What's in a Theme -- Thought for Dom3

[rylen]

First, to state the obvious...

I can easily divide existing themes into two type:
Unit themes like Ulm Iron Woods and Abyssia Blood of Humans. These change the units available for play, generally removing and substituting.
Effect Themes like Desert Sun and Golem Cult. These are less tangible.

In Dom2 you cannot take more then one theme. Of course, you cannot take more then one unit theme. But, should you be able to combine a unit theme with an effect theme, or take multiple effect themes?

I see a few reasons no.
--Programing. Current modding treats both the same. If the design team uses the same engine, Dom2 has serious obstacles to patching in that as a change. Since Dom3 will inherit from Dom2, this limit may stay. There's also the matter of checking that the conditions for both themes continue to be met.
--Game ballance. You can predict the power of a single theme. As more get added, it could be harder to ballance. I think this would be ironed out by the community over the first few weeks.
--What else?

So, why do it? Mostly I think this would allow unit themes to behave like normal nations, and that that's good.

So, what do ya'll think? Is this interesting? If so, is it ballanced? And should it be part of the wishlist?

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An unrelated meditation on theme in the "cool idea?" Category.

Magic path unlocked themes. Pretenders w/ a minimum number of paths in certain magics get the option of picking up certain themes. This could be another incentive to take bad scales and get a 10Path. Plus other cool stuff. But it is more to keep track of.

Looking forward to the answers.

Rylen

[Wauthan]

Adding themes would indeed by very interesting. Moreso if there was additional themes added to Dom3. Since chosing two themes would impair an even higher cost and more forced scales it oughto be fairly balanced.

It might be fairly hard to get this feature into the game though since it would require both UI reconfiguration, additional theme balancing, more bugs and more code to plow trough.

Having a national theme and a "culture" theme seems to be a good way to incorporate new strategic and replayble elements into Dominions. Also a way to fulfil wishes for new factions without actually adding new factions.

As an example a "Kingdom of the Ratmen" theme for Pangea with a "Demon Worshipers" theme would add a few new ratty units to Pangea and boost summoned demons inside the dominion. Strategy and game experience would be very different from "plain vanilla" Pangea.

[Kristoffer O]

Pangaean ratmen? I would probably make ratmen a marignon theme. Sewers and dirty renaissance. And rats with puffy hats and troUsers. Perhaps Ulm.

But, I do not have plans for rats at the moment.

[Wauthan]

Thank the powers! I don't know where I got "Kingdom of the Ratmen" from. I would greatly prefer if you guys focused on units that you enjoy painting instead. I really like the new Nagas and Medusa over the previous incarnations. I just hope the Mother of Lions get a similar makeover. Neither me or my pals have been able to figure out what her head really looks like.

I take it from the lack of comment on the original topic that there's a lot of solemn nodding and rubbing of noses at Illwinter?

[Kristoffer O]

Themes are going through some other alterations. I currently cannot say if there will be changes in the suggested direction (I don't know).

[Kristoffer O]

Naga is remade once more. Even better. There are several hundreds of units that are stuck with rezoomed dom1 sprites. They are ugly. But it is more boring to redraw old stuff than drawing new sprites. Some of the uglier ones deserves a makeover. I'll keep the mother of lions in mind.

[rylen]

Kristoffer O said:
Themes are going through some other alterations. I currently cannot say if there will be changes in the suggested direction (I don't know).

Cool. I just wanted an "I'll think about it." Does it matter to other players?

Rylen