Mod: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate V1.01

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

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.

[HoneyBadger]

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]

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 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

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

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 , 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]

Hmmmm.....I enabled the mod, but when I go to choose the nation it doesn't show up????????

[Aezeal]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.