an idea to reduce turtling

[Wrana]

I'd say it has more than a few issues. At least one was already mentioned - there are nations which have a strong research and weaker troops. Plus, different paths require a different research level to really affect game. I think you are offering solution to an absent problem - if you don't want to turtle up - play a bless rush nation. Of course, you may be mowed down when your opponents complete a neccessary research - but that's the game. It doesn't consist of tank rushes... :P

[Dragar]

Surely this would favour the strong early game nations even more?

To be honest I'm not really aware of much turtling in this game. Winners almost always have powerful starts and expand aggresively

[Illuminated One]

Well, I like the idea of not having the mages do the research.
I like the idea of giving the map more points of strategic interest for the late game, too, but those will be around early on also and just another bonus for the bless rushers.
How about giving each nation a shapechanging unrecruitable researcher instead of the starting scout. Different shapes produce different research but need different upkeep?

[Dragar]

Surely this would favour the strong early game nations even more?

To be honest I'm not really aware of much turtling in this game. Winners almost always have powerful starts and expand aggresively

[Humakty]

As far as I know, you'd have to modify each mage separately, be it national or indep, plus create new researcher unit. Good luck Jim, this mission, if you accept it....

I do think too it would entirely screw many nations. And make others totally ubber, like Nielfelheim, as they don't normally have access to cost worthy researchers. Maybe make one researcher per nation to keep the balance.

[Fate]

The research difference would be simple to maintain. Just make a different research unit for each side with more or less research.

A more difficult consideration is the cap-only-ness. For some nations this is not a problem, but for nations with lots of cap-only recruits you are still forced to decide between research and deploying units, ony this time you have a unit that can ONLY research vs a unit that can ONLY fight. I think it would unfairly disadvantage them.

I would suggest editing it in as an auto-summon or a summon-allies.

I encourage you to look at modding. Making such a research summon (or adding it as an ability to every pretender) shouldn't be that hard. The hard part is going through the DB and giving an RP malus to all the mages out there (I suggest getting EDI's excellent DB for this).

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Fate

I encourage you to look at modding. Making such a research summon (or adding it as an ability to every pretender) shouldn't be that hard. The hard part is going through the DB and giving an RP malus to all the mages out there (I suggest getting EDI's excellent DB for this).

Actually this is the easiest part. Takes about 10 minutes.

A) Find someone who can use perl (or some other coding ****, I don't really know about those)

B) Have the said guy generate you a mod that gives researchmalus -50 to all dom3units.

Actually, Lch did me one a couple days back. According to IrC log, it took him under 20 minutes to do it.

[Humakty]

The original plan was to turn around the cap only stuff by making them recruitable in a prov next to the capital, which would require map modding.

The whole idea still seems to me like loads of pain for small benefits...(if any)

[Sombre]

You can't summon allies commanders. I already outlined how to do all of this stuff that's being discussed in IRC and can't really be bothered to repeat it here. Suffice to say - start with F1H7 unit, he can cast a spell that summons whatever researcher unit. If someone wants to do it, it's all doable with current mod commands. It's just a matter of deciding exactly what you want to do and actually committing to do it. I (or any other modder, really) can tell you /how/ once that's decided.

So stop worrying about the exact method.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, would only take a few minutes.

Everyone should learn Perl.