Did you noticed.......

[Pocus]

thats my part of the comments, which go either in the direction of Alex arguments, or in the opposite:

- combat pretenders are more powerful in doms II that they were in doms I, because they didnt change, but as gold income is reduced by a factor of 2 (a bit more actually, see below), they gain advantage relatively. A doms II nations with a combat pretender will develop way faster than a nation without (Alex got 36 provinces by turn 20 with a dragon, I got 18, just the half, with a rainbow mage, same settings. Ok it can just mean I'm really bad in this game ).

- The highest gold income in doms II is 250 gp in your capital. You cant really count on doubling that by patrolling, as several mechanisms concur into making the idea a really bad one (more unrest, and big decrease in pop). Compared to doms I, where you could patrol easily your capital, and reach nearly 600 gp a turn.

- non blood nations gained some big summons, but as only blood nations can really hope to get and hold demons princes, the situation has not so clearly changed in favor of one of the two clans. Blood harvest is more difficult, but from my experience, when you succeed, you get more slaves, so the situation is not that clear.

- nether darts are not * that * overpowered. To be correct, nether darts are not overpowered when you have an anti magic ward, as the damage need a MR check. Lamias with AM ward dont need to fear the darts, eg.
Also the larger battlefield is rather detrimental to accuracy (fireball and flare have lost much of their interest by the way).

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by johan osterman:

quote:

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Originally posted by apoger:
>The sphinx in all it's cheesy glory is confined to its home castle. Immobile units cannot teleport.

Really? Tell that to my Last few dozen Sphinx's.
Might want to look into that...

Heh, ok.

Edit: I checked, you are right. I had the strongest recollection of it being changed.

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Uh, so they can still teleports?
Is this getting changed in some patch or not?

[Pocus]

Originally posted by ywl:
I don't think Castle admin add to tax income, only resource? Am I right?

admin add to tax. full admin in doms I, half admin in doms II.

If I'm right, it's 21% + 18% (39%?) - (growth and productivity add 3% each level?) versus 30 + 30% (60%). Assuming your base income is 3000 gold by turn 30, it would be 4800 vs 4170. Big enough but I don't see it very significant - could be my play style.

the formula has not changed, and is :

admin * scale bonus * tax rate

in doms I without patrolling it gives :
1.5 * 1.3 * 1.3 = 2.535
380 gold for 30000 pop capital
with patrolling (order dont increase max gold output):
1.5 * 1.3 * 2.0 = 3.9
585 gold for 30000 pop capital

in doms II, without patrolling (hey sure!) :
1.25 * 1.33 = 1.6625
249 gold for 30000 pop capital

and thats it : 249 gold versus 580. In these 580, you need to recoup the draft cost of patrollers, and pay there upkeep though. Significant, but 50 archers cost only 25 gold in upkeep, and 400 gold to buy.

So the ratio is that you have half the gold of doms I in doms II (for the capital).

[apoger]

>I don't think Castle admin add to tax income, only resource? Am I right?

No.

Admin in Dom I added in as a direct bonus. In Dom II it adds 50% of the bonus.


> a Sphinx doesn't kill fast enough with Astral

Almost all my Sphinx's use fire and/or water in order to get fire shield and/or breath of winter. You can have both up at the same time BTW. It kills troops plenty fast, and the ability to teleport into and deal with the biggest enemy threat before it can move, is huge.


>I see thunder ward gone.
>It's there. Now you need only Air 2. You mean it only starts at 50%? And thus detrimental to game balance? May be. But I'll have to wait and see.

Not only partial defense, but it only affects a handful of troops. It's not good enough to defend an army from wrathful skies.


>>Seithkona nether darts
>It's more than a trick. It's too potent.
>You have similar killer spells in other paths: "Flame Eruption", "Astral Fire".

It's more than "nether darts".
It's seithkona-nether darts.

The siethkona are incredibly cheap and are very available. The combo is simple and cost effective. That's what makes it better than other spells.

Astral fire isn't something that any mass produced mages can cast.

Flame eruption requires very close range. In Dom II this is much harder to get since armies start farther away from each other.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Nerfix:
Uh, so they can still teleports?
Is this getting changed in some patch or not?

It most likely will. We were all surprised to find that it hadn't been implemented.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by apoger:
So I'm a troll just becuase I have some negative opinions? Get real.

Welcome to our club, partner.

In Dom I order was an effective 10% due to the ability to rasie taxes without penalty. With prod and growth the combined bonus was 60%. With a fortified city it was 110% (more really due to bonuses stacking).

In Dom II the combined bonus is 33%. With fortified city 57%.

That's a pretty big difference, and that's before any patrol tricks.

The 7% for order in D2 is more important than the 10% in D1. In D1 any province that could pay for its patrols in 3-4 turns got them asap and taxes were upped to 200%, even if that meant decreasing the pop there. As a result you didn't get these 10% extra gold from order from these provinces, and combined they often contributed for 75+% to your total income. True, with high order you needed less patrollers, say an extra initial 160 gold investment for order 0 (compared to order +3) and 11 gold more upkeep in every subsequent turn - but these extra costs didn't come close to these "lost" 30% from order +3.

I must say I like the D2 economics better. In D1 everyone - maybe even you - thought this patrol trick was bothersome and silly. Everyone felt compelled to pick growth +3 and order +3 for the extra gold, almost disregarding the increased productivity and growth - dumb. Everyone felt compelled to pick a 35+ admin castle for the same reason - dumb. Now that there are less no-brainers, we have more choices, and that's good. The only problem is the costs of units and leaders should have been scaled down to fit the new economics.

BTW, am I the only one to patrol my capital and raise taxes to 200% when I have idle troops there? I've never been so rich in D2 than when I tried turmoil +3/luck +3 and started to slaughter my commoners with all the free militia I got.

I am about to post a long essay on blood magic, I hope you give it a read.

I'm eagerly waiting for it.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:

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Originally posted by apoger:
So I'm a troll just becuase I have some negative opinions? Get real.

Welcome to our club, partner.

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Hey!! I said the comment is trollish!! Not that AP is a troll - there is some subtle difference!! Anyway - if AP found that comment offending, I apologize .

BTW, am I the only one to patrol my capital and raise taxes to 200% when I have idle troops there? I've never been so rich in D2 than when I tried turmoil +3/luck +3 and started to slaughter my commoners with all the free militia I got.

I do have the suspicion that with turnmoil+3 / luck+3, you'll get more income from random events than the shortcomings from the tax penalty. If you could compensate the 20-40% shortfall with patrol, it might be an interesting strategy. Say, if you use C'its with the Desert Tomb theme, you might be able to compensate with the undeads later in the game - yes, I better stop before I stop ranting incoherently.