Mictlan

[Daynarr]

Judging from new pictures C'tis shamans are hippies.

[atul]

I personally like the theme of Dominions regarding national troops and summons. You start the war relying on your nationals, but things slowly (or not so slowly) escalate to the point where common people have little business being in the battlefield - except as a diversion. Some feeling of apocalyptic grandeur or such.

Anyway, remembering the same complains from threads along the years, I got the impression that the main beef of people was that while the beginning featured a varied group of distict nations, the end-game devolved into armies of identical groups of summons. I dunno whether the increased number of tweaks, new beasts and spells already addresses that thing, but...

...one of the things leading to the identical summons seemed to be the ease of empowerment of magic paths. Get one blood random, start hunting, empower, turn Man into a blood nation. Get a death random, begin site scrying, empower, suddenly Marignon fields Tartarians. And so on.

We already have lists of each nation's favoured magic paths. How about a couple of disfavoured paths for each? Double (or triple) the empowerment cost of disfavoured paths for all nation's mages as the general resentment of the magic in question makes it tough to improve on (hard blood magic for many nations, hard fire magic for mages living in flammable forest cities, I dare you to research air magic underwater, etc), lessen the empowerment cost of favoured paths. Make it harder to get high levels in all of the paths deemed "useful", and not all nations start bringing in an army after army of Tartarians, devils, abominations, wished SCs and tarrasques.

Obviously I haven't thought this one through, the idea just occured to me.

[Nerfix]

Actually, the identical composition of the armies is my biggest grieve. Maybe the national summons can spice things up, or then they become just another high-level powerfull magic summons.

....which are, in the worst case, not used because it's just too profitable to churn out demons.

[DominionsFan]

Nerfix said:
Actually, the identical composition of the armies is my biggest grieve. Maybe the national summons can spice things up, or then they become just another high-level powerfull magic summons.

....which are, in the worst case, not used because it's just too profitable to churn out demons.

Yeah its a shame, I mean even in Doms 2. we had 1000+ units, and basically only a "few" were used in the late game. I think there should be much more viable units for endgame tactics. Hell even the national troops should stand a chance in the endgame. Why is the player forced to use a few summoning spells in the late game? I think it would be much more fun to play with more summonings spells -> much more equally strong endgame beasts, also high level national troops would be good as well. I think these things can be modded in Doms 3. It will be hard work, but if the player can "change" the summoning spells, it is doable. [I meant to change a specific summoning spell like 1. to summon an other monster, not the original one. 2. give the spell a new required level & gemcost]

[Graeme Dice]

DominionsFAN said:
Hell even the national troops should stand a chance in the endgame.

If national troops, which require absolutely no research, are still viable when level 9 spells are being cast, then you have a bigger problem with game balance. That problem being that the research wasn't worth the cost.

I meant to change a specific summoning spell like 1. to summon an other monster, not the original one. 2. give the spell a new required level & gemcost]

Have you ever even read the modding manual? Everything you describe is already possible.

[DominionsFan]

Well I wasnt modding in Doms 2. and I wasnt looking at the modding manual at all..

Btw Graeme you misunderstood me! If you read back a bit, I mentioned, that these new high level national troops should be summoned.

[NTJedi]

Well I personally feel national troops should exist within most of the game. Since most national troops do not compare or equal the power behind most summoned troops I believe the national troops should provide a different use within the game.

Instead of weakening summoned units maybe Illwinter has planned a way to make national troops provide some other bonus(es) to other aspects of the game. This way national troops will be used beyond early stages of the game.

One suggestion I listed was that national troops would provide a special bonus to province defense when national troops equal the province defense... thus gamers would be interested in buying national troops throughout the game.

[Cainehill]

Again : an "armanent" school of "magic" to research could allow better, beefier, troops. Imagine : Ulm researches "Black Volcanic Steel Armor" for its troops. Caelum researches "Mechanically Winged Holy Wingless" or "Dirigible Mastodons".

Hell, shut up wolf, write your own game

[Nerfix]

Graeme Dice said:If national troops, which require absolutely no research, are still viable when level 9 spells are being cast, then you have a bigger problem with game balance. That problem being that the research wasn't worth the cost.

This is where I bank my hope on national summons.

They are similiar to national troops, require reseach and are hopefuly competive with other magic boogies.

[DominionsFan]

Nerfix said:

This is where I bank my hope on national summons.

They are similiar to national troops, require reseach and are hopefuly competive with other magic boogies.

I think national summons gonna be monsters, not troops equipped with armor/weapons. Anyways lets wait and see! .. but Im gonna implent my ideas to my total conversion mod for sure. I think its gonna be neat.