game option/old age

[Xietor]

well,

when they get afflictions and die 5 turns after you buy them, it affects my mood! But with some races like Ulm, their mages are so cheap, and with only a few getting old and dying, it is just more aggravating and micromanagement than balance.

I think the effect on balance would be marginal if no race had the old units. Except of course the races in MA that have no age issues like Pangaea, van, and Ryleh.

[Sir_Dr_D]

In case you do not already know, A growth scale does decrease the chance of an old aged unit getting diseased by quite a lot. With 2 growth I find when the old age time comes around, at most one of my old aged researching mages gets a disease. There was more disieases amonst my mages that were fighting in an enemy dominion.

[Xietor]

I am aware of that, and I have 3 growth when i play Man. It helps but the old age is still a pain in the ... At 300 gold, i would prefer to get a mage with no management related issues.

Especially when said mage starts with 3 nature and no fire.
Just sort of baffling why Crones get extreme old age, and vanaheim's air mages do not. And vanaheim's do not even have the 3 nature.

I am not advocating that vanaheim get old mages of course, rather just an option to turn off the old age feature for those of us not wanting to deal with it.

[Sombre]

This has been explained - it is simply because Crones are old women.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I don't think the old age was put in for any concept of balance of nations. It is there for role playing/nation flavour reasons. Vanaheims mages don't get old age simply because Christopher does not see them as being old.

[Xietor]

Well David(me) does not see the crone as having old age issues. Old yes, but not old age. there is a difference. I see her as having an extremely long life span, both from living in the forest of Avalon, and being one of the most proficient nature mages of the MA.

And it does affect the balance of the game a good bit, and it does affect some players enjoyment of the game. Both good reasons to have the option. One of my friends, who always loved machaka, has played the game about 2-3 times before saying this is dumb and going back to wow full time(:

While you can say he should enjoy the challenge, or it is no great loss, but it deprives me of a friend to play the game against, and it is one less person playing a great game(though he bought it, so it is no profit loss).

So give those who do not see the old age feature the same way as Christopher an option.

[Edi]

There are several different races in the game. Humans, Abysians, Pangaean halfmen, Atlanteans, Vanir, Jotun giants and so forth.

Different races tend to have different lifespans, and for humans, old age hits at 50 unless they have nature magic. The Avalon Crones are humans with powerful nature magic, but even so, they have far outlived their normal (augmented) lifespan, whereas the Vanir and Sidhe count their lives in centuries. They this have more time in which to learn things and consequently do not start out as old comparatively.

Some of the old age mechanic is also a balance effect or otherwise all the powerful mages would stay around forever like they did in Dom2. The aging mechanics also force people to make choices between scales, or otherwise we would see nearly everyone using Death 3 for free pretender points.

Those who do not wish to deal with the aging mechanics are free to do their own mods. Frankly, and this is a general statement not aimed at anyone in particular, this demanding new features every time something isn't tailor-made to suit a particular player's PREFERENCES is starting to grate.

There's also the issue of priorities. The devs only have a limited amount of time they will use on Dom3 and assuming they would be equally interested in doing any of the following -
a) bug fixes
b) new content
c) tinkering with a feature to modify things that are not broken (but could easily become so) and which were intended to be in the game in order to accommodate people who could, with rather bloody minimal effort, do away with it for themselves.

- you can basically pick two. My picks are obviously a and b. That's with the assumption that the devs would consider all equally weighty things, and, my personal guesswork as it may be, I don't think they put as much weight on c as they do on the others.

[Xietor]

No offense taken Edi, and none meant,

but i think many people, if not a majority, favor twinking the existing game more than new content. The casual player, which does not include people on this forum that make up a very small percentage of Dom III players, do not make mods, and for them there is already a lifetime's worth of content.

While old age may not be near most people's list of where the twinking effort should be, I think improving the AI is a top concern of almost everyone. And that does not fall under new content.

of course fixing bugs should be done as a matter of course, and i do not think that warrants to be a separate category.

Finally, I thought I made it clear, if I did not i apologize, that i would like to see the old age optional feature made a part of Dom IV, not a high priority item that needs to be done in the near feature.

So, you see, there is nothing in my request that should "grate" you. You either agree with it or not. And I certainly do not think anyone should agree with every suggestion made by me or anyone else.

I do think the forums are the right place to express your likes and dislikes about a game.

[Graeme Dice]

Edi said:
Frankly, and this is a general statement not aimed at anyone in particular, this demanding new features every time something isn't tailor-made to suit a particular player's PREFERENCES is starting to grate.

In my opinion, these sorts of things are exactly what the devs should be spending their time on. Options that allow people to tailor the game to the way they want without having to mod dozens of units. User interface issues that have been around for years such as blood slave micromanagement for sacrificers, game logic issues like the still broken morale system, etc. These are things that are useful to the players, and which can't be fixed by the players, unlike the addition of even more nations, which is something that players can accomplish using the mod tools.

Instead, what we get is a major nerfing of fire magic and the nations which use it. Never mind that fire was only better than water magic in Dom 2. Never mind that the fire nations were well behind the power curve, and are now even more so. (Well, you can make an argument for Abysia, but their power came from blood magic, not fire, and Machaka, unlike Marignon, has usable death, nature, and earth magic.)

My picks are obviously a and b.

Mine are a and c, since they are what actually need to be fixed in the game. I don't really care at all about new content, since I expect it to be much like the new content in Dom 3 - badly balanced and haphazardly thrown together with little thought as to how it will actually work. I suspect that we'll continue to wait for several months or years for balance fixes. I mean, we've been waiting for more than five years for something to be done about Ulm.