Back again after absence, polling interest for a MA (learning) game

Originally Posted by Torgon

Basically everything comes down to forge a boat load of gem gens, forge a bunch of hammers, get GoH or chalice, summon Tarts, win.

You have the settings ingame to limit all of the above, if they are a problem in your games:
Play games with harder research, or 8 provinces/player with 6 player max, lower magic sites...and you will not see a single Tartarian. Or play against more agresive players.

I played many games of Dom PPP and we hardly ever got to lv9 spells. Pretty much the same with Dom2. Dom3 I have played little in MP, but I know it is even more customizable that those were.

I would also like to add that endgame strategies need some kind of imbalance (from a game design perspective) in order to avoid stalemates and draw games to a conclusion. With this I do not mean that "I win" buttons are fine, just that lv9 spells being slightly over is not bad per se.

[bbz]

the problem is not with the imbalance, you cannot have perfectly balanced game, the problem is that everyone uses the same strategy and it gets boring and tedious in the late game. And as the best thing about dominions is its diversity(among other things)its rather a shame that by the late game all nations have to become the same(to be competitive).
Whats CBM does is introduce more choices, like now you have all the EDM summons or tartarians and they seem sort of balanced.(still some tweaking needed) But for example if you are stuck with fire or air or water, and not death you at least have some options rather than just forfeit the game.

[Korwin]

But for example if you are stuck with fire or air or water, and not death you at least have some options rather than just forfeit the game.

I really like scales pretender. I think in every cbm game I played, I took extreme good scales.
The reason being, I dont need my pretender to break into another gem type, I dont need to plan how I get into clams, I dont need a Way to get hammers...

I am no Way an expert player.... so if I am wrong Tell me

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Wendigo_reloaded

You have the settings ingame to limit all of the above, if they are a problem in your games:
Play games with harder research, or 8 provinces/player with 6 player max, lower magic sites...and you will not see a single Tartarian. Or play against more agresive players.

I played many games of Dom PPP and we hardly ever got to lv9 spells. Pretty much the same with Dom2. Dom3 I have played little in MP, but I know it is even more customizable that those were.

I would also like to add that endgame strategies need some kind of imbalance (from a game design perspective) in order to avoid stalemates and draw games to a conclusion. With this I do not mean that "I win" buttons are fine, just that lv9 spells being slightly over is not bad per se.

But with those options you have to play artificially short games, or play with few magic sites, etc. I guess I would just prefer to play the game where you can get to level 9 spells and have the game still be interesting and diverse.

And I agree that level 9 spells should be powerful, absolutely. It's just that there should be powerful spells available down all path and for all nations without forcing everyone down the same trajectory.

But this isn't the CBM thread, so I'll stop after this. Bottom line, I'd prefer to play CBM, but I'm not 100% averse to playing a vanilla game.

[Yskonyn]

I begin to understand what CBM tries to balance out, but I am not really convinced yet that the 'imbalances' are not just in the eye of the beholder.
Has there ever been any statement from Illwinter about CBM or imbalances of the game in general?
Thing is; when they designed the game, they must also have seen the issues which have been brought up above. If they were so glaringly obvious, why didn't they change it?
Aren't there counter-tactics against the 'Tartaren tactic'.

Are there nations that are excluded from said tactic and therefore inherently have a hard time winning the game no matter what?
Or are these issues more subtle?
These are the questions I would like to see answered with funding.

It might be that everyone plays the same tactic because every Nation's guide comes down to the same tactic, rather than there being other alternatives.
I have too little experience with Dom 3 to make a statement on that either way, but I am a little hesitant towards accepting claims towards gameplay changing mods being the 'best way'.
Mods of other games in the past have proven they were the best only on personal basis.

I am not against CBM at all. Do not get me wrong, but I would like to make sure that it actually improves the game (for me).

While this isn't the CBM thread, I do think the discussion is a valid one for my purpose. We need to confirm the setting before setting up the game.

[legowarrior]

cbm. hate farming for gems.

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Yskonyn

I begin to understand what CBM tries to balance out, but I am not really convinced yet that the 'imbalances' are not just in the eye of the beholder.
Has there ever been any statement from Illwinter about CBM or imbalances of the game in general?
Thing is; when they designed the game, they must also have seen the issues which have been brought up above. If they were so glaringly obvious, why didn't they change it?
Aren't there counter-tactics against the 'Tartaren tactic'.

Are there nations that are excluded from said tactic and therefore inherently have a hard time winning the game no matter what?
Or are these issues more subtle?
These are the questions I would like to see answered with funding.

It might be that everyone plays the same tactic because every Nation's guide comes down to the same tactic, rather than there being other alternatives.
I have too little experience with Dom 3 to make a statement on that either way, but I am a little hesitant towards accepting claims towards gameplay changing mods being the 'best way'.
Mods of other games in the past have proven they were the best only on personal basis.

I am not against CBM at all. Do not get me wrong, but I would like to make sure that it actually improves the game (for me).

While this isn't the CBM thread, I do think the discussion is a valid one for my purpose. We need to confirm the setting before setting up the game.

So without CBM Tarts are by far the best SC chassis in the late game. Nothing else is really viable. And while there are counters to tartarian spam (anti-undead spells, weapons, etc.) The shear dominance of SC in the late game just tends to tip the scales in their favor.

So one big change is that CBM incorporated EDM that gives some other options outside of death for endgame summons. There's still controversy over whether these are actually on par with tarts, if the eclipse vanilla summons in those paths, etc. But it seems like there is pretty broad agreement that they provide many more viable options.

Take a look through the vanilla options and you'll quickly realize that the other top level summons just don't really compare, especially since most of them are unique. A tart summoner can have 20 Tarts rampaging around to your 3 queens of elemental air.

And yes. There were nations that were pretty much excluded from the tactic unless they specifically geared a pretender around it. Nations without death access just had a very difficult time being competitive.

Another big change was the removal of gem gens. From what I understand, as long as these were in you just had to gear you game around producing them, especially in any longer game. They had all sorts of bad effects on the gameplay, number one being that they complete disassociated income from territory control. You could be sitting in a besieged capital, but if you had pursued a gem gen strat and your opponent had not you could have a higher income.

Final big change was removal of hammers, which while they were included basically forced you to have E on your pretender or face a pretty huge penalty compared with other nations who did have them.

I'm not really sure what the developers have said about the existence of CBM, but I would be very surprised if they thought that the base game was perfect. I would guess they probably just decided to leave it up to the modding community to work out the issues with their own changes, which is exactly what CBM seems to be doing.

[Yskonyn]

Ok, well after some research and the comments in here I can accept CBM into the game.
I will open a new thread in the MP section shortly to rally everyone.

[Yskonyn]

Game thread can be found here !

[Corinthian]

Actually I suspect that good nature magic access is much more important than death magic for the purpose of tart spamming. Partly because GoR'ing of the 80% or so of tarts that start as non-commanders are more expensive than the actual summoning of the tart. And partly because there's only two ways cure the 80% or so of tarts that are feeble minded from the get go. Both of these ways requires nature magic.

Also Tartarians are a bit interesting in that they are great at breaking stalemates. Only two nations can make tartarians at the same time due to there only being two ways of healing them. This means there will be a tug-of-war for these ways. For example, I once payed 250N to overcast Gift of health in order to steal it from an enemy in a vanilla game once. It was worth it. So yea, Nature is much more important than death for tarts.

It also does not help that Bootstrapping death is very easy. Just recruit one of the D2 mercs (Göte or Nergash) and there you go. If you have traded for death gems you can have them summon a couple of revenants (Ench 3, D2 9d gems, comes with D1) and have them cast dark knowledge. Have the merc forge a skull staff and that revenant can make more revenants. Give the skull staff to Göte and he can summon a mound fiend. (conj 7) The the mound fiend can then summon tartarians eventually. (Skull Staff, Skull helmet, RoS, RoW = D7 = Tarts.

I have actually done more or less this in an MP game once so it is feasible. I got some D1 indies to site search for me though.