Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Soapyfrog]

What I mean by devalued is that you wont care so much if you lost that doom horror you summoned because you are summoning two more PER TURN.

Thats devalued. When high end is no longer high end!

If you want "high end" to really MEAN something throughout the game, then you have to make sure that resources are constrained so that the upper limit of you game is always tough to reach.

I think dom2 has a plethora of strategies that can be pursued that can kleep the game interesting for very very long games as long as you disallow the investment strategies that create wealth out thin air. In the real world investing works of course (not at 14% mind you, generally speaking!!) but resources are always being consumed. If wealth is created out of thin air you have inflation.

So here would be my suggestions to make these investment strategies a little more interesting in dom2:

Added Restrictions:
Only mages can equip clams/fetishes/blood stones (I see cohen agrees with me on this one!)
Only blood mages can equip soul contracts
Random horror attacks on soul contract bearers should actually work

Gem producing items:
Clams allow the bearer to convert (via an action) 1 water gem into 2 astral gems.
Fetishes allow the bearer to convert (via an action) 1 nature gem to 2 fire gems.
Blood Stones allow the bearer to convert (via an action) any 1 gem of any type to an earth gem.

The action could be like "summon allies" you can just switch it on and forget about it, so no crazy micro-management neccessary.

Vampire Lords and Fallen Angels:
Ideally imho only uniques should be able to summon allies (outside of combat summons). There are tons of mass summoning spells if you want to summon batches of stuff, no need to have unit "factories". For example, vampire lors can cast blood rite instead of having the cummon allies ability...

[Ygorl]

Or you could play in a game with difficult research; low site frequency might help slow down clamhoarding and its end results as well.

[Cohen]

Random attack on Soul Contract bearers works!
I can assure, at least in 2.12 ... where I didn't known that Soul Contracts attracted horrors and assigned them to Warlocks and such ...
I'd agree in fact that only Blood Mages could get the Soul Contract.

Warlock:"Hey Scout, come there, I've sold your soul to Hell Lord"
Scout: "A well, what I've gained? Eternal Life? Neverending youth? All the women I want? To become the richest of the world?"
Warlock:"Oh yes everything of this ... put a sign on those contract"
Scout: "Wow" ... and signs
Here the first Devil appears but the Scout can't issue him any order and the Devil start rampaging for all the countryside in a frenzy killakilla.
Scout: "Mmmm there should be something wrong in that ... unless that red stuff is my first female"



About Fallen Angels, nothing to say to they Summon Allied Imps ... since Imps are good only as sieging and defending force (don't eat, and fly). Even Fallen Angel itself is far weaker than an ID for his Blood Slave cost (I know he's more magic, but why it is far less used? Probably because it's too weak even if it is not unique).

About Vamps, I'd agree to remove them the Summon Allies skill. They can easily cast the vampire summoning spell.
Otherwise may I suggest a rule that a Vampire in a province feeds himself with X population at turn (1 to 10), I mean Vampire, Lords, Count, Queen or whatever.
If the Vampire in question doesn't find any suitable pop victim, he'll dissanguate 1 troop non lifeless non undead non magical of your army (note: Commanders won't get touched by Vampires). If there're no living soldiers the Vampires that aren't fed should become an indipendant force proclaming a vampire a vampire commander (perhaps upgrading to count) and revolting against the army they're in, or they simply migrates in the next friendly owned province to seek new feeding.
This could prevent you to keep vampires in your land, going to attack forcefully unless you want to see your lands get depopulated as an Ermorian province. And usually to go in enemy land you'll need a strong dominion at least ... well not so difficult to reach with Aby or Mic that can sacrifice however, but however they eat pop of provinces that are going to become yours.
If Vamps goes hiding and eat in enemy provinces, a message like the unrest caused by spies should appear.
Solar Brillance spell should be mostly effective too against Vamps, killing them asap it is cast in battle.
The Second Sun global could burn them out too. (beware all ppl will be interested in dispelling it or attaking you because their provinces will get warmer)

If you have to issue an order to produce gems, even for a better alchemize, you probably have too many mages spending time creating gems, making this strategy totally wothless considering you strip resources to your research and combat firepower.

[Soapyfrog]

Heh yeah there should be SOME kind of cost for spreading rampant vampirism through your lands... heheh I was just thinking pop death and unrest!

As for soul contract horrors in 2.12 its not working. When I get a "lesser horror attacks" message, I get the "bad vcr" crashbug when I try to watch the battle and the scout with the contract is still alive when I check. Maybe this is only hapening with hidden units?

[PvK]

Yes, I like that idea (Vampire's Summon Allies order could require and consume population, just like the Unholy-1 raising of Ghouls. Seems appropritate, thematic and limiting).

PvK

[Kel]

Soapyfrog said:If wealth is created out of thin air you have inflation.

I don't know about it being created out of thin air but yes, there is inflation. That's a *good* thing, though. Every game has a natural life cycle and evolves through stages, otherwise research would not be a meaningful element.

There seems to have been a recent push of people who want the game to *not* evolve by discouraging the use of SC's and other mid/late game tactics, instead favoring the national troops that are more effective in the early game.

I like the way it is now. Each instance of a game evolves into different stages and you have to employ different tactics at different stages. You can talk about how powerful soul contracts are but what if someone attacks you on turn 10 by summoning troops while you are still making brazen skulls to work towards contracts ? Soul contracts are effective during certain phases of the game, in certain situations, just as pure summoning and national troops are at other parts of the game.

If you want the option to have research caps or turn limits in your game or in the program, that's fine by me, but I don't want my games turning into limited Versions of what they are now.

Summary:
Minor balance tweaking (ala the VQ changes) = yes
Major strategic element rebalancing = no

- Kel

[Cohen]

I'd agree with Boron ... he's a good analyzer.

Abysya is very rushable. And is totally defenceless except a good pretender. Aby infantry costs a lot of gold and resources and you can't pour out many of them.
You probably start recruiting Warlock type mages that are good at research but are useless in combat at early stage (and mostly in late unless you use blood magic ... please make sure in the next patch slaves don't take fire by heat aura).
I add the consideration that Aby infantry, for how much it could be strong, has a very bad morale for his cost, and thus is too weak at capturing indeps or defending. Unless you want to afford a 360 gold mage that is a pretty useless battery (due to poor aim) and that could cast fanaticism, depriving you of many gold AND a mage that can research (this is very bad for Abysya due to bloodhunters and researchers capitol only).

I've already made my proposals in previous Posts.

EDIT: About Vampires the cost isn't for Summoning Allies, but for the presence itself of vampires, so you're losing X pop for every single vampire you've, and every turn.