Niefelheim, bless and the outrageous

LordArioch · #1 November 2nd, 2003, 09:37 PM

Seems that nature blessing is pretty much the best. Adding to so many stats and no rout is worth a defense penalty, and regen at 9 means high prot units like black templar just get angry when injured and immediately regenerate.
Of course when somebody hurts your arch theurg for 1 damage and he goes beserk you might regret the nature.

geo981010 · #2 November 2nd, 2003, 09:48 PM

The Life after death is not very good for normal troops - you just get soulless which aren't very useful.

But that is a big perk on mages - Pythium Arch Theurgs cost 380 to make, and one arrow and they die usually. But this way, they turn into soulless with all their magic intact(!). So you have to kill them twice to really lose them.

I like them better as soulless - no longer have to pay income on them

I imagine a goal will be to get consistent ways to have the blessed mages converted to soulless to save on income - maybe the life leeching spells that target troops around you?

Pocus · #3 November 2nd, 2003, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geo981010:
The Life after death is not very good for normal troops - you just get soulless which aren't very useful.

But that is a big perk on mages - Pythium Arch Theurgs cost 380 to make, and one arrow and they die usually. But this way, they turn into soulless with all their magic intact(!). So you have to kill them twice to really lose them.

I like them better as soulless - no longer have to pay income on them I imagine a goal will be to get consistent ways to have the blessed mages converted to soulless to save on income - maybe the life leeching spells that target troops around you?

Thats evil, but why taking death 9 if you are not evil.

HJ · #4 November 2nd, 2003, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nerfix:

A theoretical one:
Marignon-9 Blood-Build Flagellants. Bless them. Let the enemy kill them. Watch enemies to get cursed.

So that's what death curse is? The unit that kills the blessed unit gets cursed?

I took nature 9 and air 4 for Niefelheim. I thought that the giants could use an arrow shield due to their size.

Keir Maxwell · #5 November 2nd, 2003, 11:10 PM

I suspect I have understated my case somewhat as some people seem to have missed the point.

re retarded scales.

Who cares? Death is not really a big deal when all you run are super combatents. Sloth is ok as you don't need that many resources to go crazy.

There's actually alot of room to play with scales as I tried chaos 3 luck 3 and got a truly absurd start with a free 1000gp's on the second turn and lots of other useful freebies - although I didn't like getting free troops to upkeep until they have starved! As for the magic I doubt I would research anything other than construction for along time and there's no hurry with that - you start with powerful magic through the bless and everything you fight with can be blessed.

Its not like there are any spells you could research early to compare to the bless or anything you could buy with gold for that matter - thats is why these style of races will work. You start with the power from turn 1 or 2 and thus the speed of your start makes up for the weakness of your scales irrelevent.

If you have 20 provinces by turn 10 do you really think bad scales matter? Building a conquering army each turn after turn 5 or 6 is insanely fast. I've won in multi-player using death scale 3 before with a significantly slower race so I'm not just blowing smoke on this one.

re Death 9 Earth 9 to expensive?

Who cares about weakening dominion scales if you get pretty much everything you need at the beginning.

I should have made it a bit clearer in the first post - I suspect this race is so powerful as to be broken for mutli-player. So the question of wether paying the points for the effects is worth it just doesn't occur to me - I wouldn't seriously consider doing without the +4 protection for this race.

The only thing this race would really like it doesn't have is higher dominion.

Re Jotun Herse as a super combatent.

I would not say most independants can be taken by one Jasper - indie strength 5. You actually have to be very careful and I'm doubting the speculation I have read on early super combatents and the lack of counters to them. Anything with high damage (Lizard warriors, knights, Barbarians) will, and did in test, kill any of the early game super combatents in this race if the numbers are bad enough - I tried pushing the limits and even the Earth Mother bit the dust. However vs weak indies the Herse is pretty awesome and supporting the Niefel giants it makes all the difference as do the Jarls you use for blessings. The biggest problem with this race is actually getting enough blessers early so I turn my first Herse into a prophet.

re other possibilities.

I think there are a heap (everything from sacred Serpent Cataphracts to Heart Companions could go crazy) of other good potential races with high magic pretenders utilising bless. I really rate the water, earth, and nature bless abilites and I'm not writing the others off yet (except perhaps astral and air). One of the most important features is finding a pretender to get what you want cheap - Earth Mother is obviously useful but any pretender starting at lvl 3 can get to 9 for around 160pts which is no big deal.

Van with +4 defence and 50% quickness - Valkrie with +4 defense and 50% quickness! I'm keen to get my copy of the full game.

Through your preconceptions out the window - Dom II is not Dom I.

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

Keir Maxwell · #6 November 2nd, 2003, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geo981010:
The Life after death is not very good for normal troops - you just get soulless which aren't very useful.

But that is a big perk on mages - Pythium Arch Theurgs cost 380 to make, and one arrow and they die usually. But this way, they turn into soulless with all their magic intact(!). So you have to kill them twice to really lose them.

I like them better as soulless - no longer have to pay income on them I imagine a goal will be to get consistent ways to have the blessed mages converted to soulless to save on income - maybe the life leeching spells that target troops around you?

Thanks Geo thats really fabulous news!!

At this point I'm struggling to say wether the new themes for races or the bless effects are the most interesting addition to design possibilities. To be honest I was critical of the lack of design possibilities with powerful/tight synergy in Dom I but Dom II, for me, is potentially even better than Stars! for race design possibilites.

Thanks for that Geo,

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

Jasper · #7 November 3rd, 2003, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by geo981010:
Paraphrasing: life after death can yield mages with no maintenance cost

This seems potentially abusive to me. Typically a very large proportion of one's upkeep is for mages, and I bet it's fairly easy to figure out ways to arrange for one's mages to die once -- especially with a cooperative ally.