Ermor

[LordArioch]

If a minimum population growth is set, it should be 1 pop/turn/scale at max. Keep in mind at .2% a growth scale a +1 growth only gives +1 pop/turn with 500 people, so if the min was set above +1 pop/turn/scale there'd be no growth advantage for large provinces.
Person summoning spells and curse curing spells are fine with me as long as they are made really really REALLY expensive. I shudder at the consequences of mass castings of pop raising spells combined with 200% patrol. If it was made too cheap pop raising spells would just bring back patrol. And in mp at least ermor's population killing is unbalanced against it more than for it, what with how every human player doesn't want to see valuable lands destroyed and will work together against ermor.
Curse curing is nice for doing rp stuff but in practice a cheap curse cure would make supercombatants even more important. Curse is effectively an anti-supercombantant spell: against anything weaker you're better off using magic that just kills it rather than trying to make it acquire battle injuries. An item that protects would just become standard for sc's so that might not be a great idea. Note that the curing of battle wounds + the variety of magic for forging makes arcoscephale perfect for setting up supercombatants in my opinion.

Wish doing either would work fine. And paper is clearly the unbalanced one. Rock never even has a chance.

[Taqwus]

I haven't tried it (in Dom I, let alone II), but a reading of the strings in the Dom I binary suggests to me that you could wish for "population", "people", "populace", "peasants", or "commoners". It would certainly make more sense than wishing for "death" or "to die".
It may generate a message of the form "Suddenly a whole bunch of people appeared in {province name}."

[PvK]

Yes, it was mentioned in an earlier thread that it was possible to get extra population with a wish.

PvK

[Wendigo]

Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
Now we dont have counter when Ermor kills the pop, we cannot remove curse, and the curse spell is so cheap, Ermor cannot defend against turn undead..etc.
Frankly, some things are totally unbalanced. [/QB]

This is soo uterly wrong....

You can defend yourself pretty easily vs Ermor's Dominion: invest more desing points in your own dominion, build temples & preach.

You will only have porblems with curse if you put all your eggs in one basket, and if you do so you are playing lotery & deserve it. If you still insist on doing so at least have the sense of developing one of the multiple ways to cure afflictions.

Ermor can defend itself vs banishment with MR pumping spells & unholy prayers (if these still exist in Dom II). Lesser undead like soulless will still die in droves, but being a meat shield to take the hits from your better troops is part of their job anyway.

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by DominionsFAN:

quote:

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Originally posted by HJ:
By design, Ermor has a dominion that kills off the population very quickly, leaving them worthless in terms of gold income and supply. That's one of their main strengths, since they don't need either. Growth scale wouldn't help you much - it's only 0.2% growth per turn per tick, so it's only noticeable in provinces with high population base. In other words, you are stuck with it. Here is a guide that might help you in dealing with Ermor as a novice player (it's for Doms I, but many things will still apply).
http://illwinter.com/defeat_ermor.html

I think that there should be spells like summon population. Why not? This is a fantasy wargame afterall! All things should have some counter, that is the key.

Now we dont have counter when Ermor kills the pop, we cannot remove curse, and the curse spell is so cheap, Ermor cannot defend against turn undead..etc.
Frankly, some things are totally unbalanced.

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I tend to agree with you on this.
Curse is a low level spell, and there is no spell like remove curse. Why?
It is a pain to play against Ermor, since it is totally wiping out the population of the provinces. We cannot summon/conjure/create population. Why?
It is hellish hard to remove battle afflictions. [In some cases it is impossible.] Why?
It is way to easy to 'get some' battle afflictions....

Seriously these things should be changed. Every tactics must have some counter tactics, it is a "key part" of all strategy games, this is very true! This has nothing to do with the "generic rock-paper-scissors" game type.

[Taqwus]

Dominions already lets you romp around with supercombatants -- especially the AI does, since it's not particularly clued about pulling out the counters. Curse happens to be one of those counters.

How is that a part of strategy then?

Sounds like someone marched their army into a desert and is asking why there are no farms to burn down and pillage to feed their troops. I consider Ermor like difficult terrain that you can't tackle head on; like you do with other things.

Which is good.

[Sammual]

Curse increases your chance of getting Battle Afflictions.

Most units die before getting a Battle Affliction.

Super Combatants and Jotun are the only things hurt badly by curse.

If Battle Afflictions bother you play Arcoscephale, research Enchantment 5 and empower a caster to Nature 5 and cast Gift of Health, or research Conjuration 8 empower a caster to Nature 5 and summon a Faerie Queen.

Sammual

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Mortifer:

quote:

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Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
I think that there should be spells like summon population. Why not? This is a fantasy wargame afterall! All things should have some counter, that is the key.

Now we dont have counter when Ermor kills the pop, we cannot remove curse, and the curse spell is so cheap, Ermor cannot defend against turn undead..etc.
Frankly, some things are totally unbalanced.

I tend to agree with you on this.
Curse is a low level spell, and there is no spell like remove curse. Why?
It is a pain to play against Ermor, since it is totally wiping out the population of the provinces. We cannot summon/conjure/create population. Why?
It is hellish hard to remove battle afflictions. [In some cases it is impossible.] Why?
It is way to easy to 'get some' battle afflictions....

Seriously these things should be changed. Every tactics must have some counter tactics, it is a "key part" of all strategy games, this is very true! This has nothing to do with the "generic rock-paper-scissors" game type.

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Curses will not win your games, cursing is a defensive and longterm tactic to hurt opponents. Most MP players do not seem to consider curses or afflictions as unbalancing. Curses are only a real limiting factor to players that concentrate significant effort to maximise one or a few units. Making curses counterable would make supercombatants both harder to deal with and the players using them less cautious. The same goes for afflictions. I am not sure that unbalanced is even an applicable term for single player games, frustrating yes, but unbalanced?

Why do you say it is too easy to get afflictions? Why should it be harder? In what way is the loss represented by getting cursed or gaining an affliction a less acceptable loss then other permanent losses such as loosing a unit. If you view your army as the combined strength of the units in it, getting the limp affliction on your Ice Devil Nycafor is not much different from loosing a lava warrior. Both represent a loss of total combat capability, why is one unbalanced and not the other?

People die in war. Population growth in games often give rise to cheesy tactics, where players first minimise taxes in order to max pop then raise the taxes as soon as it hits its growth shelf, or herd their population around their planets/cities like Texas Longhorns. Dominions is not a serf breeding simulation, many 4X strategy games are, that doesn't mean that Dominions II need follow suit. Is there any particular reason you think that population should grow more abundantly other than that it does in most other games? Population loss is as much a weakness as a strength for Ermor.

Dominions is a conservative game, meddling by centralised power structures results in damage that will only very slowly recover, social engineering doesnt work, the evil empire must be stopped before it destroys the world etc.

Also what wendigo said.

[Teleolurian]

I'm not exactly one for realism in fantasy wargames, but I do understand the strategical elements of imbalance. The atom bomb is (currently) unbalanced in the real world- the potential ramifications of how it's unbalanced is a political discussion belonging to an entirely different sort of forum.

Unrecoverable curse and horror mark, IMHO, are fine. Neither one is tremendously disabling. I do think that recovery from battle afflictions could be slightly more available, as with population growth, but this is only because these things make sense to me in the overall worldview (war kills stuff, populations still increase globally because that's what happens). People get hurt, but then get better. Maybe it's just because I live in an age where overpopulation and advanced medicine are taken for granted.