"New" Pythium and the javelin throwers in general

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

quote:

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Originally posted by ywl:
A side note: the usefulness of javelin has made the Sun Warriors of Mictlin very interesting. They're holy and cheap (17/14). If you could get some good bless effects for them, they would be very usable.

In my experiance these are about the only useful unit you get for expansion with Mictlan. I have generally tried them with the Earth9 to give them enough protection to get good survivability and they work ok. However inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers makes the Sun Warriors not that significant in the long term. Its the Ulm IF Templers problem only worse as Sun Warriors die easier and as you are so dependent on them early its really hard to build up numbers.

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I don't see what you mean by "inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers". Isn't holy troop production determined by your god's dominion strength (adjusted by number of temples) rather than by the actual dominion you currently have in the province? I could have sworn I could produce 5+ holy troops on the first turn when I only have 1 dominion. In any case, I wouldn't think you would have too much trouble boosting your dominion strength in the capital early - you should get good results just from your god and sacrificing your home temple's slave income. It's later on that Mictlan starts to seriously sag in dominion - when other nations are building multiple temples and have a prophet to boot, and Mictlan is still struggling to find a province to hunt slaves in and afford enough priests to have one to hunt, one to sacrifice and usually some more to lead armies. Mictlan's priests really need to be cheaper - they are so dependent on them, far more than Marignon which gets its priests cheap.

[warning feature imbalence rant ahead]

Pythium is quite remarkable compared to other races and the only explanation I can give for its all round strength is that they wanted some nations to be much better than others. I almost wrote a very sarcastic post on the topic when I was in the midst of suffering with Tien Ch'i themes and Mictlan but managed to restrain myself somewhat. I do still feel that, given the strenght of Pythium (and Arco), the answer for races like the Tien Ch'i themes and Mictlan is simply to make them better and there is alot of scope for this. Its also a powerful argument for improving the accuracy of Abysian mages as Abysia is unlikely to rival Pythium and Arco in terms of strength so why should we have to put up with such a painful, mocking, feature playing Abysia? If some races get it all (or very close) then why can't the "cripple" features in the game get a serious boost? Was it a perverse form of humour to give the race with fire magic and fire resistent troops such a low precision that this seemingly excellent combination proves irritating in practice?

I have to admit, I don't understand either. The balance problems are well known and not seriously disputed by anyone, and Dom I/II are often played multiplayer where any balance problem has a serious effect on gameplay.

Another one is the low level blood summons that require a powerful blood mage to summon one ok devil a turn. For all the difference low level blood summons make to the game they may as well have left them out. Its an odd combination the extreme caution shown with some features to make sure they arn't to powerful and the richs that the uber races get. Caelum in Dom1 was truly ridiculous. Useability imbalences is the feature that has always annoyed me most about Dominion as it has huge impact on cutting down the avaiable play options and combinations. Fortunatly its not so bad in Dom2 - chiefly because the reduction in the power fo air magicmeans you don't have to have access to air for thunder ward to be a serious contender.

Please Illwinter try to make as many as possible options fun and useful.

Aaah well not to worry. Incompetent Abysian mages and useless low level blood summons have been with us since Dom1 and its unlikely that this will change.

A lot of low level summons suffer from this problem - they are too much *mage time* for the effect, even if the gem/slave cost is low. Vine men almost have this problem, but some nations have cheap weak nature mages (shaman, bard, dryad) and can get around it. But there are very very few cheap weak blood mages - and no cheap Blood 2 mages. (Pandemoniac 320, Demonbred 280, Skratti 250 are typical of Blood 2 mages IIRC)

The Blood 2 summons, especially, need to give more demons, even if they also cost more slaves. I wouldn't mind seeing all low level blood summons double or triple in both cost and number of demons summoned (or, since they really need a boost, triple the number summoned for double the cost).

Or maybe add items that work like the ivy crown but for all non-commander demon summons (you get +1 or +2 demons of the same type whenever you cast a summon, this would have a bigger effect on 1 demon for 3 slave spells than on Horde from Hell or Infernal Forces) - ivy crown is another way vinemen avoid the "too much mage time" problem. Who summons vinemen without one? How about these:

Infernal Vessel
Level 2 blood, 2 construction misc item
This bowl is specially designed to attract the attention of infernal beings. When the bearer fills the vessel with sacrificial blood to summon demons he will attract more demons than usual (+1 demon summoned per attempt).

Sceptre of Hell
Level 2 blood, 2 fire, 6 construction one-handed weapon
This sceptre grants the wielder greater authority over the hosts of Hell. The wielder will be able to command more demons than usual (+25 demonic leadership), and when he summons demons from the netherworld, more demons will answer his call (+2 demons summoned per attempt). The sceptre allows the wielder to strike his foes with the fires of Hell.
Spell: Hellfire
Attack 1, Damage 10 (Armor piercing, strength not added), Defense 3, Length 2, magic

Of course they wouldn't affect commander summons.

Mictlan in particular could really benefit from some demon troops beefing up its army, but the present summons are very inefficient given the high cost of Mictlan's blood mages. But if you give them an Infernal Vessel to summon those spine devils or fiends of darkness with, they could become dangerous.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I have to admit, I don't understand either. The balance problems are well known and not seriously disputed by anyone, and Dom I/II are often played multiplayer where any balance problem has a serious effect on gameplay.

I don't think it's so clear cut. Nobody seems to dispute that Pythium and Acroscephale are among the best nations, but I for one don't think they're so much better than the middle of the pack factions. The bottom tier factions on the other hand really are pretty bad.

IMHO multiplayer games are much less susceptible to inbalance, as players tend to adjust their diplomacy to gang up on perceived leaders. For example, I've done just fine against competent players using Pangaea in Dom 1, even despite a weak starting location.

[Endoperez]

About the more demons -items... I think that new spells should be added for lower-level demons, always a level higher than the main ritual, which give one/two more demons per casting and cost more. I'm not sure but they might need more magic requirements too. An example for this:

Get Some Devils
fire-2, blood-3
Blood 4
Summons 2 devils.

Another way would be higher level mages summoning more devils. That is, the rituals we have now would summon 1+ devil(s), and with a mage with blood-4 you would get three devils. We would already ahve the items needed...
Because of the quite abusing pretenders one could make (research level 3 to get the effect of level 9 spell!) maybe these should be national summons. The Devil-variety for Abysia, Frost Fiend -one for Jotunheim, Storm Demons for Vanheim (even if the Jarls still start with blood-1). And maybe Dark vines- summoning for Pangaea? I'm not usre about this, though... The nations would have to START with those spells to get these spells.

[Pocus]

Chris Byler wrote:
The Blood 2 summons, especially, need to give more demons, even if they also cost more slaves. I wouldn't mind seeing all low level blood summons double or triple in both cost and number of demons summoned (or, since they really need a boost, triple the number summoned for double the cost).

in dom2 shows a reverse tendency. The bind serpent fiend now cost only 5 slaves, but summon only one demon. As the spell was mostly of interest in dom1 because it allowed you to get 3 units per cast, one can say that in dom2 it has been somehow crippled.

If serpent fiend are deemed more powerful now (death poison), then the cost should have been raised from 8 to 12 eg, but the 3 units per cast should have remained, as this was a distinct feature of this spell compared to say fiend of darkness.

another one bite the dust...

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

quote:

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Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers makes the Sun Warriors not that significant in the long term. Its the Ulm IF Templers problem only worse as Sun Warriors die easier and as you are so dependent on them early its really hard to build up numbers.

I don't see what you mean by "inability to get a high enough dominion to produce serious numbers". Isn't holy troop production determined by your god's dominion strength (adjusted by number of temples)

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Thats right. The problem is if you are building say 5-7 sun warriors a turn and losing 1-3 the build up is prettty slow. As conflict grows you will lose more but your ability to build them will only ever rise a few beyond its starting level. Relatively easy to kill sacred troops that you can only build at your capitol are difficult to build up large numbers of.

maybe add items that work like the ivy crown but for all non-commander demon summons
. . . How about these:

Infernal Vessel
Level 2 blood, 2 construction misc item
This bowl is specially designed to attract the attention of infernal beings. When the bearer fills the vessel with sacrificial blood to summon demons he will attract more demons than usual (+1 demon summoned per attempt).

Sceptre of Hell
Level 2 blood, 2 fire, 6 construction one-handed weapon
This sceptre grants the wielder greater authority over the hosts of Hell. The wielder will be able to command more demons than usual (+25 demonic leadership), and when he summons demons from the netherworld, more demons will answer his call (+2 demons summoned per attempt). The sceptre allows the wielder to strike his foes with the fires of Hell.
Spell: Hellfire
Attack 1, Damage 10 (Armor piercing, strength not added), Defense 3, Length 2, magic

Of course they wouldn't affect commander summons.

I like your idea alot Chris. Adding in items that improve spells is very in keeping with Illwinters approach and adds to the flavour. Requiring you to get construction for items makes it harder to abuse multiple devil summoning by delaying it while simply increasing the amount of devils could be too powerful if you start with the spell.

cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Dom I/II are often played multiplayer where any balance problem has a serious effect on gameplay.

IMHO multiplayer games are much less susceptible to inbalance, as players tend to adjust their diplomacy to gang up on perceived leaders.

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I think it depends very much on game environment. In an alliances allowed game of mixed experiance/skill you can win with pretty much any race played well as the enormous imbalences in game setup and diplomacy provide game tipping opportunities. No diplomacy games with everyone of a similar fairly high level of experiance/skill on the other hand is much less forgiving of weakness.

In full diplomacy games I find people are as keen to be friends with the races doing well as they are at trying to bring them down. Many players are quite happy to ally in such a way that they have little chance for victory but could well come 2nd or 3rd on the winning team. If on the other hand they take on the monster they could be crushed merclessly. Diplomacy is what decides it and diplomacising from a position of power is very effective if done well.

Cheers

Keir

[olaf73]

I have only played three nations, so keep that in mind.

Why do people think Pythium is overpowered? The javelins look good on paper, but mine miss a ton or do no damage. Plus they usually only get 2 throws off, if that, before someone locks them up in melee. And, as straight melee troops they seem crappy compared to Ulm and Jotunheim, the other nations I have played with.

Along the same lines, what is the general concensus for which nations are top of the heap, middle of the pack, and bottom of the barrel in terms of power?

Thanks
olaf