Invisible Swarm III: over

[Aku]

Well nobody seems to be attacking me since i destroyed pasha's main army including his god lol. They just want to leave me at 2 provinces and dom kill me!

[CUnknown]

Yay Aku! You rock.

[jeffr]

"I dislike most of the other changes in the mod, such as making flying boots, water bracelets, etc. more expensive."

I guess we just disagree then I also like this change. Why should I as Pangaea have easy access to Flying Boots and Boots of Quickness (via the Water Bracelet)? Pangaea is not supposed to be an Air or Water nation, yet I use the same old tactics as everyone else (although clearly not as well .

I think the nations should be differentiated more. I'm Pan and yet I'm fielding Bane Lords with Hell Swords, Boots of Quickness, Lucky Coins, blah, blah, blah, the same as everyone else. What is that? If I want the benefits of these clearly superior items, I should have to do more than stick a water bracelet on a water random mage.

I'm just brainstorming here, but I would even go so far as to have some spell schools and items prohibit the use of opposite spell schools and items (Wraith Sword means no Lucky items as a first guess?). Do I want Nature or Death spells? Or Tartarians and Demons stacked with most mortals kills the mortal's morale. If I summon Fiends as Pan, shouldn't my Centaurs be pissed off? I'm just throwing thoughts around without thinking about them, but the goal is variety. Tough choices are more interesting.

The spell mod attempted to introduce variety and choice by making the obvious spells more difficult to cast. I liked the fact that I saw Iron Pigs on the battlefield! I think
the item mod might do the same for the item aspect of the game.

And I have a feeling Zen carefully considered the changes, although everything can be tweaked. I also agree with the idea that upping the item cost is not the solution for most of the items (Wraith Swords, etc.).

And hey, if you really think your favorite nation (say, Ulm) is not playable with this mod, then I'd be willing to play the next game as Pan without something I like (say, White Centaurs). Although Jurri, or someone else, will probably just kill me off that much earlier and use my resources against you

But maybe we should ask those with experience. Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of games played with the Item Mod?

[YellowCactus]

Is there a maximum number of gems you can put into a global?
-yc

[The Panther]

This is an interesting discussion and I have to agree with Jeff about the items.

I am playing in Yarnspinners2, where the main point of the game is writing yarns and not necessarily winning. I am therefore making thematic choices (which are not necessarily the best or even the usual choices) because of the yarns. As part of my story tale, I wanted to outfit my Great Enchantress pretender with a bunch of cheap artifacts. And, because the game is still fairly early (plus I wanted to be totally thematic), I only built low-level air or nature items (I am base Man). No astral or death artifacts! Can you believe that someone would actually outfit a pretender without luck or MR or LD??? I did! It was actually quite fun looking around for an interesting combination of Man-specific artifacts which seem to mesh well together. Did you know that weightless scale mail is really cool for a mage?

I suppose I have been playing Dominions long enough by now that I am more interested in variety instead of doing the absolute best thing (like life drain, luck, boots of flying or quickness, magic resistance, etc).

[The Panther]

YellowCactus said:
Is there a maximum number of gems you can put into a global?
-yc

Yes - it is 999.

[CUnknown]

"I am playing in Yarnspinners2, where the main point of the game is writing yarns and not necessarily winning."

Hey Panther, I totally agree with the role-playing aspect and that writing yarns is fun. I agree that lifedrain is, at times, a no-brainer choice (not all the time, however), and that it should be nerfed.

"And I have a feeling Zen carefully considered the changes"

You can carefully consider something and still make a terrible mod. I love Zen's other mods, but the item mod is just awful. While I agree that Lifedrain should be nerfed, Zen nerfed it to an insane degree.

I also agree that variety of options in a strategy game is something positive. Without variety, there is no strategy, is there? But, I actually think that the item mod in some aspects has -removed- options, case in point Lifedrain weapons. Sure, you can say that "Oh, now people will start to use other weapons! That adds variety." But. if people weren't using other weapons in vanilla, I have serious doubts about their ability as a player. I use other weapons all the time, by no means are my SCs solely lifedrain-machines. If I use lifedrain more than other weapons, it's -not- because the lifedrain weapons are more powerful. I much prefer the artifact weapons, for example. But, also I love fire brands, flambeaus (basically anything armor-piercing), herald lances, moon blades, etc. I think that flambeaus are a far superior weapon than a Wraithsword, even. But those wraith and hell swords are just so damn cheap! They need to be twice as expensive, but they sure don't need a damage nerf. They do rather weak damage already. The Blood Thorn, on the other hand, is a dagger, and shouldn't do a lot of damage. Turning it from +4 damage, +2 attack to +0 damage +0 attack sounds like a plan. Even -2 damage, +0 attack if you're feeling froggy.

I am playing a game with the item mod right now (Faerun), and I can tell you my weapon choices have changed very little (except for the obvious no more lifedrain thing). Basically, Fire Brands are the best weapon now and I try to eqiup most people with one of those, or an anti-demon weapon (Flambeau). Although there are admittedly other very good choices (that weakness-causing morning star comes to mind).

As far as Jeffr's concern about shiny-happy-tree huggers summoning demons, I agree that that's a problem. There's no way to solve it in Dom2, though...I'm looking forward to Dom3 for that. Dom2 is just geared for everyone to use the same weapons, troops, etc.

[Cainehill]

But making items (such as wraith swords) more expensive means that the magic path required to forge it goes up; apparently you can't increase the gem cost without increasing the magic path requirements, unlike spells.

So : Let's say wraithswords would now cost 20 death gems. So, a death 3 mage instead of a death 2 mage. Now fewer nations can forge it, exactly what you didn't like about the changes to the flying boots and water bracelets. In fact, bumping the wraithsword cost would tend to mean that those nations and SCs that arguably least need lifedraining weapons are the ones most likely to be able to forge them : death nations that can summon undead champions that don't normally accumlate fatigue anyway.

About the flying shoes : I kind of agree with you there, but only because they're a utility item sorely needed for all those 1-strategic move mages. But, I do like the idea of them not being so easy to outfit all SCs with. So what I've suggested to Quantum Mechanic (who is now working on the mods) is cheaper flying carpets, since they can't be used in combat, and making air boots require construction-6 instead of air 2. Be even better if you could make them require 10 or 15 air gems, but still be forgable by an Air-1 mage, but you can't.

[PashaDawg]

His Luminescence, the Shedu of Arco, agrees that AKU rocks, and for he certainly taught His Luminescence a lesson (and singed his fur).

However, the Council of Philosophers are currently debating vigorously as to the most fitting way to smite-smush the Evil Aku for his misdeeds.

[Jurri]

CU: Would you believe me even if I told you what the nexus produces? Thank you for the compliment, although it's mostly a feature of the undewater nations that they can tenaciously cling to life, rather than any supreme strategy... My greatest asset is selecting the most broken nation for the environment!

I participated in a game with a mod where the life-drain weapons had been significantly raised in cost (like, a blood thorn for 80 slaves); well, that didn't remove them, it only served to limit them to heavy blood nations, which in my opinion only unbalanced the game in their favor. Zen's solution makes them rather unusable for most anyone, which isn't cool either. Perhaps lowering their damage and attack would be a good solution (less than the ~20? points Zen has), since then a good armor or high defense would protect against them. Indeed, wouldn't lowering their attack value or damage by something like 5 points accomplish almost the same thing as Panther's proposition of removing the fatigue-gain? Only, instead of having to fit a reinvigoration item to the mix, attack boosters or strength boosters would need to be considered.

I haven't yet played a game with the item-mod, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have area of effect magical weapons especially with multiple attacks. As I understand it, with an AoE attack the hit is certain; thus these weapons make attack and defense values a non-issue, weakening all sorts of units that don't need any weakening and also strengthening astral weapon that wouldn't really need it. (Assuming astral weapon works with AoE attacks - I don't see a reason why not.) An always hitting, armor-negating ~40 point attack 4 times a turn should shut up most opposition. With a quicknessed golem and the morning star that gives 10 damage you can, assuming the above. (Undoubtedly with so high a damage bonus you wouldn't even need astral weapon, come to think of it, so a regenerating chassis might be preferable.) But this is just conjencture with no testing whatsoever, which I'm more than happy to try out in the next game Chris hosts!