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  #1  
Old October 27th, 2006, 06:35 PM

FrankTrollman FrankTrollman is offline
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Water Magic:

I find Water Mages to be annoyingly useless under water early in the game.

Solution: Why not have Water Strike available at Evocation 0? The indeps are using it from the start of the game, why shouldn't player armies do so as well?

-Frank
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  #2  
Old October 27th, 2006, 07:50 PM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Quote:
FrankTrollman said:
Water Magic:

I find Water Mages to be annoyingly useless under water early in the game.

Solution: Why not have Water Strike available at Evocation 0? The indeps are using it from the start of the game, why shouldn't player armies do so as well?

-Frank
Also, move Boil to...like Alteration 2 or 3 and make it Fire 2 Water 1 or perhaps Water 2/3 Fire 1. An underwater only combat spell that has awkward paths and appears at Alteration 6? No thanks.
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  #3  
Old October 27th, 2006, 08:34 PM

FrankTrollman FrankTrollman is offline
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Quote:
Um, no. Lord of War is 75 points cheaper than Forge Lord or Cyclops. At least the last time I checked. =|
It sure is. However, a Forge Lord has an extra point of dominion and a point of Fire Magic. If you have a Fire Magic of 3, that costs your Forge Lord 24 points and your Lord of War 98 points. If you have a dominion of 4 it costs your Forge Lord 7 points and your Lord of War 21 points.

So that's 156 points of Forge Lord and 169 points of Lord of War.

And if the Lord of War gets anything else, the Forge Lord can get it for the same price or less.

It's cut and dried. The Lord of War is crap.

-Frank
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Old October 27th, 2006, 08:51 PM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

I'll second the Vampire Queen and Corpse Eater being boosted, as well as making the seniors take longer to die. Also perhaps have Old Age work by the percentage of the 'in his prime' time period, due to the also-aforementioned '51(50)/1001(1000) issue. Fire boosting aging would probably be much less of a problem itself if aging worked reasonably.

Seduction also feels like it doesn't work nearly often enough. I could swear it's literally impossible to seduce an enemy with the Oriad, though I haven't gotten the chance to try with Succubus. Some even consider it a glitch. Perhaps also add a way for such characters to improve their seduction ability.

EDIT: Also, not sure if this applies, but I could swear the AI will always go for you first before fighting other AIs. Doesn't really make sense.
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  #5  
Old October 27th, 2006, 09:33 PM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

A fiend of darkness is about equally strong as a devil. Which is effed up, seeing that devils take a better mage, are more expensive, and higher research.
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Old October 27th, 2006, 10:59 PM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

With one Wish, you can get enough Astral Pearls to make it pay for itself with intrest. This means that one Mage with Wish can cast the spell, for non-pearl reasons, at least once every third turn while losing no astral gems at all. I understand it's level 9, but this strikes me as sort of overpowered. It might be better to prevent wishing for Astral Pearls, or decrease the amount of Pearls you can wish for.

Unless my calculations are wrong, in which case I apologize.
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Old October 27th, 2006, 11:06 PM

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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Quote:
UninspiredName said:
With one Wish, you can get enough Astral Pearls to make it pay for itself with intrest. This means that one Mage with Wish can cast the spell, for non-pearl reasons, at least once every third turn while losing no astral gems at all. I understand it's level 9, but this strikes me as sort of overpowered. It might be better to prevent wishing for Astral Pearls, or decrease the amount of Pearls you can wish for.

Unless my calculations are wrong, in which case I apologize.
Just so long as any gems you get are more than what you'd get with Alchemy I think it's fair. After all, genies don't allow you to wish for more wishes
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  #8  
Old October 28th, 2006, 07:37 AM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Zen - I hope you don't mind me commenting on these suggestions. Also, as Potatoman said, *applause*. I Wish you Luck on your quest. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon23.gif[/img]



Quote:
Potatoman said:[*]A 1001/1000 aged commander is just as likely to die as a 100/50 aged commander.

Actually, this isn't the case. A commander with 1000 maxage is less likely to die than a maxage 50 commander, regardless of how big maluses they get from old age. 10 000/500 commander is less likely to get an affliction than a 32/28 commander. Of course, the first might actually be close to dying from the age percentage malus to HP.



Quote:
FrankTrollman said:

Drakaina

Lord of War

Titan (Female)
Drakaina is a monster. In Dom3, monsters like Dragons and Drakaina get Dominion of only 1. So there's a reason for it, but the reason isn't enough to keep anyone from changing it if it doesn't work.

I'd like to see Lord of War as a Nataraja equivalent: 0 cost chassis, with perhaps 40-point paths. You could take ANY path, but not high. Water for defense and Quickness, or Earth for some protection and Earth Power/reinvigoration, etc.

Female Titan is an excellent warrior, with attack and defense of 15. This is very good. However, she actually has fewer hitpoints than other size 6 titans, both male and female. Her Owl is a nice addition, because Length 6 #bonus attack gives her a chance of Repel regardless of her actual weapons. However, she has Nature and Astral, neither of which are good paths for a warrior. Astral makes her weak against Magic Duel, and I don't think she's available to any non-Astral nations, while Nature only gives Regeneration, forcing her to Enchantment. If she had a (new) helmet called Magic Crown or Magic Tiara as a helmet, she'd only need some armor, and if she had Water instead of either Nature or Astral, or Astral 2/3 instead of Nature, she'd be better.

Also, even while it's true that it's easier to take high level magic with expensive pretender that starts with more magic in a path, levels 9 and 6 aren't always needed. For combat pretenders, another path at just 3-4 might be good enough, and for e.g. weak Air nation A4 is actually a very nice choice (see below).


Son of the Sun was also mentioned. The S1 version, at least, could benefit from beings S2-3 and 75 points instead of S1 and 50 points. If he had some other path instead of Astral, he could be used as a combatant, but Astral makes him vulnerable.




Quote:
PDF said:
1) Huhu, what about nerfing Horror Mark ?

2) Both Air boost items are now A4, it's really hard to have mages able to make them. It means you need base A4 to be able to progress, it's too harsh a requirement.

3) I have issues with Bless effects, but these aren't moddable...

4) About archers, it's not that logical that lowly goblinoids make as much damage with a bow that a human or better - after all the bow effectiveness is related to archer strength and skill, as well as bow quality isn't it ?

Thus the too-easy hordes of cheap archers will at least be less effective that better, more expensives ones.

Issue is that I'm not sure we can *add* weapons in mods?
1) Horror Mark isn't the problem, but Horrors with Horror Marking attacks, and the fact that Doom Horror attacks are currently too common. When weapons can be #cleared, I'll do a test mod which removes Horror Mark effect from all Horrors' attacks. I'll try if adding another #specialeffect or #specialeffectalways works, or if the horror mark effect of their attacks can be made resistable, or something.

2) There are two Air boosters that only require Air, and both are available at Constr 4. At that level, Water has one booster, Robe of the Sea. Fire has one, Flame Helmet, which isn't good in battles. Earth, Death and Nature have good and cheap boosters, but Earth has no boosters after that, and Nature only Treelord's Staff at Nat 5. Death has Skullface, which is good. Blood has access to three boosters at this point, but Armor of Souls requires Blood 5, Blood Stone some Earth and Brazen Vessel Blood 4.

In short, Air is different, but not much worse than other. One Air 4 mage can forge two boosters, and then even an Air 2 can forge more, and the hand slots are left free for a Dwarven Hammer if you can get your hands on one.


3) This is a very good point. Bless effects cannot be modded. While it's nice to throw ideas around, don't expect anything to happen via the Conceptual Balance mod.

4) Why would Goblinoids be inferior to humans? I think you mean Bakemonos with this. They are size 2, as humans, and some kind of lowly demons.
Dominions doesn't model hit locations, so archer's skill doesn't affect damage. Currently, Precision is the only stat that affects archers. It's good enough, of course, and Precision could differentiate different archers from each other, but why should independent human archers be made more viable instead of national ones?

Also, weapons can be added, but currently not #cleared. This means that weapons' damage can be changed, but it can be impossible to change some of their features, including #nostr.



Quote:
UninspiredName said:
With one Wish, you can get enough Astral Pearls to make it pay for itself with intrest.

Unless my calculations are wrong, in which case I apologize.
A Wish for gems gives amount of pearls that can be almost alchemized back into 100 pearls. 97 pearls and 1 gem in each of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Nature, Death. With two Wishes, you could alchemize it back into 200 pearls. It'd ONLY be profitable if you had Alteration bonus site.





Quote:
B0rsuk said:
1. Light cavalry archers

-prec to 10
- if I wanted archers with acceptable melee ability, I'd take indy archers 10/8, ones with shortbow, short sword, ring mail. 8 morale, but still.
- only advantage light cavalry has is speed, and speed is not THAT big advantage on Dominions battlefield. I think both flyers and heavy cavalry on flank are better for attacking commanders.

2. independent mages - Is it intentional ?

3. Slings (damage) aren't affected by strength. Why ? If slings were changed to be affected by strenth, perhaps Blood bless would be marginally more useful, althrough I can't think of a single holy unit with sling. Or are slings already too powerful ?

1 - Ligh Cavalry.
Their movement bonus isn't as good as it could be, because most archers of the various tribes have mapmove 2, and some of them have one or several terrain survival abilities. If all independent, non-mounted archers had mapmove 1, Light Cavalry would have some use.
There is more gold in circulation, so LC could be afforded when ANY archers are better than no archers.
LC should be better in battle than LI or archers. Light Lance would help, but that'd make Tien Chi LC weaker when compared to normal indy LC.

2 - Indy mages
Random picks were made more rare, and new paths from independent mages were made more rare. It's inentional.

3 - Slings
There isn't a #clear command for weapons yet. If there was, I'd mod slings so that they deal the same damage when used by str 10 units, more with higher strength, make normal slingers a bit cheaper, and make some slingers Elite with 12 gp cost and str 12, precision 13 (still lowered by sling's negative prec - they're hard to use properly). I'm still considering whether or not their range should be few grids more than for shortbows or not. I wouldn't mind my idea being incorporated into CB mod.
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  #9  
Old October 28th, 2006, 03:56 AM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Quote:
The_Tauren13 said:
A fiend of darkness is about equally strong as a devil. Which is effed up, seeing that devils take a better mage, are more expensive, and higher research.
Devils are Fire Immune, have a Heat Aura and get a 7 dmh Trident for the extra cost of what, 2-3 blood slave?
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  #10  
Old October 28th, 2006, 05:14 AM
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Default Re: Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

Heh Zen, I think you know my issues about dom III. Celestial Masters s2 and no old age across the board. Also maybe have mid age TC be able to do something battlemage wise. Make spears not suck. Order scales is too good. ABYSIA NEEDS HELP. I'll think of more sometimes. =)
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