.. the game of mutual self-destruction ..

[Keir Maxwell]

Sadly the wars around the accension of the gods are not a positive thing for the ordinary folk of the world.

Two things I would like to see looked at on this:

Default growth scale of +1 - or maybe +1/2 - for both independents and player/ai races. This would mean that a death 1 race would still enevitably fail as they cannot grow while it can certainly lose population while a baseline race or inde would slowly grow. Growth should be slow and collapse into chaos is always a possibility but surely the norm, as Arralen says, should be slow growth not no growth.

I think luck needs reworking - more like the Dom 1 way where it affected likelyhood of events making luck 0 the safest option. This would increase the value of the luck scale (at least the not playing misfortune part) somewhat from its present degraded value.

At present I'm testing turmoil/luck races and they do seem to get more bad events than order/misfortune races though the occasional beauty (chainmail of displacement for PoD) makes up for alot and I have seen alot of hero's. The whole order/misfortune thing has a large impact on race designs as whatever fits this approach is easiest to make work - I don't get a meaningful amount of random events at order +3 so the misfortune 3 (or sometimes 2) only really effects national hero's.

I think the Barbarian Kings recruitment through pillaging/conquest/turmoil idea helps because it gives the race a better return from playing the, generally weak, turmoil approach. I also like being able to play the game in different ways and a barbarian horde that grows as it conquers would add to the variety of the game - as long as its balenced.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

On this general theme I think what we are seeing is people putting alot more points into their pretenders and alot less into their dominion. I often have no points left (or negative) when it comes to my dominon scales - no wonder its bad for the people. All these self-centered gods worrying about their struggle for accension. Still wouldn't want to be on the losing side.

cheers

Keir

[Wendigo]

You mean Imprint Souls killed 95% pop? if it works like you said it must be bugged, I have had no time to check most of the new spells but this seems much more powerful than Black Death (which is higher research & much more fitting for population wasting).

I believe the devs said that AIs were more unlikely to pick negative scales the higher their lv, I do not consider this much of an issue in SP anyway.

That said, I like the idea of the world suffering after a global war, it would make no sense for it to end up richer & happier after such devastation, war is a grim affair.

It is also my experience that in Dom I MP players do not engage in province devastation until the very end game: you want the lands of your current opponent as untouched as possible to use vs the next one, only when it's down to the Last 2 nations/sides will the population be targeted.

Do not dismish the long term potential of a growth scale, a 25% pop increase in a minor province might not seem much, but 10,000 more citizens in your capitol is nice.

[ November 22, 2003, 10:06: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

[Teraswaerto]

I'm sure it wasn't imprint souls, but a nasty random event:

"Some ancient power has been disturbed, turning everyone in the province into mindless plant beings!"

There was one pretty much like that in Dom I, the one with the Ancient Presence (or something like that).

[PDF]

Uh, yes, Dom is not an Empire-building game, it's about warfare, and a nasty one at that !
And warfare KILLS people actually ... How many deads in WW2 ? How many survivors at the end of the Elric Saga ?
I don't see this as a problem, it's the setting, that's all. Unbalanced random events are a totally different issue, maybe as some already suggested the "baddest" ones should not occur early in the game.

[Whismerhill]

hum yeah it's a war

but it's a war of gods
and god of love is one theme I would like to play someday ...

besides this,
it's also a game balance,
if growth scale isn't significant
then it's better to focus on death/pillaging ...
and things like that

also some gods at least should think of being loved by people,
as we always say all exist in the world ....

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Arralen:
[*]The AI seems fond of death scale, though it doesn't really understand how to use these strategies .. . It's tedious seeing Jotumheim and Vanheim both using death 1 in the same game, killing themselves off as they could't afford their expensive commanders after some time.

I agree with this... the AI gets plenty of design points. They should always choose growth 0 or greater scales unless they specifically rely on reanimating corpses (e.g. Ermor, Ctis) or are immune/resistant to death scale supply effects (e.g. Ermor, Abysia, Ulm (for using heavy troops)). Not only do death scales weaken the AI in the late game, they also make AI armies starve and die from diseases.

I mean, I agree with a lot of what you said, but the AI scale choices specifically can be addressed easily and do not fundamentally alter the nature of Dominions.

-Cherry