LA Ermor's Dominion Change in 3.15...

[Velusion]

I read that LA Ermor's dominions will now kill population 10x faster than previously. Does anyone else think this is a bit much?

Now I'm not saying that it shouldn't be increased... but by a multiple of 10?? Thats a pretty massive change. Your dominion will drive nations to attack you immediately now and your income is reduced drastically to a trickle.

LA Ermor was already very difficult to play in the late game - and experienced players could usually handle it (all the anti-ermor spells).

I can't imagine trying to play it now though.

[Sombre]

As I just said in the other thread, this also effects ermor's enemies. If you invade you face supply problems (fairly easily mitigated, admittedly) and you get worthless land for your troubles. If they dompush they start to kill your income on the borders.

It just makes them more extreme, not necessarily much weaker.

[vfb]

With dom10, Ermor's population in turn 5 in your capitol is around 3000. Turn 10, around 130. With dom5, capitol pop is around 6000 in turn 10.

One candle kills about 10% population in a month, so even the indies around your home province won't have much life in them when you grab them.

Looks like there's no choice but to take Turmoil-3 Luck-3 now, and pray for gold and fire gems.

[Aezeal]

reaching the capitol will be harder though.. and invading Ermor doesn't make it weaker (lower income) as it does with other nations

[Velusion]

Sombre said:
As I just said in the other thread, this also effects ermor's enemies. If you invade you face supply problems (fairly easily mitigated, admittedly) and you get worthless land for your troubles. If they dompush they start to kill your income on the borders.

It just makes them more extreme, not necessarily much weaker.



Take the capital and you get 15 death gems though - that is always been the real reason to attack them early.

The big problem is that your dominion is so horrible now that your neighbors MUST attack you early on unless they want' all their border provinces completely depopulated.

Also the fact that because your income will be so very, very horrible means that you build less temples and less forts which means less and weaker freespawn. You are underestimating the impact money directly has on your undead hordes. Temples = dominion, dominion = freespawn, Forts = upgraded freespawn.

No money = much less freespawn.

[Twan]

I think it's a big nerf for the guys rushing Ermor as soon they can for the 15d gems...

Already the ermorian castle was a trap for living conquerors, with no supply inside a counter attack could be devastating. Now supplies will be a problem even in the very early war to approach it.

edit : ...and for the neighbours not trying http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Velusion]

Twan said:
I think it's a big nerf for the guys rushing Ermor as soon they can for the 15d gems...

Already the ermorian castle was a trap for living conquerors, with no supply inside a counter attack could be devastating. Now supplies will be a problem even in the very early war to approach it.



Supply is a red herring here IMHO. Staving is not good but hardly crippling and easily countered by many items.

[B0rsuk]

I guess it's called Ashen Empire for a reason.

[Xavier]

i think you can fix your income slightly by raising taxes to 200%. pop dies so fast anyway you do a little better by milking it hard when people are still alive. i did some tests and it looks like after 5 turns you're about 200 gold ahead by pushing 200% taxes. and this means that unrest decreasing events are more helpful too. and i still have to test, but i suspect that patrolling with 200% taxes will be even better, because the pop loss will be negligable next to what your dominion does, but the increased tax revenue with minimal increases in unrest will be even better for your income.

but in general, yeah...the pop loss does seem a bit extreme. i think for diplo i'm gonna have to promise EVERYONE i encounter not to put any temples on their borders, and to keep my pretender an profit away from there. I'm hoping that'll work....

[DrPraetorious]

You can also pillage.

If they're going to do this, the Ermorian capital should also make some money. It doesn't have to be a lot - 100gp/month would enable Ermor to do build some forts and temples, on top of money from other sources.

[Velusion]

Ermor also needs money for indy mages...

Pillage requires a large force just sitting around.

[Jazzepi]

Velusion said:

Twan said:
I think it's a big nerf for the guys rushing Ermor as soon they can for the 15d gems...

Already the ermorian castle was a trap for living conquerors, with no supply inside a counter attack could be devastating. Now supplies will be a problem even in the very early war to approach it.



Supply is a red herring here IMHO. Staving is not good but hardly crippling and easily countered by many items.



Yeah I agree D: I've definitely run starving armies around the map. This is especially true for guys with mindless units, like R'yleh. Starving? Who cares, I'm morale 50! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Jazzepi

[vfb]

Pray for a hidden gold mine! At zero population you can tax it at 200% and get double funds out of it. Searching for earth sites would be a good plan.

[Xavier]

confirmed - patrolling with taxes at 200% seems to be your best source of income (at least in your capital). the gain's not huge though, so i'd only bother patrolling for the first turn or two in high income provinces.

in other news, playing LA ermor against a single normal AI on a small map is pretty hilarious. I was running these 5-turn income tests, when after the last one i noticed that my capital was now bordering agartha. i took all of the available units (8 dom pretender) with my starting commander, and marched. got straight to their capital, sat there until i breached the walls, took it, then mopped up the rest of them. i never spent a single gem, or used anything other than that starting army.

[Agrajag]

In dom2 I always took Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Death-3,Cold-3,Luck-3 (and magic depending on strategy), so I don't see that as changing much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif
And besides, it is being multiplied by 10, yes, but from what number exactly?
My tests indicate that their death dominion now kills 5% of the population per candle (and that population death occurs after dominion spread)
IIRC that's the same number it was in dom2.

[Twan]

Jazzepi said:
Yeah I agree D: I've definitely run starving armies around the map. This is especially true for guys with mindless units, like R'yleh. Starving? Who cares, I'm morale 50! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Jazzepi



Rlyeh isn't the best example, take a nation with ressource intensive troops and no nature (there are many in LA, Atlantis, Agartha, Marignon, etc...) having all the troops you use in an early war to try to destroy Ermor diseased (and demoralized for the final battles against morale 50 ennemies who never rout) may make a big difference (of course if you win fast, the 15d gems per turn make your mortal armies less important, but if Ermor succeeds to resist a moment it can change the outcome of the war).

[Kuritza]

Even now, I'm fighting LA Ermor as Bogarus. No nature mages = no way to mitigate starvation. Already my first army has starved to death (thankfully, not commanders). Good thing my peshty are quite expendable anyway.
But with this new patch, commanders are going to starve too...

At least my dominion 10 helps to safeguard my own lands.

[Sombre]

Commanders can starve in the new patch? That's quite a change. Before they never suffered from starvation, even with 0 supplies.

[Edi]

Since when are commanders going to starve in 3.15? I've not heard anything about it and neither has anyone else in the beta group so far as I know.

[Kuritza]

You mean, commanders dont need to eat in Dominions?.. I thought they just get the first share of supplies. But when supplies = zero, they starve, dont they?

[Endoperez]

Commanders consume supplies, but never starve, similar to various creatures that don't NEED to eat but have gluttony.

[Kristoffer O]

Agrajag said:
In dom2 I always took Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Death-3,Cold-3,Luck-3 (and magic depending on strategy), so I don't see that as changing much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif
And besides, it is being multiplied by 10, yes, but from what number exactly?
My tests indicate that their death dominion now kills 5% of the population per candle (and that population death occurs after dominion spread)
IIRC that's the same number it was in dom2.



Correct. Domkill is at dom2 levels again. Before the fix ermor had lower domkill than LA R'lyeh, which is silly. You could practically run Ermor as an ordinary gold based nation, which is quite unthematic.

Ermor is supposed to destroy civilizations, not build them. The lands of Ermor shall be barren and dead.
Scourge of the world, they shall have no friends.

[Amhazair]

I haven't played Ermor yet, so I'm not sure about balance considerations. If it hits them to hard something might have to be done to compensate. But I've allways thought it silly that the nation that should have the least money was the one that had a fort and a temple in every province, so at least from that point of view I applaud the change.

[B0rsuk]

Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...

[Sombre]

Yeah I agree. If it weakens Ermor too much they should be improved in some other way, for example by getting stronger freespawn or a bigger starting army or something. Not more gold.

[CUnknown]

I think the domkill is now finally where it should be. I agree with those saying that Ermor should be boosted in some other way if they are now too weak. But, they were one of the most powerful late age nations before, weren't they?

[Foodstamp]

You guys really think LA Ermor should be boosted? o.O

[Amhazair]

Noone has said they should be boosted Foodstamp. (and yes, they were considered one of the LA powerhouses) We're just saying that IF the domkill adjustment hurts them too much, so they become in fact underpowered, they should be boosted in some other way, but the domkill adjustment should stay.

[Foodstamp]

This is from the victorious nations thread in the multiplayer forum.

Late (13)

Ermor: 4
R'lyeh: 2
Marignon: 2
Mictlan: 1
Argatha: 1
T'ien Chi: 1
Utgard: 1
Jomon: .5
Caelum: .5

Not to discount the player skill behind the nations, but the two freespawn nations make up almost 50% of the victories in MP LA games, Ermor accounts for almost 1/3rd of them alone.

Adjusting the domkill at the very least limits their diplomatic options and traditional gameplay options a little bit more. At the worst, it may bring them into line with other top tier nations. Chances are, they are still going to be the king of multiplayer and singleplayer LA play.

[Loren]

I'm trying a game against a bunch of impossible AI's with LA Ermor right now.

If your dominion pushes beyond your empire you don't have enough gold to build temples to push your dominion out. When my fighting took my borders beyond my dominion for a while I actually started making enough money to temple reasonably.

My idea of a fix:

I would add two spells, one that creates a dark temple and one that creates a fortress and which need death gems. This would solve the basic problem of LA Ermor not being able to afford it's buildings without making it a gold-based nation.

I would also be inclined to prevent LA Ermor from getting random events that give troops that need upkeep.

[Sombre]

Hmm. We can already mod a death gems for a castle spell by altering the '60 red seconds' or whatever it's called blood spell.

[vfb]

And there's the Earth spell too, Wizard's Tower.

Will any fortress type work to give Ermor castle-type freespawn? Or do they need an Ermorian Castle/Citadel?

[Saulot]

vfb said:
Will any fortress type work to give Ermor castle-type freespawn? Or do they need an Ermorian Castle/Citadel?



I'm pretty sure the answer is any fort will do. Also the idea of a death-based national fort spell for LA ermor sounds great.

Edit:
Perhaps it should be called... Tower of Infinte Bones

[vfb]

Sounds great for Ermor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

It would have to be expensive. Otherwise you're going to see at least one fort coming up each turn, instantly, if Ermor casts the Well. But if you start making it really expensive, it could be cheaper for Ermor just to cast a Wizard's Tower instead.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I applaud the changes to Ermor. This will make Ermor more challenging and interesting to play as, and balance out the late age considerably.

[Xavier]

I'm about to host a 12 player MP game, playing LA ermor, so I'll get a chance to test out the change properly. I tend to be a strong diplomatic, so I'll see what I can manage - I plan to offer my neighbors no temples on their boarders and to keep my pretender and profit off of border provinces, except possibly to site search.

Also keep in mind that with luck+3, which LA ermore can easily afford, there's a reasonable number of +400ish gold events, which pays for a temple or half a fort right there. And from my testing, by taxing 200% and patrolling at least the first turn (I'm assuming that against standard indies ermor will expand on turn 2, with a decent dominion, so you won't have the leader+troops to continue patrolling), you can afford almost a fort+temple based on capital income alone before it dies. I realize that that's nothing compared to what it was, but...it was pretty extreme before.

[Lingchih]

You are going to play Ermor diplomatic? Heh. Good luck. I have been able to do it in a few MP games, but it is not easy. People love to gank Ermor early.

[Endoperez]

Loren said:
I would also be inclined to prevent LA Ermor from getting random events that give troops that need upkeep.



Militia event has already been made rare, for everyone. Flagellants could still appear, and I think the Ermorian Cultist attack is also possible, but those aren't nearly as annoying as militia. The cultists can also potentially conquer low-pd enemy provinces, from which you get income.

Ermor might also want to use Arouse Hunger, other similar rituals or fliers to capture weakly-defended provinces far from its own dominion.

[Aezeal]

I do not think ermor needs it really... maybe it would be somewhat more balanced if instead of building a temple + fort in every province you could only do it later.. after saving cash.. just like normal races

[B0rsuk]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but LA Ermor doesn't even have any units to recruit, right ? Except for independents, who are going to die soon anyway. No units to recruit means no upkeep, so you can spend ALL your gold on temples and castles.

[Aezeal]

hmmm in my SP game (ok not as competative as MP and I'm no crack ermor player (was my first LA ermor game actuallY)) I was floating in cash really.

my conclusion:
If the change nerved Ermor a bit (and I guess it did a little) it was no more than deserved (I hope we all agree on this) and certainly not to much. So new spells to make them the nr 1 race again are not needed. They might be worse than dreamlands now.. maybe but are certainly better and 90% of the races in LA (or any age) so they are not in need of improvement.

[thejeff]

Any fort will get you the improved longdead.
Playing around in SP, I've gotten them while sieging enemy forts in my dominion. I'm not sure that makes sense.

[WraithLord]

I think the change is in place. It is thematic for Ermor as a death nation to bring, well, death to the living. More so, I'm surprised it took so long to introduce this fix, I was completely unaware of this glitch.

Besides, that's the way Ermor was in Dom and Dom-II and it was very powerful then. In-fact, it was so powerful that it was a common practice to gang up on Ermor.

The statistics of LA Ermor's MP victories suggest that this aspect of Ermor has not changed much. Its a power house and 1 vs. 1 it should be able to crush any "living" nation (meaning most LA nations).

Suggesting to further boost Ermor seem to me quite unreasonable.

[Edi]

As stated, the death dominion was restored to Dom2 levels, i.e. to where it should have been all along. It was an accidental oversight that led to the bug being introduced and as soon as KO noticed the problem in one of his own test games, it got whacked over the head with a weapon called Developer Keyboard, the Bane of Bugs.

The reason why it went so long unnoticed was probably people not paying enough attention to compare to Dom2. I know I've never played a single game with LA Ermor in Dom3. Played a few with Ashen Empire and Soul Gate in Dom2 and those killed the population off very, very fast.

[Kristoffer O]

I think it was noticed by QM during beta, but me and JK managed to not understand that it was there.

[WraithLord]

For my part, I'm glad QM noticed it and that you fixed it promptly.

On a loosely related note, for quite sometime I've been thinking that it could have been cool to see a new nation added to Dominions universe that is not human and that has different mechanics than those of the human nations. Meaning a nation like LA Ermor, or R'lyeh, that has non gold economy. It doesn't have to a nation with domkill dominion but it could maybe be a nation that doesn't has little to no use for gold.

For example, an ancient race of overlords that used to subjugate and enslave lesser races is now reawakening. Their economy is base on slavery and summonable commanders and troops. Wait a sec. Isn't that similar to R'lyeh???

Well, I don't have a good example but still a new nation that plays differently would be very nice.

[Saulot]

I concur with WraithLord.

Perhaps an undead nation that doesn't have hordes of chaff, but a small amount of high quality units. Something similar to Necropolis, or llamabeast's TombKings, but less based on gold-recruitable units.

Thinking about the Yomi effect, and taking it a step further; Perhaps with some sort of zombie (or any unit really) that rises a few times after it's killed, before it finally is destroyed.

Even if KO is not interested, I'll probably put in the on the backburner and I'll try to tackle it in some way, at some point, maybe during the summer...

[llamabeast]

Try Foodstamp's Cradle of Gaea nation mod. Thet nation has no recruitables and is pretty interesting.

[llamabeast]

Working out a way to do an undead nation other than the approaches taken by Ermor and Tomb Kings is tricky I think - at least, I couldn't think of another good way of doing it. Might be interesting though.

I was kind of feeling tempted to do a Vampire Counts style undead nation - all gothic and medieval-Europe-ish in feel. But I couldn't think of many interesting ways to differentiate it from Ermor. Sure the longdeads wouldn't be carrying tower shields, but I think more differences than that are needed.

[Endoperez]

llamabeast said:
Working out a way to do an undead nation other than the approaches taken by Ermor and Tomb Kings is tricky I think - at least, I couldn't think of another good way of doing it. Might be interesting though.



Something like undead Panii could work. Your other mages only exist to research and perhaps cast some minor rituals with the help of items; your Great Ones are your main battlefield power, they lead, reanimate and summon your armies, and they cast the spells your armies of chaff need to be effective, but they cost much upkeep. Dominions only has gold-based upkeep, so it doesn't really work outside of gold economy, but it could be an interesting alternative.

[otthegreat]

B0rsuk said:
Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...



I know this was mentioned a while back but I think it should get more attention. I agree that there should be a way to partially regrow devastated provinces and growth scale is probably the best choice. I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.

[Agrajag]

Growth in dominions is exponential.
It's just that even with growth-3 it's just 1.006^n http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[B0rsuk]

otthegreat said:
I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.



It's called 'bell curve' .
Why not realistic ? It's a matter of massaging the numbers until it's playable. Currently Growth scale is pretty much unplayable. Supply was nicely balanced in Dom2, I had to actually look before stepping into a mountain or wasteland. Now I rarely bother.

[vfb]

It would be cool if different nations had different base growth. Humans would be pretty high, Heims would be bad, Abysia and Fomoria and Agartha would be dismal. Caelum and C'tis could get a surge of growth only in the spring.

[Agrajag]

B0rsuk said:

otthegreat said:
I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.



It's called 'bell curve' .


The "S" curve he mentioned was regarding the total population. Obviously, total population over time does not follow a bell curve.
The case he described does "contain" a bell curve, with "growth rate over time" following a bell-like curve.

[llamabeast]

Yep, the bell curve is the differential (gradient) of the s-curve. The s-curve is often called a sigmoidal curve, sigma being the greek s.

[WraithLord]

Wow, Your ideas (Saulot, llamabeast and Endoperez) sound promising. Maybe we can spawn a dedicated thread to brain storm a new *different* (probably modded) nation for dominions along the lines of one of the ideas you've suggested.

[Saulot]

Undeath discussion:
That sounds fine WraithLord. I guess that would go in the mod forum. I confess I have no time to contribute actual work (outside of thinking/speculation) for a long while.

Oh, also as a suggestion to just improve undead overall (which would also slightly tweak up Ermor), soulless should probably have a secondaryeffect disease on their weapon (fist / claw usually?). They are after all, a walking corpse.

About the population discussion:
Well, it's certainly true that the games don't last long enough to really show population changes into a different generation, and so vast differences in the populations doesn't make much sense.

Furthermore, during a game of Dominions is the 'time of the Chaos War' as I like to call it, when a pretender rises to dominance, and there should be much turmoil, death, and destruction of the peoples.

However, this is a game of magic, in a land with magic, and magic should provide an answer. There should probably be some sort of province enchantment which produces, let's say 50 to 500 more people per turn (probably a nature spell). As a province enchantment, this should prevent abuse or inbalance, and if priced correctly would likely only be used in situations which really warrant it.

[Xavier]

What about a nation of dragons? Ranging from humanoid dragon-kin (I'm thinking AD&D Dragonlance draconions) all the way to full on ancient dragons (which would be SCs at or above the level of Niefel Jarls). In between you have the most powerful of the dragon-kin and the very youngest of the dragons, which can be your stock mages and your non-mage commanders. The whole thing can be summonable (x gems for 5 to 15 of the regular dragon-kin, which are your troops, x gems for 1 dragon-kin mage, and then LOTS of gems, and some research, for the full-on dragons). You can even make it multiple path based, and allow summoning of different kinds of dragons (like the dragon pretenders).

That'd be a non-gold based nation that I think would be pretty interesting, and different from anything out there.

[Endoperez]

Conquest of Elysiun uses the form of "few gems for troops, more gems for good commanders/special units, lots of gems for very good commander" extensively. The problem is that one good commander or small group of very good units is much better than lots of weak units.

Making gold-independent nation also has the problem that all nations will have money, and if they won't use it elsewhere they'll use independents a lot, castles a lot, can build temples everywhere and probably won't suffer from upkeep nearly as much as common nations.

[Wick]

Once upon a time (dom2) I toyed with a choir nation. It would have been based on the Call God mechanism to summon angels ranging from Putti to Angels of the four hosts to unique angels, with a little bonus if the paths of the Singer or Matster of Harmony matched what they were calling. The Celebrants were troops that could join a Singer and there would obviously been spell songs. The troops were weak and the mages overpriced but calling units whose priestly abilities would let them call more units would probably have made it a late game powerhouse.

Another non-standard economy could be your basic d&d goblins. The troops would freespawn but cost upkeep so you have to keep attacking your neighbors. Although this might not work too well given the clever ways people found to dispose of militia. Hmmm...

[Xavier]

dragons are famous gold-hoarding - make the upkeep costs for units and commanders 10x normal.

and yes, quality over quantity is a big effect in this game, but if you balance the costs and don't make the units *too* absurd you should be fine. I mean, Niefelheim can produce a jarl every second turn at the beginning, and it doesn't take long to get the income going to produce one every turn.

you could also force the pretender to be one of the dragons, which have insanely expensive magic paths. You'd also have to be awake. This would mitigate the strength of your pretender or starting scales some, since you'd obviously be able to go 3 sloth.

there's a fix for every balance issue http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[WraithLord]

I suggest to stop abusing this thread and move the discussion to this dedicated thread (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=587122&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=7&fpart=&vc=#Post587122)

[BigJMoney]

B0rsuk said:
Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...



I agree. I've always thought growth could do more for its namesake than it does. I also think it could without negatively impacting Ermor's gameplay/theme combo. What if when a pop reaches 100 or less, it is unrecoverable, but above that, it can be regrown with growth scales along a stronger curve like B0rsuk suggests? Would it hurt Ermor if it were possible for territories to be taken back from them if you can manage to prune their dominion?

Basically what would happen is
1) Ermor puts dominion in a province
2) Ermor captures the province
3) Ermor depletes the province heavily (but does not get it down to 100 or less)
4) Opponent retakes province
5) Opponent removes Ermor's dominion from province
6) Province regrows

This is probably pointless, but I just thought of it. Is that game breaking?

BTW, I'm real embarrassed none of us caught the Ermor pop bug. Not that I played Ermor much in Dom2, but as much as I like to point out inconsistencies in game behavior, I'm bothered that I never complained about Dom3 Ashen Empire (which I thought had way too much gold).

=$=

[OmikronWarrior]

Agrajag said:
Growth in dominions is exponential.
It's just that even with growth-3 it's just 1.006^n http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=544415&page=1&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

The above link is where I ran the numbers on growth and death domains and calculated the aggregate money changes over so many turns. First off, the extra 2% per tick of growth of money you make per turn is not insignificant. Secondly, Growth in the long run will equal order for as a money maker, with the break even point being around turn 42 for growth-3. Third, the real strength of growth as a money maker is to combine it with order-3. Then all the multipliers (21% for order, 6% for growth, and exponential population growth) combine for the biggest pay out in Dom3.

Don't get me wrong, early expansion is important than late game bounties, but its not something to be dismissed either.

[Zeldor]

OmikronWarrior:

But you need to control that province for so many turns. AND have your dominion [prbaobly at least str 3-5] all the time. So that 42 turns is for capitol only.

I wish growth effect was 2-5 times bigger but with no income boost. Just boost by population growth. It could maybe also make population destroying spells weaker.

[OmikronWarrior]

Zeldor said:
But you need to control that province for so many turns. AND have your dominion [prbaobly at least str 3-5] all the time. So that 42 turns is for capitol only.



42 turns is the length of time in which you need to hold a province (any province) for the money difference between order-3 and growth-3 to be a wash (not the actual turn number in which everything everywhere equals out), and after turn 42 growth looks a lot better (due to the nature of exponential growth). Your criticism is a bit misguided in that in order to benefit from Order-3 you need the same criteria, control of the province and a minimum dominion to move scales. Once this is achieved, 42 turns is a theoretical number in which money breaks even, with plenty of room for 'experimental deviation'. Obviously, not all provinces will be under you control for a full 40+ turns, and there is no easy way to calculate the exponential benefit of growth in the provinces you control for more than 40 turns (or 70 for that matter) averaged against those you'll hold much less. The bigger the game, the more advantageous growth becomes.

Of course, I pretty much went out and said if you need money for your early game than you want order-3, which may allow you to take more provinces and thus have more money over the course of the game (to say nothing of more magic gems). Yet, how often does pretender design end up as a 120 points to spend on either Order or Growth? Realistically certain nations require growth to keep their old age mages alive. My suggestion has always been to combine Order-3, Growth-3, and even temperature scales for maximum effect accross the board.


I wish growth effect was 2-5 times bigger but with no income boost. Just boost by population growth. It could maybe also make population destroying spells weaker.



A dangerous line of thought. Check out this graph on wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Exponential.png .

The green line represents exponential growth. It starts our relatively slow compared to other forms of growth, but towards the end skyrockets into the atmosphere. The danger with increasing the pop growth to much is it becomes simply overpowering. I set up another spread sheet on my PC to compare your suggestions: 2xs and 5xs the current population growth figures. Assumming Growth-3 (1.2% and 3%).

For 1.2%, the break even point (with out any income benefits) was turn 31. A population doubled after 58 turns, and tripled after 92. For 3%, the break even point was turn 13. Population doubled at turn 24, tripled at 38 turns, and after 100 turns, the population would be 20 times the original.

I do feel like growth should be strengthened, but playing with exponents can be dangerous. I'd like to see the income modifier changed to 3%/tick. That make positive scales strategies much more viable.

[Zeldor]

OmikronWarrior:

How many turns you need now to double population with growth 1,2 or 3?

You have admitted that it gets good later. So you need to control that provinces for at least 25-30 turns to see a real difference in income from growth. That's really a lot. It will affect provinces you got in early game but you won't benefit from new ones. And you will have Order bonus from newly acquired provinces when you spread your dominion there. Does order also increase income from gold mines etc?

[johan osterman]

Omikron warrior, by 22-23 turns a province held in growth 3 should have an income equal to that of a order 3 province with growth 0.

It should take about 100 turns to double population with growth 3.

[Xavier]

I did some fiddling with this earlier - direct tests on early expansion with and without growth 3. The difference I was paying for was an asleep versus imprisoned pretender (who was mostly just a 9/6 bless vehicle). The difference in early expansion was actually substantial - do not underestimate the value of that +6% income. I would say that on any nation that doesn't need the resources, take sloth 3 and growth 3, as growth will substantially improve your income (this assumes you don't have anything more pertinent to spent those 120 points from sloth on, and that you're already at order 3).

[OmikronWarrior]

johan osterman said:
Omikron warrior, by 22-23 turns a province held in growth 3 should have an income equal to that of a order 3 province with growth 0.

It should take about 100 turns to double population with growth 3.



My "break even" is a bit more comprehensive then that. Current income might be equal after so many turns, but I take into the "lost" income from not having +21% the whole time. Thats where I get my 42 turn figure from. At that point you have made just as much money as had you picked Order-3, Growth-0. Feel free to link I gave above and the spreadsheet to make sure my math is right.

As for when population doubles with growth-3, its an easy calculation to make. 1.006^x=2, or x=ln2/ln1.006, or x=115.9.

[B0rsuk]

Growth: +1 +2 +3 +4 = +10
Order: +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 = +10

Total extra gold for growth and order may be the same up to the breaking point, but growth allows you to invest it early. Lies, damn lies, statistics ! Breaking point is the breaking point only for people who sit idle scratching their backs. Another advantage of Order is that it quickly covers your newly conquered provinces. Looking at it this way, Order may actually pay more in the long run than Growth does. Not only Growth benefits mostly your core provinces, but it also benefits your enemy if he captures your territory. Order, on the other hand, disappears from your provinces when your enemy conquers them (destruction of temples, prophets, pretenders, enemy builds his own temples etc) And I'm pretty sure it makes your territory easier to invade, because it provides supplies for enemy army ! (The fact that no one noticed this before is a testament to the pointlessness of supplies in Dom3)

[johan osterman]

OmikronWarrior said:

johan osterman said:
Omikron warrior, by 22-23 turns a province held in growth 3 should have an income equal to that of a order 3 province with growth 0.

It should take about 100 turns to double population with growth 3.



My "break even" is a bit more comprehensive then that. Current income might be equal after so many turns, but I take into the "lost" income from not having +21% the whole time. Thats where I get my 42 turn figure from. At that point you have made just as much money as had you picked Order-3, Growth-0. Feel free to link I gave above and the spreadsheet to make sure my math is right.

Ah ok.


OmikronWarrior said:
As for when population doubles with growth-3, its an easy calculation to make. 1.006^x=2, or x=ln2/ln1.006, or x=115.9.

¨
There used to be, and still is as far as I know, a 1.001 base growth at growth scale 0. Which is where I got the 100 turns, as in (turns)=ln2/ln(1.007)

[hnchrist3]

I have been playing LA Ermor for over a year. I switched when my other test factions consistently ran into trouble against Ermor. (Of course the idea was to understand the enemy so he is more easily defeated.) My conclusion was that LA Ermor is an extremely subtle nation to play; that is, it is always on the edge, and one miscalculation can sink it.

The population change is just another variable in a game of hundreds of degrees of freedom. Apparently it was "traditional" and it has been restored. To we LA Ermor players, it only means we have to adjust our strategy.

Frankly, I am a hard ***, and I do not take crap from any other players. I take the Lord-of-the-Rings point of view and tell other players, "The dead do not suffer the living." [The Return of the King.] If you attack me early, you can be guaranteed that neither of us will survive. If you find support in your attack, others will grow stronger while you defeat me.

Frankly, Ermor is a conundrum: Damned if you attack, and damned if you wait.

For my part, the new population rules mean it will be harder for ME to keep up a blood pool.

In any event, you'll have to pry those 15 death gems from my cold tight hand.

[B0rsuk]

johan osterman said:
There used to be, and still is as far as I know, a 1.001 base growth at growth scale 0. Which is where I got the 100 turns, as in (turns)=ln2/ln(1.007)



There appears to be no base growth. I just tested it, it's suposed to happen every single turn, not every 2 turns or anything like that, right ? 30370 in Man capital. One turn later, 30370. I vaguely remember Kristoffer being surprised that there's no longer base growth, and later saying something along the lines that it's ok because it makes growth more useful, it's end times, not much time passes between turns so it's realistic, etc.

[Beorne]

My two cents.
I'm palying a 5 players mp and one is Ermor. The game started before the patch. None attacked Ermor early but soon we formed an alliance of four vs Ermor. Now, around turn 40, it's too late. We started attacking him around turn 15, but the combination ermor plus gold is unstoppable. He has lot of castles, lot of temples, lot of indy mages. If he had only huge undead armies and death spells he would be manageable, now isn't. Btw, I'm R'lyeh and I would be a good anti ermor having cheap fodder and good spells. I had very good start too. But now there is no match.
I agree with increase of pop death in ermor so to have (at least) its income crippled.

[johan osterman]

B0rsuk said:

johan osterman said:
There used to be, and still is as far as I know, a 1.001 base growth at growth scale 0. Which is where I got the 100 turns, as in (turns)=ln2/ln(1.007)



There appears to be no base growth. I just tested it, it's suposed to happen every single turn, not every 2 turns or anything like that, right ? 30370 in Man capital. One turn later, 30370. I vaguely remember Kristoffer being surprised that there's no longer base growth, and later saying something along the lines that it's ok because it makes growth more useful, it's end times, not much time passes between turns so it's realistic, etc.


No, it should be every turn. And since you checked the capital it should have enough pop to make an impact as well, as long as you didn't recruit?

So I guess it got removed somewhere along the line, in which cas Omi's number is correct and it takes 115 turns to double pop with growth 3.

[Endoperez]

johan osterman said:
No, it should be every turn. And since you checked the capital it should have enough pop to make an impact as well, as long as you didn't recruit?



Wait - does recruiting a unit lower population by 1? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif If not, what does this mean?

[johan osterman]

Well it used to reduce pop, once upon a time, apparently it doesn't anymore. It reduced it with more than 1 though, as I recall.

[tromper]

I'm not hardcore or anything, but my preference the past few months (not worrying about getting turns in on time, etc.) has been to play with 6-10 AIs, random, on mighty with various maps, and if LA Ermor's around - the game is over as Ermor beats the crap out of any AI around it.

Something's wrong with the SP balance.

Or shall none of us ever play SP again? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Endoperez]

Ermor has always been a special case other AI's don't know how to deal against. At least we know have access to two eras in which there are no dominion-killing nation that spawn thousands of troops out of thin air.

[mathusalem]

I have tried a solo game with the "new" dominion.
Really difficult without some high gold events : can't by any castle after the 20 first turns

[Xavier]

then you're doing something wrong...even with no gold events I can have a castle and a temple on turn 7, and have enough cash to start another castle on the following turn.

try increasing your taxes to 200% in every province, and make sure you take farms and other high-income provinces near your capital ASAP, to maximize income before your dominion wipes out the population.

also, with the increased dom kill I think you're pretty much forced into taking luck 3 (as though you didn't have the points to spare) for the gold events.

[hnchrist3]

Luck +3 is mandatory. It will be your greatest generator of gold (particularly after you cast Utterdark), {you WILL won't you?} as the gold you acquire during "events" will be real and not modified by Utterdark's 90% reduction.

In a recent game I had a double, "3000 gold and a magic item" in one turn! (Under Utterdark!)

I used to go luck -3 for the magics, but as long as you have a Pretender with something in *all* paths, there is no real advantage to the extra points. (The reason is to avoid the 50 gem 'penalty' for getting into a magic path.)

===========================================
With the change, you should go +200% taxation in all provinces, to extract the maximum income, and to ruin it for anyone else who decides to conquer it.
Taking a province is one thing... Keeping it is another.
Bwaaaaaaa--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
(Excuse me: Ha!)
=================================================
In the end, Ermor is a freak. Worse yet, everyone hates it (just as everyone, including Ermor, hates R'Lyeh). Against R'Lyeh your troops/commanders go insane in its dominion. Against Ermor, (their) troops/commanders starve. The difference is that starvation is curable, and insanity is not.

Viva la mort!

Oh yeah, and to answer mathusalem, what are you building so many castles for anyway? If you have Soulgate up all you need a temple (400 as opposed to 800 gold) and you'll get freespawn priests that will crank out undead by the thousands. Not only that, your only 3 sources of dominion increase are: Pretender; Prophet; temples. [OK, you can buy living priests to preech as well, but you have to pay upkeep!] But you can only recruit a (living) priest where you have built a temple anyway.

[otthegreat]

Castles freespawn the better Roman legionnaire undead.

[hnchrist3]

Yeah, but at 800/1000 gold a pop? I spend that on providence defense and not castles. The problem with castles are they are transient: yours today, someone else's tomorrow. Then you have to bother with a siege to get it back. Just ugly all around.

------------------------------------------------

Oh, one of the things I forgot to say is that Ermor's new/original death rate pretty much makes it impossible to have a blood economy. Kind of tough to pull virgins out of a population zero province.

[Zeldor]

Just lol.

[Gregstrom]

PD is more transient than castles are - you can't reclaim it.

[hnchrist3]

True, Gregstrom, but it does not switch sides and it weakens an opponent.