Librarys and sages

[Peter Ebbesen]

Cainehill said:
Not so sure I agree. Yes, you have more money - but unlike Dom2, it's difficult to go with a strategy of using all your money for mages/forts/temples/labs. Both because you really _need_ troops in Dom3, and because those forts/temples/labs cost substantially more, so you're unlikely to be able to make a _lot_ of forts the way you could in Dom2 with Mausoleums, watchtowers, and Wizard towers. Heck, even the middle range fortifications were substantially cheaper in Dom2.

While that is true, in my experience gold scaling on the income side is higher than the scaling on (mostly static) expenses such as forts, temples, labs. Sure, I pay twice cost for labs and temples and way for fortresses than I used to - but I don't, in general, need more temples, labs, or fortresses than I did in Dominions 2. And, being forced to shell out real money on the fortresses (sniff) because of not being able to choose the cheap options, I end up with fortresses with better administration ratings and higher income: They cost more but the long-term gain is worth more than the mere cost-factor needed to match normal income growth from 2 to 3.

The exception to this might be to the ones going from Dom2 mausuleum strategies or using all mage/fortress/no-troop strategies to Dom3 as you note, and for nations such as the Ashen Empire all odds are off* - but again, that's not the general case.

* We really do need somebody to do a thorough analysis of Ashen Empire in Dominions 3. So many of changes made to balance other nations have a weird impact on the undead hordes.

As for troops, I almost always neeeded troops in Dominions 2 - both for single player and multi player. In Dominions 3, I just need more of them, but seem to have a larger percentage of my total income available to use on mages as the game progresses [so long as it is not a short game setup - those call for radically different strategies]

So, Dom2 you could get a lot of mages cranked out for research pretty quickly. Dom3, sages are seen more rarely, and while yes, there are lots of shamans about, the shamans are pretty poor researchers, _and_ it's what, 900 gold to build the temple and lab required for them? Whereas Dom2, it wasn't that difficult (with some nations at least) to have 3 forts by turn 12 or so, all churning out national mages.

And then again, you could play long Dom2 games without getting sages if you were unlucky. As for early-game research, I happily concede that on the spot: it is bloody obvious that early-game research has been hit with a sledgehammer - which is why I'm interested in the question of mid-to-long game research where my tentative opinion, based on way too few games to be definite, is that I'm certainly not worse off, on average, than in Dominions 2, once I've got a core realm established and can start mass recruitment of researchers.

The point in time when the research explosion begins is definitely later than in Dom2, but RP/turn tends to grow faster per turn after that point than it did as well.

Oh - and in Dom2, your researchers didn't have a _nasty_ habit of dying of old age.

Now that is a good point - for some nations.

[NickW]

Peter Ebbesen said:
We really do need somebody to do a thorough analysis of Ashen Empire in Dominions 3. So many of changes made to balance other nations have a weird impact on the undead hordes.

I haven't done a thorough analysis but I've played them SP several times and I'm about to start my first MP game with AE Ermor so I'm somewhat familiar.

Overall I'd say AE Ermor got savaged with the nerf stick. They were weakened in a lot of way and subtly boosted in a few ways but the overall net is downward I believe.

Changes I've noted.

1: Capital province gives 15 death gems now instead of 10. Ermor can get a faster start and more summons.

2. Capital provine starts with 30k pop so it takes a long time to die down. Ermor gets a little more gold in the early game phase.

3. Ermor still gets the points benefit of bad scales, but can't get the point benefit of dormant/imprisoned pretenders. So Ermor doesn't get a higher point pretender than everyone else like they used to. They just get them earlier which doesn't make a lot of difference since early on they are just summoning and so forth.

4. Slower research hurts Ermor since a lot of Ermorian strategies required conjuration or construction or globals. Historically Ermor has never been as good at research as the other nations anyway and this exacerbates the problem.

5. Boosts to banishment REALLY hurt undead horde strategies. Even humble indie priests will blow big holes in an horde of longdead unless they are protected by the magics of unholy priests. This means Ermor needs to spend more gems to make sure all their armies are well covered by priests or else anyone with a few priests will evaporate their hordes.

6. Boosts to castle/temple costs really limit Ermorian access to the good undead. Ermor has always had a cash problem and now that a temple+castle combo is going to cost about 1200 minimum Ermor can't afford them. Alchemizing won't cut it at those cost levels. On the flipside, Ermoria n players are going to be drawn to enemy castles like moths to light because if they can take it a free castle is a big bonus to Ermor.

7. I can't quantify this yet, but it seems like the distribution of magic sites have changed. The sites that give more than one gem of a type seem to be rarer. My SP Ermorian games have seen me scrambling for death gems in a way I never was in Dom2. In the late game phases, it seems an AE Ermor player in Dom3 has less death gems available than he would have had in Dom2. Not 100% sure on this one yet, it could have just been crappy luck in the games I played.

[Endoperez]

7. Less gems

LA games' default site frequency is lower than DomII's, or earlier ages'. Just 35 IIRC.

[NickW]

Ahh thank you Endoperez, that might explain what I was seeing.