Forbidden Magic: Darkness and Light!

[Amhazair]

I'm not sure about balance (at all) but the concept sure sounds fun. If you have trouble finding players willing to be neutral I might even be tempted, depending on what age the game will be in.

To go with the wealthy neutral theme, I would think it a good idea to add an iron mine or other bonus resource site to their start province too.

If they happen upon a death or blood site, they must let these gems/slaves sit and rot in their vault. Do NOT use them for ANY purpose.

How about alchemy? Thematically 'destroying the essence of evil made physical, and converting it to astral gems for the betterment of mankind' sounds good to me.

[CUnknown]

If you think the GOOD races are at a disadvantage, we could let them alchemetize the death gems.

I'm not sure they are at a disadvantage, though.. Being able to talk and coordinate is just huge.. Hmm... I dunno. We will vote on the death gem issue. I just don't want to have the GOOD races getting indy death mages and searching for sites. It's not thematic.

An iron mine for the NEUTRALS could be a good call.. we should vote on that as well.

And, this is all ages, we are going to use the Single Age mod (all Ages in one). Pick any faction you want.

[thejeff]

The only exception I'd suggest to the Blood and Death ban would be to allow the death anti-undead spells. I'm not sure if there are any equivalents in Blood. (And anything actually using Blood slaves is out.)

If not, mod out any Blood/Death paths from the Good nations.
Even if it's just a random.

[CUnknown]

Okay, using Wither Bones seems acceptable for the Good races. That is sensible. Good people can specialize in Death magic for the purpose of learning the weaknesses of undead, that makes perfect sense.

In that case, maybe we should go ahead and allow them to alchemitize death gems to astral.

I have modified the original post about this game to include wither bones and alchemy for death gems for Good races.

I also started up a new thread for this game. This is really a splinter game from the original idea, the original idea was good, too! I mostly just didn't want to play this as a blitz.

[thejeff]

The only problem with my suggestion is it'll be difficult to keep Good death mages from spamming undead once the scripts run out.

(As I argue against myself...)

[CUnknown]

Yes, but these are the reanimated bones of only the "good" warriors. They are "good" skeletons. There is a world of difference.

As long as Good isn't using any death gems to summon tartarians or whatever, that is all I care about.

Let's say Good is forbidden from having Death or Blood on their pretenders as well.

[Tuidjy]

Why would the good races forsake death magic? Blood magic MOST definitely,
but death magic is not evil per se.

As a matter of fact, this game will be ruined if it is played unfairly. Nothing
can stop the Evil players from coordinating, and if they do that, it will be a
walk in the park for them. So we have to assume that all Evil guys are honest.
Can't we assume that all Good guys are honest as well, and let them script
only non-evil spells?

What is an evil spell? Anything that hurts population. Unrest and discent is
fine, killin is not. Anything that uses mind control and has 'evil' fluff.
Anything described as killing innocents. Thus summoning ghouls is an abomination
but rasing longdead would be fine.

Evil elemental spells: Hurricane, Tidal Wave, Volcanic Eruption
Evil astral spells: Enslave Mind, Imprint Souls, Master enslave
Evil death spells: Black Plague, Burden of Time, etc..

If a spell can be rationalized, it's fine:
Charm - oh, yes, you convert an unit, but you do it by a mind melt that lets
them see that your side is right.
Raging Hearts - the good people of the province are rising against the oppression
and are killing the tools of the evil regime.
Bane Lord - a great hero from the past arises to help defeat the enemies of
all that is good and pure.

I wonder whether any non-blood items should be forbidden to the good races. I
cannot think of any items that are clearly evil, and do not require blood. Does
the horror harmonica? The Wraith Sword I'm not quite sure about. There's
plenty of soulstealers in fantasy that are not evil... but still.

[moderation]

Hmm, well that's the tricky thing, you can justify all sorts of extraordinary and awful practices in the name of achieving a "good" cause (many news headlines come to mind). It's kind of disturbing, but also interesting to think about in Dominions terms since you would be the one responsible for said acts.

As for what good and evil mean, I think we're stuck with using the commonsense ideas we've inherited today to a certain extent. Of course if we tried to put ourselves in the shoes of a civilization from 3000 years ago, it would probably be different, but I'm not sure I'd want to be a barbarian.

Hey this gives me a new idea: Civilized people vs the barbarians. However this is also a rather big can of worms. Both Mel Gibson's Braveheart and Ghengis Khan come to mind. Maybe EA nations could fight LA ones or something.