Mods?

[Meglobob]

In other games I have used mods alot, for example GC2, however I have found Dom3 to have such depth and complexity in its vanilla form that I do not need to look at mods.

I have been playing Dom3 since Oct 06, thats nearly 6 months, also played in over a dozen MP's and some nations are still a complete mystery to me. For example, I have never played C'tis yet or Marignon or R'ylieh or even faced those nations in combat MP.

Also I keep discovering better and better strategies to try out with spells and magic items, vanilla game on its own appears to have endless possible combo's. There are still plenty high level spells I have still to cast.

So I may get around to trying peoples mods but it may be some time yet.

Several of my MP's use worthy heros mod which is good, when you get a hero, he/she/it should be special.

[calmon]

Mods beside Heroes or CB Mod (or a few others) are only useable for singleplayer.

In multiplayer its really difficult to build in nation mods. Maybe you can start an only-mod-nation game but only allow one player to get a specific mod nation doesn't seem to work. You still have the ballance problem here.

And because i hate playing Dom3 SP games i only test some nation mods for 2-3 turns and so mainly don't use mods (besides the MP mods) really much

[Meglobob]

If you want your mod to be used alot, it may be a very good idea to design a mod that can be used in MP and by all nations, just like the worthy heros mod. I personally am not a fan of the cb mod and always avoid joining any MP's that use it. I think vanilla Dom3 is balanced and bandar is completely correct one mans balance is another mans nerf and if there one thing I HATE its game nerfing, destroyed lots of good games that.

[SlipperyJim]

Meglobob said:
In other games I have used mods alot, for example GC2, however I have found Dom3 to have such depth and complexity in its vanilla form that I do not need to look at mods.

Yeah, that's my story too. Even though I only play single-player, it still takes me a long time to finish a game. And there's so much depth in the unmodded Dom3 that I haven't really felt a need to dive into the mods.

Your work-in-progress Ulm Reborn mod is the only mod that has my interest. Partly, that's because I really like Ulm. (I'm a simple man with simple tastes, I guess.) I also like the Iron Faith theme, and I'm delighted to see it reborn in Dom3.

Gratuitous link to Sombre's "Ulm Reborn" mod:
Ulm Reborn
(currently at v0.5 and still in development)

[jutetrea]

I'm not a fan of the CB type mods, although I do appreciate how the CB mod is split into sections.

I definitely like the nation mods and absolutely LOVE the worthy heroes mod and want to see further additions. I essentially play most of the game just to get a few SCs and nurture them along. I get REALLY bummed if one dies off

I'd like to see more national spells, and recruiting sites as they can definitely add flavor or flesh out weak spots.

I currently use:
CB Scales
Worthy Heroes - need more heroes!
Mythological pretenders
Militia and light cav buff - even though i rarely use the troops
Healing gods - non-recup pretenders suck (I'd like to see all gods with recup in vanilla, and those with recup already get regen)

[Sombre]

I don't think that MP necessarily excludes new nation mods. It's true that you should probably only use Amos' nations (for example) against each other, not against vanilla sides, although you could give a stronger mod nation to a less experienced player and I doubt it would be so overpowering that he would roll over a seasoned veteran of MP. A lot of the new nations are built with balance in mind and have already undergone many changes to bring them in line with the vanilla game - furthermore, most of them aren't final versions, so unlike vanilla nations they are totally subject to further balance and gameplay improvements. What seems to be lacking a lot of the time is feedback from players to help balance the nations, especially for MP.

I see no reason why a MP game between members of an established group shouldn't make use of one or two mod nations, especially if the game is relatively short, on a small map etc. If there are some balance issues it probably isn't going to be enough to spoil the game - you can give feedback to the modder afterwards or even make some changes on the fly (provided everyone gets the latest version of the mod).

Of course I take the point about Dom3 not exactly needing new content - there are already a silly number of units and spells and whatnot, but then people seem very enthusiastic about more nations and the like being added in patches,.. so there must be desire to see new nations,..

I'm a big fan of Zepath and Amos' work too by the way. They inspired me to mod and their .dm files were a big help as I learned the ropes.

[Gandalf Parker]

I tend not to use mods. Very few balance or fix mods interest me.

The mods I have used are the one that gives new flags, the ones that fill in the empty nation slots with way unbalanced nations meant to be better AI opponents, ones where people are testing new AI improvements, and the chaos mod.

Chaos mod is left over from the Dom2 programming projects. Its a program that you run that creates a mod which randomly changes a feature of every unit in the game. It was an extension by someone else of my chaos project which scattered randomly generated armies into every province (and made Johan cringe)

I would be willing to use any mod which is part of a scenario (such as working with a map) but those are still in discussion apparently.

[Sombre]

Are any of those 'built for AI' nations actually available on the mod forum? I haven't seen them yet.

[Beorne]

I have very little time to try and evaluate different mods. My group is currently using the heroes mod and I'm awaiting some review of the CB mod.
I have seen a lot of nation mod, and some of them seems very good and "professional". I think a solution to broad the audience could be to package a set of verified and balanced new nations into a one mod, to have a "new nations mod" package, like the wonderful races and ai mod (I don't remember the name) of space empires iv.
A very good start has been the creation of the "mod list" thread, a step further would be the joining of all the best and actively mantained in a single mod.