.. the game of mutual self-destruction ..

[Arralen]

We all played Stars!, didn't we? In Stars!, minerals for shipbuilding where limited. In the endgame, when all tech was research, all planets colonized, all mines depleted, things boiled down to grabbing the most minerals from battle debris and getting as much races' home planets as possible, as those couldn't be depleted completely. But you had build a big empire and a mighty fleet till than, and the finale could have been furious, which thousands of ships meeting to battle it out.

DOM2 isn't about empire building.
It's even not about dominion building (gaining worshippers) or the ascend to goodhood.

It's a game of mutual self-destruction:

• Even without illfortune, random events kill of the pop, but I yet have to see any growth from them:
  
  - first turn Multiplayer:
  Ulm, Order+1, Luck 0; .. "province flooded, 1/2 pop dead" ... game over
  
  - 31st turn SP:
  Man, Order 0, Luck+3 ..still no hero (looks like turmoil would help, however?) .. but "everyone in the province has turned into mindless plants" .. 30000 -> 1500 pop .. as there are _very_ few provinces on all maps with that much pop, this is game over as well
  
  
• number of races/themes which use death dominion, death scale, extensive blood and death summoning which eat up pop has increased
  -> suggesting TienChie Barbarian Kings gettings troops through pillaging wouldn't help here either
  
• a lot of things produce unrest (turmoil, conquering, events, spells ...).
  Quelling unrest kills pop.
  (those few bandits from 120% taxes are sufficient to negate growth+3)
  
• provinces have shrinked in size considerably. Has anyone seen 30.000-pop provinces besides the capitals on any map? Seems most prov are aroud 7000 pop or less now, which are killed of easily.
  
• The AI seems fond of death scale, though it doesn't really understand how to use these strategies .. . It's tedious seeing Jotumheim and Vanheim both using death 1 in the same game, killing themselves off as they could't afford their expensive commanders after some time. Ermor had troubles gettings buildings in Dom2, but at least there where plenty of units. Things have gotten worse now.
  

What would I like to see changed:

1. make pop grow (death1 cancels)
2. make pop move from death dom. provinces
3. turn down the severity of the random events. (Even with turmoil 3, luck 3 I yet haven't seen any additional pop from them - but a lot of pop dying)

yours,
Stefan

[ November 22, 2003, 08:03: Message edited by: Arralen ]

[Teraswaerto]

Take growth and order, and don't overtax --> steady increase of population. I do agree that there are too many really bad random events, makes taking order nearly a must.

[Nerfix]

The "mindess plants" event sounds like the spell Imprint Souls. Did the province get attacked?

[Arralen]

mindless plants:
How likely is it that R'lyeh casts an Astral-4, Thaumaturgy-6 spell in turn 30/31?
They can do it, maybe.
It was recorded as random event, not an attacking spell (does it ever?). There was a battle with some mandragoras and manikin attacking. Look very much like a servere Version of the vine man attack too me (text is nearly the same).

Nevertheless the thing is broken: Judging from the description, it should kill some inhabitants, not 95% or 30.000 of them.

You cannot grow back such losses - it would have needed 500 turns (!) of growth+3 (remember, pop doesn't move so I would have had to start out with the remaining 1500 pop). That takes me to the second topic:

pop growth
At first, choosing growth+3, order+3 and some luck to get the hero commanders at all costs some 240+ design points. Most designs simply don't have so much points to spare.
Second, growth is too slow initially:
0,6% growth will give you +20% pop on turn 30, +80% pop at turn 100 - sounds great, isn't worth it.
All those pesky 7000-pop provinces will be at 8400 30 turns later, which doesn't make much of a difference .. one turn of quelling heay unrest or pillaging will reduce it to rubble anyway - with no chance of recovery.

S.

[ November 22, 2003, 09:30: Message edited by: Arralen ]

That was more than likely an attack spell. No attack spells except artillery type (Vine Arrow etc) have a non-random message.

If you had that happen on your first 10 turns I'd say it didn't have a chance, but 30+ he could have researched well beyond that point. Especially if he has most of his underwater provinces still.

[Keir Maxwell]

Sadly the wars around the accension of the gods are not a positive thing for the ordinary folk of the world.

Two things I would like to see looked at on this:

Default growth scale of +1 - or maybe +1/2 - for both independents and player/ai races. This would mean that a death 1 race would still enevitably fail as they cannot grow while it can certainly lose population while a baseline race or inde would slowly grow. Growth should be slow and collapse into chaos is always a possibility but surely the norm, as Arralen says, should be slow growth not no growth.

I think luck needs reworking - more like the Dom 1 way where it affected likelyhood of events making luck 0 the safest option. This would increase the value of the luck scale (at least the not playing misfortune part) somewhat from its present degraded value.

At present I'm testing turmoil/luck races and they do seem to get more bad events than order/misfortune races though the occasional beauty (chainmail of displacement for PoD) makes up for alot and I have seen alot of hero's. The whole order/misfortune thing has a large impact on race designs as whatever fits this approach is easiest to make work - I don't get a meaningful amount of random events at order +3 so the misfortune 3 (or sometimes 2) only really effects national hero's.

I think the Barbarian Kings recruitment through pillaging/conquest/turmoil idea helps because it gives the race a better return from playing the, generally weak, turmoil approach. I also like being able to play the game in different ways and a barbarian horde that grows as it conquers would add to the variety of the game - as long as its balenced.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

On this general theme I think what we are seeing is people putting alot more points into their pretenders and alot less into their dominion. I often have no points left (or negative) when it comes to my dominon scales - no wonder its bad for the people. All these self-centered gods worrying about their struggle for accension. Still wouldn't want to be on the losing side.

cheers

Keir

[Wendigo]

You mean Imprint Souls killed 95% pop? if it works like you said it must be bugged, I have had no time to check most of the new spells but this seems much more powerful than Black Death (which is higher research & much more fitting for population wasting).

I believe the devs said that AIs were more unlikely to pick negative scales the higher their lv, I do not consider this much of an issue in SP anyway.

That said, I like the idea of the world suffering after a global war, it would make no sense for it to end up richer & happier after such devastation, war is a grim affair.

It is also my experience that in Dom I MP players do not engage in province devastation until the very end game: you want the lands of your current opponent as untouched as possible to use vs the next one, only when it's down to the Last 2 nations/sides will the population be targeted.

Do not dismish the long term potential of a growth scale, a 25% pop increase in a minor province might not seem much, but 10,000 more citizens in your capitol is nice.

[ November 22, 2003, 10:06: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

[Teraswaerto]

I'm sure it wasn't imprint souls, but a nasty random event:

"Some ancient power has been disturbed, turning everyone in the province into mindless plant beings!"

There was one pretty much like that in Dom I, the one with the Ancient Presence (or something like that).

[PDF]

Uh, yes, Dom is not an Empire-building game, it's about warfare, and a nasty one at that !
And warfare KILLS people actually ... How many deads in WW2 ? How many survivors at the end of the Elric Saga ?
I don't see this as a problem, it's the setting, that's all. Unbalanced random events are a totally different issue, maybe as some already suggested the "baddest" ones should not occur early in the game.