[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
For instance, the Vanheim fay boar is a boar meant to be repeatedly eaten, much like Thor's goats. Kill them, cook them, eat them, let them miraculously reconstruct themselves from their remains. Hence, they provide a significant supply bonus.

That's all fine and good, but what does this porcine respawning have to do with dominion? Outside of their dominion, should it grant a supply bonus? It does now.

You're right in that this is one of the cases where the functioning of immortality in-game seems at odds with the effect for which this immortality is exploited: If the boars, when killed and eaten, respawned in the capitol, they would not provide a continuing supply bonus, and not at all outside of dominion, since they would not respawn. A fundamental disconnect between flavor text, function, and implementation, as it were: I think you're just going to have to suspend your disbelief on this one.

The same goes for vampires, if you consider the Version of immortality as-is versus, say, the vampire found in western European lore. Those vampires could be incapacitated, if with difficulty; once done, there were ritualistic methods for permanently finishing the job (typically involving holy wafers, decapitation, dismemberment, wooden stakes, or some combination thereof). Thus, if one managed to take down a vampire, it -could- be finished if you were aware of its nature and took the appropriate means; otherwise, if you just buried it as if it were an ordinary mortal, it would eventually be back.

Well, according to other sources of vampire lore, when a vampire is slain in battle, it reverts to a gaseous state and returns to its place of rest, generally a coffin or sarcophagus, where it reforms and recuperates. It can be slain in such a state via the aforementioned means. Thus, this seems to be accurately modelled in the game: The vampire returns to its place of rest, the capitol, but if that place is controlled by hostile forces, they put an end to it.

And, for some units (perhaps a demilich's spirit can flee back home and reconstruct a body?) the current form would be more appropriate.

A lich exhibits a similar behavior: When a lich, at least in the same sources consulted, is slain, its spirit returns to the locality of some object of importance to it, which in Dominions II flavor text, appears to be the lich's viscera, which is removed and stored in a safe place, undoubtedly the capitol, and the lich's spirit returns to it and a new body forms from the "dust of dead humans".

If anything, such a process shouldn't retain *ANY* physical afflictions, but the lich is not so lucky, apparently.

This dependency on the dust of dead humans is amusing, though: In theory, a lich's reincarnation could be forestalled indefinitely by storing it in a place where there are no dead humans or any other similar critters anywhere in the vicinity, such as in space....but that's outside the scope of Dominions.

[ June 06, 2004, 09:15: Message edited by: Norfleet ]