Dom I Strategies which WON'T work in Dom II

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Jasper:
Oh, and it's definitely great for Caelum, Jotunheim, and Ermor. Although this may be somewhat mitigated now that there's only partial resistances.

There are not only partial resistances, just that the spells affecting the entire battlefield only offer partial resistance. As long as you are not besieging there are domes, but when you siege this is not an option. One way to deal with this is to take out the opposing mage casting the murdering winter. After he has used murdering winter you can target him with veangeance of the dead for example.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
Lads, if the mod tools will be powerful enough and we can disable spells, these problems won't exist. Simply you will have the chance to disallow the disliked spells.[/QB]

I typically play multiplayer, and modding individual aspects that don't fit my taste isn't really a viable option.

Besides, I don't have time to do the balancing necessary to make a good mod of Dominions.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by johan osterman:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jasper:
Oh, and it's definitely great for Caelum, Jotunheim, and Ermor. Although this may be somewhat mitigated now that there's only partial resistances.

There are not only partial resistances, just that the spells affecting the entire battlefield only offer partial resistance. As long as you are not besieging there are domes, but when you siege this is not an option. One way to deal with this is to take out the opposing mage casting the murdering winter. After he has used murdering winter you can target him with veangeance of the dead for example.

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean... do you mean that Caelum and Jotunheim are still 100% immune to cold?

Domes are not really effective against spells like Murdering winter, unless you never move your troops. And you must beseige in order to win, and likely can't kill the responsible mage without the catch-22 of storming a castle in the first place.

The counters you mention make your opponent think a little more carefully about when to Murdering Winter, but don't really limit it's power. You can only be protected if you are static -- which is a loosing strategy in itself.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by johan osterman:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jasper:
Oh, and it's definitely great for Caelum, Jotunheim, and Ermor. Although this may be somewhat mitigated now that there's only partial resistances.

There are not only partial resistances, just that the spells affecting the entire battlefield only offer partial resistance. As long as you are not besieging there are domes, but when you siege this is not an option. One way to deal with this is to take out the opposing mage casting the murdering winter. After he has used murdering winter you can target him with veangeance of the dead for example.

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Perhaps I suffered traumatic experience with murdering winter (having been hammered by an uber caelum with this spell during 25 turns), but here is my opinion :

1. in practice you only dome provinces that you think you can hold. Perhaps 2 or 3 provinces at most will be domed. Aside that, I can assure you that you will get bLasted most often than not, either in your empire (in the 90% remaining provinces not domed), or in the provinces of your enemy.

2. the mage casting the spell must be found. There is no easy mean to do that, as generally he wont stand in the capitol (the player is not that stupid). And even if you find it, you can bet that there is some domes up (3 or more from my experience).

To end the story I started, the Caelian mage was never killed, as he was not reachable by any mean. The game ended when Caelum started to stall heavily (we dispatched his ally) and after our own ally Abysia started to vitrify his armies with Flames from the sky (and everybody else was sending leprosy, the third tactical nuke of the family)

I think that more than half of all units killed in the game were done by these 2 spells (MW and FFTS). When the game ended, most of the players were dispirited by this fact (or is all?), by the no brainer in using these spells. Even the Caelian player recognized that he used MW with distate, so powerful they were. And no, the game was not a big one, there was only 7 players, but it dragged as nobody wanted to concede (which is a good thing).

Murdering winter is level 7, that's easily reachable. With some water income, you can have a big reserve when you can cast it. Sure, you wont see many of these spells cast in small to medium games, or games ending at turn 50, but otherwise they are really detrimental to the gameplay (in the experience of our group).

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Pocus:
Murdering winter is level 7, that's easily reachable. With some water income, you can have a big reserve when you can cast it. Sure, you wont see many of these spells cast in small to medium games, or games ending at turn 50, but otherwise they are really detrimental to the gameplay (in the experience of our group).

Even worse, this strategy synergizes with the underpriced Ice Devils, which are immune to the effects, and generate water gems to pay for casting Murdering Winter.

This is a very popular strategy and effective strategy; 3 out of 6 players in my current game seem to use it!

[apoger]

>Even worse, this strategy synergizes with the underpriced Ice Devils, which are immune to the effects, and generate water gems to pay for casting Murdering Winter.

I have heard that blood hunting has been altered somewhat, and that the large blood summons will be handled differently in Dom II.

Perhaps some of the testers could enlighten us about the way it works now.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by Pocus:
Murdering winter is level 7, that's easily reachable. With some water income, you can have a big reserve when you can cast it. Sure, you wont see many of these spells cast in small to medium games, or games ending at turn 50, but otherwise they are really detrimental to the gameplay (in the experience of our group).

Even worse, this strategy synergizes with the underpriced Ice Devils, which are immune to the effects, and generate water gems to pay for casting Murdering Winter.

This is a very popular strategy and effective strategy; 3 out of 6 players in my current game seem to use it!

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the demons&devils commanders are now limited in number in doms II (as the elemental kings and queens), so at least this abuse will be fixed. It wont change much how much murdering winter can be used anyway (the Caelian player I mention never recruited ice devils, but still managed to cast something like 10 MW - each time you gather a sizable force to counter him, bLast, you were back to stone age, very frustrating).

I wonder who really appreciate these spells, (gameplay wise not power wise). Alex Poger gave his opinion, but I would like to hear some MP vets like Wendigo, YWL, Sunray, etc.