using in MP games
never worth using in solo games
never worth using in rpg games
never worth the AI using
Often when someone says that something in the game is worthless or not worth having in there they meant to say that its true of one of those categories.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Well... What use does the Naiad and Freak Lord have? The *****queen? The Lich? The Mother of Monsters?

I realize I'm inexperienced, but there just seems to be some options far more attractive than others, and the element of surprise doesn't last long in a turn-based game ;)

Other than that... Maybe a few more spell animations? Some spells don't look very much like what their description says they are. And perhaps up the movement speed of magical projectiles. When you have 10 mages per side in a battle it takes quite some time for those Storm of Thorn's to land : P

Another thing I'd really, really want to see is to have the sound looked over. Some sound effects are just unnecessarily loud (especially since they "stack"). Some hurt even from just one unit shrieking (HYDRA!).

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Search the mod subforum for Conceptual Balance (easy to find) and Sound Mod (slightly harder). The first makes many if not most sub-par choices playable, and there's a version that only improves pretenders if that's the only thing you want. Sound Mod replaces many of the annoying sounds (elephants, female death-scream, illithid mind blast) with things that won't kill your ears.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Many of the pretender chasis and units are simply not effective with the vanilla game. No reason to ever take them unless you are a player that enjoys role-play.

Use CBM (Conceptual Balance Mod) if you want to balance things properly and make these choices more attractive.

edit: Hahah - jinx, Endo!

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Sure, but there's really no reason for the game to be reliant on mods ;&

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Ive taken all of those for rpg purposes. And I have used them in scenario maps where appropriate.

The upcoming game of Chronicles might see some use of such gods since the purpose of the game is more AAR (role-play writing about the game) than it is the winning.

You might try running Dom3 with some of the switches. Such as..
--partamount X Max nbr of particles 0-8 (0=none, 4=default, 8=max)
--noarcade Don't draw floating damage numbers
--renderpath X Use different optimizations 0-1 (0=good for low mem cards)
-x --fastgrx Faster graphics (use 3 times for best performance (-xxx))

A list is available here...
http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/CommandLine.txt

There are some user-made packages which change some of the sound files. I dont remember hydra but I know that the elephant trumpet and the girls screams were modified if you install their changes.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Well, I could take a freak lord, take -3 on all scales and play with that for rpg-purposes :P

I'm not proposing removing those pretenders, I'm proposing they be changed.

I'm not having performance issues (at least I don't think I do). The projectiles move slowly inately. Why should a vine arrow be any slower than a normal arrow? : /

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

If you took -3 on all scales it wouldn't matter what pretender you took, you would BE a freak lord.

You can always have the game fast-forward through parts that move slow. Just press F.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

-3 on all scales isn't that bad.....

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

I feel to remember everybody that if you don't like spells going so slow just press F and it activates the fast forward mode. F again and it returns normal way. F and F again, you practically skip the flight of the vine arrow if you do with timing. ;)

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Thanks Tifone. I remembered there was a button but I couldnt remember what it was.

As to -3 scales, there are nations which can make good use of any scales that others cant. For instance, with Pangaea I often take negs in order and production. With Ulm I often take negs in magic, water nations neg in temperature, Ermor neg in growth.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

I might take -3 in one or two things, but even as ermor I wouldn't take -3 to all scales. I would want probably luck 3 and neutral magic.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

I rarely if ever play with less than 2 positive Luck on *any* Nation, no matter the scales. I'd frankly find very useful a mod that gave every Nation in the game an immobile, unteleportable, 100% bad event negator, so that I wouldn't have to worry about losing my temple or lab in my Capital.

That's the primary reason I take Luck 2 or 3, but sadly it's reason enough to do it every time.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Ive taken massive neg scales. With the right nation, and low dominion, it might not affect you much. The benefit is to get the maximum in blesses.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

...Or for the Awakened SC imho ;)

Well LA Ermor is pretty much the king of negative scales. I usually play it all negative except Luck 3 and Magic 3 (to compensate for all the mages I will have to keep on summoning).

Also Kailasa, if you wanna play a full bless strategy (which I never manage to do too well, and it's just funnier to go with lotsa monkeys!!) I think you just really can go with T3S3H3D3L3M3. (Which leaves lots of points for experimenting a good bless... but never enough :D )

Gandalf: why massive negative temp on water nations? :) It's just a thematic thing of the cold oceans or you see some advantage in this? (The n00b in me always needs to learn :o )

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

I start every battle with hitting 'F'. I think it's still too slow. Not normal attacks and normal arrows; just spells.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Water nations' income underwater is not penalized by temp scale, but only underwater.

Still, means you pay less for those points.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Thanks. I like the theme of the water nations but still I almost never feel like playing them :o

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Yes, in water the water nations arent affected by temp scales. So you can set yourself up powerfully in the water with a major detriment to any land nations which try to push you out.

On the other hand, with land nations I often take a point in temp. In that case Im hoping to never fight within my own dominion but always be doing combat outside of it trying to push my territory further.

If I remember, with Dom2 I was able to get all 4's and a few 9's for bless affects. I would have to experiment with that again. That can be quite a boost in a small-map blitz game if you are determined to keep expanding beyond your dominion. Taking low dominion helps too to keep your candles from catching up to your front armies.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Probably works best for a giant nation, where you are going to be far more resource limited than Holy limited, and you can rely on fewer, more powerful troops.

Also worth noting, with a garbage-scales-uber-bless strat, even more useful than low starting Dom, is not making a prophet, if you can get away with it. He'll often drop a single candle in every province he lands in, insuring that unless your opponent has an aggressive dominion, you will propagate your bad scales with little effort involved.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

A prophetized Niefel Jarl with a really high bless and a forged weapon (ice sword is fine) is more powerful than almost any out-of-the-box SC Pretender. So, within 3 turns or so--providing you get a 500 gold event in the first 3 turns or so-1 Niefel Jarl can start taking independent provinces by itself.

Re: Spells that allowed summons to bolster an other player's/indy province
 

Getting back to the subject of the thread:

Three Red Seconds can target enemy provinces.