MP: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. Game Over. Supplicants Triumph!

[rdonj]

Sept - for LA R'lyeh, suiciding its troops against others can be a bit hard. The problem is they have a number of aquatic only units that spawn without the player's consent, and still cost upkeep to maintain. So unless there happens to be someone sharing the water with them it's impossible to get them killed off in combat.

[Septimius Severus]

Thanks for that info rdonj and the info on the spell used by the final sacrifice mod. May be useful to use (I like the holy variant of the modified spell), and while it works for underwater units, a more appropriate message/description for underwater destruction might be better than flames from the sky.

Wonder which aquatic only freespawn R'lyeh gets. I have been considering modding their aquatic only units (slaves, crab hybrids) to be amphibious. Shouldn't be too difficult. Wonder if that would make R'lyeh ultra powerful.

[chrispedersen]

I'd love it if you did that, sept. I have often pondered doing it - making minor changes, as a way of balancing La-R post nerf.

Some of the units need to be made mobile, many of them need to be made amphibious.
I'll get you a list of all the units, if you do the modding (which is relatively painless).

[Finalgenesis]

The upkeep also doesn't go down well with me. Forced freespawn (even with a 1 gold cost) that has an upkeep just exacerbates their mobility and aquatic (for the aquatic spawns only) problems.

I reckon that their upkeep be removed entirely along with amphibious spawn only, and if that's overpowered then down the spawn rate.

[chrispedersen]

thats actually a great idea FG; easily done.
I think we're guilty of a threadjack, however =)

[Septimius Severus]

I will say that I think the majority of R'leyh troops both recruitable and freespawn are amphibious but yes as rdonj and chris point out they have a few that are aquatic only, which could be fixed. Of course, the R'lyeh player could opt to play them with a high growth/high order/low dom which might not be so bad given the water area plannned (at least in the water) and given they'll have no direct competition in the water. But of course this is not necessarily the best way to play them, and certainly a high death, high dom is also a very good option. Up to the player.

LA Atlantis is also an option. All of their units are amphibious and they don't have to worry bout freespawn. The only thing with them is their start would have to be a land start. Which would tend to necessitate the need for several provinces of land in the midst of this central sea. Of course I could make the center water province a land province only and just give a resource bonus site, but they'd not be able to recruit Tungaliks en masse until they took some land. Forgiving fathers have a little more research but don't share all of the same paths and are more expensive. Mournfuls would also not be able to be recruited outside of the cap until a land province was taken. Though Arsaturts (cap only) and Unsleeping/Unsleeping consorts should be plentiful and are probably the most powerful recruitables LA Atlantis has.

Of course if people prefer a land nation for the indy nation I am throwing in, that is of course very possible (wouldn't require water either). Only thing is they'll be surrounded by the AI caps and might be more vulnerable. If the AI should end up being defensive in nature, like the current game, Atlantis or R'lyeh could pretty much attack without fear of losing these core holdings. But Ermor or another land nation would have to defend itself and might be more hard pressed.

[Finalgenesis]

Would Caelum be a viable mercenary? I don't know what Nav3 will look like, but from Nav2 it seems there's a limited options in terms of lending army muscle. Granted, the info, craft and other services are unhampered, though the actual "mercenary" service is difficult to bring to players. Flight would help

Another idea might be to give merc gate-stone, with the rule that gate-stone can not be used to teleport on player provinces unless permission was given, or usable only when solicited and paid for by a player. Or hell, maybe just no rule at all, as its a pain to enforce. Flying ship might be another one to throw in...

Just some ideas.

If land nation for merc is choosen, maybe set the map up to have its core holding locked in by border mountains, maybe with 2-4 pass or just the teleporting connection to edge of map (of course I don't know what Nav3 will look like remotely, just basing on Nav2). a Not so good idea may be to stick a sphinx (or whatever works) in each of those pass with a fort...

I'm not sure what setting/role/power/goal you have in mind for the merc in Nav3, so the above haven't really accounted for that.

[rdonj]

The only problem with caelum is that its actual flying soldiers are generally pretty poor in a straight up fight. They have incredible encumbrance issues, and are easy to pick off because they're larger than normal humans so fit less in a square, have very average stat lines, and have very poor tactical sense with regards as to where to stand. So they are often butchered en masse... not really great for dealing with AI army hordes.

I reasonably like the idea of giving out flying ships though... but more than one. Reduce them from artifact level, and start the merc out with a bunch of them (but increase the cost...). Then they have all the mobility of flight without the disadvantage of sucking.

[Septimius Severus]

I had thought about Caelum as the merc for the current game but decided to go with Atlantis. Though Atlantis had lost most of their land holdings, their few water holdings proved fairly safe from the AI, though they probably need to do a bunch of preaching to keep their dom up because of the way the provinces were set up on this map (wasn't expecting the loss of the initial land provinces). Hopefully they will have the magic were-with-all and have built up enough strength to maybe push back against the AI at some point.

For game 3, Caelum is planned as part of the Heavenly Realm team. The extra player in game 3 will be more of an indy nation than a merc (as we know it in the current game). Of course they will still be free to do as they wish and ally as they please. But I don't want to have a lot of rules on them. I am throwing them in just to spice things up and perhaps have a strategic impact. That is all. They will always be at a disadvantage trying to solo against 4 teams, but perhaps with tweaks to R'lyeh they'll have a better chance if they choose to go that route.

If its a land nation, yes, mountain provinces around their camp might well give them some protection and they could even be sealed off entirely connection-wise.

Interesting to discover which option people prefer. So far we've had talk about how weak LA R'lyeh is and how annoying their dominion is, but I haven't heard any preferences. If I don't hear otherwise, I will give a choice between LA R'lyeh and LA Ermor to the prospective indy player.

[AlgaeNymph]

I wouldn't mind being a merc player using LA R'lyeh, or LA Ermor (which I won with on my own).