1981

This newbie votes Middle. Because it’s close to Middle Earth. Plus maybe I can be Pythia which is like Byzantium, sort of kindof.

Yeah, I’ll give it a shot assuming my box and firewall cooperate.

sjennings@brokentoys.org

1982

I think a far more elegant solution would be to make scales more important. Right now a lot of the scales are pretty much free points.
Sloth scale doesn´t matter much if your sacreds have low resource costs, so there´s a free 120 points.
Misfortune3 doesn´t hurt much with order 3(it changes one out of four events you receive from good to bad) and you get no heroes, so there is another 120 points.
Drain 2 is only one research point lost, so another 80 points, and the extra fatigue on mages makes your blessed troops harder to counter.
Death 3 is pretty harmless, with a low income hit and a negligible amount of population dieing each turn.The lower amount of supplies is even beneficial to bless strategies. Again 120 easy points.
Now if you are a nation with a preferred climate of cold/heat 3 you get another 120 points, but if you aren´t 5% income hit hurts.
Order scale is of course a nobrainer scale. 7% income is far too good to pass up, so you have to spend 120 points here.

That´s 440 points you can easily gain as a blesser without harming yourself much. Now if all of those scales had a significant effect, you would actually give up some significant income boosts by choosing a bless strategy and bless strategies wouldn´t be so dominant.

I mean picking if picking scales is pretty much a waste and true SC Pretenders aren´t really viable/costefficient anymore, what else are you going to do besides pumping the points into blesses. Not to mention that the usual f9/w9 bless usually makes a pretender a pretty good fighter, especially if he has fear.

1983

Tweaking scales can be (and has been) done in a mod, of course. Another idea that would require a change in the code (so we’ll not likely ever see it) would be to increase the marginal cost of going from magic level 8 to level 9. The marginal benefit is big enough to outstrip the current cost, at least for fire and water.

Either way, I’m not ready to leap on the “conceptual balance” bandwagon just yet. I will, eventually, but first I’d like to get a better handle on what really can and cannot be done with things as the devs made it.

1984

Death scales and unluck hurt pretty bad over the long run. In my Dom2 game that just ended, i had over 32,000 pop in my capital with Growth 1 before i started getting hit with enemy spells and units. Jotunheim took unluck 3, death 3, and (apparently) turmoil 3, and had 8,000 in his capital at the end of the game.

The simplest answer is to increase the cost of the units in question, both in Gold and Resources. You can make a very real and defensible case - within the boundries of the games’ logic itself - that some of the Hellheim/Vanheim blessable units are too cost efficient.

1985

What if the bless effects didn’t kick in until your pretender was awake?

1986

Then you would never see double bless in multiplayer. EVER.

1987

Which would be awesome :)

But I realize that’s probably not a majority opinion.

1988

Actually I agree if a double 9 bless is out of reach that would nto be a bad thing at all.

W9 Vans are still pretty good though honestly ;)

1989

But it’s the chassis not the bless that’s the problem.

Afraid of double-blessed Wardens of Man? Or Seal Guardians?

The other thing is that without Bless strats , all you get are SC chassis wars and “rush build 4 castle/labs and spam mages” while avoiding all human troops, like in Dom2. (spiced with a little sarcasm!)

1990

And, btw, i like Death/Fire Vans myself :).

1991

Maybe the dominion strength of the pretender could be 1 at turn 1, and gradually increase to the actual strength when the pretender awakens?

1992

Possibly, but if one of the two has to go I’d prefer to see the blesses. That’s a matter of personal preference of course, so there’s no hard right or wrong.

Not horribly familiar with either of those units. From what I recall, either of those dual blessed is a pretty potent troop.

I liked Dom2. The way things look as of 3.04, I liked Dom2 a lot more than I like Dom3. So a return to roots, so to speak, would be a good thing.

In Dom2 it took awhile for mundane troops to become obsolete. It required late game summons and supercombatants and potent magics. In Dom3 they are obsolete on turn 1 as the sacreds rule the game from the beginning.

1993

So what you guys are basically saying is that if you aren’t playing a Sacred strategy and at least one other person is, you’re already losing?

Is it that bad?

1994

So i suppose what changed between Dom2 and Dom3 is that having an Imprisoned pretender + free castle choices makes up for the bad scales and lack of a Pretender early on?

Like i said, i think the problem is pretty simple, and that you wouldn’t be having this issue if Vans (et al.) weren’t so good. The Boar Warrior of Marverni costs 55g and 15 (?) resources, and isn’t worth 1/2 of a Van, whatever blessings he has. And he’s not too bad of a sacred unit.

You might argue about Vans having glamour in the early eras. But mediocre units with blessings like Jaguar Warriors don’t bother anybody.

Here’s the test: is it the blessing or the unit? Take your F9/W9 blessing and try out any random nations’ sacred units. If F9/W9 is so good it makes any mediocre nation sucessful, blessings are too good. If it only works with Vans, then Vans are too good.

1995

I don’t think so.

For one thing, in Dawn, I’m playing with a nature-8 bless (regen 15% I think, on troops that already have berserker, so it comes to the same thing as nature-9). That’s not bad. It’s also completely irrelevant to the actual situation. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d taken fire-9/water-9 against the Vanir - I might have done a bit more damage but fundamentally the troop matchup is just completely one-sided; in a straight fight, my guys lose, no matter what blessing I have. Therefore, I need to find alternative methods of taking them down. I think it’s doable, without crippling my setup against other opponents, particularly now that I know exactly what sort of thing I’m up against, but in Dawn I might have waited too long to start seriously figuring out what to do.

BTW, is the timer turned back on for Dawn yet? It’s been ages since the last turn.

Edit: what SelfishGene said.

1996

No, it is not that bad.

I just defeated a major army of Clark’s blessed to the 9s giants with my major army of Abysians with few sacreds. Because I know he took massive scale penalties to bless his giants, I know I can outlast him if I make it past the initial rush.

And by having my pretender awake from the very beginning, I got 240 magic research in before the sleeping ones woke up, and 480 research in before the imprisoned ones were ready to dance-- all just from the pretender. So my mages had Fireballs and Soul Contracted Imp swarms and Paralyze and Blood summons when our armies met about 30 turns in.

Conventional armies matter MORE in Dom3, IMO. There are counters, and not all counters are as terribly specialized as the priest-Ermor issue. Jotun Woodsmen have no armor to speak of and no shields, so massed archers will take them down. It’s actually the Berserking from the Nature 9 that’s most dangerous, but they will eventually fatigue out.

1997

The imprisoned pretender removed the need for bad scales and the lack of a pretender early on is really not much of a lack at all. Dormant/Imprisoned pretender is basically free points for anyone except the undead.

1998

I haven’t been able to check that game since my home machine got borked. Please tell me you didn’t kill of my scouts before the battle!

DAWN
Rollory - I think I’m probably the rate limiting step in Dawn. I’ll get to it today!

1999

The pretender, more than anything I think. I haven’t played a ton of Dom3 but an imprisoned pretender gets you a lot of points. A lot of pretender builds don’t really contribute much in the early game anyway (they’re just used as researchers) so people end up with a lot of points to spend on magic paths. Like Nick said, it used to be that a super-bless strategy meant big tradeoffs in other areas. Not so much anymore.

Like i said, i think the problem is pretty simple, and that you wouldn’t be having this issue if Vans (et al.) weren’t so good.

That’s a fair point, but it may just be the synergy here. In other words, some nations get good sacred units, some mediocre, some bad. If you then change the game so that any sacred unit can be made way better, the ones who started with medicore and poor sacreds can use it as a nice boost, but the ones who started good sacred units suddenly get amazing units that are really hard to counter (especially early on). Whether the problem is in the base units, or in the mechanic that allows you to make sacreds way better for not much expense, is probably in the eye of the beholder.

2000

Nah i dont think that überblessings are unbeatable… You have to concentrate on the strong point not the weak point of a nation. If your going with bless your pretender is sleeping or even imprisoned. So a countertactic to this one is, get an awake SC and conquer like crazy… You have to outproduce the blessing nation at least 4 to 1 better over it.

So there are a few thoughts to be made about your strategy at the start and by that i dont mean o yeah i will get staff of thunder on that turn and after that my blablabla… No you must have a clear conventional winning strat from the beginning: What forces do i rise, what is my sc doing and so on. The use of conventional forces IS the key against an überbless.
For example in Dawn of domininons the ulmish troops nearly broke my lines and they had already fought a war against ermor and i had only peace, i believe if they didndt had the starting war they could have beaten my force. So before we criticise the system to death lets have some more games played.