Forge

[HoneyBadger]

Endoperez, I very much agree that I'd like to see different magic items at different ages (For that matter, I'd like to see 2-4 more ages). Forge wouldn't represent massive technical achievements, it would simply represent different styles of armor or weapons differentiating one unit from another. More resources could be put into creating more elite units who can afford the best armor and fine weapons, and more gold could be put into equipping elite soldiers. Having a Forge for some nations like Ermor for instance might mean more, but not absolutely. for every nation. Jotuns with a Forge might invent the sling but jotuns without one may be stuck with spears, javelins, and boulders. It wouldn't mean Jotuns would invent gunpowder-although maybe late era Tien'Chi does in the form of crude fireworks with limited battlefield value. My concept of the Forge is as a stepping stone to differentiate a province with a much higher technological infrastructure than others, a situation which historically often enough did occur, and which wouldn't be out of place. If you wanted the best steel, you went to Toledo or Damaskus. Venice had glassblowers and the Dutch had skilled craftspeople. Constantinople had silk and the weight of a thousand years of relative enlightenment. Other places were at best, well...midieval. You can compare this with places like Delphi and Jerusalem as far as temples go. As far as labs go, it's harder to draw a real-world comparison, but for ritual spells certainly Stonehenge comes to mind.
If you want to build the best armies then you need an infrastructure. A big part of the reason Rome was so successful is because it had Greece. Greek artizans, thinkers, and artists, and Greek soldiers who were both tough and smart. If Rome had been founded in England, we probably wouldn't be speaking English right now.

[Levolun]

HoneyBadger said: If Rome had been founded in England, we probably wouldn't be speaking English right now.

That's an odd statement.

I've played the demo for about 3 hours & I've got a question about how the forge would help gameplay.

HoneyBadger said: My concept of the Forge is as a stepping stone to differentiate a province with a much higher technological infrastructure than others, a situation which historically often enough did occur, and which wouldn't be out of place. If you wanted the best steel, you went to Toledo or Damaskus. Venice had glassblowers and the Dutch had skilled craftspeople. Constantinople had silk and the weight of a thousand years of relative enlightenment.

Doesn't the game already have this? In those three hours, I was able to conquer a total of four new regions (ok, not the best numbers there, but... Two were forest regions right next to each other. One region was able to produce troops at 1/2 the cost of the other. Given that gold applies to the whole nation, doesn't the difference imply a better infrastructure in the 'cheaper' region?

HoneyBadger said: Forge wouldn't represent massive technical achievements, it would simply represent different styles of armor or weapons differentiating one unit from another. More resources could be put into creating more elite units who can afford the best armor and fine weapons, and more gold could be put into equipping elite soldiers.

Doesn't the game already have this? I was playing the available 'celtic' nation (EA obviously). It had soldiers, when you looked at their stats, who had helms and swords while others had maces and helms and shields and chainmail. The different soldiers had different equipment and different costs and looked different to boot.


But, those weren't my questions. My question is this.. Let's say at the beginning of the game, I can choose between a Troll race of 7att/ 7def folks and a Human race of 5att/ 5def folks. Why would I ever choose the Humans over the Trolls, if all the modifiers are the same? Could you really say that a human iron mace is worth +2, where a Troll iron mace is +1 on the same forge and construction level?

Which, that brings up the thought that you might consider resources, where you need iron or copper or horses before you can build specific troops/weapons/modifiers.

It seems to me that a moddable units with a forge adds needless complexity and removes some individuality from the game, because there might be a basic 'chassis' (or body type) that works better than another.

I might change my mind when I reach 10 hours of gametime, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

Thanks,

[HoneyBadger]

You make some good points, Levolun.

The reason I made that statement is because at the time of the Roman Empire, Greece was already a very technologically-advanced empire, so were Egypt and Carthage, for that matter, so Rome didn't happen in a test-tube. It had a lot of role-models and a broad base of military and technical know-how to draw from. England at the time was still barbarian backwoods, with only the remnants of the fringes of the Celts to look to for any real "civilization" in the, ironically, Roman/Western sense, and it took the advent of a conquering Rome to help the situation.

Forest regions do get better resources, because they have all that readily available wood. Wood's good by itself, but it's also good for smelting and forging metals because it can be made into charcoal. Owning a forest province doesn't make you Greece though, it just means you have a nice stand of timber you can lumber off. It shouldn't affect your gold-cost though.

Now we're getting into the heart of the matter. Ok, you compare humans to trolls. Your Celtic humans are a great example because some are equipped with chainmail while others are bare-chested. That's fine as per the purposes of the game, without Forging, but suppose you wanted to arm your Celts with some of the advanced weapons the Celts and Saxons and Gauls and Scottish and Irish and etc. actually invented? You could equip them with the Seax or the Falcata or the Irish longspear or the Scottish claymore or the dirk (perhaps a little anachronistically, but still...) or even a harpoon (to represent the Gae Bolga). The possibilities go on and on, but still you're talking one human with one weapon. You shouldn't have to invent a whole new nation just because you want the Irish to represent. But, advances like the Falcata SHOULD cost more to equip your units, and that cost is technology and resources. That's what the Forge represents, a determined effort to improve your nation via the application of technology and infrastructure. Now you might say "well one broadsword is as good as any other, why do we need seven different colors of the same thing when we already have a few types of generic sword in the game?" Well, because we already have the Falchion. And the falchion is a different breed of sword from a broadsword, so why limit ourselves and the game to one curious type of specialization?

Now, consider the Trolls. Trolls get a bad rep: they're stupid, ugly, and they eat gold like you and I would split a pizza. But they are crafty, and sneaky, and mercenary, and mean, and some of them more than others. Smart trolls (who grow up to be Troll Kings) are out there, and maybe some of them decide that they want to use technology too. Well, clever or not, they're lazier than humans, that's why they live under bridges instead of staying at the Ritz.
So when they invent, they think bigger, and spikier, and smashier versions of what us humans have already invented. Troll smiths come up with something like the Troll-sized 3 headed flanged iron mace. Great for smashing, carbon-graphite shaft, has a nice sweet spot. And because Troll-sized is Jotun-sized, they turn around and sell it to the Jotuns, and then the Jotuns start inventing, or more probably, they've been inventing all along, coming up with things like "axe" and "boot" and "war" while us humans were still dangling from the trees eating lice off of each other (until God told us not to, for those Christian creationists out there). Now Troll arms are far more expensive than human arms, because they're 5 sizes larger and because they can sell new designs to the Jotuns for a fortune (and Jotuns always want exclusive rights). They're also cruder, because as stated before, Trolls are lazy, and they're mostly just in it to make a buck. If you got a human or a jotun master smith to make you a triple-headed, flanged, iron mace, it's going to be a work of deadly loving beauty, and it's going to work great. If you get a troll to do it, it's going to be a hulking rusty monstrosity, and it just won't work as well. Att and Def will be reduced. Damage might even be a little tiny bit lower because all the flanges aren't individually aligned to maximal aerodynamic brains-on-the-slaughterhouse-floor angle. It'll still smash 'em up good though.

The Forge, however, doesn't take on balancing issues by itself. It's up to whoever uses the Forge application to resolve that, and hopefully that person will have some sense. Some nations just get more out of the Forge than others, and that's a good indicator of a population's overall intelligence, creativity, determination, and-most importantly of all-ability to steal ideas from their neighbors.

[Endoperez]

I'm not quite sure if Marverni -> Marignon works, but Marignon (a nation of MA) has halberds, pikes and greatswords - those would be the Irish Longspears and Scottish Claymore.

Rome was in Italy precisely because the technology already existed.

Also, "a determined effort to improve a nation via the application of technology and infrastructure" doesn't mean magic. If Romans decided to invest on technology (as they did), they might have gotten swords of sligthly different design better suited for formations, or better armors, or better helmets, or perhaps may have come up with a more effective way of making armor. This took more than few years, though. Even a decade would really push it, and your Forge would produce wonders in very, very short time. Claymores weren't invented in 6 months, and a Forge shouldn't take longer to build than a castle...

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, I wish (and hope for the future) that there was a way, based on the time/aging system for new units to appear for nations at certain years. This would really help make the Forge useful, because you'd have to protect your Forge for say a year or 10 years or whatever until it started paying off in larger amounts. It still would be useful in the beginning of the game for added resources and a few different kinds of units, but it would grow better as time went by, providing the Forge had an "age".

[HoneyBadger]

For that matter, the "aging" system could be applied to temples and labs. Older temples might spread Dominion faster and themselves produce the occasional advanced troop, while Labs might allow you to perform rituals for less over time, because you're assumed to have collected magical apparatus which can be reused or recycled. Better, older labs might also let you make or summon new types of undead, demons, etc. while at the same time increasing the chance for a magical catastrophy as the "land itself over time became warped by the vast concentration of magical power pouring out, until the very waters and forests and ground itself spewed forth abomination".

[HoneyBadger]

Endoperez, magic is present and we have access to it. The Romans attempted quite extensively and earnestly to use magic, but it wasn't working for them nearly as well as, say, concrete. Dom3 however postulates a world in which the forces of the elements, the moon, nature, death, faith, and blood sacrifice are resources as easy to tap as, for instance, pulleys. They are in and of themselves a "sort" of technology that improves with research and application. I'm certain that if you dropped the Greko-Roman empire into a Dominions world, within 50 years they'd be coming up with all manner of new uses for magic, even if they had no power of magic within themselves to begin with. So there's no reason that technology and magic can't be interwoven, and no reason they can't develope along separate lines-magical "scientists" developing spells, performing rituals, coming up with new ideas, and magical "engineers" forging magic items, creating machines and technology, and utilizing ALL the forces and resources around them-not just the so called "magic" ones, but also the ones we use. They'd even be able to tap into things we can't, that you wouldn't necessarily call magic, like the Void. There's room for both, and there's room for faith, as well.