New Game: Fun Sites

[RedRover]

I promised a new game on Friday, so here it is.

The goal here is to create a list of possible magic sites for Dom3. The ground rules are:

1. The site can't duplicate a Dom2 site, nor can it be a slight variation of an existing Dom2 site or of a site already submitted to this Game.

2. The site must do something the devs probably would not put in a random site list. If you're not sure, send it in, there will be a judging phase.

3. In addition to your basic site idea, you can include minor variations or point out unusual applications that modders might be interest in (see examples).

4. If you adapt an idea from from a book or other source and you think people won't recognize it, then you have to identify the source.

5. The game runs for a week. After that, it may be extended at my option. I will not extend it past January 5, 2006 in any case.

6. There will be a judging phase at the end--I'll post a poll (if I can figure out how to make that type of post work), and we'll vote.

7. The examples I use to start the game are excluded from the judging process.

NEW [added 11/26/05]
8. Please give all your entries a Site Name in bold.

9. Ideas that are close variants of previously posted sites can be posted as "noncompeting" sites. They will be excluded from the final poll.

As thread creator, I reserve the right to exclude sites I consider close variants from the final poll. Since I am setting myself up as de facto judge and coordinator, all of my entries to this thread will be posted in noncompete form and will not appear on the final poll.

[Name (noncompete): Form is in brackets and italics.]

A LIST OF ALL THE SITES IN Dom2 and what they do can be found here: Site List, fourth item down.

EXAMPLES

The Neutral Zone
Dominion of any type holds no sway here. (That is, all dominion-change effects here are x0.)

Ideally, the assigned Level of this site would be fully moddable, up to Level 10 or more (the last would render it virtually undetectable by search or remote scrying).

In a slight modification of the foregoing, immortals entering the province might also get the following popup:

“[PRETENDERNAME], you do not feel too good. Something is wrong.”

(What is wrong is that immortality is not in force here, but this point is consigned to a secondary resource, like Liga's Manual.)


Antimagic Zone
Ritual spells targeting this province fail. Tactical spells cast in this province fail, even holy magic. Magical beings cannot enter (but, there’s a new amulet…). Magic items do not function in this zone.

(I think all the above effects may be doable. Reactivating items once they leave the province might be the toughest issue.

If the whole package is too hard, the easiest close variation is to simply assign the site a 100% effective and permanent ward that prevents ritual spells from penetrating.)

Inspired by the Dead Magic Zones of the Forgotten Realms.


The Unmaker
In this site, a magic item can be destroyed by activating a special command.

The magic destroyed might be: 1) any, 2) set by type/level, 3) set by school (inclusive or exclusive for multipath items), or set to 4) a list or 5) a single item. Also, modders get a “destroy-cursed-item” command that allows the site to destroy cursed items as a special variation.

As for a picture, I don’t know: How about a volcano?

Anyone not recognize the source of this last one?



OK, go!

[shovah]

i will post more later but heres my relatively poor (compared to yours) idea: fire alter, a fire mage may enter to cast fires from afar
edit: forgot to mention i kinda got this idea from guildwars

[PvK]

The Curing Waters (W4)
A commander can enter to cure disease for himself and his troops (40% chance per unit per turn).

Field of Clover (N4)
Luck scale increases in the province.
Effects of curses are suppressed while in this province.
There is a very small chance each turn that a cursed unit may lose its curse.

Cloister of Anonymity (E4)
A leader may enter to lose their horror mark, but they are also renamed and lose any heroic abilities, fame and kill history, but not their experience level.

PvK

[RedRover]

shovah: Don't beat yourself up. A site that enables a spell to be cast is something we haven't seen yet.

(Also, remember that the examples in the first post come from idea files I was keeping during a roughly 6-month hiatus from Dom2 play. I promise to keep this thread open long enough for everyone to get their creative juices ramped.)

Your post suggests to me that we need a new rule.

8. Please give all your entries a Site Name in bold.

PvK: Nifty ideas. I also like the way you added path and level suggestions.

One of your ideas is very close to one that I was prepping. This suggests to me that a rule for close variants is needed. While it seems unfair to let later variants compete in the poll, it is also against the spirit of this thread to exclude contributions, particularly if the suggestions stimulate new modding commands. The new rule, then, provides for "noncompeting idea" posting.

9. Ideas that are close variants of previously posted sites can be posted as "noncompeting" sites. They will be excluded from the final poll.

As thread creator, I reserve the right to exclude sites I consider close variants from the final poll. Since I am setting myself up as de facto judge and coordinator, all of my entries to this thread will be posted in noncompete form and will not appear on the final poll.

[Name (noncompete): Form is in brackets and italics.]

Note: Everything shovah and PvK have posted so far is in.

"NONCOMPETE" EXAMPLES

[Lethe’s Pool (noncompete): A Leader who enters this site is immediately Feebleminded. The pool eventually heals a Leader’s Horror Mark or Curse.

The chance of the pool healing a Horror Mark or Curse is the same as that of the Chalice healing an affliction. Variant: The healed Leader becomes a Unit until the Gift of Reason spell is applied.]


[Spirit Cave (noncompete): Adapted from African tradition and previously posted to Wishlist, this cave contains a dangerous spirit monster that may teach a leader medicine. Mercenaries, magic beings, undead, and animals will refuse to enter this site. Also this site has no effect on Pretenders. Entering with a Pretender gets a popup.

“The spirit flees at the approach of {PRETENDERNAME}.”

When the site is entered by a Leader and the turn advanced, the following steps occur in order:

The Leader has a 20% chance to become a healer. If so, the unit receives a Healer icon, and the Heal command is enabled.

If not, the Leader has a 30% chance to be eaten by the spirit of the cave. Popup:

“The spirit has grown tired of {LEADERNAME}, and has destroyed {him/her}.”

If neither, then there is no effect at all on the Leader this turn.]


[Wild Magic Zone (noncompete): This is inspired by the “Weave” of the Forgotten Realms setting. Magic scale here is permanently locked at +3 and won't be altered (except via a special trigger mod command).

Variant: Any spell cast in this province has one or more of the following parameters altered: Damage, Range, Area of Effect. The variation breaks down as follows: 25% doubled, 25% halved, 50% change value by -5 to +5.]


Site Zero (noncompete): This site is invisible, has no illustration, and has no game effect. It is simply a "destination" site--you "destroy" other sites by changing them to this one. You can also use this site in a group of random sites to increase the number of empty provinces, that is, it is counted as a site by site placement utilities.

[Agrajag]

The Dark Academy (D5)
A Leader may enter the Academy and persuade the mages inside to make him immortal by storing his viscera in their Academy and turning him into a lich.
The mages in the Academy have a 30% chance to agree. If the province containing this site falls under enemy dominion or is conquered by the enemy, all liches created in it, die. If the mages refuse to turn the leader into a lich, he dies. The leader-turned-lich retains all of his Experience, and all his magic paths (so he doesnt gain death magic), and he retains all of his skills that are not physical (So he loses... Trample, but not Heals, since healing is based on his acquired knowledge of healing).
Variant: Instead of being turned into a Lich (which sounds rather overpowered), the leader gains the Etheral ability (or dies, of the mages refuse!)

[shovah]

actually spell casting sites arent new, what about the one that lets astral mages scry?

[Boron]

I am not good at namegiving, so the name will be incomplete .

Shrine/Altar of ...(cool sounding name of a god or something from the dom3 mythology)

A commander may enter this Site for 1 turn to preach and give the god gifts. Gifts can be anything like gems, troops, Gold etc. etc..
Depending on what the commander spent he may get empowerments that are thematic. The amount of spent stuff also matters.
The same commander can preach and spend multiple turns and always get additional effects.

There is a complex formula system behind it which includes random dicethrows and a chart.

Simple example:
A D100 is thrown.

Chart for spending Deathgems:

0 Deathgems spent:

Diceroll:
1-10: The god is annoyed by the blasphemy of the hero and throws him into hell.
11-50: The god punishes the greedy hero. Random effect like lose 1D6 HP, get a random affliction or something like that.
51-90: Nothing happens.
91-100: The hero gets a small gift which can be anything like a weapon, extra health, another equipment slot etc. etc..

If the hero instead spends 1-100 deathgems the diceroll chart is modified that he gets better results, e.g. like this:
1: Hero dies
2-20: Hero gets punished
21+: Good effects, thematic to the deathgems, like getting lifeleech, etheralness etc..

Then additional charts for ppl who spend even more gems.

But always there is a small chance included that something bad happens to your hero.
So it is a big gamble what you get. It may be more than worth the spent gems or it may be a waste.

Inspired by various Rpgs, iirc there were 1 or 2 such spells in one of the Black Isle D&D games like BG 2 and iirc the Chaos faction in Lords of Magic had such spells too.

[shovah]

that sounds like a fun site (might be more useful for some than others)

[Boron]

The great Annoying

This site has some really bad features. There could be several variants of this site.

Example variant:
The site spreads death 3 and casts 1 plague per turn, with 1/3 probability that it casts the plague on the province which it is in and with 2/3 probability on another randomly chosen province from the realm it is within. This way it is not save to park it in one of your low populated provinces.

Now there is the special second feature of the site:
You may pay X gems or 10x X gold. Then at the end of the turn the site searches a new host and randomly pops up in another realm played by a different player.
Stronger players have a higher probability that the site appears in their realm.

Sacrificing Wood
A blood mage can sacrifice up to his bloodlevel bloodslaves.
For every slave sacrificed he gets +1 to all his paths for the next turn.

Hellhole
This site is a giant hole that connects this plane with the hell. Every turn it spawns creatures from hell. An immoral god may employ these demons.

Gameplay effects, several ideas:
1. The number and might of hellspawns depends on the turn, the monsters that spawn in lategame are more powerful than those in earlygame.
2. The spawned monsters offer the owner of the province their services. They demand random amounts of blood/gems, which reach from 50-150% of their worth in blood/gems if they would have been normally summoned.
2.1. Only evil gods may employ these monsters. An evil god is a god that took either blood or death magic during pretender setup.
3. If the owner of the province did not pay for their services, the demons attack the province.
3.1: New game concept: Maurading indy forces.
If the hellspawns defeat the troops of the owner of the province they can start maurading, which means they attack other provinces. This is completely random though, each turn a dice is thrown and then the hellspawns either maurade or stay in the current province, depending on the dicethrow.

[Boron]

shovah said:
that sounds like a fun site (might be more useful for some than others)

Thnx .
Yeah it would need to be carefully balanced. But the concept of chaos magic has always fascinated me since i am always at least to a certain degree a gambler .


Sleeping Dragon

This site looks like a mountain site from Dominions 2 and has as effect only +x resources, just like the Dominions 2 mountain site.

In truth the mountain is a sleeping dragon though.

Ideas:
1. There is a new ritual to investigate sites to discover their secret features.
2. The dragon randomly awakes. There is a small base chance each turn and if there happens something extraordinary in the province like a huge battle the chance is greatly increased for this turn.
3. There are 3 kinds of dragons: Good, neutral and evil dragons.
If your pretender has the same ethos the dragon serves you, if not the dragon starts maurading your empire.

Ethos of the pretender:
Took mainly astral+nature magic: Good pretender
Took mainly elemental magic: Neutral pretender
Took mainly blood+death magic: Evil pretender


Valhalla

And similiar fitting names for all the other nations. This site is a known starting site which can be enabled or disabled in the game setup options.

In this site you can resurrect your fallen national heros. For every resurrection the price increases lineary though, like 1st time 2 gems, 2nd time 4 gems etc..

Combo sites
Not a single site, but a new game mechanism.
Can be turned on or off via game options.

Ideas:
1. No sitelimit per province, so you could get 100 sites and more in one province.
2. New ritual that lets you teleport sites from one province to the other, it gets the more expensive the more sites you already have in the target province, price also depends on the might of the to be teleported site.
3. All sites have one or more combo effects. These can be positive or negative, depending on the sites ethos.
Sites with the same ethos give positive boni, sites with different ethos give negative boni.
If you have e.g. a deathsite that lets you summon undead and one that lets you summon soulless if you have both sites in the same province they summon lictors instead then.
4. New ritual to transform sites. Only the alignment of the site can be chosen, then the site is transformed semi-randomly into a site of this alignment.
This way you can slowly transform your realm into one of the 3 alignments.
This could become a completely new game concept.
If you field troops of different alignments you will get problems. If an evil nation e.g. fields devils and angels the angels will desert.

Vague game concept idea:
The sites/troops/etc. from the good and evil alignments are in general more powerful than the neutral ones.

There is now a new abstract figure, aligment supply.

Good gods can then field only good troops and some neutral ones, evil gods only evil troops and some neutral ones.
Neutral gods can field troops from all 3 aligments.

Depending on the power of the site it creates several alignment points.

Good gods can then field good troops and neutral troops worth 25% of their good alignment points, evil troops analog.
Neutral gods can then field neutral troops + any mix of evil+good troops worth in total no more than 33% of their neutral alignment points.

This concept would lead to an enchanced build up component which would also be interesting.

Inspired by Magic the Gathering, especially Kamigawa Block and by Civilization 4.