Patch Improvements

[Twan]

- Why exactly should the amount of points you get be generally lowered?

Because pretenders starting imprisoned are already more powerful than a dom2 pretender, what may have become a lot more powerful with the actual base points + my options. And also because many players have said that bless strategies with imprisoned gods are overpowered in small games, and are starting to ask for nerfs, so I've reduced a little the points for the normal imprisonment.

-Also, why are you worried about people taking dominion 10, good scales and being unable to actually take part in real world events?

I'm not worried. It's just that with the "petrified + in a far away plane" option and say an Oracle you can have all scales at +3 and 10 dominion if he's allowed to have a base dominion of 4, so all players wanting a "high scales only" strategy would take an Oracle petrified in a far away plane and end exactly the same, with dominion 10. Reducing base dominion to 1 for petrified pretenders, force to make some choices even for them, they may take all positive scales at 3 and dominion 5 or go for a higher dominion but with some lower scales.

[Sandman]

Even better, why not tell the player the name of the discovered site in the message?

Yet more:

More unit trait icons: I'm thinking of drain-immune, minor death bless, gem producers, spy ability, assassin, shape-changer etc. Almost every unusual trait should have an icon on the unit screen.

Accurate army depiction on map: There's no reason to not show every unit in your armies in the correct proportions, rather than just the most common one or two.

Better fort icons: A great city should look different from a fortified one. In an ideal world, this would extend to the map icons as well.

Jotun hurler defence boost: Is there any particular reason they have such a low defence? They only have a few shots, and then charge into battle, where they inevitably get clobbered.

Marignon mage age reduction: A fairly weak nation is made all the weaker by hobbling its priest-mages with old age.

Reworked Conquerors of the Sea: It's a fair old mess of a theme at the moment. Mixing diabolic faith and CotS was a mistake.

Reworked Black Forest: As above, but even more a mish-mash. Illuminati, vampires, villains, holy inquisitors, paladins, wolfherds, rangers, fortune tellers, ghoul guardians, zweihanders ...why? I'd remake it as a B-movie style vampires and werewolves nation, but that's just me.

I also agree with proposals 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.

[Graeme Dice]

Sandman said:
Reworked Conquerors of the Sea:

I don't see it as a mistake. It takes a weak nation and gives them the more powerful magic that they need to actually survive.

Reworked Black Forest:

The nation is horribly weak without some way to put armour on its vampire counts, and even then, is only middingly powerful. It needs earth mages.

[FrankTrollman]

The nation is horribly weak without some way to put armour on its vampire counts, and even then, is only middingly powerful. It needs earth mages.

It's pretty minimal as is. The Black Priests are capital only and old. And the benefit for being an inquisitor is proportionately less than it was in Dominions 2. They really got boned. They need their random pick back. A 100% chance of getting an Earth, an Astral, or a Nature wouldn't change the overall magical capabilities of the nation, but would do wonders for their ability to get things done.

For a team so dependent upon site finding spells, it's a travesty that noone in the empire can cast Gnome Lore. Even a 1/3 chance of getting a Gnome Lorer would set them to right to an amazing degree.

-Frank

[Twan]

A little thing very useful for MP games :

The ability to see the list of messages you are sending by clicking on "messages sent" (especially the number of gems and gold sent and identity of recievers). If you make many exchanges in a turn in a slow paced game, not having this possibility may be really annoying.

(ps : I wasn't a big mp player in dom 2 so I don't know if there is a shortcut or any way to see sent messages, if there is one it's not in the shortcut list)

[Gandalf Parker]

Ulm, Black Forest
I think that a hodgepodge is the result of any nation making it to Late Age. It almost seems to the be definition of late age.

As for the ranking of its abilities, I note that they are being done by people who tend to play large-army. No mention of the stealth at all. Ulm BF is setup rather well for using stealth armies in the field while keeping its non-stealth units closer to home defensively. Any ranking of its abilities without taking note of such things amounts to a personal play opinion Im thinking.

Altho I do feel it that could benefit from a stealth priest.

Gandalf Parker

[Graeme Dice]

No, I am definetly including the stealth when I discuss black forest Ulm, as the rangers are just about the only unit that's worth producing. Everything else is no better, or actually worse, than the mediocre troops of middle age Ulm.

[Nerfix]

Sandman said:Marignon mage age reduction: A fairly weak nation is made all the weaker by hobbling its priest-mages with old age.

Reworked Conquerors of the Sea: It's a fair old mess of a theme at the moment. Mixing diabolic faith and CotS was a mistake.

Reworked Black Forest: As above, but even more a mish-mash. Illuminati, vampires, villains, holy inquisitors, paladins, wolfherds, rangers, fortune tellers, ghoul guardians, zweihanders ...why? I'd remake it as a B-movie style vampires and werewolves nation, but that's just me.

Aye aye, agreed. I'll start working on un-mishmashing mods for LA Marignon and Ulm once (if!) they fix the age commands.

[Nerfix]

Graeme Dice said:I don't see it as a mistake. It takes a weak nation and gives them the more powerful magic that they need to actually survive.

It's an unappealing senseless mishmash, a lazy cop-out. That's whats wrong with it.

And the Diabolists who have enough magic to actually to do something are too old to do anything before they die in most of cases.

[Endoperez]

Nerfix said:And the Diabolists who have enough magic to actually to do something are too old to do anything before they die in most of cases.

Isn't it more like 15 turns, like with every other old mage in the worst case?