Balancing Wrathful Skies

[johan osterman]

Tudijy: Stacking enchantments/buffs would reward players trying to cover all possible paths in order to reap the full benefits of the buffs. While this might serve to deal with wrathfull skies and increase the duration of national troops it would promulgate an unappealing warlords III'ish mischmasch buff approach. I would prefer if you did not stand to gain from buffing soldiers with combinations of the type: warriors of muspelheim + warriors of niefelheim + army of lead + army of gold + body ethreal + barkskin. I find ethreal, cold and heat aspected, soldiers with bodies of both lead and gold with bark for skin a little unaestetic.

[Boron]

Will there be a 2nd form of upkeep in form of Mana or something like that for spells too in Dom 3 ?

Then the issue could be solved imo by making "permanent" spells which give this way "enchanted" troop 50% resistence but cost upkeep each turn .
E.g. a spell for lightning resistence which costs 1 airgem per creature to cast + 1 Mana as Upkeep each turn and gives the troop 50% lightning resistence .

Mana is then e.g. 5 per Province + 5xNumber of Gems gained from sites/turn + 1 per 1000 Population if you have a magically skilled nation like Ermor etc. .

I would wish some more possibilities to enchance troops like Tuidjy as well because i agree with him .
In current Dominions you can outfit all your leaders very well and prepare them well for most situations with the right equipment but with your troops you can only do battlefield buffs which are expensive and not good enough .

So you just try to get the really good troops as quick as possible which are mainly the 200+ hp beasts like abominations , then Mech men and finally the really cheap creatures which are still very powerful , mainly vampires from Vampire lords + devils from soul contracts .
After turn 50 if you see troops you will only see troops from the above mentioned types which are about 10 out of about 500 possible troops .

So a system with permanent ritual like buffs for troops in Dom 3 would be imo a good idea . This is quite well done in Aow 2 SM already (one of the few things where it is a bit superior to Dom 2 ) .

A 2nd form of magical upkeep for all summons would also reduce the extremely exponential growth in lategame a lot because you would have to household with your resources a bit more and wouldn't be able to do things like summoning 30 new Vampire lords from turn 70 or 80 on each turn .

[Tuidjy]

This is wierd. One hour ago, I downloaded the Last turn of the multiplayer game
I'm playing, and as I was looking at my Arch-devils, Ice devils, Storm demons,
and plain old devils, shielded by Abysian Intantries, led by a Virtue, and
backed by hordes of archers and crossbowmen, I was reminded of my favorite
Warlords III stacks - based on the orc race's debuff units (disease, poison,
fear, etc...) and padded with Allies like Archangels, Demons and Dragons.

I am afraid that as a card carrying member of Powergamers Anonymous I should
just shut up and not draw too much attention to myself, lest I suffer the
wrath of the Powers that Be.

[Boron]

Tuidjy said:
This is wierd. One hour ago, I downloaded the Last turn of the multiplayer game
I'm playing, and as I was looking at my Arch-devils, Ice devils, Storm demons,
and plain old devils, shielded by Abysian Intantries, led by a Virtue, and
backed by hordes of archers and crossbowmen, I was reminded of my favorite
Warlords III stacks - based on the orc race's debuff units (disease, poison,
fear, etc...) and padded with Allies like Archangels, Demons and Dragons.

I am afraid that as a card carrying member of Powergamers Anonymous I should
just shut up and not draw too much attention to myself, lest I suffer the
wrath of the Powers that Be.

There is a figure of speech :
Strategy is about winning .
Dominions is a hardcore strategy game so its fangroup should be powergamers .

Fortunately there are so many things to think of that you always forget something so dominions is complex enough and you can't really powergame .
Unlike e.g. Age of Wonders 2 or most other games where it is quickly obvious whats powerful and what is not .

Cause as soon as i find lots of cheap exploits normally a game gets boring for me . In dominions this is nearly impossible