Mod: Dominions 3000 v0.81 - lots of new indies, new map (using the brand new map commands)

[rdonj]

Yet another alternative - cause the nectid queens to generate space form insectoids. If you do that though you should definitely get rid of the summon allies button for males on normal queens, and possibly not give them males at all. That might be a bit much though unless the level of the nectid queen spell was dropped a bit.

And another bug: There's still a province on the bottom left planet that's considered a forest... province 28.

[rdonj]

Hmm... you're going to have to either give insectoid females completely insane mr or, probably better, reduce all insectoid unit morale to 30. With females the only non-mindless creatures in the race, you're pretty well doomed if R'lyeh ever attacks you, they'll just kill your commanders with mind blast and then your army will rout.

[Aezeal]

Wow lots of stuff for me to work on (not now though)
- THe strike force is permanent, the fact you get those troops (the commander black knight and the non commander medic and general) is something I can't change really and doesn't matter that much IMHO.. I thought the price was reasonably since it can be deployed all over the map and it's a force strong enough to take and hold provinces and then it's neighbours since it has a mage a commander and high protection

- Will need to fix that lightspearspace1 thingie.. must have suffered when I fixed the alpha channel thingie

- I don't get you post about insect blood spells and alternative methods.. and what don't you like

- THe morale thingie is a good point.

-I thaught the insects could get a decent number of males as they are now.. but it seems you have tested it and disagree.. so I'll need to fix that .. somehow. Why do you want to have the nectid queens to do that?

[rdonj]

The black knight strike force is pretty good... however it still imo is not worth 45 astral pearls. There are a lot of other things you could do with those pearls. My personal favorite at the moment is forging rings of wizardry to give to dreadnaughts and enhance the power of their magma eruptions. Sounds expensive but with the forge and the hammer of the forge lord, not that expensive.... It probably would not bother me that much if it was remotely possible to forge clams with ulm, or if it took fire gems instead. I'm swimming in fire gems right now in my game because I can't figure out anything really interesting to use them for. Maybe flames from the sky, once I reach 9 evocation.

With the insect blood spells I was just brainstorming different ways that the bugs could deal with space or avoid it altogether. The number of males is not too bad now in a way, but it does require building lots of the normal queens on your starting planet. Depending on the planet, it may require more than is ultimately healthy for you due to blood slave requirements. And in the game I was playing it took me quite a while to build up to the point where I could try to go and conquer other planets. I only really started having males in large quantity by year 3 or so. But when I finally had them I had them in pretty huge numbers because of all my queens summoning. So I don't know. Basically I think the summoning probably grows to be too strong, but it can take years for the bugs to get off the ground.

What I was saying I didn't like is the idea of making the males stronger to make the insects more competitive in space, they don't need to be stronger. And I suggested the nectid queens as a space creature generator because at the moment I don't think it does anything and because it would give the insectoid player a little more to consider strategically if, say, they could build those to improve their space forces but the units were absolutely terrible in atmosphere. So you'd choose between building balanced armies, land assault armies, or space conquering armies. Anyway I am just throwing out ideas atm.

[Aezeal]

hmm males probably shouldn't be much stronger, maybe only a little so most will have to cdome from numbers, I think the nectids are mostly water creatures that don't really have a special function in this game. They could have a better summons for the males. or a domesummon in addition to the regular summon.

You can't win the game very well without taking space too so just bypassing space isn't enough. Thanks for he brainstorm and the idea that the race needs this balancing in the first place

I''ll probably change something about the price of the strikeforce.. some pearls less or firegems indeed...

[rdonj]

It would also be kind of nice if coccooned bugs had the need not eat tag. You're going to have to slowly move your assault force through space while protecting it with males, and it is guaranteed to lead to starvation issues if both groups are decently sized. The morale penalty doesn't affect them but being forced to have diseased armies is a bit frustrating.

[Aezeal]

that is a perfect idea and completely needed thematically.

[Aezeal]

- Dreadnaught HP and MR improved
- capitol --> capital
- #weapon "Twin Ship Heavy Blasters - close"
#weapon "Twin Ship Heavy Blasters"
#weapon "Tractor Beam"
#weapon "Lightning Cannon"
should be the capital ships weapons (I've put the twin ship heavy blasters higher in the list now, hope another one doesn't fall off)
- strike force is 30 pearls now

- the lightspearspace1 and 1a where non existant there where a sparespace 1 and 1a however, it's fixed but for your game you could just rename the spears in Lightspears (noone uses the other name)

Why random events give pirate scout (never heard that before btw) or oni-dragons is a mystery to me.. there is no way for me to edit is.. I do hope it's changed permanently from to 50 scouts since that will be similar to getting militia instead of getting 50 oni- dragons which is more like getting 50 tartarians

- insects troops have morale 30 (mostly) and NNE on coccoons

- I've not yet changed much about the males, THe nectids are for underwater troops.. the queens are amph. but it's not in the spirit of Amos mod to have them make space troops, they are a separate race too so they couldn't make nest males. An option would be to create a Hive male but I sort of like the idea of them only having one unit in space.. it must be all-round though so maybe it IS a little bit weak as it is.
Perhaps summoning more might be the best option really or improve their armor a bit? --> why don't you think they should be stronger? they are still pretty weak (anyway I've not changed anything here yet since I'm not sure what to do yet)

I've not yet done the insect transport spell since I think they should have some incentive to go into space.
Amos actually already had the spell in his mod and it's still there
but burrowing from one planet to the other seems... well wrong.. and as I said they shoulnd't be able to bypass space (the cocoon thingie was intended as the starshiptroopers kind of travel)

--newspell
#name "Underground Tunnel"
#descr "Borrowing underground the Insectoid mage is capable of moving to a province of its choosing unopposed by the earthly obstacles."
#restricted 80
#school 3
#researchlevel 3
#path 0 3
#pathlevel 0 2
#effect 10019
#fatiguecost 300
#damage 1
#nreff 1
#end


--newspell
#name "Underground Passages"
#descr "Borrowing underground the Insectoid mage is capable of transporting herself and her army to a province of her choosing unopposed by the earthly obstacles."
#restricted 80
#school 3
#researchlevel 7
#path 0 3
#pathlevel 0 5
#effect 10077
#fatiguecost 2300
#damage 1
#nreff 1
#end


SO I think that should settle most stuff mentioned lately... except the weakness of Commonwealth.. they DO lack AP attacks while all other races have loads of them which does fit this age (better armour and better weapons to break it .. and if you don't have that your race has been eliminated a 1000 years ago just after LA)

I'm a bit hesitant about what to do.. If I make all their melee weapons AP they might be too strong? And if I only make on of the troops AP the rest will be never used. --> I've made it all AP.. the race can use it I guess.

[llamabeast]

I think "Underground tunnel" isn't a great thematic justification for a teleport spell... in space. In ordinary dominions it would make sense, but not so much when the action spans several planets.

I think the teleport spell sounds like a good idea though. Just needs a different name.

[rdonj]

Woo, lots of changes.

I've gotten the pirate scout event 3 times in my current insect game (halted temporarily due to meeting r'lyeh and realizing there was no way I could fight them), and I got it a few times in the orc game I was playing recently also. I haven't seen oni dragons as a random event so I'm pretty sure you don't get them anymore.

I didn't think males should be stronger for a couple of reasons. The first being that most races are a fair amount weaker in space than on land, and the insectoids possibly having strong space units seems strange. And it's not like they're weak either, they can defeat even large groups of space krakens reasonably well with their current stats without too many losses. They perform at least reasonably on par with other races units for space duty, and flying units with multiple attacks can easily become overpowered if you're not careful. My suggestion would probably be to make them autosummons, instead of dom summons, and have them come in batches of 2 at a time. That way you would be able to break into space faster but you wouldn't get huge amounts of males later on. You could maybe do 3 instead but that might be too much.

I was aware of the spell from amos' mod, but when I was playing them in dom3k I didn't see it so I figured you probably disabled it. It's fine if they don't get it, it just seemed like a fun idea. If they do get something like that though it should be really expensive/hard to research, because I think females have 160 leadership... having that many units show up suddenly anywhere they want would be pretty scary.

I think all the commonwealth melee weapons should be ap. If you think about it, the only units in the game that don't have either ap or an melee weapons are militia and illithids. Actually you could almost consider giving the heavy commonwealth infantry AN weapons... they don't have shields, so there's not a lot of incentive to recruit them as is. But not some kind of crazy weapon that gives them strength plus weapon damage with an... but better than space marines 4 an tasers.