Dominions 3000 (name confirmed!)

[Aezeal]

hey honey I know you are around.. what do you think? If this isn't answered in a week after I asked the question I'll have to make up my mind alone I fear.. after that no comments about what isn't good about it plz

[Darkwind]

I was thinking that space would be plains. It'd be a lot simpler I think, since you wouldn't have any special symbols, just a blank area where forest or mountains or such should be. Sort of like empty space where planets or stars or such should (not) be.

Also, anyone have any ideas for Neoclidia? Right now I'm working on the Old Ones (spaceships pushed back for a while). I plan on having two Old One/Lesser Old One types, ranged and melee, and three Great Old Ones (Ktalu, He L'geb, and Azathoth, all of whom are more or less transferred straight from the Mythos; all of them are awesome but He L'geb is supposed to be the most awesomest of them all). Right now this is pretty much all I have planned for the Old Ones. Any ideas for other summons? Since Azathoth is going to be king (daemon-sultan to be specific) of the void beyond the universe, I suppose he must have subjects. Likely blind and mindless, as a nod to Azathoth's role in the Dream Cycle. Also, any ideas for ships? Possible national spells?

Finally, I think I'll update the front post now. Nikelaos seems to be rather active with Aezeal's mod.

[Aezeal]

hey plains is the the blank? how do you call the thing with the bushel then?

I have no idea what neoclidia exactly is but great old ones.. are those the same things honeybadger is fooling around with?

[Darkwind]

Yeah, plains are the blank space. I assume the bushes (because a bushel is a unit of measurement) you're talking about are actually the little tree, which means forest.

Also, since you seem to have forgotten already, Neoclidia is a nation with a few ties to R'lyeh but more to the Cthulhu Mythos (which Honeybadger is also working with, and which R'lyeh is partially based upon). The Great Old Ones are, well, powerful and old beings. Cthulhu, for example, lives (or rather sleeps) under the sea in R'lyeh (an underwater city, duh). A lot of Lovecraft's work is based around the idea that there are forces much more powerful than humanity which simply don't care about humans; forces which are not good or evil, but simply have completely different thought processes than humans. What Wikipedia tells me is that then August Derleth came along and messed it all up with his 'good' and his 'evil' and his 'elemental forces'.

[Aezeal]

so shouldn't you and honey work together then and create one nation out of this since honey clearly admits he's got a lot of other priorities and his idea's aren't that simple maybe you could just borrow some of his good ideas and put them in your mod which I think will be finished a few centuries before Honey even has his new computer

I meant the farmland icon which I though was a a pack of grain which I thought is also called a bushel but it's not now I look at it again

ok so plainshape it will be .. will be a lot of work, need to decide which ones deserve a 2nd shape and which ones don't even need one. wtf to do with monsters in space.. can't give them a space suit or a pod .. they'd need a cage and then they'd be useless... well that might be the best idea and then it'll have to be balanced in price.

Another thing I was thinking of is giving militia (or most militia) a very very useless space form.. that would lower their price though but then they'd be VERY effective just to defend the province they are in, that might invite turtling.
I'll start plainshaping ulm since I hear their infantry is a bit overpowered.. a less effective space form might be just what they need.

Jomon's battlesuits stay the same in space I think, as do all spaceships
I guess R'lyeh's chaff need to have weaker plainshapes to and the predator aliens (which you haven't seen yet, another indie that R'lyeh dominates) needs to go in cages and not be able to do anything in space. R'lyeh still has the spacepirates though.

Another thing I fear while thinking of this is that pplz might just go for the most flexible troops (which are the spaceships) a solution would be to give them a weaker "landshape" but I can't really explain to myself (and thus to others) WHY a spaceshipfighter wouldn't be as effective on the earth (in shooting for example)

[Darkwind]

I think the solution to the ship problem is to make spaceships cost a lot more. Maybe 15 upkeep for a basic, recruitable ship, with a capital ship armed to the teeth costing as much as 100 gold per turn, as well as quite a few gems. Troops would likely be slower in space and less accurate, so there's an idea for you. Also, militia are essentially raw recruits from the general populace who likely don't even know how to handle a gun or have any useful weapons, useful only because they're easy to produce. Militia in space would likely have practically no mobility, very little precision, and low health (due to the harsh conditions of space and their inadequate armor). At least that's the way I see it.

Finally, Neoclidia and HB's Aboleths are fairly different, though both borrow somewhat from the same source material. Neoclidia is centered around the idea of the Great Old Ones and their awakening while the Aboleths are, well, undead fish-things spewed from a black hole who create pylons which use said magical hole's energy to summon various undead critters from worlds sucked into the hole, among other things. Two completely different ideas.

[Nikelaos]

Originally Posted by Darkwind

. Troops would likely be slower in space and less accurate, so there's an idea for you. Also, militia are essentially raw recruits from the general populace who likely don't even know how to handle a gun or have any useful weapons, useful only because they're easy to produce. Militia in space would likely have practically no mobility, very little precision, and low health (due to the harsh conditions of space and their inadequate armor). At least that's the way I see it.

i disagree with this, with no air resistance in space you actually wouldn't slow down so fast(less friction) and the course of ranged amunnition wouldn't be affected by the direction the wind blows in, meaning units should in theory go faster and missiles should be more accurate. Saying this it would likely be hard to direct yourself when moving in space, now i know some commanders can autocast spells in battle (like the communicant thing which does auto communion slave) but i don't think we can for units (though it's worth checking anyway), if we could then we could mod all these militias to auto cast blink at the start of a battle to emulate them not really being able to control where they are going. If not then i have no other ideas right now.

Also i agree with militias have reduced hp due to the conditions in space.

[Aezeal]

Hmm I've looked into #plainshape and it appears to be the opposite of #forestshape (so not a seperate form for when you move to a plain, but the form you get when leaving a forest.)

I'll do a lil test with this but it probably means we'll have to use forests as space. which means 'we'll probably have to give nearly all forms forest survival for else they won't be able to move fast through space.

[Aezeal]

Well seems that plainshape isn't what we wanted.. so I've changed all space to forest and put a forestform on all units that REALLY need it (some remain open for debate)

I'll test it a bit myself tomorrow and if it seems to work for a few units then I'll post the mod.

This certainly means we need to do a race that is best in space too.. sadly we can't let them randomly start in space (nothing like a "foreststart" command in the game) but I'll place it on the map if we have such a nation (maybe they neoclidia?)

Hey how is your nation proceeding anyway? I could already put what you have (if you also have some art) in the next version as a sort of teaser. If you have like 2-3 ready units with stats and an idea for the start sites then you could send me the code and the sprites and I'll put them in before I release this

[Aezeal]

aren't there some dom 3 sprites you can colorize and then use...