Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by apoger:
It would be nice if IW could have an option to start with a "nation". Perhaps 7-10 provinces circling the capital. Force balance so all nations start will about the same gold/resources. Possibly have all starting provinces pre-searched as if the pretender had searched there.

What would be really cool is the traditional board game "province draft". I've thought about doing this by editing a map, and then having the players draft on IRC or something, and get a certain amount of resources, income, and gems to purchase a small amount of starting stuff.

There are a couple of downsides however to doing this manually via scenario creation: Capitol locations are public knowledge, and the super randomization of province income/resources means some of the players will almost certainly get screwed badly. Plus it's a pain in the *** to get everything setup and make sure you avoid typos.


It would be really cool if the game could handle this... The mechanics behind it is fairly simple, although the GUI would take some work.

I'm imagining something like this: Players log onto the game host, and then draft a given number of provinces in random order, with the order reversting each time through. Players then secretly select one of their provinces as their capitol, and spend a given amount of gold and resources on troops and leaders, with a settable max number of starting leaders. A settable amount of research points could then be distributed as desired, and a settable number of turns of gem income could be used for rituals and forging.

A game would then be created based upon all of these values, with the sum value of each players provinces roughly balanced within a settable range.

[Jasper]

[On the topic of varrying bless effects]

I suggest bonuses starting at +1 for level 3, and then increasing by one ever level after that. The special bonus effects would kick in at level 6.

This would be a more convincing incentive to have higher magic skill levels.

[geo981010]

I think they (update:they = the bless bonuses) are too expensive, but can be a lot of fun for single player.

Maybe in special cases they could be worthwhile - Jotun's Niefelhem special and Nature 9 is expensive but potent. 150 gold gives you a monstrous Niefel Giant who when blessed gets Beserk +3 (+3 attack and protection, 99 morale, -3 defense), 50% poison resistant (nice if you have a Green Dragon pretender) and regenerates 15+ points a round. Almost like a supercombatant from the start, so you can get a pretty quick start. But your economy or magic will take a beating getting this, so for a longer game you may get outproduced.

Why doesn't the dominion candles in a province affect the blessing affect? If a god's power is so strong in a province that it is altering the weather and such, you'd think that his followers there would get increased power.

Maybe the effective starting magic skills could be modified by dominion strength in that location. So a 9 Nature god has his troop blessed in a neutral province, and they get bonuses like he was a 9 Nature pretender. But for each candle, they get a 10% effective starting magic bonus - so the same 9 Nature would count as a 14 Nature in a 5 candle province, and whooping 18 in a 10 candle. A 10 candle dominion with a 9 magic pretender is not very likely until very end game, and even then, only effective in your lands so not too overpowering (especially since in the late game, you probably had to seriously hurt your economy to get the 9 magic pretender). Makes the bonuses at least be an endgame perk, and creates another reason to maintain your dominion in your lands (which a lot of the time is not very important as long as your neighbor isn't Ermor).

[ October 29, 2003, 21:33: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

[Sammual]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by apoger:
It would be nice if IW could have an option to start with a "nation". Perhaps 7-10 provinces circling the capital. Force balance so all nations start will about the same gold/resources. Possibly have all starting provinces pre-searched as if the pretender had searched there.

What would be really cool is the traditional board game "province draft". I've thought about doing this by editing a map, and then having the players draft on IRC or something, and get a certain amount of resources, income, and gems to purchase a small amount of starting stuff.

There are a couple of downsides however to doing this manually via scenario creation: Capitol locations are public knowledge, and the super randomization of province income/resources means some of the players will almost certainly get screwed badly. Plus it's a pain in the *** to get everything setup and make sure you avoid typos.


It would be really cool if the game could handle this... The mechanics behind it is fairly simple, although the GUI would take some work.

I'm imagining something like this: Players log onto the game host, and then draft a given number of provinces in random order, with the order reversting each time through. Players then secretly select one of their provinces as their capitol, and spend a given amount of gold and resources on troops and leaders, with a settable max number of starting leaders. A settable amount of research points could then be distributed as desired, and a settable number of turns of gem income could be used for rituals and forging.

A game would then be created based upon all of these values, with the sum value of each players provinces roughly balanced within a settable range.

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This would not be all that hard to do in a map editor. All the needed commands are supported when creating a senerio.

Sammual

[Sammual]

Originally posted by Jasper:
[On the topic of varrying bless effects]

I suggest bonuses starting at +1 for level 3, and then increasing by one ever level after that. The special bonus effects would kick in at level 6.

This would be a more convincing incentive to have higher magic skill levels.

I agree. The bless effects are too expensive right now (Not worth the cost).

Sammual

[Saber Cherry]

I admit it, I'm still not certain that in an MP game I'd have any incentive to go over level 4 magic... and that, just for site-searching/construction. Bless effects are neat, but I hardly ever had any sacred troops in Doms 1, so...

Yeah. Starting at 3, incrementing every level, and getting a big bonus at 6 sounds pretty crazy to me, but starting at 3, incrementing every other level, and getting a big bonus at 8 still wouldn't convince me to buy a magic-rich god. So maybe somewhere in between... otherwise, making cheap sacred units more common might make taking magic a better bargain.

[licker]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I admit it, I'm still not certain that in an MP game I'd have any incentive to go over level 4 magic... and that, just for site-searching/construction. Bless effects are neat, but I hardly ever had any sacred troops in Doms 1, so...

Yeah. Starting at 3, incrementing every level, and getting a big bonus at 6 sounds pretty crazy to me, but starting at 3, incrementing every other level, and getting a big bonus at 8 still wouldn't convince me to buy a magic-rich god. So maybe somewhere in between... otherwise, making cheap sacred units more common might make taking magic a better bargain.

Hmmm... and what is between 6 and 8?