Patch 'n mod

[Kristoffer O]

No empowerment cheezieness possible

[Edi]

This is a repost from the bug thread, but thought it should be put here as well because it is relevant to this thread and won't be buried under other issues.

Three bugs with Oceania:

• Mermidon (1101), the land-form, has wrong action points. It retains the AP value of the underwater form, Base 24 modified by armor, when it should have base 14. As a consequence, they are as fast as heavy cavalry on land.
• Turtle warriors turn to regular mermen (1046) when you take them to land and back to water again. This is because the regular Oceanian merman (1046) has land-form merman (1047), which is shared by the turtle warrior. 1047 reverts back to 1046, regardless of whether it started out as turtle warrior or merman 1046.
• Turtle Captain suffers the same fate as turtle warrior, he just becomes merman captain.

I think the turtle warrior and captain bugs are a consequence of incorrect secondshape assignment, because turtle warrior is #1097 and turtle captain is #1099, but I can't get monsters #1098 and #1100 (presumably the turtle warrior and captain landforms, respectively) visible in any way. These bugs take a lot of the flavor out from Oceania, in my opinion.

Edi

[tinkthank]

Ì must have been really out of the action for a few months -- when was Clam of Pearls changed from 2W to 2W1N ? Was this in 2.15? I cant find these balance change notes anywhere. Is this mentioned in a thread somewhere?

(Boron: This is another reason why "clamhoarding" will not be more difficult with them, Boron. Actually, I see no real feasible way to give them a fire blessing, since they dont have any pretender with decent fire-skills.)

[Edi]

The clam is changed in the Oceania mod, I'm not sure if it's changed in 2.15 itself, because the Oceania mod code has the change implemented.

[Cainehill]

Edi said:
The clam is changed in the Oceania mod, I'm not sure if it's changed in 2.15 itself, because the Oceania mod code has the change implemented.

Heh. That seems to make it unlikely that the Oceania mod will be used in many MP games - certainly not games that include other nations like R'lyeh that can utilize clamming without the mod. (It'd be one thing if the mod removed clams altogether, but to take it away from some nations while keeping them for the Oceania theme?)

[Boron]

tinkthank said:
Ì must have been really out of the action for a few months -- when was Clam of Pearls changed from 2W to 2W1N ? Was this in 2.15? I cant find these balance change notes anywhere. Is this mentioned in a thread somewhere?

(Boron: This is another reason why "clamhoarding" will not be more difficult with them, Boron. Actually, I see no real feasible way to give them a fire blessing, since they dont have any pretender with decent fire-skills.)

It is only changed in the oceania mod :
Code:

---

 #selectitem "Clam of Pearls"

#mainpath 2

#mainlevel 2

#secondarypath 6

#secondarylevel 1

#end

 

---

Hm this is unfair though .
So in a game with oceania mod they are the only nation which can hoard clams en masse .
All other nations need a jade sorceress for that with lucky random picks or really luck with random picks from their mages .

Hopefully this idea is not followed in dominions 3 .
I wanna rather see more hoarditems there especially like soul contract

[Turin]

You want to see more hoarditems?? Playing with tons of hoard items removes most of the strategy imho.

Who cares how many provinces you have when your income comes mostly from clams/fetishes.
I really like that in games with no hoarding you have to choose how to spend your limited resources and the game doesn´t turn into a giant wishfest/micromanagement nightmare.

Especially since you can get such massive discounts on forging.

Take the god is a bullet game for example. I had the forge of the ancients up for ~20 turns. Together with a hammer and a forge bonus site I can forge clams for 2 water gems. Now if there hadn´t been a limit on hoard items in that game my income would be so humongous now, that the other nations wouldn´t have the slightest chance resulting in an easy win for me.

With the hoarding limiting rule there are 4 other powerful nations left, and I have to consider carefully on what I should spend my big, but not unlimited income and I´m looking forward to a very challenging endgame.

[Tuidjy]

> You want to see more hoarditems?? Playing with tons of hoard items removes
> most of the strategy imho.

Just in your not humble enough opinion. First of all, hoarding is not 100%
necessary to win. I consider myself a decent player, and I seldom
start hoarding before turn 20-30, by which time many people have gone critical.
Second, hoarding is in no way a guarantee for winning. I would put it behind
diplomacy, race selection, and anticipating the enemy, in that order. Third,
even if hoarding in general were necessary to win, there are still enough
different kinds of hoarding to make things interesting. So, yes, I would
like to see more hoardable items.

> Who cares how many provinces you have when your income comes mostly from
> clams/fetishes.

And this is necessarily bad? If you managed to get to that point with just
your capital province, you must be really good. If not, what are you
complaining about?

> I really like that in games with no hoarding you have to choose how to spend
> your limited resources and the game doesn´t turn into a giant
> wishfest/micromanagement nightmare.

What I really hate more than house rules, is unenforceable house rules.

> Especially since you can get such massive discounts on forging.

You can? Then you must have done something right. Doing something is right is
what the game is about.

[Alneyan]

Technically, you can enforce "no hoarding" from a game, as item modding should now be available. Make clams and the whole thing require 5 Nature and 5 Air, and you will be virtually rid of them (summon spells are easier to remove from the picture).

The other way is, as usual, to have a devoted host (and host only) check the game every single turn. This would, however, not exactly be feasible in this case, unless you only have a few players in the game.

[Ivan Pedroso]

Turin said:
Take the god is a bullet game for example. I had the forge of the ancients up for ~20 turns. Together with a hammer and a forge bonus site I can forge clams for 2 water gems. Now if there hadn´t been a limit on hoard items in that game my income would be so humongous now, that the other nations wouldn´t have the slightest chance resulting in an easy win for me.

With the hoarding limiting rule there are 4 other powerful nations left, and I have to consider carefully on what I should spend my big, but not unlimited income and I´m looking forward to a very challenging endgame.

I'm C'tis in that game - and I feel that because of the limits on clams/fetishes/stones/contracts we'll have an interesting endgame.

I don't think your forge would have been up that long had it not been for those limits - but I totally agree - if there are no limitations a Forge should be dispelled ASAP. And I hope that domIII will have well balanced gem producing items, they do serve a purpose as an on-board gem surply for a battle-mage. Actually they could serve to lessen micro-management if they were only used in that way, but of cause people abuse them.

Just got an idea(sorry if it has already been proposed) :
What if gem producing items were only usable by mages with a combined magic path level of 3 or above. They are the only ones that really need gems in battle, because most spells that have a gem cost have path requirements of 3 or above (so a WSS mage could use a pearl and would thus always have some on him, and if he communions or otherwise gets boosted in astral - viola - he has the gems he needs to cast the big stuff). And there are no cheap 3-path(combined) summons to use as mules (spectral mages are 10D, and so perhaps a restriction of 4+ combined paths might work better). Could this work ? You could still slap one on a commander that didn't have the required magic skill, it just wouldn't produce any gems, if you need to transport such an item. The fantasy-rationale behind this restriction could be that it requires some skill to harness the gems from the item. You would still be able to "hoard" them, but the mules would a least not be cheap scouts etc. Or make the total combined path requirement 4, then it would be quite expensive to use more than 20 of each - and I wouldn't call 20-30 pearls in a big game "hoarding".