LA Ermor's Dominion Change in 3.15...

[vfb]

Pray for a hidden gold mine! At zero population you can tax it at 200% and get double funds out of it. Searching for earth sites would be a good plan.

[Xavier]

confirmed - patrolling with taxes at 200% seems to be your best source of income (at least in your capital). the gain's not huge though, so i'd only bother patrolling for the first turn or two in high income provinces.

in other news, playing LA ermor against a single normal AI on a small map is pretty hilarious. I was running these 5-turn income tests, when after the last one i noticed that my capital was now bordering agartha. i took all of the available units (8 dom pretender) with my starting commander, and marched. got straight to their capital, sat there until i breached the walls, took it, then mopped up the rest of them. i never spent a single gem, or used anything other than that starting army.

[Agrajag]

In dom2 I always took Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Death-3,Cold-3,Luck-3 (and magic depending on strategy), so I don't see that as changing much
And besides, it is being multiplied by 10, yes, but from what number exactly?
My tests indicate that their death dominion now kills 5% of the population per candle (and that population death occurs after dominion spread)
IIRC that's the same number it was in dom2.

[Kristoffer O]

Agrajag said:
In dom2 I always took Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Death-3,Cold-3,Luck-3 (and magic depending on strategy), so I don't see that as changing much
And besides, it is being multiplied by 10, yes, but from what number exactly?
My tests indicate that their death dominion now kills 5% of the population per candle (and that population death occurs after dominion spread)
IIRC that's the same number it was in dom2.

Correct. Domkill is at dom2 levels again. Before the fix ermor had lower domkill than LA R'lyeh, which is silly. You could practically run Ermor as an ordinary gold based nation, which is quite unthematic.

Ermor is supposed to destroy civilizations, not build them. The lands of Ermor shall be barren and dead.
Scourge of the world, they shall have no friends.

[Amhazair]

I haven't played Ermor yet, so I'm not sure about balance considerations. If it hits them to hard something might have to be done to compensate. But I've allways thought it silly that the nation that should have the least money was the one that had a fort and a temple in every province, so at least from that point of view I applaud the change.

[B0rsuk]

Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...

[otthegreat]

B0rsuk said:
Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...

I know this was mentioned a while back but I think it should get more attention. I agree that there should be a way to partially regrow devastated provinces and growth scale is probably the best choice. I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.

[BigJMoney]

B0rsuk said:
Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...

I agree. I've always thought growth could do more for its namesake than it does. I also think it could without negatively impacting Ermor's gameplay/theme combo. What if when a pop reaches 100 or less, it is unrecoverable, but above that, it can be regrown with growth scales along a stronger curve like B0rsuk suggests? Would it hurt Ermor if it were possible for territories to be taken back from them if you can manage to prune their dominion?

Basically what would happen is
1) Ermor puts dominion in a province
2) Ermor captures the province
3) Ermor depletes the province heavily (but does not get it down to 100 or less)
4) Opponent retakes province
5) Opponent removes Ermor's dominion from province
6) Province regrows

This is probably pointless, but I just thought of it. Is that game breaking?

BTW, I'm real embarrassed none of us caught the Ermor pop bug. Not that I played Ermor much in Dom2, but as much as I like to point out inconsistencies in game behavior, I'm bothered that I never complained about Dom3 Ashen Empire (which I thought had way too much gold).

=$=

[Sombre]

Yeah I agree. If it weakens Ermor too much they should be improved in some other way, for example by getting stronger freespawn or a bigger starting army or something. Not more gold.

[CUnknown]

I think the domkill is now finally where it should be. I agree with those saying that Ermor should be boosted in some other way if they are now too weak. But, they were one of the most powerful late age nations before, weren't they?