Kristoffer's encouragement thread

Meglobob · #1 March 7th, 2007, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Beorne said:

Quote:

Meglobob said:
Can I second this.
So many people complain about 'balance' and this usually results in a unit, spell etc... being nerfed, made vastly inferior than it was. This happens time and time again until eventually the game does become 'balanced', in such a way that noone plays it anymore, cause its boring. I have seen so many good games spoiled this way.

I can't understand. All the nations are unabalanced, it is not a balanced game (and we love it for this too) but there are very very unbalanced nations, that would be in the "normal unbalance range" with very small tweaks ... and someone (all single player, I think) oppose to this. I can't understand the reason, seriously.

I agree that if you zoom in on 1 nation vs another nation you will find inbalance between them. However, take a step back and look at all the nations in a particular age, you find its very, very cleverly balanced overall.

My MP experience has shown this to be true. For exmaple in MA, Bander Log can destory MA Ulm very, very easily, but MA Agartha can destroy Bander Log easily. Another example EA Helheim can destroy EA Marverni easily but struggles badly against EA Atlantis who in turn struggles against EA Oceania. If you take the nations overall there is a balance.

This was discussed on another thread and in Dom3 you have 'face hugging' (think Alien the movie, attacks the nearest thing straight away), nations such as EA Helheim, MA Ermor, every era Mictlan vs the non-face hugging nations such as EA T'ien Ch'i, MA Arco etc...

Other factors also have a big effect, a face hugger will do well on a small map, a non-face hugger will do well on a large map. Also low gem sites will favour a face hugger (who does not rely on magic as much), well high gem sites favours a non-face hugger. Same with easy to hard research.

Boron · #2 March 7th, 2007, 09:56 AM

I also vote to not care for balance when adding new nations. If they are really imbalanced mods/houserules can solve this issue for mp. But for sp somewhat imbalanced nations are a good thing imho

.

Though i have been rather quiet lately i have played a lot of sp recently

. With every new patch i like Dom3 more, especially thanks to the much improved modding and new nation(s). I am looking forward to the new nations also, especially to the new machaka and pythium nations

.

Cor · #3 March 7th, 2007, 06:26 PM

Many kudos on Dominions 2 and 3. I am playing a multiplayer right now that is so dramatic that I find myself holding my breath while taking a turn. I have to remind myself to breath. Dom 2+3 are most likely the best games I have ever played, possibly just behind Fallout 1+2.

Anyway my vote is give some good national spells to Marverni, they are very weak right now IMHO. I really like them thematically however.

Sombre · #4 March 8th, 2007, 12:21 AM

There's a mod adding new spells to Marverni in the mod forum. Just so you know.

NTJedi · #5 March 10th, 2007, 01:21 PM

The movie 300 has been released in the USA this weekend... not sure how long before it arrives in your country, but watching this movie might also spring new ideas for the upcoming patches.

Sombre · #6 March 10th, 2007, 03:07 PM

I was thinking of doing a blood-favouring war-hungry EA arco replacement nation myself. Not inspired by 300, but similar themes I suppose.

Gandalf Parker · #7 March 10th, 2007, 03:24 PM

If you do then you have two choices (probably more if I thought about it).

(1) a balanced nation suitable for playing against other unmodded nations in the game

(2) a wildly unbalanced nation meant as a more powerful AI opponent

Both have their difficulties. With (1) its hard to do good balance. With (2) its hard to get it to make best use of the AI code.