I’m also travelling this summer. July 9th to July 28th I will be in the US. Not sure yet whether playing Dominions while I’m over there is in the cards.
Will be looking for a sub for Foss, unless there are several others who are also travelling in which case it probably makes more sense to just pause the game.
As long as we’re talking vacations, I’ll be out the last week of June. I’ll have a laptop with me, and the hotel has wi-fi, but I’d rather not have to worry about an actual timer during that time, because if we’re out in downtown Chicago and I get a six-hour reminder email, I’m not going to get that turn in time.
Nate! With everyone going on vacation in the next few weeks, it seems, what about turning the timer off and setting the game to host when all the turns are in? And then just bugging people to get turns in?
Where in the US will you be?
California. Will be flying into SF, staying there a few days, up to Napa for a bit, down to Mountain View to see some friends, Highway 1 to LA and then Vegas, flying home from LA. Whew.
That’s a busy stretch! You should fit some Kansas City in there! It’s only like 1300 miles away from you! That’s an easy one-day drive if you hate yourself!
That’s probably too far a drive for me to come have you autograph my horror helmet.
Wow you could go right by me. Im in Vacaville, CA and only about 3 blocks off of Highway 80
I’m expanding rather a bit more slowly in this game that in my test games. Bloody knights.
N&S was delayed on my account, but there’s still a good chance that I’ll finish my turn by the original deadline of 10 hours from now.
Hey guys,
I have for a very long time been working on a way to fairly “price” pretenders for the game. Essentially, I thought a few choice chassis were noticeably under priced and thus overplayed, while a much larger number of Pretenders were slightly overpriced especially when compared to the choice minority, and finally another handful so expensive to what the player got as to be useless.
So, know those games that give you so many “points” and let you choose how you want to customize your player or nation? Galactic Civilizations comes to mind, but there are many others. Different abilities cost different amount of points, and some are actually disabilities and give the player a refund?
I am essentially trying to reverse engineer this using existing Pretenders. I think I have developed a fairly solid scoring system. The next logical thing is to turn this into a mod. However, I would like to get some outside perspective before I poor a ton of work into such an endeavor.
So, I ask a few questions for those who feel they have the experience to answer.
How would you price the Wyrm, the Oracle, the Titan (male), the Vampire Queen, the Prince of Death, the Great Enchantress, and the Sage. I think this list represents a large segment of well known pretenders. Any additional comments are appreciated.
What sort of traits do you look for in a (SC, rainbow, bless) Pretender chassis that make you pick one option over another?
Name what you think are the most erroneously priced pretenders and tell me why?
Thanks in advance for any insight you guys can provide.
First off I do think CBM does a pretty good job of rebalancing the pretenders. I believe it’s available as a separate download. So I’d use the ideas from there as a starting point. I only have experience with CBM 1.6, so that’s my frame of reference.
I think the Wyrm, the Oracle, the Great Enchantress and the Sage are all pretty much fine. The Wyrm needs dom 9 or 10 to be effective at expanding, and drops in utility a lot as the game goes on. The Oracle is a really nice bless chassis that opens up a lot of designs, and its low cost and high dominion are offset by the lack of mobility and vulnerability. The Sage and Enchantress are both decent as-is, though I would not object to lowering their cost somewhat as was done in CBM.
The Prince of Death is undercosted. A much better starting SC than the Wyrm with dom 9 or 10, more magic, full slots, flying - it’s brutal. CBM had the right idea bumping it up from 75 to 125. If I need an awake SC in vanilla I’d look no further than this unless the gorgon is available.
The vampire queen is probably the most overcosted pretender in the game. Seems they overcompensated here because she was so good in Dominions 2. Maybe 75 or so would be the right cost for her, equal to the master lich (another immortal). She still wouldn’t be played a lot due to the weak dominion - to get good value out of an immortal pretender, you want high dom. Could probably be made even cheaper. The male Titan is also overcosted IMO. 9 out of 10 times you’d rather have a cyclops. Should cost 75 or 100 I’d say.
- What sort of traits do you look for in a (SC, rainbow, bless) Pretender chassis that make you pick one option over another?
No time to go into this in detail, but I tend to like multi-role pretenders. A rainbow with four minor blesses, or an SC with a minor bless. I love forging and can’t imagine being without hammers, so if don’t have any national earth mages I’m likely to take an awake E mage that can site search.
- Name what you think are the most erroneously priced pretenders and tell me why?
Vampire queen for reasons already stated. But the majority of pretenders are somewhat overcosted. Take the Mother of Rivers - in vanilla she costs 75 and yields 2 water gems each month. In CBM she costs 0 and yields 6 water gems, and she STILL isn’t played that much. That’s indicative of how much you can boost power without eclipsing pretenders like the Oracle, Wyrm, Cyclops etc. Of course a large part of the reason the Mother of Rivers is fine at such low cost in CBM is that clams are gone and water gems aren’t very useful.
One point that balances the Prince of Death is that any afflictions he gets can’t be healed by normal means, since he’s undead. Nothing short of the Chalice or Gift of Health, I believe.
I think any nation-specific pretender needs to have a lot of incentives on it, like Vanheim’s Allfather. I also would be very happy for each nation to have one or two specific pretenders just for them (or at least each similar group of nations, like a few of the Heims, or Ermor/Pythium etc.)
Most afflictions don’t affect the Price of Death very much or at all either. It’s almost impossible to justify any other SC pretender in vanilla. I took him over a Gorgon once and didn’t end up regretting it too much, even though the vanilla Gorgon is even more underpriced that he is.
I agree with everything Scribble said, and don’t have much to add. I like the CBM approach of trying to price and actually change pretenders such that there exists at least one situation where each would be worth picking, and think it’s better than trying to balance costs by rating the relative value of existing traits only, assuming the goal is a general purpose mod.
Most of the titan type pretenders…the mother of earth, the lady of love, the mother of rivers, lord of rebirth, son of the son…all of those are interesting flavor, but if you were to drop all of them in price 25-50 points then I might look at them.
I would add the Monolith to the fountain, oracle, sphynx class of pretenders that have decent dominions/path and are balanced by immobility.
Balancing the dragons has to be an interesting problem. I believe the Dragons would be taken for more often if the price of new paths wasn’t so steep. On the other hand… a mistformed, ironskined, ethereal dom10 flying dragon would be too much.
There is also an AwesomeGods mod. The Awesome mods do what CBm does but in a different direction. Less nerfing of the big things and more increasing of lesser things. Both mods (and Im guessing the one you are planning) are geared toward MP players. There are different “balance” mods for Solo play.
This thread is extremely long, which is killing our server. Please make a new thread and send Tom or me a PM and we’ll include a link to it at the end of this one.
Edit: Continued here.
Hey everyone.
I just found out about the Dominions series, and have been playing the demo for Dom3. So far, it’s been a ton of fun, and I can only imagine what the full game will be like.
The question is though, do I get Dominions 3, or Dominions 4? I eventually plan on trying to learn enough to be decent at multiplayer, as I have no problem with the large time commitments that this game would hold. In that regard, Dom4 seems to be the clear winner, with Disciples play as well as the (I imagine) larger playerbase, combined with numerous UI improvements (the ability to repeat a build order looks REALLY nice).
Dom4 without a doubt. You may be able to pick up Dom3 cheaper, but don’t fall for it - Dom4 is better in not obvious, but very meaningful ways. Lots of quality of life and UI improvements, simplified tax system, auto-recruitment, etc. That and all the MP action is with Dom4, so no point picking up obsolete strategy/info/habits.
Odd first post… it’s a copy/paste from the Desura forums from 3 years ago. :P
Simple answer - listen to the wise sharaleo.
I wish that I could get into the Dominion series but I have been unable to penetrate the veil of the mechanics of this game. It is something that I should like but I just do not know what to do. I tried reading a guide at one point but it was overly long and I could not wade through it. I own Dom3 and it sits on my account unplayed and unloved.