Dominions 3000 (name confirmed!)

[Darkwind]

Yeah, plains are the blank space. I assume the bushes (because a bushel is a unit of measurement) you're talking about are actually the little tree, which means forest.

Also, since you seem to have forgotten already, Neoclidia is a nation with a few ties to R'lyeh but more to the Cthulhu Mythos (which Honeybadger is also working with, and which R'lyeh is partially based upon). The Great Old Ones are, well, powerful and old beings. Cthulhu, for example, lives (or rather sleeps) under the sea in R'lyeh (an underwater city, duh). A lot of Lovecraft's work is based around the idea that there are forces much more powerful than humanity which simply don't care about humans; forces which are not good or evil, but simply have completely different thought processes than humans. What Wikipedia tells me is that then August Derleth came along and messed it all up with his 'good' and his 'evil' and his 'elemental forces'.

[Aezeal]

so shouldn't you and honey work together then and create one nation out of this since honey clearly admits he's got a lot of other priorities and his idea's aren't that simple maybe you could just borrow some of his good ideas and put them in your mod which I think will be finished a few centuries before Honey even has his new computer

I meant the farmland icon which I though was a a pack of grain which I thought is also called a bushel but it's not now I look at it again

ok so plainshape it will be .. will be a lot of work, need to decide which ones deserve a 2nd shape and which ones don't even need one. wtf to do with monsters in space.. can't give them a space suit or a pod .. they'd need a cage and then they'd be useless... well that might be the best idea and then it'll have to be balanced in price.

Another thing I was thinking of is giving militia (or most militia) a very very useless space form.. that would lower their price though but then they'd be VERY effective just to defend the province they are in, that might invite turtling.
I'll start plainshaping ulm since I hear their infantry is a bit overpowered.. a less effective space form might be just what they need.

Jomon's battlesuits stay the same in space I think, as do all spaceships
I guess R'lyeh's chaff need to have weaker plainshapes to and the predator aliens (which you haven't seen yet, another indie that R'lyeh dominates) needs to go in cages and not be able to do anything in space. R'lyeh still has the spacepirates though.

Another thing I fear while thinking of this is that pplz might just go for the most flexible troops (which are the spaceships) a solution would be to give them a weaker "landshape" but I can't really explain to myself (and thus to others) WHY a spaceshipfighter wouldn't be as effective on the earth (in shooting for example)

[Darkwind]

I think the solution to the ship problem is to make spaceships cost a lot more. Maybe 15 upkeep for a basic, recruitable ship, with a capital ship armed to the teeth costing as much as 100 gold per turn, as well as quite a few gems. Troops would likely be slower in space and less accurate, so there's an idea for you. Also, militia are essentially raw recruits from the general populace who likely don't even know how to handle a gun or have any useful weapons, useful only because they're easy to produce. Militia in space would likely have practically no mobility, very little precision, and low health (due to the harsh conditions of space and their inadequate armor). At least that's the way I see it.

Finally, Neoclidia and HB's Aboleths are fairly different, though both borrow somewhat from the same source material. Neoclidia is centered around the idea of the Great Old Ones and their awakening while the Aboleths are, well, undead fish-things spewed from a black hole who create pylons which use said magical hole's energy to summon various undead critters from worlds sucked into the hole, among other things. Two completely different ideas.

[Nikelaos]

Originally Posted by Darkwind

. Troops would likely be slower in space and less accurate, so there's an idea for you. Also, militia are essentially raw recruits from the general populace who likely don't even know how to handle a gun or have any useful weapons, useful only because they're easy to produce. Militia in space would likely have practically no mobility, very little precision, and low health (due to the harsh conditions of space and their inadequate armor). At least that's the way I see it.

i disagree with this, with no air resistance in space you actually wouldn't slow down so fast(less friction) and the course of ranged amunnition wouldn't be affected by the direction the wind blows in, meaning units should in theory go faster and missiles should be more accurate. Saying this it would likely be hard to direct yourself when moving in space, now i know some commanders can autocast spells in battle (like the communicant thing which does auto communion slave) but i don't think we can for units (though it's worth checking anyway), if we could then we could mod all these militias to auto cast blink at the start of a battle to emulate them not really being able to control where they are going. If not then i have no other ideas right now.

Also i agree with militias have reduced hp due to the conditions in space.

[Aezeal]

Hmm I've looked into #plainshape and it appears to be the opposite of #forestshape (so not a seperate form for when you move to a plain, but the form you get when leaving a forest.)

I'll do a lil test with this but it probably means we'll have to use forests as space. which means 'we'll probably have to give nearly all forms forest survival for else they won't be able to move fast through space.

[Aezeal]

Well seems that plainshape isn't what we wanted.. so I've changed all space to forest and put a forestform on all units that REALLY need it (some remain open for debate)

I'll test it a bit myself tomorrow and if it seems to work for a few units then I'll post the mod.

This certainly means we need to do a race that is best in space too.. sadly we can't let them randomly start in space (nothing like a "foreststart" command in the game) but I'll place it on the map if we have such a nation (maybe they neoclidia?)

Hey how is your nation proceeding anyway? I could already put what you have (if you also have some art) in the next version as a sort of teaser. If you have like 2-3 ready units with stats and an idea for the start sites then you could send me the code and the sprites and I'll put them in before I release this

[Darkwind]

My idea for Neoclidia was to make them an aggressive race with powerful space-faring units, yeah. This is what I have so far, in .dm form. No sprites though. I'd love it if someone (anyone!) could get me some, since I'll likely otherwise just start taking them from Dominions III itself (and no one wants Illithid-flavored Yithians or Shoggoths who look like piles of meat). Also notice the Old Ones line is done and I began work on the ships (although no spells are in yet so the Old Ones don't feature in yet). Finally, I wanted to give Azathoth blood vengeance but the manual said nothing on how to so I gave him fire shield instead. So yeah I think I'm making inroads (all of the troops' planet forms are done, Old Ones are done, sites are in, retender is in) but I still have a lot to do before this becomes a complete nation.

Also the balance is completely off whack most likely; I can't balance due to being spriteless. I don't really want to test a nation where all of my units look like shades because I couldn't find any other sprite.

Edit: Text file as well if anyone wants that instead.

[Aezeal]

aren't there some dom 3 sprites you can colorize and then use...

[Aezeal]

I really like your nation and I think it will fit in perfectly. Your troops look great and divers. There are just a few armor and weapon thing:

I gave all ships a natural high protection (to avoid a low head protection.) I see you giva e ship prot 0 and then shipplating. I'd recommend you change that to no armor and just 20 prot.

All your ranged weapons have very high #att and that means troops and ships will fire AP, high damage shot AND can't miss. (att 10 means +10 precision I think) already the ranged troops I have in my mod rip through indies and yours would be even worse.
In addition to this I think the heavy lasergun might be a lil too strong on the #dmg part.
The anti-ship cannons (why anti-ship they seem to be able to kill troops just as well.. why not just cannons?) suffer from this too.

Basicly just lil changes I'd advice based upon what I've encountered so far in playtesting my own nations.

Another thing is that I think it might be best if we just use the same weapons as base weapons (not the fancy stuff like your strang claws and deadly signs) but these

#newweapon 652
#name "Light Lasergun"
#att 5
#armorpiercing
#dmg 8
#nostr
#rcost 2
#range 40
#ammo 30
#explspr 10102
#end

#newweapon 653
#name "Lasergun"
#att 10
#armorpiercing
#dmg 12
#nostr
#rcost 3
#range 45
#ammo 40
#explspr 10102
#end


#newweapon 656
#name "Heavy Lasergun"
#att 20
#def 1
#armorpiercing
#dmg 18
#nostr
#rcost 5
#range 50
#ammo 50
#explspr 10102
#end

and

#newweapon 657
#name "Anti-Ship Cannons"
#att 20
#def 0
#armorpiercing
#dmg 15
#nratt 2
#nostr
#aoe 1
#rcost 25
#range 75
#ammo 50
#explspr 10110
#flyspr 362 4
#end

kinda resembles

#newweapon 700
#name "Laser pistol"
#dmg 8
#nostr
#att 0
#def 0
#len 0
#range 40
#ammo 50
#nratt 1
#rcost 1
#end

#newweapon 701
#name "Blaster"
#dmg 10
#nostr
#att -1
#def 0
#len 0
#range 50
#ammo 50
#nratt 1
#rcost 2
#armorpiercing
#end

#newweapon 702
#name "Power Blaster"
#dmg 12
#nostr
#att -1
#def 0
#len 0
#range 60
#ammo 50
#nratt 1
#rcost 3
#armorpiercing
#end

#newweapon 703
#name "Infantry Heavy Blaster"
#dmg 15
#nostr
#att -1
#def -1
#len 0
#range 60
#ammo 50
#nratt 1
#rcost 4
#armorpiercing
#end

and

#newweapon 706
#name "Ship Artillery"
#dmg 25
#nostr
#att -2
#def -2
#len 2
#range 100
#ammo 10
#nratt -2
#rcost 10
#aoe 1
#armorpiercing
#explspr 10101
#end

so maybe we should just make use of the same weapons to keep the future mod nice and tidy. If you have though about all your sounds etc I'll gladly add them to the weapons in my mod and then just change the weapons your pplz are using in the weapons from my mod (you could just copy the basic set of weapons from my mod while you are working so you have them in tehre to work on and then later we leave them out again.) I'd be willing to make the switch for you so you won't be bothered at all. If you are completely against this then so be it but I think it will make balancing the complete mod easier later.

Let me hear what you think.

[Darkwind]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

I really like your nation and I think it will fit in perfectly. Your troops look great and divers. There are just a few armor and weapon thing:

I gave all ships a natural high protection (to avoid a low head protection.) I see you giva e ship prot 0 and then shipplating. I'd recommend you change that to no armor and just 20 prot.

That's a good idea (I'll probably try it), but what if we were to make "helmet" armor for ships and call it Cockpit Protection, Heavy Cockpit Protection, etc.? That could work too.

All your ranged weapons have very high #att and that means troops and ships will fire AP, high damage shot AND can't miss. (att 10 means +10 precision I think) already the ranged troops I have in my mod rip through indies and yours would be even worse.
In addition to this I think the heavy lasergun might be a lil too strong on the #dmg part.
The anti-ship cannons (why anti-ship they seem to be able to kill troops just as well.. why not just cannons?) suffer from this too.

I agree, I'm not sure what I was thinking when going through the laserguns. Looking back on those, wow. Compared to Ulm's (I assume), Neoclidia's guns are incredible. I'll tone down those #atts and raise the resource cost of the Heavy Lasergun. It was meant to be able to kill things quickly (in one shot I guess), but wow.

Basicly just lil changes I'd advice based upon what I've encountered so far in playtesting my own nations.

Another thing is that I think it might be best if we just use the same weapons as base weapons (not the fancy stuff like your strang claws and deadly signs) but these

-snip-

so maybe we should just make use of the same weapons to keep the future mod nice and tidy. If you have though about all your sounds etc I'll gladly add them to the weapons in my mod and then just change the weapons your pplz are using in the weapons from my mod (you could just copy the basic set of weapons from my mod while you are working so you have them in tehre to work on and then later we leave them out again.) I'd be willing to make the switch for you so you won't be bothered at all. If you are completely against this then so be it but I think it will make balancing the complete mod easier later.

Let me hear what you think.

Part of the idea of Neoclidia was that they used mostly laser weapons instead of conventional weapons (a Blaster sounds a bit different). My lasers look like gifts from heavens compared to yours, though. Perhaps lasers could have higher precision vs Blasters, at the cost of damage? Either way, I might exchange the Light Lasergun for a Laser Pistol. The Anti-Ship cannons probably do need some reworking too, and I might replace them with the Ship Artillery.