Serious Suggestion: Dominion Victory

[Lord_Bob]

This idea came from Master of Magic. In it a wizard could cast a Mastery spell to win. To bring conclusion to long games and prevent the inevitable "alliance victory" for Dominions I suggest the following rough draft for achieving a "Dominion Victory". In rough terms, casting all these spells achieves a "Dominion Victory", automatically defeating all other opponents. This means that while players can and will ally, one can beat his allies without having to duke it out in a long, relatively boring war. Path requirements and costs can be raised or lowered, obviously.

The following spells are added to Conjuration-9, Enchantment-9, and Construction-9.

Construction-9
Spell:
The Scepter, The Throne, and The Crown-
Earth-5 Astral-5, 30 Earth Gems
Using special ores and exacting craftsmanship a Scepter, a Throne, and a Crown are made and prepared for enchantment.

Conjuration-9
Essence of the Earth-
Earth-6, 50 Earth Gems
The essence of the Earth is summoned, so that the artifacts may be imbued with the power of the Earth.
Essence of the Fire-
Fire-6, 50 Fire Gems
The essence of Fire is summoned, so that the artifacts may be imbued with the power of Fire.
Essence of the Air-
Air-6, 50 Air Gems
The essence of Air is summoned, so that the artifacts may be imbued with the power of Air.
Essence of the Water-
Water-6, 50 Water Gems
The essence of Water is summoned, so that the artifacts may be imbued with the power of Water.

Enchantment-9:
Scepter of the Dead:
Death-6, 50 Death Gems
Using the power of the Four Elements, the Scepter is enchanted to give it's wielder Dominion over the Lands of the Dead.
Throne of the Earth:
Nature-6, 50 Nature Gems
Using the power of the Four Elements, the Throne is enchanted to give it's wielder Dominion over the Earth.
Crown of the Heavens:
Astral-6, 50 Astral Pearls
Using the power of the Four Elements, the Crown is enchanted to give it's wielder Dominion over the Heavens.

The costs and path requirements can be changed, but programically this should not be to difficult to add as it only effects the Victory Conditions portion of the code. Additionally changes, such as forcing them to be cast in the correct order and such, while nice, are not necessary. This provides a way of winning without having to kill all your allies, and makes allying with someone in a good position to pull off a "Dominion Victory" riskier.

*Master of Magic was a very underrated game on par with Orion I. It is currently available for free!

[sum1lost]

What about blood?

[Lord_Bob]

Blood is a "forbidden" art, and dealing with dark powers should not be REQUIRED for Dominion Victory.

[Frostmourne27]

Its an interesting idea, and spells that allow for victory have a certain degree of merit. Unfortunately, your current setup allows for a nation to put the nexus up, maintain it for maybe 5-10 turns, cast 380 gems worth of spells in one turn, and then win. Maybe if they were globals that had to be run concurrently or something, but as you suggested, amassing gems and casting them all at once could bring about a rather sudden end to the game. Also, how would this work with dominions victory conditions? Remember, as things stand now, you choose one, or none, and conquest is always an option. It's, regrettably, not a checklist. Still, I like the concept. You could add it to the Dom4 wishlist, although I doubt Dom4 will happen, so that may not accomplish much.

[sum1lost]

Lord_Bob said:
Blood is a "forbidden" art, and dealing with dark powers should not be REQUIRED for Dominion Victory.



Psht. Its only forbidden by some nations. Others embrace it.

Lord Bob Hates Blood People.

[Loren]

I like the idea but how about some a tweak (admittedly that would make for more changes to the game):

Make it a global. It gets it's own special set of slots and thus is unaffected by other globals but otherwise it is subject to all the normal rules of globals.

[Archonsod]

Make it so it must be cast either by or on your pretender. Could slow it down some, and also allows other players a chance to stop you beyond attempting to wipe you out in a turn or two (by killing your pretender...)

[krpeters]

This is all completely redundant... the game already has "dominion victory" enabled.

Conquer 1/3 of the world, build a temple in every province, wait a few years, and your dominion will wash over and exterminate all of your opponents. Well, ok, this probably works better in SP against AIs who don't think to build temples... but it ought to be somewhat effective in MP too.

Maybe there should be a spell which improves the output of your temples to achieve the same result in less time.

[llamabeast]

Arcane Nexus, Utterdark and a couple other spells are already effectively "I've won" spells - if they aren't dispelled quickly there's no stopping the caster.

[Fate]

Actually, I have had experience with an actual Dominion loss. I was T'ien Ch'i against my friend's Abysian sacred rush. He is good at it, but he prefers to claim around 2/3 of the map and then turtle (which defeats the purpose of the "rush").

I eventually push him off with masses of crossbows + celestial soldiers on the front lines. Then I realize he has Dominion in every province except my capital. I start marching to his capital while spamming temples and setting my entire stack of celestial masters to preaching, but it is too late.

My measly 6 Dominion and 2 temples (I was building more) are defeated by my opponent's 10 Dominion and 10+ temples.

Obviously this can only happen on small maps, but I have been wary ever since...

[Sandman]

Maybe there should be a spell which improves the output of your temples to achieve the same result in less time.



I like this idea, it's nice and simple. Maybe an astral/fire spell? The others are too complicated, they'd require a lot of messy programming and testing.

[Edratman]

I agree that there should be some tweaking for victory conditions. I just checked the poll that asked the question about which percent of games are completed and the current results say that a very low percentage are completed.

That salient fact cries out for something. I do not know if additional victory conditions are the answer or not. (For myself, I quit games because the turns take too long.)
But it is worth investigating.

[Frostmourne27]

Edratman said:
I agree that there should be some tweaking for victory conditions. I just checked the poll that asked the question about which percent of games are completed and the current results say that a very low percentage are completed.

That salient fact cries out for something. I do not know if additional victory conditions are the answer or not. (For myself, I quit games because the turns take too long.)
But it is worth investigating.




I think most of us quit because we get bored, or the outcome is obvious. I don't see not finishing games as much of an issue, myself. It's more of an interesting statistic, and might be fun to pull out infront of rabid FPS-ers just to see what they think of our quaint little turn-based world...

[Sensori]

llamabeast said:
Arcane Nexus, Utterdark and a couple other spells are already effectively "I've won" spells - if they aren't dispelled quickly there's no stopping the caster.



Somehow that doesn't seem right. I've seen nations with these "I win" globals lose more often than the nations without. They are more like "I wanna win!" globals rather than direct victory ones. Sometimes people cast them when they've already won, which doesn't make 'em "I win" globals, but rather "I already won, I don't care about yous!" globals. ;p

[thejeff]

Well, they seem to be "I'm going to win if you don't stop this" globals. In MP, they tend to be viewed as a declaration of war on the whole world and everyone attacks/dispels them.

Have you seen games where nations with the "I win" globals lose without being ganged up on or having them dispelled (usually by a joint effort)?

[Humakty]

For a spell mastery victory, having five globals up could be sufficent. I guess human players use dispell a lot.