Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?

[st.patrik]

So the new bless effects sound quite potent. The devs have said that one of the reasons for this is to encourage people to take more magic on their pretenders. How much do you think this will change your pretender design?

[Endoperez]

So, is this post to be redone after we get DomII / demo? And after which ithis is done?

[apoger]

I'm not really sure about the whole new sacred/bless paradigm.

The old system allowed many sacred troops to be made and gave everyone a good benefit for blessing.

The new system limits the number of sacred troops by dominion and only allows them from the capital (except by Marignon). Further, in order to get good bless effects, you will need a huge amount of magic on the pretender.

I suspect that a bless-pretender strategy will only be viable for Marignon, since they can get efficiency by making many troops that get the benefit.

I have not seen the game yet so I could easily be wrong, but my gut feeling is that the new sacred/bless system is fun, but not viable for competitive play.

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
So, is this post to be redone after we get DomII / demo? And after which ithis is done?

I'm guessing this change in bless effects will have something of a ripple effect in how people play - so yes, it would be interesting to do a similar survey after people have gotten used to playing Dom II.

Originally posted by apoger:
I suspect that a bless-pretender strategy will only be viable for Marignon, since they can get efficiency by making many troops that get the benefit.

I have not seen the game yet so I could easily be wrong, but my gut feeling is that the new sacred/bless system is fun, but not viable for competitive play.

You may be right... It seems like it will be hard to come up with significant numbers of sacred troops. [incidentally this is why I was in support of the suggestion made a while back to make it possible to 'sanctify' troops, to allow a greater use of sacred troops.]

Then again apparently roving bands of flagellents are apparently just as common in Dom II as in Dom I - or maybe even more so...

[Pocus]

I'm a bit concerned too. Sure we shall wait for the demo (at least), but even simple calculation can let us evaluate the importance of blessed troops :

some potent holy troops:
Warden of Avallon 26 res
Temple Guard 43 res

It means that nations which can count on quality holy troops will have resources to recruit between 5 and 10 units in their capitol.

I dont know if the overall number you can get with this rate of drafting will be enough to warrant the spending of several hundred points in magic levels, but I doubt. True also that these magic levels give a benefit by themselves, but taking fire 6 for spell usage is not justified in my mind for example.

I have read some time ago that your blessed troops were recrutable in all provinces with temples, and limited to the number of candles present. Is this rule obsolete?

we will see...

[Psitticine]

Unless I'm testing some special situation, I always go for a strong bless effect in my games, and I find that I always get my money's worth, no matter what nation I play. Since the effects are additive to the units, i.e. you get a bonus to your attack from a Fire magic blessing instead of just having your base attack stat replaced by the same one all blessed troops might receive, that's what keeps things in balance. The really expensive sacred units tend to have pretty good stats already, but blessings can either close gaps or boost those units to an amazingly high potency. The cheap sacred units, e.g. the flagellents, aren't that great without their blessings. The power of the blessings makes them into much more potent units, but they still won't be a match for, say, a blessed Warden of Avalon. Because of this, the relative costs for the units still keeps them in balance.

I don't want to raise the spector of "Supercombatents" because, well, there's a counterbalance for everything, but I find 10 blessed Wardens can take on just about any number of flagellents without too much fuss. It's the blessed Knights of the Challice they have to be careful of.

On the note of blessings maybe being over-powered, well, you do have to sacrifice in other areas to get them, and they will follow along certain lines due to their natures. For example, Abyssia doesn't have to concern themselves overly with the flaming weaponry given to blessed troops with a Fire magic 9+ pretender. You can plan accordingly, especially since the new titles give you a peak at what kind of magic the enemy gods are packin', and try to work out counters. I'd worry more about them being over-powered than under-powered, but I think they are pretty well in balance. So much comes from how well you design them, so it is hard to seperate innate power from design skill there, but so far, I haven't had any qualms with their cost or potency.

Now, the second tier blessings are different in that they are effects that are either there or aren't, such as flaming weaponry, but since (to continue this example) the damage for flaming weaponry is in addition to the unit's normal damage, it still works out the same way in most cases.

It all balances out in the end, IMO, although it does take skill (thankfully) to plan and prepare the right kind of blessing for your nation. Obviously, Ulm doesn't really need more Protection, so an Earth magic blessing isn't that useful. Giving them a Fear effect, however . . . Likewise, the sacred undead usually already have a built-in Cause Fear ability (although blessing them with an additional one gives a cumulative result, if I'm not mistaken), but an MR boost via Astral magic (e.g. Banishment protection) is a marvelous thing.

Maybe I'm overstating my case here, but the blessing effects are one of my favorite parts of Dom II. They really bring the "godly" flavor of the whole thing onto the battle field. A blessing from Ceannthine, the Burning Soul, King of Every Flame is a very different thing from that of Lobheair, Mistress of Poison and Goddess of Decay. There's a dimension added by the blessings that I'd sorely miss if it weren't there, and the only thing I'd want to tweak about them is to have a summary for your god's blessing available without having to check out a current blessed unit. (I always have to go and check my prophet, as prophets are permanently blessed, if I forget exactly what my god's blessing does.)

Your milage may vary, of course, but I really do think y'all will find the blessings one of the very best parts of Dom II.

[ October 26, 2003, 20:06: Message edited by: Psitticine ]

[Wick]

I don't think the new bless is intended to dominate the game. It's just there, like the reduced dominion benefits, to encourage sinking some more points into the god himself. That and, very definately, to add flavor! The sacred troops of an air & astral pretender may be inferior to the originals but they're different, and different then all the others. This is cool.

[apoger]

>Since the effects are additive to the units, i.e. you get a bonus to your attack from a Fire magic blessing instead of just having your base attack stat replaced by the same one all blessed troops might receive, that's what keeps things in balance.

Bless was "additive" in Dom I.
I don't see how this helps "balance".


>The cheap sacred units, e.g. the flagellents, aren't that great without their blessings.

Neither are the expensive ones... if you take thier costs into account.


>The power of the blessings makes them into much more potent units, but they still won't be a match for, say, a blessed Warden of Avalon. Because of this, the relative costs for the units still keeps them in balance.

I don't see this.


>I find 10 blessed Wardens can take on just about any number of flagellents without too much fuss. It's the blessed Knights of the Challice they have to be careful of.

Not in Dom I by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure a Warden is better than a Flag one on one, but Wardens cost 3.5X as much gold. If you had 35 Flags fighting 10 Wardens, the Flags would mop the floor with the Wardens (in Dom I).

As for Dom II, keep in mind that Flags will allow massive efficiency compared to Wardens. Consider 100 Wardens getting +3 Strength and +3 to Attack. This 100 instances of the bonus being attributed. Now consider that for the same gold cost we can make 350 Flags. Also consider that Flags strike twice, so they use their bonuses twice! This is 700 instances of a bonus being attributed. The Warden army gains +300 strength and attack while the Flags garner +2100.

I think you have dramatically underestimated the potency of flagellents.

My suspision that Marignon will be the only nation to benefit from the changes to blessings remains unchanged. We will have a better opportunity to judge when the demo comes out.


>On the note of blessings maybe being over-powered,

I worry about underpowered. I have absolutely no concern that blessings will be over-powered.


>Maybe I'm overstating my case here, but the blessing effects are one of my favorite parts of Dom II. They really bring the "godly" flavor of the whole thing onto the battle field.

Agreed. It sounds like a great way to add flavor.
My worry is that it won't be particularly useful.


>Your milage may vary, of course, but I really do think y'all will find the blessings one of the very best parts of Dom II.

I hope so.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by apoger:
As for Dom II, keep in mind that Flags will allow massive efficiency compared to Wardens. Consider 100 Wardens getting +3 Strength and +3 to Attack. This 100 instances of the bonus being attributed. Now consider that for the same gold cost we can make 350 Flags. Also consider that Flags strike twice, so they use their bonuses twice! This is 700 instances of a bonus being attributed. The Warden army gains +300 strength and attack while the Flags garner +2100.

>On the note of blessings maybe being over-powered,

I worry about underpowered. I have absolutely no concern that blessings will be over-powered.

First off, I'm also concerned about "underpowered", a bit. I think it would be nice if bonuses started at level 2 magic or level 3 magic instead of level 4 magic, or if blessings gave +3str +3mrl in addition to magic bonuses. But, we'll see how it works.

But as to your other point, uh... the math is wrong. With strength... yes, strength can be multiplied by number of affected units (and Flags have the advantage with their double hits). But for things like attack, MR, protection, and so forth, you can't simply multiply #units by #pts increase and get the overall improvement. Moving a flagellant from 0 protection to 3 protection, for example, does not really affect his survivability, while moving a Warden (dunno, say 15 protection) up to 18 protection would make him much less likely to be hurt when attacked by a flagellant.

Similarly, quickness - 50% extra attacks by 10 Wardens would probably be similarly useful to 50% extra attacks by 35 flags, because their attacks are so much better. Reinvogoration would be more valuable to wardens than flags. Regeneration would be WAY more useful to wardens than flags... and flaming weapons would probably be more useful to flags because it is multiplied out like strength.

Essentially, some blessings are better for some units, and some for others, but you can't really claim that all blessings are better for cheap, plentiful units, because it's not true.

-Cherry

[apoger]

>Similarly, quickness - 50% extra attacks by 10 Wardens would probably be similarly useful to 50% extra attacks by 35 flags, because their attacks are so much better. Reinvogoration would be more valuable to wardens than flags. Regeneration would be WAY more useful to wardens than flags... and flaming weapons would probably be more useful to flags because it is multiplied out like strength.


+50% Quickness would net 10 Wardens an extra 5 attacks. It would get 35 flags another 35 attacks! While the warden attacks are stronger, it gets overwhelmed by the sheer volume of flag attacks. Easily.

Even for the stuff like regeneration, yes the flags don't get the benefit of the double attack, but they still get regen on 3.5X as many troops. In a one on one comparison a warden gets more regen than a flag. When you account for 1 warden versus 3.5 flags, the situation is much murkier.

For the bonuses that don't involve an attack the flags only get 3.5X as much bonus as opposed to 7X. I'm still willing to bet that flags are the only troop that will be able to make the new blessing system worthwhile.