So you want to build your own mod nation? And you're not sure where to start? Maybe you don't know how to finish, either. You're not alone. Plenty of people are making new mod nations all the time, and many of them never really get off the ground.
This guide, which I'll be editing to death, and well beyond, attempts to codify what types of nations are out there, why they work, why they often don't work, how to balance them, how to make new nations interesting and unique, and some tips on basic mod-structure, to help everyone create better mods that are enjoyable for everyone. I only have limited space here, so I'm going to keep this as simple and straightforward as possible, and if there's interest, I'll expand upon specific elements in later posts.
First of all, there are 3 basic types of themes that you can base mod nations around. The first is the so-called "Historical" mod: In some ways, the Historical mod is the easiest to create, and in some ways the hardest. It requires a lot of background work, and research, but a good place to start is to pick a place on the globe that catches your interest, and then to research the crap out of it. Wikipedia is where I usually begin. It may not be as accurate as the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but it's a lot more accessible, and it'll help you familiarize yourself with the basic concepts. Think of it as a stepping-stone. If you don't know anything about the history and mythology of Cambodia, but you want to do a mod that's centered around Angkor Wat, Wikipedia gives you just enough information to find your way to where you want to be. Once you've learned all about that part of the world, the hard part begins, as you now need to translate that real world history and mythology into the form of a Dom3 Nation-which usually means making a lot of stuff up, and changing a lot of things around. Real history and myth give wonderful weight to a Nation, but they almost always make more work for you.
The second type of mod is one that's based on either a real world mythology-Taoism for instance-or a real mythos that an author (not you) has created-Clive Barker's Imajika, Eric Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros", the Empire of the Petal Throne, R. A. Salvatore's "The Crystal Shard", whatever you've read and enjoyed and are familiar with. In that case, it's a lot easier, because the research and creativity has mostly been done for you, and all you need to do is inject it with life, and squeeze it into the Dom3 mod-nation mould. It requires a lot of work! But still the least mentally draining of the three.
The third option is to simply create a Nation yourself, out of whole cloth. You come up with a basic concept-whether it's a nation of phantasmal creatures, or shark-riders, or cat-men, or a nation that worships elementals, you're free to do whatever you like, but the pressure's all on you to make it interesting and fun.
Once you've got a concept that you like, and you're familiar enough with it that you can work with it confidently, the next things to think about are the basic structure, and the power structure.
The basic structure is how the units in the game are presented. Which are recruits? which are commanders? which are summons? Which ideas do you absolutely want to get across? Giving your mod character, making it different from every other mod in some special, fun way, is just as important, and just as difficult, as balancing it out.
Power structure is all about how you're going to balance the Nation out.
To give you an example: If you're making a nation of elemental-worshippers, then obviously, your Nation is going to have good access to elemental magic (fire, water, earth, and air). It'll be different from other Nations in that maybe lesser elementals are recruitable for you, and maybe all of them are sacred. Some of your recruits and commanders might even be part elemental, with strange powers and weird appearances. The various elemental kings and queens might even show up as heroes-denying them to other Nations. To balance that out, your Nation might have no access to Astral, Nature, Blood, or Death magic. You might have limited starting gems-1 of each elemental type, and you might not have any mages with access to more than 1 path-denying them access to all the dual-path spells and forged items that are available.
When considering the structure of your Nation's power, there's a lot to consider. There are three stages of the game-the Early stage, the Middle stage, and the End stage.
The Early stage happens in roughly the first 10-30 turns. Nations that are strong in the Early stages are the ones who are able to gobble up Independent provinces, do quick, devastating rushes against other Nations, and/or research very quickly. The more power you can grab in the Early game, the more power you have to use in the other two Nations. The trade-off here is that Nations which are strong in the Early game often top out by the Late game, so they have to make up for the lack of high level spells, summons, and strategies, by having those early game advantages.
If you design our Elemental worshippers to be able to do a lot in the Early game, it's only fair to compensate for that, by not giving them as much to do, later on. And the reverse is true.
Early game traits: Good starting army, ability to move quickly, fair to good PD, powerful and often diverse (and often sacred) recruitables, mages that are suited to casting low level buffs out of the box, and units have who can benefit from them. Likely to take either an awake SC Pretender, or an imprisoned high bless Pretender.
The Middle game happens from the moment the last surviving Pretender comes out (or, if they all start awake, until nobody's left to rush), and lasts until only two Nations that can really compete with each other, are left.
Middle game Nations are ones that achieve their highest arc of power by the time they've researched the first 4-5 levels of magic. They're not great Rushers, but they also lack high level Summons/good access to high level spells. A Middle game Nation works at a slower pace than an Early Nation, but has a larger power-base than a Late Nation, allowing them to compete with both, through the use of clever tactics
Middle game traits: Lots of forging, specialized recruitables, decent PD, mages have lots of contingencies-they can cast chains of beneficial buffs, they have access, or can get access, to useful dual-path spells. Commanders are more likely to be sacred than recruits, and thugs will be the units of choice. Rainbow mages are common.
Late game Nations go for the highest levels of power possible. They're harder to manage than Middle or Early Nations, and harder to learn to use successfully-it pays to be diplomatic, as a Late game Nation, because you're going to be playing *with* your allies, longer than you are *against* them, ideally. Late game Nations often have either good PD or are aquatic, allowing them enough time to get their ducks in a row. Once they do, they're practically unstoppable, and other Nations recognise this, and will want to take you out, early, so it pays to make nice.
Late game traits: Access to Communion. Blood magic. High level Summons. Powerful mages. Mediochre recruits-but who needs recruits when you can wipe out an army with a handful of mages?
So now that we've discussed the different stages of the game, let's talk about some tricks and abilities that Nations can exploit to get themselves ahead, going from more basic, straightforward tactics that are simple to put into effect, to the complex, long-term powerplays that Late Game Nations can use to put a Coup De Grace on everybody.
First up are recruitable tramplers. Tramplers are like a shotgun-easy to load, easy to aim, easy to hit the target and put it down. Elephants are the most popular choice here, because they're fairly Independents, and they're huge, with lots of hp, lots of damage potential, and the ability to squish multiple enemy soldiers in a single move. Their only major flaws are a shaky morale, and low protection-but there are ways around that. They can be buffed easily-regeneration's good for them, berserk's even better, making them lucky or etherial is *really* good-and the various resistance spells never hurt-particularly Air Shield. Typically, people use archers and mages to combat these guys, but that's not always easy, and not often cheap. Giving Nations access to these guys as recruitables isn't all *that* much of an advantage-again, you can typically find elephants within a half a dozen independent Provinces, but giving them immediate access to them, *and* the ability to put buffs on them, means you can use them to rush other Nations immediately, and respond to some of the tactics those Nations will use to defend themselves.
Secondly is the all-mighty sacred "bless-strategy". These are extremely popular, not just because they can be very effective, but also because they're a way for us players to have a *little* bit of control over how our units-atleast our sacred ones-function in the game. There's only 8 of them (which is a damned, dirty shame, in my opinion), and out of those 8, only Fire, Water, Earth, Nature, and Astral are really popular-and Astral's generally considered to be the weakest of all blesses. Seriously, people pore over bless strategies, looking for the perfect one, like alchemists in search of the Philosopher's Stone. It's generally expected that Nations will have access to atleast one or two sacred units-the game's about religion, and the clash of world views, after all-so you may want to plan on including them somewhere in your Mod. If not, then find other outlets for Player choice, *before* they start playing. You might give them a range of Pretenders, each of which *significantly* affects the character of your Nation, for instance. It's your vision, but if you want it to be a popular one, then do right by your audience and give us a hand in it, even if it's just choosing a really obvious, good bless (Nature and Earth for Niefelheim), over a weird, fairly useless one (Blood)
Enough said on that. Power from bless strategies is all about what your units can be boosted into, and how expensive they are. If your sacreds have more than one attack, then a high water bless will multiply that-and it'll also boost that unit's defense. If they've got armour, earth will boost that by either 2 (if they've only got helmets, or chest pieces), or 4 (if they've got full coverage), and make the unit itself suffer less fatigue. If they're demons or undead, then astral will make them a lot more resistant to holy magic. Death affects the wounds that melee attacks, and missle attacks, both inflict, by making them more likely to cause afflictions. It isn't all that great, but if you've got good access to sacred units who do lots and lots of damage, they'll already have bonuses to afflictions, which you'll-again-be multiplying. High Fire and Death will *also* grant magic damage to your sacred units, meaning that they can take out etherial units easily, but Fire (the more powerful of the two) only affects melee weapons.
Understand what all of the blesses do, and keep them in mind when you're designing your sacred units, because blesses can be a big factor when balance is considered. The worst culprit here is probably Nature, because it not only helps your units deal with afflictions and disease, it also makes them longer lasting in battle, *and* pretty much nullifies morale problems, since a high Nature bless makes sacred units go berserk (which can actually end up being a handicap, if your mages are sacred, since going berserk puts an end to spell-casting).
The next factor to consider is mages and their paths. Mages are powerful-sacred mages even more so-and it's not that hard to make a unit that can become wildly, exponentially, more powerful than you ever intended. This is called "bootstrapping", when you take a mage of low power, and you use forged items to boost that power, and then either use that empowered mage to forge even *more* powerful boosters, or to summon an even more powerful mage. Death is the easiest one to do this will, but I believe all the magic paths have their boosters, and there's even rings and spells which boost every single path, all at once. Take a good long look at bootstrapping-again, there are guides on the Forum, but just going through the forgeable items will give you an idea of the potential here.
Another consideration is research, and the boosters available. Air, Death, and Fire are the three magic paths that offer boosters. Giving your mages the paths and the gems they'll need to forge items with any of these three paths means they'll have access to *all* spells, a little more quickly than perhaps you intended.
A third consideration is the spells your mages can cast "out of the box". The term "out of the box" refers to a unit which can perform a spell or other action, without any boosters, buffs, or other modifiers, immediately upon being recruited or summoned, etc. Whenever you design a mage, go through the manual and look at every single spell that mage can potentially cast "out of the box", then do the same thing for every single forged item. The better the spells they can cast immediately, the more immediately useful and directly powerful that mage is. Mages don't need a lot of paths to be very powerful. Ofcourse it helps, but a mage with *just enough* paths to cast a spell, can be *just as good* as a much more powerful, much more expensive mage, with the proper blesses, buffs, and gear.
The units your Nation can create-whether it's by recruiting, summoning, or otherwise-are very important too. Infact, it's these units that pretty much encompass your entire Nation. How available you make these is another big factor in how powerful your Nation will ultimately be. If you make a recruitable, non-commander unit "available everywhere", as in, it doesn't need to be build at your capital, then that unit can potentially be mass-produced anywhere that you can build a fortress. That's a huge boost to mobility for that unit, and decentralizes your power. If that unit is very powerful or versatile or both, then it can potentially unbalance your Nation-especially if the unit itself can move quickly from Province to Province. Mobility, decentralization, and individual power/versatility are three of the most important attributes of a modern army, and great for modern era games, but be careful with adding too much of them to Dominions. Adding a little of those things is fine, but adding too much is like putting gunpowder in the game-it's anachronistic, and potentially explosive.
...To be continued!
Last edited by HoneyBadger; October 5th, 2008 at 04:22 AM..
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