Dom I Strategies which WON'T work in Dom II

[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 ]

[Nerfix]

IMHO leprosy is the worst army bLaster there is:
It is dirt cheap, and even if "just" diseases and wounds the troops, the effects are crushing:
Instead of dead units you will end up having dying troops, who still eat, figth(propably not for long though) and have upkeep cost.

You can also get it ealier than other army bLasters, and it think requires less skill to cast than others.

[ October 17, 2003, 06:07: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[ywl]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

---

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.

---

I don't think that you can kill 600 troops with a single MW. As Alex said, it can only kill 20%-40% of an army. If your enemy has a 2000 units army, Mw won't help you.

In my experience, 30 water gems is a significant amount even at turn 30. 15 water gems per turn is a very good income already.

I can think of many other good ways to use 30 water gems. 30 water gems give 30 winter wolves, or 3 Boots of Quickness - neither is too shabby.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by ywl:
"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.

I kinda like them, but they are commander bLasting spells, and "Assasination" was one of the ten whammies... Curse of Death and Mark of Kurgi are good, but Smite of Justice and Scythe of Conscience are commander bLasting spells for sure.

Edit: I wonder why there isn't an "Earthquake" province bLasting spell for earth... I don't mean it would be the temple killing earthquake, but an earthquake in general.

Edit Redux: I also predict that Star Child will become the new king of assasins in Dom II because of the singletarget, range 50, precision 100 no AoE paralyzing Mind BLast. Just put SC in the other edge of the batlefield and bLast away with Mind BLast. Extra paralyzation does 2 damage/round, it may not be the fastest way to kill someone, but powerfull nevertheless. I however think that MR can be used to resist Mind BLast. But he still has Star Fires, Luck, Twist Fate and Body Ethereal with him if the enemy resists. And if you give him Astral Skullcap, he can Horror Mark commanders, Mind Burn commanders, and in fact, he can Mind Hunt commanders from some cozy laboratory.

But this is just what i predict.

[ October 17, 2003, 06:39: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[Pocus]

Originally posted by ywl:
I don't think that you can kill 600 troops with a single MW. As Alex said, it can only kill 20%-40% of an army. If your enemy has a 2000 units army, Mw won't help you.

In my experience, 30 water gems is a significant amount even at turn 30. 15 water gems per turn is a very good income already.

I can think of many other good ways to use 30 water gems. 30 water gems give 30 winter wolves, or 3 Boots of Quickness - neither is too shabby.

The murdering winter spell, aside from taking out group of mages along with mundane units (thus weakening them even further compared to magical summons) act as a very strong deterrent to gather any sizable force in a given location. A nation which is capable of MW'ing his opponent has already strategical and tactical superiority, even before casting the second one, as your opponent will have big difficulties (to say the least) resisting any sizable land attacks of your. When the MW'ing nation has national units immune to cold, as Caelum, it is even worse, as you cant force him to break down his force into defeatable stacks.

In the house rules some of us plays, we interdicted the casting of the 3 army bLasting spells in no dominions was in the province. Perhaps too extreme, and a solution could be to tie the cost of the spell to the dominions level : if you dont have a presence in a province, harnessing magical energies in it should be more difficult somehow.

To understand the problem, you have to play games which Last reasonnably long, on medium to large maps. It seems to me that dominions is failing in his game balance when you reach this point, but this is seldomly seen as most tests and games are stopped before reaching this extremity.

If Daynarr or Psitticine can give their opinion on how these spells play in doms II, then perhaps further conclusions could be drawn.