Ermor themes, too strong?

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Which brings up a question about the cradle game we're playing in. How on earth did my dominion go from positive to -9 in a particular province in one turn?

I've only played the demo, but occasionally, the engine burps when it processes a turn - Once, playing Abyssa, I got a unholy-4 fire-3 devil commander off of a soul contract on the exact same turn one of my priest-4 fire-3 commanders died from a horror attacking him due to one of the soul contracts he was carrying; I only saw it happen once, but it happened.

Also, one option: It appears that pretenders, prophets, home provinces, and temples have a secondary dominion spread effect than just the area right around the pretender, prophet, home province, or temples - the "conVersion rate" - it appears to act by adding dominion, at random, to anything currently in your dominion or next to your dominion that is not at your maximum dominion. If this is so, late game, if two or more players have lots of temples and such, and a mostly peaked dominion inside their own areas of control, it could be possible that 18-19 such conVersion points could hit one border province on a single turn. That is, if the conVersion rates work like I suspect they do, which is no sure thing.

It might be a bug, might not.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
There were four seraphines preaching in an adjacent province

Preaching in an adjacent province doesn't spread dominion, because preaching only raises dominion in the current province....and if your dominion strength is at least 7, Seraphines, even preaching at a temple couldn't push you over to max dominion and result in spillover anyway.

and a temple one over with dom strength 7, so it seemed really strange to me.

Going from positive to -9 is a rather sudden and dramatic shift, 'tis true. On the other hand, a lone temple alone may not be sufficient to stop a massed array of temples feeding dominion outwards.

i think that game's just about over anyways, since there's absolutely no gold anywhere on that map.

Cradle does seem to be a little lacking in pure farmlands and "large" provinces. Perhaps the next time we try this map, it should be done with "rich" world option to avoid the "no gold" effect. At least there's lots of gems: Have you tried converting gems to gold by alchemy? That's where most gold I use is from.

[ April 11, 2004, 00:12: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Preaching in an adjacent province doesn't spread dominion, because preaching only raises dominion in the current province....and if your dominion strength is at least 7, Seraphines, even preaching at a temple couldn't push you over to max dominion and result in spillover anyway.

They will prevent enemy dominion from spreading through the province they are in however. There is also some chance that even a dominion that is not at the maximum in a province will spread, which is seen most commonly in the very beginning turns.

Cradle does seem to be a little lacking in pure farmlands and "large" provinces. Perhaps the next time we try this map, it should be done with "rich" world option to avoid the "no gold" effect.

I don't particularly like how the rich setting also doubles resources, so I was thinking that I would just mod the amount of gold a given population produces to double gold income only.

At least there's lots of gems: Have you tried converting gems to gold by alchemy? That's where most gold I use is from.

I have been, but Caelum has a particularly hard time finding both fire and earth gems.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
They will prevent enemy dominion from spreading through the province they are in however. There is also some chance that even a dominion that is not at the maximum in a province will spread, which is seen most commonly in the very beginning turns.

This is true, but the chance of a temple check attacking a neighboring province appears to be independent of the strength of dominion in the current province, except for the case where the current province is at maximum dominion strength: Then the temple has no choice BUT to attack a neighboring province.

The interesting question is how a temple check propagates out beyond the immediately neighboring province, as temples are clearly capable of spreading dominion further than a neighboring province: Perhaps there's a chance that a temple check which attacks a neighboring province instead bounces and attacks a neighbor of that neighbor: Obviously, this may be forced if the temple's neighbors are also all at full dominion, and perhaps contain temples of their own: If this is what happens, and the nation is jampacked with many temples and is at max dominion in most provinces, the dominion spread may be forced outwards like a giant tidal wave, which WOULD very much account for the overwhelming force with which it overran your own dominion, since the above profile fits my empire.

]I don't particularly like how the rich setting also doubles resources, so I was thinking that I would just mod the amount of gold a given population produces to double gold income only.

Can that be done in a .map file? If it requires a full mod, the Cradle map may be fundamentally unfavorable towards gold-dependent races.

quote:

---

At least there's lots of gems: Have you tried converting gems to gold by alchemy? That's where most gold I use is from.

I have been, but Caelum has a particularly hard time finding both fire and earth gems.

---

Caelum is also a water nation, with cheap national water mages. High Seraphs can easily roll a random in Astral, which can then jumpstart the process. Surely you can afford to simply use Acashic Record to search for those necessary fire and earth gems, since Gnome Lore and Augury are not castable by basic national mages?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Can that be done in a .map file? If it requires a full mod, the Cradle map may be fundamentally unfavorable towards gold-dependent races.

That's a mod only change.

Caelum is also a water nation, with cheap national water mages. High Seraphs can easily roll a random in Astral, which can then jumpstart the process. Surely you can afford to simply use Acashic Record to search for those necessary fire and earth gems, since Gnome Lore and Augury are not castable by basic national mages?

To get a high seraph to astral 3 takes a good 75 pearls, and then you are going to be spending a lot more pearls to search provinces that have been almost totally searched anyways. You're really better off just sending around a search team of two high seraphs of fire 1 and earth 1.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
To get a high seraph to astral 3 takes a good 75 pearls, and then you are going to be spending a lot more pearls to search provinces that have been almost totally searched anyways. You're really better off just sending around a search team of two high seraphs of fire 1 and earth 1.

75 pearls? No way. It takes 40 pearls: Take an S1 High Seraph, empower to Astral-2 at the cost of 30 pearls, and forge a Starshine. You can use him for the purpose of scanning any new provinces you take for a full search. If you can take F or E High Seraph and give him a booster, you can then easily do probings for Fire and Earth on your searched provinces as well. If the terrain around you is so apparently poor in gold, then it will be rich in resources and gems, because mountains and forests are higher-resource provinces, and wastes, swamps, mountains, and forests again are also richer in magical sites: Acashic Record is very much to your benefit on such targets.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
75 pearls? No way. It takes 40 pearls: Take an S1 High Seraph, empower to Astral-2 at the cost of 30 pearls, and forge a Starshine.

Bah. I need to pay more attention to what I'm saying.

Acashic Record is very much to your benefit on such targets.

Except of course when you've already completely searched for every other type of site (except blood).