FRAG! Newsletter

[Endoperez]

Heh, maybe I should get around to do that Ice Age mod after all...

[Endoperez]

FRAG! of February has come! I post this here, so that we can discuss the chances.

5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dominions III Developer Diary

Developer Diary 03
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>From the keyboards of the dynamic duo behind the Dominions series comes their
third designer diary...

February...

Christmas holiday has passed. Time has become rarer and more precious. I believe
someone has cast a mighty ritual to slow down my work.

Hmm, I had to take a look at our archives. Not so bad after all.

Several new pretenders including the hilarious Solar Disc. Who wants a body when
you can have a disc? Still, it's quite nice to have a pair of wings, arms and why not
a head? Legs are useless if you fly. Discs rule!

Also several new blood summons for Mictlan. You like turkey? Mesoamericans did. I do.
Meet the turkey shapeshifters.

Another topic is the Angels. I like Angels, more than Devils actually, but I never
really liked the Angels in Dominions. They are ugly, they are friendly and they don't
sing. Devils are way cooler, and that is bad. Bad to the bone. Angels rule, or should
rule. Impossible to behold they mete out the justice of the Lord or praise Him with their otherworldly hymns. So

now the Angels have new sprites that I like. I have the harbinger
as my new forum avatar. Seems appropriate. Now they have to be revamped to be on par
with Arch Devils. There is also a new angelic being to match the Demon Lords. Feels
good.

Now some good news for the modders. We are moving an increasing number of traits to
the nation data to make mod-enabling smoother. Traits like blood sacrificing nation
and production bonus nation as well as default province defence and national heroes
are now part of the national data.

/Kristoffer

-------------------

After taking a look at the latest progress in Dominions III, I decided that this
months most enjoyable achievement has to be the age. We had a good time adding the
new age stat to units. The age adds a nice RPG feeling to your characters who will
now age one year every winter. Different monster have different lifespans of course.
So don't grow too attached to your monkeys, they don't live very long.

The aging system integrates quite nicely into the game system and I think it can result
in some new strategies or at least some hilarious situations.

/Johan

[Endoperez]

Empowerment of Angels is quite nice, and the addition of unique celestial summon sounds interesting. Besides, the thread about angelic upgrade we had some time ago (in December?) seemed to indicate that majority of the forumites are for the change..

The modding news is very good, indeed! I just hope that the old mods don't become invalidated... Maps stay useable, as Kirstoffer played a test game with Faerun in earlier D3DD (Dominions III Developers' Diary, which some of my non-Dommunist friends have started to hate). I'm only worried that the unit pictures have been doubled again... The Harbinger in Kristoffer's avatar is in 128x128 picture, and is about 55 pixels high without wings... Either he is of Giant size, or humans have been enlarged, or Kristoffer's forum avatar is bigger than sprites in the game.

I rather like the idea of aging. Crones and Arch Theurgs will start suffering after some 120 turns of gameplay, so you can't just wait. And imagine Burden of Time!

[tinkthank]

The only drawback to the "Eras" structure would be, however, that now the opponents will automatically know which nation you are playing; if there are 17 nations, each with 3 themes, there will no longer be 51 playable selections for any given game, but rather 17.

[Chazar]

The aging system sounds interesting - athmosphere-wise, but does it also imply that national troops become even more useless due to their short live spans? Is age another thing that Devils are good at?

[atul]

I'd assume that at the rate of one year per 12 turns it'd take a real turtleplayer for national troops' aging to be a problem.

More serious it would be with mages and such you'd might see stay alive for long... ...and honestly, I'm itching to see some useful but really short-lived troops. They could even implement it so that Devils' contracts on earth last only a specified time, like a couple of years, if those guys are seen too powerful. Okay, and that was total speculation.

[Endoperez]

Err, basing this to the fact (?) that Legionaires served 30 years before retiring, it would take 30 years (=12*30=360 turns) for a fresh Hastatus to retire. In fact, if age can change units, they would eventually become Principes, and then Triarii, and then retire. And even if he didn't fight in any battle at all, he would have 4th star of experience, gained just from serving in the military over 200 turn/months.

For a triarii (lets say 25 years already served) to retire, it would take "only" 5*15 = 75 turns. Besides, I think this aging system could be continued to magical creatures, so that they serve only a year/three/ten before returning to their home plane. It would be an interesting shift to the Seasonal Spirits if they retired in the second "late Season" before their own season. With this, Winter Wolves summoned in winter would last longer than Winter Wolves summoned in summer.

[Oversway]

Also several new blood summons for Mictlan. You like turkey? Mesoamericans did. I do.
Meet the turkey shapeshifters.

Turkey shapeshifters sounds...interesting. Will there also be a Maize Lord pretender, with his corn husk helmet (or is it his head)?