Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[Endoperez]

Meglobob said:
I agree with everything you say in your rant, Ma Man thematically is a excellent nation, its based on Robert Jordans books I believe. I like the nation, even if it does not translate to a powerful Dom3 MP nation. The bards are a great unit and overall Ma Man only needs a few slight changes to its national units to be a great naation.

Feudal system, longbowmen (yeomen), the traditional three witches (daughter, mother, crone), Tower and Forest of AVALON, questing Knights of X (stone, round table, whatever), Green Knight - it's pretty strongly Arthurian legends influenced by feudal Britain. It's nice that you like the nation, but I can't see any connection to Wheel of Time.

[Gandalf Parker]

I guess it could be. Depends on what books you have read. But yes all of the nations have a theme. It might be hard for some of us to spot some since few of us would have read all of the books that Kristoffer has (tying in with his real daytime job)

[quantum_mechani]

Endoperez said:

Feudal system, longbowmen (yeomen), the traditional three witches (daughter, mother, crone), Tower and Forest of AVALON, questing Knights of X (stone, round table, whatever), Green Knight - it's pretty strongly Arthurian legends influenced by feudal Britain. It's nice that you like the nation, but I can't see any connection to Wheel of Time.

I'm pretty sure KO said at some point that the wardens/witches thing was inspired by the Wheel of Time.

[Endoperez]

quantum_mechani said:
I'm pretty sure KO said at some point that the wardens/witches thing was inspired by the Wheel of Time.

Oh, that. Hmm. I always thought of them as some kind of an experiment, not as elite bodyguards like the guys in Wheel of Time were. And it seems they're even called Warders in English.
The all-witch magic could also be Jordan-inspired, since there isn't even a Merlin hero. It's strange, though, because Bards surely didn't come up with LA Man's magic. Some kind of MA Man mage that could work in the transition after they lost the Nature magic would be nice.

[Xietor]

I want to add a balance of power rating for the middle era, as it the only one I feel qualified to do. But it will take a bit of work, and I am not up to it yet.

But, I will add a few thoughts:

Tartarians were effectively nerfed, which means that MA Pythium and Marignon's endgame rating has been boosted.

I agree with KO that Man is playable. They are not a broken race. They could be improved, but so could other nations. I do feel that MA Ulm was broken, and am grateful KO fixed them.

When you have people messaging you at the start of Perpetuality for a MA Ulm sighting, then you know that race was broken. It was often a race to MA Ulm's capital, which of course, to some degree, highlighted their deficiencies.

I also like the fact that not all races and spell lines are equally powerful. WOW recently bowed to its vocal minority and gave the evil races "paladins" just so everything could be identical. Identical is boring.

It requires no challenges. LA Ermor and LA Ryleh were not excluded from Kingmaker because they were unbalanced, but because of the unit cap. If there was no unit cap, they would have been viable race selections.

It is the players' fault that LA Ermor and LA Ryleh were allowed to ascend to world domination in perpetuality. Petty bickering should have been set aside, and those races should have been terminated by group effort in the beginning phase.

[thejeff]

Not to go into the full Man is broken argument, but part of the reason you see people begging for an Ulm location and not Man is that Man is actually decent at the start, though not strong enough to rush, but lacks in mid/late game power, while Ulm was weak along, but especially vulnerable to an early rush.

Longbows & lightning do fairly well against elephants and some sacreds.

[Xietor]

I am glad KO is not fooling with Man. Hopefully I will get motivated and finish my Kingdom of Avalon Mod and actually get
someone to test them in a mp game setting.

Sort of a beta test to some of the numerous suggestions. If the changes stand up to a good mp test, maybe some could be considered.

[Gandalf Parker]

I totally agree on the "same is boring". I hate games that balance the multiplayer aspect by creating matching armies that simply wear a different colored coat.

Hence the problem with some "fix" requests. Saying that a nation needs xxxxx for a fix might be considered step one. Then comes the problem of creating that fix in a way that fits the nation in question. If we just wanted to toss units around between the nations then we can do that easily enough with mods. Kristoffer isnt likely to do that without his usual amount of heavy researching. If he cant find a thematic match, then Im guessing the "much needed fix" is unlikely to occur.

Lesson to be learned: dont just say it needs it. Make an effort to pitch it thematically. And along the same lines, remember that you are making a request, not placing an order.

[Xietor]

One reason people want Ulm and Man to be decently strong, is we identify with those races.

Most players' 1st races are Ulm and Man. We grew up with Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Knights, so it is natural to gravitate to those when you start playing.

Until you meet a banelord. oh, love at 1st sight!

[thejeff]

I completely agree that "same is boring". It's however annoying when any suggestion of balance issues is met with dismissal by such arguments. Especially when no one has suggested making all the nations the same.

A bunch of thematic suggestions were made in the last thread this came up in. No need to hijack this thread further by repeating them here. It sounds like Xietor trying to incorporate some of them into a mod. I don't play with mods much, there's too much in the base game I haven't really seen yet, but I look forward to this.
There were several mods improving Ulm before the patch changed them. Most of the changes didn't come from them though.