Scales/bless changes you would like

[vfb]

I like the idea of reducing fort build times too. But one of the problems with reducing fort build times is that it's already low in some cases, so decreasing a Forest Fort build from 3 turns to either 1 or 2 is too much of a benefit.

One idea for getting around this would be for the Production scale have a percent chance to shave off one turn from the build time, maybe 7% per Production scale.

So at Production 3, every turn you put towards building a fort, there's a 21% chance that instead of doing one turn of construction, you do 2.

And at Sloth 3, every turn you put towards building a fort (or temple or lab), there's a 21% chance that instead of doing one turn of construction, you do zero and make no progress.

[Ewierl]

Foodstamp said:
Magic/Drain - Make the research bonus scale per step, instead of every two. 3 Magic yields a research bonus of 3, magic 2 yields +2 research etc.

That way it's too strong; in Dom2, a positive magic scale was practically mandatory. But I think a better variant might be:

Make half research points count. Then the RP bonuses can be 0.5/1/1.5 and scale normally and be on par with other scales for value. (The manual/GUI says somewhere it's half a research point per scale now, but as far as I can tell, that just gets rounded up to 1/1/2.)

[Foodstamp]

What would be the point of magic 3?

[vfb]

I think he means to add up the total research for all researchers, including half points, and then round.

So 4 shamans would give:

Magic-3: 4 * 4.5 = 18
Magic-2: 4 * 4 = 16
Magic-1: 4 * 3.5 = 14
Neutral: 4 * 3 = 12
Drain-1: 4 * 2.5 = 10

etc

[OmikronWarrior]

Off the bat, the only changes I'd make is to the income adjustments of growth and production, change to 3% per tick instead of 2%, and double the population change effects of growth and death. Basically, make people debate whether its better to get Order for income or go elsewhere.

[Endoperez]

OmikronWarrior said:
Off the bat, the only changes I'd make is to the income adjustments of growth and production, change to 3% per tick instead of 2%, and double the population change effects of growth and death. Basically, make people debate whether its better to get Order for income or go elsewhere.

Order gives you income, and nothing else. It should be best for purely monetary gains, but not by as much as it currently is.

I'd like to see Growth scale's supply bonus being more meaningful. As someone pointed out, you rarely run out of supplies in Dom3. Has anyone tried playing games with suplies 75% instead of 100? I wonder if that'd do too little or too much. Too low supplies would just make the game way more annoying without adding in anything.

[B0rsuk]

My suggestions:
Air9 gives +5 Precision

I think that holy ranged troops are hard enough to mass so it wouldn't unbalance the game, and we'd see some variety in multiplayer, right ? Besides, there are many counters to archers.

Blood9: Toughness. extra max(+3, +25%) hp. Simple, thematic, fun.
So it would be either +3 hp, or +25% hp, depending on which one is higher. Little sacreds with 10 hp would actually get +30% hp. A 20 hp giant would get +5 hp.

Endoperez: Order provides...
... income
... bad event tolerance (!)(!!)(!!!)(!V)
... enables/disables certain events. It is believed that many bad events only happen in Turmoil dominion.

But ok, I see your point and I deffinitely agree that supply points are pretty useless. This highlights something more sinister - in Dominions, swarm strategies aren't effective for numerous reasons.
First, swarms of lightly armed units are... much more expensive than elite soldiers. Everyone says how resources don't matter because - sooner or later - it's gold that becomes the bottleneck. Usually you can have 2 chaff for the price of 1 elite soldier, not counting resources. Is 2:1 enough to beat elite with chaff ? Hardly !
Second, many area spells are hard counters to swarms. Each unit in a square gets damage.
(...)

People use chaff, but as arrow/lance decoys, and to keep mages safe. I think only Pangaea can afford to use Maenads offensively, and this fact alone makes it a very interesting nation. Do maenads cost gold to upkeep ? Can someone enlighten me ?

[Edi]

As I play SP, I find I have to crank supplies up to 150% just to keep AI armies from starving to death.

Air bless needs an overhaul, but if charge body is to be used, the units need to get the shock resistance anyway, because the charged unit will also take damage when the effect is triggered. Unless it has resistance, that is. The copper plate armor actually gives both 100% shockres AND charge body, but those are separate effects.

[Endoperez]

I think they don't. I remember reading something similar in the Pangaea strategy thread.

Order doesn't give you "bad event tolerance". There's enough synergy that Order 3/Misfortune 1-2 is considered safe, but nothing more. If Order only negated bad events, imagine Order 3 Luck 3 - lots of money AND only good events!

Turmoil enables some of the raiders, but IIRC unrest does the same - so even in Order 3 lands, if you have unrest you might get barbarians. I'm not sure whether knights require order or turmoil, but I think they take turmoil. Villains are probably also turmoil. These are FAR from the worst events, because you can always conquer the provinces back.

[calmon]

I like the original idea of the blood 9 bless but it needs some improvements, maybe an autoaffliction (or a chance of one) for the attacker.

Air bless should get a complete redesign. Maybe something fire-bless equal for ranged attack. +precision (and maybe even +arrow protection) from Lv 4 on and as Level 9 bless something like lighning damage from arrows or as alternaive an effect equal to charge-body.

fire, water, astral, nature, earth and death are fine and shouldn't be changed.