Epic Heroes Mod MA game(finished)

[Tuidjy]

I see that Pythium is taken. Has someone claimed them, or is it my
old pretender loaded? I entered this game because I wanted to try
Pythium in Dominions III while able to downplay a potential loss :-)

I would not mind trying something else if someone wants Pythium.
I am about to run two more tests with Ulm. If the results turn
as I expect, you'll see me propose alliance to Ulm on turn 1...

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Oh, and to maintain my reputation as a argumentative bastard:

> Because Smiths are generally not good battle mages early on.

When expansion is conducted with the starting troops and the free
thugs, and a starting SC pretender is not needed, Ulm can concentrate
on rapid infrastructure development. With Conj 3 and Const 3,
smiths are able to cast legions of steel, which makes many of
their troops nigh invulnerable to physical damage.

> Also, Ulm is limited to 3 Black Order Soldiers per turn,

Three free thugs which I would value at 10 gems a piece as troops,
and 25 gems a piece as commanders. If that's limited...

> and that means the Black Duke is not out searching for death magic
> sites,

The black duke has no business going out to search for sites.
Once Dark knowledge is researched (because of Summon Earthpower)
Ulm should trade for death gems, and spellsearch for death sites in
the likely provinces. With the expected rapid rate of expension,
they should have provinces where the scales indicate a death site.

> forging items

That comes later.

> or leading in battle.

Risking him in battle is insane. He should stay inside a patrolled
castle, with five thugs as bodyguards. He should be producing thugs
every turn he's not searching, forging or empowering.

[Xietor]

you have dibs on pythium.

That pretender you see is your own! If you are keeping the same pretender, you need do nothing. If you want to change, just resend and it should send you a message telling you it will use your most recent one.

[Dedas]

I understand that you want us to test your mod Xietor, and I appreciate that you give us the opportunity. But obviously it isn't ready for multiplayer beta testing just yet.
So my thought is that maybe we should just play a standard game on your excellent map for a while. In the meantime you and others who are willing can do some tests on your mod in SP. Else we are just gonna keep restarting the game all the time. What do you say?

[Xietor]

This will be our last restart. I understand your frustration dedas, especially as you are playing ulm. If you can live with Ulm getting 3 rather than 4 Black Order Soldiers, I actually would like to see Ulm in the game.

[Dedas]

It is okay.

I can actually live with having no black order soldiers at all. In my opinion they just make the early game too easy and unchallenging. They may be cool and all that when playing SP... but in MP, nah. Nice work anyhow.

[lch]

jutetrea said:
If 20 dual blessed vans demolish 20 ulm summons, I still don't see a problem. Hell, if they're even I still don't see a problem.

20 dual blessed Helhirdings cost 20*75 = 1500 gold (don't know the numbers for Vans by heart) and thus 100 gold upkeep per turn aswell. Plus their recruitment is limited by dominion level. Do the free Ulm summons even take any upkeep?

I agree with Tuidjy, whenever you introduce something to the game you can't think "oh, those are pretty nice units, users would like to play with these", but "how bad is the chance for abuse if a user exploits this to the fullest?"
Looks like an Ulm player could just keep a low profile for a couple of turns and then bulldoze over anybody with a horde of free summons. That hardly sounds like fun.

[llamabeast]

Okay, the game is indeed waiting for pretenders again, and I've removed Ulm and Pangaea.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Hi. Darrel here. I changed my user name to a nickname I had developed on msn messenger. I will be using this one now.(that is if more then one Dr is allowed on this forum. )

I will be sticking with my current Machaka pretender.( And so everyone is warned, the Immortal Assasin does have a long distance decay attack, which can be deadly to SC's)

Xieter I appreciate what you have done with the epic heroes. They are fun. But I do have some comments.

1) In creating them you should be concerned about making them fun, rather then using them to balance the game. It would be more fun for me if each nation had their hero equal in relative power, rather then some being strong and some being weak. That makes playing a nation with a weak epic boring, and having an epic that can easily clobber everything isn't fun either. And if people want to balance the game they can play with CB, or another balance mod, and epic heroes should be used to have fun heroes in the game. The fact that you use Epic heroes for balance means that a person cannot play with both mods togther.

2) I don't like the idea of these Ulm summons either. Lets never mind the balance between Ulm and other nations, this unbalances everything within ulm itself. Every other unit ulm has, now becomes pointless.Those summoned units become what Ulm is, instead of just being an accessory.

3) Just for other ideas. I have no idea if the following can be modded or not, but as an alternative to having Epic heroes summon allies , you can have them very slowly accumulate allies over time like a VQ gets vampires, or have them start off each battle with a set of extra units like Oni get wolves. As is, why would anybody use the Mictlan hero for anything other then summon Jaguars. If instead of this they got 6 or 7 automatic Jaguar warriors each battle, then you can actually use this epic hero to expand (which is much more heroish and fun). This will also balance the Epic Heroes better among themsleves.


P.S. This Immortal Assasin is fun

[jutetrea]

2 types of summons - dom summons and summon allies. Quite a few of the epic heros have dom summons (automatic summons which occur in a positive dom area), while fewer have the summon allies version it seems.

I believe Dedas dropped, so I might be joining again as Mict...and I'll definitely be using the hero to expand (at least early). I've played a few games with it and MA Mict is BORING without blood. The hero really spices things up, my problem is that even in SP i keep getting him killed due to overconfidence...usually right around turn 20.

In terms of fun, most MA nations were just as fun as any other dom game and some just weren't. The non-fun/viable nations needed a bit more oomph IMO and the heros provide that. I'm really curious to see how it affects a full game. I fully expect to lose about mid-late game with Mict..but if its fun while before it happens and theres a bit more mid game potential... mission accomplished.

Why can't you use CB and epic heroes together? I'm missing something.

[Xietor]

I love the idea that melee heroes have summons-and that is not going away, but I do think Ulm's(in the next version and not in time for this game) will be balanced for mp purposes).

The black order soldiers do have an upkeep cost btw. And I did not try to "balance" the races through the Epic Heroes Mod. What I did was keep in mind how tough the various races were in designing their Hero-a subtle but important difference i think.

And I tried to give every race a hero that would benefit that race, even if it was not on the field of battle(Vanheim, Marignon).

But getting a mp game going is the best way for me to receive input and make changes. Look at my thread on the forums-i have received tons of input. When people are actually selecting races to play in mp, and looking at their neighbors with an eye to how to fight them, i think they take a very hard look at the mod, something they may not be inclined to do when commenting on it generally or after a sp game.