Faerun - started

[Reverend Zombie]

I'd like to join with C'tis, please.

The latest version of Zen's pretender mod on his web page appears to be 2.00. Where can we find 2.01?

[Boron]

DragonFire11 said:
Assuming that I have not been banned for incompetence, Dragonfire would like to play Abysia. Thanks!

Oops sorry i realized now that i forgot to include you in the initial list. I shouldn't always post at 2+ a.m. (like now again ).
Aku has already claimed Abysia, i put you on the list with Machaka, the nation you claimed before. If you want still to change feel free to take one of the other still available nations.

Reverend Zombie said:
The latest version of Zen's pretender mod on his web page appears to be 2.00. Where can we find 2.01?

Aku sent me 2.01. Atm he is unfortunately not online but when i meet him again (hopefully tomorrow) i will post where to get 2.01 if Aku has not posted the info before already.

[Aku]

I got zens pretender mod 2.01 from this site.

http://www.dominions-2.org/

after clicking downloads is this link

http://www.dominions-2.org/files.htm

go to zen conceptual balance series

[DragonFire11]

OK, my bad. I stick wih Machaka, b/c after all, that sounds just like one of my favorite mexican food dishes. If any of ya'll come to Phoenix, be sure to stop by La Pinata. I've been eating there since I was about 3 months old, and man, their machaca tortilla plate is simply the best.

[The Panther]

Very interesting that, so far, nobody has picked 2 of the 3 strongest nations: Caelum and Pythium! Maybe the mods are the reason? Or maybe because they both start in the middle of the map and the edges are a far better place to be.

Plus, after all the micro-management pain on our current Faerun game, I see that Soapyfrog and Hazurdaddi are both joining this one? Some people never learn...

[Shmonk]

I have a question about the preferences that will be used - VH Research and 9 indie strength. It seems with those settings, the expansion at the beginning will be very slow, correct? Like what, maybe every 3 turns a new province is taken, or even longer?

I guess I'm still having a hard time getting used to indie strength of 9, at least in my SP. Makes for a slow start. But maybe that's what this game will be about. Slow start, more national armies maybe (because of VH research), and it will be a while before summons can happen.

[Boron]

shmonk said:
I have a question about the preferences that will be used - VH Research and 9 indie strength. It seems with those settings, the expansion at the beginning will be very slow, correct? Like what, maybe every 3 turns a new province is taken, or even longer?

I guess I'm still having a hard time getting used to indie strength of 9, at least in my SP. Makes for a slow start. But maybe that's what this game will be about. Slow start, more national armies maybe (because of VH research), and it will be a while before summons can happen.

A SC-Pretender e.g. can probably still take 1 province a turn from turn 2-5 on depending on the chassis.
This SC-Pretender will be expensive though and with the new scales etc. it is not as an easy choice as in vanilla anymore
But the initial Expansion will be a bit slower of course.
The various Mods and settings shall exactly do what you describe: Give more incentives to build national armies

[Huzurdaddi]

The Panther said:
Very interesting that, so far, nobody has picked 2 of the 3 strongest nations: Caelum and Pythium! Maybe the mods are the reason? Or maybe because they both start in the middle of the map and the edges are a far better place to be.

Pythium gets kind of Borked in this mod. Thurges more expensive, communicants more expensive, troops slightly more expensive. It's pretty watered down.

As for Caelum it's beyond comprehension but they were improved in this version. At least their primary troop: the archer.

A game with this mod and no hoarding restrictions is going to be interesting that is for sure.

I *really* hope that graphs will be off. Graphs being on simply makes the game more titled to hoarders.

[Huzurdaddi]

Heck, I've never played Caelum in a PBEM game. I'll take it instead of Marignon.

I *know* marignon is amazing. I've tried them out before. Let's see if Caelum lives up to the hype.

And Panther. You are right I never learn. Actually where I work is *very* quite right now, I've never seen a company this "quiet" so I have some time at this exact moment to play a game. However this may change in a couple of months. We'll see. Let's hope we can resolve this game very quickly!

[Saber Cherry]

Huzurdaddi said:

Pythium gets kind of Borked in this mod. Thurges more expensive, communicants more expensive, troops slightly more expensive. It's pretty watered down.

As for Caelum it's beyond comprehension but they were improved in this version. At least their primary troop: the archer.

Pythium did get slightly toned down, but they're still very potent with cheap communicants and cheap, powerful, sacred, holy mages. Also, assassins were improved and cheapened, so they may now be of use to Pythium. I think that people just don't using things that are "nerfed" even if they are still powerful . For example, I was trying to convince someone to buy a Celeron-based laptop (personally, I only use AMD, but notebook computers are one area where Intel still has some advantages). This person had a very tight budget, of around $600... and he was never, ever, ever going to use the computer for anything other than Word, Outlook Express, and Internet Explorer (so he really didn't need anything above a Pentium 100). But he would not buy the Celeron because "he had heard from people that Celeron is worse than Pentium," which is true, but made him pay $100 more on the processor and compromise on things like screen size and RAM, which would have been much more important to him in practice... just to avoid something that was "nerfed"

As for Caelum - the troop lineup was toned down, IMO, in that magical weapons and flight no longer came "free." Their scouts became more expensive too. The only units that dropped in price were:
Archers, who are essentially unarmored and unshielded and therefore die easily to anything (even soulless or 4g slingers) and also get -1 morale;
and Wingless, who are capitol-only and thus compete with Temple Guards for resources, and are hard to use with other Caelian units because they can't fly.
I'm fairly certain that Caelum was reduced in power, not boosted; considering that the gold cost of the Caelian Archer was dropped by 10% while indy unarmored archers were dropped by 25%, even that unit was weakened in the context of the mod. The only area where Caelum was empowered was in food, as the mod's 60% supply increase is very handy to Caelum (and Jotunheim and Ryleh, for that matter).

Both nations seem (to me) to still be stronger than average, and I think only the "nerf factor" prevents people from jumping on them like in unmodded games But I'll be watching closely to see if I'm wrong...