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

[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.

[Aetius]

(long)

I was not aware of the revisions to the Dominions 1 blessing effect until I read this thread, in particular Nerfix's breakdown of the modifiers. Playing the demo I have had only one pretender that was successful with the blessing effects, this pretender was a red dragon leading Ulm with the Iron Faith Theme. I must admit that the black templars are devastating with flaming weapons. However, late game it remains to be seen how effective a potent blessing pretender will be.

As pointed out in Chris Byler's post the cost of creating the potent blessing pretender are very high. For my Ulmite pretender I had to take significant negatives in the drain (-2) and misfortune scales (-3),if I recall correctly. The misfortune was partly balanced out by the strong order scale (+3). However, I was shall we say magically challenged and R'leyh in particular caused my nation fits.

I have noticed that the Dominion increasing effect of purchasing temples increases the number of holy troops that you can have. This observation made me wonder if it would be appropriate to have the pretender's blessing effect increase if additional magical empowerment is performed. I think the gem cost alone would balance things. Lastly, I noticed that rival AI pretenders frequently had one magical area in the 9+ range to obtain the greater blessing benenfits.

[HJ]

Originally posted by Aetius:
This observation made me wonder if it would be appropriate to have the pretender's blessing effect increase if additional magical empowerment is performed. I think the gem cost alone would balance things.

I think that it would equalize things too much, as everybody would in the end get the same bonuses, and therefore diminish the variability inherent in the present system. Furthermore, it would make the sacrifices that you have to make while creating a pretender unneccessary, as you can always make up for it later. This way it's deterministic, and either you sacrifice the points to get a good bless or you don't, but there's no going back - a tradeoff that you have to live with. Also, it would put too much focus on empowering your pretender, as opposed to doing other things with the gems.

[ November 06, 2003, 23:49: Message edited by: HJ ]