Drain Life

[Tuidjy]

Life drain is overrated, SCs are overrated, everything is overrated. The
ultimate weapon in Dominions II is the specialist mage squad, and if it is
made out of Tartarian Titans, so much the better.

As extremely well equiped SC is only marginally better than a decently
equiped one. Sure, it kills chaffe a bit better, but no unsupported Sc
will win a battle of the opponents choosing.

In my current game, I just eliminated an enemy pretender loaded with life-drain,
the Aegis, and quite a few magic paths with two warlocks, a sage and a relief
spammer. The same squad would have taken three Lords of the Gates instead of
one, no problems.

The one trick that wins Dominions II is to always have a rock to the enemy's
scisors, which is why you will not see a good player whine about nerfing
'overpowered' stuff. There is no tactic without a counter. Fortunately, not
all races have all the tactics and counters... and unfortunately, some races
have too few counters, or none (Ulm)

[Oversway]

I'm curious. What, if anything, would you like to see changed in dom2 or dom3, Tuidjy? You seem to be firmly in the "don't touch a thing" crowd, but maybe you have your own pet ideas?

[FrankTrollman]

I'm very nearly in the "don't touch a thing" camp. I'd mostly like to see:
[*] More Information available to the player (ex.: when I mind hunt a province, I want the message to say which province got hunted in addition to who did it and the name of the guy who got hit.
[*] Small balance changes. Cave Drakes are too expensive, Ghost Riders are too cheap. Not by a lot, but enough so it matters.
[*] More options. I want to be able to select from a menu when I build a castle. Sometimes I want to invest in a Fortified City or a Mountain Stronghold, and sometimes I don't. I should have that kind of option on a per-province basis.
[*] More stuff. I want to find provinces that are populated by Giants or Vaetti. I want to have multiple different versions of things show up at each research level - when I get Summoning 3 I should be able to make Vine Ogres or Vine Beasts, not just one.

In short, I want subtle tweaks that make the game more accessible and deeper, rather than an explosive nerf campaign against every strategy I don't use.

-Frank

[Bummer_Duck]

FrankTrollman said:
[*] Ghost Riders are too cheap. Not by a lot, but enough so it matters.
-Frank

Maybe 7 Death gems. My biggest beef on this, though, is that GR, Well of Misery, and Tartarian Gate are all in Conj. They should be in seperate disciplines.

[Oversway]

Thanks. I like a lot of those, especially the first four.

[Tuidjy]

Of course I do. I will not go into details, but here are a few places where
I'd look for improvements.

1. All orders should be checked by the server, not by the client
2. Scripts should allow for 'hold', 'repeat last order', 'loop script'
3. Castles need to be balanced. Protecting sites should be an add-on per site
4. More counter-spells - to calm storms, to evaporate thunderclouds, de-buff...
5. More 'slayer' weapons - in addition to undead/deamon, magic, construct, etc..
6. Stiffer penalties for being outnumbered by _sentient_ troops
7. Higher bonus to precision against huge targets
8. Gem generators' chance of working should decline as more items are built
9. Items and spells that severely hinder spellcasting on the battlefiend
10. Globals that severely hinder spellcasting in friendly domain
11. Globals that protect or disable other globals until dispelled
12. Better low level summons
13. More, and better troop buffing spells
14. Ulm and T'ien Ch'i to be made half-way competitive. War engines for Ulm.
15. The ability to cap spell level from the game setup menu

[Huzurdaddi]

Tuidjy said:
2. Scripts should allow for 'hold', 'repeat last order', 'loop script'

This is one of the 1st things I asked the dev's for when I started playing the game. While they agreed that the implementation would be trivial they said that the implications would be quite large and thus they were hesitant.

I'm a control freak so I'm all for it. However it is clear that it would swing the balance further towards mages.

And point #1 I personally think is 100% required for internet play. This is not a peer-to-peer game where enforcement is impossible, it's client server and you should never trust the client, ever.

[The_Tauren13]

Well, Tuidjy, up until that last post of yours, I cant say Ive ever agreed with anything youve said. Where did all those great suggestions come from?

[Zapmeister]

I'm 100% behind Tuidjy's and the subsequent posts. I really hope the devs read this thread.

[FrankTrollman]

On the cost of Summonings angle:

Very basically the mark-up that people pay for distance summons that stay around is too high. That's why Call of the Wild and Arouse Hunger are too expensive. The cost break for summons that don't stay around is too high as well. Ghost Riders and Earth Attack are too cheap.

Very basically the mark-up that people pay for getting a spell at a low level of research is too high. Ice Drakes and Summon Animals are too expensive.

Very basically, the price hike for getting non-unique leaders out of your summons is usually too big. The Harbringer Angel is overcosted. The Archangel is even worse (partially because it is a distant summons that sticks around, and partially because it comes with a leader, it ends up simply costing about a millsion gazillion more gems than could possibly be justified).

-Frank