Cross-breeding
 

Is it worth it? It seems pretty terrible to me...am I missing something? I suppose for chaff it's vaguely decent at 2 units per blood slave...but I don't love it. I think my biggest problem is the micro involved. I can't double-click to select all the spawned units, and having to double-click 5 or 6 times to organize my troops for a single spell, more if I want an effective force, is just too much of a pain.

Does anyone know how luck scales play into it? Are there exceedingly rare but awesome creatures at improved cross-breeding?

Re: Cross-breeding
 

It scales upwards with blood and luck, blood level increasing the number of spawns (up to 40ish per casting for normal cross breeding) and luck the chance of the good ones. There are a few very nice spawns, exceedingly deadly. I forget their names. One has solid hit points, flies and has fire breath. Another is fragile but does a crazy Gaze of Death attack with a pretty big area, and there are two others worth having.

I've looked at it using a Fountain of Blood, but don't think you get enough of the good spawns to make it really worth pursuing. I've never taken the trials up to Improved Cross breeding though, hard to imagine it's worth it at that stage though.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

The chaff are upkeep free, which can be handy for some blood nations. Some of them get interesting powers, but they're still pretty much worthless in a fight.

I did a little testing once, and with Luck 3 you'll normally get one of the good spawn with a casting (or 2 with Improved Cross Breeding).

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Can't you just click one unit and hit "a" for all? Alternatively, shift-click to select only a subset.

-Max

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Try Improved Cross Breeding. Never used the weaker version. You get some cool stuff, then some situational ones [amphibian or with good attacks, like touch of leprosy, or life drain, etc] and then you get lots of crap [use it to patrol blood hunting? or for sieges].

Re: Cross-breeding
 

The worst thing is that people use them by themselves. What good is it to have something that causes sleep or paralysis and not provide any troops to hit the enemy when they are asleep. I look thru all the results and try to assign them individually where I think they will work best.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Actually, units which causes fatigue (e.g. Sleep) are fantastic at dealing damage. I learned this to my chagrin when my Zamzummite mage leading an army of Wights (mage was place in the middle of the Wights, scripted to cast [Weapons of Sharpness, Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants] while they did [Hold and Attack]) had the misfortune to step into a Cold-2 province. He cast his spell as usual, and then suddenly he disappeared. The chill aura from 40 Wights exceeded 200, converted to damage, and killed him instantly!

-Max

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Carrion beasts, fatigue damage. I'm pretty sure they can kill just about anything.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Are you sure Sleep Vines affect lifeless (Golem, Gargoyle, etc)?

Re: Cross-breeding
 

While it should not affect them, it does, there is damage anyway.

A while back I ran a test with a golem and carrion harpies. They have two sleep vine attacks, that's six actually since they have nrat3, but they did slowly, very slowly afflict damage to the golem for some reason.

Only two sleep vine attacks, no claw or anything.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

To the contrary. I much prefer regular crossbreeding. The ability to get large numbers of spawn early in the game can be situationally useful. by the time you get to blood5, (iirc) its much less likely to be useful.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

At least they affect undeads and clockwork horrors.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

I ran a couple tests a while back because of a game I was in, versus Pan with some big carrion hordes. My SCs were a Gargoyle with the Stone Sword and a Golem with the Aegis, neither had a problem with around maybe 2000 units.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

I ran the test again, same result, here, take a look for yourself.
It's a golem with no equipment. Watch carefully.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Thanks Executor ... where do I get "FW thugs.dm"?

Oh hold on ... sleep vines are length 3 or something, and a naked golem punches with length 1 and has craptastic attack skill.

I bet he took 1 HP of damage a bunch of times from harpy repels of his attacks.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

It was on? Hehehe, a new mod ordered by Zeldor, here
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43378

Re: Cross-breeding
 

And other mods are needed too. Conflux.dm is being asked for after Thugs and I can't find it....

Re: Cross-breeding
 

I made an empty Conflux.dm to test. It's the repel, like I thought:

Harpy Manikin repells Golem (Fist repelled with Sleep Vines)
morale negated repell
attacker damaged by repell
hitloc Harpy Manikin strikes Golem wl4 diff1 -> 4
damage 1 on Golem, spec0x200000 ba4

Executor, you should try running dom3 with the -dd flag, it's pretty useful.

Edit: I think this is a bug. A unit should not take damage during repel from a weapon he's immune to. I searched the short list for 'repel' and didn't see anything.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Well it should be added to the bug list than, a unit definitely shouldn't take damage from a weapon he's immune to.

Conflux was on too? It's a mod nation I'm making currently.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

What kind of nation is it going to be?

Re: Cross-breeding
 

And I put the -dd flag on how / where?

I have used your trick of an empty dm file for Conflux and that worked a treat so I can get in the game now :)

Re: Cross-breeding
 

It's a commandline option for the executable. I have no idea how to do that on a Mac or on Windows, sorry.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

You put it in your desktop shortcut to dominions. For example, mine is set to "C:\Program Files\dominions3\dom3.exe" --scoredump.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

It's an EA nation, very magically dependent, focuses on elemental magic and summons.
I'm trying to make a new and interesting idea, and it's going good so far however I have a very hard time creating a Phoenix unit. I wanted to use the Phoenix from Heroes of Might and Magic 3 but I can't find the images anywhere.

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Try this link:
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com...agic3iii.shtml

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Yeah, I tried, there's no Conflux Castle there for some reason. :(

Re: Cross-breeding
 

Try Celestial Heavens: http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=600

That has Conflux pics....