Mod Dominions 3000 v0.81 - lots of new indies, new map (using the brand new map commands) [Archive] - Page 2?login=1

Aezeal

December 13th, 2008, 12:56 PM

I'm testing orcs a bit now and they have more cash than I want them to have (or at least too easy) so I've added some unrest to more commanders etc.
They also have VERY high prot, all of them so I've also lowered the prot of all armour types (so also for ulm etc) the spacecraft have gotten a bit more armour.
The Orc infantry have had a bit lower stats and in space even more so.

Killing orc hero's is a viable option throughout the game though.. and there are some powerfull assasins in some nations :D

I must admit that when you have high dominion you get a pretty insane amount of troops though so I might increase the cost of the upgraded recruitable commanders a bit more so upkeep will be pressing a bit harder.. I'll wait with that though to see the effect of the unrest (which was a killer on orcs in the past) I've also lowered the orc pretender's starting candles a bit (well to 1 actuallY) since dom 10 is a must have and they don't really need much else (though considering upkeep income related scales never hurt) so more investment is needed here. I could also lower his summoning ability a bit.. but I won't for now.. I'll probably nerve the orc troops first if needed (light armour or a special orc armour in between ulmish light and medium) since orcs should stay a bit of a horde race.

Magic for orcs works now though, research too, pretty good research IMHO, might have to nerve that but since buying a reseachers mean less troops it's probably still a hard choice.. now I'm thinking of it the hero probably is worth so much for the race his actualy recruitment price needs to be higher too.. going to do that now

I'm playing the first few turn against the orcs (testing) with Jomon and personally I have a pretty hard time breaking indies.. must be me.

I've lowered the def for the icesuits (on their staff actually) by one and damage a bit too. The Oni ranged attack is still AN but only 5 damage now.. I'm thinking about making it more of a napalm attack with higher AoE (2 probably no need to overdo it) and 3 damage but I'm not doing that yet

I've changed nothing (I think, unless I did that a while ago just after previous version release) in the ao or aka oni naming and it seems correct in my game. Same for orc PD, it seems to be working I'm getting orcs there (I've changed it a bit nonethe less but it was working)

Aezeal

December 13th, 2008, 02:20 PM

Ok v0.75 has been uploaded all issues I could find have been changed, I've also changed a few týpo's in some descriptions and just tweaked stats a bit when I felt like it. All summons spells I knew to be unfit for dom 3K have been removed I think. Spells I didn't know or some very powerfull summons remain.

If the few testers that regularly visit this thread could DL the new mod and maybe test it as much as possible in the next week (maybe even put older SP games on hold (I know I'm asking much) (maybe even divide nations between them to improve this even further. New nations need most testing IMHO) then we could maybe start a game in the next few weeks.

rdonj

December 13th, 2008, 10:25 PM

I will give the orcs another run tonight. Possibly ulm also, the changes to them sound like they could be significant. If I get through both of them I will take a look at jomon.

I think 5 AN may still be too high, if you're going to have an AN aoe attack I would make it maybe 2 or 3 damage at most and rely on number of shots or random dice rolls to kill. But with the change to prot on units maybe ranged damage gets done faster now and it's not too much overkill.

rdonj

December 14th, 2008, 12:17 AM

Imo the solar system map is getting a bit too small for all the races in the game (69/7=9.8), it would be nice to have, say, an 80-100 province map to play on, preferably with a higher proportion of planet provinces as compared to space, to make it slightly easier for the weak space races to perform well.

Also, Jomon isn't necessarily great at defeating independants, but being by far the most powerful race in space gives them a huge advantage over most people. Plus the power of their oni is not to be underestimated against 10hp units.

rdonj

December 14th, 2008, 01:57 AM

Did you give incunrest to the orc shamans too? I haven't tested extensively but it feels like it... if so I don't know that I like that, it's already hard enough to justify building them that giving them unrest makes it almost not worth it. I think the unrest from aspiring heroes has reached the point now where it has a significant enough impact on you themselves.

Oh, you might want to change the colors for each nations graphs so they aren't all black, it can be annoying trying to figure them out as is.

rdonj

December 14th, 2008, 03:15 AM

Ulm's hero for some reason has his stats listed in his description. Also I'm not sure if this is WAD but planet guards get no melee weapon in space. Somehow I think we already had that discussion, I just don't remember it. I'm a bit iffy on orcs having ranged weapons stronger than any ulmish soldier uses, but the orcs do tend to kill things mostly with ranged, I'm not sure how they'd manage if their weapons were weaker. Probably not very well. On the other hand, maybe black knights at least could have equivalent weapons.

Aezeal

December 14th, 2008, 05:21 AM

no incunrest only for characters producing troops.

Orcs should be able to deal damage in melee too, their weapons are not that good hitters but do solid AP Damage (and in my test game the just walked through all bullets and broke some PD's. Maybe orcs should get their own blaster with a lil bit less damage and at least less range. (not doing that yet though, first I'll see the effect of changing their armour.
Or just lower precision on all orc troopers by 1.

Since only a few troops used the power blaster I've just given it 18 damage, making it the most powerfull blaster.

Planetguards will have a combatknive in space now.. not that it will do them much good out there.

Fixed Johnny Rico's stats in description.

a new map.. nice idea.. lots of work too though (I have to set ALL landtypes and poptypes by hand) and I'd need a nice picture to start with or I'd need to redraw lines on this map.

Iév done something with the nation graphs... should all be different colors no idea what they'll be I'll check it now but unless it's extremely unfitting I'll not bother with that too much.

THanks for these post, this will improve the mod a lot (and if we MP the graphs will certainly be better visible now :D

PS I know of a JOmon bug where returning Oni (form ghost form) become the old dom 3 oni... can't find the problem in the code yet and so I'll leave it there for now .

Aezeal

December 14th, 2008, 05:29 AM

I"m thinking R'leyh is a bit powerfull maybe.. the Ilithids and the mutants blast a lot away.. maybe they should be somewhat more expensive?

rdonj

December 14th, 2008, 08:19 AM

Hmm, is it just me or are the forums lagging horrifically right now. Anyway.

The unrest thing is slightly weird, I had unrest in my capital when all I was doing was producing ork prentices there, no heroes, and other than that just 80 odd orc troops sitting in the garrison. The orcs do kill things well enough in melee, I just find it's the getting there that's hard. Against someone with a lot of ranged weapons I have to send 3+ large groups of melee orcs or they never reach the shooters due to morale issues. Of course I'd probably have less of such if I used the standards on heroes but they're too fragile and too important to use aggressively without items.

If power blasters are getting such a boost, I would like to see other units have stronger blasters, like siege tanks (which use a standard issue space marine blaster) :D

A new map would take a lot of work, that's really more of a wishlist feature... would be nice but isn't necessary. Something else along those lines: I've noticed ulm's black knights seem to have a sort of black graphical bit that sort of floats behind the sprite. They lose it in their attacking form, but it makes them look a bit odd when they're at rest.

rdonj

December 14th, 2008, 10:03 AM

Oh and as for R'lyeh. I don't really know, they're one of the races I've played the least. On the one hand the illithids can do a lot of damage to you at range. But on the other hand all their units are expensive and you pretty much are forced to use expensive chaff for your illithids to survive. I think when fighting a player the incredible expensiveness of their units will probably make them not overpowered, but the relatively low mr on almost all units will make it hard to use most thug/sc units in the game effectively against them.

Aezeal

December 14th, 2008, 12:52 PM

most SC material has high MR I think. Which ones need higher MR.. this is the time to say it :D

Orc ragers have jumpsuits (flying) so cover the distance quicker. The tank does have a cannon next to his blaster I hope? (the orc tank or the Ulmish one?) --> orcs aren't easily checked but the siegetank says it has a cannon at least.

I'll fix that sprite (and a similar thingie for the elderbrains) --> both cleaned up

I've actually worked for about 2 hours on a map today.. it'll not be as nice as the one I got premade but it's getting somewhere. No usefull images on the net readymade.. if we want about 50% space/50-% planet.. well most galaxies are only very very very small bits of planets :D.

So I'm using a galaxy background with zoomed in boxes of planets which I copy paste in there from other pics. For the rest I'll try to put more provinces per planet and keep the total about 50-50 (if possible)

I think I'll make all startsite province be on a planet with 4 or 5 land provinces (non forest that is of course :D) I'll maybe even put a single waterprovince back in somewhere even though basicly no troops can go in there atm :D just for fun :D

rdonj

December 14th, 2008, 08:52 PM

Hmm, I was thinking the mr of the ulmish capital ships might be too low but it actually isn't too bad. Jomon's suit commanders maybe could use an extra point or two of mr. Insectoid females should probably have higher mr. The commonwealth's teachers of the law have surprisingly low mr... should probably be bumped up a little. Aside from that I don't know, I just went through the recruitables list for each nation, I don't know about summons. I suspect the dreadnaught if anything will have too low of mr, if it has 14 or less it needs more, otherwise it is probably okay.

The tank does have a cannon, yes. I've never gotten any orc summons, it is really hard building up a decent rate or rp.

Actually I counted and on the current map it's pretty even, I think it was 37 space and 33 land, or something along those lines. I was thinking maybe the space zones could be fairly large, so while they cover a lot of space they take up relatively less of the map. Again, because some nations are just terrible in space. Like the insectoids, I'm not sure if they could ever defeat a player because it would be very tough to ever land on a planet. Making planets relatively larger like the ones you're talking about would help with that though, and make it more possible to build extra forts.

I suppose water provinces could represent planets or areas of space that are too dangerous for most lifeforms to survive in....

Aezeal

December 15th, 2008, 02:43 PM

Well if I make the insects only space troops stronger that will have significant impact on their abilities.. but I'll see after our game (or during)

Water can just be water too :D

rdonj

December 15th, 2008, 07:03 PM

I think it would be almost more fun if the bugs got, say, a blood magic national astral travel sort of spell that the females could cast, or an insectoid remote province attack spell where you get to keep the army afterward. Somewhat akin to how the bugs in starship troopers transported themselves across space in meteors.... Then they could still be terrible in space but take over planets anway. If you can't defeat the bug army, well, run away... maybe you can find a new home, somewhere, before they can manage to kill you off in space.

Aezeal

December 16th, 2008, 02:56 PM

Hmm new spell idea's are always good.

has anyone tried the remote summon for Ulm.. something along those lines maybe?

rdonj

December 16th, 2008, 08:15 PM

You mean the black knight strike force? No, I haven't gotten to use it yet. I have some doubts about the sanity of its gem requirement though. I mean... ghost riders is a 5 gem spell, I don't think 15 black knights are going to be that much more relatively effective than the ghost riders spell. Unless it's some kind of special extra powerful black knight with an ethereal or air shielded leader.

But if you also get them afterward it is definitely worth more. Maybe 15-20 gems instead?

rdonj

December 18th, 2008, 03:51 AM

Dreadnaughts for some reason have 3 less magic resistance than ulmish capitol ships (which, by the way, should be spelled capital). It should at least be equal. Also I get the impression a dreadnaught is supposed to be bigger than an ulmish cap ship, so I was thinking maybe they should have a little more hp? :) They also have twin ship heavy blasters (close) but no ship heavy blasters. I'm not sure if it's intentional for them to not have ranged blasters or not, as most things tend to have both. I guess you don't always do that with the ulmish fighters so it probably is intentional. In any case I would like it if they had another set of twin heavy ship blasters (close), or even just a single one, since they're most vulnerable in melee and you can't give them an aoe weapon with a hand slot or something. Their ranged weaponry is actually surprisingly weak but I think that pretty much doesn't matter since they should be using evocations most of the time anyway.

Also a bug report. I was able to cast the black knight strike force, and I stick by my earlier assessment of the spell. However, I also noticed that in the strike force I received four commanders, a medic, an ulmish general, and a black knight. I suspect this is a bug because there was a second medic and a second general in the army that were not commanders, and I'm guessing probably were supposed to be. As a note for just how weak the commonwealth is right now, I just beat a significant pd force (34 melee, 2 space mines and an ice shaper) losing only a single from that strike force. The knight was killed by one of the ice shaper's cold bolts. I only got one blaster shot to connect, then the black knights tore them apart in melee.

I also just now got a crash error about the game not being able to find lightspearspace1.tga? I was looking at a pirate scout army I think that I got from a random event this turn at the time, I think. That is probably unrelated though.

Hmm, doesn't appear I'm going to be able to continue that game until the lightspear thing gets fixed. Too bad, I was just about to crush the galaxy with my stealth fighter fleets, capitol ship SCs, and magma eruption spamming dreadnaughts :)

rdonj

December 18th, 2008, 06:52 AM

You could also give the insectoids blood spells with requirements high enough only the queens could cast to produce specific units. As another alternative method to the idea of increasing the strength of their space units, which I don't really like.

rdonj

December 18th, 2008, 08:37 AM

Yet another alternative - cause the nectid queens to generate space form insectoids. If you do that though you should definitely get rid of the summon allies button for males on normal queens, and possibly not give them males at all. That might be a bit much though unless the level of the nectid queen spell was dropped a bit.

And another bug: There's still a province on the bottom left planet that's considered a forest... province 28.

rdonj

December 18th, 2008, 10:55 AM

Hmm... you're going to have to either give insectoid females completely insane mr or, probably better, reduce all insectoid unit morale to 30. With females the only non-mindless creatures in the race, you're pretty well doomed if R'lyeh ever attacks you, they'll just kill your commanders with mind blast and then your army will rout.

Aezeal

December 18th, 2008, 04:33 PM

Wow lots of stuff for me to work on (not now though)
- THe strike force is permanent, the fact you get those troops (the commander black knight and the non commander medic and general) is something I can't change really and doesn't matter that much IMHO.. I thought the price was reasonably since it can be deployed all over the map and it's a force strong enough to take and hold provinces and then it's neighbours since it has a mage a commander and high protection

- Will need to fix that lightspearspace1 thingie.. must have suffered when I fixed the alpha channel thingie

- I don't get you post about insect blood spells and alternative methods.. and what don't you like

- THe morale thingie is a good point.

-I thaught the insects could get a decent number of males as they are now.. but it seems you have tested it and disagree.. so I'll need to fix that .. somehow. Why do you want to have the nectid queens to do that?

rdonj

December 18th, 2008, 06:36 PM

The black knight strike force is pretty good... however it still imo is not worth 45 astral pearls. There are a lot of other things you could do with those pearls. My personal favorite at the moment is forging rings of wizardry to give to dreadnaughts and enhance the power of their magma eruptions. Sounds expensive but with the forge and the hammer of the forge lord, not that expensive.... It probably would not bother me that much if it was remotely possible to forge clams with ulm, or if it took fire gems instead. I'm swimming in fire gems right now in my game because I can't figure out anything really interesting to use them for. Maybe flames from the sky, once I reach 9 evocation.

With the insect blood spells I was just brainstorming different ways that the bugs could deal with space or avoid it altogether. The number of males is not too bad now in a way, but it does require building lots of the normal queens on your starting planet. Depending on the planet, it may require more than is ultimately healthy for you due to blood slave requirements. And in the game I was playing it took me quite a while to build up to the point where I could try to go and conquer other planets. I only really started having males in large quantity by year 3 or so. But when I finally had them I had them in pretty huge numbers because of all my queens summoning. So I don't know. Basically I think the summoning probably grows to be too strong, but it can take years for the bugs to get off the ground.

What I was saying I didn't like is the idea of making the males stronger to make the insects more competitive in space, they don't need to be stronger. And I suggested the nectid queens as a space creature generator because at the moment I don't think it does anything and because it would give the insectoid player a little more to consider strategically if, say, they could build those to improve their space forces but the units were absolutely terrible in atmosphere. So you'd choose between building balanced armies, land assault armies, or space conquering armies. Anyway I am just throwing out ideas atm.

Aezeal

December 19th, 2008, 09:25 PM

hmm males probably shouldn't be much stronger, maybe only a little so most will have to cdome from numbers, I think the nectids are mostly water creatures that don't really have a special function in this game. They could have a better summons for the males. or a domesummon in addition to the regular summon.

You can't win the game very well without taking space too so just bypassing space isn't enough. Thanks for he brainstorm and the idea that the race needs this balancing in the first place

I''ll probably change something about the price of the strikeforce.. some pearls less or firegems indeed...

rdonj

December 20th, 2008, 02:23 AM

It would also be kind of nice if coccooned bugs had the need not eat tag. You're going to have to slowly move your assault force through space while protecting it with males, and it is guaranteed to lead to starvation issues if both groups are decently sized. The morale penalty doesn't affect them but being forced to have diseased armies is a bit frustrating.

Aezeal

December 20th, 2008, 02:48 PM

that is a perfect idea and completely needed thematically.

Aezeal

December 21st, 2008, 08:04 AM

- Dreadnaught HP and MR improved
- capitol --> capital
- #weapon "Twin Ship Heavy Blasters - close"
#weapon "Twin Ship Heavy Blasters"
#weapon "Tractor Beam"
#weapon "Lightning Cannon"
should be the capital ships weapons (I've put the twin ship heavy blasters higher in the list now, hope another one doesn't fall off)
- strike force is 30 pearls now

- the lightspearspace1 and 1a where non existant there where a sparespace 1 and 1a however, it's fixed but for your game you could just rename the spears in Lightspears (noone uses the other name)

Why random events give pirate scout (never heard that before btw) or oni-dragons is a mystery to me.. there is no way for me to edit is.. I do hope it's changed permanently from to 50 scouts since that will be similar to getting militia instead of getting 50 oni- dragons which is more like getting 50 tartarians

- insects troops have morale 30 (mostly) and NNE on coccoons

- I've not yet changed much about the males, THe nectids are for underwater troops.. the queens are amph. but it's not in the spirit of Amos mod to have them make space troops, they are a separate race too so they couldn't make nest males. An option would be to create a Hive male but I sort of like the idea of them only having one unit in space.. it must be all-round though so maybe it IS a little bit weak as it is.
Perhaps summoning more might be the best option really :D or improve their armor a bit? --> why don't you think they should be stronger? they are still pretty weak (anyway I've not changed anything here yet since I'm not sure what to do yet)

I've not yet done the insect transport spell since I think they should have some incentive to go into space.
Amos actually already had the spell in his mod and it's still there
but burrowing from one planet to the other seems... well wrong.. and as I said they shoulnd't be able to bypass space (the cocoon thingie was intended as the starshiptroopers kind of travel)

--newspell
#name "Underground Tunnel"
#descr "Borrowing underground the Insectoid mage is capable of moving to a province of its choosing unopposed by the earthly obstacles."
#restricted 80
#school 3
#researchlevel 3
#path 0 3
#pathlevel 0 2
#effect 10019
#fatiguecost 300
#damage 1
#nreff 1
#end

--newspell
#name "Underground Passages"
#descr "Borrowing underground the Insectoid mage is capable of transporting herself and her army to a province of her choosing unopposed by the earthly obstacles."
#restricted 80
#school 3
#researchlevel 7
#path 0 3
#pathlevel 0 5
#effect 10077
#fatiguecost 2300
#damage 1
#nreff 1
#end

SO I think that should settle most stuff mentioned lately... except the weakness of Commonwealth.. they DO lack AP attacks while all other races have loads of them which does fit this age (better armour and better weapons to break it .. and if you don't have that your race has been eliminated a 1000 years ago just after LA)

I'm a bit hesitant about what to do.. If I make all their melee weapons AP they might be too strong? And if I only make on of the troops AP the rest will be never used. --> I've made it all AP.. the race can use it I guess.

llamabeast

December 21st, 2008, 10:44 AM

I think "Underground tunnel" isn't a great thematic justification for a teleport spell... in space. In ordinary dominions it would make sense, but not so much when the action spans several planets.

I think the teleport spell sounds like a good idea though. Just needs a different name.

rdonj

December 21st, 2008, 01:51 PM

Woo, lots of changes.

I've gotten the pirate scout event 3 times in my current insect game (halted temporarily due to meeting r'lyeh and realizing there was no way I could fight them), and I got it a few times in the orc game I was playing recently also. I haven't seen oni dragons as a random event so I'm pretty sure you don't get them anymore.

I didn't think males should be stronger for a couple of reasons. The first being that most races are a fair amount weaker in space than on land, and the insectoids possibly having strong space units seems strange. And it's not like they're weak either, they can defeat even large groups of space krakens reasonably well with their current stats without too many losses. They perform at least reasonably on par with other races units for space duty, and flying units with multiple attacks can easily become overpowered if you're not careful. My suggestion would probably be to make them autosummons, instead of dom summons, and have them come in batches of 2 at a time. That way you would be able to break into space faster but you wouldn't get huge amounts of males later on. You could maybe do 3 instead but that might be too much.

I was aware of the spell from amos' mod, but when I was playing them in dom3k I didn't see it so I figured you probably disabled it. It's fine if they don't get it, it just seemed like a fun idea. If they do get something like that though it should be really expensive/hard to research, because I think females have 160 leadership... having that many units show up suddenly anywhere they want would be pretty scary.

I think all the commonwealth melee weapons should be ap. If you think about it, the only units in the game that don't have either ap or an melee weapons are militia and illithids. Actually you could almost consider giving the heavy commonwealth infantry AN weapons... they don't have shields, so there's not a lot of incentive to recruit them as is. But not some kind of crazy weapon that gives them strength plus weapon damage with an... but better than space marines 4 an tasers.

Aezeal

December 21st, 2008, 06:29 PM

Hey how are the orcs doing... I'm thinking from your earlies remarks there might not be enough incentive to go for research..

I'm thinking that an option would be to give the starting domsummons a lighter armour and the real summons and the domsummons of summonable commanders the armour they have now? Or would that make the orcs to weak?
Since these troops will be there in huge amount later in the game changing armour on them might have a pretty strong effect on the race...

On insect males: you don't think that making them domsummon and then having the option of just summoning them (cost a precious turn) would be just as well? that way breaking into space can be done but it would cost you something. To me this solution appeals since going somewhere you are not so strong costs you but you need to anyway :D

rdonj

December 21st, 2008, 07:57 PM

Oh, THAT was why I was still playing that orc game, still need to research more. I assume you mean the things that are domsummoned would get lighter armor and the things that you need gems and research to summon would be tougher? Well, my first thought is that sounds horrifying, it would hugely weaken the race probably. On the other hand, armor is pretty flimsy in melee and shields do a lot of the protecting at range anyway. And the orcs are one of the strongest races right now, so perhaps they could use a bit of nerfing. But the summons are still going to have to be pretty good to justify not building an orc hero every turn in every fort, unless the change makes their domsummons a lot weaker. But if it does make them that much weaker it will probably be very hard to survive later in the game.

I suppose if you look at summoning males that way it does work. My biggest problem though is in the very beggining of the game there's not a whole lot you can do if you start on one of the smaller planets. Your dominion and queens ramp up slowly so playing a mp game as insects might be a bit boring for the first year or two.

Amos

December 22nd, 2008, 03:59 AM

For the teleport spell just create dimensional portal bypassing space/time between two points. That way it doesnt matter if two points are divided by light years of space or 1mm. You could call it a "Sub-space Tunnel" and make it a high lvl spell.

For Commonwealth - I could replace all of the swords with guns. But I'll need to find time for this project.

Aezeal

December 22nd, 2008, 03:37 PM

Amos:
I think that they'll have to just deal with space for now :D

Teh commonwealth with more guns might be nice but Í've already modded a lightning stick (or whatever it was again) on one of them so ranged damage is covered somewhat. I think totally removing melee from the game will not make it nicer so having some nations being more melee orientated isn't bad.

If you happen to make the gun slinger I'll be sure to put them in the game though.. have no doubt :D

Rdonj:
- If the orcs are strong now I think I'll maybe lower their armor a bit on the basic "recruits" they'll keep the same helmet though.
- maybe you just need some males in the insect starting army?
- and if you start on a small planet maybe you need to get more forts fast?

rdonj

December 22nd, 2008, 08:28 PM

Possibly males in the starting army wouldn't be bad. Not sure how many you'd need to start taking space indies though.

The insectoids don't recruit with forts so I have no idea what you mean about them building forts. They just have an early dominion problem since they can only get dominion with their god and blood sacrifice, and they need slaves both for sacrificing and also to make commanders/queens.

Aezeal

December 23rd, 2008, 11:30 PM

arg damn that's orcs of course.. lol.. could make them start with another queen maybe?

rdonj

December 24th, 2008, 08:27 AM

Hmm, you could do that, that probably wouldn't be too bad. Just replace the assassin with a queen. It might work.

Aezeal

December 24th, 2008, 09:02 AM

it would speed up the start I'd say..

Aezeal

December 27th, 2008, 01:10 PM

Insect life in space has been made easier.

starting with 2 females, some males and males in PD and the pretender no giving 1 slave/turn. (the last thing I'm not even going to try to explain thematically if the race doesn't need it'll be gone the first too.

Orcs choppers and shooters now have body armor (10 prot) instead of medium body armor

I've given the dragons some changes that will also be implemented in the dragons mod (lower cost for bone biters and higher for ghostdragon and hopefully fixed the deathwraith dragons assassination ability)

A map is being made but progress is slow. I'm busy with the pic and having fun there.. but I'll tell you that making lines will be annoying in the end and then doing the programming even more so and I'm not looking forward too it :D. (anyone willing to help and create the .map file when I'm done with the pic (you'll even be allowed to change the pic if you want) will certainly be allowed to do so (provided you'll not be slower about it than me.) the map file for the other map should be a good thing the help you (copy paste pop types etc etc)

I'm posting the new files now.. I've also added a few sites and deleted some spells etc etc.. plz try it and if it seems better balanced and working then we'll start a game soon.

Aezeal

December 28th, 2008, 09:56 AM

Ok the new version has been posted and I'm thinking this should be the version we'll play on unless major problems arise in the next 2 weeks during playtesting.. I'm going to have a son this week though so as usual I can't playtest that much. I'm hoping the excellent dom 3000 playtest team will be able to play this latest version (still called 0.75 though) and see if it's suitable for playing. Complete balance isn't neccesary (we all know vanilla dom 3 has hugely unbalanced nations) and in MP the strenght of the nation isn't everything either. The game will be more for fun and playtesting anyway. I also expect players to report possible loopholes and hugely incorrect stats etc as bugs so I can fix it while the game is busy.

If an army of 50 oni dragons arises (though I've not had reports lately) I'll probably mod in a unbeatable ancient horror as remote summon for my nation (for free) and send one to kill the dragons. (I expect cooperation of the player controlling them and sending them to their doom :))

it'll be great fun.

I think I'll start asking llama to set it up and I'll play if we have as few as 3 players (new stuff doesn't always attract lots of visitors.. my other non conventional game I coulnd't get of the ground) and I think there will be 2 other players.

Aezeal

December 28th, 2008, 12:51 PM

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7456&d=1230482955

this is (a smaller version of course) the map.

anyone interested in doing the .map file?

rdonj

December 28th, 2008, 01:19 PM

I'll give it a shot. You'd have to tell me what you want from it though, and I have the feeling that enough information to do it properly is one step away from writing the .dm yourself.

rdonj

December 28th, 2008, 02:37 PM

The Commonwealth are MUCH better now since the patch. They're actually capable of killing black knights and their magic weapons actually give them a little bit of an edge over some units. They should now be a completely competetive nation, rather than easy prey.

Aezeal

December 28th, 2008, 04:42 PM

it'll be a .map file, .dm files are the files for modding stuff not for maps :D

hmmm well basicly I'd start with loading the pic (I'll mail it to you if you want) in the program in dom 3000. (I already deleted all white dots before placing my own, and I do hope they ARE all there now, because entering new ones is quite annoying)
1. In that program I'd try to set all landtypes (space must be set to forest, and obviously you can't use a forest land type on planet provinces.) It's probably better NOT to use water provinces :D.
2. In that program you can let it try to set borders, but you WILL have to check it all manually (I think removing borders is with shift or cntrl or something) be VERY carefull with which mousebutton you use because before you know it there will be a new connection on the map.

If all that is done (if you are more precise than me you can hopefully do it correct the first time)
3. in the program set names: most province names are insufficient for our purpose. Planetprovince names can be acceptable but leaving them random is asking for problems luckily you can just keep setting a new name for the province (picking a random one till it's acceptable.) For the spaceprovinces (all forests now after step 1) you'll have to think of names that fit their spacy nature (you are welcome to use the ones from the .map file of the solar system map)

After this you'll have to save the file (probably better to do it in between too :D) and you can't really use the program anymore

open the .map file with some program and then the real work will begin

The landtypes and names should be together I think and the province connections too.
Personally I just keep the province connections together but for each province name and type etc I put them on different lines. Then you can just type what you want with each province what you want.

I'd open the solar system map file than and you'll have to put (copy/paste) a poptype line for each province (else it'll be a regular random dom 3 poptype which will be unthematic. AND a starting army.
you'll have to check the landtype for forest so you can recognize forest provinces (better not to mix landtypes for forest = space provinces else you won't recognize them and there are no real good explanations for having a space/waste landtype anyway.)
pirates and kraken and space eels should go into space (spaceeels are not a poptype you can recruit though) if you want to know which is what you can look that up in the .dm file (nearly on the bottom just above the lines that put all old races in MA, from the single age mod) you can ofcourse copy certain setups for multiple province (as I did) but it's fun to have some variety (like I someties put a space eel or kraken with pirates etc etc.)

well that is basicly it. Good luck. Let me know where I can mail the big map picture.

PS the idea is that the black area's around the planet close-ups are just connection with all province on the planet they seem to touch and that the province on the planet (all divided into pie pieces) only touch their land neighbours (no connection over the central point) and the space province in the black box. The black box space province always touch eachother AND both of the province in which the box seems to lie/touch. For the rest I've made lots of connections in space where 4 provinces meet eachother and unlike on planets I think you should let them all connect.. it's space after all.. but if you think they shouldn't connect diagonally as well (which would be the other option) then that is fine as long als you do it consistently...

rdonj

December 28th, 2008, 08:02 PM

That's actually less than I was expecting, I take it you're going to muck with the population sizes later on yourself? Or do you have some general guidelines you want me to follow for setting those? Anyway you can email me at: kurisu(dot)basu(dot)gasu(dot)bakuhatsu(at)gmail(do t)com. Yes I know, it's a bit long :D

Aezeal

December 29th, 2008, 01:15 AM

you can set pop sizes if you want too :D there will be examples in the solarsystem file

You will also have to clear the provinces you want to be starting points of any army (else players will get those indies in addition to their starting army)

so you have to select 7 provinces (at least) as starting provinces (I'd say one on each of the major planets.

Well if you've done this we can see what needs to be done afterwards... if this is done we'll be much farther along at least :D

Aezeal

December 29th, 2008, 04:06 PM

hey you've got mail.. and I do hope that is your name or else you are just psycho for having such a mail adres..

any special meaning to it?

rdonj

December 29th, 2008, 05:06 PM

Well, it's my first name in japanese followed by a japanese tongue twister. No real special meaning, I was kind of annoyed when I created that email address and my revenge was creating that horrible address for people to have to type :)

Aezeal

December 29th, 2008, 05:51 PM

hehe I used to have an adress paperclipdp on hotmail.. created it when I was in a loser clan darkpriest in starcraft (no I never was good) for half a week just when I needed a mail adress.. my 7 years in university I kept it but kept getting question about what it meant...explaining that when you are a year away of being a MD is somewhat annoying/awkward... when I had to sent letters for jobinterviews I decided that I''d probably lower my chances with that mailadress and created the one I send my mail to you from (which might seem strange too but is just my first and last name in a row :D)

PS got the pic?
or found anything during testing?

rdonj

December 29th, 2008, 06:05 PM

Heh, I was recruited into a starcraft clan also a long time ago, but I never got involved in it. I was never that good either :) I think the new address was a good idea, your name is always better to use for professional purposes. For some reason I thought you were italian, guess not.

I got the picture. I had to download gimp and convert it into a .tga before I could use the map editor. Frustratingly, said map editor seems to have connected the space provinces to absolutely nothing so I'm going to have to be careful about space connections.

Aezeal

December 29th, 2008, 06:13 PM

nope dutch, been that all my life.. italy is for holidays

Good luck on the work... if you get totally stuck... mail all you got back to me and I'll see where to go..

PS.. IF you have finished all stuff in the program and then start working on things with a text editor and typing and you see an error somewhere.. you CANNOT just open it in the editor again.. well you can but if you save you'll loose everything you've edited manually.. so I'd just try to do it perfect first time or save what you typed to a separate file so you can copy it in later again.

rdonj

December 29th, 2008, 06:22 PM

Good idea, I will keep that in mind.

I am really busy doing several things at once right now so I have not done too much yet with the map. I will probably finish with it before tomorrow though.

rdonj

December 29th, 2008, 07:15 PM

I think all the neighbors are set, I'm beginning on setting province terrains. Do you want me to mark all space provinces as small provinces? Also, what do you think about setting all of the secondary planets (i.e. no-start planets) as high magic site frequency? Just as a little added incentive to fight over them.

rdonj

December 29th, 2008, 09:06 PM

Hmm, coming up with names for space is hard. I think I'm going to use some more of yours.

rdonj

December 30th, 2008, 02:10 AM

Sent you an email, I ran out of ideas for space province names so I started throwing in sci fi references. Anyway take a look and get back to me when you have the chance.

Aezeal

December 30th, 2008, 02:39 AM

hmmm will take some time.. we are preparing to go to the hospital.. the kid is going to come out today :D

rdonj

December 30th, 2008, 02:41 AM

Congratulations! Take your time, enjoy your newfound fatherhood.

Endoperez

December 30th, 2008, 09:47 AM

Hmm, coming up with names for space is hard. I think I'm going to use some more of yours.

Longago, Ingalaxi, Farowei, Nuhoup, Periodophor, Rebel Space-base, Galactic Emirate, Sto-lenplan, Stardeath, Atrap... I better stop now. :p

Sector Alpha, Sector 17-Omega etc etc (Sectors are traditional)

Constellations, horoscopes etc could also be used. Sagittarian Hole, Aquarius Clouds etc.

Or you could name some of them after nearby planets in some fashion. "Betelgeuse 17-My" or whatever.

Amos

December 30th, 2008, 11:40 AM

Here is a heavily armored Gunslinger sprite you asked for.

I'll probably add it to the regular "Commonwealth" as a hero so it doesnt destroy the balance.

rdonj

December 30th, 2008, 01:22 PM

Hmm, I might rename some of the spaces with numbers to say sector first, that would have been a good idea. Horoscopes also, I did a few constellations but somehow horscopes never came to mind.

Aezeal

December 30th, 2008, 06:35 PM

hey thanks.. my son has been born and is doing great. Rdonj: first days I won't be able to do very much so just see where you can go and I'll look at how far you are then.

Amos: great, since GIMP takes about 30 min to start here I'm not going to look now (need to eat, sleep and go to my girl (and our son) in the hospital tomorrow morning again.. all is well though) but I will once I have some time.

Endo thanks for helping us, all help is appreciated.

PS if anyone wants in in the game for which I'll create a thread in the next few weeks just let me know already.

Loren

December 31st, 2008, 05:14 PM

An observation:

My comments on the power of the dragons don't work nearly as well on this map.

My first impression is that Ry'leh will win given anything like parity in power--they simply have so much more territory to expand into.

Aezeal

December 31st, 2008, 05:18 PM

more territory? why? I don't get that all races can go into space.. dragons most easily even since they can all just go there without going to another form..

The nations here are relatively more powerfull so dragons which are balanced in vanilla might seem to have a disadvantage but their high HP will make them survive the first shots and in melee they should still rule supreme (and they fly into that ASAP).. all the AP weapons will be annoying but if it's all too much I'll lower dragon costs a bit during the game.

Aezeal

December 31st, 2008, 05:24 PM

PS rdonj (and other testers) is the mod now acceptable for MP?

rdonj

December 31st, 2008, 07:15 PM

I think so, I haven't found any new bugs yet. Aka oni may still be too strong, and there are a few nations I think are going to be a lot stronger than others in the long run, but it should be playable now.

Aezeal

December 31st, 2008, 08:10 PM

nice which ones do you think are stronger and which ones weaker and why... you are the one with most experience so it's probably good to know some of this stuff for others going to join us in the game.

Aka-Oni still too strong after halvinf damage.. hmmm they are sacred which makes it extra powerfull... do you play with a deathbless? or have you tried... I created these to be THE deathbless carriers, I wonder if you think that succeeded. Their damage might get lower or maybe be AP since it auto hits..

rdonj

December 31st, 2008, 11:02 PM

Well, it's been hard to get a really good feel from fighting just the AI because it's not very good with several of the nations. But I will give my best assessment. I don't think I know enough to rate them from 1 to 7, but I will group them into close proximity.

Top tier nations: Orcs, Insects, Jomon.

Orcs - The orcs have a stronger start than the insects (I think, I haven't played a new orc game yet since the last update) and should expand faster, plus they don't need to worry about resources so they can build as many forts as they can afford to build from (advantage over normal nations). They can either build straight heroes for early power or build mages also to get access to their better units. They did lose some armor in the most recent update but that shouldn't make indies too much harder I think. They're still decent in melee so most races will have a fair fight trying to fight off their numbers. As long as they don't lose too many commanders early on they'll just get stronger and stronger as the game goes on. If the game lasts too long though I think nations with strong magic will probably have the advantage, I still have yet to summon anything with the orcs yet so I'm not sure how strong they'll be, but chances are anything that will kill a normal army of orcs will probably kill their summons too.

Insectoids - Don't expand as fast as the orcs, but don't have to. All they need is population. Since you can't make queens in space they only care about planet provinces. They start off fairly slowly, but they are *very* good fighters and if they aren't exterminated early will grow to have huge amounts of troops. Pretty much the only things that can melee them effectively are jomon's suits, but they can't make nearly as many. The insects really come into their own in about year 3, by that time they should be able to kill basically anyone 1 on 1, except MAYBE the orcs. The insects are also stronger late game than the orcs, because they take a lot less damage from aoe and they should be able to spare males for suicidal dashes into enemy ranged blocks. Followed by massed dreadnaughts. I'm not sure if anyone could really deal with that.

Jomon - Massable, high damage armor negating ranged weapons, some of the best melee units in the game, dai oni, and aka oni. The ice battle suit samurai are less massable than insectoid armies, BUT they are also very hard to hurt with ranged weapons, so they are very solid units. Plus paralyze damage on their staves means they are a good counter to thugs/scs. Their dai oni are fairly powerful as mages and scs, though you have to craft gear for them as they have only fist as a melee weapon right now. But properly equipped they should be able to kill most other things in melee, and solo armies. They don't quite have ulm's magic diversity and their recruit-everywhere mages aren't as good but jomon also doesn't need magic as much. Especially since aka oni will do a pretty good job of decimating human-sized units. Aka-oni are probably only too strong against ulm and the commonwealth, orcs might be able to deal with them but it would be hard if they were massed enough. Jomon's wraith suit shinobi are also some of the better assassins. And Jomon has some of the best units in space. They aren't as overwhelmingly powerful at any stage as the orcs or insectoids can be I don't think (except on commonwealth/ulm with aka-oni) but they're also less vulnerable to the above nations and should be strong the entire game.

Mid tier nations: Commonwealth, Ulm.

Commonwealth - The commonwealth doesn't have terribly effective ranged units for the most part, but they have the best shields in the game and are basically invulnerable to non-aoe ranged attacks. They also all have magical weapons. They're pretty strong in melee but not ridiculously so. They'll tend to win pound for pound against most melee units but they're fairly resource-intensive so they won't have huge numbers of troops. They also have to fight in cold provinces or they are much weaker. They have very powerful water magic but not a whole lot else, so they are somewhat magic-limited. The commonwealth seems to be a lot better defensively than offensively due to their turrets and cold weather abilities. I could see them being pretty tough to dislodge but they would conquer other players fairly slowly.

Ulm - Ulm has the most magic diversity, a good selection of troops, recruitable SCs, powerful summons and is terrible in space until late game. Ulm is another fairly defensive race in that they are just so much better on planets than in space. Their marines and black knights are capable but in space most things will beat them given similar resources. On land they can add artillery marines which are good if not as good as aka-oni, or tanks if they want something hardier. Before battlefield damaging spells come into play though the artillery marines are probably much more efficient as tanks are pretty expensive and relatively easy to kill in melee. Ulm though can get lots of artillery and buffing mages, and should have massive amounts of earth gems to use for crafting, globals and summons. Ulm has the ability to kill just about anything given the right troops at the right time, but will struggle against jomon, insectoids and orcs. Ulm is decent early, fair towards the middle game and really comes into its own in the end game. Ulm is a very good case for casting Riches from Beneath and Earthblood Deep Well.

Low tier nations: Dragons(?), R'lyeh.

Dragons - I'm not sure whether Dragons belong here or with mid-tier, as I have not played as the dragons since they were incorporated, only against them. But since they are so expensive and relatively vulnerable to ranged attacks, they will probably be fairly weak until they get some research done and can forge/summon. With the dragons that can take a long time due to how expensive research is for them. On the other hand massed bonebiters are still strong, and can reach the enemy in one round. This is still bad for pitched battles, but the dragons would make great raiders. They will probably have to raid with small groups of dragons while building up research to turn out thugs/scs. The dragons do have probably the best recruitable assassin in the game, especially early, which could help a lot. If the dragons can survive until they get their late game research they should be able to kill everyone, everywhere.

R'lyeh - R'lyeh is, in my mind, almost certainly the weakest nation (but then I'm not very good with MA R'lyeh either, which is what they remind me of). They do have some things going for them. They have lots of magic, which they can do the usual illithidy things with. Covering astral, water, earth and death fairly well. However they don't get nature, which combined with them not being secluded from most other races makes the R'lyeh clamming turtle strategy a lot harder than in vanilla. Also, most of their recruitable units are both expensive and not very good. R'lyeh can expand fairly quickly but once their slave troops don't fare very well against most national units and then they just have illithids, sitting there getting shot. Pirate raiders are probably their best bet for protecting the swarm of illithids that is actually going to kill the enemy. Unfortunately said swarm of illithids is pretty expensive and will make it very difficult for the player to do much in the way of research. R'lyeh could try to get around this by not building armies until they're being attacked but that's probably not the best idea. If they survive until mid game they will start becoming more viable but I think they would have a hard time killing anyone until then. If they survive until late game they'll be pretty dangerous, especially as they probably are one of the best sc killers, but their pretty bad early game would make things hard on them.

Whew, that was long! Anyway, those are just my observations from my own play style and understanding, and obviously the latest update changed things a bit so I don't know entirely that some of what I said is correct. Feel free to disagree where you will :)

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 05:02 AM

THAT was a great post.. so R'lyeh would be weakest.. well which troops do you think are too expensive for their power, can easily be changed :D (though not befor we start a game)

Personally I think huge blocks of illithids and mutants would be pretty annoying for most opponents and I'd say insects with their low MR (I've raised it a bit too, 7 MR was very low.. but if they are too strong it might be a nice way to balance them back again.. it's 9 now, still vulnerable for (AoE) mindblasting I'd say. They are also very good against indies usually.

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 12:49 PM

Enslaved aliens and space trolls, and predator aliens. The pirate raiders are actually probably too cheap, they're much more durable than any of the other units and are ranged so they won't get butchered nearly as fast as your other units. Of course they do actually take resources so it would be tough to mass them, relatively, since you definitely want order and probably want to take sloth. I would suggest putting them somewhere between 30 and 35 gold (35 is probably overcosting for the unit itself, but they're really just screens for illithids), and basing everything else off assuming they're your best blockers.

Huge blocks of illithids and mutants ARE pretty strong. For some races they can be pretty painful to deal with. However r'lyeh can't build very many big blocks of illithids, they are just too expensive to support. I don't know about the magic resistance, it wouldn't hurt too much I think against mind blast but master enslave would just destroy them.

Just to give you an idea of scale, I invaded R'lyeh's homeworld with the insectoids in a game where rlyeh was the strongest other power. I sent probably about 550 bugs down to their planet and have over a thousand more land troops in space atm, with another 170 finishing off the dragons and have another 1,300 bugs on my production worlds. And that is just my ground troops, I also have probably 600+ males. It is late winter of year 4. Anyway, those 550 planetary assault bugs (just drones and soldiers) destroyed somewhere in the vicinity of 150 illithids and mutants, in several battles not involving armies of 100-150 bugs, losing only 1 female and no more than 100 insects.

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 12:58 PM

you know what this sounds like.. a need for less bugs.. or maybe weaker bugs since bugs (as orcs) are meant to be massed.. 3 green waves of destruction... problem is they should be masses of weak troops.. and both races are not that weak on individual troops compared to others...
I can't change much in domsummoning though since I've only got domsummon, and 2 and 20.. and those are all taken.. makemonster isn't used that much and when it's used it's mostly for males to get into space (which you insisted they needed.) maybe to make it a bit harder I'll have to lower that by one though. I think R'lyeh needs very good battlefield placement to work.. I was thinking the troops wheren't that bad though.. aliens and predators are pretty solid troops.. spread them through the ranks of illithid (in several groups across the field and a screen of tough guys in front and you should be there.) I actually think the pirates are useless since you need melee power, ranged the illitid are better anyway, you just need more melee to finish the grey statues :D

Loren

January 1st, 2009, 01:19 PM

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 01:29 PM

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 01:50 PM

Yeah, I know. I was a bit insistent on the males, but then I started realizing what the end game would look like with all those males... I think either the makemonster for males needs to be removed, or the domsummon. And yeah, the bugs definitely are too strong. You just get too many if you're left alone long enough.

It may be you are right about the troops, but in my experience rlyeh's melee troops die very fast to ranged firepower, while the pirate raiders die a lot slower. So my entire thinking is that they dilute the amount of ranged damage the illithids take, and that's the entire pupose they're serving.

Loren - to clarify what aezeal said, space is represented by forest provinces. There were a lot of issues with using water as space that were hard to work around, so forest terrain was chosen instead.

Darkwind

January 1st, 2009, 02:46 PM

I've finally gotten around to working on the Pirians. As a sort of teaser, here's the code for one of their heroes(the Trueblood Hero, heh). I still can't figure out how to apply a custom name, so no go there. It should be easy to follow even if you can't mod Dom3.
#newmonster 2235
#name "Firstblood Hero"
#spr1
#spr2
#descr "The Firstbloods were the first generation of Pirians, magically powerful, physically strong, and long-lived. Lahatiel was a great warrior among great warriors, known for his martial prowess. As Piria's strength grows, Lahatiel has awoken, ready to blaze a trail for the Pirian nation in the cold depths of space. His very presence inspires Pirians to greater deeds."
#holy
#ap 12
#mapmove 2
#size 4
#hp 25
#prot 13
#str 15
#enc 1
#att 16
#def 13
#prec 14
#mr 14
#mor 12
#gcost 10
#rcost 1
#maxage 75
#fireres 100
#coldres 25
#poisonres 75
#shockres 25
#maxage 1000
#older 200
#firepower 3
#fireshield 14
#heat 10
#standard 10
#goodleader
#researchbonus -3
#magicskill 0 2
#weapon "Greater Starburst"
#weapon "Starsword"
#armor "The Brightshield"
#end

And the weapon and shield:

#newweapon 665
#name "Starsword"
#att 4
#def 2
#armorpiercing
#dmg 10
#rcost 5
#sound 8
#len 3
#secondaryeffectalways 216
#magic
#end

#newarmor 668
#name "The Brightshield"
#type 4
#prot 10
#def 8
#enc 0
#rcost 0
#end

Well, there you have it, the first preview of the mod in action. This Pirian, at least, isn't going to be felled by merely shooting metal at him until he drops. And I expect the combination Heat Aura/Fireshield makes Pirians hard to fight in melee. And you can't effectively shoot spells at him, with his numerous resistances. I doubt if he's an SC, but definitely a higher-end thug. I hope :)

By the way, that 171 in the sword's code means small area fire. The defense value on the shield is actually the parry, and that magicskill means the hero has 2 Fire magic. The spr1/spr2 are the sprites. I still have none :( Puppies lament my poor spriting skills daily.

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 03:12 PM

NICE keep working.. his shield seems a lil powerfull but whatever.. (and thanks for the explanation of the numbers.. I guess they are for those who never mod though :D)

Is he meant to have very old age, might be a weakspot?

you can't give names ad far as I (and those I asked and replied) know so don't worry about that. If he's not unique it's not usefull anyway.

About sprites.. which seem to be your bottleneck (as they are honeybadgers).. if you have idea's about how they look you might just look for them on the net and adapt some pic into a sprite.

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 04:19 PM

Did a little more work on the map. Just need to set poptypes now and it will be playable.

Also, that pirian looks like it would make a pretty decent thug. Might want to raise the fire magic a bit though, 2 seems a little low for a pirian hero... though you did say he was a warrior. But about all he could do with that is cast phoenix pyre. Alternatively, maybe give him a dash of something else?

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 04:41 PM

Astral will probably be a first choice.. and of course if you insist don't hold back.. but there is a lot of astral in dom 3K already (since I have to admit for me the 2nd choice of magic for any space nation would automatically be astral) so if you can somehow think of another 2nd magic choice that would be great. I'd say the nations should be a mostly fire nation though.. I'd just give them randoms.. death (for banefire), air and blood are magic types I've not used much and which feel (to me but I know near nothing about pirians) like they might fit.

Just one nasty question.. why does he have prot 13.. fire.. doesn't seem to have natural armor.. I could imagine some sort of fiery armor.. but a being of fire having a natural protection equalling very strong armour.. less so.

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 04:48 PM

On the other hand, how does being hit hurt fire?

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 05:03 PM

There must be something under there :D I guess... or they should be ethereal, arent fire elementals ethereal.. I still wonder how ethereal creatures are hit by mighty blows but that isn't my problem to talk right since that is how illwinter made the game. Having said that.. an all ehtereal nation might need some balancing.. it WOULD make this hero more thugable :D

Darkwind

January 1st, 2009, 06:30 PM

Ethereal would solve the arrows problem (Pirians generally won't have shields, ie that slinger army you recruited from Backwoods Province 9845 will rain rocky death upon a Pirian army). It might be a bit much though, I mean 75% of all attacks stopped? I'm thinking it might be a good idea to include a low-level Fire spell that gives Air Shield (maybe 25%)to all units on the battlefield for a gem.

On a side note, about how thuggable would you rate the hero? 0 being nonthuggable, 10 being an SC among SCs. I figured the effective 20 attack (16+4 from weapon) and 15 defense (13+2 from weapon), plus the 18 damage (I meant to add in 8 AP fire damage, actually, I'll add it in right now) combined with considerable strength makes him an effective attacker, at least. He has a heat aura to rival the Niefels and a free Fire Shield to boot, so melee units can't really touch him. Not without fiery death at least. I'd hope he's at least a highly effective thug (being a hero, he should add something). With that Air Shield spell, he'd also have less to worry about from that slinger army and they'd have more to worry about from him.

@magic paths: I think the Pirians will have a bit of astral (I remember saying something about this before, or rather reading something I said about this before). Death and blood won't be common, and at best they'll have small randoms on a recruitable mage or two, but I do plan on including a multihero Trueblood Warlock and a hero Firstblood Revenant or something like that. The Warlock would have F/B, the Revenant D/F, with maybe a little bit of Blood. I'll probably include a couple spells in the Blood line (Lowbloods like I said, Trueblood Revenants, maybe a unique fire demon). Pirians won't have air though.

As to the magic on the hero, I purposefully set it at only 2 since he's a warrior, not a mage. A Firstblood Mage (hey, that might make another hero) would have more like 5 Fire on average, and a truly great one could likely have up to 7, which means Flame Storms possibly doing 20+ AP damage over a 40 AoE and Falling Fires with maybe 7+ AoE. Using Phoenix Power and a couple boosters you could get truly awe-inspiring fiery death.

@age: He's meant to be old, but not old-age-old. I doubt he'd be older than 8000 before the age bonus, so this should achieve that fairly well.

Babelfish says this is a "muur van tekst" in het Nederlands.

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 06:55 PM

You have #maxage 75 and #maxage 1000, I'm not sure it will like that.

It probably has the unkillability of a low grade SC and sufficient killing power to make an sc happy in vanilla terms. In Dom3k terms it's probably a moderate level SC. Just get it a little more MR and resistance and you'd be pretty hard-pressed to kill it. Probably it would take multiple fire immune thugs or mass mr-negates spells to bring it down.

Aezeal

January 1st, 2009, 07:02 PM

yeah I saw maxage 75 and then older 200... I read over the latter maxage of 1000... jsut remove the maxage 75 line (since it's redundant) but it was probably what you wanted

Darkwind

January 1st, 2009, 07:46 PM

Didn't notice the extra maxage. While I'm at it, I'll remove the costs too, it's a hero so it'll never be recruited. Oh! And the morale should be 15, not 12.

Good to know that the "great warrior among great warriors" isn't too fatally flawed. While I'm at it I think I'll spin up the Revenant for you guys too.

#newmonster 2236
#name "Firstblood Revenant"
#spr1
#spr2
#descr "The Firstbloods were the first generation of Pirians, magically powerful, physically strong, and long-lived. The Revenant was once a great mage among the Pirians, known throughout the civilization for its skill. But it fell to darker ways and, when it died, preserved itself out of fear of death, becoming a pariah in the process. Now, it has risen from its deep slumber, cursed by its own magic to never die, and will serve the returning God of the Bright Stars to regain its lost honor. Its sickly green flames can scare even the bravest man."
#immortal
#undead
#ap 12
#mapmove 2
#size 4
#hp 20
#prot 10
#str 13
#enc 0
#att 13
#def 11
#prec 16
#mr 17
#mor 30
#fireres 100
#coldres 25
#poisonres 100
#shockres 25
#maxage 2000
#older 750
#firepower 2
#darkpower 1
#fireshield 10
#heat 7
#poorleader
#magicskill 0 4
#magicskill 5 3
#custommagic 20480 100
#custommagic 4224 100
#weapon "Banefireball"
#weapon "Touch of Death"
#end

I should probably start messing around with the item slots soon.

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 08:00 PM

He looks pretty nasty. Not quite as unkillable out of the box as the trueblood hero, but he could easily be made into a painful thug/sc.

Loren

January 1st, 2009, 08:24 PM

in dom 3K there is no water :D well there could be but there just isn't.. there is space and several landtypes.. using water next to that would make it a bit complicated (even MORE units needed, or amphibious indies (that would then also be able to go into space)

You can't get off your world without water breathing. Maybe space isn't the same thing (I didn't note any difference but I wasn't really looking for one, either) but there are no routes from land to space anyway, you have to go through your own seas and that takes water breathing.

Given how few provinces you will own at this point you simply don't have the gems to make very many items.

I just beat the AI at regular and it wasn't easy. I'm not even going to try the impossible AI's I beat the computer with a normal map.

Darkwind

January 1st, 2009, 08:27 PM

I can't edit the post anymore, but for the record, the custommagics mean 100% DB and 100% DF chances. The immortal wasn't originally planned, it struck me in a fit of inspiration. The weapons:

#newweapon 669
#name "Touch of Death"
#att 4
#def 2
#armornegating
#dmg 0
#sound 18
#len 0
#secondaryeffectalways 255
#secondaryeffect 64
#magic
#end

#newweapon 670
#name "Banefireball"
#aoe 3
#range 65
#ammo 50
#nostr
#dmg 10
#sound 16
#armornegating
#magic
#secondaryeffect 64
#flyspr 133 4
#endFor the record, the #secondaryeffect 64 is Decay on hit, 255 is small area fear. the 5 3 magicskill means 3 Death magic--for a total 25% chance of 3D, 50% 4D, 25% 5D. Nice little bell curve of sorts.

rdonj

January 1st, 2009, 08:56 PM

Aezeal

January 2nd, 2009, 06:31 AM

there have been a few hours where the solar system map was down.. maybe he's using that other map (which is down now). The solar system map is attached to the first post.

You should just use the dom 3 K mod btw, the dragons are in there and not use the dragons mod next to it (doubt it would make much difference but might)

Aezeal

January 2nd, 2009, 01:28 PM

once I have time I know which nations I want to get in this universe.

Machaka severly fits in.. I've already got spiders in the galaxy and refugees could have hidden on such a planet and are reemerging now.
Spiders, Spidershaped ships which are also "walkers" on land in 2 -3 sizes.
The sorcs could remain the same, ancient traditions haven't changed. The assassins could remain nearly the same too. troopers would have to change though.. naked black pplz won't fit anymore (except the sorcs who as I said will keep their traditional outfits. Need to think of something
I'll put the spiderqueens and other spiders I have as indies in there as recruits and summons. I'll keep some form of spiderrider but not sure what to do with them in space. guess cheap ones could just have a spaceform without spider and maybe the sacreds could keep blackhunters with some sort of spacesuit to fly around it.. and the black hunters would be less overpriced.

AND POISON RESISTANCE AND WEAPONS EVERYWHERE!!!

I think I'll do those first.. I like that idea

2nd idea is some sort of van/pixie nation... vans themselves nearly extinct only as commander and sacreds..well that isn't anything new... no human troops they had to flee into space due to ulmish dislike of non-humans (or something) they now have not exceptionally bright lesser pixies and whatnot as troopers small sized (all size 1 except the vans) with some abilities (all somewhat specialized troops) and vastmoving. Miniature space fighters for the pixies and only a few commandships (probably only as summons) for the few vans (who otherwise have a regular sized fighter or a spacesuit (need to decide what I like best.. highly agile and trained vans with glamour might better be suited than in a ship I'd say to make best of their abilities.)
I've seen a cartoon movie once where there where like these high human like (van) leaders and small lesser creatures (ow somewhat like the war of the flowers book od Tad williams too).. I think it might be that way in irish or english folk tales etc but either way this is how it will be.

This nation would be more work and atm I feel more like working on a Machaka (but maybe I'll change my mind before I start) both nations will probably resemble Jomon most of all existing nations I'd say, troops with special abilities etc.

Loren

January 2nd, 2009, 03:30 PM

You can't get off your world without water breathing. Maybe space isn't the same thing (I didn't note any difference but I wasn't really looking for one, either) but there are no routes from land to space anyway, you have to go through your own seas and that takes water breathing.

Given how few provinces you will own at this point you simply don't have the gems to make very many items.

I just beat the AI at regular and it wasn't easy. I'm not even going to try the impossible AI's I beat the computer with a normal map.

Loren I just started up a game with the dragons and I seem to have no problem leaving my planet on turn 1. I don't get what you mean there are no routes from land to space, with what seas? You're using the solar system map, right? There are no water provinces on the map at all. And all land provinces connect directly to at least one space province. You should not need water breathing to get anywhere.

Also, that banefireball looks evil.

I've got the game I just won up now. There's a magma dragon that showed up on the last turn sitting in my capital and I'm trying to move him. I can reach the other 6 land provinces within the circle. He can't enter any of the 4 provinces around the central one that are of type sea. The only connections to the rest of the map are via these provinces and then out into the ones of type deep sea.

You obviously are treating them as space but when you select them you get the little icon for water and something that can't breathe water won't enter them, nor can a flier fly over them--they behave just like water.

Thus you need water-breathing items to get anywhere unless you use the ice-plated dragons and there's no hope of having enough gems to send any decent force out with items.

Some bugs on that map, also:

#69 & #70 aren't connected.

#69 & #62 aren't connected.

Likewise #62 and #54, #54 & #42, #42 & #38, #33 & #36, #33 & #39, #39 & #48, #48 & #67, #39 & #67. Most of these comprise a vertical line--perhaps the edge of the map??

rdonj

January 2nd, 2009, 03:30 PM

I don't know how well spider riders fit thematically with dom3k. I am having trouble imagining a spider rider that could charge into a line of ulmish space marines without being shot to pieces. Maybe instead you could use just Black Hunters, and turn them into some kind of super-heavy sacred tank? Maybe you can find a way to make it work though.

Likewise I don't know about making the spider independants into machaka recruitables, they can be useful but it's already pretty easy to recruit them if you want. It wouldn't really help that much to have them as recruitables. Possibly as a cheap summon wouldn't be too bad, but I think if you do it should almost be a different kind of spider that's a bit better than the indies you can recruit.

Loren

January 2nd, 2009, 03:32 PM

rdonj

January 2nd, 2009, 03:39 PM

Yeah, the only currently approved map for Dom3k is the Solar System Map. The Galaxy Map was basically the beta map for dom3k, scrapped when aezeal decided to change over to forest spaces instead of water. I am currently working on a second, larger map. Hopefully it will be done within a few days and we will have another galaxy to fight over.

Aezeal

January 2nd, 2009, 05:36 PM

yeah my bad Loren, I still had both up and when I needed to add something else (ow the preview for that map rdonj is working on I wanted to deleted galaxy at war but somehow removed to other one I noticed only after I'd asked you to DL the mod, sorry to have wasted a game for you.

Hope it works now.

Aezeal

January 2nd, 2009, 05:38 PM

Rdonj if we aim for a short and fast test game it might be nice to set up the MP game now on the old map and then do a quick and nasty game to test it all and then do some changes and try a new game on your map (which might be finished then and tested (also important).

Aezeal

January 2nd, 2009, 06:12 PM

I've released 0.76, it's not much changed, only added the arena reward and lowered the ulm farsummon a bit.

I did it mostly since there where multiple 0.75 versions and that would not be a good idea for MP I think, now everyone will have to play with this one :D

I'm creating a MP thread in the MP forum now.. all regulars in here are welcome sign up. I'll take R'lyeh since it was said to be the weakest nation.

Loren

January 2nd, 2009, 08:45 PM

Ok, an observation on the correct map:

My gripes about being pinned by water are gone.

In SP at least I find the dragons unplayable on this map. My victories in a more normal game have always been based on being able to pin his armies with assassins.

Against the races of this map that doesn't work as well and it's moot anyway--the battle is at knife-fighting range, there's no space to use the strategy that works.

I won an early war that Ulm picked but then I was approaching the limits of what my income could support. The game dissolved into being pecked away at by a combination of Jomon and Ry'leh and there was simply nothing to do about it. I could maintain only two fighting forces and that realistically gave me two provinces and a severe negative cashflow. Furthermore, I was always fighting, I couldn't research my way to summons to help, not that I would have had the gems to summon much of anything anyway.

It's possible the dragons might fare better in MP because a low army strength doesn't result in an automatic gang-up like it does against the AI but I still don't like it. This race needs room or it dies.

rdonj

January 2nd, 2009, 09:21 PM

The new map should make that a bit better... with 130 provinces and 7 players, that's 18 provinces a player, versus the current 69/7 = 9.8. The current map is definitely crowded for 7 races, it will be very hard to expand much with so few provinces. Just curious, what difficulty were you playing on?

I think for dom3k the bonebiters are actually probably not an optimal choice, you'd probably have better luck with ghost dragons. Fighting in space is probably also a good idea, since most races are weaker in space. Unfortunately jomon is not one of those races, and R'lyeh is a terrible enemy for the dragons to have to fight period, because of mind blasting.

Aezeal

January 3rd, 2009, 09:09 AM

Well the MP game now will be relatively short and is mostly to test this sort of thing. R;lyeh is indeed a nasty enemy for every one who uses lower amounts of troops and dragons are one such race. On the otherhand commanders and summons have high MR. Dragons CAN fly and attack rear though so they can bypass the chaff more easily than other nations and just kill the mindblasters faster.

Since there is a lot of flying around all ranged troops need to be supported even more by melee troops else they will be attacked in melee. On the other hand most ranged troops have a better melee ability than most archers and such in the regular game.

Loren

January 3rd, 2009, 01:10 PM

The new map should make that a bit better... with 130 provinces and 7 players, that's 18 provinces a player, versus the current 69/7 = 9.8. The current map is definitely crowded for 7 races, it will be very hard to expand much with so few provinces. Just curious, what difficulty were you playing on?

Normal.

The ghosts can't take out many of the more powerful leaders and the ability to control the enemy with the ghosts is essential for the dragons.

I think for dom3k the bonebiters are actually probably not an optimal choice, you'd probably have better luck with ghost dragons. Fighting in space is probably also a good idea, since most races are weaker in space. Unfortunately jomon is not one of those races, and R'lyeh is a terrible enemy for the dragons to have to fight period, because of mind blasting.

I wasn't even using them. They're no longer worth it.

Endoperez

January 3rd, 2009, 01:55 PM

The sorcs could remain the same, ancient traditions haven't changed. The assassins could remain nearly the same too. troopers would have to change though.. naked black pplz won't fit anymore (except the sorcs who as I said will keep their traditional outfits. Need to think of something

This is how "naked pplz" fit in: Minotaurs vs Hoplites, 3000 version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL6uDzSR18M&feature=related).
That is based on the Samurai Jack episode "Jack and the Spartans". For some reason, of the dozens of people who combined visuals of that episode with the trailer of the movie "300", only ONE included the awesome "chainsaw-shields" scene: 0:35-0:36 in this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQvG-pEQ9OE&feature=related). Nothing else to see in that vid, though.

Any way, hoplites are hoplites , so here's the weaponry for Machakan Space-Hoplites, based on the above:
SPEAR Rocket-launcher:
limited ammo, good range, low-ish precision, high damage + AP, causes 2 points of armor-negating stun damage (fire resistance negates stun) in AoE 2.
SPEAR Shockblade:
Basic spear upgraded to Dom3000 levels. Probably nothing fancy, although it could deal a point or two of lightning or fire damage if that fits.
Hoplite Shield (weapon):
bonus weapon with high damage, -3 att, len 1.

Shockblade:
Used instead of Bane Blades (so limited to few commanders). Armor-piercing, deals fire or lightning secondary damage.

Some troops (Spider Rider equivalents) have SPEAR Web-launchers instead of normal rockets.

rdonj

January 3rd, 2009, 02:02 PM

Oops, I wasn't thinking at the time, sorry.

rdonj

January 3rd, 2009, 06:29 PM

Umm... I just started a new game with the dragons under the new version and ended up in province 1 with no starting army. I'm not quite sure why, I checked the .dm and the lines for starting units are there. I think maybe it's the province. Btw, you never did fix the venemous dragon's ranged attack.

rdonj

January 3rd, 2009, 08:07 PM

Monster number 1394, a space kraken is named "predator alien". It's possible it's both ways, I didn't see. Also I have some monter number 0 PD in a forest with dragons.

Well, it's possible to expand with the dragons, but it is REALLY hard to accomplish a lot. I had to use ghost dragons to assassinate most things, and steel dragons to take krakens. Haven't met many space eels but I was able to kill one by sending 3 stargazers set to cast personal luck and attack. Though blessing first would be a good idea to get a little extra morale. I think as things are now the dragons are definitely the weakest race, they can make annoying for other people by assassinating commanders, but they're stuck at their weak level for far too long. I don't think that a rainbow pretender with paths within booster range will work, at least for this map, as you basically need to hit construction 6 to summon anything. Couple that with the amount of research and gems you need to summon anything, you're looking at several years of research before you can summon anything.

I think the dragons need to ramp up faster, and possibly reduce the cost of the summons. Possible changes to make them more competetive in dom3k:
1. Give at least some of the dragons a research boost of a couple points.
2: Make stargazers recruit-everywhere.
3: Make another type of dragon that's good at research and not horribly expensive, but otherwise relatively useless.
4: Give the dragons some level of air magic on recruitables, even just 1 air on stargazers would be enough.
4: Reduce the cost of the level 5 conjurations by about 10 or so gems. They might end up being slightly cheap for that level, but you still want 10-35 extra gems worth of equipment to use them, and since you can't get forge bonuses for the nation they'd still be a lot more expensive than something like a bane lord. Plus the dragons need thugs more than other races anyway.

Aezeal

January 3rd, 2009, 09:11 PM

OK I know what to do.. more AP attacks for the lot of them just like all races here dammit :D (just for dom 3K though)
Why air 1?
stargazers recruit everywhere: why not and I'll give them one more research bonus. (unless I decide to give them air one since then they will have more magic already)
What was I supposed to fix again in the venemous dragon.

I thought the summons where already pretty low on the research scale for their power. I could maybe lower the weakest ones a bit more so you have early acces.

Also.. they have 3 multi heroes which are the low level summons (but have very good combat magic paths) so think about luck 3... also helpfull for your gems. If you go relatively high on commanders you could go O 3 for commanders, some troops and lots of castles and then save points on the production scale. A pretender with like 3 magic paths to create boosters, some luck and order and low dominion can help with research too.

I'll do this.. before we start the MP game else Loren will have no fun at all.

rdonj

January 3rd, 2009, 09:42 PM

Air one so it's easier to get thundercloud dragons partly, but also because that way they could forge amulets of missile protection, since they have very poor missile protection for dom3k that would help them a lot. Or maybe give them 1 air income, so they can get air started more easily with their pretender.

You were going to do something to make the venemous dragons do higher damage... atm they have a 4 ap ranged attack, that makes them slightly better at range than ulmish planetary guards.

The summons are a bit low on research requirements for the power, yes. It's only the conjuration 5 ones that I am suggesting any sort of change to, they probably come early enough, it's just a matter of getting to the summons, having the gems and being able to cast the spell. I think probably your best bet is a sleeping 4F3A4E5S statue of the dragon god, with that you can cast your first level of summons without needing to get a huge amount of construction first and most summons you can't cast are in close reach. But they really need a huge amount of gems to get those dragons, and it's a bit hard to scrape them together in such a crowded map, with slow expansion. Obviously we need a Baalz guide to dom3k dragons :P

It's hard squeezing in all the magic that the dragons need plus scales too. But yeah, both luck and order are very important. With my suggested pretender chassis above, you can get 3 order, 3 luck, and dom 6 with 1 heat and 1 sloth. Taking another sloth or 1 death gets you magic 1, which is almost necessary with the low rp to cost of dragons. Sloth is dangerous though, with 2 sloth I had a second fort in the game I was playing earlier and all surrounding provinces and couldn't build a single commander from it.

Yeah, hopefully this will be enough to make them competetive enough to get somewhere in the mp game. I certainly wouldn't want to try how they are now, it would be painful :D

Aezeal

January 4th, 2009, 05:44 AM

ok then I'll add 1 air to the stargazer, I think the dragons are getting a lot there though, sacred, good stats for a mage (very very good), reseach bonus, no old age.. they'll be massed. I 'm doubting wether they should be all castle then... one of these/turn is a pretty solid research base.

And the AP weapons and higher damage on the venom...

Aezeal

January 4th, 2009, 12:28 PM

PS I'm thinking for empowering air 1 or 0 makes no difference.. with his magicboost he'll have 2 after empowerment. (and when I go air 1 I'd have to remove that or he'd have 2 automatically.)

I could give him a2 (incl boost).. would make him pretty powerfull more magic than most recruitables, certainly cap only and costing more.. I do think getting some air somewhere would be thematic. and it's either this or a new dragon but that would make it so.. predictable..

let me hear what you think

venom got 8 dmg now.

all recruits now have AP claws, which left the bonebiters a bit equal to all others (especially steels) so I gave him a single AP claw attack but made his whiptail -2 att. (it's non AP so it's not that much of a bonus in dom 3K but might give him advantage over steels (with his higher str and hp etc) for some situations.

anotherthing: do all onebattlespell work properly now?

rdonj

January 4th, 2009, 05:05 PM

Giving the stargazer air2 wouldn't be bad, and yeah, I'd agree on keeping them cap only. That would help them significantly and put thundercloud dragons much more realistically in reach. I never really liked the idea of a new dragon either, so I'm glad to see a different method used.

I'm not sure if all onebattlespells are working properly, I'm pretty sure the stargazers do luck but I haven't looked through the dm for anything else.

Aezeal

January 4th, 2009, 05:20 PM

yeah new dragons would be summons only I'd say..

I think 2 more lvl 5's and/or lvl 6 wouldn't hurt those lvl 5's could be pretty much elemental or paraelemental (as in Dnd) lvl 6 and higher must be something special though :D
I've made the lvl 5's 25 pearls though but I'm wondering if you have 55 gems would you get 2 lvl 5's or one lvl 8-9 summon (even assuming you'd have access to both) 25 is pretty cheap. well the lvl 9's are much stronger so maybe I'd get them anyway.

I'm contemplating a summons of the dragon god (or his avatar or something) but it's pretty hard making stronger dragons than the ones I already have :D

if I make a 999 pearl summons would it be fair if it was a pretty unbeatable (multiple forms each nearly the same so he wouldn't LOOK like a shapeshifter but so soulslay wouldn't work even if they go through the MR (which would be very high) avatar of the dragon god (more so than the avatars that can be pretenders) casting requirements something like 7 astral and 7 something else (death maybe since it's relatively easy to get and this is somewhat of a ressurection :D

most high class summons have powerfull onebattle spells

rdonj

January 4th, 2009, 05:41 PM

I don't mind the idea of a super powerful summon that is supposed to be the dragon's god being brought back into the world. But I would make the casting requirements even higher. Say 9 astral, 9 death, and instead of making it a summon make it a different path, like enchantment. Although it would be better if it was a path that really didn't help the dragons otherwise, like thaumaturgy.

Oh I didn't get far enough to summon in that game, I'm going to start over with the pretender I suggested (I used one more rainbow with inferior magic paths that just wasn't going anywhere fast), and see if I can do better. Hopefully I'll even get a starting army this time.

rdonj

January 4th, 2009, 07:10 PM

Someone seems to have pushed a sloth dominion onto me, I can't for the life of me muster the willpower to set all those provinces by hand. I did my first today, hopefully as I do more it will feel less painful... I think I need to get some things organized first so the task seems less monumental.

rdonj

January 6th, 2009, 05:33 AM

The organization work I needed to do is done and I have gotten a few more provinces completed. Hopefully I'll have a day soon with more time available in it where I can sit down and do more than a few provinces without having to run off for some reason or another. I haven't really had time to test much either, maybe I shouldn't have gotten myself into all those games.

On a different note, how are all the other nations coming along? It's been a long time since I've seen anything about the ermor nation, and what ever happened to aboleths/neoclidia? How are the pirians coming along? And finally, any more thoughts about the evolution of machaka?

Darkwind

January 6th, 2009, 07:54 AM

@machaka: They're an Africa-esque nation, right? Why not 'update' them? My vision(please don't make me do Machaka, please!) of Machaka is this: A nation that has come back from a massive civil war. The many tribes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, have finally unified under Machaka.

The tribes in general have less-powerful weaponry (one tribe might not). However, they are numerous, very numerous, and the order of the Black Sorcerers has returned. Machaka would have a lot of magic diversity, though each mage would have roughly the magic diversity of Ermor (ie, you get an okay amount in one path, or very little in two). And I have to leave so I'll finish this up later (I ended up writing the bottom part first).

For the nations, I've got two Pirians done (the two heros). I thought I did the pretender too, but no. With winter break gone, I might work on them a bit more (I'd say less but that's not possible to do). As to Neoclidia, it's about finished. I forgot to update it for the forest-provinces, though, so I may get around to that too (or Aezeal might do it I guess since I posted "full" Neoclidia a while ago.

Aezeal

January 6th, 2009, 04:53 PM

Hey, I must have missed the whole neoclidia mod then? you mean the whole dm file or the sprites too (I'm sure I've not seen the sprites)

where is it?

Darkwind

January 7th, 2009, 05:54 PM

Here's a .zip. It has both the text and .dm file. No sprites though. Never any sprites. I need a professional spriter or something. Maybe I can go into the year 3000 and steal a weather control droid from Ulm to sprite for me :D

Aezeal

January 7th, 2009, 06:01 PM

hmm without sprites you can't play it :D, I assume Pirians don't have sprites either then... we need an artist taking interest in dom 3K

IS there a solution on the way for the sprites? Do you have pictures on the net that can be used as sprites?

- maybe r'leyh sprites from teh void gate (down side is that r'lyeh and their voud gate and it's summons are still in the game
- other sprites on the net? Once I have some time I could try to extract spirites from certain pictures if you point me to them.. perferably shots from a side (as dom sprites) if I need to alterstuff it's probably not gonna work.

I've read through the file and I love it, only thing not viable is spaceships not being able to go to land provinces, they just can do that and we can't stop it.. you could make a landshape with lower AP, and movement though. And we do need forest shapes (if the unit needs it I assume most ancient ones, old ones and ships don't mind about being in space (unless you want the ships to be weaker on land which probably is a good idea)) maybe even make more other troops better suited to space making this a real space nation but weaker on land.. but with a few troops good on land (and put those and some space troop in PD)

Darkwind

January 7th, 2009, 06:07 PM

I might be able to forage some sprites, but it would take some time. Time better spent procrastinating :p I might go through it at some point, but I doubt I could ever summon up the willpower to surf the 'net for good ship sprites.

In fact, I'm almost feeling energetic enough to start right now. I have other stuff to do, unfortunately.

Aezeal

January 7th, 2009, 06:09 PM

Pirians will probably be easier I guess :d just something with a fiery flare about it :D... and then just scale it with increasing size.. lol a whole nation based on the same sprite :D

rdonj

January 7th, 2009, 06:23 PM

Yeah there are dominions sprites that I know would work at least as placeholders. I used them in a mod I occasionally fiddle with.

Darkwind

January 7th, 2009, 06:37 PM

I'm dabbling in #copyspr right now, so one quick question: Do need the name of the unit I'm copying or its unit number?

rdonj

January 7th, 2009, 06:58 PM

The unit number is better since dominions has multiple units with the same name.

Endoperez

January 8th, 2009, 02:17 AM

I'm dabbling in #copyspr right now

Do you have any version of the AllView map? It lists all the units from 1 to whatever, named "1", "2" etc, and it's the best way to go through the units when you're looking for something.

Here's (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=38589&highlight=allview) a version of it I made. It only works if you have a mod enabled (Dom3000 works), but it should still be up-to-date. Create a new game and play as EA Ermor.

Darkwind

January 8th, 2009, 07:31 PM

I have a version of it now. :up: I'll be sure to use it when messing with sprites.

Darkwind

January 9th, 2009, 08:37 PM

I don't mean to doublepost (well yeah I do), but I've finally finished Neoclidia. Three hours total to give it all sprites and add in the space/planetforms. Just in time for the MP game! :) It should work.

If it gets added in for the game, I'll stay with the Commonwealth. I don't want to give false impressions of the nation sucking by failing myself.

Edit: Getting something about a bad #newsite command. Not sure what that means.

Aezeal

January 9th, 2009, 09:13 PM

let's not use it in our soon to start game yet since it's completely untested.
Maybe try and use the order Sombre uses in his mods for the different parts of the mod.

Aezeal

January 9th, 2009, 10:15 PM

Darkwind, plz download the file I've attached to this post, I've edited your file, cleared up a few errors including the ones that didn't let you start the game, and another after that that wouldn't let you either.. and I've actually made your pretender appear in the game.. and given him the pretender stats of moral 30, mr 18 as they all have.. I think you'll need to do some thing with him though seems underpowered.. but at least the nations seems to be working. not tested it further though

Aezeal

January 9th, 2009, 10:18 PM

ps the keypoint was that startsites can't use numbers but need to use names, seems to be incorrect in the manual.. I'll tell thingie that works on it

Darkwind

January 9th, 2009, 11:51 PM

I fixed the problem with two copies of each Shoggoth and my horrible misunderstanding of spells. Here's a new zip of the nation, hopefully less buggy.

I'll likely start actually playing tomorrow.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 05:09 AM

hmm did you use my file? I can't think of solving your original problem with doing something to the shoggoth.. inmy recruitment screen I didn't have 2 version of each shoggoth

rdonj

January 10th, 2009, 05:55 AM

Bugs:
-In the descriptions for yithian units it talks about them having some kind of offensive mental powers, but none of them have any.
-I had two different versions of deep one priests, yithian awakeners and elder yithian awakeners available in my recruitment screen.
-There are two Create Orbital Station spells with the same name and description, but different levels/paths/costs.
-Summoned a ranged old one... no ranged weapon. I suspect you have a ranged weapon messed up here somewhere.

Suggestions:
-I don't really like having troops with their only melee weapon being a fist weapon :)
-I also don't like ships with fist weapons!
-get rid of the random on the stations and make them automatically have 2E.
-might want to do the same with the cultists, it's weird that their description says they can summon old ones when half of them can't. But with them it's less necessary.
-you might want to give the neoclidians shields as well. They have a lot of prot but ap weapons drastically reduce the effectiveness or armor. Or you could leave them as they are now and make them into a slightly high numbers race as they are a little less resource-wise than most units.
-streamer guns are pretty awful. 3 ap damage is not nearly enough to count as a ranged weapon in d3k. Try making them 6-8ap and seeing what happens. It may be a little overpowered but even 8 in not that much damage for d3k.
-I think researching is unnecessarily hard for neoclidia, even their 4 research mage starts old, and is a bit expensive. And they're supposed to be summoning old ones with some of their mages, taking up extra mage time. You should probably rethink mage cost/rp/age, as they are now I think they will research too slow.
-lightswords are pretty strong... I haven't used them yet but 16 armor negating damage might be a bit much for national recruitables.
-I think the god is a bit weak, he has path costs worse than any titan pretender, barely has better stats than a human pretender, and has terrible research ability. At the moment he's not terribly useful for any purpose.

rdonj

January 10th, 2009, 06:25 AM

Okay I checked and the mindblasts you're using don't work because they are written Mindblast instead of Mind Blast. Just put that extra space and capital in there and it should work fine.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 06:27 AM

I like the feel of the nation though.. the sprites don't exactly fit their high prot etc for the regulars but it's close enough to work. Only thing that is sort of annoying is that R'lyeh usees the mindflayer sprites too.. but since they''ll probably always face eachother from other sides of the battle field it's probably not that much of an issue..

if Rdonj and I agree on the preteder being weak it must be so...
Either you make him a rainbow and thus lower newpath cost but I think that isn't the way to go, or you give him some better stats, some ability to reflect his weirdness and an extra magic path, or one path up to 3.

rdonj

January 10th, 2009, 06:36 AM

I do really like what you did with orbital stations, having them be effectively manufacturing plants. That's pretty cool. And the ships are a bit closer offensively to what I was thinking when I first envisioned them. But I have the feeling they might be just a little overpowered compared to the units aezeal has made ;) Pretty low hp though.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 06:42 AM

Having another nation with spaceships etc is good for the mod too (though personally I think getting some new maybe weirder spaceships for this mod should be first priority, also because those sprites are being used a bit often maybe.)

I'm thinking of another nation concept to introduce a death race in dom 3 K.. the sprites would be easy, and no different space forms probably.

A world inhabited by religous creatures, with lots of ancestor worship and communication with the souls of ancestors, destroyed by demons, blown apart. Their god/pretender usually a distant sort tried to save them and put all his remaining power into a casting to protect them to give them life eternal even. But the god of the demons twisted the spell and give them life eternal as shades and revenants.
A few pieces of that world land in a province, the site Shard of a broken world.

A lot of capitol only immortal souls of the pplz of the death planet, warped bu the spells of gods to be undead, ethereal and immortal. In other castles they can only force the souls of the dead that have lived there to follow (regular sort of shadish creatures, probably ethereal, not immortal)

all troops have AN attacks but with lowish damage

Relatively powerfull priests.

Recruitment of the death is not as in LA ermor, you can just buy the souls you want (I'll think of something blabla that the race was advanced in contacting souls no real magic was needed, just some cash to get the right stuff to arrange it etc etc)
No spaceships
A variet of cap only leaders, a small selection of everywhere recruitables.

A capitol

rdonj

January 10th, 2009, 08:01 AM

Darkwind

January 10th, 2009, 10:21 AM

@ranged weapons: Ranged Old Ones are supposed to have lots of Mind Blasts. Streamgunners are supposed to attack 5 times, per turn.
@the pretender: He's supposed to be a semi-SC who can also get high in Astral. I'll lower the path cost to 50 maybe and give him S3. He also has a Mind Blast, but that's not too important.
@weapons: The Neoclidians are armed for a new era of Ranged Space Combat. If you're having melee problems due to having almost no melee weaponry, buy some Shoggoths. Trample the opposition under-blob. :p You could also buy Streamgunners.
@Orbital Stations: The higher level spell is level 3 Orbital Station. It can only be accessed by a Level 2. Higher levels get higher paths and consume fewer supplies, in addition to being tougher. I think I'll just give them 2E, since you're right the 1E ones are useless.
@research: Awakeners are now poor leaders, but have research bonus 4 (ie, 6/7 research). Elder Awakeners also get the research bonus. Both of them get a decrease in age(Awakener 10, Elder 25). Not much, but the Awakener shouldn't start old now.

Not sure what's up with the sprite numbers. Neoclidia is 2200-2248, maybe that's the problem. Checking an old version of Dom3K, it seems that that's 2600+.

And I'll fix the double-cap-only problem. it's because I placed the capital only troops & commanders as recruitables.

Here's my newest .dm. Time to play!

Edit: Also fixed a problem with Heavy Laserguns.
Edit2: I didn't want researchbonus 4. Too much. Down to 2 now.
Tripledit: Added Neoclidian Warship to unit roster.
Quadrupledit: Fixed a problem with the recruit screen mixing the space & land forms of units up.
Edit5: Two units were number 2205.

Darkwind

January 10th, 2009, 10:58 AM

JUST as I was about to post edit 6, my editting limit runs out. Ah well.

Assuming this is stable, it'll be the last 'edit'. I'll wait for some other people to post first :D

So, I fixed the number problem (for real this time) and went through with my promised changes to the pretender.

Aaagh, I forgot to actually post the .zip.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 12:05 PM

hmmm low hp, no prot, and the immortals would be cap only... if needed high resc can prevent to much of them coming in the game.

I'm thinking an immortal trooper
an immortal

Darkwind

January 10th, 2009, 02:08 PM

Hmm, just got some weird "spr number too high for this file" error. I am not quite sure what caused that. I had just summoned my first orbital space station that turn? Yeah, and it doesn't seem to show up in my list of commanders. Unless maybe building one kills the one that made it?I got the error too. I went to look at the army setup after I summoned an advanced Orbital Station and it gave me the sprite number error too. Interestingly, the spaceforms for the units (which are all above that station's) didn't show up either. Also, I meant for building a station to kill the one that builds it, but that wasn't possible, sadly. I think the unit shows up as a non-commander, maybe due to the game getting confused about two nearly identical spells popping up.

As for the immortals, I'd think that giving their unique pretender a naturally low dominion would help keep the immortal units down a bit. I wouldn't want too powerful priests, either. H2 at most.

Finally, anyone have any experiences with the hopefully less-buggy Neoclidia? I've attached yet another .dm, as before I was accidentally saving the .txt only to the .dm--when I made a new change, the old ones were overwritten.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 03:05 PM

PS 2050 Hashmal (never seen that before as a base sprite for Pirians?) you can then alter sizes and colors a bit for different units.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 03:52 PM

well the pretender will probably be low dominion yes.. more a SC type I think.. ala Ghostking.

I think they will have powerfull priests.. I don't see priests as a very powerfull thing for a nation unless they are very very blessable then having a H3 recruit will be a severe advantage.

As it is my intentions is to flavor them as anti demon.. so 1-2 H2-H3 spells for doing more than regular damage against demons. Holy summons would be a nice idea.. not for this nations though... why ARE angels astral anyway :D

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 06:14 PM

yeah I'm busy on this nation.. has so much going for it (from my point of view

- I've been waiting for an undead nation in dom 3K (and the other one that might be it seems on hold.
- It's undead yet clearly different from ermor in several respects
- It has clear and defined abilities for all units (sort of like dragons. I'll try to make the things that aren't fixed as different between troops as I can) I like this coherence in a race myself though some might find a race a bit boring due to it.
- I can use sprites that exist in the game and I don't need to mod spaceforms (who is lazy)

Most important though.. since I've written the basic story of the race (even though it's only a few lines) down I can't stop thinking of it and I keep thinking "this is kewl" so I have to do this :D.

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 06:31 PM

Be honest does this sound like the basis of a nice nation?

#name "Souls of Shiar"
#epithet "Shards of a dead world, seeds of a new religion."
#era 3
#brief "Remnants of a destroyed world have landed in a province the undead souls of the dead, blessed by a god and cursed by another, want to take over the galaxy creating an undead leadership over all life."
#descr "The people of Shiar had a long culture of ancestor worship next to the worship of their benign pretender, they had researched ways of easy communication with the souls of the dead, leaving the bodies resting. This benign death magic was widely practiced on Shiar and supervised by the clergy of their pretender to avoid evil use of necromancy. The world of Shiar was recently destroyed by demon invaders and their terrible pretender god. In the moment of destruction the pretender god of the Shiar, not strong enough to battle the demon pretender, tried to save his people by blessing them with eternal life using all his powers including his lifeforce. The demon pretender warped his spell and now the souls of the inhabitants of Shiar live on, undead. The spells also affected the dying pretender and he too was changed, now undead, and less benevolent. Shards of Shiar have fallen in a distant province and are now the centre of a new nation and religion. The new Shiar nation does not want to extriminate all life but want leadership of selected suitable undead souls over the unbalanced and often unthinking forms of life in the galaxy. They use their still powerfull death magic abilities in their old, but also in new ways."
#summary "Restless undead souls of inhabitants of Shiar are going to conquer the universe. An undead religious nation."

rdonj

January 10th, 2009, 06:54 PM

Darkwind: With the new version the pretender somehow got messed up, it now looks like unit number 0 (nothing) and has a maxage of 50.
Streamguns: I didn't actually say they were bad until I used them. I know they fire 5 shots per round, but they're still useless. 3ap damage versus say an average prot of 12 for infantry units in the mod, prot is reduced to 6 for its effective protection, you need a DRN roll of 4 to do 1 damage. In my case I had a bunch of them shooting at space trolls and failed to do almost any damage. On the other hand laserguns tear things apart and may be even a bit too strong. The only thing that would prevent me from hiring nothing but deep one soldiers is their complete lack of a melee weapon. If nothing else you can give them a melee attack with their gun. Make it have similar stats to a Combat Knive, but with one extra length.
Also, the sprnbr error is still there.

Aezeal: It's interesting, sort of a blend between t'ien ch'i, ermor, and amos' traveler's mod. I'm thinking if you make this nation it's going to need a nation to pair it against... one with ties to its tragic past ;)

Aezeal

January 10th, 2009, 07:46 PM

hehe yeah I'm leaving that one open... a completely demon nation.. there are such things around.. might convert one :D. Then again demons totally do not appeal to me in anyway so I'll probably do Machaka sooner.

No one is stopping you from doing it though :D

Loren

January 10th, 2009, 09:15 PM

Finally, anyone have any experiences with the hopefully less-buggy Neoclidia? I've attached yet another .dm, as before I was accidentally saving the .txt only to the .dm--when I made a new change, the old ones were overwritten.

Tried it--no units, no province, nothing to do but die.

rdonj

January 10th, 2009, 09:30 PM

I'm going to take a guess that you started in province 1? For some reason when I start there I don't start with any units. I think there's something wrong with the province commands for that province.

rdonj

January 11th, 2009, 03:59 AM

Well, I know why you get space krakens called predator aliens now. Was working a bit on the map and I realized that I had the answer in my documentation.

--- pop type 86 - PREDATOR ALIENS

#copystats 2716
#name "Predator Alien"

#copystats 2717
#name "Predator Alien Queen"

--- NO TYPE, ASSORTED SPACE MONSTERS

#newmonster 2715
#name "Ancient Space Kraken"

#newmonster 2716
#name "Space Kraken"

#newmonster 2703
#name "Space Eel"

Pop Type 86 pulled directly from the dom3k mod, copied and shortened in form to be easier for me to manage.

Aezeal

January 11th, 2009, 09:20 AM

I saw it again when looking at the all view map yesterday.. but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it since the name and the stats seemed to be correct :D

I've now changed the copystats numbers in poptype 86 (both 1 higher) so I think that should do it.

THanks for your solution and again much thanks for your help (=all the work) on the map.

Loren

January 11th, 2009, 03:14 PM

rdonj

January 11th, 2009, 08:02 PM

Povince one is the second province from the bottom left on the strip of land that goes across the bottom. If you started nowhere, well, I have no idea what to tell you about that.

Loren

January 12th, 2009, 12:44 AM

Povince one is the second province from the bottom left on the strip of land that goes across the bottom. If you started nowhere, well, I have no idea what to tell you about that.

Given the initial map positioning it could have been pointing me there. I didn't own it, though.

Darkwind

January 12th, 2009, 10:01 PM

I just realized that Neoclidia has almost no magic diversity. It has Earth, and it has Astral, and that's it. What do you guys think about adding a recruit-everywhere mage who can help diversify Neoclidia (and maybe take on the role of researcher)? I'd guess a 'Deep One Scholar' or something like that, with S1+110%SWFD. Any suggestions?

rdonj

January 12th, 2009, 10:48 PM

It's probably a good idea. Neoclidia could use a little extra magic diversity, and they could really use a more effective researcher. But maybe you should remove the 100% random on S, and just leave the 10%.

Aezeal

January 13th, 2009, 06:15 AM

no brains in a jar?

Darkwind

January 13th, 2009, 07:41 AM

If I drop the 100% random, maybe I should boost it up the 10% to 20%? I don't want Neoclidia to be stuck with almost only Astral and Earth up until the late game.

@Aezeal: No, no brains in jars. Poor Yithians can't try out their experiments. I might make an Astral "Pocket Brain" item or something which boosts research, though.

Aezeal

January 13th, 2009, 09:07 AM

hmmm as long as you don't remove items that already exists you can do everything you want :D

rdonj

January 13th, 2009, 11:25 AM

No no, I didn't mean to remove the 100% random, just the astral part of the random. To lessen the amount of astral the mage gets and give it more diversity.

Darkwind

January 13th, 2009, 05:02 PM

Here's Neoclidia, plus the new Deep One Scholar. I also made a couple other changes, but they're not very large.

rdonj

January 14th, 2009, 08:14 AM

I swapped in the new mod and tried to load my game... got a "bad #addrecunit command" error.

Darkwind

January 14th, 2009, 04:25 PM

I'm not sure what happened. I deleted all #addrecunit(and #addreccom) commands, saved the file--still a bad one, despite the lack of any commands to be bad. I delete all but one--still bad. I'm not sure what's up. It seems Dominions hates me--first the errors with the Orbital Stations, now this. I might just go PM a better modder about it, see what he (or she I guess) says.

Aezeal

January 14th, 2009, 07:44 PM

I've looked at the lines and can't really find the problem.. what did you change between versions?

Maybe take old version again and put one of the changes in (PS was the scholar recruitable I couldn't see) and then test etc etc. (of course simple stat number changes you can do all at once since that shouldn't be a problem.

Darkwind

January 15th, 2009, 11:58 AM

I'm reasonably sure that the only major change was adding the Scholar. I'm just going to go see what a better modder than I can say about it.

Darkwind

January 16th, 2009, 11:23 AM

I contacted Amos, and his help started a spree of modding. As it turns out, I had done my #addrecunits in a rather wrong manner. I also discovered that the reason behind the Orbital Stations showing up as units was because I wasn't summoning them as commanders. The reason they crashed the game was because, due to a typo, they had no sprites (#sopyspr instead of #copyspr). So, I've fixed the no-commander-summoning issue, the typo, my recruiting list for Neoclidia, and I changed the #copyspr for the ships to actual sprites from the Dom3K mod because I was tired of the units showing up as priests and archers.

So there you go. here's a new, hopefully bug-free zip. Kudos to Amos for the help.

rdonj

January 16th, 2009, 03:59 PM

Next bug! The drones have weapon: fist, rather than the life draining weapon they're supposed to have. Probably another misspelling.

Darkwind

January 16th, 2009, 06:25 PM

As it turns out, I just never bothered to add in the Ancient Laser. And I can see why, since I have no idea what effect # Life Drain is. But, well, at least I've put in the Ancient Lasers now.

Other miscellaneous changes: I noticed that the otherwise-incredible Capital Ship had merely 10 MR, so I decided to instate a sort of system: base 9 MR, +1 for every 10 supplies consumed (5s go either way). So, the Capital Ship, with 65 supplies consumed, now has MR 15. Of course, it still requires 65 supplies, or else your 50-gold-upkeep Capital Ship is suddenly gaining afflictions very, very quickly. 50 gold, you say? 50 gold for an absolutely awesome unit, I say.

Also, Streamguns/Streamcannons received boosts due to complaints (or a complaint). Guns are now 5 AP damage, Cannons 12 AP (compared to 3/8).

Fate

January 18th, 2009, 02:47 AM

Hey guys, kudos on the mod so far. I thought I would just write my impressions after playing the mod for a day:

?BUGS? I have never seen a space mine explode, even after sitting next to enemies for a number of turns. Also, R'lyeh seems to have Jomon's summons (except for the dragon).

I found the space dynamic very fun and enjoyable. The nations are also much more balanced and varied than I expected, I am very impressed. But some are clearly more powerful than others.

In particular the Dragon nation seems very weak. They are obviously billed for evocations and thugging, but that is much less effective when the standard units have AP and AN ranged weapons and many indies, even, have thuggish units. The one bright spot is their incredibly effective assassins.

Assassins in the mods are generaly much more powerful. Jomon and the Dragons both have thug-level assassins that should be able to take out most mages and their bodyguards until some serious research/kitting has been done.

Thug-level units are also surprisingly prevalent, especially among indies. In particular the Pirate Space Station (big pirate ship) is much more powerful than the rest of the pirate ships combined. I have often lost to this single ship multiple times, but had no trouble with the other pirate ships.

For the Insects, I disagree with the comment in their description. I don't see why a blood hunting nation should take death (though it is thematic) and, seeing as all the Nest units are holy, I think an imprisoned pretender with a strong bless (I took F9/A6 for damage and protection against the all too common missiles) is better. I can transform one starting female to get my blood economy going, while the other (with my strong bless) can take any province at all with the starting army (the spear spiders take land and the males take space). The Hive and Swarm are not Holy, nor are they more space-capable, so I do not consider either superior to the starting Nest and therefore I have little incentive to research. Even my spear fighters come with poison throwing if I need it, obviating the need for the one unique Hive unit.

Ulm and Jomon are both extremely powerful. Jomon also has a very powerful assassin, along with the AN ranged troops and the Dai Oni, so they are very powerful and versatile.

I did not play the Orcs enough to really understand them. In particular I did not understand the difference between an Aspiring Hero and a Hero. When would I not promote an Aspiring Hero? If there is greater upkeep on a Hero it doesn't mention it anywhere...

The Commonwealth also seems a bit weak. Their troops cost a crippling amount of resources, even with a full production scale, and are only moderate in combat, using mostly AP or less attacks (when most nations can recuit AN) and no ranged attacks. This might be different if I had got a bless (which I did not try). It does seem like the Commonwealth should be able to get rolling after their first few provinces, with all the unrest bonuses and defensive unit spells.

In conclusion this Mod was an excellent change of pace from Dominions and I enjoy it a lot. Thank you, I hope to keep up with any improvements.

Johan K

January 18th, 2009, 10:04 AM

Fun mod, definitely different from the standard game. I liked how the blue aliens got space suits when I took them into space.

It was a bit difficult to get it running on Linux though. Linux is case sensitive regarding file names and "Dominons 3000" uses a capital D every second time. Also some "_small" postfix had the same problem. The Ork tank hero had a black frame around him which probably shouldn't be there.

A starry background would make it feel more spacey though, I have to patch something for that into Dominions.

How come you used forest instead of sea for space? Wouldn't the sea movement restrictions be practical.

Aezeal

January 18th, 2009, 10:13 AM

Fate, I thank you for your evaluation of the mod. I'm glad to hear there are some others playing it aside from rdonj :D
It's nice you think races are somewhat balanced (with help of Rdonj I hope we got them withing the range of balance that vanilla dominions has.. since those nations aren't that balanced I hope we got there now)

I think the air bless is probably way overpowered in the mod (anti missile weapon spells have been increased in cost but I can't make the air bless more expensive or less effective)

I might need to decrease the number of holy units on the insects or do something about incentive to get Hive or Swarm, maybe remove ranged attack from Nest?

The powerfull indies are meant to put on the map to make some province harder to take as in scenario maps. I think I need to use space Eels and spacestations less perhaps :D (Rdonj plz take his comment in account with your mapping :D)

The Orcs shapeshifting of heroes has given me lots of replies like yours, the IDEA was
1. I could get a lower recruitment cost and after shapechange a higher upkeep. I can also change recruitment cost and upkeep separately now which I thought would give me more options for balancing (IMHO balancing races which are about domsummons etc is hard.)
2. It simulates somewhat the rising of commanders from the ranks by skill

all in all there is indeed no reason not to shapeshift them though.

The commonwealth only just got their AP weapons, before that they where even worse, same for dragons.. I hope they both are better now, commonwealth has very good shields against ranged weapons and that should help them. I think your reply about AP or less means you use an older version of the mod (from time to time I change a lot in short notice) so that could also be why your dragons are not as strong as they are now.. I hope.

Maybe upload the latest version.. and DL the nation Souls of Shiar which I've released seperately it's the undead nation for this mod and I'll put in in later after some balancing (like dragons it uses no spaceforms so cann be used for dom 3 vanilla and releasing it seperately has 2 things I like about it: non dom 3K players might try it and dragons certainly got much more feedback)

Darkwind

January 18th, 2009, 10:47 AM

@Fate: I've got a couple (semi) answers, but I'm not too knowledgeable about a lot of this stuff, so I'll just skip some.
1-Space Mines' "self destruct" (if I remember) has an area of effect. I think Aezeal meant for them to hit themselves, but it doesn't seem to work out that way.
4-The power level of assassins in the mod might be due to most nations being, in Aezeal's own words, rather more powerful than your average Dominions nation.
5-Once again, nations are generally more powerful in Dom3K than Dom3. Though, I guess a thug in Dom3 would still be fairly powerful in Dom3K.
6-I think that was from Amos's original mod, actually. He suggested it for thematic reasons.

Oh, hey! Johan K, developer extraordinaire, is here! Let's see...
@the tank: Yeah, the frame around the tank hero is weird. Hopefully it's easy to fix, though.

@forest-vs-space: I think we settled on forest because water was coded to act like water, not space. Units can move 1 province/turn in water, period, which was a really big disadvantage. Sailing could've been cool though. Still though, the 1-move limit plus the lack of blood hunting sort of nailed the proverbial watery grave for water provinces.

We wouldn't have to use either, though, if you let us play around with void terrain and voidforms! :D

rdonj

January 18th, 2009, 12:01 PM

I will :) Although, honestly I've never had problems with the space stations. It's just a matter of getting the independants to flee, then eventually your units run into melee and carve the space station up with their ap weapons. They're a pain to bring down with ranged weapons, but just about any unit with an ap melee weapon can kill one eventually. I've always found space eels to be the most problematic, especially when there's 3 or more in a province.

Btw Fate, the commonwealth does have a ranged unit. I believe their gun does 4AN damage. I haven't found it terribly effective personally, though.

Darkwind - Haven't had a chance to play yet to see if your new streamguns are effective. I'll try to look into that at some point.

Johan K

January 18th, 2009, 01:33 PM

I have implemented two new map commands for the next patch that I hope will be used for Dom3k. #skybox "myskybox.tga" will put a custom made skybox in a province. #batmap "empty" will remove the ground you fight on. Together they should provide the possibility for a decent space map without any pine trees floating around when you fight.

Aezeal

January 18th, 2009, 01:47 PM

Hey JK, nice to have your feedback too :D, it's been quite a task to get it this far but if you don't mind a bit below average graphs and nations with not (yet) as much background as most dominions races the gameplay should be decent.

Making spaceform for nearly every troops is quite annoying but just giving some troops space helmets was the only thing I could really think of.. and it's not as hard as giving them a whole new sprite (sprites are hard for me :D)

I heard the linux comment before and I'm trying to correct it somewhat but when I heard a few nations and most base weapons I use where already done... can't even promiss new nations won't ahve it since on my system it doesn't give errors so I won't notice it. I'll look into the orc tank hero since I tend to borrow my sprites of the internet and then adapt them I've had some start with a alpha channel which makes them not recognized as the black which needs to be transparant, but just as pure black.

I'd love it if I could get a spacy back ground !!! would increase the feel for space a 100 times..

About the seaprovince.. when others started this idea they started it about seashapes etc.. when I actually made a nation I noticed it isn't playable though. Several reasons:
- Movement with spaceships should be fast, not limited to 1 prov/turn.. though considering how large space is between planets and that on the maps they should be considered as "zoomed" in that wouldn't be the largest province.
- Biggest issue was this: spaceage dominions is not only about being in space, it's also about having more ranged weapons (though I try to include as many excuses for melee weapons since the combat system isn't nearly as much fun with only ranged weapons since it was not made for that.)
anyway as you know sea provinces and ranged combat are an exceptionally bad combination.

all in all forest use as space isn't that much of a problem except that I can't make ships that need to stay in space and all troops can walk into space and they will unless I make spaceform for them to discourage it. (which ranges from just having lowerstats to being in a freighter not being able to do anything.)

Ow and fate, darkwind is right that suggestion to use death was from Amos mod (I've tried not to change to much in his mod) he wanted pop to decrease under insect rule which is why he thought to thematic, I think he's already replaced it with a sort of deathdominions now that command is added to our modding arsenal.

anyway sailing could've been nice but if I want to create hyperspace lanes I can just link provinces which are distant.

On assasination: I've not played much with assassins much so I might just have underestimated it... it's not been THAT much of a problem yet so I'm leaving it for now.
On spacemines: yeah selfdestruct doesn't seem to do what I want, I've not encountered much mines myself though can some one tell me if they do actually attack or that they just don't hit them selves?

Rdonj: spaceeels are meant to be problematic as indies they shoudl I was hoping for them to be some sort of indie anti thug.
And as a summons for R'lyeh I think they will be devastating when equipped (I'll see if I can get there in our game :D)

Aezeal

January 18th, 2009, 01:57 PM

JK, you are my hero

I'll put them in the map right away when the next patch comes out and see what happens
I guess I can just use any file to set as the skybox .tga and then just add that and the the #batmap "empty" command to a province?
Or will I actually need to use - #skybox "myskybox.tga" - and then I will get a background you've put in the next patch too

Rdonj will do the same for our new bigger map. (I think :D)

I think this will mean I'll wait for the next patch with our MP game since this will make it so much better.

Aezeal

January 18th, 2009, 02:06 PM

PS I'll look into the orc hero thing (didn't remember he had a different tank sprite any more) once I have access to my old comp again with the files and the game on it.. the compenents for my new comp included a defect 4850x2 videocard so I'm using my old card now. (needed to test the rest of the system) If it takes to long I'll put it back in the old one but for now I'm enjoying my newer faster system.

Darkwind

January 18th, 2009, 02:09 PM

I'll throw in with Aezeal that the new commands sound very, very awesome. Though, if experience is any indicator, we'll have to steal a semi-decent skybox from the Internet, or from Dom3. Assuming I have any idea what a skybox is. One would think the name gives it away, but there's always the chance it's something crazy.

Fate

January 18th, 2009, 02:15 PM

Ok, some further thoughts.

The Orcs are VERY powerful. If you can get 1 province to 7+ dom and put just a few heroes in it you can get a full army every turn. On top of that the Orcish blasters are very powerful. Significant numbers of Orcish Shooters can take down just about anything. IDK about the summons, but just the basic orcs can really tear stuff up.

I still think the Common Wealth is underpowered. All their better belee troops are missing the all powerful shield. Also, their shield does nothing against the Neoclidean lasers (they get chopped down mercilessly). The only advantage to the Common Wealth is the ease with which they can defend territories. The turrets output ~20 AP rounds a turn, so two of them are normally sufficient to defend against most armies (with a little PD to catch enemy fire). Offensively I was helpless until I got Falling Frost, and even then I had to sacrifice swarms of my Teachers just to get close enough to cast it.

This could also all be a reflection of Neoclidia, which I think is very powerful. The recruitables are good, especially anything with a laser. A group of 20 heavy lasers can take down anything, including space worms. The tramplers are useless because of the speed with which chaff is destroyed in this game and the generally large enemies (especially the indies). I think their cheapest militia unit having mindblast is a little overpowered. Unless you really swarm them or attack with very high MR units you are dead, because they can mindblast entire armies into oblivion.

Then Neoclidia has powerful summons. I generally find the ranged more powerful for the above reason (if you get 40+ mindblasters there is really nothing the enemy can do). I was a bit confused at the way the summons ramped up. Because the higher level summons give you better Old Ones AND more Old Ones/gem there is really no reason to ever cast the lower level spells after that. Of course, some of the higher ones require more paths, but that logic doesn't apply to the lowest level versions which are easily researched and each makes the preceding version completely obsolete.

I also thought Neoclidia had no need whatsoever for the (admittedly very nice) space ships, because most their normal units (and certainly their best units) can go into space anyway. I would probably suggest making the standard troops significantly weaker in space, and maybe even weakening the Old Ones in space, both to restrict Neoclidia a bit more and to force them to use the battle stations.

And a small bug on the map, province 38 is connected to 25 (a planet on the far right to the center of jupiter). I found this out just in time to take advantage of it, :P

Still a very entertaining Mod, thanks guys!

Johan K

January 18th, 2009, 02:35 PM

I guess I can just use any file to set as the skybox .tga and then just add that and the the #batmap "empty" command to a province?

That's correct. A normal 512*512 tga or rgb image will do.

Aezeal

January 18th, 2009, 02:50 PM

wow different views for different provinces NICE :D I'll start looking for some nice backgrounds. PS will larger images just resize to fit or will additional pixels just not be seen?

Fate: I've toned done Orc armour in the latest version but ifyou already have that I might need to do more... giving the basic Shooters a bit weaker gun might be it since you get so many of them. Anyway if you can get that much commanders that easily then I'll just increase their cost and upkeep :D
I might do this before our test game.

Johan K

January 18th, 2009, 04:42 PM

Larger images will be resized, but they really should be a power of two sized (512,1024,...) and not too large as they are rendered as a single texture.

Loren

January 18th, 2009, 07:27 PM

In particular the Dragon nation seems very weak. They are obviously billed for evocations and thugging, but that is much less effective when the standard units have AP and AN ranged weapons and many indies, even, have thuggish units. The one bright spot is their incredibly effective assassins.

Assassins in the mods are generaly much more powerful. Jomon and the Dragons both have thug-level assassins that should be able to take out most mages and their bodyguards until some serious research/kitting has been done.

The assassins don't fare all that well in this mod--too many commanders are too powerful for them to take on.

Using the race in the regular game it's real strength is those assassins but I haven't been able to make those tactics work in 3k.

Thug-level units are also surprisingly prevalent, especially among indies. In particular the Pirate Space Station (big pirate ship) is much more powerful than the rest of the pirate ships combined. I have often lost to this single ship multiple times, but had no trouble with the other pirate ships.

And the Dragon assassins can't cope with these even though they munch any ordinary commander they encounter.

Aezeal

January 18th, 2009, 07:33 PM

Well the recruitable assassin isn't really meant to be able to take out spacestations or space-eels really.. he's just a recruitable commander, scout basically... He should be able to take some mages of most nations though. If you kit him out with a few cheap items he'll be even better. (pendant of luck and something regerating?)

Darkwind

January 18th, 2009, 09:58 PM

@Fate: Yay! Someone's using Neoclidia! Now on to the post itself...

All their better belee[I think that should be melee] troops are missing the all powerful shield.Though, Neoclidian troops don't really have shields either. I guess Neoclidia makes up for it with range.

This could also all be a reflection of Neoclidia, which I think is very powerful. The recruitables are good, especially anything with a laser. A group of 20 heavy lasers can take down anything, including space worms.Looking at the Heavy Lasers, 12 bonus attack, 1 bonus defense, and 18 AP damage is admittedly a lot. Toned down now (lower range, -1 defense versus 1 defense, 3 vs 12 attack). What was I thinking, for only 9 resources?

The tramplers are useless because of the speed with which chaff is destroyed in this game and the generally large enemies (especially the indies). I can live with Shoggoths being a niche unit. Against something like the Orcs, though, who don't field many large units (only a ton of human-sized ones), they can be powerful, I imagine.

I think their cheapest militia unit having mindblast is a little overpowered. Unless you really swarm them or attack with very high MR units you are dead, because they can mindblast entire armies into oblivion.Maybe you're just being faced by a really bad AI? The Yithians are fragile. As in, really fragile. If the enemy can get a group of fliers, the Yithians will scatter like dust in the wind due to low morale and sheer fragility. Thus, Yithians are worth nothing against Dragons (or Dragons played competently, which is I suppose too much to ask of the AI). You don't need to fly in and do melee, either--anything with a ranged attack could do. The Orcs could crush the Yithians under sheer weight of numbers, too--who cares if they're melee?! It''s 10-1 odds! In summary, I think Yithian Cultists suck completely but just for you (you're the one with the experience in Yithians, after all; I never touched them) I'll increase them to 40 gold, keeping them with twice as many resources as the Illithids.

Then Neoclidia has powerful summons. I generally find the ranged more powerful for the above reason (if you get 40+ mindblasters there is really nothing the enemy can do).I meant for the summons to be powerful, honestly. The later ones, at least. And yeah, Old Ones are kind of powerful. I'm rethinking the Fear on them, really. I can't really argue about the mindblaster stuff there, though I used Old Ones as shock troops (the fear is a killer).

I was a bit confused at the way the summons ramped up. Because the higher level summons give you better Old Ones AND more Old Ones/gem there is really no reason to ever cast the lower level spells after that. Of course, some of the higher ones require more paths, but that logic doesn't apply to the lowest level versions which are easily researched and each makes the preceding version completely obsolete.The individual Summon (Lesser) Old One spells were meant to be there for the impatient people. I wouldn't use them myself, honestly. I think the Summon A Ton Of Lesser Old Ones spell is useful, though, because every other Awakener can do it. Though, there's not much need to make Awakeners now, since Scholars have become the primary researchers. So, err, yeah. Never mind. Though, the weaker Elder Awakeners can do it too. So the Summon A Ton Of Lesser Old Ones IS still useful!

Also, have you tried the highest-level spells? If not, you really should. They definitely don't invalidate the other spells; they're on a whole different level from them.

I also thought Neoclidia had no need whatsoever for the (admittedly very nice) space ships, because most their normal units (and certainly their best units) can go into space anyway. I would probably suggest making the standard troops significantly weaker in space, and maybe even weakening the Old Ones in space, both to restrict Neoclidia a bit more and to force them to use the battle stations.That's certainly true. In fact, you've helped me realize something--Deep Ones would pine for the Deep that they are One with out in space, no? :D I think I'll just decrease the number of Old Ones summoned, though. They are a bit too powerful.

Still a very entertaining Mod, thanks guys!No problem! If I may say so, it's not hard to entertain with Lovecraft as an inspiration.

And for your enjoyment, Neoclidia taking into account the account I've been given. :)

Aezeal

January 21st, 2009, 04:40 PM

Darkwind, once I incorporate the mod in dom 3K you'll have to update it in that file yourself (since I'm not about to copy all your changes :D) do you think I should put it in there already or do you want it to remain stand alone a while longer.

Darkwind

January 21st, 2009, 05:34 PM

I created Neoclidia for the sole purpose of it being added to Dom3K. Of course I want it added!

Also, it'll feel a lot less out of my hands and I can actually start on Piria (or rather, NOT start and procrastinate). :D

Aezeal

January 21st, 2009, 06:43 PM

hmmm there are some nice sprites in the vanilla game you could use for the pirians, in the old mod I started there is also an efriti which if you remove the sword looks decent (not the efriti sultan)

Aezeal

January 21st, 2009, 06:43 PM

have you changed stuff to neoclia btw? Plz attach the latest version to a post and I'll insert it one of these days. Ow wait that last version is only a fe posts away.. i guess that will be it then :D. Means you can't make new changes untill I've posted this new versionthough :D

PS laser and laser melee have same number since you use all names in giving weapons I've just made the last weapon 668. (ow and I've arranged all weapons in order of number.. you made a mess of it :D)

rdonj

January 21st, 2009, 06:55 PM

Btw, I got to mess around with neoclidia a bit today. The streamguns still aren't that great but they are at least useful now, at least on independants. I haven't had the opportunity yet to test them on properly shielded infantry though.

I actually think the yithian cultists are a bit overpriced now. At least if you compare them to r'lyeh's illithids. R'lyeh's mind blasters cost the same amount of gold, and have 20 more hp. So they are quite a bit more durable. And actually, the cultists should be relatively more effective against dragons than other units, since they don't really have that much mr and come in less numbers than most things. It wouldn't be too hard to have enough mindblasters in one province to paralyze an entire dragon army.

I am interested in Fate's comment about neoclidia's lasers getting through the commonwealth's shielding so easily. I have been noticing that the lasers equipped on their normal soldiers seem to be abnormally good. They seem to hit far more often than their precision (14) would seem to indicate, and in my personal testing I have found it very hard to damage the commonwealth with non aoe ranged weapons... as in nearly impossible. Is there something going on here causing their lasers to be more devastating than they should be, or does it just seem like they're abnormally good because of the projectile art they're using (I have never seen a neoclidian laser strike hit a random part of the terrain). But if so why are they so good at getting through the commonwealth's shields?

Also, question: Why is the Neoclidian Ghost hero given a theoretically inferior armament to that of Neoclidian Warships?

Darkwind

January 21st, 2009, 07:07 PM

Ghosts aren't heroes, I think. I never intended them to be anyways. Did I do something wrong again?

It seems that I did. Here's a new .dm. And stop complaining about the weapons--the ship's ethereal!

Also, you were supposed to get an "Outer-Dimensional Being", which is also ethereal. Immortal, too. Sucks to be you I guess. Anyways, new .dm attached. I fixed the conflict.

Aezeal

January 21st, 2009, 08:34 PM

ARG I told you NOT to do new updates!! I'll put them in the dom3K .dm one last time and after that you'll have to save them up and send them to me or we need to discuss what needs to be changed in neoclidia before a new version.

edit: for clearity: there needed to be a :D somewhere up there.. but I do mean that now you can't update at your own leisure since it just won't be in the mod then :D

rdonj

January 21st, 2009, 08:52 PM

Outer dimensional being as a hero instead of the ghost? Hmm. I wasn't really complaining about the weapons, an ethereal ship is pretty cool. I was just wondering.

Darkwind

January 21st, 2009, 08:59 PM

ARG I told you NOT to do new updates!! I'll put them in the dom3K .dm one last time and after that you'll have to save them up and send them to me or we need to discuss what needs to be changed in neoclidia before a new version.I couldn't help myself. It was just a couple little changes! I changed the Ghost's number to 2253 and changed the spell to summon them (previously called Create Neoclidian Raiders or somesuch).

Aezeal

January 21st, 2009, 09:00 PM

plz read my edit :D

anyway that last version is in now anyway :D

Darkwind

January 22nd, 2009, 09:55 PM

Also, I've got an idea for yet another nation-in-progress (someone else can steal it I guess though, if you want). Essentially, it's a nation of robots. Not really robots, though, I guess, more like a horde of bloodthirsty nanomachines. What I'm thinking of is a fairly unique nation.

They'll start off with one E gem from their capital. They can research a spell to create a unique "Factory" or somesuch that adds another 2-3 gems/turn. Of course, there'll be a few uniques along these lines, so they can end up with maybe 15/turn from these uniques alone. They'll likely also have a basic "Factory" unit somewhat high up, that provides on gem/turn. It won't be as strong as uniques, though--pile all the unique Factories in one place and you've got a practically unassailable fort.

Their units will mostly be swarms. They'll have specialized swarms, mostly--one for assassinating, one "Assembler" or somesuch that can turn into turrets and a couple other things, one for chaff, one for melee combat, one for ranged, etc. They'll likely all have x3 damage vs smaller (or x2 vs larger) units. They'll have a whole slew of cool racial things, like not needing eyes and poison immunity. They'll recuperate, high strength, likely high protection (though somewhat low defense, it's not hard to hit a giant swarm of bugs or bug-analogues), these guys will be fairly nice. And, by late-game, they'll have spells to summon massive hordes of individual swarms, huge planet-eating swarms that make Cthulhu like like a redshirt, the works. They'll be limited only by the number of commanders they have.

Which will be a limitation. You see, they'll be capital-only. Every single unit. Those other fortresses? Tear them down, whatever. You won't need them, probably. It's not like those indies will be useful. Or that you could recruit them, because you'll be losing population somewhat quickly.

Did I mention that? They'll likely have a natural domkill, too, I'm thinking 2x R'lyeh's. Not to mention the factories will spread all sorts of nastiness. They'll likely have a powerful 350+ gold unit to recruit, too, so it's sort of a race against time. Not to mention time probably wins, due to their likely poor research skills (I don't plan on giving them any clear researchers; any really good researchers will be cut down).

So there you have it. Start with low gem income and a gold economy, move to high gem income and gem economy. It's like LA Ermor, if they started with a hangover and later got steroids, if those steroids were on steroids that were actually vicious nanorobots bent on the painful death of anything that could loosely be considered living. What does everyone think? Other then that I'm rambling, incoherent, and insane (I blame that on the time I'm posting this)?

Oh, and, uhh, wall of text above.

Aezeal

January 22nd, 2009, 10:30 PM

hmmm the idea is nice.. balancing it might not be so nice though..
graphs seem pretty easy.. just a lot of pixels in a greyish color

Pirians will probably be a better bet to start on a fire-ish nation could fit better for now (the niche isn't filled yet)

I myself have (aside from Machaka) still that Jedi idea in my head.

Sacred padawan recruits,
Jedi knight leaders (sacred)
Jedi master summons (sacred)
Jedi Supreme master summons (sacred)
Droid troopers (NNE and inanimate)
Droideka trooper (NNE and inanimate)
Stormtroopers
Bountyhunter as scout/assassin (weakish assassin for dom3K though)

X-wing medium starfigher (recruit)
A-wing weak starfighter as 2nd form for stormtroopers)
B-wing strong starfighter or bomber (summon)
Y-wing Bomber (summon)
Vulture droid fighter (summons?)

Jedi's in space would be in A-wings too but would remain sacred and the leaders able to buff.
Summonable Jedi's in stronger ships (might not be that usefull)

All jedi will be H1/N1 (or S1 but that give vulnerability for duels etc)
the Jedi power spells will be either H1/N1 (holy spell which you start with) or N1/H1 (which will be somewhere researchable.

next to that I'd need some sort of real magician (I'm thinking doing it ulmish style so engineers) I'm thinking EDNF as paths

If I put Sith in (summons maybe) that would work as Jedi's but with H/D.. which probably won't add much to the nation.

sprites are the problem as usual.. I'd like to test work on those force powers :D

Ow In 0.8 there will be added
- Shiar
- Neoclidia

- an ulmish turret (sprite + att sprite) + (spaceform sprite + att sprite) as summon

and did some spriting ** WARNING polished is somewhat subjective ****

- New sprites for Orc spacecraft (+ attspr)
- new sprites for Ulm cap and dreadnaught (both HUGE) + Att
- att sprite for kraken and ancient kraken (different solutions)
- polished the ulmish transport sprite, pirate sprite, ulmish fighter sprite
- polished wyrmling sprite & bonebiter sprite
- att sprite for ghostdragon
- att sprite for tank and orc tank (with nice backwards movement on blast)

Changed some of the many typo's which I accidentaly saw... didn't check it that much though

removed Amos line about death scales from the insects.

Aezeal

January 23rd, 2009, 08:52 AM

ow the orc shooter in space sprite now has the same attack stuff in an attack sprite as the one not in space (I'm pretty proud on that blood and the nozzle, hoped you all liked is as much as me :D)

Made an attack sprite for the orc brute too.

Aezeal

January 23rd, 2009, 02:50 PM

Orc chopper and orcchopper space now have att sprites

and the rager and rager space also (and a different, more raging solution for it for them.)

Aezeal

January 23rd, 2009, 09:16 PM

Due to lack of sprites (as usual) I had to drop the jedi nation idea, I found a lot of good sprites but humans where 50 pix large which is just to much.

Anyway I couldn't stop my self from getting a Jedi :D
I've made just one, an all in one Jedi-knight :D
I think I'll make him a summon too btw :D

he's the master of self buffs, but not a real good mage, all spells I wanted to make jedi spells he can cast :D
A1 for airshield (jedi deflect), aim (jedi force correction of the bullets or just the focus you have (think luke's shooting etc), or if you want to go darkside (this is a side effect and not intended as such) resist lightning and chargebody.
S1 for Twistfate, personal luck and Body ethereal (all something like jedi's not being hit easily)
W1 for quicken self and of course the most thematic jedi power of summon water elemental

Ow and lets not forget selfblessing for all blessings you deem him worthy of.

#newmonster 2731
#name "Jedi Knight"
#forestsurvival #spr1 "./dominions 3000/2731_Jedi_Knight_1.tga"
#spr2 "./dominions 3000/2731_Jedi_Knight_2.tga"
#descr "Jedi's are the keepers of peace in the galaxy, they are masters of the lightsabre."
#hp 15
#size 2
#prot 0
#mor 15
#mr 14
#enc 2
#str 12
#att 17
#def 17
#prec 14
#mapmove 2
#ap 16
#weapon 757
#armor 349
#magicskill 1 1
#magicskill 8 1
#magicskill 4 1
#magicskill 2 1
#holy
#maxage 150
#goodleader
#gcost 175
#rcost 5
#forestshape 2732
#end

#newmonster 2732
#name "Jedi Knight"
#forestsurvival #spr1 "./dominions 3000/2732_Jedi_Knight_1.tga"
#spr2 "./dominions 3000/2732_Jedi_Knight_2.tga"
#descr "Jedi's are the keepers of peace in the galaxy, they are masters of the lightsabre."
#hp 20
#size 4
#prot 16
#mor 15
#mr 14
#enc 2
#str 12
#att 17
#def 17
#prec 14
#mapmove 2
#ap 16
#weapon 717
#weapon 717
#weapon 719
#weapon 719
#inanimate
#magicskill 1 1
#magicskill 8 1
#magicskill 6 1
#holy
#flying
#maxage 150
#goodleader
#gcost 175
#rcost 5
#plainshape 2731
#end

Aezeal

January 23rd, 2009, 09:21 PM

#newspell
#name "Contact Jedi Counsil"
#descr "You contact the Jedi Counsil and beg them for help on your noble cause the bring peace and stability to the galaxy. A Jedi Knight is send to do your bidding. May the Force be with you."
#school 0
#researchlevel 5
#path 0 4
#pathlevel 0 3
#effect 10021
#fatiguecost 500
#damage 2731
#nreff 1
#end

economical as I am with sprites I've naturally not wasted the X-wing sprite on just that rare jedi. I've made it a summon for all nations relatively high on the research tree so ulm gets their own summons first.

llamabeast

January 24th, 2009, 08:09 AM

counsil -> council
is send to do your bidding -> is sent to do your bidding

Hello! :)

Aezeal

January 24th, 2009, 10:24 AM

screw the english language :D

Darkwind

January 27th, 2009, 04:15 PM

So, Aezeal, how's merging Neoclidia and Shiar in going? You haven't posted in the thread for a while, and usually you're a rather prolific poster, so something must be up. :angel

Aezeal

January 27th, 2009, 04:20 PM

Well I do have a 4 weeks old son now and nightshifts this week that might have something to do with ti :D

Well merging the nations was about 1 min work since it was just copy pasting :D.
I've asked Rdonj which sprites bothered him most and changed that as I posted about and entered that jedi knight, Xwing and ulmish turret.. thought I was doing quite a lot really :D

I'm mainly waiting till the neew patch comes out and Rdonj finishes his map so we can present it all at once :D but I guess I could releast 0.8 already

Are there any other sprites you think need to be changed btw then I can look into that.

rdonj

January 28th, 2009, 09:43 AM

The map is DONE. I just spent ~3 hours finishing it up. Don't ask me how it took that long, I have no idea :/ I will definitely look into using the rand program if I ever have to do something like that again, there is so much work involved in placing independants on a map that large. I tried to make sure there were no bugs, and just gave the .map document a final once over to try and catch any copy/paste errors I might have let creep in there... and there were a fair number of them. I think they are all gone now but it is still possible there are some bugs with the map. Anyway, I am sending the finished document to your email now Aezeal.

Anyone who guesses all the references right gets a prize. What prize I'm not sure. Perhaps making the next Dom3k map... :D

Darkwind

January 28th, 2009, 12:45 PM

Yay, the map is here! Now we can legitimately say that Dom3K is only 90% done by Aezeal!

I wonder who will add in the #batmap and #skybox commands to the map, though, rdonj? ;)

Aezeal

January 28th, 2009, 03:06 PM

As I see it there SHOULD be 8 starting sites somewhere.. but I can't start a game with 7 persons.. or 4...

maybe you need to have a look at that :D

Aezeal

January 28th, 2009, 03:11 PM

I have got the suspicion you have given all provinces 512 (and something more) so they are nostart site.

Aezeal

January 28th, 2009, 03:49 PM

hmm not all the provinces are 512 or higher.. I've found 3 with 0... let's test with 3 nations.. 3 nations doesn't work either... I'm not getting this.

Aezeal

January 28th, 2009, 03:51 PM

Orrrrrrr I have an old version of the tga file... (loaded it in the prov editor and only saw a smallllll number of provinces :D) I'll look into this :D

Aezeal

January 28th, 2009, 04:41 PM

hmm seems much better now, haven't done much testing but the map loads.

The way I made the space provinces in the boxes does mean you have to be carefull when clicking those. (the dot is on one side of the planet so clicking on the wrong side of the planet means you'll get another one)

I'm thinking that maybe the spacekraken provinces are a bit strongish btw.. maybe less small kraken woudl be better.. (goes for my old map too) what do you all think.

3 spaceeel might be a lil tough too...

rdonj

January 28th, 2009, 05:57 PM

You know what, you're right, I had to convert the image to be able to work on it and I probably should have sent you that version of the picture. If you have it working properly though that is good. I most certainly didn't set all provinces to no start, all the major planets should have 1 no start location on it where I didn't add any map commands.

I agree, space kraken provinces can be pretty strong. They're still not as strong as space eels though, even in what seems like obscene numbers. I think most of my space kraken provinces are actually a bit lighter on numbers than some of the solar system map's provinces, though there are one or two with ~30... :P 3 space eels is definitely pretty strong, but again, there are one or two provinces in the other map with that many space eels. That said, I don't terribly mind reductions in quantity to those. Especially if they happen to be right next to a planet, I wasn't very careful in the end about just what I put where.

Have you found any of the special commanders yet? :D

rdonj

January 28th, 2009, 07:05 PM

Darkwind: I may consider doing it if it's straightforward and easy-seeming. But I'm betting it would be painful. If we use a different set for each terrain type... ugh! Then I would have to go and figure out what all terrain all the provinces are before I went in to set them.

Aezeal

January 30th, 2009, 12:00 AM

nah it won't be like that.. we'll make a few backgrounds for each space province and start with randomly putting those on all forests, which are easily identified.

You could probably start with just copy pasting #skybox etcetc space1.tga
in all forest provinces, and then just randomly cahnge those one is 2 or 3 or let them remain.

For land provinces there is no immediate need to change anything but I guess if we can change colors a bit we might give fitting colors to each planet (since I gave each planet a nice color already on the map :D)

other stuff we might do is get backgrounds with a large castle or futuristic city or something for cap provinces. Or something for your specially modded provinces.

Anyway spaceeel and spacekraken are like that on my map, I know that since I did that myself, but that isn't holy.. I still think we should do 2 space eel max unless it's a very far off special province :D and kraken maybe 1-2 ancient and 10 normal ones? But I don't know where those powerfull forces are on the map really. Space eels where really meant to be SC killers with their nasty attack, anti SC pretenders taking everything in sight :D

I've edited (removed the light grey line) from the probe droid too btw it annoyed me.

rdonj

January 30th, 2009, 01:04 AM

Krakens aren't really a big deal imo. They can be hardish to kill in massive numbers, but each ancient kraken is about as durable as 10 normal krakens. They also don't tend to kill huge numbers of units. Neoclidia for example can take 20+ krakens and lose no more than 2 units. Really 10 krakens isn't that much, but probably much more than 20 krakens is pushing it in some cases.

Space eels are a different matter. If you can't kill them in a few turns they can rout your whole army, kill commanders and generally make a mess of things. I was able to kill a 3 eel province today with the orcs with just a mix of shooters and choppers, taking 7 losses. Of course, I had 120 orcs spread out across 2 or 3 leaders.... Space eels are more of SC killers, but if you get unlucky a rout of your army can result in huge losses. And eels have an annoying habit of preying on commanders.

The way you're talking about skyboxes doesn't sound too bad. It would still be a bit of a hassle since province numbers aren't always connected but especially if it was phased in over time shouldn't be a big deal. But for what you're talking about I have sufficient documentation that it would just be double-checking against the province numbers. I wish I'd had the foresight to have checked province numbers of space near planets... grumble.

So when are we starting the mp game again?

Aezeal

January 30th, 2009, 05:36 AM

no need to check against province number.. you can already see which province are forest by the code it has. It's just pasting it with the right provinces. And an error won't destroy the game it'll just give a province a wrong back ground.. purely cosmetical really so not that much of a big deal. I'll ask if the patch will be out soonish.. if it's long I'll release 0.8 soon, else I'll wait and make a 1.00 with the new map and the old one. I'll make a new thread too for it I think since all our discussion here is pretty long and not important for pplz just wanting to play it and might make it get some new viewers.

Aezeal

January 31st, 2009, 07:26 PM

a new hire bounty hunters spell.. hire 3 renegade Jomon battlesuit warriors with upgraded weapons and some magic. They are meant to be good for killing SC... probably need to be kitted out though but would probably be nice SC chassis.

one has new sprites (similar to existing ones though) the others have recolored sprites.

rdonj

January 31st, 2009, 07:39 PM

Cool :)

Aezeal

February 1st, 2009, 04:02 PM

ow and a new poptype snowbeast with snowbeasts and snowbeasts alpha's they are wait I'll post

#newmonster 2737
#forestsurvival #spr1 "./dominions 3000/2737_Ice_Beast_1.tga"
#spr2 "./dominions 3000/2737_Ice_Beast_2.tga"
#name "Ice Beast"
#descr "Some planets are inhabited by ferocious Ice Beasts of great strenght."
#hp 25
#size 3
#prot 7
#mor 12
#mr 11
#enc 3
#str 20
#att 12
#def 9
#prec 7
#mapmove 2
#ap 20
#weapon "Claws"
#weapon "Claws"
#cold 3
#berserk 3
#coldres 100
#gcost 50
#rcost 5
#maxage 70
#forestshape 2738
#end

with the alhpas being just a lil stronger
regular claws aren't AP so they shouldn't be that strong.
Maybe you could put them in 2-3 provinces..

they are pop type 26 and have number 2737 and 2739 for the alpha's

Aezeal

February 1st, 2009, 04:02 PM

In space they are all barges like most other monsters, the alpha's too.

Aezeal

February 1st, 2009, 05:22 PM

Ow and another poptype, their spacecraft are a new sprite, the worshippers are ulmish planet guards with black outfits and the priests are some in game exarch (bogarus, 1960)

#newmonster 2741
#forestsurvival #spr1 "./dominions 3000/2741_Horror_Worshipper_1.tga"
#spr2 "./dominions 3000/2741_Horror_Worshipper_2.tga"
#name "Horror Worshipper"
#descr "In recent years before the coming of the new Ulmish Pretender some couldn't wait on that god anymore. Gods aren't the only powerfull beings in the universe. Throughout the galaxy some worship demons but in Ulm the worship of horrors and Doom horrors was most popular. Hunted by the authorities they left the Empire for remote provinces."
#hp 10
#size 2
#prot 0
#mor 11
#mr 12
#enc 3
#str 10
#att 9
#def 9
#prec 9
#mapmove 2
#ap 10
#gcost 15
#rcost 15
#armor "Body Armour"
#armor "Standard Space Helmet"
#armor "Ion Shield"
#weapon "Combat Knive"
#weapon "Shock pistol"
#maxage 60
#forestshape 2642
#end

#newmonster 2742
#forestsurvival #spr1 "./dominions 3000/2742_Horror_Worshipper_1.tga"
#spr2 "./dominions 3000/2742_Horror_Worshipper_2.tga"
#name "Horror Worshipper"
#descr "In recent years before the coming of the new Ulmish Pretender some couldn't wait on that god anymore. Gods aren't the only powerfull beings in the universe. Throughout the galaxy some worship demons but in Ulm the worship of horrors and Doom horrors was most popular. Hunted by the authorities they left the Empire for remote provinces."
#hp 15
#size 4
#prot 15
#mor 11
#mr 12
#enc 3
#str 10
#att 9
#def 9
#prec 9
#mapmove 3
#ap 16
#flying
#weapon "Ship Blaster"
#weapon "Ship Blaster - close"
#armor "Ion Shield"
#itemslots 61440
#inanimate
#gcost 15
#rcost 15
#maxage 300
#end

#newmonster 2743
#forestsurvival #copyspr 1960
#name "Horror Priest-Mage"
#descr "The Priests that lead the religion that worship the Doom Horrors are generally cast out mages and priest of Ulmish society. They are all proficient in astral magic and usually some other paths that are less approved of in The Empire."
#hp 10
#size 2
#prot 0
#mor 14
#mr 14
#enc 3
#str 10
#att 9
#def 9
#prec 9
#mapmove 2
#ap 10
#gcost 175
#rcost 15
#holy
#magicskill 4 2
#custommagic 22528 100
#custommagic 20480 100
#okleader
#okmagicleader
#okundeadleader
#armor "Armoured Robes"
#armor "Ion Shield"
#weapon "Combat Knive"
#weapon "Shock pistol"
#maxage 60
#forestshape 2644
#end

#newmonster 2744
#forestsurvival #spr1 "./dominions 3000/2742_Horror_Worshipper_1.tga"
#spr2 "./dominions 3000/2742_Horror_Worshipper_2.tga"
#name "Horror Priest-Mage"
#descr "The Priests that lead the religion that worship the Doom Horrors are generally cast out mages and priest of Ulmish society. They are all proficient in astral magic and usually some other paths that are less approved of in The Empire."
#hp 15
#size 4
#prot 15
#mor 14
#mr 14
#enc 3
#str 10
#att 9
#def 9
#prec 9
#mapmove 3
#ap 16
#flying
#holy
#magicskill 4 2
#custommagic 22528 100
#custommagic 20480 100
#okleader
#okmagicleader
#okundeadleader
#weapon "Ship Blaster"
#weapon "Ship Blaster - close"
#armor "Ion Shield"
#itemslots 61440
#inanimate
#gcost 175
#rcost 15
#maxage 300
#plainshape 2643
#end

-- pop type 69

#selectmonster 1001
#copyspr 2741
#copystats 2741
#name "Horror Worshipper"
#descr "In recent years before the coming of the new Ulmish Pretender some couldn't wait on that god anymore. Gods aren't the only powerfull beings in the universe. Throughout the galaxy some worship demons but in Ulm the worship of horrors and Doom horrors was most popular. Hunted by the authorities they left the Empire for remote provinces."

#selectmonster 1002
#copyspr 2743
#copystats 2743
#name "Horror Priest-Mage"
#descr "The Priests that lead the religion that worship the Doom Horrors are generally cast out mages and priest of Ulmish society. They are all proficient in astral magic and usually some other paths that are less approved of in The Empire."
#end

They aren't that special really but some bloodmagic access is nice.
The Horror part won't be very clear if you just place these on the map (maybe in 1-2 provinces) since you can't summon horrors in battle (I could make a spell but I guess the AI wouldn't use it and we'd abuse it :D)
So maybe you should place a few horrors (no not doomhorrors)
Lesser horrors are 307 and horrors are 308

I've to admit I've never fought these myself so I can't say hoe much would be good to defend an indie province along with the units above.
I'd say 15 troops, 5 mages and some of these horrors should make a nice challange (maybe place a few items on the mages to make ti worth the effort)