Excessive mage nerfing in dom-III (?)

[Sindai]

Dominions 2 was hugely unbalanced, Dominions 3 will be also, just in different ways. You can't balance a game with over a thousand units and hundreds of spells and items. That's what makes Dominions great.

On the other hand, it's just common sense to make clearly "best" tactics that hinge on a couple of overpowered spells or items less powerful in the next iteration of the series. Who wants to play exactly the same game forever?

[BigJMoney]

1. Life drain needed to be reduced. I saw WAY too many SC builds using life draining weapons, meaning most people thought it was "best". Besides, it makes no sense that a weapon drains more life because someone is stronger. It's the magic in the weapon that does the draining, not the creature! The protective spells having weaknesses is great, because it's a built in Achilles heel that requires you to alter your strategy a little. You have to simply be careful which ones you use, that's all.

2. I bet none of us will miss mages with quickness once we play Dom III. Again, it is one of those lame strategies that is simply too good. I mean, who WOULDN'T want their mages casting 2x as many spells? I do agree that reducing the range of combat spells would be poor judgement. Mainly because it will necessitate more battle micro-management. I never thought the elemental spells were too powerful, and I thought astral magic was powerful enough in Dom II. I never used false horror, so I have no comment.

=$=

[Sindai]

Actually, it would be nice if lifedrain was a variable weapon property. That way the cheap ones like Wraith Blades could only drain 5, but perhaps there would be artifact weapons with much higher drains.

Too late for version 3.00, but maybe in a patch.

[Boron]

BigJMoney said:
2. I bet none of us will miss mages with quickness once we play Dom III. Again, it is one of those lame strategies that is simply too good. I mean, who WOULDN'T want their mages casting 2x as many spells? I do agree that reducing the range of combat spells would be poor judgement. Mainly because it will necessitate more battle micro-management. I never thought the elemental spells were too powerful, and I thought astral magic was powerful enough in Dom II. I never used false horror, so I have no comment.

=$=

The mid evocation area elemental damage spells have been very good in dom2.
Falling fires and magma eruption especially.

With the range nerf they are no longer a nobrainer .
Especially magma eruption was great. In Dom2 not many nations could cast it, but in Dom3 Argatha and Man Late Era e.g. can cast magma eruption too.
Now with the reduced range you have to consider whether you use those spells or rather do something else like skelly spamming with your argatha necros e.g. .

If a magma eruption hits it is still deadly and can easily kill 10 enemy troops at once.

[Tyrant]

Whenever i get a new game and go looking for the path to Ulitimate Power i start my search with four things- flight, invisability, life drain, and speed. The nature of these powers makes them hard to balance, and smart game designers are right to examine them closely. Wraith's post is very articulate, and I understand his worry, yet I do think he jumped the gun. Life drain did need a nerf, and quickness was at least worth a hard look since it makes the quickened unit twice as good, more or less.

In a game as wide as this one, true balance is not a realitic goal. Better goals are to try to make sure that there are many viable strategies and few useless features. DomII did a fine job on the first, and the second is less important.

Now here is my worry about balance in 3. Sounds like differntiating the nations was a big design goal, and that ups the ante on balance issues. In DomII there was an evolution during a given game away from your store bought troops and mages such that if you made it to the late game you likely had a little of nearly everything. If that's less true in 3 it raises the chances of bad match ups (ie there's a counter to your enemies plan, but you can't do it), and means that new nation stuff itself needs to be thouroughly thought out and tested.

[DominionsFan]

Tyrant said:
Now here is my worry about balance in 3. Sounds like differntiating the nations was a big design goal, and that ups the ante on balance issues.

If the races would be perfectly balanced, the various races would loose their real point: the diversity.
I never had problems with this in Doms 2. Simply because you also need luck to win. No luck = no win. Luck is much more important compared to the race imbalance.

[WraithLord]

Sindai said:
Dominions 2 was hugely unbalanced, Dominions 3 will be also, just in different ways. You can't balance a game with over a thousand units and hundreds of spells and items. That's what makes Dominions great.

On the other hand, it's just common sense to make clearly "best" tactics that hinge on a couple of overpowered spells or items less powerful in the next iteration of the series. Who wants to play exactly the same game forever?

I agree with the second part of your statement. though I would have liked it if sometimes instead of nerfing there would have been an additional counter to a "best" tactic. For example, quickness may have been balanced by a slow spell or a spell that deals damage only to quickened critters etc. Nerfing as the sole key to balance makes things more boring (imho).

As to the first statement (dom-II is unbalanced), I think it requires a closer look. What do you mean by unbalanced?- Most of the nations and themes were balanced, and each successful strategy had it's counters. I have played countless hours both SP and MP and it never failed to amaze me how for each great strat. that I've found there was also a counter.

Tyrant said:
Whenever i get a new game and go looking for the path to Ulitimate Power i start my search with four things- flight, invisability, life drain, and speed. The nature of these powers makes them hard to balance, and smart game designers are right to examine them closely. Wraith's post is very articulate, and I understand his worry, yet I do think he jumped the gun. Life drain did need a nerf, and quickness was at least worth a hard look since it makes the quickened unit twice as good, more or less.

Thank you for both the compliment and the critique
Sure, I may have been to early to state my worry, but my opinion is that its better to bring things into the open rather than harbor them. I agree about life drain, yet about quickness I still have some doubts, after all its use was offset by fatigue and, to top it,it was one of the key spells to the otherwise relatively weak water spell school.

Tyrant said:
In a game as wide as this one, true balance is not a realistic goal. Better goals are to try to make sure that there are many viable strategies and few useless features. DomII did a fine job on the first, and the second is less important.

Now here is my worry about balance in 3. Sounds like differentiating the nations was a big design goal, and that ups the ante on balance issues. In DomII there was an evolution during a given game away from your store bought troops and mages such that if you made it to the late game you likely had a little of nearly everything. If that's less true in 3 it raises the chances of bad match ups (ie there's a counter to your enemies plan, but you can't do it), and means that new nation stuff itself needs to be thoroughly thought out and tested.

Ahmmm... I find your concern quite plausible, hopefully the community will help report such possible bad match ups, so that they get fixed in patches.

All in all, I'm very encouraged by the replies here. They represent a very good attitude and keen insight, so I'm positive that the game is in good hands.

[Nerfix]

Well, in some games adding counters like the ones you suggested may work, but this is Dominions where often the spellcasting AI selects poor spells. Would the casting AI be smart enough to make the choice to shoot off a counterspell in an aproriate moment?

I doubt it. Thus taking in the Nerf Sword is pretty much the only choice. That or having yet again 20 nin pages long threads about how Caelum and it's quickened lightning shooters eat through everybdoy. That or skelly spam.

Now, that said, I wonder what they've added to make the Water magic worthwhile. Quickness and Clams were both admitedly overpowered, but they were pretty much all Water had.

What now?

[quantum_mechani]

Nerfix said:

What now?

All kinds of things. Naiads, Kokythos, Catoblepas, Asp Turtles, ancient undead unfrozen from glaciers...

[Nerfix]

Tell me more about them. They sound cute and fuzzy. Especially the undead, kind of reminds me of this one Warcraft III game...