Drain Life

[Oversway]

Now the question in my mind is: how badly should summons beat national troops? Currently national troops get pretty spanked.

I agree, that is the main issue here. Then again, I don't think its fair to compare a group of heavy infantry to some summoned troops. Most likely there will be mages on both sides, etc. But then it is really more difficult to balance. Still, I think some of the mods are really doing a good job at keeping national troops a little more viable.

[The_Tauren13]

All I can say is "Zen rules". I think he has done a truly remarkable job with his spell mod. I wish more people would play it.
Just make a quick mod that nerfs hoarding items (and maybe life drain), use Zens spell, scale and pretender mods, play on small, crowded maps with very difficult research, and I think youll find the game quite balanced and quite fun

[Arralen]

So it boils down to the fact that province sizes where greatly cut down in Dom2 vs. the standard Dom1 maps. I can remember getting provinces or 20k pop easily, but in Dom2 you'll have 15k pop with a grassland province (which takes a big -50% ressource hit for being grassland). Most other provs are 4k-8k size.

Less pop means less ressources and less supply. (add to that the change supply generation from castles..)

But units costs where never adjusted to fit this!

I'm running my SP games with +50% ress/richness and +200% supply and with diff research since these things are moddable and have had whole lot of fun, even with only normal AIs ... .

[Graeme Dice]

The total amount of gold in the economy was cut to less than half the amount in Dom1, so a simple change would be to double the amount of gold produced, while leaving resources alone via a mod.

[Zen]

Yes, Zen Rules!

Just an update. I've had a few requests to finish my mods (I don't feel right sending out betas)

I plan on doing so in the next week or so (don't quote me).

I have split the Spells mod into two sections that can easily seperate out what some might feel are unneeded changes. One section will be the actual Spells, the other will be Summons.

Look for that one soon. I also have a slight update on the Pretenders (it seems to have been widely accepted).

The reason I bring this up, is because in the Nation mod, not only do I change alot of units (I'm a little reluctant to release parts of it since Cherry modified some in the same fashion I was and don't want to detract from SC's mod).

There are certain moddable things in the game and others unmoddable. You can't make a great divergence in the gold in Dom2 because you cannot mod (and I have a feeling will not be able to in the future) fortresses. Because of this, you cannot modify the gold of the entire game without dramatically shifting the balance of castle placement for carpet castling. While you can at the same time argue that the castles can be defeated easier because of more troops, it doesn't change the "annoying" factor of dealing with an entire map of castles. I don't think making a mod that can only be played with VP's is a good way.

So in the Nation mod I have modified the supplies to 150% of normal as well as Resources. This creates a real feeling of armies clashing, while not rendering certain scales effects useless (Growth for example, could take Death 3 and still field a fairly decent army with Wineskins).

Just my thoughts. Also, rendering certain spells uncastable (like say, Drain Life) so you are required to have the item, use the slots to use the spell (Like a Standard of the Damned) really changes the dynamic of the game.

[Huzurdaddi]

The_Tauren13 said:
All I can say is "Zen rules". I think he has done a truly remarkable job with his spell mod. I wish more people would play it.
Just make a quick mod that nerfs hoarding items (and maybe life drain), use Zens spell, scale and pretender mods, play on small, crowded maps with very difficult research, and I think youll find the game quite balanced and quite fun

Hey that sounds like the faerun game that Soapy ran. It was quite fun. Sadly I made a couple of booboo's in the mod ( Clams used fire gems and growth was too powerful ) but it worked out pretty well.

[Huzurdaddi]

One additional difference was that battlefield spells ( wrathful, etc ) were made very hard to cast. I'm very happy with that change. Hopefully Zen will make wrathful and it's ilk as difficult to cast in his mods.

[Scott Hebert]

I've always wondered what would happen if every spell in the game changed so that its (total) path cost would equal the level at which it was researched.

[Huzurdaddi]

Scott,

I know you are into rubrics but I don't think that is a good one. A number of spells are powerful at the higher levels only due to their low path requirements.

It would be a fine rubric if you moved the levels of tons of spells though.

[Scott Hebert]

That might be a part of it.

However, the suggestion would certainly 1) make the research levels actually mean something, 2) make racing up the research tree not necessarily a winning proposition, 3) make high-level magic a pick-and-choose proposition, instead of an instant-win proposition.