Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[JimMorrison]

Xietor said:
I also like the fact that not all races and spell lines are equally powerful. WOW recently bowed to its vocal minority and gave the evil races "paladins" just so everything could be identical. Identical is boring.

Since I used to be addicted to that drug, I have to comment, for sake of veracity. The Horde (evil WoW races) did NOT want paladins. Facing the wall of rejection and ignorance they were getting from the devs, eventually the pleading did change to "fine, then just give us paladins.....". But what the Horde wanted, was simply for shamans to not suck horribly compared to paladins in the same raid encounters.


Taking the analogy back here again, I don't think anyone here wants all the nations to be vaguely similar. There is just a feeling that some weaknesses and drawbacks are more crippling than others, and some strengths and bonuses are less useful than others. One of the points of this thread, was to help highlight problems. So rather than people running around smacking about "MA Man is weak", and yada yada, if 10 people all rated MA Man at 4/4/2 for the power ratings, or 4/3/2 or whatever, then this would directly show that there is a widely accepted problem in their late game specifically.

By pinpointing the weak areas of the weaker nations (and conversely, any nation rating too highly, might use a small tweak down in some way), allows the discussion to then become more focused, and useful. So if we say MA Man has late game issues, then we can start to look for late game specific solutions, such as new national summons, perhaps a special nation specific Nature evocation of some sort. Also I had the thought that if they are seen as great woodsmen and "rangers" as a whole, their national troops could thematically receive a mobility increase, specifically boosting all national units +1 to their map move, and being more liberal with FS/MS so that later in the game as mobility becomes ever more important, their less relevant troops can at least be present.

Let's not ask that MA Man play like any other nation, but request it be added to in a meaningful way that makes it a stronger opponent in the late game. Then let's take that philosophy and extend it to other nations.

A theoretical example - nations who are weak in the early game might benefit from adding +1 DEF to their national troops, or +1 PRE for their ranged units. It's not that you just grab them and say "what are they weak at, let's fix it", but rather to ask what are they strong at, and see if that can be turned into something that can be relied upon more. One thought I had for early game weakness, is to give a potentially useful low level summons. EA Agartha has Rhuax Pact for example, which gives them 5 Magma Children for 2 F gems, and only takes Conj 3. These units are not singularly powerful, and don't make an "I win" strategy alone, but they are a powerful tool in their arsenal - and they are one of the only nations that gets an early national summon worth burning gems on. A number of nations could get their early game improvement simply by buffing the low level summons that they already have, preferably not by making them stronger (too easy to make them too strong), but by increasing the number per cast, or gem cost efficiency to make them a viable option.

[Tifone]

A really nice and important post JimMorrison. Even if my opinion surely doesn't count, I'd like to express my agreement with every single word you said

[Hoplosternum]

I agree a good post JimMorrison.

I don't think many people are calling for nations to be made all alike. Or even that they are all balanced.

But tweaking a few things. Be they minor cost or stats changes or a minor but useful national summons or spell hardly does this.

[Zeldor]

JimMorrison :

I will repeat myself - many nations are unbalanced because of unbalaned magic paths. Take look at some:
Astral:
- Mind Hunt to kill non-S nations unless they are lucky and diversify
- Magic Duel to kill low level S nations or non-S that get lucky and diversify into some S magic
- precision 100 spells that are not affeced by many things like Darkness
- Enslave, Master Enslave
- Communions
- Wishing
- Teleportation
- Golems

Death:
- all undead spam
- life after death
- tartarians and other good SCs/thugs
- Darkness

And what other paths get?
Nature:
- Charm: ha, ha, with that range? If you mass huge amount of probably cap only mages you can stop 1-2 SCs if he isn't expecting that
- Mass Regen: to die slower? in end-game battles end fast anway

Earth, Fire, Air get some nice spells. But how many nations can really cast them? Well, astral nations mostly. You just get communion and cast them. Other nations need expensive boosters, putting additional gems, wasting turn to cast a buff like phoenix power... I don't think anyone would complain if Man had N6 mages, well, probably even N20 mages wouldn't make it powerful enough. Nut at least crones wouldn't massively die of old age every winter with growth3.

[JimMorrison]

I don't know what you're repeating Zel, but I didn't state that I felt that "all nations are differently created equally". What I did say, was that I feel that arguments that lean towards suggesting something like giving all nations access to Astral, are not a productive line of reasoning.

As I was saying, since the consensus is that MA Man starts out strong, but has no strong options in the late game, that we understand the basic problem. You can enumerate all you want on the relative benefits of other paths, but you're not suggesting a solution, unless it is to give them access to Astral or Death, which is the sort of request I was specifically trying to avoid.

Now, if high end Nature magic had a couple of choice spells/summons added, or perhaps there were a couple of options added just as nationals for Man, it could go a long way to bridging the gap. Also, pursuing the line of reasoning I had about adding FS to all Man troops, they could be given a top end BE, some sort of Grasping Weeds or something that causes a small amount of damage each turn, and impedes the movement of any unit which lacks FS.

Obviously it can be stated that for various reasons, Nature is one of the weaker paths in late game. Fine, we get that. Just try to come up with some creative solutions to the problem - creative, thematic, easily implemented solutions. The Grasping Weeds spell I just described could help, but obviously it's not enough to compete meaningfully with the other options, so more is needed. Our Devs thrive on inspiration, not on argument. We're simply past the stage of "proving" a disparity, the point is made, now find something that will spark interest in getting the problem actually solved.

Personally, I'd prefer to put some more effort into getting help for the nations who are soft in the early game. There will always be more creative solutions to a late game weakness, than an early game weakness. But this forum has been stuck on MA Man for over a month now, let's get something solid and put that puppy to bed.

[Tifone]

Excuse me if I say that, Zeldor. You are clearly a much more expert player than me, for your grade and your deep knowledge of the paths mechanics.

But I don't like the tone of your participation. You are not saying - that is cool and I think I have ideas of how to improve it. You are just pointing out things it seems you think have been done wrong with a rude sarcasm that put me somehow in discomfort.

I'm not attacking you, I don't know you and possibly you are a very kind and moderate person. And I'm not some kind of "politically correctness" tyrant. I just want to say I hope people use more moderate tones towards the work of the devs to create this huge game world with dozens of nations and thousands of spells... mostly because I respect and really like their work, and secondly and in minor part, because it would be easy to make them feel underappreciated and lose their support for the game... and I don't think you will find another game so wide and unique around

Peace ^_^

[Zeldor]

Oh, I was not attacking anyone. Sorry if someone understood it that way. I totally agree with JimMorrison that nations should be different and play differently. But it is strategy game and we'd all like to start with our favourite nations with as equal chances as possible. It is unfair to suggest someone to play other nation because the one he likes just sucks in late game.

The thing I said was that instead of trying to balance many nations we should balance magic system. Because magic is what matters later. And you simply need astral and death [at least a lot of astral] to have any chances. Nature can get everyone with common indies. Giving some nation N10 recruitable mages wouldn't really change much, people wouldn't fear them. And imagine someone getting S10 or D10 mages.

And Tifone, I am in favour of removing Mind Hunt and Magic Duel totally from the game, or at least really nerfing them. That probably goes for horror spam too. There are many overpowered [well, simply too easy and cheap] tactics in that game. Luckily CBM makes it a bit better and gets better with every version.

[Gandalf Parker]

Tifone said:
I'm not attacking you, I don't know you and possibly you are a very kind and moderate person. And I'm not some kind of "politically correctness" tyrant. I just want to say I hope people use more moderate tones towards the work of the devs to create this huge game world with dozens of nations and thousands of spells... mostly because I respect and really like their work, and secondly and in minor part, because it would be easy to make them feel underappreciated and lose their support for the game... and I don't think you will find another game so wide and unique around

Peace ^_^

BINGO, and excellently put.

[Xietor]

It is actually true that the vast scope of this game cannot be realized by the players at all. You get a sense of it when you try to mod. And even with a simple mod like Epic Heroes, which is tiny in scope, it is hard to balance, and a few months after I stop working on it, I cannot recall all of the abilities each Hero has etc.

Unless KO has a photographic memory, then there is no way he can remember all of the spells, units, items effects.

It is amazing that the races are as balanced as they are, even with the limitless diversity.

It is also true that no matter how much work KO devotes to tweaking the races, even if he did it for 12 hours a day until the day he last drew breath, would a game of this scope be "perfect."

Something could always be found that could be tweaked. Which is why 99 percent of games that have no monthly fee to play just fix a glaring bug or 2, and that is that.

The online games that continue to tweak the game, develop new content etc, as you may have noticed, all charge a monthly fee.

Lastly, I do disagree that all magic paths should be equal
in power. And besides s and d, which Zeldor mentioned, Earth and Blood are also very powerful. Ask all of the astral nations that fell to Pangaea in Alpaca!