LA Ermor's Dominion Change in 3.15...

[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.

[Endoperez]

Conquest of Elysiun uses the form of "few gems for troops, more gems for good commanders/special units, lots of gems for very good commander" extensively. The problem is that one good commander or small group of very good units is much better than lots of weak units.

Making gold-independent nation also has the problem that all nations will have money, and if they won't use it elsewhere they'll use independents a lot, castles a lot, can build temples everywhere and probably won't suffer from upkeep nearly as much as common nations.

[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...

[Xavier]

dragons are famous gold-hoarding - make the upkeep costs for units and commanders 10x normal.

and yes, quality over quantity is a big effect in this game, but if you balance the costs and don't make the units *too* absurd you should be fine. I mean, Niefelheim can produce a jarl every second turn at the beginning, and it doesn't take long to get the income going to produce one every turn.

you could also force the pretender to be one of the dragons, which have insanely expensive magic paths. You'd also have to be awake. This would mitigate the strength of your pretender or starting scales some, since you'd obviously be able to go 3 sloth.

there's a fix for every balance issue

[WraithLord]

I suggest to stop abusing this thread and move the discussion to this dedicated thread