Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

does this common wisdom hold for Oracles too?

against all common sense, I found a nation build that I really like with an awake oracle (NOT PROVIDING A BLESS!) The nation doesn't need an SC pretender, loves good scales, needs no bless, but likes a high dom to spread scales, and the added pearl income and astral magic just tops off their magic diversity. Additionally, the nation has magic paths with no natural income, and the pearls allow them to bootstrap this income MUCH easier.

amicrazy?

Not so much, because high astral is far better than high blood, particularly if you aren't a blood nation. As for the gem producing,.. I think that's CBM only.

From what you describe the oracle there is an imprisoned standard S4 one, right? I don't think the pearl income or the astral when it wakes up is going to be significant. Still better than a blood fountain though.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Opinions become facts if you get more than a couple of people to agree with you.
Its not surprising that MPers want to balance the game for MP.
Its also not surprising that they fail to consider Solo gamers.

To get really involved in the MP games, you have to join the forum. But to Solo play its not such a necessity. You can lurk, and search, for a long time. The sales numbers, and the numbers of forum visitors that are registered vs unregistered tends to show how the numbers really compare. But in the forums its easy to get the impression that the game is mostly MPers of a certain type. If you hang around the other forums, or the IRC channel, you get another impression of a different grouping.

Unfortunately, altho the soloists are probably the majority, they will always be the minority in discussions.

you're being a solo gamer totalitarian. however it is a falsifiable hypothesis that solo gamers need the game balanced for them like MP gamers do. The fact that solo gamers don't MP has just axiomatically disproven that hypothesis. MP gamers have some sort of (slightly ambiguous) reference point for balancing nations in MP. What is the SP reference point of balance?

P.S. I'm just being antagonistic because you pointed out the situated nature of knowledge, and then went on to use it for your own purposes of arguing for a situated point of view.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Not so much, because high astral is far better than high blood, particularly if you aren't a blood nation. As for the gem producing,.. I think that's CBM only.

From what you describe the oracle there is an imprisoned standard S4 one, right? I don't think the pearl income or the astral when it wakes up is going to be significant. Still better than a blood fountain though.

no. reread my post. I specifically stated it was an awake oracle. the off-the-bat pearl income can pay HUGE dividends when it can be used to quickly bootstrap another gem income for a nation that has natural access to that path but no natural income. Additionally, The Oracle can have at least one path which the nation doesn't have that can be served by the pearl income to build up an economy of; aside from the astral paths and income of the oracle.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

no. reread my post. I specifically stated it was an awake oracle. the off-the-bat pearl income can pay HUGE dividends when it can be used to quickly bootstrap another gem income for a nation that has natural access to that path but no natural income. Additionally, The Oracle can have at least one path that the nation doesn't have too which can be served by the pearl income to build up an economy of; aside from the astral paths and income of the oracle.

No. There's no need to reread your post.

Do you mean by using the astral search spell? I'd think in the early game you're much better off manually searching with those native astral mages.

It's an interesting tradeoff in CBM. You lose a lot of scale points by taking it awake and gain,... pearl income. Not the most useful thing in the early game, but certainly nice to have a stash of them to rock that first dispel or to use for magic duels, power of the spheres etc. The research you gain is negligible so I'm sort of discounting that.

The second path doesn't make sense to me. How is the awake oracle going to use it in the early game? If it isn't, I would think a sleeping oracle would be better. It definitely sounds like a build that could have problems with early aggression. No SC pretender, no sacreds,... so who is this with? Caelum? Bandar?

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Is there a good side to that poploss, or is it just a negative to having a blood fountain?

Because, you know, blood fountains aren't great to begin with.

It's just a bad event. A rare one, I think. I've seen it a few times when playing with Broken Empire Ermor, since the data typo made it contingent on their Principes. Annoying, but it's supposed to be in the game and supposed to be correct. Some people had reported that event as buggy, which is why I checked the data references when I proofread the code. That's how it got caught.

[thejeff]

That's nice, Gandalf. And probably even true.

But does it actually have any relevance to Hinnom's power?
I do play mostly SP. Hinnom is unbalanced. I'm not that good a player, but it's not even fun using it against the AI. You can just roll over them.

And it's not even that useful as an uber AI opponent, since the AI doesn't do well with it's strengths. Hinnom is all about SCs and small groups of tough troops. The AI can't build or script SCs, won't use small efficient groups of troops, but just throws a mish-mash of recruits together and sends them out. If you give it a decent bless, half time it won't bother blessing the troops or sending out sacreds in the first place.
About the only thing that really helps the AI is the good PD.
The AI just isn't good at using nations like Hinnom, so why is it a problem to balance it for MP? To me it looks like the changes will help keep it from being easy for SP, while not crippling the AI anymore than it already is. Do you think Hinnom is particularly good for SP as it is? Are there different changes you'd suggest?

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Edi

It's just a bad event. A rare one, I think. I've seen it a few times when playing with Broken Empire Ermor, since the data typo made it contingent on their Principes. Annoying, but it's supposed to be in the game and supposed to be correct. Some people had reported that event as buggy, which is why I checked the data references when I proofread the code. That's how it got caught.

Shame it doesn't give you a bunch of blood slaves as well. Oh well.

[Ballbarian]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Apart from being on of your favourite ways to separate dom3 players into two groups, what does that actually have to do with this topic Gandalf?

Gandalf's post added more to the discussion than yours just did (or mine for that matter).

(Sorry. Couldn't resist. )

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Sombre

No. There's no need to reread your post.

Do you mean by using the astral search spell? I'd think in the early game you're much better off manually searching with those native astral mages.

It's an interesting tradeoff in CBM. You lose a lot of scale points by taking it awake and gain,... pearl income. Not the most useful thing in the early game, but certainly nice to have a stash of them to rock that first dispel or to use for magic duels, power of the spheres etc. The research you gain is negligible so I'm sort of discounting that.

The second path doesn't make sense to me. How is the awake oracle going to use it in the early game? If it isn't, I would think a sleeping oracle would be better. It definitely sounds like a build that could have problems with early aggression. No SC pretender, no sacreds,... so who is this with? Caelum? Bandar?

not the astral search spell... the normal site search spells. The pearls can be alchemized to become anything they need to be. I know... laugh laugh because alchemy suxxor... But used in this fashion it is paying large dividends because a nation can increase its per turn gem income by a factor of two in the early portions of the game and can increase its per game income maybe by 25-50% (depending on the length of the game, short games would see higher percents) since it allows gem income to ramp up very quickly.

This works best with a nation that:
1. Can make do without an SC pretender
2. Don't need a bless
3. have no astral mages...
4. no astral income
5. at least one mage that can site search a path that the nation does not have income in. (i.e. good natural diversity. i.e. five natural paths)
6. uses good scales and needs high dom (maybe combined with weak priests, thus making high dom more necessary?)

Essentially, this is only another option for very specific nations that might have gone with an Enchantress, but where the nation has enough natural diversity that the Rainbow's benefits might be superceded by what an Oracle can offer. In these situations the Oracle will provide at least equivalent scales, better dominion, and an (even higher than Enchantress) natural income of Pearls. The main benefit comes from the much higher dominion.

For nations: Shinuyama is a good nation because they already have access to 5 paths naturally, mages with paths but no gems, and lots of good mix ups. All they need is Astral and Air and something they can alchemize early on to start searching out Water and Air (and of course using the pearls themselves for Astral) to be complete.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

chrispedersen:

Both Hinnom and Niefel are beyond any other nation. The fact that in some circumstances [bad player? good cooperation against them? different game settings?] they are not dominating means nothing. Look at the big picture. While Niefel and Hinnom are very strong in early game, in mid they turn into insane mode - buffs + construction for forging + recruitable SCs. At that stage Hinnom is as strong as he had 3x more provs.

Zeldor I have played Hinnom/Gath in something like 9 mp games.
I've been playing Dominions since its inception. Perhaps I am completely unskilled. But I simply do not find Hinnom to be the game breaker you portray it to be. Strong yes. Top Ten yes. Beyond any other nation.. no.

You posit that Hinnoom and Niefel are beyond any other nation.
But that just doesn't square with objective reality. LA Ermor, LA Ryalla are much bigger problems.

I believe I can reliably beat a person of equal skill playing hinnom with many different nations - I don't think its even particularly challenging. Lanka, Mictlan,LA Mictlan, LA ermor, Sauromatia, to name a few.

By the way - I am not a competent player with ulm - but I'd be interested in seeing how the the ulm new stop sacred would work again hinnom / Niefle.

And the Size difference makes a *huge* difference. It stops the chariots from trampling some of Fomorias units, some of Niefles, and elephants - which includes the arcosephale nations, the bandar log nations, and independent elephants - not to mention Caelum's mammoths.

I have no problem if hinnom is nerfed (hopefully in a thematic sense). But to my mind the biggest problem is the strength of the starting army.

But I'd much rather see some of the weak races boosted a little.
Yomi, if it had just a few problems fixed (mostly having to do with magic paths)- could just blow Niefle out of the water.

Change the precision of those yomi flame throwing units from 8 to 11, and increase the prcision of the throw flames to +4 and you'd see Niefle.. go down in flames.. literally.

And its not that unbalancing as you're talking about 3 ammo units......