Dominions Ice Age Contest

[void]

Ice Age...
Illwinter' age?

Its a javalin/slinger age in my impression ^^
Snow-covered lands should makes for common water magic, and horse-rider not available yet. Only a few mystic telepath with unicorns,employs them as troophorse.

heres 2 spell

Avalanche
Conjuration 8,WWWWFF,Province Disaster (Ritual)
35 Sapphires.
Mountain/Snowcovered land only.
The caster summons the occult power,cause an avalanche strike targeted province,kill down 1/4 population,1/2 patrolling garrison and bestrow a magic site.

Icequake
Evocation 5,WWWEE,Battlefield Enchantment
5 Sapphires,500- Fatigue.
Snowfield only.
Deals 7 cold damage and 3 physical damage to each non-flying unit per turn.
Magic resistance Negates(+3).

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
If we are talking really Ice Age then I would have though Abysians and C'tis would need to be drastically different as its just too cold for them. Abysia could live underneath the surface perhaps where rivers of Lava raise the temperature.

The nations should probably feel tribal rather than nations in the main. If they still do have something decribable as a nation then this could be a reflection of a very organised, disciplined, response to the Ice Age. I think you would want none of the nations to bear more than a passing similarity to present nations.

If the Ice Age came suddenly, a modern C'tis would be turning to its shamans, desperately seeking a magical solution. On the other hand... I was envisioning Dinosaur C'tis, made of lumbering giants. Ultimately, of course, the cold kills them off and only the small, agile C'tissians with opposable thumbs, tool use, and mastery of fire survive. However, this extincition has not yet come. Let us say that it is the beginning of an ice age... either way, of course, C'tis would be very different from modern C'tis. Maybe their temples could radiate heat =)

On the other hand, Abysia would be tough to play. I imagine their heat scale would be capped at +1, with the Smouldercone given an additional effect of +2 heat scale in the capitol only - so essentially they would be clinging to their homeland for warmth, and recruiting indies to conquer. Maybe it would lead to the origin of the humanbred, able to tolerate Abysia, and able to conquer cold lands as well.

As the game will see the development of grand empires, not normally what happens in an Ice Age, it might make sense to set the game at the end of a period of Ice Age with whoevers God wins gets to decide the conditions in the next period - if its Caelum then its more Ice, Man, Pangaea etc then the greening of the world begins while if its abysia then the Lava rivers spout forth as volcanos light the horizens and the world is roasted beneath the fiery light of great sun.



Keir

...of course, that would be awesome... but somehow I think it would not be possible with the current or soon-to-come mod tools

I like the idea of Ctis and Abysia burrowing toward the warmth of the core . But I'm not sure how to realistically accomplish it, except on custom maps.

Also, if indy populations had their own scale modifiers, all the Ice Age indies could be set to cold+1 to give a semblance of an ice age...

[Leif_-]

Just a few loose ideas.

Instead of todays longbows, Man should have javelin-throwers with atl-atls - which should give them a range advantage over Ulm's more powerful stone-throwers.

There should be a nunatak special site wich gives + to production. Various glacier-based sites, ice-caves, frozen water-falls, deep-frozen lakes et. al. for other site "themes". Volcanoes, hot-springs and magical fire sites might add a few +1 heat dominions.

Instead of Marignon and Arco, perhaps nations based on Inuit and Lapplanders? (Polar-bear mounted heroes bravely battling masses of spear-throwers fighting from sleighs drawn by reindeer.)

R'lyeh should be land-based in this mod (Re: At the Mountains of Madness) Perhaps even a pre-fall Atlantis

[General Tacticus]

Are you sure about Ulm ?

On the one hand, they are strong and wear heavy armor, which is good.
But on the other hand, normal Ulm is also the most advanced nation as far as forging is : it has the best steel and forging bonuses... Yet you send them back to stone armor. Not even copper, stone...

I think you should at least give them something that announces their coming mastery. Perhaps capital only troops of some kind ?
Here is an idea : Capital site Fallen Meteorite, allows the recruiting of Ulm Ironclubs.
"A Meteorite made mostly of iron fell from the skies. The heat from that fall created a crude form of steel. By putting sharp edged fragments of that meteorite on their clubs, the artisans of Ulm have created a truly awesome weapon, able to penetrate most armor".
And then you make the Iron clubs armor piercing, but with low damage and attack value (they are still crude and cumbersome...)

name=Iron_Club dam=3 (armor-piercing) att=0 def=-1 length=1 hands=1 hits=1 res=5 new=1

or perhaps a 2-handed club (easier to stick the steel to the club) .

name=Iron_Club2 dam=4 (armor-piercing) att=0 def=-1 length=3 hands=2 hits=1 res=7 new=1

And you could the create a "Meteorite smith" leader, which does not get a penalty on item forging...

At first I thought about some kind of armor, but they already have their stone platemail (just imagine the time needed to make stone mail !!), and I like that idea

So, what do you think ?

[Wauthan]

Just had an idea that might be interesting. Something to do instead de-evolving the existing factions, which might be very troublesome since surely the iceage predates the Ermorian empire.

Why not set the time after the events in Dominions 2? Say the coming of the ice was due to the meddling of the pretenders and the existing factions have been thrown back into a serious "dark age". The magic energies that flows trough the world simply couldn't take the massive use of spells. The world was torn apart, which the frequent disasters of "bad luck" is evidence about. Now the survivors cling to what hope their new leaders can bring.

That would allow the use of higher techlevel armor and weapons than what the stoneage implies but still toss the materials used backwards so to speak.
It would also explain why the magic items available still are around, since we can't mod them away.

[Saber Cherry]

Ok. After discussions with my geologist-father, I decided stone plate would be best made of mica (not flint), and that an alternative would be leather armor with plates inserted in pockets, like modern combat armor. I'll modify the stone and ceramic armors accordingly.

[undead dolphin hacker]

Not to undermine Cherry, but does it *have* to be set in the Ice Age? Why not instead of an Ice Age we make a "What Once Was" mod that creates races based on the backstories we have availible for the current races?

[quantum_mechani]

How about an ice age vanheim without humans or dwarves. Thier units could keep the high defense, but no longer wear any kind of armour. Perhaps they could also gain access to higher blood magic and instead of riding fey-horses they would be separate recruitable creatures. To have something to use thier resources on they could have extremely high cost, buildable in the unit queue, hovering cities. The cities would act as moving castles with very low admin, defense, and supplies.

The Last part is probably not possible, but it would be cool.