Kristoffer's encouragement thread

[merlinme]

To return somewhat to the original theme: Kristoffer was hoping for some inspiration to get him into writing some fun new background stuff for Dom3. A couple of ideas that spring to mind (dunno if they're practical but hopefully they're at least slightly interesting):

1) how about a nation which worships horrors? complete with the option to take a pretender based on a horror chassis.

2) how about a nation based loosely on the Wizard of Earthsea series? I realise copyright is an issue, but in any case there would have to be significant modification to fit it into the Dom3 setup, so it would be more in the way of inspiration. But you could (for example) combine it with Greek legends of sailing to beef out the land troops and so on. The basic idea would be a sailing nation with strong wizards. The wizards would be air/earth/water, perhaps with a bit of death thrown in. Perhaps you could make it an undead nation in one of the ages, say a necromancer has been successful in subjugating the archipelago, and the dead now rule.

The best wizards should be capital only, to keep them expensive (and rare), but much weaker witches and warlocks should be easily available. Priests should be average or weak, but capital wizards should have weak priestly powers as well (to represent their powers over spirits, and the respect in which they are held).

If you brought in inspiration from sources like the Odyssey and Jason and the Argonauts, or even Sinbad the Sailor, I would have thought you could have a nation with a really interesting background.

[Cor]

I like the horror worship idea.
I think if a nation worshipped horror, the horrors would not care. It would be cool to have the nation a little over powered and balance it with all commanders starting with heavy horror marks, to reflect the intrinsic danger of worshiping the astral sociopaths who dont even understand the concept of loyalty.

[Nick_K]

How much of an issue is copyright? I believe Illithids are copyrighted by WotC, for one thing.
I think someone suggested some nations based on middle-eastern mythology (or was it the arabian nights... I forget) a while back. i don't know much about it myself, but I think it'd be cool.

[DrPraetorious]

Kristoffer, do you have anything general in mind for the other nation nbrs you've reserved? If you've cooled to whatever ideas you had originally, we might have suggestions (or just "no, that's cool! Do it!").

Generally, whatever Kristoffer does is cool - I've been looking forward to the new nations. New ideas? Hm...

One example that was raised: Amos' horror-worshipping nation is quite good. It needs playtesting, balancing, etc. There are some additional mod commands needed (units recruited horrormarked, units who are technically horrors in addition to magicbeings,) but does Kristoffer need to do another horror nation? Amos is the only one who does pixel art which is up to Kristoffer's standards, so I don't think so.

What do I think is *missing*? Persians (Caelum, Abyssia and Marignon all show some degree of persian *influence*, but it's not the same), Sumerians/Babylonians/Arabs, Korea, Indochina, Phoenicia/Carthage, Russia (Jotunheim sorta), Two more nations of China (for romance of the three kingdoms), insect people, fire giants and goblins.

If *I* were to put those together, I'd add:
- arabic jinn, children of Catharsis. Everyone is ethereal, so your light cavalry are survivable (also they live on bones and dust, so no supplies). Ifrit are evil jinn, fallen children of Anthrax.

- persian and/or phoenician fire giants. You get white robed mages, fire/water/astral.

- russian goblins. Lots of wolf riders. In the LA, inherits the magic of the spheres from pythium - is a communion power.

- thai/chinese bug people. The males are big six-limbed warriors and the females are hot psychadelically-colored human women with butterfly wings for no reason.

In terms of nations that play differently-
- A nation that freespawns troops, but still pays money for mages (and maybe for sacred elites or something.) Like Pangaea, except that the maenad-equivalent makes up 90% of your army.
- A nation that pays money for troops, but only summons mages for gems never money. LE Ulm is almost like this.

But if he's got a cool drawing, that's probably a better basis for a new nation than all of this comparitive folklore or game mechanics.

aside: WotC tries to exert some amorphous IP control over illithids. They might try to stop you from using the term in a title but they can't stop you from using the term otherwise (Johnson and Johnson can't stop me from calling something a Band-Aid in my fictional setting, for example.)

[Wish]

merlinme said:
1) how about a nation which worships horrors? complete with the option to take a pretender based on a horror chassis.

this could loosely be applied to a new nation mod I am working on built around the shadow seers of nexus.

[Gandalf Parker]

Nick_K said:
How much of an issue is copyright? I believe Illithids are copyrighted by WotC, for one thing.
I think someone suggested some nations based on middle-eastern mythology (or was it the arabian nights... I forget) a while back. i don't know much about it myself, but I think it'd be cool.

Shrapnel is a game publishing corporation. So they cannot be seen as ingoring other game creators copyrights. But being copyrighted doesnt mean you cant use it. It only means that you cant use it without permission.

In the case of MODs where it was clear that they used items from other games they were either deleted from shrapnels forums or the person got permission to use the images/sounds/names etc.

[TirAsleen]

i rather would like to see more undead nations, blood nations, in general more evil stuff.

[Nix]

Nick_K said:

I think someone suggested some nations based on middle-eastern mythology (or was it the arabian nights... I forget) a while back. i don't know much about it myself, but I think it'd be cool.

I thought that was cool as well. Here's how I see it:

First era could be "pre-Islamic" type, camels and nomads, Moon-worshippers with djinn summons... their magic site could be Irem, City of Pillars, as described by Lovecraftian lore - it would add a touch of Death to an otherwise Astral nation.

The Middle Era could be inspired by 1001 Nights and the Caliphate: Sinbad and Sheherazade-esque heroes, elemental mages on flying carpets, horseback sheiks, assassins, lesser djinni, ghouls, etc.

The Late Era nation, finally, might be based on the Barbary Coast, with pirates and Beys... perhaps with sailing? It would of course be primarily a Water nation, but Blood or Death could be added along with slave traders, or there could be a further emphasis on the "desert" aspect to add Fire magic.

[Aleph]

I'd like to see a blood nation who has taken Crossbreeding to a whole new level. I love the randomness mechanic that crossbreeding brings to certain blood nations as it is, but I'd like to see some nation which went overboard with it, such that their nationals are crossbred units themselves (not necessarily the same units as those created by the crossbreeding spell, but with similar attributes). Many gameworlds include a faction/nation which uses biology/fleshcrafting in favor of chemistry/physics; Dominions could use one.

Blood/Nature/Astral are obvious schools, to make and dominate life. National spells would obviously include improved versions of Crossbreeding (perhaps as simple as versions which include effective Luck bonuses already, perhaps something more complex), Flesh Golem summons, a hierarchy of single-to-AoE spells which would warp and mutate enemy soldiers into maddened amalgams. I'd also like to see a "selective crossbreeding" spell with which two units of the caster's choice have their attributes randomly merged, but that seems risky and like it might stretch the code.

Their key (likely capital only) mage should freespawn crossbreeds similar to how Pangea gets Maenads (although I'd think basing their numbers on Growth, rather than Turmoil, would be more thematically appropriate) - clearly, you wouldn't want to allow for Basilisk / Dracolion / etc, but the basic crossbreeds are still kind of cool. Their more generic mages might be based physically on the Freak Lord.

I'd also like to give them a Doppleganger character which is both assassin and spy at once, with excellent stealth and fear to make up for fairly normal physical attributes.

Missile troops should be limited to poison spitters (perhaps a light skirmisher unit, and a more artillery-like unit capable of multiple poison shots/round). I'd love for them to have biological weapons as well (similar to Plague), but that seems much too powerful for a recruitable.

Maybe their heavy regular troop could have poison spines similar to Armor of Twisting Thorns.

Ermmm... that's all for now.

[lch]

Aleph said:
I'd like to see a blood nation who has taken Crossbreeding to a whole new level. I love the randomness mechanic that crossbreeding brings to certain blood nations as it is, but I'd like to see some nation which went overboard with it, such that their nationals are crossbred units themselves (not necessarily the same units as those created by the crossbreeding spell, but with similar attributes). Many gameworlds include a faction/nation which uses biology/fleshcrafting in favor of chemistry/physics; Dominions could use one.

Ohh, that reminds me of "X-Com 2: Terrors from the deep". Maybe it overlaps with R'lyeh / Call Of Ctuhulu a bit, but maybe it could be a good inspiration anyway.