[Patrik]

Originally posted by apoger:


I'd like to hear from some of the beta testers, as you guys have much more experience in this matter than I. What scale choices have you been inspired to use? How does the balance between military and magic feel, in your opinion.

We don't have a demo to examine yet, please throw us a bone.

Order is good, one of the top priorities. Magic I feel is very nice if you have cheap 1 point mages (Marignon, Pythium, Mictlan etc.) Don't underestimate Production - it can be awhile before you can put up additional castles. Furthermore, remember that most nations only can produce sacred troops in their capitals - thus, if I invest heavily in my pretender to get nice bonuses I usually take Prod +2/+3 (and/or a high adm castle). For many nations, the production of sacred units is resource (rather than dominion or gold) limited. Luck is for me not so attractive, depends on event setting and national heroes though. Growth does seem somewhat weak, yet for some reason I always hesitate to take a death scale.

For me, nation design is enormously more complicated in Dom II. Now, I start by addressing the following questions: Will I be using/rely on sacred troops? If yes, what bonuses will be most beneficial? What pretender can provide the magic at a reasonable cost? Will the pretender be used primarily for combat or site searching/forging? If primarily site searching - does the pretenders magic skills complement the national mages? And still provide useful bonuses?

Powerfull sacred troops should be most useful in short games (possibly games with Victory points conditions), games with slow research, or few magic sites. For normal settings, I am leaning towards spending points primarily on the scales instead (Vanheim and Marignon excepted). Rainbow mages might be interesting as well (The crone is now only 25 design points).

As for military - magic balance, the shift to magic dominance will occur later than in Dom I, primarily because the 'free' summonings have been removed. You can no longer (like Dom I) rely entirely on a mage based army after lvl 3 conjuration - however, eventually magic will prevail. There are just so many potent spells out there.