Indep. Mages

[MaxWilson]

Is that the same as just setting indie strength to zero? Or is there a mod that prevents you from building indies once you conquer their provinces? I should try that...

-Max

[Edi]

Max, there is no mod that prevents building indies. The way you do it is add the following into the map file for each province

#setland <province nbr>
#poptype 100 (any value greater than 87 will do)

That will remove the independent poptype, but it will still get defenders, because poptype removal only happens after the defenders have been assigned. You have to do a separate no-indies version of each map you want to play that way.

Independent strength means just how powerful the defenders are (i.e. higher value = more of them).

As far as what indie mages are useful, the Enchantresses, Enchanters, Sorceresses and Metal Order mages (Iron, Silver, Golden) are great, as are wizards. Depends somewhat on what paths you have and how high you can get them with nationals. Moon Mages and Elludian Moon Mages are downright brutal with Evocation 7, just put a horde of them in the back, script Nether Darts and watch the nemy army vanish under a rain of dark power.

Sages can be recruited from 3 sites: Library, Citadel of the Loremasters (unique, rare) and The Council of Sages (unique, rare). I think there might be a fourth one, but I can't remember for certain.

Of the indie poptype mages, only the Amazons are really worth anything bar special circumstances, or the lizard shaman if you lack astral magic (such as EA Ulm).

[Sombre]

4 maps have already have NI (No indies) versions ready made in the mod forum.

NI Silent Seas
NI Aran
NI Parganos (Edi's fix)
aaaand,... the other one Edi fixed that I don't remember the name of. The thread where you can find them was made by me and should be called 'no indy maps' or something.

Edit: Forgot to mention that if you play primarily single player the AI actually does better with no indies. No more armies made of 15 or so random national troops and a million crappy light infantry and militia. Makes a nice change. I personally very rarely play on anything but the NI maps.

[jutetrea]

Hmm, I saw this pop up then forgot about it, will definitely try out the NI maps. Randomized of course

Enchantresses have been my saving find more-so than any other. I've had bad luck with sorceresses getting old, even more than sages. I did use the onyx (amazon?) sorceress in the last game to kickstart a weak blood economy with a rainbow pretender. Before that, never used em.

Enchantresses are pretty expensive, but worth it for the automated site searching and the 2E + boots blade winds.

[Gandalf Parker]

I would think that it would be more balancing to have some mod that removes the site-based indept mages rather than the poptype recruitable indept mages. The site-based ones tend to be the "worthy" ones. Those would be the random-luck effect on the game that true strategists dislike.

Of course, in my games I tend to increase such things.

[thejeff]

My impression is that many of the rarer site based and maybe some of the rare poptype ones weren't nerfed the way most of the independent mages were.

Hydromancers and the Azure academy mages come to mind, but only because I've seen them recently. Gnomes, maybe?

Paths and pricing seem what I would expect from Dom2, not Dom3.

I wonder if it was intentional, or an oversight?

[Edi]

All poptype recruitable mages have been nerfed to some degree or another. The Jade Amazons most prominently, Onyx, Crystal and Garnet less so, but still somewhat. Druids were chopped from N2 to N1, lizards are unaffected and all the rest are new additions compared to Dom2.

The site based mages are a different matter. Most of them have remained roughly the same as they were, except their random picks have been modified, which in many cases makes them weaker and in some cases makes them stronger. Enchantresses are far stronger due to the changed random system, Sorceresses and some others a bit weaker.

Most indie mages suffer from old age problems right out of the box unless they have nature magic (again, Enchantress FTW) or are some specialty stuff like the Moon Mages (both regular and Elludian). This makes the non-old mages kick that much more backside all over town.

Compared to national mages, who have fairly limited random selection, many of the site mages are more powerful due to what they can bring to the table, more so than was the case in Dom2 in some respects, less so in others.

[Sombre]

Well the idea of the NI maps wasn't so much to preserve strategic balance, more to keep the focus on national troops and to see if it would improve the AI. With NI certain nations play quite differently, since they lack the generic cheap indy troops, or the ability to crank out indy knights and longbows making up for lack of missile and cavalry in their own lineup.

The biggest difference is with the AI though. Now the large number of castles it likes to crank is actually a good strategy since you basically don't get troops without them.