Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Zeldor]

Gem gens must go. They made late-game rot. I really prefer to just use higher magic site settings.

There won't be any other acceptable way to replace gem gens. They simply must go. There won't be anything done with forging either, unless someone wants to adjust prices for ALL rituals to match new situation. And I doubt people would like to play that.

New CBM is coming. CBM with nation balance fixes. It will be whole new world, new game then. So revolution is coming.

[Trumanator]

And Zeldor, His prophet, hath spoken the gospel, and the people found it good, and it was good.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Really? How can you do it? Enlighten me please.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43892

Look at the example mod in there.
It doesn't create sites, but I does change the gem income of one of sauromatia's home sites.
Remove some "super sites" (discount sites and special indies) and replace them by sites where the player can increase the gem income through his actions (or maybe pay for a discount).
(You can also create sites, not by changing the mod, but by changing the savegame files)

Originally Posted by Micah

Why are people so keen on preserving the gem generation mechanic?

From my experience playing without them it makes for a much better game, IMO. I'd like to hear why people are so reluctant to get rid of them.

Well, I think you are right that they do not enhance the game as they are now. But it's the only mechanic that allows to affect your nation's economy besides the scales that you set on the very beginning.
Sure you can say that you want only battles but imo there is a much greater sense of archievement in creating and maintaining the economy that fuels your war than without it.
And then if you went down that direction (i.e. all that should be of strategic importance are battles) then I don't really see for what reason you'd want to keep the strategic map at all, since it only waters it down with luck (Ha! You underestimated me. Didn't quite expect that wrath of the sky from the air mages I found somewhere, huh?) or silly metagame stuff (Player X is known to go AI after some light raiding but Player Y makes sure whoever attacks him doesn't win the game, now, who should I attack). I guess in that case you could just give every player x rp and y gold and z gems to assign as they like before the game and then let them duke it out on some (completely) barren wastelands. That would even make for a fun game, I'm sure, but that's not for the long haul that dom3 games normally are.
So to come to a point, gem gens are broken, but I'd rather change them and see what happens instead of removing them.

[Psycho]

I know I won't be playing in another game with gem gens.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Well, I think you are right that they do not enhance the game as they are now. But it's the only mechanic that allows to affect your nation's economy besides the scales that you set on the very beginning.

Let me see if I'm understanding your point correctly: 4X games typically have Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate phases. Dominions has a more limited set of options for Exploit than MOM or MOO/MOO2.

1.) Site-search (costs mage time and/or gems, may permanently increase the gem-production of that province)
2.) Build forts (increases resource and gold output of that province, allows recruitment of national units)
2b.) Build labs/temples (may be necessary to allow you to exploit certain indy pop types and/or sites)
3.) Forge gem-generators

I think you're arguing that the options available to Exploit are so limited that eliminating #3 cripples the Exploit phase to the point where it's not really worth playing as a 4X game. Is that right?

-Max

[Squirrelloid]

well, building forts mostly allows recruiting of national units and pooling resources. The cost of the castle relative to the gold boost is so low as to be unnoticeable, basically.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

well, building forts mostly allows recruiting of national units and pooling resources. The cost of the castle relative to the gold boost is so low as to be unnoticeable, basically.

True in most cases, and in fact I personally DON'T build forts to increase gold income, but it is a form of Exploit that can potentially increase your gold revenues by up to 25%. The main reason it isn't done is not because the gold increase is negligible but because fort costs are so high relative to per-province income, in a normal-settings game.

I'm AFB, but IIRC building a fort gives you (baseIncome*admin/200) extra gold per turn, so you need to hold a province for (200*fortCost/(baseIncome*admin)) turns in order to show a positive cash flow. Depending on the province that may or may not be worth bothering with. From memory, here's some examples:

130 gold province, Tel City (Admin 40, 1400 gold): +26 gold. You need to hold the city for 54 turns to show a net profit.

390 gold province, Tel City (Admin 40, 1400 gold): +78 gold. You need to hold it for 18 turns to show a profit.

130 gold province, Hill Fort (Admin 20, 800 gold): +13 gold, 61 turns.

390 gold province, Hill Fort (Admin 20, 800 gold): +39 gold, 21 turns.

A 21-turn payback isn't short, but it's in line with the payback times for many buildings in other 4X games like MoM--although of course those games may go on for hundreds of turns and Dom3 usually caps out in the 80s.

Playing on smaller but richer maps (x3 or x4 and high gems) is one way of reducing micro, by effectively consolidating provinces into larger and richer metaprovinces. It tends to emphasize normal armies slightly more over summons/thugs, and it also makes fort-building a strategic option for economic development.

None of this changes the fact that Exploit plays much less of a role in Dom3 than in most 4X games--I'd actually submit that Dom3 isn't really a 4X game at all. It's mostly 2X, Expand and Exterminate, although research plays a big role and the Exterminate phase is unusually rich because of all the unit/spell variety.

-Max

[Benjamin]

I'm so pleased at this thread. I had just posted at QT3 about thinking of giving dominions another go, but how much I hated the MM, especially from gem gens. I thinks to myself, why don't I go over and see what's going on at official dominions 3 forums, and I find this thread. I'm so pleased.

Anyhow:

1)I'll be happy to see gem gens go. Mechanics that drive players to be tedious to win stink, and an overwhelming late game gem income is bad gameplay even without tedium.

2)A mod removing gem gens does or does not currently exist? I see people in the threads recalling games without gem gens, was that simply an honor based ban?

3)If push comes to shove, it's really the fever fetish I hate.

[Benjamin]

Making gem gens "discount ignoring" like contracts/lifelong protection might also be a good compromise position. Or finagling required paths.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

2)A mod removing gem gens does or does not currently exist? I see people in the threads recalling games without gem gens, was that simply an honor based ban?

You can find the unique gem gen mod here:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=699040

And as mentioned it will be integrated in CB 1.6.