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

[Panpiper]

It may well be that I am missing something as I am not the best of players and I have never really played R'lyeh before, but in this mod I am having utterly no success with them versus independents. Jomon and Ulm are both relative cake walks for me, buy lots of ranged firepower, stand off and blast. With R'lyeh this does not work. Trying to play the hand to hand game gives even worse results. I've tried spending as many as ten turns building up prior to attacking an independent and still get my face handed to me. (I should mention that I always set independents to maximum strength.)

Is there a trick that I am missing or is R'lyeh simply weaker than the other two races?

[Aezeal]

hmm I turned the indies down a bit, I don't know if the indie setting still matters since I handplaced them all in the provinces

In my test games I didn't have too much trouble with the indies though.. especially the ones with few troops (the fish) are immobilized fast.

I usually try a screen of chaff and then depending on what I'm facing either mutants or illithid (since most troops are higher size so less on a square I think I'll lower muntant price since they are relatively less effective)

it sort of worked then.

I didn't figure r'lyeh would be that weak.. teh same illithid that work pretty well in base game are now even cheaper and there are larger and less indie troops.. so I'd figure that would help them actually.

I'll lower the mutant cost though.
PS do you ahve the latest version? 1-2 versions ago I lowerd MR a bit on some indies which should help mindblasting

PS there is a #end missing so the weapon of the jomon militia is strange, this is changed already for the next patch
also there will be a new indie type then.
as I said next version will also have shield with a parry value which will lower effectiveness for ranged combat.. sadly most indies don't have shields since they have no tech except the pirates and they need to be clearly weaker than ulm so have no shield either....
I need to think of something for that .. though indies being weak isn't that much of a problem

[Panpiper]

I do have the latest version, yes.

I expect part of my problem is that I tend to resist the use of 'chaff' as I do not like having resources 'expended'. I would rather come up with a strategy that preserves investments so that my strength is always building. It would seem that this strategy simply does not work with R'lyeh. Without investing resources in sacrificial chaff each turn, R'lyeh has no way to keep the trolls off it's ranged troops as they simply don't die fast enough. My worry is that anything I have ever seen in hand to hand with those trolls dies so fast, I don't see how any chaff will be anything more than a speed bump. I'll try again.

By the way, I have gotten very confused with the names of the two maps. I expect that is partly because the 'Galaxy at War.map' uses the 'spacemap.rgb'. Anyway, all map feedback I've given was feedback on the 'solar system map'. Hence; Adjacent orbital spaces on 'solar system map'; 31 & 17, still don't connect.

[Nikelaos]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

It might be better if you choose one of the 2 races to work on.

What I've found about the necromorphs in dead space is that they are some sort of alien (no idea how they look) that go inside a corpse and then they and the corpse morph into some sort of freaky looking zombie (all different sorts)

if we know how the primary creature should look like we could easily create a send form (which would then be your pics)

do they use weapons or is it all melee?

Too me there isn't enough known to start creating a nation out of this atm.
What unit should there be?
how about commanders?
do you just buy each of the creatures or do you summon them?

basicly: tell me more

well i think it should work pretty much exactly like LA ermor, we could swap the variety of freespawn chaff with my chaff units which i have based on the mutilated corpses you see in dead space, the odd mound king that freespawns can be replaced by a beefier walking mutant corpse and then the remaining summoned commanders and troops can be formed from a mix of dead space, the necrons from warhammer, LA agartha's Ktonian dead and perhaps some other things we think of before and possibly after i complete the sprites for what we already have.

i'll get to work on the countless chaff sprites we'll need and this should give us some time to think of something if we need to add more on.

also i should espect most of the chaff will be melee but with the prospect of us changing space into something other than sea so we can have a sorta no gravity all round flying effect on all critters in space, melee shouldn't be much of a disadvantage. However we could probably add in some ranged attack summons if not have any as freespawn.

[Aezeal]

hmm let's not mix the necrons in this since we'll already have a crapload of sprites etc.. If I have some extra time I might just create another nation for the necrons (I've been looking into them and there is more than enough there for a nice nation)

Have you checked if the replacing of the original chaff can be done?
I think that if you just use the weapons from those sprites I send you for higher troops you can use those as ranged troops. (so the most common free chaff will be weaponless zombies, the medium ones will have melee weapons (the chainsword thingie) and then ones with blasters like Ulm has.
Everything stronger than that will be a summon. This nation looks bloody so we could make it a blood/death nation instead of just death.

PS a think about sprites. make the sprite sizes 16-32-64-128 and not just random and make the background true black (0.0.0) since that is what dominions seems to use (black in creatures should be a bit off like (30.30.30)

(Necrons would be earth/death)

[Nikelaos]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

Have you checked if the replacing of the original chaff can be done?

In that email to me you said it could be done by using the same unit number or something, except in that email we were thinking of pangea to be the nation to replace and have my big bloody corpses take the place of the big leafy carrion beasts if i remember rightly.

[Aezeal]

I said I thought it could be done.. asking pplz here might be an idea

we'd need to know which troops (numbers) are the ones that you get as free spawn (and which ones with temples, and castles and castles and temples...

there is a way to find the unit number of troops ... if you can look that up and then look which troops ermor get then I THINK I could change them.

I'm a bit busy with the rest so if you could look that up for this nation while making the sprites then I can mod it later

[Aezeal]

wait wait, we can't do that .. if we change all free spawn then we'll change the regular skeletons etc etc too.. it'll mess up death magic incredibly.

Untill we find a way round this or redesign the whole race idea you'd better put it on a hold and start with that semi-pangaea insectoid idea

There IS an insectoid mod somewhere.. I never played it but heard about it.. might be worth checking out.

[Nikelaos]

okay then, but would you mind making a thread to ask if we can do that, i would but my explanation for what we are trying to do seems a bit 'not enough' for me cause i'm not sure entirely how you said it may be done.

little bit confuzled.

but i'm fine looking up which troops ermor gets and then making a new sprite for each.

[Nikelaos]

hmm you raise a fine point, maybe if we do ermor on pangeas number thing (so replace carrion beasts and manikins with my corpses) then we could atleast have a uniquereanimate command which reanimates our undead instead of the bog standard skellies and zombies, this was the initial plan anyway wasn't it?.

Pangea ofcourse would then have to go under another nations number thing but that works fine because i didn't wan't them to retain the manikin/carrion beast reanimating abilities anyway.