[baruk]

Cainehill said:

These two contradict one another. On the one hand, you imply raiding is too powerful, and on the other hand, you want to make it more powerful.

The first one I think could use some improvement - random movement sequence would fix this.

The second one is insane. Fortifications are _supposed_ to provide defense from raids, that's one reason they were built all over most of the world. The idea of an army being able to come zooming right in, and in less than a month travel, siege, and storm is .... Well, I already used the word insane. Albeit it might be acceptable for mausoleums / watchtowers, which really aren't proper fortifications.

Firstly, I don't find my changes contradictory. My aim is not to hamstring raiding or fortifications. I just want to iron out a few kinks in the system.

I think armies should be able to travel, seige and storm a castle in the same turn. It doesn't make sense to me that they would seige a castle down to zero defences... and then stop abruptly, waiting a turn for new orders to storm the castle.

It does not strike me as unreasonable that a weak fortification, or one left undefended should not be vulnerable to capture in a single turn by a large force. Note that I have suggested a one half seiging penalty for armies that have moved in the same turn, effectively doubling the size of force needed to achieve a single turn capture. Fort defence values could perhaps be increased 10 or 20% across the board as some compensation.

Note that armies using magical movement would not get the move & storm option. It would be a bonus available to the conventional army, and thus may be easier for a defender to anticipate/intercept.

baruk said:- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Cainehill said:Your "solution" simply makes combat teleportation unusable for many units, while once again allowing the Sphinx to plop right down on an enemy capital, easily surviving the couple of turns it takes to regain consciousness before casting fire shield, astral shield, etc, and winning. You also don't mention why cloud trapeze should have "planar sickness", since it doesn't involve plane shifting. Or why flying units shouldn't have "air sickness".

In game balance terms, if I'm going to penalise teleport, then the same has to go for cloud trapeze, as its just as accessible and effective, a sphinx-type SC can use either spell quite easily. If you allow some fantasy license, you can imagine a powerful spell such as cloud trapeze would involve traversing the elemental plane of air (not in the spell blurb as such, but not something that has to be regarded as gospel). Flying units, and others with large strategic move would be fine, as they simply use natural, "earthly" abilities.

Regarding the Sphinx example, its possible it will still be successfully used to hit capitals, and I'm not against such a use in principle. It will be considerably less effective with 120 starting fatigue, however. If it is tested and still considered too powerful, the fatigue penalty could be exaggerated for the larger creatures, eg. 5, 15, 30, 50, 90, 150 for sizes 1 to 6. Another tweak could be to scale fatigue according to enemy dominion strength, perhaps an additional hit of 5 or 10 fatigue per enemy candle. Alternatively, you could give an extra vulnerability to the Sphinx: dominion dependence. This would work by depriving a pretender (by some combination)of his magical powers and protection when in enemy dominion (and perhaps increase the penalty to hit points substantially).

My original thoughts about gateway were that a fatigue penalty could be a tradeoff in allowing it to target any province, as it did in dominions 1. This is really not needed, as that ability is covered by astral travel. The fatigue penalty, however, keeps it in theme with teleport and cloud trapeze, the trio forming an "economy class" of movement spells. For symmetry, under my fatigue system, at level 8 or 9 research non-fatiguing Versions of teleport and cloud trapeze would be available.