New pretender gods

[Thufir]

johan osterman said:
More seriously: what's wrong with the ancient and very powerful totally evil Moloch. Hmm, the totally whimpy imps I suppose.

Exactly! I think the Moloch precisely fits the description of what Boron is asking for (at least for Abysia), but would be so much more fun and so much more thematic if we fixed that imp problem

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron said:

I miss those truly bad gods a bit too .

No, no, I don't miss "bad" or "evil" Gods. There are plenty that fill that role. The Prince of Darkness and the Vampire Queen being prime candidates. (The Moloch as well were it not for the Whimpy Imps Inc. I still feel that his ability should be changed to an inherent lifelong protection effect spamming 1d6 imps per combat turn - but that is a different discussion).

What I would like would be the whimsical, who are one part good, one part bad, and one part fun. A splendid example - though that would be Jotunheim specific - would be a Loke pretender. He might not be the best warrior, the greatest mage, or the most learned sage, but things should never be boring when Loke was around.

[Peter Ebbesen]

johan osterman said:
What's wrong with the ancient and very powerful totally evil earth mother.

Well, she is a bad momma, true enough. You could add her evil twin, the Barbie, (same basic shape) for a most malignant pretender indeed.

Of course, for something potentially really nasty, you could have an Aboleth pretender for R'lyeh.... *shudders* Or even worse, and Aboleth *theme* for R'lyeh. The Aboleths have taken over and the star children are reduced to slavery under their Aboleth overlords... Possibly the only theme that would add leaders to beat Jotunheim's in cost.

[Kristoffer O]

> I miss those truly bad gods a bit too .

They come in plenty. Blood sacrificing earth mothers and Virtues of torture and death spring to mind.

> You could put the Moloch / the Vq and the Lichs probably in that niche but at least their descriptions are way to positive and there is no really evil nation in the game too i think .

> Ermor doesn't fullfill this role good enough imo . A nation with recruitable bad guys like demons etc. is missing . The nation could be an evil counterpart to jotunheim and have a demoniac recruitable SC which is of similiar might than niefel jarls .

> In general i think in dominions most nations have a neutral feeling . The only somewhat bad guy is ermor and the others are just neutral . I can think of no good nation .

Most nations in Dominions are evil. All nations but your own actually.

> And a lot of fantasy creatures like elves / orks etc. are missing .

They are not missing. They are omitted

> All nations have human troops and only jotun is an exeption with giants .

And C'tis and abysia and caelum and vanheim and atlantis and r'lyeh and pangaea.

[Kristoffer O]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Of course, for something potentially really nasty, you could have an Aboleth pretender for R'lyeh.... *shudders* Or even worse, and Aboleth *theme* for R'lyeh. The Aboleths have taken over and the star children are reduced to slavery under their Aboleth overlords... Possibly the only theme that would add leaders to beat Jotunheim's in cost.

What scrying bowl have you been looking into?

Edit: hmm, this gremlin is looking disturbingly like some dead german leader.

[Gandalf Parker]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Of course, for something potentially really nasty, you could have an Aboleth pretender for R'lyeh.... *shudders* Or even worse, and Aboleth *theme* for R'lyeh. The Aboleths have taken over and the star children are reduced to slavery under their Aboleth overlords... Possibly the only theme that would add leaders to beat Jotunheim's in cost.

You can play with an aboleth pretender if you want. Or set it up for an AI to do it. Its in the MAP commands. Ive tried alot of different preenders such as harvester and horror and tree lord. It can be fun.

I miss the bat dude. Dark Lord. The original one with summons.

[Endoperez]

Few things:

Some of the more clichee options for evil are not available, but there are many options still. Read the description more closely.

Abysia has no doubt concerning blood sacrifices or crossbreeding humans with demons. They have succeeded, and have recruitable halfdemons in demonbred. They also have created humanbreds, entire race made to be slaves of the abysians, a race totally infernal in many ways. And you think this is neutral?

Helheim seems pretty evil too. And Niefelheim. A nation that *starts* with the spell that is most feared by the inhabitants, the one which will be their death unless someone manages to dispel it... Illwinter, the spell of eternal winter, has very flavourful and evil description. Are these neutral too?

You want an ancient and mystical beast? One that is almost impossible for humans to control and even those who have spent their lives studying it will often become mad when meeting it, or just die from pure horror? Haven't you ever used Void Gate or palyed R'lyeh? They could be evil too. Only if you think that sucking brains of humans and lobotomizing/slaving another humanoid race is evil, though.


Also, Dominions II has no beings called elves, and no beings called orcs. However, both Vaetti and Tuatha can be considered to be the mythical equivalent, and predecessor, of the elves Tolkien & co. have created in fantasy literature. Vaetti were called goblins in Illwinter's first game IIRC, and in other game they would just be an orcish species smaller than normal. All of them, as well as Jotuns/Niefel (hill/ice giants), Caelumians (bird people) and C'tissians (lizard people), have enough depth to rival some of their counterparts *in literature*! Pretty good for a mere game, that doesn't even have elves or orcs!

In short: Dominions II does not have the common fantasy clichees (sp?), it has a theme and roots deep in mythologies of different eras and areas. And not everything that looks like human is even close to being one!

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Endoperez said:
Pretty good for a mere game, that doesn't even have elves or orcs!

In short: Dominions II does not have the common fantasy clichees (sp?), it has a theme and roots deep in mythologies of different eras and areas.

And that's a good thing. Please keep that AD&D-esque crap out of my game!

[Alneyan]

I second what you wrote Endoperez. Elves are somewhat present in Dominions though; there is an Elf Bane, and Vanhir are quite bluntly said to be "a race of elvish beings".

But even if these "mundane" races are slightly present, Dominions manages to stay well away from such clichés, and does not throw yet another Elven Empire of Goodly Ambitions fighting the Infamous Dark Elven Empire of Nastiness, Wickedness and Spiders. It is very nice for once to have spiders without Lolth popping right behind.

My only suggestions for Pretenders would be to add the trickster (mentioned previously in the thread), and perhaps to allow more Pretenders to come in either a female or male Version. For example, a Druidess to go with a Druid, and so on; but this is a minor matter, and you could always "change" the gender of your Pretender without too much problem.

[Ironhawk]

Kristoffer O said:
And C'tis and abysia and caelum and vanheim and atlantis and r'lyeh and pangaea.

While the people of Abysia are technically half demon or something? I can't recall correctly and dont have the description handy. Anyway, (I know it will never happen but) it would be nice to see some kind of visual distinction on them. Like a pair of horns or something. They really do look like plain humans.