.. the game of mutual self-destruction ..

[Teraswaerto]

Take growth and order, and don't overtax --> steady increase of population. I do agree that there are too many really bad random events, makes taking order nearly a must.

[Nerfix]

The "mindess plants" event sounds like the spell Imprint Souls. Did the province get attacked?

[Arralen]

mindless plants:
How likely is it that R'lyeh casts an Astral-4, Thaumaturgy-6 spell in turn 30/31?
They can do it, maybe.
It was recorded as random event, not an attacking spell (does it ever?). There was a battle with some mandragoras and manikin attacking. Look very much like a servere Version of the vine man attack too me (text is nearly the same).

Nevertheless the thing is broken: Judging from the description, it should kill some inhabitants, not 95% or 30.000 of them.

You cannot grow back such losses - it would have needed 500 turns (!) of growth+3 (remember, pop doesn't move so I would have had to start out with the remaining 1500 pop). That takes me to the second topic:

pop growth
At first, choosing growth+3, order+3 and some luck to get the hero commanders at all costs some 240+ design points. Most designs simply don't have so much points to spare.
Second, growth is too slow initially:
0,6% growth will give you +20% pop on turn 30, +80% pop at turn 100 - sounds great, isn't worth it.
All those pesky 7000-pop provinces will be at 8400 30 turns later, which doesn't make much of a difference .. one turn of quelling heay unrest or pillaging will reduce it to rubble anyway - with no chance of recovery.

S.

[ November 22, 2003, 09:30: Message edited by: Arralen ]

That was more than likely an attack spell. No attack spells except artillery type (Vine Arrow etc) have a non-random message.

If you had that happen on your first 10 turns I'd say it didn't have a chance, but 30+ he could have researched well beyond that point. Especially if he has most of his underwater provinces still.

[Keir Maxwell]

Sadly the wars around the accension of the gods are not a positive thing for the ordinary folk of the world.

Two things I would like to see looked at on this:

Default growth scale of +1 - or maybe +1/2 - for both independents and player/ai races. This would mean that a death 1 race would still enevitably fail as they cannot grow while it can certainly lose population while a baseline race or inde would slowly grow. Growth should be slow and collapse into chaos is always a possibility but surely the norm, as Arralen says, should be slow growth not no growth.

I think luck needs reworking - more like the Dom 1 way where it affected likelyhood of events making luck 0 the safest option. This would increase the value of the luck scale (at least the not playing misfortune part) somewhat from its present degraded value.

At present I'm testing turmoil/luck races and they do seem to get more bad events than order/misfortune races though the occasional beauty (chainmail of displacement for PoD) makes up for alot and I have seen alot of hero's. The whole order/misfortune thing has a large impact on race designs as whatever fits this approach is easiest to make work - I don't get a meaningful amount of random events at order +3 so the misfortune 3 (or sometimes 2) only really effects national hero's.

I think the Barbarian Kings recruitment through pillaging/conquest/turmoil idea helps because it gives the race a better return from playing the, generally weak, turmoil approach. I also like being able to play the game in different ways and a barbarian horde that grows as it conquers would add to the variety of the game - as long as its balenced.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

On this general theme I think what we are seeing is people putting alot more points into their pretenders and alot less into their dominion. I often have no points left (or negative) when it comes to my dominon scales - no wonder its bad for the people. All these self-centered gods worrying about their struggle for accension. Still wouldn't want to be on the losing side.

cheers

Keir

[Wendigo]

You mean Imprint Souls killed 95% pop? if it works like you said it must be bugged, I have had no time to check most of the new spells but this seems much more powerful than Black Death (which is higher research & much more fitting for population wasting).

I believe the devs said that AIs were more unlikely to pick negative scales the higher their lv, I do not consider this much of an issue in SP anyway.

That said, I like the idea of the world suffering after a global war, it would make no sense for it to end up richer & happier after such devastation, war is a grim affair.

It is also my experience that in Dom I MP players do not engage in province devastation until the very end game: you want the lands of your current opponent as untouched as possible to use vs the next one, only when it's down to the Last 2 nations/sides will the population be targeted.

Do not dismish the long term potential of a growth scale, a 25% pop increase in a minor province might not seem much, but 10,000 more citizens in your capitol is nice.

[ November 22, 2003, 10:06: Message edited by: Wendigo ]