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

[Wendigo]

Hey George, good to see you back old bud!

I am not as sure as you are regarding the uberness of a Bless strategy for Ermor, for the following reasons:

-Unlike live nations Ermor cannot really concentrate its recruiting onto the sacred troops (I am assuming this part stays as in Dom I) as it stays fixed: Ermor gets 0-2 knights per turn in each fort with a temple in normal richness settings, which certainly limits the number of unholy knights it can field when coupled with its income troubles.

-Unholy knights do not heal now!, so their 6 HPs can only take them so far.

-Wither bones: Fielding units of undead elites is always a risky business, there's no spell of comparable power to threaten live sacred troops.

I do agree with you regarding the Shroud though, that thing is extremely cheap & potentially unballancing with the current blessings.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Hey George, good to see you back old bud!

I am not as sure as you are regarding the uberness of a Bless strategy for Ermor, for the following reasons:

-Unlike live nations Ermor cannot really concentrate its recruiting onto the sacred troops (I am assuming this part stays as in Dom I) as it stays fixed: Ermor gets 0-2 knights per turn in each fort with a temple in normal richness settings, which certainly limits the number of unholy knights it can field when coupled with its income troubles.

-Unholy knights do not heal now!, so their 6 HPs can only take them so far.

-Wither bones: Fielding units of undead elites is always a risky business, there's no spell of comparable power to threaten live sacred troops.

I do agree with you regarding the Shroud though, that thing is extremely cheap & potentially unballancing with the current blessings.

The Shroud replaces your standard armor and prevents you from wearing armor (AFAIK there is nothing with two body slots). It provides no protection (IIRC) unless you have Earth 9, and then it provides a measly 4.

If you can cast Invulnerability this is less of an issue, but many things can't cast Invulnerability (Ice Devils for example).

If you want to make a supercombatant, I think making it your prophet is probably a better option than the Shroud for getting bless effects.

Unless it's your god - but I've heard the Shroud doesn't work on gods. (Haven't tested it though.)


Also, the standard theme for Ermor is no longer Ashen Empire. Ashen Empire may well cost points, which will cut into Dom I Ermor's traditional ton of points. And undead are vulnerable to various countermeasures (even relatively tough ones like Tomb Wyrms - which are hard to get).

[Saber Cherry]

Was the shroud changed? It gave 5 prot in Dominions I.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Was the shroud changed? It gave 5 prot in Dominions I.

Oh, I didn't know that.

In any case, 5 is probably lower than your standard armor (except maybe for mages), and certainly lower than other armors you could probably forge.

I don't think the Shroud will be too good. Few gods are going to have a bless effect stronger than Dom I's.

[geo981010]

The Shroud no longer works on Pretenders! Used to in Dom1 - maybe the description should note that?

The shroud would still be great for some supercombatants though, especially for Ice Devils. Their base armor of 15, up to 20 in the cold, so the armor effect is icing. Getting regeneration, Beserk + 3, 50% poison res, and possibly other bonuses too (reinvig seems like a good choice and a Great Mother allows this) and you have a supercombatant that only takes 5 gems of equipment. I hacked a map and made an Ice Devils (I got Nycafor) with just the shroud, and he was really nasty even with the new tweaks to reduce supercombatants.

Ermor, well we'll have to see about. If Ashen Empire costs them enough so they have a slighly similar number of design points available, then they won't be too bad. If not, an Ermor Shrouded Ice Devil (or similar) would still be ridiculous. I forgot about the lack of healing for the undead Knights, though I wonder if undead creation rates were affected because of that (seem to get more with C'tis undead kings, not sure on dominion creation effects at all).I guess there is a lot of unknowns with Ermor right now...

But anyway, I still think that lowering the incremental costs of magic paths will be tricky (and may not be needed). You can't just blindly grab specials and expect them to pay off, but some of them may be powerful enough and will likely be abusable already. Two more weeks until the full Version!

I can't wait to play Pythium with an Earth +4 mage, too

[ November 01, 2003, 19:41: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

[Sammual]

After a lot of playtime with the demo I have had a change of mind. The Bless effects can be very powerfull as they are and changing the levels you get them at might make them too powerfull at the highest levels.

On the other hand has anyone EVER played with magic 10 in ANY skill? There is not enough incentive to do so. If the bless effects did not get verry cool powers at level 9 I would NEVER take higher than level 4 in any magic skill to start. I would like to see a formula for the cost of magic skills that was a bit less steep. The cost for levels 2 - 4 are fine but 5+ is a bit much, and adding the 9th and 10th level is just painfull.

Sammual

[Psitticine]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

quote:

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Originally posted by Psitticine:
The best solution to things like this is usually to allow people their choice in the matter. A good idea might be to have a system where players could set how expensive magical power is to suit their own tastes. The problem there, however, lies in the UI: that choice would need to be made before or during god design, and yet the game and its settings are chosen after the god design is completed.

I have a quick fix for that: instead of capping god designs at 500 points, just have each god record its total point value. Then when you start a game you would set the maximum point value of gods that are allowed in that game.

So if I want to see more powerful magic and blessings on everyone I could play with 600 or 700 point gods.

Of course, this would probably go better if the suggestion to record multiple gods per nation (in the newlords folder) were implemented.

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I like that idea. Possibly one setting for max. points allowed in the game and another for setting the proportion that needs to be for scales vs. Pretender magic? You could set up some very interesting games that way.