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[Valerius]

Yeah, feebleminded tart commanders could be equipped to get respectable MR. It's the ones that you didn't GoR that would be in a more difficult situation. For instance, without magic it's almost certainly not worth GoRing a monstrum - but they are useful troops. A feebleminded monstrum would be at 13 MR, that you could only boost as high as 17 MR with antimagic/iron will/army of gold (excluding magic scales in this of course). At the same time its high HP would make it a target.

But perhaps a way around this would be to give the monstrum in particular a starting MR higher than 18? If it weren't feebleminded and were GoRed this still wouldn't be a problem since it has such limited slots compared to the other tarts. In fact you might have to give it a perk like exceptionally high MR to convince anyone to GoR a monstrum without magic.

Interesting idea about the siege golem, I'd never considered GoRing one. Those attack/defense stats look pretty horrible (just the kind of target I like to send my glamoured thugs after ) but I guess it's not much worse than a golem and if they had hand slots you could get that looking a little better.

[WraithLord]

I personally don't care much for the new suggestion re. Tartarians. I agree that they're too common by far so would like to put another suggestion on the table:

How about tartarians become nation specific spell for nations that have a strong thematic connection to death and/or that need such a uber spell to compensate for innate weakness. So for example, make tarts available only to:
- Ermor (yes, LA Ermor don't need tarts but this is the nation that thematically should have them)
- MA Machaka
- Sauromatia
etc.

That way you kill two birds with the same stone - reduce tarts from very common status and grant or not grant the spell as a further tool to address nation balance issues.

[WraithLord]

QM could you also kindly post the things that are currently on the table for 1.8?- This way we would be able to provide feedback. Even if only a fragment of this feedback would end up being useful it's should still be worth it, right?

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

I personally don't care much for the new suggestion re. Tartarians. I agree that they're too common by far so would like to put another suggestion on the table:

How about tartarians become nation specific spell for nations that have a strong thematic connection to death and/or that need such a uber spell to compensate for innate weakness. So for example, make tarts available only to:
- Ermor (yes, LA Ermor don't need tarts but this is the nation that thematically should have them)
- MA Machaka
- Sauromatia
etc.

That way you kill two birds with the same stone - reduce tarts from very common status and grant or not grant the spell as a further tool to address nation balance issues.

Care to offer some counterpoints about the other tart suggestion?

I don't see how leaving tarts as they are and restricting them to some nations does much good, especially as death nations are by and large the best nations anyway. If won't change the fact that nations with access will use them almost exclusively, it just means those that don't are fighting a massively uphill battle.

I'll look in to posting a possible change list before release.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Executor

Valerius, they would be really nice imo, all resistances, high protection, high HP and mindless. Would be able to capture forts alone too of course. But yes they have terrible stats like Golems, however you add a good shield and a brend weapon.
I think they should be allowed hands, it goes along with late stage thug/sc diversification. They'd be like a bigger version of the Mechanical Giant.

Sounds good to me. It's certainly not OP and the greater variety of summons on the field, the better.


SSJ reminded me of something when he mentioned the Momentum 3 rules in the EDM thread. In that game one of the boosts I gave the elemental royalty was 100% darkvision for those that didn't already have it. What about making the elemental royalty either blind or have darkvision 100? It seems odd to me that, for instance, the Queen of Storms can summon blind air elementals but isn't blind herself. Same goes for the earth kings. Then the fire and water royalty have odd situations such as summoning blind elementals but having darkvision themselves. Seems like it would be thematic and a nice little boost to make this consistent and give all the elemental royalty blindness/darkvision (I don't think anyone would argue they're OP and they are in any case unique).

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

I don't see how leaving tarts as they are and restricting them to some nations does much good, especially as death nations are by and large the best nations anyway. If won't change the fact that nations with access will use them almost exclusively, it just means those that don't are fighting a massively uphill battle.

Agree completely; I'd rather stick with the current situation than go this route.

[WraithLord]

Yes please.
You said:
"
At the moment I'm toying with the idea of removing their default magic in favor of 'potential' magic. They would have no magic when you summon them but 50 gems empowerment of the appropriate type would get you direct to level 4 in a path (thematically speaking, it's just a different way of representing the feebled mind, but in a way that anyone could heal them, not just the GoH/Chalice). This way, with the right investment they could well surpass most EDM summons, but they wouldn't have the huge diversity advantages.
+
Yes, I think the only way to remove afflictions would be to swap out the summoning spell, which has side effects I'd rather avoid. I think having plenty feebled would still be OK though- it's true GoH/Chalice is great now but the concern with the direct raising prices was that it would make them better- this would just leave them at about their current power. After all, how many tarts can you really empower? At 10 gems each you should easily have plenty of healthy empowerment candidates. Also, under this tart scheme GoR could probably get cheaper and they could be used with whatever afflictions as thugs (I actually think seeing some still feebled tarts used in battle would be quite cool).
"

let me see if I get you right, your suggestion consists of:
1. Tarts won't have magic.
2. 50 gems worth of empower would give them lvl 4 of ???
3. Tarts would still have afflictions
4. Tarts summon price would be 10D

So basically to get a 4X tart I'll need to spend 10D *(avg # of times to get non feeble mind tart) + 50D. My gripe with the suggestion is that: a- it keeps the current unthematic "all nations take death to get to tarts" tendency. Yeah, it really makes sense to see MA Mari + Pyth deploy tarts and go hvy on death...
and b- The price raise and losing diversity seem to take all the fun out of tarts - or in other words are too extreme.

Except LA Ermor the other nations could use both diversity and row power. Think what it would do to MA Machaka status to have near exclusive access to tarts. So perhaps don't give Tarts to LA Ermor but do give to other underpowered death nations.

Tarts are fun the way they are but not everyone should have them. To prevent ppl from taking them you'll need to make them suck and then nobody will summon them

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Tarts are fun the way they are but not everyone should have them. To prevent ppl from taking them you'll need to make them suck and then nobody will summon them

That seems a defeatist attitude towards balance- either they are so good people use them exclusively or they suck and no one uses them.

Originally Posted by WraithLord

let me see if I get you right, your suggestion consists of:
1. Tarts won't have magic.
2. 50 gems worth of empower would give them lvl 4 of ???
3. Tarts would still have afflictions
4. Tarts summon price would be 10D

That more or less sums it up, yes. Though given for 10d they are quite good troops anyway, the cost for an empowered tart chassis is more like 50 of whatever gems you can spare + GoR cost. I do sympathize with your objection to unthematic nations getting tarts, but honestly I don't see any option to stop that without very unwanted repercussions. To me, having Mackaka get Tarts but not LA Ermor seems even more unthematic than everyone getting them. And allowing high powered death nations privileged access is just asking for trouble. In any case, restricting tarts by nations is more of an and/or suggestion than directly in opposition to changing their magic.

As for the point about removing fun, I admit I get as much fun from rolling randoms as the next person, but there are plenty of places to do that in dominions. You could even look at the empowerment as simply a more round about way of rolling randoms, based on what kind of gems you get extra of from sites. And as much as rolling randoms is fun, so are strategic choices and this seems to actually increase those.

EDIT: Boosters would work as normal, i.e. they would not boost anything unless you already had that path.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

That seems a defeatist attitude towards balance- either they are so good people use them exclusively or they suck and no one uses them.

Yes, I'm basically saying that I'm concerned your suggestion would lead to the latter. Why should anyone pay so much the get a one path lvl4 tart?- If you need level 4 summons there's plenty to go around now that are way cheaper and easier to get. It was the diversity and unexpected nature of what you'd get that made for the "fun" factor.

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

That more or less sums it up, yes. Though given for 10d they are quite good troops anyway, the cost for an empowered tart chassis is more like 50 of whatever gems you can spare + GoR cost. I do sympathize with your objection to unthematic nations getting tarts, but honestly I don't see any option to stop that without very unwanted repercussions. To me, having Mackaka get Tarts but not LA Ermor seems even more unthematic than everyone getting them. And allowing high powered death nations privileged access is just asking for trouble. In any case, restricting tarts by nations is more of an and/or suggestion than directly in opposition to changing their magic.

As for the point about removing fun, I admit I get as much fun from rolling randoms as the next person, but there are plenty of places to do that in dominions. You could even look at the empowerment as simply a more round about way of rolling randoms, based on what kind of gems you get extra of from sites. And as much as rolling randoms is fun, so are strategic choices and this seems to actually increase those.

EDIT: Boosters would work as normal, i.e. they would not boost anything unless you already had that path.

ok, how about the following: go even further with the randomness effect - add a certain chance that the summon would backfire. Either not work, or summon horror or some such.