Vampire Queens and Sneaking Armies

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
The Vampires that a VQ spawns do not appear in a controllable manner or in very large quantities, even with strong dominion.

The chance of a vampire appearing is 5% times the current dominion level of the province the VQ is in. In dominion 10, she gets one every other turn.

[Truper]

[quote]Originally posted by Norfleet:

[ It's not as if Vampires fly by any apparent natural means, as they're clearly not aerodynamic and have no ability to generate lift. Dom2 wouldn't be the only game with flying, armored vampires. I don't even use Black Steel, the spellcasting encumberance imposed would cause her to pass out during prebattle buffing. [/QB]

Well, I normally don't use black steel on a queen either, unless I'm playing an earth nation, and want a bargain-basement queen. But consider, say, a Caelum Seraph, flying happily around wearing 80 lbs of plate mail...

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
Well, why not take away the etherealness like Tawqus suggested... I don't think I'm familiar with any literature that says that Vamps are innately ethereal like ghosts and specters and what not...

I'm not entirely sure what the Etherealness of Vampires is supposed to represent, although personally, I'd have thought a Mistform would be more appropriate: Vampires are reputed for their ability to assume gaseous form at will. Not sure where Etherealness fits into this. Then again, would this really be an improvement? Mistform is in some ways better, and other ways worse, than pure etherealness....

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Etherealness means that magic weapons are (mostly?) required to hit the creature, yes? IIRC, in the pen & paper RPG gaming world of AD&D, at least, you needed something like a +2 magic weapon to hit a vampire. Etherealness seems a pretty good fit for that (themewise, I can't really comment on balance since I haven't played/encountered one yet).

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
The chance of a vampire appearing is 5% times the current dominion level of the province the VQ is in. In dominion 10, she gets one every other turn.

And a VQ that's out on the borders of the empire thumping indies and kicking *** is not going to be sitting around in a dominion-10 province most of the time. Furthermore, a vampire in the occupied province every other turn tends to result in a trail of little vampires with no master. A single vampire lying around with no way to get home until somebody comes along and kills it, sending it back to the capitol, is hardly a real threat: A VQ that sits around spawning mini-vampires in the comfort of a 10-dominion zone is one that is not having much effect on you.

In all my games with a VQ, never have I gotten auto-vampires in quantities that make them more meaningful than as a bodyguard for an occasional death/blood mage. It's just too hard to round them up when you're constantly on the move.

[Kel]

Hehe, all the suggestions that are based on 'lore' could arise to some funny modifications to balance her out

Say...she can't cross running water (streams bordering provinces).
Or automatically suffers the equivalent of a 'petrify' on defense (or auto-routs) because what sane commander would attack her at *night* ? No, no , attack her during the daytime !
Susceptibility to fire, anyone ?

- Kel

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Kel:
Say...she can't cross running water (streams bordering provinces).

That'd be cute, but I don't think the game currently has streams, as evidenced by their implementation on Cradle.

Or automatically suffers the equivalent of a 'petrify' on defense (or auto-routs) because what sane commander would attack her at *night* ? No, no , attack her during the daytime !

Dominions doesn't really have a good concept of night and day, so concepts like attacking at night don't really exist.

Susceptibility to fire, anyone ?

I wasn't aware Vampires were exceptionally flammable. There are certain fires that cause 3x damage to undead, though. Built-in fire susceptibility would leave a potential gap in the defenses, even with elemental armor equipped, though. Sounds cool, though, if you could find a source for it.

Don't think too many other folklore based limitation would really apply too well in the confines of the Dominions II engine, though.

Maybe you could add a special item like "garlic", a misc item that gives +20 defense vs. vampires.

[Yossar]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
The chance of a vampire appearing is 5% times the current dominion level of the province the VQ is in. In dominion 10, she gets one every other turn.

And a VQ that's out on the borders of the empire thumping indies and kicking *** is not going to be sitting around in a dominion-10 province most of the time. Furthermore, a vampire in the occupied province every other turn tends to result in a trail of little vampires with no master. A single vampire lying around with no way to get home until somebody comes along and kills it, sending it back to the capitol, is hardly a real threat: A VQ that sits around spawning mini-vampires in the comfort of a 10-dominion zone is one that is not having much effect on you.

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Well, to use your other example, you probably wouldn't want to park a PoD in a dominion-10 province for very long either, would you? At least the VQ's fodder can fly at the same speed as her. The PoD just leaves a bunch of leaderless skeletons in his wake.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Yossar:
Well, to use your other example, you probably wouldn't want to park a PoD in a dominion-10 province for very long either, would you? At least the VQ's fodder can fly at the same speed as her. The PoD just leaves a bunch of leaderless skeletons in his wake.

A PoD consistently generates the skeletons every turn, however, as long as he's within dominion. The PoD is also more likely to sit still for a period of time, being that he's not quite as directly combat-oriented, and will likely spend more time casting rituals or just being a blessing pretender. The PoD's skeletons can form a sizeable pile of chaff useful for a death-magic nation in only a few turns. The VQ's vampires are closer to the GK's ghosts in general format. If anything, the VQ's vampires are a poor choice for accompanying in combat unless you've piled up a lot of them, because the vampires are very cowardly despite their immortality and flee quickly, routing off into neighboring provinces and becoming badly scattered again, especially when there are not many of them to stabilize the squad. All in all, the VQ's vampires are more flavor than they are a real consideration: Nobody takes a VQ just to get the little vampirelings!

[GavinWheeler]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:

quote:

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Originally posted by Zen:

The only other Immortal Pretenders are the Bog Mummy and Phoenix.

And the Lich, the Master Lich, and the Lich Queen,

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..and the Saurolich.

[Firebreath]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

Maybe you could add a special item like "garlic", a misc item that gives +20 defense vs. vampires.

Haha. I like that idea. It would probably work quite well, too. The notion of 'vampire hunters' would quite clearly balance out the apparent superiority of the vq. Maybe the inquisition should get a nice bonus vs vampires, too?

I have a question though, as everybody here seems to pay the dominion costs of equiping the vq in magic...wouldn't empowerment work equally well and a lot cheaper, or do MP games just not Last long enough for empowerment to be effective (vq's are just as effective at the start with only very limited spells).