Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[Amorphous]

Regarding Yomi:

I am admittedly not that familiar with Yomi, but if it needs a boost, I do not think it well advised to do it through making the Dai-Oni more powerful. The unit is already plenty powerful with excellent base stats. The starting armour is not good, but it is easily replaced even early on. The magic paths of the Dai-Oni allows for the casting of excellent buff spells after a little research is done, so it is not really dependent on a good bless.


Regarding R'lyeh:

I think pop-kill is the way to go. Perhaps not as drastic as with Ermor, but this seems like a good compromise. Limiting R'lyeh's astral power - other than through economics - is not such a good idea, however. The nation is a powerhouse, but with a dominion that makes everyone else insane it needs to be, and as far as I can see, astral is a big part of what makes it powerful later on. If there is a problem, I see it more as one of quantity and not of quality, which means limiting the amount of high-astral mages, not the level of astral on each mage, is the way to go - and increasing the pop-kill effect should accomplish this.


Regarding invasion of water provinces:

I do not like the idea of making it easier for land-bound nations to invade water provinces. As it stands now, I think there is a pretty good balance between land and water nations while still keeping them rather different in style and options. Making it easier for land nations to invade the water and provide water nations with better recruiting abilities on land would just make them more similar to each other.

Consider also that maps in general have more land than water provinces. In EA and MA there are 3 full-fledged water nations that compete under the waves and even in a game where only one of them is present there are undead and amphibian troops to contend with, not to mention that you do not win by just owning the water. And on land they are at a disadvantage. In LA, R´lyeh is the only nation that starts in the water, but Atlantis is still around and still a full-fledged water nation, Mictlan has some rather beefy amphibian units, Patala's Nagas are something to ignore at your own peril and there is death magic practically everywhere, so more or less everyone can just send wave after wave of undead.

Also, at construction 2 you can get thugs in the water and from construction 4 you can bring troops as well.


Regarding acid:

I think especially EA Atlantis is a great acid nation. All Basalt Kings and half the Mages of the Deep can cast acid spells. Great, dark old beings rising from the sea, calling down acid from the skies and making the population kneel in the acidic sludge before their giant god of the deep is an image that would make Lovecraft proud.

[Tifone]

Nice and reasonable analysis Amorphous. I must say I agree with almost everything.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Amorphous

Patala's Nagas are something to ignore at your own peril and there is death magic practically everywhere, so more or less everyone can just send wave after wave of undead.

Nagas are capital-only and not very good, so ignoring them shouldn't be too difficult, and wave after wave of mindless undead will die rather quickly when the Illithids Mind Burn can only target the non-mindless commanders. Once you have a small stronghold underwater, you can recruit aquatic units, but launching a straight land-to-water campaign is much harder than you imply and only possible for spesific nations, and far from easy even for them.

Great, dark old beings rising from the sea, calling down acid from the skies and making the population kneel in the acidic sludge before their giant god of the deep is an image that would make Lovecraft proud.

That IS nice.
I agree with your other points.

[Kristoffer O]

I have other ideas for Yomi, but they are a bit mechanics-heavy, meaning I must convince JK to make them, meaning he must shift focus from other projects. Thus I need to be quite clear on what I want. So for the time being I will work on coolifying Jomon. The coolifying is coming along quite nicely I'd say.

I have a dragon break, meaning I have quit drawing dragons for the time being. They need attack sprites, which is annoying since the originals took me quite some time to draw. Scaly bastards. I've moved to kami making. Jomon will have a nice number of sacred summons. Some shinto and some buddhist. Also there will be a couple of new monsters for Jomon, shinu and yomi. Some, like the shikome, will be restricted to yomi and possibly shinu I suspect.

Jomon will also recieve a couple of new recruits and some priestly spells if I can make mechanics out of some buddhist concepts.

[Kristoffer O]

I like the basalt king acid sludge image!

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Nagas are capital-only and not very good, so ignoring them shouldn't be too difficult, and wave after wave of mindless undead will die rather quickly when the Illithids Mind Burn can only target the non-mindless commanders. Once you have a small stronghold underwater, you can recruit aquatic units, but launching a straight land-to-water campaign is much harder than you imply and only possible for spesific nations, and far from easy even for them.

It was not my intention to overstate the case and claim that it is easy for land nations to just switch to underwater combat on the level with water nations - sorry if it came off that way. The point I tried to make was rather that it is not that hard for land nations to descend into the seas.

Nagas, for example, may not be very good, but they are easily good enough to take underwater indies or provinces just defended by PD. And, as you said, once you have a water province you can start to expand using troops bought there. Since Nagas can be bought from turn one, ignoring them may lead to a rather nasty surprise later on.

As a general rule, land nations are the under-seadog beneath the waves, which means they should use a strategy appropriate to that - most probably raiding. Water nations cannot afford to let others have water provinces too long, or they risk the creation of another water power. And raiding with high taxes and pillaging is not fun for the target.

Specifically for LA R´lyeh, the nation needs expensive Illithids and/or mages to counter raiding. Keeping sufficient forces of these everywhere cost a lot - more than can usually be afforded.

Again, to be clear, I do not mean that it is easy for land nations to carve themselves a sizeable underwater empire, but for many it is relatively easy to be a bother to existing water empires. The same - even for LA R´lyeh - really applies to water nations trying to ascend to dry land. Late in the game this changes, but I think it does so for both parties, at least to some extent.

I cannot really claim any extensive knowledge of this game - what little MP I have played, have been with friends who, like me, probably are not very good. With that in mind, I still think that some of the complaints voiced here comes from less than well thought out strategies. Going into the seas is an investment for land nations that is initially expensive as is going on land for water nations. The difference is that when playing water nations, players tend to realize that they have to plan land campaigns well ahead, while in the case of land nations they do not do it to the same extent. I think you can get a good perspective on this through perusing the many strategy guides in this forum, while keeping the crossing of the water-border in mind. At least to my recollection, water nation guides more or less always include advise on how to get on land, while the converse is rarely true for land nations.

In my opinion it is hard for land nations to go up against water nations in the sea and it is hard for water nations to go up against land nations on land - and I like it that way.


Edit:

I like the basalt king acid sludge image!

I like the treatment of lovecraftian themes in this game a lot.
In fact, while I like Dominions for a lot of things, I have to say that it was the excellent treatment of mythologies - historical and purely literary - in general that drew me to it in the first place. It is rare to see a sound collection of mythologies handled so successfully and respectfully. In my mind mythologies are foremost good old stories that have stood the test of time and deserve to be remembered, added to and viewed from new perspectives.

Going on will just be even more like a rant, so instead I will just say thank you for a great game.

[Xietor]

I am very appreciative of the fact that KO continues to update Dominions. But count me among the few that hate to see the super races nerfed. To me having a couple super races adds a sense of urgency to diplomacy in mp games.

The player who typically like to do his own thing starts out next to LA Ermor. He is basically forced to do some emergency diplomacy or he is likely to die. I think the previous Big Game benefitted from having LA Ermor and LA Ryleh in them. They were not excluded from Kingmaker because of their power, but because of their free spawns, and the unit cap.

But the other socalled super race was in Kingmaker and was either the 1st or second race eliminated from the game-Hinnom. Yes they were double teamed, but that is what mp is all about. It is rare in mp that you make it through a game and never see the short end of a double team.

My only caution is to nerf lightly. No need for overkill as none of these races are broken as they are.

If time permits, and it is thematic, I would like to see a few of the minor easy to implement suggestions for underpowered races added. Like a commander for LA Ulm that can lead undead. There were a couple of other minor tweaks for races that have been discussed over the last few months and i will not rehash them here.

[Tifone]

I am partially buddhist so please treat us nicely mr KO

[TwoBits]

I just don't see how R'lyeh can function in even the medium term with a much faster population crash. Unlike Ermor, they have to spend gold on their commanders (280 each for non-sacred Starspawn mages). Add to that, apparently their not-so-free-spawn cost upkeep. Played the normal way (awake Dom 10 god, building temples as fast as they can, etc.), they will quickly cripple themselves economically.

Heck, I'm in the mid-game as R'lyeh in an MP game right now, and as it is I haven't bought a new Starspawn or Illithid in at least a dozen turns, as already more than two thirds of my income is devoured by upkeep! If my population really started to die off, I'd be FUBAR.

Yeah, in my current game, I'm a dangerous faction. But as others have mentioned, this is where diplomacy comes into play - there's already a coalition built just to deal with me.

The point is, if R'lyeh's population dies a whole lot faster, it will require a completely different style of play. They can't just ignore it, and burn gems and the occasional lucky gold strike like Ermor. They'd have to play a lot like Mictlan (except with a lot less control, with no blood sacrifice available), restricting their crappy dominion to their capital and surrounding environment.

Outside of their lethal dominion, they'd have to play like MA R'lyeh, except they'd have to do it in whatever crummy enemy dominion they happened to be in. "Free Spawn" would become a totally minor part of their game plan - just something they scrape up from the 'dead-zone' that is their capital.

LA R'lyeh will have to 'nerf' it's own Dreamlands fun, just in order to fund it's own existence. So that would mean a lot less random void-beings, many fewer free cultist commanders, and a whole lot less INSANITY - all the things that make LA R'lyeh such a fun race to have in the game. Basically, it would wind up like a gimped MA R'lyeh.

Oh well, just my two bits. Maybe I'm only griping because I'm worrying that the next patch will totally kill me in my current game I just wish there was another way of cutting LA R'lyeh down to size (that didn't involve cutting it's head clean off!).

[archaeolept]

less talk, more releasing of patches