Drain Life

[Boron]

Wights are not a really good example .
By the time you can summon them with the lvl 9 spell most of your opponents should be able to get wither bones casters .
Wither bones kills the wights really so quickly that it is not funny . Especially when cast by lamia queens or Sauromancers .The former is available to almost any nation . Eagle Eyes , Wither Bones x4 , and 1 Relief casting Lamia or Ivy King and your Wights are gone really fast .

Mech Men and the like otoh are very vulnerable to spells that target MR like nether darts etc. .

Imo the only really a bit overpowered summons are the blood summons . FoDs and Devils are uber . And the Devil is strangely the cheapest summon also . Vs the Devil only Air and Cold spells work but holy pyre and the other fire spells don't . Really problematic it gets with soul contract generated devils and with wished blood .
I think there is nothing more cost effective you can do in dominions than clamhoard and then wish for blood . Then you get decent Thugs with the devil leaders from horde to hell , good defense troops with vampires and vampire lords and good + cheap troops with the devil .

With national troops imo unfortunately the supply system is a bit broken . In SP i always play with 500% or 1000% supply multiplikator and 200% resource multiplikator .
The resources are the second unfair thing , ulm and other resource intensive nations have big problems getting lots of troops .
But some national troops that require few resources are really good also , especially the centaur warriors from pangenea and all kinds of missile units with flaming weapons .

Basically Dominions is quite balanced but because of the too serious supply + resource restrictions only resourcecheap nationals are worth being recruited . Zens spell mod does it just right , ghost riders need 6 death instead of 4 to be cast , same for wrathful skies .
If you add a supply x300-500% multiplicator then everything is fine and most national troops are worth being used also .

I always play SP with 15 or 16 impossible AIs , 200% resource multiplicator and 1000% supply multiplicator on a rather small map like karan . It is fun and very often i lose to the ai hordes .
Even with caelum and either doing false horror spamming or thunderstrike squads i got overwhelmed until turn 40 by 3 attacking AIs .

[Saber Cherry]

Boron said:
With national troops imo unfortunately the supply system is a bit broken . In SP i always play with 500% or 1000% supply multiplikator and 200% resource multiplikator.

(snip)

If you add a supply x300-500% multiplicator then everything is fine and most national troops are worth being used also.

Interesting, I'll try that. There are some units that I simply never use (mainly, heavy cavalry sorts) because of resource limitations.

I sort of like starving AI troops because it feels so good to beat a huge army with a little army, but then it probably gives false feedback and reinforces weak tactics

[Oversway]

Now the question in my mind is: how badly should summons beat national troops? Currently national troops get pretty spanked.

I agree, that is the main issue here. Then again, I don't think its fair to compare a group of heavy infantry to some summoned troops. Most likely there will be mages on both sides, etc. But then it is really more difficult to balance. Still, I think some of the mods are really doing a good job at keeping national troops a little more viable.

[The_Tauren13]

All I can say is "Zen rules". I think he has done a truly remarkable job with his spell mod. I wish more people would play it.
Just make a quick mod that nerfs hoarding items (and maybe life drain), use Zens spell, scale and pretender mods, play on small, crowded maps with very difficult research, and I think youll find the game quite balanced and quite fun

[Arralen]

So it boils down to the fact that province sizes where greatly cut down in Dom2 vs. the standard Dom1 maps. I can remember getting provinces or 20k pop easily, but in Dom2 you'll have 15k pop with a grassland province (which takes a big -50% ressource hit for being grassland). Most other provs are 4k-8k size.

Less pop means less ressources and less supply. (add to that the change supply generation from castles..)

But units costs where never adjusted to fit this!

I'm running my SP games with +50% ress/richness and +200% supply and with diff research since these things are moddable and have had whole lot of fun, even with only normal AIs ... .

[Graeme Dice]

The total amount of gold in the economy was cut to less than half the amount in Dom1, so a simple change would be to double the amount of gold produced, while leaving resources alone via a mod.

[Zen]

Yes, Zen Rules!

Just an update. I've had a few requests to finish my mods (I don't feel right sending out betas)

I plan on doing so in the next week or so (don't quote me).

I have split the Spells mod into two sections that can easily seperate out what some might feel are unneeded changes. One section will be the actual Spells, the other will be Summons.

Look for that one soon. I also have a slight update on the Pretenders (it seems to have been widely accepted).

The reason I bring this up, is because in the Nation mod, not only do I change alot of units (I'm a little reluctant to release parts of it since Cherry modified some in the same fashion I was and don't want to detract from SC's mod).

There are certain moddable things in the game and others unmoddable. You can't make a great divergence in the gold in Dom2 because you cannot mod (and I have a feeling will not be able to in the future) fortresses. Because of this, you cannot modify the gold of the entire game without dramatically shifting the balance of castle placement for carpet castling. While you can at the same time argue that the castles can be defeated easier because of more troops, it doesn't change the "annoying" factor of dealing with an entire map of castles. I don't think making a mod that can only be played with VP's is a good way.

So in the Nation mod I have modified the supplies to 150% of normal as well as Resources. This creates a real feeling of armies clashing, while not rendering certain scales effects useless (Growth for example, could take Death 3 and still field a fairly decent army with Wineskins).

Just my thoughts. Also, rendering certain spells uncastable (like say, Drain Life) so you are required to have the item, use the slots to use the spell (Like a Standard of the Damned) really changes the dynamic of the game.

[Huzurdaddi]

The_Tauren13 said:
All I can say is "Zen rules". I think he has done a truly remarkable job with his spell mod. I wish more people would play it.
Just make a quick mod that nerfs hoarding items (and maybe life drain), use Zens spell, scale and pretender mods, play on small, crowded maps with very difficult research, and I think youll find the game quite balanced and quite fun

Hey that sounds like the faerun game that Soapy ran. It was quite fun. Sadly I made a couple of booboo's in the mod ( Clams used fire gems and growth was too powerful ) but it worked out pretty well.

[Huzurdaddi]

One additional difference was that battlefield spells ( wrathful, etc ) were made very hard to cast. I'm very happy with that change. Hopefully Zen will make wrathful and it's ilk as difficult to cast in his mods.

[Scott Hebert]

I've always wondered what would happen if every spell in the game changed so that its (total) path cost would equal the level at which it was researched.