About caves and darkness

[Maraxus]

This sounds like a thing for Dominions 4 - Since total darkness is to serious but some effect would be nice - specificly light effects that can be carried around or cast/thrown.

[vfb]

How well would Yomi/Lanka demons do in cave Darkness? They're 100% effective when the Darkness spell is active. Is it the same effect? I think I saw the Darkness BE icon when I stormed a cave castle in the Dawn of Dominions map. But that was a while ago so there's a good chance I could be mistaken.

LA Rlyeh also has 100% DV units, and LA Ermor should be fine. An MA Ermor going heavy Shadow vestals would also be effective.

[Sombre]

All immunity to darkness from being demons, blind, undead, darkvision etc would work. Partial dv would actually work pretty well too, it would be a big advantage over units with no dv at all, though demons and undead would cause trouble.

I don't know why people would want to resist this. None of the default maps even use caves to my knowledge and this is listed as a bug, Illwinter have said they've fixed it/want to fix it a couple of times.

Really this is more for user created maps than anything else, because only mappers actually use caves and they are very rarely extensive.

I haven't seen darkness autocast by any of the forts that are supposed to (though I haven't tested) or cave provinces. It should certainly be cast by all of them.

[Rathar]

For Agartha at least their cave homes do have inherent darkness (check non darkvision units stats in battles) but it doesn't come as a cast spell effect. I.E. you won't see anything casting darkness but it is there.

[vfb]

Is that just during storming the castle? Or is it any battle in the province?

[Sombre]

Just storming the castle.

Does the darkness spell icon show up when that happens?

I didn't notice any darkness effect when I stormed MA Abysia's cap fort.

[Twan]

Iirc only when storming (which is logical considering cave forts can be built out of cave provinces) but not sure.

About maps with caves, I prefer fantasy worlds with an underworld so an high number of caves, and it's why I hope such maps (like the two I've made World of Geometry and Oeridia, but I hope other mapmakers will make some) won't end with big balance issues (I also like fantasy worlds where humans know how to carry a torch, and all serious mages learn the cantrip light spell).

Anyway, if a #darkvision command is simply added for modders (iirc already announced in a thread someone asked for) or even with some copystats (but there are some issues with the units actually having darkvision always having unwanted other stats) -or better a darkvision effect for buff spells / battle enchant (not announced but why not)- I think there will be no problem to make a mod to balance maps even with a huge number of (dark) caves if people want to - it would just reduce a little the power of darkness spell (or let some nations suffer in full dark if people prefer). So I won't argue more over this (eventual) issue.