LA Ermor's Dominion Change in 3.15...

[Saulot]

I concur with WraithLord.

Perhaps an undead nation that doesn't have hordes of chaff, but a small amount of high quality units. Something similar to Necropolis, or llamabeast's TombKings, but less based on gold-recruitable units.

Thinking about the Yomi effect, and taking it a step further; Perhaps with some sort of zombie (or any unit really) that rises a few times after it's killed, before it finally is destroyed.

Even if KO is not interested, I'll probably put in the on the backburner and I'll try to tackle it in some way, at some point, maybe during the summer...

[llamabeast]

Try Foodstamp's Cradle of Gaea nation mod. Thet nation has no recruitables and is pretty interesting.

[llamabeast]

Working out a way to do an undead nation other than the approaches taken by Ermor and Tomb Kings is tricky I think - at least, I couldn't think of another good way of doing it. Might be interesting though.

I was kind of feeling tempted to do a Vampire Counts style undead nation - all gothic and medieval-Europe-ish in feel. But I couldn't think of many interesting ways to differentiate it from Ermor. Sure the longdeads wouldn't be carrying tower shields, but I think more differences than that are needed.

[Endoperez]

llamabeast said:
Working out a way to do an undead nation other than the approaches taken by Ermor and Tomb Kings is tricky I think - at least, I couldn't think of another good way of doing it. Might be interesting though.

Something like undead Panii could work. Your other mages only exist to research and perhaps cast some minor rituals with the help of items; your Great Ones are your main battlefield power, they lead, reanimate and summon your armies, and they cast the spells your armies of chaff need to be effective, but they cost much upkeep. Dominions only has gold-based upkeep, so it doesn't really work outside of gold economy, but it could be an interesting alternative.

[WraithLord]

Wow, Your ideas (Saulot, llamabeast and Endoperez) sound promising. Maybe we can spawn a dedicated thread to brain storm a new *different* (probably modded) nation for dominions along the lines of one of the ideas you've suggested.

[Saulot]

Undeath discussion:
That sounds fine WraithLord. I guess that would go in the mod forum. I confess I have no time to contribute actual work (outside of thinking/speculation) for a long while.

Oh, also as a suggestion to just improve undead overall (which would also slightly tweak up Ermor), soulless should probably have a secondaryeffect disease on their weapon (fist / claw usually?). They are after all, a walking corpse.

About the population discussion:
Well, it's certainly true that the games don't last long enough to really show population changes into a different generation, and so vast differences in the populations doesn't make much sense.

Furthermore, during a game of Dominions is the 'time of the Chaos War' as I like to call it, when a pretender rises to dominance, and there should be much turmoil, death, and destruction of the peoples.

However, this is a game of magic, in a land with magic, and magic should provide an answer. There should probably be some sort of province enchantment which produces, let's say 50 to 500 more people per turn (probably a nature spell). As a province enchantment, this should prevent abuse or inbalance, and if priced correctly would likely only be used in situations which really warrant it.

[Xavier]

What about a nation of dragons? Ranging from humanoid dragon-kin (I'm thinking AD&D Dragonlance draconions) all the way to full on ancient dragons (which would be SCs at or above the level of Niefel Jarls). In between you have the most powerful of the dragon-kin and the very youngest of the dragons, which can be your stock mages and your non-mage commanders. The whole thing can be summonable (x gems for 5 to 15 of the regular dragon-kin, which are your troops, x gems for 1 dragon-kin mage, and then LOTS of gems, and some research, for the full-on dragons). You can even make it multiple path based, and allow summoning of different kinds of dragons (like the dragon pretenders).

That'd be a non-gold based nation that I think would be pretty interesting, and different from anything out there.

[Wick]

Once upon a time (dom2) I toyed with a choir nation. It would have been based on the Call God mechanism to summon angels ranging from Putti to Angels of the four hosts to unique angels, with a little bonus if the paths of the Singer or Matster of Harmony matched what they were calling. The Celebrants were troops that could join a Singer and there would obviously been spell songs. The troops were weak and the mages overpriced but calling units whose priestly abilities would let them call more units would probably have made it a late game powerhouse.

Another non-standard economy could be your basic d&d goblins. The troops would freespawn but cost upkeep so you have to keep attacking your neighbors. Although this might not work too well given the clever ways people found to dispose of militia. Hmmm...