New Dom3 races! Post suggestions here!

[Endoperez]

After seeing Gandalf's list of themes/ideas that already exist in Dominions I started to think. I found two theme/ideas that I don't think already exist: culture that values spartan way of life, resistance to pain, strength of body and mind strong enough to control it perfectly. Another one has been in side-role many times, but never really the main thing of a race: monasteries. I think they would go well together:

*only light to medium infantry, but very skilled and not expensive
*sacred heavy infantry, if it is made different enough from Heart Brothers
*monk/eunuch mages and leaders, also quite skilled

I don't know what magics I would give them, but some levels of Earth could represent the hardiness of theirs. No Death, as the dead should be given rest, but maybe a path with strong summons. Astral could be, but more for the spiritual/divine guidance than for any 'real' reason. Maybe nature, as monks often worked as healers and herbalists in the middle ages.

I would like the leaders being viable choice for casting some personal buffs and going to front line, but they would have to have many hitpoints, extreme skills or be way too cheap. I don't know of a real theme for it, so it it more of an idea than a nation ready enough for a mod, but anyway...

[Tyrant]

I'd like to see nations modeled on the Persians, Mongols, and Indians.

Persia was one of the great empires of antiquity and battled it out with the Greeks and Romans for centuries. They had a rich mythic and magical tradition and should be easy to make a nation out of. Fire, air, and hoards of bowman for starters.

Mongolia would be tougher to do in DomII since light cav is such a crappy troop type, but perhaps DomIII will address that.

India is a huge chunk of the world and home of all kinds of exotic mysticism. I don't know much about ancient India, and it might be hard to isolate a mythic thematic thread, but something could be done.

A Celtic nation might be good too. Man has a wiff of it already, but i'd like to see more of a pure dark age celtic thing instead of Romano-Celts.

Carthage or the Phoniceans (the "sea peoples") might work.

I like the suggestions above for the Shogunate and a real Eygptian nation.

[Humer]

Tyrant said:
India is a huge chunk of the world and home of all kinds of exotic mysticism. I don't know much about ancient India, and it might be hard to isolate a mythic thematic thread, but something could be done.

Yeah, they should feature the Karmic(sp?) wheel: all troops and/or commanders are immortal, but only so that when they die (in own domain) they reincarnate as different troop/commander based on... what? Luck? Productivity? Other scale? Experience? This is where my imagination fails me.

Of course, this requires a whole new system to implement - but then again, I'm no dev.

And cows as sacred troops! Yeah.

- Humer

[Mind Elemental]

Actually, Mongol Empire = Barbarian Kings T'ien Chi, if I'm not mistaken, and Persia is also included in Arcoscephale.

[PashaDawg]

How about based on Indian (Hindu) myths?

Or based on Native American or Eskimo myths?

A Zoroastrian/Persian type thing could be fun, too.

Or some sort of race that normally inhabits another plane of existence/dimension but has managed to manifest themselves on “this” plane/dimension. I'm thinking of something supernatural, but not undead.

Arabian knights type stuff would also be very cool.

Just some vague stabs in the dark...

[Kel]

PashaDawg said:
Or some sort of race that normally inhabits another plane of existence/dimension but has managed to manifest themselves on “this” plane/dimension. I'm thinking of something supernatural, but not undead.

You mean...like R'lyeh ?

- Kel

[deccan]

Kel said:

You mean...like R'lyeh ?
- Kel

Perhaps he means something more like Ether Lords / Warriors instead of weird indescribable monsters, drawing on D&D planescape.

[Cainehill]

deccan said:

Perhaps he means something more like Ether Lords / Warriors instead of weird indescribable monsters, drawing on D&D planescape.

Slaadi! Githyankees and Githzerais and Githwrapping!

[PashaDawg]

deccan said:

Perhaps he means something more like Ether Lords / Warriors instead of weird indescribable monsters, drawing on D&D planescape.

R'leyh seems like aliens or Call of Cuthulhu (sp?) /Lovecraft. "Ether Lords" is on point, because I was getting some "inspiration" from the "pale" race in the game "Etherlords." They are an odd sort of mix of an Indian/Persian/Native American race of beings that are commonly only a shadow on this plane of existence, unless they use magic to materialize themselves on this plane, and they can be sent back to their own plane (but not die) unless magic is used to trap them here and then kill them... well, I am making this up... In fact, there could be two races: a guardian type race and an evil malevolent race... maybe that's too much...

[Peter Ebbesen]

Hmm. I like a "Return of the Ether Lords" theme as an idea. Start with human followers (astral/death mages, recruitable everywhere, best mage SSD? capital only), default priests, weak light/medium infantry with independent strength archers (shortbows).

To use a mechanism already in place, give them a summoning site (akin to R'lyehs) in their capital which allows an astral mage to summon in reinforcements. The stronger the mage in astral, the stronger the Ether reinforcement.

A mage of astral skill S and death skill D will receive one pack at random from the categories allowed by his skills from the following list per turn.
Code:

---

ReqS ReqD

  1    0  1d6+S Troopers

  2    1  1d6+S Warriors

  3    1  1 Champion[leader SSD?]

  4    1  1d6+S Troopers + 1 Champion

  5    1  1d6+S Warriors + 1 Champion

  6    2  1 Lord[leader SSSDD?] - make lords produce 1 astral gem and 1 death gem/turn

  7    2  1d6+S Troopers + 1 Lord

  8    2  1d6+S Warriors + 1 Lord

  9    3  1 Prince[leader SSSSDD??] - make princes produce 3 astral gems and 2 death gems/turn

---

Chance of insanity depending on astral strength. (Ether beings being nearly immune)

Then give them two special spells, "Summon Ether Troopers" (SSD, 10 Astral Gems for 5 Ether Troopers) and "Summon Ether Warrior" (SSSD, 3 Astral, 1 Ether Warrior"). Alternatively, give the leaders "Summon Allies" ability. (Champion->1xTrooper, Lord->1xWarrior, Prince->2xWarrior), though that would perhaps be too powerful given the substantial odds of getting an extra leader per turn for somebody who made an Astral 9 pretender.

Together with Ether Gate, that should allow the player to summon ever larger Ether Armies.... Either slowly through the gate back in the capital (a steady trickle of good to excellent forces) or through summoning at the cost of a lot of astral gems.

One completely sick idea would be to give them a base income of 10 astral gems/turn and the handicap of automatically changing all gems to astral gems (1 astral for each 2) corresponding to automatic use of alchemisation after site-income has been added to the pool each resolution phase. They do drain the world of other magic than themselves, right? If you want to use other types of gems, you'll just have to alchemise back and use them during the same turn (or store them on scouts...)