"Old Age" system in Dom3 - need some info

[Agrajag]

Cainehill said:
Except that for one thing, Boots of Youth aren't available until Const-6 : an awful lot of mages can have gotten diseased, feebleminded, mute, and dead before then, and having to refrain from recruiting 4/5 of the national mages until then is crazy. For another thing, yes Abysia is a blood nation - but having to outfit 4/5 of their mages with an item that costs 10 blood slaves also sucks, considering that those slaves could've gone into summonings.

I mean, when even your _weakest_ mages start with old age, there's something wrong imo. Pretty damn hard to research to blood-6 or construction-6 when the mages you'd want to use as researchers are dying or getting feebleminded on you, _consistently_. Demonbreds are a little pricey for research use, _and_ they're capitol only.

So, the aging system has ensured that I will never _EVER_ play Abysia, and possibly other nations. Wonderful bloody mechanic.

Actually, I was messing around with Abysia in a SP game. I recruited Warlocks almost exclusively, and was able to forge Boots of Youth for every single one, the only casualties of old age by the time I got everyone the boots were one dead warlock, and one that will soon die (diseased).
I suppose it won't work as well in an MP game, but I don't think the problem is as big as you make it out to be if I can do this.
(And no, I did not take any growth scale [nor death scale])

EDIT: Just to clarify - it was EA Abysia

[dirtywick]

RoyalOak said:
Not so sure about growth. Recently played MA Abysia, and at first late winter turn 6 of my 8 eligible units for old age get diseased, altough I've taken growth 2.

I for one like to see the age system toned down a bit : I've quit playing abysia for the moment, as they have really big aging problems.

Wow, that's bad luck.

[Resok]

I've been playing Early Age Abysia in SP and have only had one of my Warlocks suffer from old-age caused Disease over the course of 60-odd turns. I slapped a ring of regen on him and am working up to Const 6 atm (after focusing on Evocation first for battle magic) to try to help rectify his situation. In the meantime he's still just as functional sitting in my labs as he was before so I'm not too worried.

I don't really see much of an issue with the Age system... I think alot of the bad experiences people have been getting have been flat out bad luck. As far as things in the multi-player venue, it's one of the many balancing factors between various nations. Almost everyone is affected by old age so it's just another part of the overarching system of afflictions and other issues that are either ignored or overcome through invested effort.



Resok

[user5124]

Hello.

I've registered to say that the only thing that keeps me from buying Dominions 3 is the aging feature.

I'm going to continue with Dominions 2 until it can be disabled with patch/mod/hack. I think it's good that it's available, but wish very much it was optional!

[Arralen]

Sry, you can't simply turn it off, its part of the balancing ...

[dirtywick]

Yep, no more recruiting piles of sages in some far away province and forgetting about them. I think everyone who found a library did that as soon as they found it, so it's kind of nice in that regard. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinions.

[Cainehill]

Ah - the "balancing" that thinks that a Crone pretender, who starts 250 or so years into old age, and has no special abilities, is only worth 35 points less than the Great Sage or Master Druid, both of whom have at least semi-useful special abilities and 250 years or so before they get to old age. Or that balances Crone pretenders as being 55 points less than Frost Father or Great Enchantress, both of whom start with _two_ paths, and _good_ special abilities.

Oh yes, aging is helping _so_ much with balance. *mutter growl spit*

[JPSeraph]

I really like the inclusion of an aging system. I'm sure there will be tweaks to it since this is the first implementation.

As someone who favors *long* SP games, I hope for moddability (to raise the onset of old age for some units as I see fit), or at least a more sophisticated implementation, such as:

Increasing the chance of random afflictions for units based on their "age level", so that units which are 52(50) have a very small chance to suffer from an affliction during their Late Winter Age Test, while a 75(50) (guessing because I am not sure what the age levels would be for a (50) unit) unit would have a significantly higher chance of picking up an affliction.

As it is right now, it feels like units which are barely into old age are dying off or just gaining more decrepitude than experience too soon. The penalties associated with age levels are already significant, so the chance for death/afflictions should perhaps be toned down.

As a sidenote, has anyone had unusual or comical results with older heroes like Bartolomeus?

I only have the demo, but to those who have tried long SP (or MP I suppose) games, does the Hall of Fame become a who's who of Pretenders and other long lived units even if those units haven't participated much in battles? (i.e. 0 kills, but they've been around forever)

[Taqwus]

HoF in my SP games tends to be filled with experienced, lethal battlefield commanders with either nasty magic, nasty ranged items (Spirit Helm for instance) or both.

Although, if you've researched spells like Murdering Winter or Flames from the Sky, mages which catch major armies can jump onto HoF pretty rapidly without leaving the lab. You do get experience just sitting there and researching, but it's not nearly as useful as killing a hundred or more units for HoF purposes.

Played through EA T'ien C'hi (had a couple of Celestial Masters die, but not too badly off with the nature magic... and I was spending more on archers and nobles anyway *shrug* -- trying a massed ground-pounder approach rather than a mobile, flying strat), MA Mictlan (some suffering with the High Priests of the Sun, until I broke the Lawgiver's rule and got a few blood hunters going and forged the rejuvenation boots... and I used more Priest Kings and Mesmerizing Turkeys, and later summoned mages), and LA R'lyeh (whose starspawn have LONG lifespans).

[Cainehill]

I'm also curious about the interaction between Old Age (afflictions, and dying from it), and immortality. It seems that regular healing (arco priestesses) couldn't do anything for age-inflicted ailments, which makes me wonder if immortality will clear up ailments. If not, some of the ancient immortals (like TC's) are going to have minimal usefulness / fun factor.

Also, whether immortality will bring them back from the dead when dying from old age's ailments - there's already been one post that suggests that it currently won't, since an immortal dying from disease in friendly dominion didn't come back.