Best Unit in the Game... Any thoughts?

[PvK]

I'd prefer that bless and elephants/mammoth strategies be weaker or slower to build up, rather than making magic better in the early game.

[llamabeast]

Agreed, PvK.

Sometimes the resource system is, I think, not quite what's needed.

For example elephants presumably can't in reality be massed very quickly. You have to go find them or something. But they don't necessarily need much equipment, so they don't have very high resource costs.

In my forthcoming Tomb Kings mod, the idea is that the ancient armies in the pyramids/tombs can only be woken up slowly by the priests. The resource cost should really be pretty much zero (they were buried with their armour and weapons). I've had to give them a fairly high resource cost to stop over-fast recruiting though (perhaps the rituals of awakening need lots of, er, iron).

It would be good if you could only recruit say 2 elephants a turn. But this would be a whole extra game mechanic which might be unpleasantly messy. Just thinking aloud really...

[PvK]

Yes. There are several types of units whose equipment doesn't involve much, but they shouldn't be fast to mass-recruit for other reasons (training, etc.).

In the case of your revived tomb guys, perhaps the autosummon mod mechanics could be used - a special reviver priest type unit would have a command that would only recruit so many per turn. The reviver could either be recruited, summoned, or be a national starting unit or hero.

[Saulot]

llamabeast said:
In my forthcoming Tomb Kings mod, the idea is that the ancient armies in the pyramids/tombs can only be woken up slowly by the priests. The resource cost should really be pretty much zero (they were buried with their armour and weapons). I've had to give them a fairly high resource cost to stop over-fast recruiting though (perhaps the rituals of awakening need lots of, er, iron).

Perhaps you could use a summon system instead? Though that scales inaccurately with gold/resources/supplies game options.

llamabeast said:
It would be good if you could only recruit say 2 elephants a turn. But this would be a whole extra game mechanic which might be unpleasantly messy. Just thinking aloud really...

Hm... that would be good. But it really changes the whole game dynamic. Perhaps a game option request? (Though that might be more trouble than it's worth to the devs.) (Also, I realize I'm a little request-happy, and I'm certainly not trying to be pushy or subtly complaining about what is so far available, which is considerable).

[jutetrea]

For limiting general recruitment, lower the starting game option gold/resource availability. To reduce specific unit availability modding or a summons approach would work.

For example order 3, prod 3 but with starting gold/resource availability of 50% only gives about 250g and 60res in your capital (depending on start loc). LA Arco elephants are already at 100g/62res. Of course then everyone just starts with 50% and its just a relative problem anyway.

Blesses on the other hand are a bit more tricky. I'm not generally a fan of the whole CB mod, but I like the scales part which makes blesses even more expensive. A bit more negative for bad scales and a bit more positive for good scales, so it widens the gap a bit overall.

[Edratman]

50% gold/50% resources/easy magic research/9 indies and 25 to 30 provinces per player is a good way to address magic balance/early rush tactics. This alters the ratio of resources allocated to mages/troops, slows down initial expansion/rushes by powerful troops and/or blesses and provides enough space so that the playing fields are pretty much level when you encounter neighbors.

You also have to rethink your scales because bad scales are even more of a penalty and selling everything out for a 9 F/W bless is a major buden now.

[MaxWilson]

Resources doesn't *just* mean blacksmiths. It can also mean things like the time it takes a Basalt King to enchant a glaive; anything which takes a certain amount of time. If you wanted to prevent elephants from being easily massed, it would certainly be justifiable to raise the resource cost on elephants to represent the time it takes to train one, the limited number such trainers available, etc. On the other hand, if you're thinking more about the breeding rates of elephants and how unlikely it is that a single province could produce 300 of them over the course of three years, well, population is already decoupled from army recruitment in Dominions 3.

-Max

[llamabeast]

I think I sort of agree Max - and it would be much more convenient if resources represented time as well as metals. But in fact all the resource costs in the game are pretty much based only on equipment, and resources come from things like iron mines.

Still, I don't think anyone would object if the general rules were bent a bit in certain cases - for instance elephants.

[mivayan]

quantum_mechani said:
This seems a very odd way of looking at it, I can't think of a single spell that has ever been nerfed that is not still a useful part of any magic aresenal.

(uselessinfo
I know one - summon lesser air elemental!

it was cheaper 4-5 years ago and isn't used now.. I think.

[Kristoffer O]

I met one the other day, but it might have come from a bag of winds.