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

[rdonj]

Next bug! The drones have weapon: fist, rather than the life draining weapon they're supposed to have. Probably another misspelling.

[Darkwind]

As it turns out, I just never bothered to add in the Ancient Laser. And I can see why, since I have no idea what effect # Life Drain is. But, well, at least I've put in the Ancient Lasers now.

Other miscellaneous changes: I noticed that the otherwise-incredible Capital Ship had merely 10 MR, so I decided to instate a sort of system: base 9 MR, +1 for every 10 supplies consumed (5s go either way). So, the Capital Ship, with 65 supplies consumed, now has MR 15. Of course, it still requires 65 supplies, or else your 50-gold-upkeep Capital Ship is suddenly gaining afflictions very, very quickly. 50 gold, you say? 50 gold for an absolutely awesome unit, I say.

Also, Streamguns/Streamcannons received boosts due to complaints (or a complaint). Guns are now 5 AP damage, Cannons 12 AP (compared to 3/8).

[Fate]

Hey guys, kudos on the mod so far. I thought I would just write my impressions after playing the mod for a day:

?BUGS? I have never seen a space mine explode, even after sitting next to enemies for a number of turns. Also, R'lyeh seems to have Jomon's summons (except for the dragon).

I found the space dynamic very fun and enjoyable. The nations are also much more balanced and varied than I expected, I am very impressed. But some are clearly more powerful than others.

In particular the Dragon nation seems very weak. They are obviously billed for evocations and thugging, but that is much less effective when the standard units have AP and AN ranged weapons and many indies, even, have thuggish units. The one bright spot is their incredibly effective assassins.

Assassins in the mods are generaly much more powerful. Jomon and the Dragons both have thug-level assassins that should be able to take out most mages and their bodyguards until some serious research/kitting has been done.

Thug-level units are also surprisingly prevalent, especially among indies. In particular the Pirate Space Station (big pirate ship) is much more powerful than the rest of the pirate ships combined. I have often lost to this single ship multiple times, but had no trouble with the other pirate ships.

For the Insects, I disagree with the comment in their description. I don't see why a blood hunting nation should take death (though it is thematic) and, seeing as all the Nest units are holy, I think an imprisoned pretender with a strong bless (I took F9/A6 for damage and protection against the all too common missiles) is better. I can transform one starting female to get my blood economy going, while the other (with my strong bless) can take any province at all with the starting army (the spear spiders take land and the males take space). The Hive and Swarm are not Holy, nor are they more space-capable, so I do not consider either superior to the starting Nest and therefore I have little incentive to research. Even my spear fighters come with poison throwing if I need it, obviating the need for the one unique Hive unit.

Ulm and Jomon are both extremely powerful. Jomon also has a very powerful assassin, along with the AN ranged troops and the Dai Oni, so they are very powerful and versatile.

I did not play the Orcs enough to really understand them. In particular I did not understand the difference between an Aspiring Hero and a Hero. When would I not promote an Aspiring Hero? If there is greater upkeep on a Hero it doesn't mention it anywhere...

The Commonwealth also seems a bit weak. Their troops cost a crippling amount of resources, even with a full production scale, and are only moderate in combat, using mostly AP or less attacks (when most nations can recuit AN) and no ranged attacks. This might be different if I had got a bless (which I did not try). It does seem like the Commonwealth should be able to get rolling after their first few provinces, with all the unrest bonuses and defensive unit spells.

In conclusion this Mod was an excellent change of pace from Dominions and I enjoy it a lot. Thank you, I hope to keep up with any improvements.

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Fate

In particular the Dragon nation seems very weak. They are obviously billed for evocations and thugging, but that is much less effective when the standard units have AP and AN ranged weapons and many indies, even, have thuggish units. The one bright spot is their incredibly effective assassins.

Assassins in the mods are generaly much more powerful. Jomon and the Dragons both have thug-level assassins that should be able to take out most mages and their bodyguards until some serious research/kitting has been done.

The assassins don't fare all that well in this mod--too many commanders are too powerful for them to take on.

Using the race in the regular game it's real strength is those assassins but I haven't been able to make those tactics work in 3k.

Thug-level units are also surprisingly prevalent, especially among indies. In particular the Pirate Space Station (big pirate ship) is much more powerful than the rest of the pirate ships combined. I have often lost to this single ship multiple times, but had no trouble with the other pirate ships.

And the Dragon assassins can't cope with these even though they munch any ordinary commander they encounter.

[Johan K]

Fun mod, definitely different from the standard game. I liked how the blue aliens got space suits when I took them into space.

It was a bit difficult to get it running on Linux though. Linux is case sensitive regarding file names and "Dominons 3000" uses a capital D every second time. Also some "_small" postfix had the same problem. The Ork tank hero had a black frame around him which probably shouldn't be there.

A starry background would make it feel more spacey though, I have to patch something for that into Dominions.

How come you used forest instead of sea for space? Wouldn't the sea movement restrictions be practical.

[Darkwind]

@Fate: I've got a couple (semi) answers, but I'm not too knowledgeable about a lot of this stuff, so I'll just skip some.
1-Space Mines' "self destruct" (if I remember) has an area of effect. I think Aezeal meant for them to hit themselves, but it doesn't seem to work out that way.
4-The power level of assassins in the mod might be due to most nations being, in Aezeal's own words, rather more powerful than your average Dominions nation.
5-Once again, nations are generally more powerful in Dom3K than Dom3. Though, I guess a thug in Dom3 would still be fairly powerful in Dom3K.
6-I think that was from Amos's original mod, actually. He suggested it for thematic reasons.

Oh, hey! Johan K, developer extraordinaire, is here! Let's see...
@the tank: Yeah, the frame around the tank hero is weird. Hopefully it's easy to fix, though.

@forest-vs-space: I think we settled on forest because water was coded to act like water, not space. Units can move 1 province/turn in water, period, which was a really big disadvantage. Sailing could've been cool though. Still though, the 1-move limit plus the lack of blood hunting sort of nailed the proverbial watery grave for water provinces.

We wouldn't have to use either, though, if you let us play around with void terrain and voidforms!

[rdonj]

I will Although, honestly I've never had problems with the space stations. It's just a matter of getting the independants to flee, then eventually your units run into melee and carve the space station up with their ap weapons. They're a pain to bring down with ranged weapons, but just about any unit with an ap melee weapon can kill one eventually. I've always found space eels to be the most problematic, especially when there's 3 or more in a province.

Btw Fate, the commonwealth does have a ranged unit. I believe their gun does 4AN damage. I haven't found it terribly effective personally, though.

Darkwind - Haven't had a chance to play yet to see if your new streamguns are effective. I'll try to look into that at some point.

[Aezeal]

Fate, I thank you for your evaluation of the mod. I'm glad to hear there are some others playing it aside from rdonj
It's nice you think races are somewhat balanced (with help of Rdonj I hope we got them withing the range of balance that vanilla dominions has.. since those nations aren't that balanced I hope we got there now)

I think the air bless is probably way overpowered in the mod (anti missile weapon spells have been increased in cost but I can't make the air bless more expensive or less effective)

I might need to decrease the number of holy units on the insects or do something about incentive to get Hive or Swarm, maybe remove ranged attack from Nest?

The powerfull indies are meant to put on the map to make some province harder to take as in scenario maps. I think I need to use space Eels and spacestations less perhaps (Rdonj plz take his comment in account with your mapping )

The Orcs shapeshifting of heroes has given me lots of replies like yours, the IDEA was
1. I could get a lower recruitment cost and after shapechange a higher upkeep. I can also change recruitment cost and upkeep separately now which I thought would give me more options for balancing (IMHO balancing races which are about domsummons etc is hard.)
2. It simulates somewhat the rising of commanders from the ranks by skill

all in all there is indeed no reason not to shapeshift them though.

The commonwealth only just got their AP weapons, before that they where even worse, same for dragons.. I hope they both are better now, commonwealth has very good shields against ranged weapons and that should help them. I think your reply about AP or less means you use an older version of the mod (from time to time I change a lot in short notice) so that could also be why your dragons are not as strong as they are now.. I hope.

Maybe upload the latest version.. and DL the nation Souls of Shiar which I've released seperately it's the undead nation for this mod and I'll put in in later after some balancing (like dragons it uses no spaceforms so cann be used for dom 3 vanilla and releasing it seperately has 2 things I like about it: non dom 3K players might try it and dragons certainly got much more feedback)

[Johan K]

I have implemented two new map commands for the next patch that I hope will be used for Dom3k. #skybox "myskybox.tga" will put a custom made skybox in a province. #batmap "empty" will remove the ground you fight on. Together they should provide the possibility for a decent space map without any pine trees floating around when you fight.

[Darkwind]

I'll throw in with Aezeal that the new commands sound very, very awesome. Though, if experience is any indicator, we'll have to steal a semi-decent skybox from the Internet, or from Dom3. Assuming I have any idea what a skybox is. One would think the name gives it away, but there's always the chance it's something crazy.