View Full Version : Mod New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate V1.01
Aezeal
October 8th, 2008, 05:36 PM
Introduction:
I heard there have been dragon nations in the past and I'm willing to believe it but I've not seen one here recently and since I was working on it already I decided not to let that information stop me and finish the job.
And the job is finished.
Making a dragon nation wasn't as easy as it sounds, you can't just put all different sorts of overpowered dragons together and call it a nation, it would either be overpowered or unplayable but I tried to thing of a story behind the dragons that allowed me to start with weak recruitables and commanders of acceptable powers (acutally less powerfull than some in game I think) and then advance towards the powerfull dragons we'd usually think about and a bit beyond to the ancient worms of nearly unparalelled power.
This dragon nation was originally intended for dominions 3000 (and it will actually go in there) but I think it fits well (better) with dominions 3 vanilla game.
The nation:
History:
The ancient dragon god was most important rival of the Pantokrator in ancient times. The fight was bitter and in the end the Pantokrator prevailed and the dragon god was cast down and imprisoned in the centre of a distant and unnamed star. The dragon god was to powerfull to be destroyed but his prison has lasted even after the Pantokrator's demise. The Dragon race had suffered huge losses in the war with the Pantokrator and his minions and without their god "lesser" races have been able to hunt dragons throughout the world and the galaxy with help of their fledling gods and pretenders. The dragon however remained loyal to their god, knowing he was still alive, somewhere far far away. Now their god has regained more and more of his power and is able to contact some of his sensitive dragon followers. He is now also able to be in constant contact with his most sensitive follower, lending this dragon avatar some of his strength and wisdom to lead dragonkind to dominate over the other pretneder gods. The ultimate goal of his avatar is of course to unlock the hidden powers of the galaxy to shatter the chains fo their bound god.
Dragons:
This is a nation of dragons. These dragons are beings of magic that are able to evolve into different forms during their live. They start as young, mundane wyrmling and as they mature they are able to choose different shapes. A lot fo wyrmlings are born but a great part of them dies while they are young. With age comes growth, intelligence and power, both physical as magical. When dragons are adult the magic in their blood can be channeled into spells and young adult dragons are often learning to cast spells. When they age their magic power grows and they are sometimes able to cast spells in more than one path. Dragons greatly respect their elders and older dragons are considered holy. Adult, Elder and Ancient dragons are a rare sight, since most races consider slaying one of these by tricks or in huge numbers some sort of heroic task instead of the low deed it is.
Dragons are classed as followed:
Wyrmling
post wyrmling: Steel Dragon, Venomous Dragon, Shadow Dragon
young dragon: Bone Biter Dragon, Mist Dragon
young adult: Ghost Dragon, Adamantine Claw Dragon, Stone Scale Dragon, Fire Tongue Dragon, Ice Plated Dragon, Poison Ivy Dragon, Stargazer Dragon
Adult dragon: Magma Dragon, Plague Dragon, Thundercloud Dragon
Elder dragon: Vine Dragon, Golden Dragon, Wave Dragon, Death Wraith Dragon
Ancient wyrm: Light Dragon, Dragon of Fate, Soulfire Dragon
(please note that I tried to stay a bit away from the standard DnD names, eventhough DnD covers a lot of dragon idea's and so there certainly are similarities.)
In this doesn't mean dragons are shapeshifters, their development takes years while they mature and the span of these wars is to small to see any dragon change shape. The dragons shapes are often based on being a melee fighter or a certain magic path user. Aging dragons can change from melee to caster. A melee type dragon (steel dragon) will often but not neccesarily change into an elder melee type class (bone biter dragon). In fact throughout the millenia of their live few dragons remain totally committed to their childhood choices. Often preferring to try different sorts of lives.
Despite being a magical race the dragons are not very powerfull spellcasters. The older dragons do have lots of resistances and special abilities.
The Avatar of their god is a young adult dragon and is able to recruit his peers and younger dragons. The Avatar hasn't established enough power yet to order his holy elders but they can be summoned and convinced to serve their god.
Wyrmlings to young dragons are recruitable troops with not enough intelligence to function autonomously. Young adults are commanders and can lead their younger kin.
There are 4 different Avatars available in this nation: of the Adamantine Claw Dragon, Stone Scale Dragon, Fire Tongue Dragon and Poison Ivy Dragon variety. They are pretty good pretender choices (better than most unused pretenders, but certainly don't make better blessers than the best of the best that are in the game. The different chassis can used for different wishes. One as stronger melee awake SC, others with higher magic for better bless, and one better suited for rainbow pretender choices.
Here is a preview of the dragons in this mod:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7118&stc=1&d=1224028568
Due to file size etc the quality of the preview is only 50% of the original, plz keep that in mind.
In game:
- relatively weak recruitable mage power.
- strong recruitable commander chassis with some mage power.
- all mages have a strong (dragon) chassis so you are not able to buy a cheap researcher/mage, you always pay for the chassis even if you don't need it.
- Huge sizes. wyrmlings are size 3, then it only goes up. As is known from giant nations this in not an advantage.
- PD is weak, also due to the size problem and because dragons are just not the race with the nature to stay put and defend a province.
- the recruitment bar looks like a carnival since the different shapes the dragons can take all have very specific colors.
- The young adult dragons (commanders)
- the nation has A LOT of nation specific summons (the adult, elder and ancient dragons) all of which have magic and an increasingly powerfull physique. The nation does NOT lack for SC's.
- The summons are not all castable out of the box, there will have to be investments in magic boosting equipment or powering up mages.
- To balance this the casting and research requirements for summons are relatively low and most in one research arm (conjuration)
- The lack of certain equipment slots does limit the SC options
- This lack is rebalanced again in the oldest dragons with special powers.
- The summons give acces to a wide range of magic power (large magic diversity which reflects the magic in their blood.
- for LA the nation has a high gem income. This reflects their magical nature thematically and I think the nation needs it.
- The nation has no recruitable sacred troops and only one (cap only and actually a relatively weak) sacred commander. This is because any sacred recruitable would probably make that troops the only recruited troop and the nation alway played as a bless nation. Now a bless will certainly help the sacred recruitables but then again those are powerfull already and early in game the scales might be needed, or a rainbow mage to sitesearch and more easily unlock the different summons might be a good idea for this nation. (my personal advice would be the latter.)
- I think the nation will have a hard time early on in a game but with their powerfull summons and decent magic diversity the end game might give a good end game.
- The nation has no regular heros but the 3 types of adult dragon (summons) can also appear as multihero's.
- I would prefer it (but do as you like) if the nation was played with one of the 4 different pretenders I'm providing. The regular dragon providers are not of this race and they don't deserve to be called dragon. (this nation is kind of racist and refuses to acknowledge hydra's, original dom3 dragons, drakes etc etc as part of the family.
- For reasons mentioned above I would prefer it if you'd not summon drakes.
Please try the nation and give me feedback. At first I thought the nation would be overpowered since it was created for the higher powered dominions 3000 mod. Due to this I decided to nto give them to much magicpower (thematically I couldn't drop their physical strenght or the magic diversity in the race). When I was playing it a bit it actually seemed early game was pretty hard. I'm certainly willing to adjust the nation according to the feedback I'm getting.
PS the graphics aren't my own but adjusting the existing images did take me A LOT of time. Some troops (mostly the recruitbles) do not have a seperate attack sprite. Most powerfull summons do have 2 sprites.
WraithLord
October 9th, 2008, 03:04 AM
I love the concept.
Some dragons have 0 age, is that intentional?
HoneyBadger
October 9th, 2008, 03:30 AM
This looks great, Aezeal! I look forward to playing it someday-and I'll give you feedback when I do.
Would you mind posting the graphics for the mod so that we can take a look without downloading it? Especially helpful for me, but always a nice feature for everyone.
Aezeal
October 9th, 2008, 04:20 AM
age 0, no not really which ones have that?
Graphics will follow but probably after the weekend since I've got to go to work soon and after that sleep, catch flight to barcelona, be happy there fly back and then it's monday/tuesday :D
HoneyBadger
October 9th, 2008, 04:27 AM
I want to go to Barcelona...:p
Aezeal
October 9th, 2008, 06:28 PM
So apperantly 16 DL's nice... anyone got any feedback for me.. wishes etc etc
Also.. try dom 3000 :D
WraithLord
October 9th, 2008, 06:44 PM
age 0, no not really which ones have that?
Graphics will follow but probably after the weekend since I've got to go to work soon and after that sleep, catch flight to barcelona, be happy there fly back and then it's monday/tuesday :D
Actually, all the recruitables: units and commanders.
DigitalSin
October 9th, 2008, 06:58 PM
Just a thought - the assasin dragons seem a tad overpowered to me.. Also thematically, it just seems quite a lot more dragon-y to simply blast the entire camp as opposed to killing just the commander, but I can see why you put them in there. Maybe give them a lower stat-line, and say it's because they sacrificed physical strength for etherality or something.
rdonj
October 9th, 2008, 10:24 PM
I haven't had that much chance to play it yet, but I played a bit earlier and was having no trouble beating 3 normal ai's simultaneously with just the highest prot recruitable dragons and commanders. On the other hand most of the recruitable dragons seem very weak to me. For example, the ones that shoot and do poison damage, I'm not sure they would ever be better to recruit than the bonebiter dragons. The bonebiters do a lot of damage but don't have great attack skill, but they have enough to kill light and medium infantry well enough, and they have enough strength that almost no matter how much protection an enemy has they can tear through it. I guess if you were fighting someone with glamoured infantry you might want to try the poison guys, but I don't think there is any in LA. 4 ap, strength of wielder not added, weak poison seems a bit underwhelming for a 40 gold unit. I've not used them yet though so maybe I'm just not realizing some hidden potential.
I think it would be better though if the dragons were diversified more from each other. For example, maybe the mist dragons could have high defense skill (16+ I'm thinking), or #onebattlespell mistform.
Aezeal
October 10th, 2008, 02:40 AM
lol mist dragons have glamour that is not like the others.. most high power stuff is reserved for the high level troops.
IT's a bit hard to balance the dragons since indeed they all have high strenght etc etc
I think the best solution is to just make the bonebiter price and resources higher, maybe remove their AP claws with regular claws
I might see if I can pump the poison dragon a bit I guess :D
Digital Sin: I guess you are right, the ghost dragon already has weaker stats than others of his age but for an assassin it might be a bit much with his still relative high strength and HP (compared to other assassins) and etherealness. giving him a higher price is another idea.. lol I nearly gave that one death magic too..
PS for a REAL assassin look at one of the higher level summons :D
WraithLord
October 10th, 2008, 03:24 AM
If I may suggest a possible different route to balancing. So instead of make weaker, you could try to up price (already said and straightforward), and you could give maluses. For example:
-> Dragons love to hoard treasures, make their upkeep double (for some of them if you prefer rather than all)
-> Some dragons are chaotic by nature, they kill and burn and pillage so make (some of) them pop killeres
You get my meaning. The strong "unbalanced" dragons could be both balanced and made more interesting by adding such maluses.
Aezeal
October 10th, 2008, 03:36 AM
hmmm good suggestions I didn't give them to much econ disadvantages since I thought the high price for researchers would already be quite a dent in any econ combined with the fact that I thought the recruitables wherent that strong with their big size etc etc.
I don't know how to increase upkeep though without doubling the price to buy them though and I really don't think they should be much more pricy to start with.
On thing I did was relatively low proces on the summons (since most summons are actually free) so that is somethng of hoarding treasure combined to other summons :D
The burning and pillaging idea is nice. One fo the summons already kills pop because he's a plague dragon. I only fear that if I give one dragon anything like that (increase unrest for example) he'll not be used anymore.
PS all dragons already have a pillage bonus.
Aezeal
October 10th, 2008, 03:42 AM
So for recruitables the Bonebiter with his 3 attacks is a bit overpowered and the poisondragon needs a stronger ranged attack
Some dragons might need incraseunrest (kill pop is a bit strong, even increase unrest is pretty annoying I learned with my ork mod).
Are the commanders and summons in anyway clearly flawed?
I really wonder wether the research of this race is competative and if the end game summons aren't completely overpowered :D
WraithLord
October 10th, 2008, 04:15 AM
I'm currently in four MP games so I have little time to actually test the mod, I will test it in SP when one of the MP slots clears (hopefully soon, four at a time is *way* too much).
Anyway, what I wanted to suggest is a mod only MP game with dual purpose, First to have fun :D and second to help balance the mods and iron out any glaring flows. So the players in this game should commit to also reporting their take on the latter. I'd happily partake in such a game, it will be a fun way to help balance the mods :)
rdonj
October 10th, 2008, 07:21 AM
The magically inclined dragons aren't actually that expensive to buy, they're just not the most efficient. And you don't have anything resembling a 400+ gold commander that you basically are required to buy like some nations do, so they're really not that big of a drain on the economy unless you build tons of crystal fortresses to buy them in.
Aezeal
October 13th, 2008, 01:03 PM
I'd love my mods to be tested in a MP game, I'd also prefer not to be part of it myself as to not be biased to much.
Aezeal
October 14th, 2008, 12:58 PM
hey pplz 41 DL's a lot for a mod of mine I'll admit.. any more feedback from the other DLers??
Aezeal
October 14th, 2008, 08:01 PM
The requested preview has been added
Nounours
October 15th, 2008, 12:34 AM
Beautiful graphics... I'm jealous :D !
Sombre
October 15th, 2008, 03:30 AM
Beautiful graphics... I'm jealous :D !
You're kidding.
Nounours
October 15th, 2008, 09:30 AM
Nope !
Aezeal
October 15th, 2008, 01:51 PM
Well I'm happy if you like them. No reason to get jealous though since as I've posted in the first post I've just taken existing art and taken the dragons out.. still a lot of work but no reason to be jealous of "my art"
But have you played the nation?
HoneyBadger
October 15th, 2008, 01:53 PM
Aezeal-a couple things you could do to make dragons less economically efficient:
1-the next update is going to include sites that raise/lower scales. You could include a starting site that increases sloth. The problem with that is, it won't take effect until the next update.
2-with the next update, you can raise/lower the price of temples, labs, for dragons. Since dragons are all so huge, it makes sense their temples, labs, would be huge too, and require a variety of unusual-thus expensive-equipment. Same problem as above, though.
3-You can also include "increases unrest" on your units. All my dragons increase unrest, naturally. And this is something you should be able to do, right away.
Nounours
October 15th, 2008, 02:49 PM
Not yet, too much work. I didn't even finished my own sprites for Cantabira... But I will soon unleash my dragons against other pretenders :p !!
Aezeal
October 15th, 2008, 05:12 PM
3-You can also include "increases unrest" on your units. All my dragons increase unrest, naturally. And this is something you should be able to do, right away.
Hmm a good idea, I've used it on my orcs already but it's a VERY VERY strong effect and can quickly cripple your econ.
Thing is I'm waiting for a lil more feedback to see if all agree the nation is to strong now (I'd prefer to hear about a larger game played till the end).
Everyone playing the nation: tell me everything you encounter :D
JimMorrison
October 16th, 2008, 04:11 AM
Messed around with these guys a little tonight.
First, a bug. The Stargazer dragon has a typo in the path for its attack/casting sprite, it is directing to "Stargazerblahblah.tga.tga". Worked fine when I fixed it.
Second, I changed the Poison Spit to have 3 attacks, and I think it's pretty well balanced like that. The 3 attacks hit 3 separate targets, but only individual units - it's weaker than AoE, and uses ammo up faster. I'm considering upping the ammo a little, since now they only fire for 13 rounds.
Third, I don't know what I am doing wrong, but wow these guys are hard to get off the ground. With Mighty AI, I can't seem to keep up. Maybe they could use a little stronger starting army? Especially if you add in anything to balance them in late game that slows them down even further at the start, they will need some kind of boost to even get them off the floor.
Oh one other thing, your "Claws" attack has 2 attacks, but the AP claws only have 1, which seems a little odd to me.
Oh yeah..... Also, perhaps add Holy 1 to the Stargazers? As it is, the only Holy you can get is on your Prophet, and it would be nifty if the Stargazers could Bless themselves, and possibly Communion up to get big Banishes for use against Ermor. As it is, the dragons have 0 chance against Ermor, at any stage of the game.
Aezeal
October 16th, 2008, 08:44 AM
Hmm thanks for the feedback Jim
It's good to hear that they aren't as overpowered as some feared ( if others keep disagreeing there can of course be changes anyway so keep the feedback coming) so I'll wait with changing the econ a bit till I have more opinions (wisdom of the masses). If you still think changes are needed to make early game better if I don't touch the econ just now then met me know and I'll take your suggestion to increase starting army a bit to heart.
What do you think about what the others said that just with bonebiters he could easily kill 3 normal AI's?
further:
1: the AP claws certainly should have 2 attacks
2: I'll change the poison to what you suggest since it's been said before the ranged attack is too weak
3: It's not entirely true that you can't get holy since
- you get it 50% on the stargazers
- you get it 10% on each young adult (= commander)
- you get it on all dragons adult and up with increasing strenght.
(unless of course the code I used for the 10 adn 50 % holy magic is wrong, I can't check it now.)
On the to do list still is
- age 0 for dragons, should be easily changed
- weaken assasin (ghost dragon) (I plan on lowering hp to 35 and increase price a bit)
- attack sprites for recruitables
Sombre
October 16th, 2008, 09:09 AM
I believe holy doesn't work via custommagic chances.
JimMorrison
October 16th, 2008, 09:54 AM
I believe holy doesn't work via custommagic chances.
I remember reading that. It seems easily checked in-game - none of them show a 10% or 50% random pick.
It was an interesting idea, but wouldn't it work fine enough to just give the Stargazers H1?
I'll give it another try with just Bonebiters for expansion, but I don't know. I'll update my own .dm file to give the 2 attacks on the AP claws, I'm sure it'll make them a bit more shocking. (To be honest, I wasn't fighting AIs yet, but they were outgrowing me rapidly, I just couldn't keep these guys from taking a lot of losses to indies.)
Aezeal
October 16th, 2008, 02:32 PM
if it doesn't work then I'll give the stargazers H1 yes.
JimMorrison
October 16th, 2008, 11:50 PM
if it doesn't work then I'll give the stargazers H1 yes.
Figure they're already your least cost effective mage,a nd capital only.
So far (after fixng their claw attacks), the Bonebiters are obliterating everything I toss them against. Most indies die with no losses to 10 of them, and tough indies + medium strength forces crumble to 20.
I'm under the distinct impression though, that the race as it is balanced, will never be competitive in MP. First, research is far far too slow. It forces you to take a Magic3 scale to even get anywhere. But this is a major problem. You recommend a rainbow mage for the summons who are all over all of the paths (except Blood), and then you request people do so with one of the dragon pretenders. Well, the only one that is even remotely viable as such is the Ivy Dragon.
Now, the problem here is that most of the summons are cross-path, which guarantees that without huge investments in Empowerment (did I mention site searching is expensive, with all of these non-sacred mages needed?), so you do need to cast them all with your pretender, except for the Wave Dragon, which can be summoned by an Ice Scale with a Water Bracelet. So, your paths needed for summons are: 5F/3A/4W/4E/6S/4N/4D. Taking into account the Wave Dragon, and assuming the use of RoW+RoS (and a Flaming Skull + Crystal Coin + Starshine Skullcap + Moonvine Bracelet swapped in for Nature summons), you are left needing 3F/2A/3E/3S/2N/2D. At a Dominion of 5, you are left with 218 points, enough for 5 scales. Putting 3 of those into Magic, leaves you with a pretty hampered economy. Misfortune is bad because of poor PD, and great national heroes.
Ultimately, just to get a slightly better setup, I felt forced to take the Enchantress (starts with A/E/S in CBM), which allowed me to push a couple of paths to 4 to at least get a little bonus to the Stargazers and give her more late game utility herself (other than summons botch), and ended up with 1Sloth/3Luck/3Magic. While I'm doing well enough against the AI (Ermor NOT included), the small number of real troops, the slow research, and the poor income would make the nation a sitting duck in any kind of MP setup.
I'd make 3 suggestions to rectify this. First, add 1 level to the leader/mages present in the game. This will boost research accordingly, as well as compensate for the fact that you lack the ability to use most boosters (and pay full price for everything, since no one can hold a hammer). The other option there that might help a little, would be to add a random path to each instead, so you can get a little bit of cross-path access. Second, reduce the cross-path requirements for the summons somewhat - so that you are not essentially forced to have 1 caster responsible for summoning all of them. And third, perhaps give them some sort of recruitable slave race that is a smaller size, to at least give them some sort of chaff that they can use in larger battles (no Wyrmlings don't count, they are as bad as Militia). Make it something that flies, of course, like Draconians or something - something that is size 3 or less.
Then perhaps balance this a bit with slight cost increases to their current units, or a small reduction in power of the "younger" dragons.
I haven't gotten to the actual late game yet, so those are my impressions so far. I'll probably do a little more tonight, it's fun taking over the world with dragons. :p
HoneyBadger
October 17th, 2008, 01:13 AM
With JimMorrison's good advice in mind, I'd almost consider suggesting that you set this Nation up in such a way that a player has to focus on a specific "path", with it. I don't mean magic paths, but rather a path of progression, where you'd set up a Dragon Pretender with 1 or 2 magic paths, which would allow you to utilize *some* of the summons and abilities of the Nation, but not all of them.
You'd have to, with each game, pick and choose your goals, and ways to power. This would have the side benefits both of making them more MP viable, since it would make them immanently more unpredictable and flexible, and-by forcing the successful player to narrow his/her focus, increasing the replayability and fun of the mod Nation.
That, ofcourse, would require a huge amount of work, and major changes/extensions to the mod, which is why I'm not seriously suggesting such a thing, but it's a technique which would seem to fit well with such a powerful, diverse, and unpredictable Nation.
To give you an example, it's something I'm working on incorporating into my 'Dis' mod, which has a Nation capable of flourishing through either the Blood, Conjuration, or Construction summons, but which will grant power slowly in each particular path, so there's a lot of different ways you can play the Nation, but no great way to do every single thing the Nation can do, in each and every game.
"Dis" being the root of the word "discord", it seemed appropriate.
Aezeal
October 17th, 2008, 07:03 AM
Jim & Honey
On your suggestion for another type of unit: there will be no draconians, there are just dragons in this dragon nation. It's either militia like wyrmlings or the steeldragons etc :D If needed I could weakend the bone biter dragon a bit but I'm not sure what would be the ebst way. If he's good then I might need to give him a higher resource cost though that seems the best way to limit his usefullness. I might give the wyrmling a lil better att and def value if they are that bad, that might be the best way to get some chaff that isn't too weak to be used :D
I agree with Honey that wanting to have all summons might be wanting a bit too much, some focus would indeed be better. I'm not about to change the mod that much but if you just focus on 3 paths and what your basic mages already have you can get pretty far. he idea was that you'd need to invest a lil to get mages to cast the summons. I'm pretty sure the summons will be worth it though. I also don't think you'll need use all summons since if you have acces to 1-2 of the elders and ancients that will be pretty much enough for a lot of purposes :D
I already had relatively low path needs and relatively low research levels for most of the summons since I knew research wasn't the strongest point of the nation. I was also under the impression that except for the elder wyrms the cross path requirements where not that high. I kinda aimed on it so that most summons should be cast with just 1-2 boosters or empowerments. (am I very much off the path here?) For the most powerfull summons I'd guess you'd either need your pretender or one of the lower level summons to cast it. PS it is such a problem to have one caster empowerd/boosted to cast a certain spell?
The cap only stargazer is sacred so he's a decent researcher IMHO but maybe I should give him a lil research bonus though that sort of makes it very obvious and pretty much the only choice. (but it would fit thematically so it's not that much of a problem, to be honest in my zeal not to overpower the nation (which seems to have worked I nearly gave all dragons a research malus :D, I guess I'll forget about that) I think the nation can do with less research than most since you have higher strenght and HP units and need buffs less, and can take the combats spells better when used against you, also they can deal damage pretty nicely so you'll need less combat spells your self. In just researching in conjuration and evocation gives you pretty good stuff to use I'd say.
There are a few dragon with a magicbonus (for example our stargazer) though so empowering them once would give a relatively high result (at least that is the intention I've not tested it yet.)
I was thinking about giving all commanders and higher magic boost 1 (the highest have magic boost 2)
If it still doesn't work out I might give a random path (a 25% chance I think) to the commanders but since there are a few levels of dragons above them and I want those to be clearly better I don't want to boost to much so the summons won't be worth it.
jimkehn
October 17th, 2008, 10:20 PM
Hmmmm.....I enabled the mod, but when I go to choose the nation it doesn't show up????????
Aezeal
October 18th, 2008, 05:24 AM
ehm I dunno it seems to work for the other and for me.
it's a LA nation and it's way down on the list, depending on other stuff you have going you might need to scroll down a bit (sometimes not all nations show directly) can't really think of more, you didn't play a turn in another game before starting this, that would disable the mod again
Aezeal
October 18th, 2008, 05:47 AM
hmmm after those last changes we've been talkign about have been put in I still have a pretty hard time seeing this as a weak nation. I also gave ALL dragons a magic boost to show the magic in their blood (I did lower magic paths accordingly though so they don't start as more powerfull mages). That does mean the prophets are H4 now and the stargazers H2.
I didn't want that to happen, I specifically used boost 51 and 52 just to boost elemental and sorcery thinking holy magic wouldn't be in it.. I think I'll mod it out again before I release the update to yo all.
Some more last moment changes I need to put in
I've noticed and am changing:
the graph for the stargazer had a shadow that wasn't good
Aezeal
October 28th, 2008, 10:19 PM
OK there are a decent number of downloads now so if those who've played could give more feedback then I'll change things a bit more.. can't believe the nation as is is balanced enough for SP and MP
konming
October 29th, 2008, 02:13 PM
This nation certainly does not resemble anything close to be balanced. And why should a dragon nation be balanced anyway? :)
One thing, in addition to raise recruit prices, is to have a gold cost on all summons. They will not cost gold to summon, but they will cost upkeep. So an ancient dragon can cost over 200 (3000 gold cost) to maintain. Another thing, more powerful dragon can devour gems. (I do not know how to do it though)
konming
October 29th, 2008, 02:25 PM
I do not understand the recruit mages "expensive" part. Compare to Kohen Gabol, which is 2B+2.1Random and cost 400 gold and capital only, these dragon mages are steals.
As for summons, Yakasha is widely considered one of the more worthwhile national summons, and cost 25 gems. Now most of the powerful dragon summons are also 25 gems? The most expensive one 45 gems?
If balance was thought about in this mod nation, it is certainly hard to observe. I doubt anything less than an overhaul will see it used in MP.:)
But it is a great SP Mod and I really like to stomp over all the poor AIs. And the graphics, esp. the pretender ones, are just fantastic, even better than the originals. ;)
Aezeal
October 29th, 2008, 09:29 PM
Hmmm I'll think about it I'm not sure I agree wit heverything you say though...
-I think all summons already have some gold cost (it's not that high since most regular summons already don't have upkeep so everything I added would already be a disadvantage and I didn't want to over do it.)
-I think the dragon are pretty decent summons and I think the ancient ones might be better than the yakasha, also there are a some high end summons that are more expensive than 25 and 45 gems so just comparing them to the most powerfull/ cost effienct one might not be the best way to look at balance.
- the same goes for the dragon mages. This nation can't recruit any cheap mage or leader so that has to be taken into the equation but for the rest I think that just comparing them to one mage isn't the best way to go about judging them. Niefel Jarls are 500 gc but are much better with full slots and cold aura, lots of HP too, much more magic and randoms and being sacred. Saying the dragon should be more than 400gc would IMHO be really overdoing it. THey might need a lil cost increase though.
Also other say the nation seems weakish and slow to start.. so I wonder what others think about it.
konming
October 29th, 2008, 11:40 PM
First, I would like to clarify that I like the mod and especially those fantastic graphics.
Nonetheless, I find it almost futile to balance a dragon nation against others. Dragons are physically and magically powerful, how do you balance dragons with human?
And just like pretty much all mods, this mods, while great, went overboard with super powerful units and summons.
Case in point:
Vine dragon: conj 6, 25 nature gems. 2E5N?! How many mages, summoned and recruitable combined, have 5N? Now let's look at its other attributes. 125HP, 20 prot, 17 MR, 17 MRL, 15 atk/def, 13 prec, 3/20 move. Dark vision 50, heal, fly, regen, fear+2, and holy among other things.
Even without any magic, I would easily pay 25 gems for such an SC out of the box. Lack body and hand is hardly a problem as you have 20 nature protection and regen as well as fear.
Comparing to Yakasha, also at 25 nature gems, you get a puny mage 3E1N+110%WESN. And it has 28 HP, 4 prot and other uninspiring attributes.
Now tell me how this thing even remotely resemble balance?
And the most expensive summon is 45 gems, which single summon is above 45?
As for start, I have not fully tested it, but those admantine claw dragon surely can handle many indies. Worst case, you take an awake SC pretender. There should be no problem expanding.
konming
October 29th, 2008, 11:51 PM
As for mage expense, you get a research 6 mage for 200 gold. Even not considering how powerful he is physically and all the added bonus abilities, this is a pretty decent price. Man has a research 6 mage for 250 gold. Arco's is 240 (sacred), Ulm does not have research 6 and has research 5 for 160. You get the picture.
Aezeal
October 30th, 2008, 01:30 AM
Let me first clarify that all suggestions are very much apreciated and wanted.
I actually was thinking you meant the dragon summons where to expensive (when you where talking about the 45 gems ones in compared to the "best summon) :D I agree they are pretty powerfull and might need to be more expensive..
I can't really check the game so I don't know which recruitable dragon has which research score so I'll have to get back on that unless you can tell me more about it. I would also like to mention the fact someone else told me a page back that their research is slow to get of the ground and that it's also been said that the nation would be to weak for MP.
The idea IS to make a MP balanced nation though (I'd love them to be between the 3th strongest nation from the top and the bottom) yes they are dragon and should be very strong, but most of them die before they are old so you are using mostly younger and weaker ones (as in my explanation) the real powerhouses are the summons as you have seen.
The whole idea of dragon is to have a nation with lots of thuggish/sc chassis and all flying, older ones resistances and fear etc etc. If the vie dragon is too powerfull I might need to tone his magic down a bit (but 7 combined magic isn't that rare is it, no randoms to increase his usefull ness etc.. ps I also think you forgot his best attribute I think he also has a sort of vineshield effect at least that was the intention though I've not played with this one yet.) Also most of the summons are not summonable out of the box for the mages so that makes them harder to reach and thus an investment is needed to get them.
Stavis_L
October 30th, 2008, 08:42 AM
And the most expensive summon is 45 gems, which single summon is above 45?
Look at the Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath national summon series for some expensive (but uber) summons.
Not sure what the angelic summons that Marignon gets cost.
Keep in mind, however, that straight gem cost alone isn't the only factor; the opportunity cost to acquire/hoard those gems and provide a suitable caster must be factored in as well.
If the vie dragon is too powerfull I might need to tone his magic down a bit (but 7 combined magic isn't that rare is it, no randoms to increase his usefull ness etc..
Well, having some magical diversity might help in some regards, but low level diversity in nature is especially common (available via *tons* of independent shamans, enchantresses, witches, etc.) However, a high single path nature score (or any path, really) is extremely uncommon, and immediately opens up lots of rituals that normally require either the pretender, lots of bootstrapping, or empowerment.
I haven't really looked at your mod to see what the casting path requirements to get this summon are, however; for instance, if it already costs 5 nature to summon this guy, some of the above is kind of moot (just have the summoner cast the ritual, etc.)
WRT summonable dragon supercombatants, might want to compare costs vs. the Tarrasque and Iron Dragon (possibly w/GOR cost factored in) and then increase from there because of additional features.
BTW, cool sprites Aezeal :-)
Aezeal
October 30th, 2008, 10:02 PM
Hey Stavis, thansk for the comments, ifyou could play the mod and give more feedback that would be great.
Well I think the summon costs are not that high maybe but as you said the nation can't cast most of these summons without boosters etc and they have no handslots for those boosters so IMHO you'll often need to either invest in the pretender or in empowerment.
I think it's really hard to balance things like this just based on the numbers that are seen which is why I'd love to get more feedback of pplz who actually played it a bit in SP.. and of those who did I get mixed feedback: some say the nation is weak, others overpowered.... kind of hard to change much based on that :D. I guess I might lower the vinedragons nature with 1 and maybe increase summon cost a bit.
PS the sprites aren't mine... ... ... but they are in my mod and that is all that counts in the end :D
Gregstrom
November 2nd, 2008, 05:10 PM
Quick bug report:
Summon Death Wraith Dragon is summoning unit 3022 (Wave Dragon) rather than unit 3027.
Nice mod, but I think that all these thug/battle mages summonable at 25 gems each might be a little high on the power scale.
As regards access to the summons: at Con 6, you can empower one of your S2 dragons once each in E and S, then you can build rings of sorc/wiz. They let you get Wave Dragons, and therefore Storm Dragons. The Ivy Dragon pretender (chassis of choice, surely), if you build him as N4D4 (cheap, and regen is a useful bless), lets you get Vine and Death Wraith summons. It seems you can get Magma Dragons as heroes if you take a luck scale, and they can summon more of the same.
The top end are definitely tougher to get, though.
Aezeal
November 2nd, 2008, 06:21 PM
hmm to be honest empowering isn't that hard since once you have the first summons they can get you the most powerfulls with about one empowerment I think.
I'm going to up the cost of all summons a bit in addition to all changes I wanted to do before and then I hope it's balanced..
I don't mind the higher summons to be a bit hard to reach since they are pretty powerfull anyway... for most situations they are probably a bit overkill anyway :D
you can get 3 of the first "level" of summons as multihero's
This nation can basicly use a good bless for the endgame summons but will have a harder early game then since they'll need good scales too (prod and order) and luck can be very usefull with these relatively powerfull hero's
Aezeal
November 2nd, 2008, 11:32 PM
new version is up
Gregstrom
November 3rd, 2008, 03:09 AM
As far as empowering goes, the summons I don't think need any more empowerment than 1S and 1E for one of your Stargazer Dragons.
Rings of Sorc/Wiz do the rest. For Wave Dragons it's even cheaper - you just make a Water Bracelet and your Ice Dragons can summon it straight off. I think it's not unfair to assume that you'd normally have Con 6 by the time you start looking at mid-high level summons. For the top tier, I don't think you need any empowers - if I read things correctly and the Gold Dragon has F4S1, then a RoW does the read. The Astral Dragon is an easy summon for your empowered Stargazer - no further preparation needed there either.
I only see getting a Gold Dragon as a potential sticking point, as I think you'd need to spend another 30 gems empowering your Starshine Dragon to E2.
In race design I don't think you need too much production scale, really. With the cost of units, gold is a more limiting factor in the early game. Later on, you can always buy extra forts to increase unit output.
I'd rate order and luck highly, though, for the reasons you gave.
Looking at pretender design, the Ivy Dragon pretender seems a cut above the rest. New paths cost 20 points instead of 40-50, and it starts with Nature so you can easily get a cheap N4 bless your sacred summons will love.
Aezeal
November 3rd, 2008, 11:07 PM
Greg, last update pretenders where worsened a bit too... and they summons got more expensive..
Could you maybe try the latest version (only 1 day old I'll admit) and see if you find it balanced?
Gregstrom
November 4th, 2008, 04:01 AM
I've tried downloading from the top post, but it looks just like the old version. Am I doing something wrong?
Aezeal
November 4th, 2008, 08:49 AM
hmm well not that much is changed.. mostly just the summon costs and a few small adjustments... the one in that post IS the new one though.
What more should I change about it, what do you want to look differently from the old one?
Gregstrom
November 4th, 2008, 07:47 PM
I've solved my problem - it was something to do with the way Dom3 handles updating mod files, I think.
The new costs on the summons are rather more fair I think. You can't just spam out Magma Dragons as excellent battle mages (and/or respectable thugs) to nearly the same extent as before. The other dragons of the tier will be pretty rare summons at 40 gems each.
The recosting on the pretender choices hasn't changed my preference. The advantage of the Ivy Dragon chassis is that 1: it has nature, which is a natural bless choice, and 2: it pays less for additional paths than the other two chassis that have magical paths. It makes it a more effective choice than the rest, unless you want a magicless thug for some reason.
If the three dragons with magic all paid 40 for extra paths, I'd be more inclined to choose between them according to what sort of bless/summons I wanted to use. With the Ivy dragon being cheaper, it becomes the default choice.
Aezeal
November 4th, 2008, 09:59 PM
hmmm might change that later.. I wanted the ivy dragon to be somewhat more of a rainbow mage since it's the only one of it's tier with 2 paths.. the adamantine was more meant as a SC and the other in between... due to them all being dragon it might mean they can all be used as decent enough SC so the magic is much more important.
If you'd want to bless nature would be the prime choice, maybe with water if you'd overdo it :D, but since blesses are mostly for single summons later in the game it's probably better to go scales.. both paths would be viable though which was my intention.. I just usually prefer to play on the early game more than set up for late game and hope to reach it through a difficult early game
Gregstrom
November 5th, 2008, 12:38 PM
hmmm might change that later.. I wanted the ivy dragon to be somewhat more of a rainbow mage since it's the only one of it's tier with 2 paths.. the adamantine was more meant as a SC and the other in between... due to them all being dragon it might mean they can all be used as decent enough SC so the magic is much more important.
I see them all as being strong thugs. They aren't quite SC material because they don't have full slots, and although the Adamantine Dragon is pretty nifty in a fight he doesn't have the Wyrm's 16 hp of regen. I wouldn't trust him to do as good a job as a Wyrm because of that.
The other dragons worried me more in combat, although it's possible the Ivy Dragon could do quite well with its poison aura and spikes, as well as better Fear if it adds a couple of levels of Death and of course the potential to cast Personal Regeneration.
If you'd want to bless nature would be the prime choice, maybe with water if you'd overdo it :D, but since blesses are mostly for single summons later in the game it's probably better to go scales.. both paths would be viable though which was my intention.. I just usually prefer to play on the early game more than set up for late game and hope to reach it through a difficult early game
That was another plus point for the Ivy Dragon - a N4 bless was all of 48 points, and probably worth as much overall as an extra scale.
Why not add a Stargazer Avatar chassis for a rainbow mage choice? Add some flavour text about it having newly attained Stargazer form, reduce its stats a little from standard maybe, and have a 20 point new path cost. Leave the other magical dragons at 40 points for a new path and I think the range of choices would be more varied.
Another small question: How come fire breath has no AoE? At the moment I'm ignoring the option of Fire orders for the red dragons because it seems less effective than either melee or spellcasting. It may have good AP damage, but the accuracy isn't great and shields will stop it handily. I guess it doesn't shout out 'Dragonfire!!!' to me.
Aezeal
November 5th, 2008, 01:07 PM
#newweapon 753
#name "Fire Breath"
#dmg 15
#nostr
#att 0
#def 0
#AoE 4
#range 30
#ammo 15
#armorpiercing
#fire
#sound 16
#explspr 10113
#flyspr 133 4
#bonus
#magic
#end
it should have an AOE 4, I copied it directly out of the mod...
Gregstrom
November 5th, 2008, 04:28 PM
Hmm. It didn't give an AoE in the fire breath description, as it does for the vanilla dragon pretender. I therefore assumed it had no AoE and ignored it. I spy some testing coming along.
Hmm... I guess I could have posted this before testing. However, I can report that they have no AoE. Firing against a squad of militia, even direct hits against a full square damaged one unit at most. Several times no damage at all was dealt, implying that the fire bolt was parried by shields.
Gregstrom
November 5th, 2008, 04:40 PM
Extra note:
After some further testing and comparison with other mods, I have your answer.
rather than '#AoE 4', you need to be typing '#aoe4'. I'm not certain the space absolutely has to be left out (it seems to work either way), but I am certain that case sensitivity is an issue.
Gregstrom
November 5th, 2008, 05:12 PM
Okay, I've tested with the correct AoE breath weapon. The red dragons are now 250 gold thugs who can clear nearly any indie province (including barbarians and heavy cavalry) without breaking a sweat.
I suspect this may be considered overpowered. AoE 4 may be okay for the Magma Dragons and upwards, as they're costly summons. For a non-capital recruit it's probably a little too much. Perhaps a different weapon for the lower-end dragons (and perhaps pretender, unless you like the fire dragon pretender as an early SC) with either AoE 1-2 or less damage?
Edit: Heh - I'm finding this an entertaining use of spare time. It brings back the 3years I spent doing this as a paying job.
Aezeal
November 5th, 2008, 06:19 PM
hmm case sensitivity.. never heard that before in the mods... I'm pretty sure it's not the space though. I put a space after every other command (and it's like that in the manual too) so case could be it.
I'll have to admit that clearing 4 tiles of indies without breaking a sweat might indeed be a bit too strong. I know catoblepas have an aoe 5 attack but mot much have that good attacks... maybe I' should lower damage a bit too
nice you are enjoying it since I love to get feedback :D once you are done with this the whole dom3k mod is a much bigger project (bothfor me and you if you decide to go test it :D)
Gregstrom
November 6th, 2008, 04:39 AM
I'll have to admit that clearing 4 tiles of indies without breaking a sweat might indeed be a bit too strong. I know catoblepas have an aoe 5 attack but mot much have that good attacks... maybe I' should lower damage a bit too
Well, Catoblepas have AN damage but it's lower and can be resisted by MR IIRC. Also, they're a late-game summon rather than a turn 1 recruitable. That makes a bit of a difference to balance considerations.
The thing with the dragons was that in testing I could just set them on Fire Closest and send them out to fight, not even needing to change their battlefield position. Being able to crush the traditional thug-killers such as Heavy Cavalry and Berbarians from that sort of dumb setup seemed rather much.
Aezeal
November 6th, 2008, 01:04 PM
you are right of course so as I said I'll change it :D
Aezeal
November 8th, 2008, 02:00 PM
2 days NO post in the whole forum?? can't be if nothing else is interesting about all mods in here I'll jut ask for more feedback again.
llamabeast
November 9th, 2008, 01:37 PM
Weekends are very quiet, I've noticed. I always find it a bit surprising.
As for me I've been too busy beating my head against the LlamaServer and whimpering to do anything moddy.
Loren
November 9th, 2008, 03:52 PM
3 games so far against the AI:
#1: I got rush by Ermor. While I could deal with him I found myself too far behind in the expansion and threw in the towel.
#2: Strange--everyone declared war on me on turn #1. Perhaps a relic of the previous game not cleared out of memory??? Again, I found myself right next to Ermor. He didn't go for me right away but he spreads like cancer. Most of my territory was taken from Ermor and not all that productive, I wasn't in position to deal with the two others that came at my capital from the opposite direction.
#3: Finally, I didn't start next to Ermor! (I've always been weak at the initial expansion in 4x games.) It turns out I was hemming in Caelum and Ulm, they both went to war. My dragons made quick work of them. On the other side was R'yleh, I went on a temple-building rampage to keep their insanity at bay. (I *HATE* their dominion!) At this point I was in the SE corner and had a mostly water border with Atlantis expanding through the water. Someone was to the north, I forget who, this was peaceful. My contact with R'yleh was on a narrow front to the NW, there was a little empire to the W and Atlantis was on land to the SW.
I was doing ok in the research department but the lack of boosters hurt--I didn't have the gems to blow on empowerment and needed cauldrons to feed those hungry dragons. My imprisoned oracle finally showed up (yeah, you suggest dragon pretenders--this race doesn't need an awake SC, I wanted the points for scales.) and I had less need of astral so I empowered him to 5 to make a ring of sorcery so I could forge cauldrons. No sooner had I done this than a plague dragon showed up in my capital--he can make them without boosters.
Thus the game sort of settled down. I was making army groups with 36 bone biters, the guy in charge had a wineskin and cauldron, this grouping need not worry about supply.
I finally push my dominion across the last territory of the little empire to the west. (Why he was still alive I don't know, he must have had a candle somewhere. The game needs to tell us *WHOSE* dominion is in a province, not just friendly/enemy! This is especially important when it's R'yleh dominion!) I have enough groups available that I pounce on every province he has. Two turns later he's gone.
Atlantis decides to get frisky. Next turn half is land is gone, two more turns and he only has a couple of land provinces left--then he pops. (The fact that I had leapfrogged over some of his territory and claimed a few indies and put temples on them probably helped kill him off this way.)
At this point I still have the peaceful contact to the north and war with R'yleh, no other neighbors. My temples are pushing his dominion back, every province that goes white I take. This is going easy but I don't really want to open a new front yet.
My neighbor to the north pops. I send in my dragons and claim 90% of the land and what do I find but Ermor. Strangely enough he's not the big cancer he usually is. He picks a fight anyway, though. I'm producing about one new group per month at this point and I send each group after him. I'm sort of surrounding Bogarus in this and he pops, also. Soon after I finish claiming that territory I finish off Ermor.
Jomon decides to come after me at this point despite being a bit player. This war takes longer because I don't know what black candles are his and what belong to R'yleh.
At this point I have driven R'yleh off the land and have quite a few candles in his water although I don't attempt to take the water. I have up Gift of Health and just put up Gift of Nature's Bounty and I'm summoning the big guys in the capital. (I have not cast a single battlefield spell, nor made any equipment beyond food. I decide I can squander gems to get to the good guys.) My neighbors are R'yleh, Arco (peaceful), C'tis (peaceful) and a little empire in the NE corner. I decide to munch it. I take all the provinces not being seiged by C'tis and get:
Nagot gick fel!
myloadmalloc: can't open ./mods/./dominions 3000/3020_Dragon_Of_Fate_1.tga.
I assume this is a summoning gone wrong.
Comments:
1) I have a problem with the PD. It's got a powerful commander with wimpy units. This results in routs when it could win, making it weaker than the force mix would say.
2) I think the combat power is too great. Other than those bad starts it's been basically a cakewalk. I have yet to lose a commander other than to deliberate suicide. (I was getting rid of a few R'yleh had messed up.) I have had only two forces rout, both when facing pretenders--and in one of those I won anyway.
3) The slot limits make the magic on the commanders less useful than their apparent ability would say and it feels too weak given the theme.
4) The vine dragon shares an image with the non-magic commander.
5) I'm not sure what's up with the ghost dragon assassination. Never once did it actually assassinate anyone, although it's possible this was just bad luck and there weren't any commanders there to hit.
What I would do:
1) Increase the cost of at least the bone biters.
2) Do something to improve the dragon's magic a bit. Perhaps this should take the form of race-specific boosters that fit in misc slots. (Can you do race-specific magic items?)
3) What would be really interesting if it can be done is a spell "Age Dragon". Each dragon would have a set of forms (not the usual Dominion's multiple forms, though) that it would age through. Cast the spell on a dragon and you get one of the next age. (I'm thinking it would really get rid of the old one and make a new one of the new type.) Perhaps this should only be self-targeted, although this would require having multiple spells. This would replace the summons.
4) I'm not sure what to do with the PD.
Aezeal
November 9th, 2008, 04:49 PM
Hmm a thing I need to know first: did you use the latest version (if not then the bonebiter have gotten a higher price already)
1. I don't think I want to increase the price that much if they are still way to strong I'll start with taking away the armourpiercing of their claws, leaving just armour piercing bit. Maybe lower attack skill and hp a bit too.
2. I don't think race specific boosters can be done, actually atm I can't even make regular boosters unless I change and existing one I think.
I was thinking they had pretty decen combat magic skill. 3 W, 3 F, 3 E should give some nice options really. Increasing this might be overdoing it a bit. Since combat is so powerfull it might be good to leave magic relatively weaker (might make for a decent AI nation too)
3. Are they really that weak? they should be pretty well usabale for quite some situations. There are still a lot of way of kitting them out that will really help them and improve them (and you have acces to a lot of items)
4. I'll look into that sprite thing (also the dragon of fate thing, though if ou didn't summon him ti woudl be strange since it should be a restricted spell)
5. but you could start an assasination fight right?
Gregstrom
November 9th, 2008, 05:24 PM
I think the booster situation isn't dreadful, but you really feel a need for astral in order to make rings. You wouldn't want to use boosters in combat, for sure (except water bracelets, natch).
Combat magic is pretty good off these guys, I'd say. Falling Frost/Fires would probably be a staple, and E3 lets you cast a world of support spells. You'd need either summons or costly boosters to use late game support magic, I guess.
It's hard to tell outside an MP game, but I feel like I'm paying quite a bit for RPs.
Loren
November 9th, 2008, 06:49 PM
Hmm a thing I need to know first: did you use the latest version (if not then the bonebiter have gotten a higher price already)
1. I don't think I want to increase the price that much if they are still way to strong I'll start with taking away the armourpiercing of their claws, leaving just armour piercing bit. Maybe lower attack skill and hp a bit too.
As it stands they devastate everything they've come up against.
2. I don't think race specific boosters can be done, actually atm I can't even make regular boosters unless I change and existing one I think.
I was thinking they had pretty decen combat magic skill. 3 W, 3 F, 3 E should give some nice options really. Increasing this might be overdoing it a bit. Since combat is so powerfull it might be good to leave magic relatively weaker (might make for a decent AI nation too)
They are decent combat mages as it is--that part is fine. The problem comes in the lab, boosting is so hard.
3. Are they really that weak? they should be pretty well usabale for quite some situations. There are still a lot of way of kitting them out that will really help them and improve them (and you have acces to a lot of items)
They are reasonable on the battlefield, they stink in the lab--something that feels wrong for a race of dragons.
4. I'll look into that sprite thing (also the dragon of fate thing, though if ou didn't summon him ti woudl be strange since it should be a restricted spell)
I did summon him. He apparently showed up, the sprite didn't. The game is now unplayable.
5. but you could start an assasination fight right?
Nothing ever happened. Either something is broken or there never was a commander in the province. I wish there was a message for that situation!
Loren
November 9th, 2008, 06:54 PM
I just had a thought on race-specific boosters. I don't know if this can be done or not:
Could they be made summonable? Obviously, this would make the price not affected by things which alter forging but the dragons can't wield hammers anyway.
I'm picturing a spell whose effect is to deliver the item to the lab--think wishing for gems or blood slaves.
The spell could be made race specific.
Loren
November 10th, 2008, 12:54 AM
One more thing I forgot: The mod is missing a banner.
Aezeal
November 10th, 2008, 06:19 AM
hehe banners never are high on my priority list I'll admit but I'll see what I can do :D
back to some of your points:
I think I had a few assasination fights in the past with them so I'm pretty sure that should work
I'll correct the sprite thing
I'm not quite sure I agree that dragons not being good in the lab is so unfitting :D and if you empower them in a new path they have a magic boost so that opens op a lot of options for selective boosting. (the fact you have so much options for the gems was why I had the summon costs lower before. Maybe that should be altered a bit again) (I still can't mod new boosters, that summoning thing isn't possible either i think)
I assume your last reply mean you did have the latest version so I'll have to weaken the bone biters... 3 AP attacks on a recruitable with high prot and HP probably is a bit too much.. I'll need to cut out one attack.
I guess I'll accomodate the pretenders complaints too and create somesort of immmobile dragon statue (will probably mean the others will never be used sadly.. maybe I should use those sprites for other dragons then)
Gregstrom
November 10th, 2008, 08:26 AM
If you're going for an immobile pretender, an egg could be appropriate.
Loren
November 10th, 2008, 12:18 PM
hehe banners never are high on my priority list I'll admit but I'll see what I can do :D
back to some of your points:
I think I had a few assasination fights in the past with them so I'm pretty sure that should work
Yeah, they're working this game. It must have been simply bad luck.
I'm not quite sure I agree that dragons not being good in the lab is so unfitting :D
Seems wrong for a race named "Magic Incarnate".
gain) (I still can't mod new boosters, that summoning thing isn't possible either i think)
What about an age dragon spell? Is that possible?
I assume your last reply mean you did have the latest version so I'll have to weaken the bone biters... 3 AP attacks on a recruitable with high prot and HP probably is a bit too much.. I'll need to cut out one attack.
I think it's the latest.
I guess I'll accomodate the pretenders complaints too and create somesort of immmobile dragon statue (will probably mean the others will never be used sadly.. maybe I should use those sprites for other dragons then)
Yeah, a SC pretender is crazy for this race.
I've got another game going, this time vs 10 difficult AI's on Glory of the Gods. I decided I had been not aggressive enough about expansion and decided to be more so:
End of year 1: I have 21 provinces and should have 23 except I lost two to random events.
End of year 2: I have 94.
End of year 3: About 120 provinces, I didn't count. Arco is reduced to only his fortress which I am sieging. I'm not planning to go in, there's a tough pretender in there. I have to push dominion anyway as R'yleh is in the game, I'll just wait for him to pop. I'm harrying Jotun to keep him on his side of the mountains. I'm at peace with a couple of empires and devoting my effort to smashing Ermor as fast as I can so his dominion doesn't eat the lands too badly. The dragons don't fare nearly as well against Ermor as against the other races, I've had half a dozen routs already.
Aezeal
November 10th, 2008, 01:42 PM
Seems wrong for a race named "Magic Incarnate".
Magic incarnate refers to them all having a magic boost for all magic (since they per definition have above avarage (and that is putting it mildly) stats they can't also have above average magic power since that would be overpowering them by definition.)
Age dragon spell can't be done I fear.
OK your example makes it clear that this race can be used in ways that shows they are overpowered. Can you tell me exactly what you did (I'm guessing it's mainly those bonebiters but if I'm going to fix it (prolly work for the weekend) then I'd like to know all of it.
Loren
November 10th, 2008, 07:13 PM
Seems wrong for a race named "Magic Incarnate".
Magic incarnate refers to them all having a magic boost for all magic (since they per definition have above avarage (and that is putting it mildly) stats they can't also have above average magic power since that would be overpowering them by definition.)
Age dragon spell can't be done I fear.
OK your example makes it clear that this race can be used in ways that shows they are overpowered. Can you tell me exactly what you did (I'm guessing it's mainly those bonebiters but if I'm going to fix it (prolly work for the weekend) then I'd like to know all of it.
Every couple of turns I send out an Adamantine Claw Dragon with a couple of turns of bonebiter recruits. This group will almost never lose anyone to an indie. Since it's got a flight move of 3 it's very good at getting to the battle.
I initially tried using some ghost dragons to clear provinces but it's a lot of micromanagement. I'd do it in MP but it's not worth it against the AI.
Next game I'm going to try it with a single turn of recruits.
Note that this has left me way behind on research (I have only two mages at this point, my pretender and a plague dragon that happened by) but so what? In my previous game I didn't need the magic in the first place.
It's summer of 5, Ermor is also sieged and my armies are munching up Utgard. At this point I'm deploying them with 40 bonebiters. I've got 5 castles turning them out, there about 20 such groups out there, 10 of which are smashing Utgard. I have one group in every border province with Abysia, the only other force I'm at war with.
Loren
November 11th, 2008, 01:11 AM
Followup to the previous message:
It's year 10. 3 enemies remain. Two are water empires, the third is somewhere behind Atlantis. As I utterly neglected magic I have no way to reach it or even see it. I also have no way to enter the water since I have only a few hundred points of research total.
I'm pushing multiple candles per turn into both R'yleh and Atlantis and I have enough bonebiters to take on everything they have without difficulty. The conclusion is apparent, no point in sitting there pressing End Turn.
Next game I'm taking the difficulty up another notch.
rdonj
November 11th, 2008, 01:52 AM
Actually you do have a way into the water, ice plate dragons are amphibious.
Speaking of which, I think they might want to get a #watershape, because at the moment they fly when underwater, which can be a little strange when you have a bunch of them rise up out of the ocean and fly several provinces away. It would also be nice if you had some recruitable amphibious troops, or maybe recruitables that you can only but underwater. Something like a sea serpent?
I agree with loren that the PD should probably be changed. Partly because there really is no point in ever buying more than 1 point of pd... the wyrmlings are just too much cannon fodder, basically they just make the commander flee. It also seems unthematic for dragons to have their young defend against attacks. It would make more sense if the pd was sort of there to guard the wyrmlings... you could keep wyrmlings in there but there should be something meaner to discourage you from killing them.
If you nerf the bonebiters a lot you should take a close look at steel dragons too, they're not too much worse and much more massable. And consider giving poison ivy dragons a boost to their supply bonus so it's easier to fight ermor :angel
The dragons are definitely overpowered in their present state though. I'm playing a game right now with all mighty AIs, and I'm bordered by ermor, gath, and r'lyeh. I've been fighting them for 15+ turns (it is turn 37), the war is annoying because I have to attack into their territory, then fly back out, then in, etc because of supplies. So it's not really going anywhere, and I keep thinking to myself I should just attack gath to get more money to kill ermor with, because I've been stuck with approximately the same amount of territory/money I had at the start of the war due to their evil dominion. They are actually the first nation I've fought able to kill my bonebiters in any significant number, but the best they can do is keep my numbers basically flat, and I am recruiting only ~10 dragons a turn due to upkeep. If I was not working so hard at research I could pull out all my poison ivy dragons and actually make some progress against them, but I really want to do a lot of research in this game and try to get access to the stronger dragons.
Aezeal
November 11th, 2008, 10:47 AM
well maybe the supplies being a problem is a nice way to keep it balanced a bit.
I think I'll start with removing one attack from the bonebiters one way or another. Then I'll increase cost of the steel dragons a bit (maybe 5 more gc and rec).
I'll change the PD a bit too, less wyrmlings and more steel dragons I'm thinking.
Loren
November 11th, 2008, 02:33 PM
Actually you do have a way into the water, ice plate dragons are amphibious.
I don't think I could have afforded that route anyway, most of my income was going to supporting the vast number of bonebiters I had out there.
By the time I amassed enough it would have been moot as I would have a dominion kill.
I agree with loren that the PD should probably be changed. Partly because there really is no point in ever buying more than 1 point of pd... the wyrmlings are just too much cannon fodder, basically they just make the commander flee. It also seems unthematic for dragons to have their young defend against attacks. It would make more sense if the pd was sort of there to guard the wyrmlings... you could keep wyrmlings in there but there should be something meaner to discourage you from killing them.
Actually quite high PD is still somewhat useful. In that game I put 50 in the stretch where I bordered R'yleh because he kept casting that global that sends the undead fleet around. At that level it packs quite a bit of power. In the range of normal PD levels, though, I would only do 1 point.
If you nerf the bonebiters a lot you should take a close look at steel dragons too, they're not too much worse and much more massable. And consider giving poison ivy dragons a boost to their supply bonus so it's easier to fight ermor :angel
I never even looked that much at the steel ones, I tend to favor strong units (in any game) and have a weakness about overlooking useful weaker ones.
The dragons are definitely overpowered in their present state though. I'm playing a game right now with all mighty AIs, and I'm bordered by ermor, gath, and r'lyeh.
Ermor seems to be their weakness. Again and again in that game I watched them rout from armies they could easily defeat otherwise. It looks like the real culprit is ghosts.
[quotue]I've been fighting them for 15+ turns (it is turn 37), the war is annoying because I have to attack into their territory, then fly back out, then in, etc because of supplies.[/quote]
The nature dragon can forge wineskins out of the box, if a plague dragon shows up he can forge cauldrons. One of each will support a 36-bonebiter unit in Ermor lands.
They are actually the first nation I've fought able to kill my bonebiters in any significant number, but the best they can do is keep my numbers basically flat, and I am recruiting only ~10 dragons a turn due to upkeep.
I never lost all that many, just had them rout all over the place.
If I was not working so hard at research I could pull out all my poison ivy dragons and actually make some progress against them, but I really want to do a lot of research in this game and try to get access to the stronger dragons.
Beware of the problem I had with the dragon of fate--it killed the game.
rdonj
November 11th, 2008, 03:25 PM
I was being facetious about the supply bonus az, I don't really think you should raise it :)
"Actually quite high PD is still somewhat useful. In that game I put 50 in the stretch where I bordered R'yleh because he kept casting that global that sends the undead fleet around. At that level it packs quite a bit of power. In the range of normal PD levels, though, I would only do 1 point."
Heh, they cast that in my game as well. Which proved very annoying this last turn as it killed four ice plated dragons that were trying to get to a lake with a small undead army that's been forcing me to guard against it for several turns because they're right next to some temples.
"I never even looked that much at the steel ones, I tend to favor strong units (in any game) and have a weakness about overlooking useful weaker ones."
I recruit steel dragons when I've queued all the bonebiters I can and still have resources left over. It's a good way to help boost numbers quickly, especially early on. They're probably better on a per-resource basis than bonebiters but the bonebiters are still more gold-efficient.
I really should build wineskins, I've just been hording gems for summons because I am trying to win in the least efficient way possible!
That's a good point, here I've been busily building astral boosters when there's no good reason to, I'll crash the game and then where will I be. Btw I am now fighting gath and ermor at the same time and winning :)
Loren
November 11th, 2008, 03:43 PM
Just starting out against a dozen Mighty AI's. I grabbed some steel dragons at the start but after taking the provinces next to my capital I'm gold limited, not resource limited.
There is also the issue that resources don't cost upkeep, gold does.
WraithLord
November 11th, 2008, 04:44 PM
I really like this mod, but I'm somewhat getting lost with all the updates. Do you think it would be possible to add a version # to the post subject?
Aezeal
November 11th, 2008, 05:11 PM
will try to remember that for next time.. I'll be able to do an update in the weekend, probably not sooner though, quite busy with stuff.
Nice to hear you like the mod btw, will certainly make me put more effort in getting the balance better.
I'd like to thank all of you for your help so far and hope you will continue it till we get it right :D
Loren
November 12th, 2008, 05:11 PM
Results of the previously mentioned game:
One turn of recruits usually doesn't take losses against an indie province.
This time I got an initial starting position nowhere near as good for rapid expansion but I had 27 provinces at year's end, anyway despite being at war.
Pangea fell in year 2.
Year 3 saw C'tis and Man gone.
Year 4 was the end of Gath.
Year 5 and Caelum and Utgard were no more.
In Year 6, Patala and T'ien Ch'i meet their doom. They would have fallen in 5 except I had to get rid of their toehold in the water.
I had to spend a fair amount of time repositioning, it was year 8 before Ulm was no more.
At this point I was at peace and used the time to fix a very bad supply situation and get some globals up.
Returning to war, year 10 saw the end of Pythium and Arco.
All that's left is Atlantis and I see no point in bothering. I'm way ahead on dominion (although probably half of the map doesn't have a single candle from anyone) and have Gift of Health, Gift of Nature's Bounty, Wrath of God and Strands of Arcane Power up. All have at least 100 extra gems, they aren't coming down. I could finish it reasonably quickly with Thestis' Blessing.
I used no combat spells, forged no items beyond food & rings. All those globals are from a well-boosted seraph, not the dragons. (And the seraph originally came from my oracle pretender.) The only spells cast by any dragon are site-searching and GORing the Seraph.
Aezeal
November 14th, 2008, 06:47 AM
OK I get it.. this weekend I'll nerve the 2 combat recruit :D etc etc
summoning a seraph is a crime IMHO when playing this nation.. enough very good summon in there dammit :D
Xietor
November 14th, 2008, 04:31 PM
I like the concept, and look forward to trying the mod.
Loren
November 14th, 2008, 06:19 PM
OK I get it.. this weekend I'll nerve the 2 combat recruit :D etc etc
summoning a seraph is a crime IMHO when playing this nation.. enough very good summon in there dammit :D
When I tried to summon that good astral one the game died, remember?
Aezeal
November 14th, 2008, 10:03 PM
there are others though
JimMorrison
November 15th, 2008, 02:42 AM
there are others though
Somehow I was expecting to hear something more along the lines of, "But I fixed it". ;)
Aezeal
November 15th, 2008, 04:50 PM
will be but I'm having time problems here, seems my gf's mother became 50 this weekend... so needed to have dinner somewhere with them and tomorrow the rest of the family is coming there...
Loren
November 16th, 2008, 06:57 PM
More observations:
I just whipped a batch of Impossible AI's. (Dominions 3.21)
Again, magic hardly played a role. I've changed my thoughts on their spellcasting: I would reduce their casting and I would get rid of the "Magic Incarnate" in their description. They don't need the magic, they are physically strong, why should they have good magic?
One turn of production, no bless will defeat almost any indie province. Not even Hinnom can do that.
Running up the difficulty level doesn't seem to make much difference to how this race does--it simply marches over anything even at impossible. Units rarely die no matter what you do, if you're overmatched you generally rout but get back almost everything unless you get cut off.
This game lasted only until the summer of 09. Knowing R'yleh was out there I built a lot of temples from the start. There were a dozen Impossible AI's, I got the same bad start I did last game. I managed to completely (except for water) surround Man and separately surround Abysia. Of course they reacted with war and were quickly annihlated. By the time I had disposed of those who declared war on me I had half the map. At that point I started munching on neighbors.
The nerf they did to R'yleh really hurt the AI--he barely got out of the lower lake of the left water (Glory of the Gods) and got chased back there by Mictlan! While I was smashing the empires in the NW Mictlan got dominion-killed by everyone else--when Mictlan popped I had 10 candles in every R'yleh province but he persisted for another 6 months! At this point I was steamrollering over Gath (the last land empire) and when I was done there were two empires that had escaped to the water and Gath held dominion over most of the NW lake.
I started forging boosters for Thestis' blessing but it turned out to be moot--I cast it and the game ended on dominion.
The only race I ever passed in research was R'yleh and remember they were confined to the southern lake--they never were remotely competitive.
Trumanator
November 16th, 2008, 07:22 PM
Sounds really good for SP, but w/out magic I assume you would get murdered in MP.
Gregstrom
November 17th, 2008, 04:11 PM
Er, yeah. Research is pretty costly for Dragons as it is, and there's always the temptation to use your researchers as thugs.
Aezeal
November 17th, 2008, 05:43 PM
hmm truman, what I hear now you'd stealroll over everyone in MP too.. but I still intend to change some things a bit.. hopefully next weekend.. need to get a manuscript (case report actually) out for a medical journal (my boss keeps pushing me) and I've just bought a new book and I'm playing fall-out 3 so my free time is a bit scarse.. of and my GF is 8 months pregnant so need to do more around the house too (I know excuses excuses but fact is I just have less time for modding on my hands )
Loren
November 17th, 2008, 06:00 PM
Sounds really good for SP, but w/out magic I assume you would get murdered in MP.
You could probably take out everyone on a smaller map before magic became a big factor.
One turn of recruits will take down almost any indie province. To have any hope of surviving the dragons you would have to cast anti-flight magic on the first turn of battle. Even if the big mage-supported armies can beat the dragons they'll be eaten alive by raiding--PD simply won't stop them at any sane level. Most remote-attack spells won't touch them, either.
Fresh from the barracks not only are the commanders good thugs but even the bonebiters are reasonable thugs.
The lack of slots means you won't be fielding true SC's but when you can field them on turn #1 it doesn't matter.
Trumanator
November 17th, 2008, 07:09 PM
Okay, having never played MP I was sort of drawing on what I have read.
Darkwind
November 17th, 2008, 10:04 PM
I haven't played this mod (I should probably get around to that, and finishing my little review of the Orks (I still haven't fixed the crippling Ork bug in my copy so I can't really continue until I do), and starting another nation), but I hear the phrase (paraphrased) "one turn of recruits can steamroll most indies". Can I suggest, as well as maybe cutting back on the strength of the units a little bit, increasing the cost? Dragons aren't liable to join a war for very little, considering they're powerful enough in their own right (every dragon could become a god, why die in another god's service?). Dragons should (in my mind, at least; not sure about Aezeal's) be a tiny, tiny force with an incredible amount of power. Sure, you might rely on recruitables for a while, but I suggest making the summons (thugs and SCs mostly, if not totally) so strong, one eventually just drops them, to conserve gold from the upkeep said dragons will require, being dragons.
Not sure how true this is currently, though. And, like I said, I haven't played this mod, so I guess it's sort of like a person blind from birth talking about how his favorite color is blue (no, yellow!). :angel
Aezeal
November 21st, 2008, 05:31 PM
hmmm well the story behind the dragons is that the younger ones could be more easily rallied for the cause and the more poerfull elders need bribing (summoning with gems) and the summons are scalingup to very very powerfull, maybe not THE most powerfull in the game but certainly up there and since there is a varity of them they all have certain nice options, special abilities and resistances (between them I think nearly all special creature commands have been used, the most powerfull having resistances in most catagories with 2 of them 100%) only drawback are not having full slots (which is intended for balance reasons and not going to be changed)
PS basicly not all of the dragons can become a god.. they HAVE an insanely powerfull god of their own ot fight for.. he's just locked away by the pantokrator in ages past. THey can however become very powerfull :D... the dragon that existed in the game as pretenders are not of this race... strange shapeshifting abomonations not worthy to be part of this race. (a bit confusing maybe but that is how it is)
Aezeal
November 22nd, 2008, 05:36 PM
New version (let's call it 1.00) is out
I've changed
- steel and bonebiter dragon have been changed (bone biter more than steel): higher Gd and resc, lower prot, hp, and one less attack
- The awesome vinedragon pics (well IMHO) are now actually in the game (they existed all the time but I didn't use them for some reason...) --> let me hear if you like this dragon.. it's.. different.
- Dragon of fate should be fixed
- new pretender, immobile statue
- PD has been changed (a bit improved but still not so good I think, less wrmlings as requested)
- leadership of the recruitable mage dragons has been lowered
- the cap only stargazer has a research bonus to improve research a bit to make magic more of an option now (hopefully) your armies can't destroy the world on their own.
PS I know it's not how it should be but I've not tested this yet (no time no time) but most where just small stat changes so it should all work I hope.
OW and I've made a banner :D
Loren
November 24th, 2008, 09:56 PM
Tried the revision. Two games vs 12 impossible AI's.
#1: I was trapped behind Ermor. Even the old version of the race died in this situation, it simply can't cope with Ermor early on. Your troops get scared off.
#2: It expanded very fast but nowhere near as fast as before. Good strike groups need 2-3 months of recruits. Of course, the AI's strength calculation messes up and everyone thought I was easy pickings. I had conquered most of Tian Chi's space but one powerful army remained, Man wasn't much of a threat anymore, Gath wasn't after my core lands yet but then Atlantis stormed ashore over a wide front with huge armies. The situation was hopeless.
rdonj
November 25th, 2008, 09:34 AM
Hmm, the vine dragon seems to have an issue. It shows a black background behind it and pink below it, at least when you're looking at it in the strategic view... I haven't seen it in battle yet. Might the sprite be bigger than it's supposed to be? The black background covers up part of the name and other commanders grouped near it.
Endoperez
November 25th, 2008, 01:35 PM
Black should be transparent, magent should be the shadow. If they're even slightly off, they won't work.
Loren
November 25th, 2008, 04:23 PM
I thought I finally was going to get somewhere against the Impossibles. While I started near Ermor I got a very defensible position. Tian Chi picked a fight and I killed all his land forces. I had been cranking out temples because of Ry'leh and this soon resulted in a dominion kill on his sea forces.
For some reason Ermor didn't decide to go after me but Agartha did. @#%^@%^ ghosts, the bane of the Dragons! After I finished off Tian Chi I tried to deal with Agartha but I wasn't getting very far, my forces kept routing.
I also find there is a big problem with the PD. The majority of the units you get are "no one", wimpy fighters that move very slowly. My fliers engage at the start, the stupid wrymlings die (the only use I can see for these units is to have lots of units to deter AI attacks.) and the steel dragons fight the battle alone.
While I was trying to deal with this a couple thousand Patela units came across my other border. I had put too much into PD for deterrence (probably why Ermor didn't attack) before discovering that it's actually a liability if I'm defending the province. The final straw was an attack from Agartha that hit maxed PD + over 100 bonebiters. Most decent PD would have stopped the attack alone, with 100 bonebiters it should have been a cakewalk. It was a rout instead.
I also think the dragons need better morale. I've never had this insane rout problem against ghosts with any other race.
rdonj
November 25th, 2008, 06:58 PM
Have you been using summoned SC dragons at all? The magma and golden dragons can be fairly effective SCs and go a long way towards making armies easier to fight. And you can use golden dragons as teleporting army assassins against undead with solar brilliance if you're careful. Magma dragons tend to work better on undead though, especially if you have a minor E/N bless.
Loren
November 27th, 2008, 02:24 PM
Have you been using summoned SC dragons at all? The magma and golden dragons can be fairly effective SCs and go a long way towards making armies easier to fight. And you can use golden dragons as teleporting army assassins against undead with solar brilliance if you're careful. Magma dragons tend to work better on undead though, especially if you have a minor E/N bless.
I've been killed before reaching that point.
Aezeal
November 28th, 2008, 05:25 PM
So we are not walking over AI's on impossible anymore... that sounds like balance has improved somewhat at least :D
I don't know how you normally (with other (vanilla) races) fare against 12 impossible AI's but personally Í think it might be a good thing you can't beat them :D
I will look into morale but PD exists of less wyrmlings than it did before
I've checked morale and it's all 12 (only a few) and going up.. pretty sure that is equal to well trained and elite human troops. Even wyrmlings have morale 12.. if they break I think the game wants regular troops (and militia since that is what wyrmlings basicly are) to break in that situation.
I'm not sure about avarage PD morale but I can't imagine much PD having better morale really. Not to mention I'm not feeling good about improving the race again after all reports of them being overpowered before.
The vinedragon will be looked into when I have time again. Rdonj the sprite has a "regular" size of 128 max I think but even that size makes the pictures cross over eachother on all sides.
I'm also wondering about your phrase "my fliers" since I'm pretty sure ALL dragons have flying (even wyrmlings)
the characteristics of dragons are
- flying
- (at least) darkvision 50
- (at least) size 3 (increasing with age)
- claw attacks
- magicboost 1 (for all except priestly magic, also increasing with age)
- at least pillagebonus 1 (increasing with size)
- increasingly higher magic skills (including) priestly magic (starting with 0 for young dragons though)
- having the "heal" = recuperate I think ability
- limited slots (#itemslots 61568)
JimMorrison
November 28th, 2008, 06:14 PM
I think the "Morale" issue with the wyrmlings, especially as PD, is that with their size, their relatively low defense, and their lack of a shield - they will all spread out around the enemy on turn 1, then get horribly slaughtered. Then that portion of the PD routs, and thus puts the entire battle in jeopardy of routing.
I might suggest removing the Flight from wyrmlings, as they haven't matured enough to achieve sustained flight? It may actually make them more useful then, as they will at least stay clumped together.
Loren
November 29th, 2008, 01:32 AM
So we are not walking over AI's on impossible anymore... that sounds like balance has improved somewhat at least :D
I don't know how you normally (with other (vanilla) races) fare against 12 impossible AI's but personally Í think it might be a good thing you can't beat them :D
Yeah, I still fare better with the Dragons than with the stock races.
I will look into morale but PD exists of less wyrmlings than it did before
It's got less but it should have few or none. They aren't meaningful defense. There is also those "no one"'s that hurt. If you have to have them there, beef them up and make them immobile.
I've checked morale and it's all 12 (only a few) and going up.. pretty sure that is equal to well trained and elite human troops. Even wyrmlings have morale 12.. if they break I think the game wants regular troops (and militia since that is what wyrmlings basicly are) to break in that situation.
The wyrmlings aren't the problem. It's the tougher dragons. It's *NOT* just the PD, it's in combat in general against ghosts. I think what's going on is that since you are using fewer tougher units the morale-lowering from the undead gets more concentrated.
rdonj
November 29th, 2008, 12:22 PM
The wyrmlings give the illusion of not flying, as iirc they move along the ground in combat instead of leaping suddenly where they want to go.
I am not sure I agree about strengthening wyrmlings, or about removing them from the PD. In the sense they're currently being used in, they're not supposed to be meaningful as province defense, they're what's being protected. That being the case, making them unable to fly and reducing their ap would probably be a good idea. Removing them from the PD just means they won't ever be used, because they're too expensive and fragile to be used as chaff and will underperform even unshielded militia. You also don't really need chaff with the dragons, generally speaking. But making them much stronger would not be a good idea, they're not really much weaker as it is than a venemous dragon in melee, and those cost twice as much.
I also am not sure that the dragons need higher morale, per say. I have had problems with summoned dragons routing due to fear spam even when I gave one the helmet that increases morale. But it hasn't been as bad on my armies. Maybe loren has been getting more ghosts than me, but my experience has been that the dragons win battles too fast for fear to usually be an issue. And if it is possible for it to be an issue maybe that's not so bad.
Loren
November 29th, 2008, 03:24 PM
The wyrmlings give the illusion of not flying, as iirc they move along the ground in combat instead of leaping suddenly where they want to go.
I am not sure I agree about strengthening wyrmlings, or about removing them from the PD. In the sense they're currently being used in, they're not supposed to be meaningful as province defense, they're what's being protected. That being the case, making them unable to fly and reducing their ap would probably be a good idea. Removing them from the PD just means they won't ever be used, because they're too expensive and fragile to be used as chaff and will underperform even unshielded militia. You also don't really need chaff with the dragons, generally speaking. But making them much stronger would not be a good idea, they're not really much weaker as it is than a venemous dragon in melee, and those cost twice as much.
I also am not sure that the dragons need higher morale, per say. I have had problems with summoned dragons routing due to fear spam even when I gave one the helmet that increases morale. But it hasn't been as bad on my armies. Maybe loren has been getting more ghosts than me, but my experience has been that the dragons win battles too fast for fear to usually be an issue. And if it is possible for it to be an issue maybe that's not so bad.
The problem isn't fear spam, the problem is undead, especially ghosts. Against such an army a rout is almost certain regardless of the force matchup.
Aezeal
November 29th, 2008, 08:22 PM
removing flight could be done of course but would make the wyrmlings even less usefull as chaff to recruit.
JimMorrison
November 30th, 2008, 06:06 AM
removing flight could be done of course but would make the wyrmlings even less usefull as chaff to recruit.
But they're not useful as chaff at all, already. :p
Aezeal
December 1st, 2008, 06:08 AM
2 attacks, can still put 3 on a square, some prot, decent HP and strength there should be plenty of use for them... well at least that is what I was thinking..
rdonj
December 1st, 2008, 07:33 AM
The problem is they're just too expensive to use as throwaway chaff. And I don't know that dragons need chaff to begin with. If you're worried about lances - kill the cavalry before it can attack. If you're worried about archers, all you can really do with wyrmlings is make sure they take the first volley. Magic you just can't stop, if you want to protect against it you need buffs. You could probably use them for other purposes as they don't actually have bad stats, they are just expensive for what you get.
Loren
December 1st, 2008, 03:42 PM
The problem is they're just too expensive to use as throwaway chaff. And I don't know that dragons need chaff to begin with. If you're worried about lances - kill the cavalry before it can attack. If you're worried about archers, all you can really do with wyrmlings is make sure they take the first volley. Magic you just can't stop, if you want to protect against it you need buffs. You could probably use them for other purposes as they don't actually have bad stats, they are just expensive for what you get.
Exactly. The only remotely possible use is chaff to draw the first volley and I simply haven't seen the need. At least in SP archers simply don't do enough in the first volley to matter.
Aezeal
December 6th, 2008, 05:37 AM
ah well whatever in the base game there are enough troops that never get used, they wyrmlings are there for thematic reasons and if noone wants them then thats fine :D It's pretty much a given thing for me that I usually play iwth 1-2 unit types for most races anyway :D
Aezeal
December 6th, 2008, 05:40 AM
So except for the vine dragon pic all other dragons work now? Has someone been able to test all ancient ones yet :D
Aezeal
December 6th, 2008, 09:30 AM
So 1.01 is out, vine dragon pic is changed (the colors where good but it had an alhpa channel.. no idea how it got there)
I changed the mamga dragon attack sprite a bit too (less black)
I also adjusted a few small things.. the strength of the bonebiter was 29 (instead of the 19 it is now) and hopefully the battle spells a few dragons have work now.
Have fun :D
rdonj
December 7th, 2008, 11:29 AM
I still haven't gotten to the final summons in my game yet. I'm playing about a dozen sp games at the moment and the turns in my dragon game are a bit daunting, I'm constantly shuffling around my entire army to deal with ermor pretty much :P
The change you made to strength is going to be pretty significant, I don't think it will be nearly as easy for the dragons to steamroll people now.
Aezeal
December 7th, 2008, 02:25 PM
hmm when I saw it it was obvious it was a mistake.. strenght (like all stats) scales with their "age" and while combat dragons have relative high strenght for their agegroup this wasn't correct at all (only the most powerfull dragons have strength 29.. the strengh of the recruitable troops is all below 20.. only a few commanders have higher strength.. I've also deleted one of their attacks (instead of 2 AP claws he now has 1 whiptail non armour piercing.) It could very well be that in combination with the higher price he's totally overpriced now... then the steel dragons or wyrmlings can be an alternative though.. i doubt the nation as a whole will be underpowered that easy so it can be balanced back later.
Against ermor.. well it will probably always be a weaker spot for the nation with not much access to priests early on.
Loren
December 15th, 2008, 01:31 AM
Got around to trying the new version vs 10 difficult AI's.
One AI picked an early fight when it had only a few provinces (I don't know what happened to it's expansion) and it was soon gone. I then found myself in a two-front war. The Ghost Dragons made all the difference--it took quite a while to reduce his forces but they were able to keep his armies leaderless and thus unable to actually attack. Bogarus had me outgunned by a mile in wide open space, if he could actually have advanced on me I would have been dead. I had enough force on the front to stomp on leakers but that was it and I couldn't spare the forces from the other war against Utgard.
As I was beginning to get the upper hand against Utgard Agartha decided to jump into the fray. Apparently cutting him off from Utgard (they were at war) caused him to pick a new opponent and I was the only one he bordered. He was weak, though, and died quickly.
Utgard finally fell and I sent my army against Bogarus. I was still outgunned but he had a thousand leaderless troops, I snuck around behind his battle line and gutted the rest and then I could roll up the battle line.
I got a bit of a breather to bring my PD up to stop remote attacks (Agartha would have been a real pain if he hadn't been so small--he didn't have the gems to keep it up.)
Tien Chi outgunned me at least 3 to 1 when they decided to go to war but again the Ghost Dragons really did a number on them. I really liked the battle result of him losing 500 units, no commanders and I lost nothing. (I had cut his retreat.) They are still 2 to 1 in army size but I've reclaimed my territory and am pushing him back.
The Dragon of Fate works now. Do you mean it to take multiple empowerments to be able to summon one of them, though?
I'm still in last place on research, it looks like it's going to be a win, though.
Aezeal
December 15th, 2008, 02:41 PM
So it sounds like the army is somewhat balanced now and only the ghostdragons need to be changed a bit... the assassination ability should be worth quite a bit on a stronger chassis.. and while the ghost dragon is pretty weak for dragon standards I guess his price needs to go up quite a bit.
Loren
December 15th, 2008, 09:51 PM
So it sounds like the army is somewhat balanced now and only the ghostdragons need to be changed a bit... the assassination ability should be worth quite a bit on a stronger chassis.. and while the ghost dragon is pretty weak for dragon standards I guess his price needs to go up quite a bit.
Yeah, although if you take away the assassination I suspect the race is too weak and would need strengthening somewhere. The assassination is the only thing that's allowed me to survive.
Farther into the game, some more thoughts:
1) The Wave Dragon should be summonable underwater.
2) I'm strongly inclined to think the Death Wraith dragon should have assassination capability. It looks so much like an upgraded Ghost dragon that it seems strange it doesn't retain the assassination power.
3) I think the summons need some organization as to the paths they have and what it takes to summon them. I don't like the fact that more than one of them can't be obtained without using empowerment/wishing (Although, admittedly, the Fate dragon can wish with boosters alone) or else putting a lot of magic on your pretender.
4) I'm inclined to say the elder dragons are underpriced.
Aezeal
December 16th, 2008, 07:00 AM
Hmm well against 10 difficult AI's who are picking on you you acn't expect to win every game. But I won't take assassination away completely in anycase. Maybe the troops need to be stronger again.
1) The Wave Dragon should be summonable underwater.
Hmm good point will try to get that done... once
2) I'm strongly inclined to think the Death Wraith dragon should have assassination capability. It looks so much like an upgraded Ghost dragon that it seems strange it doesn't retain the assassination power.
It should
3) I think the summons need some organization as to the paths they have and what it takes to summon them. I don't like the fact that more than one of them can't be obtained without using empowerment/wishing (Although, admittedly, the Fate dragon can wish with boosters alone) or else putting a lot of magic on your pretender.
- This is intended, either you get lots of magic in the pretender or you empower a lot or you pick certain summons. The summons should be worth it in anycase and you don't really need them all at once anyway :D (pick the summons against your opponent)
4) I'm inclined to say the elder dragons are underpriced.
- Hmm but you need empowerment etc etc so I'll leave it at this for now they should be the strong point of the race so a lil underpricement is needed (and they have SC restrictions in the slots so they aren't unbeatable.. well.. )
rdonj
December 16th, 2008, 08:11 AM
I would be inclined to say to let the troops rest as they are for the moment. Play with them for a while and if they really feel too weak they can be changed. There are lots of inherent bonuses to the dragons... they make great raiders due to the flying, and you almost never have to fight a particular battle. You can always reform and fight somewhere else. Anyway I don't think they're too bad now, but perhaps I am mistaken.
Aezeal
December 16th, 2008, 02:54 PM
I won't change much now except real bugs. They don't need to be the strongest race out there anyway. Early game is allowed to be relatively though too since I think they should be a stronger late game race.
Loren
December 17th, 2008, 04:35 PM
I don't get it. The Death Wraith Dragon is marked as an assassin as far as I can tell, yet it does not have the assassination ability.
Digging some more: The summoned dragons have gold & resource cost so they have upkeep. That's not normal. Is there some reason for this or is this a mistake?
More digging, more problems: The Dragon Raid spell. I hadn't seen it before, finding it in the file I tried it. Yikes!
*SOME* of the melee dragons flew forward and engaged. Others sat around at the start point, I don't know why. The Poison Ivy sat there at the start point casting Raise Dead--and just about killing the melee dragons that didn't fly into combat with it's aura. It's units stayed there with it, they never accomplished anything other than be arrow targets.
Finally I believe it must have cast touch of madness on itself but I didn't see it--it went up to maximum ranged attack range and started spitting, never hitting anything.
I don't know why all of the misbehavior but the poison dragons shouldn't be mixed with the others like that!
Aezeal
December 18th, 2008, 04:40 PM
Hmmm it's a good point that the poison ivy dragon should be there since you can't set up the placement.. I'll make it another dragon in the future.
The gold cost is intentional, big dragons just have upkeep.. I don't see why the smaller ones would cost gold and the bigger ones nothing.. they price isn't THAT much. Also since the summon cost are relatively low for their power this is a way to balance that to prevent you from getting too large armies of summoned creatures.
Loren
December 21st, 2008, 10:36 PM
1) There's no point in having a resource cost on a summons. It has no effect.
2) I seem to have fixed the Deathwraith assassin problem--I killed the command and copied the one from the Ghost dragon. I put the new line earlier in the list of options. Which behavior fixed it I don't know. Note that this does *NOT* affect existing dragons!
3) There seems to be another balance problem. I'm now trying it against 8 mighty's. Again, the Ghost dragons are the only reason I'm alive. Somehow a large force from Ulm broke through anyway and I threw everything I had available at it. The bonebiters mostly died, the few that didn't routed. I noticed that the real killing was coming from the Flame Tongue dragons, though--and from that point on I have been recruiting only Flame Tongue and Ghost dragons--all chiefs, no indians.
My strategy at this point is Ghosts along the entire battle front, two levels deep where I'm actually pushing forward so there's nothing that can grab the provinces I'm taking. The strike groups are pure Flame Tongues. The Bonebiters under their adamantine leaders are still around but I'm using them to mop up PD-only provinces behind his lines, sooner or later they'll get smashed with no retreat but I don't care. I've got a couple of groups of Ice Plated dragons clearing the water. The summons are beginning to come on-line but I haven't gotten enough to be committing them to battle yet.
I'm close to declaring this one won as at this point the two remaining big empires don't seem to be able to do anything about me even though Man has 3600 troops (but zero leaders) on our border. Next game will be against Impossible AI's using an all-commander strategy.
Aezeal
December 22nd, 2008, 03:28 PM
you should be able to kill a lot of those troops with a SC or a few thugs..
if the game is finished.. just try to kill those large armies.
can you try mixed armies of some shooters, bonebiters and commanders with equipment? I'd guess those balanced armies should be able to take pretty strong forces.
I'm not quite sure that the nation is underpowered though.. in SP you'll need to take advantage of tricks to beat 8 mighty opponents with any nation.. just recruiting you'll always loose since they have about double your income each (or something like that after upkeep at least)
Things I'll probably change:
- higher cost for ghostdragons
- maybe give the bonebiter a bit of a cost reduction (I guess loosing 2 AP attacks for 1 no AP attack is too much on top of the higher price)
Loren
December 22nd, 2008, 09:24 PM
you should be able to kill a lot of those troops with a SC or a few thugs..
Yeah, with the leaders gone they wither very quickly. I haven't taken them on yet because of dominion. I'm holding him at chokepoints and I don't really want to break into the land beyond until I've cleared Ry'leh dominion from it. I'm stomping on Arco first.
if the game is finished.. just try to kill those large armies.
My problem is that I have a hard time declaring that I've won when I'm in next to last place on army size.
can you try mixed armies of some shooters, bonebiters and commanders with equipment? I'd guess those balanced armies should be able to take pretty strong forces.
I see no need at this point. Pure commander armies are doing quite well.
I'm not quite sure that the nation is underpowered though.. in SP you'll need to take advantage of tricks to beat 8 mighty opponents with any nation.. just recruiting you'll always loose since they have about double your income each (or something like that after upkeep at least)
Yeah, it wouldn't fare as well in MP.
Things I'll probably change:
- higher cost for ghostdragons
- maybe give the bonebiter a bit of a cost reduction (I guess loosing 2 AP attacks for 1 no AP attack is too much on top of the higher price)
Yeah, the units are over-nerfed by now. I'd *MUCH* prefer one fire-tongue to 3 bonebiters.
A few other things:
I seem to have fixed the Death Wraith assassination--see above.
The Dragon Raid spell needs to get rid of the poison units.
Loren
December 25th, 2008, 12:49 AM
Observations against impossible AI's.
I'm at war with 3 neighbors. So far Ermor hasn't declared war, we have only one province of contact. Strangely, C'tis hasn't declared war, either. I'm not sure what's going on there, maybe he's at war with someone in the corner, he's not at war with the only neighbor of his I can see.
The other 3 nations I border I am at war with. Mictlan is now in pretty bad shape, I just took the last province around his capital and parked a group there. He's still got some provinces on the other side of the mountains, though. I've got Tien Chi stopped cold with assassins, Arco has managed to break through the assassins twice and somehow managed to kill his pretender against a PD 20 province. (He attacked with 200 units! I got the pretender and some magic units that were left leaderless, everyone else routed.)
As I said earlier, I'm going pure leaders, no troops at all. I've got a pile of Ghost dragons, a pile of Flame Tongue dragons, and only enough of the others for site searching. (I haven't started forging anything yet.)
I just finished taking the last indie province in my part of the world, this has freed up a bunch of Ghost dragons that could counter Ctis if he gets frisky.
I'm #1 in provinces and income, in next to last place on research (Ctis' has stailled, otherwise I would be in last place) and fairly low on dominion. It goes without saying I'm in last place on army size.
Aezeal
December 25th, 2008, 04:12 PM
Sounds like the flametongue and ghostdragon are overpowered to me :D
Loren
December 25th, 2008, 05:02 PM
This is the toughest one so far but I think I'm going to win it despite some miserable luck.
Mictlan is gone. I'm at war with Ermor. Assassins aren't holding the line very well, I'm having to keep a whole bunch of dragons on the battle line to hold them off.
I think I must have taken misfortune 3 instead of luck 3, though. Tien Chi is in the water and being a nusiance so I decide to sweep him out. 60 flame tongues go in--and Thestis' Blessing gets knocked out!
Idiots, it was dispelled during the magic phase, why did you go fly into the water and drown???
Then my guys discovered Phoenix Pyre: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=41737
Aezeal
December 27th, 2008, 01:06 PM
Hey loren in your fix for deathwraiths.. are they still magical beings?
Loren
December 27th, 2008, 02:42 PM
Hey loren in your fix for deathwraiths.. are they still magical beings?
Yes. I didn't actually change any properties, just messed with the text. Either there was a hidden typo or something about the order of the properties messed up the game.
I've got one on the screen, it shows:
Death-6
Holy-2
Research-8
Fear
Shock resist-50
Fire resist-25
Cold resist-100
Poison resist-100
Magic Being
Ethereal
Flying
Stealthy
Pillage Bonus
Recuperation
Darkvision-100
Assassin
Aezeal
December 27th, 2008, 02:48 PM
ok I thought it might've been to much abilities on a creature and magic being was the last... so I guess that isn't it either
gotta love the dragons and all their abilities
Loren
December 27th, 2008, 09:10 PM
At least for SP it's still got balance problems: A pure Ghost/Flame Tongue strategy won it without too much difficulty.
The only actual real use I made of the summons was to cast some globals.
I had enough summons at the end to use in battle but it all that did was speed things up by a couple of months.
At the point I declared it won I had all access to the enemy blocked off by a minimum of 50 flame tongues and I was pushing dominion out. Had I just kept hitting End Turn I probably would have won it eventually.
rdonj
December 27th, 2008, 09:36 PM
I don't think it would be nearly so easy in mp, you'd make enemies very fast if you went around assassinating everyone's commanders, and a player at least will put guards on them. I actually lost a few early on in my game against ermor to ghost grips and or fear. Plus I imagine you must expand a lot more slowly than most nations.
That said an ethereal 35 hp assassin with 3 attacks (one of which is ap) and 14 attack skill is a bit much. They need to be either ridiculously expensive (upwards of 400 gold, non-sacred), lose most of their attacks, lose ethereality, be a summon, or get a massive attack skill nerf. Possibly a combination of several of the above. I really don't think they should have 3 attacks, especially.
Aezeal
December 28th, 2008, 09:44 AM
I've started (for dom 3000 it's already uploaded) to just make them cost 300 gc.. 150% increase. For the future I'm thinking about lowering HP by 5, att by 1, str by 1 and loose one attack. But since the troops where not so strong I'll let them have this advantage for now. Especially in dom 3000 they might be just what the nation needs. And indeed with a few strong guards they might be defeated more easily.
PS Loren are you interested in playing a nation in our upcoming dom 3000 game (you could have dragons though with the serious playtesting you've already given them, thanks again btw, I suspect they will be one of the nations with fewer flaws left.)
Loren
December 28th, 2008, 02:14 PM
I've started (for dom 3000 it's already uploaded) to just make them cost 300 gc.. 150% increase. For the future I'm thinking about lowering HP by 5, att by 1, str by 1 and loose one attack. But since the troops where not so strong I'll let them have this advantage for now. Especially in dom 3000 they might be just what the nation needs. And indeed with a few strong guards they might be defeated more easily.
PS Loren are you interested in playing a nation in our upcoming dom 3000 game (you could have dragons though with the serious playtesting you've already given them, thanks again btw, I suspect they will be one of the nations with fewer flaws left.)
I'm not all that good a player actually but it might be interesting.
Aezeal
December 28th, 2008, 04:44 PM
Well I'm not a good player either so that is good to hear :D
Would you prefer the dragons or another nation (you have first pick on dragons.. for other ones you'll have to be first to sign up for them in the thread on the MP forum (which I will create somewhere next week unless there emerge huge bugs I need to fix before we can play.)
Loren
December 29th, 2008, 02:03 AM
Well I'm not a good player either so that is good to hear :D
Would you prefer the dragons or another nation (you have first pick on dragons.. for other ones you'll have to be first to sign up for them in the thread on the MP forum (which I will create somewhere next week unless there emerge huge bugs I need to fix before we can play.)
Dragons are the only one I've played with so I'll take them.
Aezeal
December 29th, 2008, 02:28 PM
I suggest you DL the whole dom3K mod then and the solarsystem map and try it out a bit.
Azriel
September 13th, 2009, 10:41 AM
Of the Dom3000 nations, these dragons are my favorite. In fact, I've taken to use them in the more traditional maps.
Great job!
There is one thing that makes them far overpowered, however: The ghost dragons assassination ability makes assassinations almost a sure thing. The only being that can survive an assassination attempt by one of these is a pretender. That's just too powerful. As cheap as they are, you can assassin spam any nation on the map and then just walk over them with any size army. Five or six ghost dragons in a capital, each assassinating every turn, will completely destroy that nation and, really that's not very enjoyable to either player.
Therefore, I recommend that the assassination ability be removed from ghost dragons. I think spy ability would be a nice trade-off.
By the way, I've fixed a few grammatical errors and I've taken the liberty to add three national heroes to your original mod. Please have a look and let me know what you think. When you download it, change the file extension from ".txt" to ".dm" and you should be good to go. The heroes I created are oriented more towards a traditional map and theme, so you may not want to include them in the Dom3k mod. I used existing sprites for the heroes, but I really should create new ones. If I do, I'll post them here, too.
Oh, one other thing. This nation becomes really interesting when you play on a map with no independants. In fact, I recommend that's the only way to do Dragons if you are going to play SP.
Once again. This is a really fun mod. Thanks!
vBulletin® v3.8.1, Copyright ©2000-2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.