What it will take for me to purchase Dom III

[quantum_mechani]

Cainehill said:
Hmm. Is it possible to mod upkeep down to 0 for national troops? Then, the only real difference between national and summoned troops would be that some summons don't eat food.

Upkeep cost is hard-linked to gold cost.

[Cainehill]

As far as weapon tech research screwing Ulm and a few others : what if it didn't improve the weapons and armor? If there were researchable things that .... could increase morale, or give better troops formations in battle, 6 scriptable mage spells vice 5, give a 20% increase in attack speed to troops, a little extra armor, a little extra chance to avoid an arrow, those seem like they might #1, fit more with Dominions - the average game ends within 40-100 turns, less than 10 years. Huge increases in weapons and armor don't tend to come in that span of time. Mmm, arguably magic might not progress as rapidly either - but tactics change rapidly enough to change the face of war. The hedgehog, the flanking maneuver, blitzkrieg, etc : tactics can transform the face of war.

All of these would be worth researching : but nations whose strength is in their troops to begin with would get greater benefits than would nations whose strength was mages. Ulm, Abysia, Jotuns, with solid troops, benefit more from incremental improvements to the troops than others do. But everyone would still want the improvements, especially if researching "tech" was separate from researching magic.

Maybe every fort generates weapons research; every military (non-mage, non-stealth) commander does as well. Maybe it's tied to Productivity (said scale needing some boosts, especially in the base game), or luck, or the inverse of the magic scale. Just some thoughts - but they do require changes in the base game, not just mods.

[Graeme Dice]

If you want to increase the relative power of national troops without making magic significantly more powerful then you should mod the amount of population needed for each unit of gold income. Increase the base income by 250-300% and the relative cost of troops compared to mages drops way down as the mages can only be built one per turn while your troops will show up everywhere.

[quantum_mechani]

Graeme Dice said:
If you want to increase the relative power of national troops without making magic significantly more powerful then you should mod the amount of population needed for each unit of gold income. Increase the base income by 250-300% and the relative cost of troops compared to mages drops way down as the mages can only be built one per turn while your troops will show up everywhere.

This also greatly encourages mad castleing, however.

[Graeme Dice]

quantum_mechani said:
This also greatly encourages mad castleing, however.

Sure, but you'll have more than three times as many troops, so you can hit your opponent in more places than he can defend.

The real solution, however, is to play multiple games on small maps, instead of a single game on a massive map.

[quantum_mechani]

Graeme Dice said:

Sure, but you'll have more than three times as many troops, so you can hit your opponent in more places than he can defend.

The real solution, however, is to play multiple games on small maps, instead of a single game on a massive map.

That is always my recommendation, more blitz games.

[RedRover]

Having read and considered the posts so far, here are a few more thoughts:


1) Generally I like the idea of some sort of additional cost for summoned units. The more variety in how the costs are configured, the better.


2) On the idea of gem availability, how about the following?

Make gems “sticky” and mages “grabby.” Each turn, all mages in labs fill to a personal limit before any gems go into the general pool.

Say the limit is one gem per level per path. The “pool gem” command ignores these gems. Unless you want to shift them manually, they are used only for tactical combat or a few special orders like Blood Sacrifice. Maybe allow a “sticky on/sticky off” toggle.


3) Give gem-producing items a “shelf life” of 20 gems.

After that, the device fails and is automatically discarded, even if cursed. Basically make some sort of #maxeffects mod code for items. (This makes gem-producing entities correspondingly more valuable.)


4) One idea to limit the “free troop” aspect of summons would be to stress the caster more.

Say a summons costs 1 hit point per two spell levels (round down) that never comes back.

So a 10 hp mage casting a 5th level summons loses 2 hit points that cannot be restored by any means. A fifth summon of this type would be fatal to that mage, and you probably wouldn't want to commit the mage to battle after the second or third such summons.

Likewise, leaders that summon magical being allies might lose a hit point or more per creature summoned—this represents the loss of personal vitality as it is transferred to activate the ally. The exact number might vary according to the creature summoned.

If this doesn't go into Dom3 proper, maybe the modding commands might allow for its incorporation for purposes of further testing.


5) Start certain summoned creatures with experience levels and adjust their base stats so there is effectively no change in their initial numbers.

For example, the Arch Devils might already be at 5 experience levels—further experience for them is irrelevant. Maybe the Draconians summoned starts at 2-3.


6) Limit ritual summoning spells to one per laboratory per turn, in the same way that Blood Sacrifice is limited to one per temple.

[This is the idea I'd most like to test.]


7) Maybe make resources a little easier to come by.

Allow Alchemy to produce Resources from Earth gems as well—maybe 5 resource points at that location per gem. These would, of course, have to be used or they go away.


On empowering national troops with magic abilities.
I’m not sure I like the idea of giving troops intrinsic magical special abilities (such as fire resistance or regeneration). That’s too much like magical crossbreeding, IMO.

I think that the option to equip entire units with magical weapons and armor of various types is worth investigating, though.


On a 250%-300% income increase:
This looks like an interesting idea to me. The mad castling issue can be dealt with simply by increasing the cost of castles and other structures in direct proportion to the income increase.

Other adjustments might be needed, though—for example, province supply capacity might have to be increased, as might the supply effects of Nature magic and certain magic items.


On "blitz" games
Advice to play more blitz doesn't really solve anything, IMO. Also, some of us like the 80-to-100-turn solo games, and desire to have a better time with them.

[PvK]

My first post on this thread, so for the thread topic, I'll buy Dominions III as long as it was made by Illwinter.

Above all, Dominions PPP and II are some of the games I've enjoyed the most over the decades I've been playing computer games. I've played literally thousands of computer games, and these are some of the very best, for my tastes. Still addictively fun after years of play, which is rare.

However I do agree with much of the desires of BigJMoney, Arralen, et al, that I would have even more fun if the mortal units were more viable and the powerful magics (summons, spells) less so.

I'm really sorry I haven't yet had or made the time to finish my Hard Magic mod. I think it would probably be able to mod Dom II to my own taste in ways that could well-satisfy these desires.

At the risk of having someone else mod something that does the same thing before me, so I never get inspired enough to finish my own, I'll throw out what I'd like to see as a solution.

First, I agree with some earlier posts that it's good that Dom II has very powerful magic that should be very hard for mortals to overcome. Where I see the main problem coming in, is that it's so easy and cheap to deploy these powers. Simply put, much of the magic seems much too cheap and easy to me for what it does.

So, my mod-in-the-works increases the path requirements and cost of all magic that is better than on-par with mortal non-magic costs. One can still cast an army-blasting spell or create a super-powerful combattant, but it costs a ton to do and requires seriously powerful mages to do it. So magic is still very useful, but it takes serious investment. Less-used magic also becomes more viable because its cost isn't increased as much (or at all, for things like Corpse Man Construction).

As Arralen pointed out though, the main obstacle to completing a mod that changes the whole economy, is that there is so much content to mod.

PvK