Dom I Strategies which WON'T work in Dom II

[Wendigo]

Originally posted by apoger:
Yes, however my view is that both types of players should be able to get what they want. You seem to want to limit everyone to your style of play.

Definitely wrong. I do not want to define how others play or enjoy the game. If they enjoy a different set of rules let them play their way via house rules. What I oppose is the hard-coding of something that goes against the very definition of the game. If you want allied victory you can have it via house rules, why do you need any coding to support something which doesn't fit with the world? Do you need an official clap in the back?

>- Right of passage.
>To which I answered same as here: it would only make gangfests easier.

Since gateway has been crippled in Dom II, I think that offering some method to cross non-enemy territory is apporpriate.

So you want totally _free_ passage through enemy lands to replace gateway?. Colour me unconvinced.

>- Exchange of commanders/mages/troops.

I never asked for this, and don't like the idea.

Sorry, it seems after a Google search that my recollection of this was inaccurate, you campaigned for Allied victory instead. My apologies.

>This is a false analogy with RL.

While real life and games are certainly different, this is a multi-nation game of conflict. I honestly don't see how anyone can argue that dippy and cooperation aren't compatible with such a theme.

Because in the Dominions world in the end there canbe only one. You can cooperate up to a point, when your ally will become your enemy. While you can play differently if you feel like it or in a scenario it would make no sense for IW to code such possibility which would not fit the story of the world as defined in the colourful background. In your house games, you are king.

Again, I'm not saying that YOU must play dipplomatically, nor that dipplomacy should be forced on anyone. What I'm saying is that it's a very important facet to many players and as such should be included as an option for those that want it.

You can play diplomatically: You can forward gems, coin, slaves & items, and you can trade information & coordinate attacks. It sounds like quite a lot to me.

That pretty much says it all.
What about *my* enjoyment? Or the enjoyment of *other* players? The whole idea here is to have a discussion about what many players want. If there is a good deal of support for dippy (as seems the case) then why should IW program for your enjoyment at the expense of others? I don't mean to be rude, but this comes across as a rather selfish point of view.

Why so? are you not capable of defending your point of view & what you like? do you expect me to do it for you in addition to defending mine?

I will tell you a secret: I will defend what I like & you can defend what you like, that way we can have...a debate. If we are to 'have a discussion about what players want' why do you label as selfish the opinions that disagree with yours?

Targeting the poster when you run out of arguments to target the post?

[HJ]

House rules are impossible for SP, unless we're refering to ironman rules, therefore the only option is to have them hardcoded. OTOH, they are quite possible to ignore in MP. The option has to exist to be ignored/switched off, so which scenario happens to take more players into account?

[ywl]

I won't really called myself a vet in MP - just 2 to 3 games. I might even occassionally sound like a know-it-all of the system but I'm not really a very skillful player.

But since Pocus asked...

I think most of Alex's whammies are fine in terms of game balance. It might catch people off-guard. But to me, they're the fun parts of the game - expect the unexpected and prepare for different situations. Otherwise, I worry that the end game will become nothing more than a race to enmasse the largest army of HIs.

1) Super-Combatants. Except for Ice Devils, I think that most super-combatants are fine. To have a good super-combatants, you usually need to invest at least 50 gems and have at least level 3 in two magic paths (earth, etc). Morever, most of these supercombatants can be killed by "Soul Slay", "Opposition", "Disintegration" et al. Or a moderate number of ethereatl beings (e.g., 10 ghosts). The ability of such an expensive commander to kill 100+ cheap heavy infantries is a reasonable thing (50 gems ~= 500 golds ~= cost of 40 HIs).

Blood summons are painful in most game but the problem is more because of the easy availability of Blood Slaves.

Ice-Devils at the 4th level is too much of a bargain. Something has been done already and I'll need to see how it turns out. I think the other Blood Summons are priced reasonably.

2) Teleport and Gateway. Not sure.

3) Magic Duel. It's fine in its current form. Or Astral would be too powerful . The only nations severly hurt by MD is Marignon. But to me, Marignon's mages are powerful enough in its current form: Astral Fire, Flame Eruption (both are only level 6!), Body Ethereal, Luck. Astral lets you boast up your magic level easily ("Light of the Northern Sky" and "Power of the Sphere"). And you can also use the Communions circle to increase the magic power of your mages. With so many variable, I don't really that MD is such a safe tactics even for Pythium.

4) Ritual Summon... what does it mean? Summoning magical creatures are what make the game fun - right?

5) Battlefield Summon. Not sure - I haven't seen enough. To me, it is just some tricks that make the mages worth their gold... If Storm is tuned down and the archers can get to the mages, it shouldn't be that dominant any more. Moreover, even in the current system, there are other spells to kill the mages hid in the back, e.g. "Howl", "Earthquake", "Rain of Stone", "Acid Rain".

6) Battlefield spells. Does it means "Wrathful Sky" and others? I find most of them fine. "Wrathful Sky" is better raised to Air 4 or 5. "Astral Tempest" should give more damage to make it worthwile. But otherwise, to me, these spells are just something to be factored in during a battle. Without them, Dominions will lose a lot of the richness of tactics and strategies.

7) Storms. I agree . The current modifications are in the right direction. I'll need to play Dom II to see whether they've gone far enough (or too far).

8) Army BLasting Spells... I don't have enough experience but are they really such a big deal? It takes 30 gems to cast MW... It's quite an expensive ritual. FftS is at Level 9. Leprosy is cheap and probably should be a higher cost (15 gems?) but it's very slow acting. For common fodder units - you shouldn't care. For important mages, it's easy enough to give them ice-rings, fire-rings or the poison-rings.

9) Province BLasting spells. An useful and fun part of the game. I don't see any problem other than the sinking feeling while I'm the one receiving them .

10) Assassination. I haven't seen anybody using them with effect more than mere annoyance. In theory, you can equip some commanders to be super-assasain but it'll be expensive to lose them. And you can never sure whether you'll hit a good target - easily countered with a bunch of cheap scouts or monks.

[ywl]

Some more thoughts on army bLasting spell.

In terms of game-play, "Vengeance of the Dead" seems to be a good way to counter army bLasting - if we can make them good even for undeads.

If we still found army bLasting still too annoying, we can introduce a few new spells in other magic paths to make mass murderers more vulnerable. Some examples:

"Curse of the Deads", a spell to curse a commander with a large body-count remotely.

"Mark of Kurgi", a spell to horror-mark a mass murderer from a distance - for later Horror attack.

"Smite of Justice", a thunderbolt to strike whoever kill too many.

"Scythe of Conscience", renders whoever kill too many feeblemind ?

Just some random thoughts.

[apoger]

>1) Super-Combatants. Except for Ice Devils, I think that most super-combatants are fine.

Said like a person that never had a Sphinx dropped on their capital on turn 7. The abuse can get a lot worse than the loss of a 100 HI.

I'm glad to hear that Dom II may have worked towards limiting this. I hope to see the new game balance in action during the upcomming months.

>Blood summons are painful in most game but the problem is more because of the easy availability of Blood Slaves.

I'm always concerned when players have control of a resource that ramps up, such as blood slaves. I hope Dom II really has addressed this.

>3) Magic Duel. It's fine in its current form. Or Astral would be too powerful . The only nations severly hurt by MD is Marignon.

C'tis and Jotunheim also often field mages that have astral-1. Even the astral-2 mages are dangerously behind the astral-3 nations. The tricks that can be done to pump astral are available to everyone. The astral-3 nations are always ahead of the curve on this, and as such it makes life hard on the lesser astral nations.

It's something you must always consider when playing with astral magic.

>4) Ritual Summon... what does it mean?

This is a reference to players showing up with large numbers of summons such as Summer Lions. It can ruin someones day for sure.

>5) Battlefield Summon. Not sure - I haven't seen enough.

This shouldn't be a big issue in Dom II (I hope).
In Dom I, Groups of mages could often take down conventional armies at no loss.

Massive summons of lesser air elementals was single handedly corrupting the game, IMHO.

>6) Battlefield spells. Does it means "Wrathful Sky" and others?

Combo's like thunder ward/wrathful skies, or poison ward/foul vapors. This sort of spell combo could often dissolve entire armies. The way IW has altered wards in Dom II will probably help lessen the frequency we see this stuff.

>8) Army BLasting Spells... I don't have enough experience but are they really such a big deal? It takes 30 gems to cast MW... It's quite an expensive ritual.

Not too expensive by the time it's in play. Much less "expensive" than allowing the 600 troop army to stroll into your area. If your enemy has a stack of mages in there, knocking out 20-40% isn't shabby. You can't protect them all...

Once MW and FFTS start getting thrown about, conventional armies with mages become much less important. You must start to rely on super combatants and larger summoned creatures. I'm not a big fan of this kind of endgame. I much prefer it when things resolve before this much magic becomes available.

>9) Province BLasting spells. An useful and fun part of the game. I don't see any problem other than the sinking feeling while I'm the one receiving them .

I never said it was a "problem" as in bad for Dominions. It's a "problem" in-game for the player who is getting slammed by repeated spells.

>10) Assassination. I haven't seen anybody using them with effect more than mere annoyance.

I was talking more about assassination spells than assassin characters.

If you have never been the victim of a serious Arco 'mind hunt' festival then count yourself lucky! (arco can use their priestesses to undo afflictions from bad results)

I can't wait to see what goodness Dom II will bring to the table.

[apoger]

>In terms of game-play, "Vengeance of the Dead" seems to be a good way to counter army bLasting - if we can make them good even for undeads.

Not as easy as you are thinking...
A> How does the enemy know where I am keeping my bLaster mage?
B> Domes. The bLaster mage is always hidden under domes.

It's often difficult to counter.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by apoger:
Army BLasting Spells... I don't have enough experience but are they really such a big deal? It takes 30 gems to cast MW... It's quite an expensive ritual.

Not too expensive by the time it's in play. Much less "expensive" than allowing the 600 troop army to stroll into your area. If your enemy has a stack of mages in there, knocking out 20-40% isn't shabby. You can't protect them all...

The problem is their efficiency. If you can kill 600 troops with a 30-gem spell, why would you consider summoning 3 cool-sounding 10-gem units (that can kill 20 humanoids each), or arrowing 3 commanders (who would die in the MW anyway), or calling several swarms of black hawks to attack (who would accomplish nothing at all ), or whatever... once you get that kind of spell, most other usages of gems become wasteful. I think that army and province bLasters should be WAY more expensive, and scaled with dominion strength.

As for assassins. I never found them to be useful no matter how I kitted them out, as they always died after a couple attempts. Until I read the newsGroups and gave them lifelong protection, which makes your assassin virtually unstoppable, except to things with trample. Actually, my fully-loaded, lifelong protected Slayers were conquering provinces all by themselves. In other words, I thought normal assassins were too weak, and assassins with unlimited free summons were way too strong. How does the strength of assassins seem in Dominions II?

-Cherry

P.S. Is Vengence of the Dead still bugged to count undead as kills, so that it doubles effectiveness each time it is cast on a commander?

[ October 17, 2003, 00:25: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]