an idea to reduce turtling
 

Since we don't have a dom 4 to work with, i'm pondering other ways to make games more fun. This is rather of a hack solution, but it'd be feasible under dom 3 as a way to cut down on turtling and make the midgame more interesting.



<Zlefin> it center around the issue that part of the problem is the need to hire mages each turn to research, lest you fall behind, and all those researchers means they aren't on the front lines
<Zlefin> so here's what ya do: all units in the game get a big research malus, so they're bad researchers; then, one special unit is added with mod that is a good researcher, a special site is made that allows recruitment of that unit, and one is placed next to each players' capital. other could also be placed to make prizes to fight over. they could be marekd with vps so they're easy to find.
<Zlefin> so everyone gets in research from the new guys, and all their normal commander buys and mages can go to actual fighting

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

An interesting idea. I suggest you make this very map! I would like to see it, if only to try it.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

So your incentive is to capture as many enemy capitals as possible, because research comes only from the UberSages? (You'd need to give all existing units something like a -30 RP penalty to prevent anyone from boosting back to positive RP w/ items.)

Another possibility would be to start a game where everyone begins with all spells researched. This would be radically different from a typical Dom3 game, but perhaps fun--and even if you get knocked out early at least you got to play with your toys. Obviously everybody would take Drain-3, and the nations with good national research mages lose part of their competitive advantage, but national power rankings shuffle around anyway depending upon what mods you're using.

-Max

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to turtling? However its not a bad idea. What you'd need to do tho is make 0-level sites of every path which allow you to recruit these special research units. That way you would ensure they were common enough that it would simply be a matter of 'gold == research' for all nations.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Well it wouldn't really matter what path they were if they o-level, cos 0-levels are automatically known anyway.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

I'd suggest a unit that can summon allies that starts in each player's cap instead, that way it wouldn't be able to be captured. You could then also make it summon appropriate researchers for the nation so that national research differences are still in play, unless someone thinks that Vanheim and Bogarus should have the same level of research potential. Since their troops are so evenly matched it would be unfair otherwise. =)

Pretenders should also not get a malus so that rainbow/researcher types are still a viable choice to kickstart research.

I think using a cap-start unit you could also make this into a mod, as opposed to having it be a specific map, but I'm not familiar with such things so I could be mistaken.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Micah is correct, you could make it a cap-only recruitable unit with a mod and then anyone who captured your capital wouldn't be able to recruit UberSages there. I thought you wanted the opposite, that you CAN recruit UberSages at captured capitals in order to encourage aggressive gameplay.

-Max

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Well it can all be done via modding pretty much. I mean the crux of all the ideas in this thread. None of em are really a problem. Of course the solutions have a few issues, but it's all doable.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

I'd say it has more than a few issues. At least one was already mentioned - there are nations which have a strong research and weaker troops. Plus, different paths require a different research level to really affect game. I think you are offering solution to an absent problem - if you don't want to turtle up - play a bless rush nation. Of course, you may be mowed down when your opponents complete a neccessary research - but that's the game. It doesn't consist of tank rushes... :P

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Surely this would favour the strong early game nations even more?

To be honest I'm not really aware of much turtling in this game. Winners almost always have powerful starts and expand aggresively

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Surely this would favour the strong early game nations even more?

To be honest I'm not really aware of much turtling in this game. Winners almost always have powerful starts and expand aggresively

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Any idea in how to do this mod-wise? I´m a little weak in the modding part of Dominions, but would like to try a mod like this against the AI... and would it be possible to do it in Dom2 too? (my notebook only handles Dom2 - weak processor).

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

As far as I know, you'd have to modify each mage separately, be it national or indep, plus create new researcher unit. Good luck Jim, this mission, if you accept it....

I do think too it would entirely screw many nations. And make others totally ubber, like Nielfelheim, as they don't normally have access to cost worthy researchers. Maybe make one researcher per nation to keep the balance.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

The research difference would be simple to maintain. Just make a different research unit for each side with more or less research.

A more difficult consideration is the cap-only-ness. For some nations this is not a problem, but for nations with lots of cap-only recruits you are still forced to decide between research and deploying units, ony this time you have a unit that can ONLY research vs a unit that can ONLY fight. I think it would unfairly disadvantage them.

I would suggest editing it in as an auto-summon or a summon-allies.

I encourage you to look at modding. Making such a research summon (or adding it as an ability to every pretender) shouldn't be that hard. The hard part is going through the DB and giving an RP malus to all the mages out there (I suggest getting EDI's excellent DB for this).

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

The original plan was to turn around the cap only stuff by making them recruitable in a prov next to the capital, which would require map modding.

The whole idea still seems to me like loads of pain for small benefits...(if any)

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

You can't summon allies commanders. I already outlined how to do all of this stuff that's being discussed in IRC and can't really be bothered to repeat it here. Suffice to say - start with F1H7 unit, he can cast a spell that summons whatever researcher unit. If someone wants to do it, it's all doable with current mod commands. It's just a matter of deciding exactly what you want to do and actually committing to do it. I (or any other modder, really) can tell you /how/ once that's decided.

So stop worrying about the exact method.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Actually this is the easiest part. Takes about 10 minutes.

A) Find someone who can use perl (or some other coding ****, I don't really know about those)

B) Have the said guy generate you a mod that gives researchmalus -50 to all dom3units.

Actually, Lch did me one a couple days back. According to IrC log, it took him under 20 minutes to do it.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Yeah, would only take a few minutes.

Everyone should learn Perl.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

My impression is that turtling is only really a game-winning strategy when an underwater nation turtles and clams. Arguably that's mostly a problem with clams, not turtling.

-Max

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Download the Debug mod from the mod forums and remove the spells to summon the Debug Sensei. I've considered playing this way in SP too, because I think a large part of the AI's weakness is that it tends to be at e.g. Conj-9, Ench-4, EverythingElse-0 when I'm at Alt-8 Conj-6 Thaum-4 Ench-3 Evoc-7. Also, I like the idea thematically (powerful pretender mages SHOULD already know spells) and it might give me an incentive to take an Awake pretender for once. However, removing research from the game will also radically change the way the game is played, so I haven't ever tried it yet.

-Max

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

By the way, it's actually even EASIER to do in Dom2 because the map command #startspell works. I believe spell modding works the same way in Dom2 as in Dom3, but I actually don't own Dom2 so I can't advise you there.

Re: an idea to reduce turtling
 

Well, I like the idea of not having the mages do the research.
I like the idea of giving the map more points of strategic interest for the late game, too, but those will be around early on also and just another bonus for the bless rushers.
How about giving each nation a shapechanging unrecruitable researcher instead of the starting scout. Different shapes produce different research but need different upkeep?