Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?

[Taqwus]

I wonder if a mounted unit should have a higher chance to suffer the Crippled affliction when hit, given that the mounts are usually large targets, and any significant injury to the mount might slow it down for either physical or psychological reasons.

[HoneyBadger]

Horses are not the most brave animals on the planet, taken as a whole. Even a well-trained warhorse is not a stupid animal and generally won't do something it knows is a bad idea. If vans rode giant armored wolverines, then they'd be realistically a problem, not that wolverines are stupid either, they're just incredibly brave, tough, and mean. If I were a long-lived, magically powerful van, I'd get myself some kind of undead mount, or atleast a magical construct along the lines of a golem, and I definitely wouldn't use a horse design, because it's too easy for even a good rider to suffer a freak accident and fall off-even immortal Vans have necks and spines to break. Who wants to spend a thousand years in a wheelchair?
Horses are good because there's a lot of them, because they're big and strong, because they're generally friendlier than a camel, and because they can travel faster over short distances than a human. A human is a much better long distance walker. We can outwalk almost any other animal. Horses are good mounts for humans, not immortals. If I were a Van with the resources-and as an immortal, I'd eventually have the resources-I'd breed myself a line of war-elephants trained and bred for both bravery and intelligence, I'd make friends with them and take good care of them so they didn't turn on me (elephants have excellent memories and can be vindictive), and I certainly would invest in some good barding. I'm not sure if it's in the Royal Hapsburg armory or not, but somewhere there's a complete, articulate suit of steel plate elephant barding. It's very impressive.

[Shovah32]

But vans dont ride normal horses, they ride fast, magical super-fay horses!

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, so does my poor old grandmother in hillbilly heaven. The point is that the Vans would be weaker and more vulnerable because of their choice of mount. Maybe immortal horses are super brave and super tough and eat golden grain and spit sunshine, it still is a weak spot that should be able to be exploited in the game.

[alexti]

I'm not sure I like to weaken Vans for thematic reasons. Maybe they could be made sort of unreliable? For example, if every turn there's a chance that Van will leave the army to do his godly things instead following commands of some pretender it will make overall Van strategy weaker without weakening Vans themselves. Not sure if there's such code in the game though. Gladiators leave after the battle, but with probability of 1.

[Saxon]

Just briefly, I would like to reiterate that I find Vanheim too strong on all map sizes in single player. Most folks are talking about MP, but I want to raise this again. I think a tone down associated with costs will help address this.

Also, Gandalf, thank you for the ideas on random maps and working to get it part of the vanilla game. One of the weaknesses of Dom II was the limited number of maps available without downloading. The random maps add a great deal to the playing experience for the game, “out of the box.”

[Hullu]

We can outwalk almost any other animal.

I'm a bit doubtful a human outwalks a dog or a horse.

[PDF]

Sandman said:

I'd go for a gold cost increase to begin with. Maybe to 90 gold, the same as a Knight of the Chalice. That would cut the number of Vans in play by about a fifth. If their starting fort had 30 admin, instead of 50, it would cut their starting income by about 10% (depending on scales), reducing their numbers still further.

Van pricing is even more ridiculous when compared to KotC, who cost 16% gold more, and ... 5 times the resources, for lower stats except the 20 prot and the "big" lance (all that is heavily factored in the 61 resource cost !).
I suggest Vans to be at least 100-120 gold, or even 150 ! Don't forget that with Dom3 high gold income you can readily have 1000+ gold/turn on turn 10-12, quite easy with those wondrous vans, plus they don't cost much upkeep thanks their sacredness...

[Saxon]

Humans are very good walkers comparativly. Horses are seen as strong, as they carry us, but actually spend most of the day standing in place, eating grass.

Have you heard about the hunting of kangaroos? You just follow it all day. It will hope away each time you get close, so you just keep going. That night, you both lie down to rest. In the morning, you walk over and hit it in the head. The lactic acid build up is so much the kangroo (built for sprints) cannot move the next day, but the human is just fine.

Speaking of which, we need kangaroo's in this game. Perhaps in Dom 4 we can have a nation with that mythology in it. Kangaroos jumping over heavy infantry and attacking archers/mages?

[Twan]

A line of ae buff spells making troops illusion immune or low level big ae spells doing 1 dammage would be sufficient to balance the game, if well distributed between paths.

Some ideas :
low level evocation fire or water spells doing only -1 AN dammage (max 1 hp like a whip) but in a large ae
low level nature alteration spell "owl eyes", medium ae, giving darkvision + making troops illusion immune
low level astral thaumaturgy or alteration spell "true seing", small ae making troops illusion immune
a level 5 version of true seing, large ae cost a gem, making troops illusion immune
a level 7 version of true seing, making all troops on the battlefield illusion immune
high level ritual version of owl eyes or true seing, make all troops illusion immune on a province for 1 + (extra gems) turns and give a patrol bonus to these troops
(illusion immune troops will also have bonuses against phantasmal creatures and some spells)
high level earth BF enchant "Truth of Weight", the earth only allow creatures having a weight to continue to exist, dispel all mirror images as well as phantasmal warriors and false horrors