Dom2 Multiplayer Wrap-Up... Please!

Rob_O_Boston · 2004-10-14T13:49:04.000Z

No resources?? You own the entire southern continent!

Rollory · 2004-10-14T13:59:50.000Z

That translates to money and not much else. My site-finding strategy was very suboptimal this game but also I think I had some bad luck on that score - lots of those mountain provinces simply have nothing.

All I can say is, based on my current gem income the global enchantment game is solidly out of my reach. To me that translates to a resource handicap.

zenblack · 2004-10-14T14:02:08.000Z

Nick_Walter:

I think a lot of people mind BALUTs mostly, though some people object to BACKOVs as well. A lot of people feel RYWILLs are the solution to BACKOVs, but I’d prefer a game without any of them ;-)

But you forgot the WALTERs.

Wraithlord Against Lumbering Trees Eaten Rapidly

or perhaps the

NICKs

Nubile Impossible Crack Killers

Calistas · 2004-10-14T14:04:11.000Z

To get into a game wait for a signup offer here or go to the Dom2 multiplayer forums and put your name down :)

From there, ask those involved!

Peter

Brandon_Clements · 2004-10-14T14:17:30.000Z

Rollory:

That translates to money and not much else. My site-finding strategy was very suboptimal this game but also I think I had some bad luck on that score - lots of those mountain provinces simply have nothing.

All I can say is, based on my current gem income the global enchantment game is solidly out of my reach. To me that translates to a resource handicap.

Not to give much away, but you really need to search my former provinces a little better.

Rob_O_Boston · 2004-10-14T14:18:18.000Z

Brandon_Clements:

[quote=Rollory]That translates to money and not much else. My site-finding strategy was very suboptimal this game but also I think I had some bad luck on that score - lots of those mountain provinces simply have nothing.

All I can say is, based on my current gem income the global enchantment game is solidly out of my reach. To me that translates to a resource handicap.

Not to give much away, but you really need to search my former provinces a little better.[/quote]

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Mind your own business dead guy! :wink:

Anaxagoras · 2004-10-14T14:59:41.000Z

balut:

What I object to is the lone SC, fully kitted out in specific Ultimate Weapons and Armor of Annihilation of All Things In the Earth, Under the Sea, and Beneath the Heavens, marching around with impunity and murdering all that defy them without taking a scratch.

So… what would the Ultimate Weapon and Armor consist of? Something Life Draining for a weapon and… umm… what for armor & miscelleneous slots? What abilities make a commander an “army killer”? I’ve tried kitting out warrior commanders, but I haven’t found a really strong combo of items for hand-to-hand fighting. (I’m a big fan of Staff of Storms and a couple other spellcaster-aiding items, but I can’t figure out what are really good for hand-to-hand stuff.)

Rollory · 2004-10-14T15:07:41.000Z

Qt3-JM-Hardcore (Vanheim) - Nycafor the ice devil with iceblade hands survives killing an Abysian PD garrison with one hit point left.

Nick_Walter · 2004-10-14T15:26:25.000Z

Anaxagoras:

So… what would the Ultimate Weapon and Armor consist of? Something Life Draining for a weapon and… umm… what for armor & miscelleneous slots? What abilities make a commander an “army killer”? I’ve tried kitting out warrior commanders, but I haven’t found a really strong combo of items for hand-to-hand fighting. (I’m a big fan of Staff of Storms and a couple other spellcaster-aiding items, but I can’t figure out what are really good for hand-to-hand stuff.)

I don’t think there is one super-perfect loadout. There are a few abilities that must be made up through items if the commander doesn’t have them naturally or via magic. Quickness is essential, lifestealing is essential, luck is essential, high MR and DEF are essentail, a damage aura, high prot, fear, and flight are really nice.

For just slaughtering enemy armies I tend to go with Wraith Sword + Horror Helmet + Chain Mail of Displacement + Boots of Quickness + Luck Pendant + Amulet of Magic Resistance. It’s a fairly cheap loadout and easy to whip up. If I’m using Wraith Lords who can cast soul vortex to get lifestealing then I sub a better weapon for the Wraith Sword. If I’m really equipping someone to the 9’s then I’ll sub in a blood thorn dagger (for lifesteal) and charcoal shield (for fire shield damage aura). For someone who can cast quickness on themselves, I sub in boots of flying for the quicken boots. I guess if someone had flying and quickness built in I’d go with some other boots but I can’t remember that combo ever happening.

Ch_Hasslbauer · 2004-10-14T16:14:57.000Z

Nick_Walter:

We should probably arrive at a good consensus definition of SC if we want to discuss the issue in fine detail. I think all of us are using the term slightly differently, and it doesn’t help that we get cross-pollination of posters from the shrapnel boards and their own subtle differences in vocabulary.

I’ll propose the following definitions for discussing powerful leaders and the roles they can take in Dom2 combat. I’ve deliberately refrained from redefining old terms so as to avoid any confusion between users of the old jargon and users of the new improved jargon.

Balance Altering Casting Killer Of Virgins (BACKOV for short). Any single leader that expects to defeat an entire enemy army via spellcasting. Probably uses Wrathful Skies. May use communion slaves. Probably uses quickness spell or items. Probably carries gems and reinvig items.

Balance Altering Lumbering Unrealistic Terminator (BALUT for short). Any single leader that expects to defeat an entire enemy army via melee combat. Lifedraining, quickness, absurdly high defenses, regeneration, and damage aura spells are singatures of BALUTs.

Really Yummy Wannabe Imbalanced Lumbering Leader (RYWILL for short). A sort of BALUT lite. Unsuited for tackling entire armies, instead are specialized for a particular task, usually killing BALUTs.

I think a lot of people mind BALUTs mostly, though some people object to BACKOVs as well. A lot of people feel RYWILLs are the solution to BACKOVs, but I’d prefer a game without any of them ;-)

It seems quite clear to me that BACKOVs and BALUTs have to disappear in future games. (Johan, is this now official Illwinter nomenclature?) But as long as we’re keeping it as simple as that, I don’t feel comfortable with it. The border between a BALUT and a leader with some equipment is too woolly.
Should we forbid giving armor and weapons to leaders? That would invalidate a major part of the game: the forging of weapons, the barby-doll style dressing up of leaders. (I like this part of the game, thus the overloaded SCs.)

How about setting acceptable margins for leader attributes. Defense, Protection, and so on.

Soul Vortex should probably be avoided. But how do you keep a wraith lord from casting it when you have researched it? Pretty much impossible. Wraith lords should probably be nerfed by Illwinter altogether, but what should WE do about them?

Anyway, the law should be laid down. Something like the Qt3 convention.

SlyFrog · 2004-10-14T16:47:19.000Z

Ch_Hasslbauer:

Should we forbid giving armor and weapons to leaders? That would invalidate a major part of the game: the forging of weapons, the barby-doll style dressing up of leaders. (I like this part of the game, thus the overloaded SCs.)

That’s clearly not an issue. You can load up a “normal leader” (e.g. an Ulmish Lord Guardian) with just about anything you want, and I highly doubt he’ll take out armies by himself. It’s the underlying SC chassis combined with the items that is the problem.

balut · 2004-10-14T17:04:41.000Z

I just wanted to formally declare my objection to the besmirchment of my character in Dom2. Yes, I have utilized a Vampire Queen SC Pretender. Yes, I do routinely summon Hell Lords, Heliophagii, and other nasty leader types. But I want to iterate that I have never, in the past or present, accoutred my leaders to the degree that a Nick Walter or Backov or Rollory will equip their Vanadrotts or Wraith Lords or Bane Lords or other SC types.

I hope all of you can see the difference between an equipment-free Vampire Lord leading a charge of a 12-vampire personal guard against PD, versus a Storm-staff Vanadrott or Bane Lord, decked out head-to-toe with weapons, armor, necklaces, contracts, magic eyes, amulets, boots, etc. fighting PD by themselves and winning with more hps than they began with. Or the difference between a Heliphagii wielding a Demon Whip and leading several Fiends of Darkness against entrenched fortresses, versus a Troll King with a wraith sword and heavy armor and the like.

In fact, I’d say that, except for initial expansion against independents, 90% of my battles involve actual ARMIES, instead of sneaking/teleporting in one ubermurderer and letting him wreak unholy havoc.

Sorry, I just had to get this off my chest, as I feel my reputation as a Dom2 player is being besmirched here. BESMIRCHED, I say!

Nick_Walter · 2004-10-14T17:27:46.000Z

Hehehehe

I’m not trying to pick on you Balut, I just had to use short names to make the acronyms doable.

P.S. Should I talk about your demon lord collection in JM-Hardcore?

balut · 2004-10-14T17:40:08.000Z

Hey, those Demon Lords are like baseball cards, or Pokemon. I gotta summon 'em all, dammit. :twisted:

Rollory · 2004-10-14T18:04:49.000Z

Equipment isn’t the issue. Belphegor (for instance) is a SC without you giving him anything at all.

He gets three free blood slaves per turn. So he casts Blood Vengeance practically automatically, regardless of what else he’s been doing recently. He probably also casts ironskin or invulnerability, being an earth-4 caster. He can also cast Life Leech any time he feels like it.

Then what?

Then he lays down some unholy whoopass, that’s what.

I don’t know how to kill this guy. I set up some test games and messed around with him and he tends to survive in spite of my trying to get him killed. I’m thinking massive armies of undead or mechanical men just beating on him forever. Maybe a Disintegrate squad. Not really sure.

Anyway, this is why I’m trying to blitz you now, while I know that he is (temporarily) at the other end of the map.

Belphegor is one case, but Belial and Pazuzu also get blood vengeance (if prepared) and protection/mistform respectively. Belial can do Phoenix Pyre. Both can cast lots of Life Leech. The Heliophagii can also do the blood vengeance/life leech thing (I think - they’re all blood casters, aren’t they?). This is just the demon side of things, you still have soul vortex casters, guys like Nycafor, the air queens - it’s the spells and abilities that fundamentally allow the SC behavior. The items just duplicate or enhance what’s already in the game.

Dave_Perkins · 2004-10-14T19:41:15.000Z

Are there any simple rules that would prohibit SC’s? I’d like to host a game fairly soon and I would like to avoid the problems you guys are describing. One thought I had: I might want the game to be called Qt3 Rainbow, and say that no pretender may have a starting magic level over, say, 4 in any magic area (fire/earth/etc). Do you think that might lead to an interesting game with no SC’s (at least until a whole bunch of turns have passed)?

Nick_Walter · 2004-10-14T19:53:12.000Z

Dave_Perkins:

Are there any simple rules that would prohibit SC’s? I’d like to host a game fairly soon and I would like to avoid the problems you guys are describing. One thought I had: I might want the game to be called Qt3 Rainbow, and say that no pretender may have a starting magic level over, say, 4 in any magic area (fire/earth/etc). Do you think that might lead to an interesting game with no SC’s (at least until a whole bunch of turns have passed)?

Limiting the magic levels won’t really rein in the BALUTS or BACKOVS. A lot of them aren’t pretenders, they are summoned by magical rituals later. Some of them quite cheaply in terms of magical levels.

I find a good ground rule to prevent the worst BALUT abuse is Ryan’s rule of labs. This rule states that a commander may never transfer gems back to the lab. Note that this doesn’t apply to blood slaves, only gems. The net effect of the rule is to stop people from building clam/fetish/bloodstone farms and so forth. This tones the magical levels of the lategame down a bit and stops wars where both sides are utilizing multiple wish spells. I’ve been in one of those wars and it was silly.

If you want to limit pretenders, it’s more fun to limit pretenders to the humanoids. Everyone has to take an archmage or druid or frostfather, etc. Ruling out the high hitpoint monster pretenders makes for some awful fragile gods. You won’t be seeing those in combat without stout bodyguards.

Backov · 2004-10-14T20:26:19.000Z

Dave, some simple points for clarity.

The game is balanced.
The issues described are not really a problem.
You do not need house rules to correct anything.

To add to this I think very obvious position:

I will not host or play on any games with such silly things as rules to eliminate SCs (which are a huge part of the game.) It’s like playing PacMan with a house rule that you can’t eat ghosts.

Rywill · 2004-10-14T20:29:32.000Z

Yeah, I really think it would be very difficult to “fix” the SC issue with house rules. Ryan’s Rule of Labs* would help, but that’s really more to stop the farming of gems. Many SC’s don’t cost a lot of gems to put together. What’s really needed to fix SC’s (IMO at least) is a limitation on lifedrain, and maybe toning down some of the really asskicking buffs like mistform. But I really think lifedrain is the main thing–that’s what allows a single SC to demolish an unlimited number of mid-level enemies. And that’s not fixable by house rule.

I’d just like to point out once again that this rule was actually Nick’s idea. I started calling it Ryan’s Rule of Labs as a Flaming Moe-style joke, and now the name stuck.

Rywill · 2004-10-14T20:32:06.000Z

Backov:

Dave, some simple points for clarity.

The game is balanced.
The issues described are not really a problem.
You do not need house rules to correct anything.

Some simple points for additional clarity:

The game is balanced

The issues described are a huge problem in the minds of many of the players, including (I’m pretty sure) everyone on this board except Backov [edit: and Rob] and maybe Rollory (not sure if he’s said one way or the other)

You do not need house rules to correct anything, assuming you are happy with an all-SC endgame and are willing to play games with just you, Backov, [Rob] and maybe Rollory.