New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate V1.01
 

Introduction:
I heard there have been dragon nations in the past and I'm willing to believe it but I've not seen one here recently and since I was working on it already I decided not to let that information stop me and finish the job.

And the job is finished.

Making a dragon nation wasn't as easy as it sounds, you can't just put all different sorts of overpowered dragons together and call it a nation, it would either be overpowered or unplayable but I tried to thing of a story behind the dragons that allowed me to start with weak recruitables and commanders of acceptable powers (acutally less powerfull than some in game I think) and then advance towards the powerfull dragons we'd usually think about and a bit beyond to the ancient worms of nearly unparalelled power.

This dragon nation was originally intended for dominions 3000 (and it will actually go in there) but I think it fits well (better) with dominions 3 vanilla game.

The nation:

History:

The ancient dragon god was most important rival of the Pantokrator in ancient times. The fight was bitter and in the end the Pantokrator prevailed and the dragon god was cast down and imprisoned in the centre of a distant and unnamed star. The dragon god was to powerfull to be destroyed but his prison has lasted even after the Pantokrator's demise. The Dragon race had suffered huge losses in the war with the Pantokrator and his minions and without their god "lesser" races have been able to hunt dragons throughout the world and the galaxy with help of their fledling gods and pretenders. The dragon however remained loyal to their god, knowing he was still alive, somewhere far far away. Now their god has regained more and more of his power and is able to contact some of his sensitive dragon followers. He is now also able to be in constant contact with his most sensitive follower, lending this dragon avatar some of his strength and wisdom to lead dragonkind to dominate over the other pretneder gods. The ultimate goal of his avatar is of course to unlock the hidden powers of the galaxy to shatter the chains fo their bound god.

Dragons:

This is a nation of dragons. These dragons are beings of magic that are able to evolve into different forms during their live. They start as young, mundane wyrmling and as they mature they are able to choose different shapes. A lot fo wyrmlings are born but a great part of them dies while they are young. With age comes growth, intelligence and power, both physical as magical. When dragons are adult the magic in their blood can be channeled into spells and young adult dragons are often learning to cast spells. When they age their magic power grows and they are sometimes able to cast spells in more than one path. Dragons greatly respect their elders and older dragons are considered holy. Adult, Elder and Ancient dragons are a rare sight, since most races consider slaying one of these by tricks or in huge numbers some sort of heroic task instead of the low deed it is.

Dragons are classed as followed:
Wyrmling

post wyrmling: Steel Dragon, Venomous Dragon, Shadow Dragon

young dragon: Bone Biter Dragon, Mist Dragon

young adult: Ghost Dragon, Adamantine Claw Dragon, Stone Scale Dragon, Fire Tongue Dragon, Ice Plated Dragon, Poison Ivy Dragon, Stargazer Dragon

Adult dragon: Magma Dragon, Plague Dragon, Thundercloud Dragon

Elder dragon: Vine Dragon, Golden Dragon, Wave Dragon, Death Wraith Dragon

Ancient wyrm: Light Dragon, Dragon of Fate, Soulfire Dragon

(please note that I tried to stay a bit away from the standard DnD names, eventhough DnD covers a lot of dragon idea's and so there certainly are similarities.)

In this doesn't mean dragons are shapeshifters, their development takes years while they mature and the span of these wars is to small to see any dragon change shape. The dragons shapes are often based on being a melee fighter or a certain magic path user. Aging dragons can change from melee to caster. A melee type dragon (steel dragon) will often but not neccesarily change into an elder melee type class (bone biter dragon). In fact throughout the millenia of their live few dragons remain totally committed to their childhood choices. Often preferring to try different sorts of lives.

Despite being a magical race the dragons are not very powerfull spellcasters. The older dragons do have lots of resistances and special abilities.

The Avatar of their god is a young adult dragon and is able to recruit his peers and younger dragons. The Avatar hasn't established enough power yet to order his holy elders but they can be summoned and convinced to serve their god.
Wyrmlings to young dragons are recruitable troops with not enough intelligence to function autonomously. Young adults are commanders and can lead their younger kin.

There are 4 different Avatars available in this nation: of the Adamantine Claw Dragon, Stone Scale Dragon, Fire Tongue Dragon and Poison Ivy Dragon variety. They are pretty good pretender choices (better than most unused pretenders, but certainly don't make better blessers than the best of the best that are in the game. The different chassis can used for different wishes. One as stronger melee awake SC, others with higher magic for better bless, and one better suited for rainbow pretender choices.

Here is a preview of the dragons in this mod:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1224028568

Due to file size etc the quality of the preview is only 50% of the original, plz keep that in mind.

In game:
- relatively weak recruitable mage power.
- strong recruitable commander chassis with some mage power.
- all mages have a strong (dragon) chassis so you are not able to buy a cheap researcher/mage, you always pay for the chassis even if you don't need it.
- Huge sizes. wyrmlings are size 3, then it only goes up. As is known from giant nations this in not an advantage.
- PD is weak, also due to the size problem and because dragons are just not the race with the nature to stay put and defend a province.
- the recruitment bar looks like a carnival since the different shapes the dragons can take all have very specific colors.
- The young adult dragons (commanders)
- the nation has A LOT of nation specific summons (the adult, elder and ancient dragons) all of which have magic and an increasingly powerfull physique. The nation does NOT lack for SC's.
- The summons are not all castable out of the box, there will have to be investments in magic boosting equipment or powering up mages.
- To balance this the casting and research requirements for summons are relatively low and most in one research arm (conjuration)
- The lack of certain equipment slots does limit the SC options
- This lack is rebalanced again in the oldest dragons with special powers.
- The summons give acces to a wide range of magic power (large magic diversity which reflects the magic in their blood.
- for LA the nation has a high gem income. This reflects their magical nature thematically and I think the nation needs it.
- The nation has no recruitable sacred troops and only one (cap only and actually a relatively weak) sacred commander. This is because any sacred recruitable would probably make that troops the only recruited troop and the nation alway played as a bless nation. Now a bless will certainly help the sacred recruitables but then again those are powerfull already and early in game the scales might be needed, or a rainbow mage to sitesearch and more easily unlock the different summons might be a good idea for this nation. (my personal advice would be the latter.)
- I think the nation will have a hard time early on in a game but with their powerfull summons and decent magic diversity the end game might give a good end game.
- The nation has no regular heros but the 3 types of adult dragon (summons) can also appear as multihero's.
- I would prefer it (but do as you like) if the nation was played with one of the 4 different pretenders I'm providing. The regular dragon providers are not of this race and they don't deserve to be called dragon. (this nation is kind of racist and refuses to acknowledge hydra's, original dom3 dragons, drakes etc etc as part of the family.
- For reasons mentioned above I would prefer it if you'd not summon drakes.

Please try the nation and give me feedback. At first I thought the nation would be overpowered since it was created for the higher powered dominions 3000 mod. Due to this I decided to nto give them to much magicpower (thematically I couldn't drop their physical strenght or the magic diversity in the race). When I was playing it a bit it actually seemed early game was pretty hard. I'm certainly willing to adjust the nation according to the feedback I'm getting.

PS the graphics aren't my own but adjusting the existing images did take me A LOT of time. Some troops (mostly the recruitbles) do not have a seperate attack sprite. Most powerfull summons do have 2 sprites.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

I love the concept.

Some dragons have 0 age, is that intentional?

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

This looks great, Aezeal! I look forward to playing it someday-and I'll give you feedback when I do.

Would you mind posting the graphics for the mod so that we can take a look without downloading it? Especially helpful for me, but always a nice feature for everyone.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

age 0, no not really which ones have that?

Graphics will follow but probably after the weekend since I've got to go to work soon and after that sleep, catch flight to barcelona, be happy there fly back and then it's monday/tuesday :D

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

I want to go to Barcelona...:p

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

So apperantly 16 DL's nice... anyone got any feedback for me.. wishes etc etc

Also.. try dom 3000 :D

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

Actually, all the recruitables: units and commanders.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

Just a thought - the assasin dragons seem a tad overpowered to me.. Also thematically, it just seems quite a lot more dragon-y to simply blast the entire camp as opposed to killing just the commander, but I can see why you put them in there. Maybe give them a lower stat-line, and say it's because they sacrificed physical strength for etherality or something.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

I haven't had that much chance to play it yet, but I played a bit earlier and was having no trouble beating 3 normal ai's simultaneously with just the highest prot recruitable dragons and commanders. On the other hand most of the recruitable dragons seem very weak to me. For example, the ones that shoot and do poison damage, I'm not sure they would ever be better to recruit than the bonebiter dragons. The bonebiters do a lot of damage but don't have great attack skill, but they have enough to kill light and medium infantry well enough, and they have enough strength that almost no matter how much protection an enemy has they can tear through it. I guess if you were fighting someone with glamoured infantry you might want to try the poison guys, but I don't think there is any in LA. 4 ap, strength of wielder not added, weak poison seems a bit underwhelming for a 40 gold unit. I've not used them yet though so maybe I'm just not realizing some hidden potential.

I think it would be better though if the dragons were diversified more from each other. For example, maybe the mist dragons could have high defense skill (16+ I'm thinking), or #onebattlespell mistform.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

lol mist dragons have glamour that is not like the others.. most high power stuff is reserved for the high level troops.

IT's a bit hard to balance the dragons since indeed they all have high strenght etc etc
I think the best solution is to just make the bonebiter price and resources higher, maybe remove their AP claws with regular claws

I might see if I can pump the poison dragon a bit I guess :D

Digital Sin: I guess you are right, the ghost dragon already has weaker stats than others of his age but for an assassin it might be a bit much with his still relative high strength and HP (compared to other assassins) and etherealness. giving him a higher price is another idea.. lol I nearly gave that one death magic too..

PS for a REAL assassin look at one of the higher level summons :D

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

If I may suggest a possible different route to balancing. So instead of make weaker, you could try to up price (already said and straightforward), and you could give maluses. For example:
-> Dragons love to hoard treasures, make their upkeep double (for some of them if you prefer rather than all)
-> Some dragons are chaotic by nature, they kill and burn and pillage so make (some of) them pop killeres

You get my meaning. The strong "unbalanced" dragons could be both balanced and made more interesting by adding such maluses.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

hmmm good suggestions I didn't give them to much econ disadvantages since I thought the high price for researchers would already be quite a dent in any econ combined with the fact that I thought the recruitables wherent that strong with their big size etc etc.

I don't know how to increase upkeep though without doubling the price to buy them though and I really don't think they should be much more pricy to start with.

On thing I did was relatively low proces on the summons (since most summons are actually free) so that is somethng of hoarding treasure combined to other summons :D

The burning and pillaging idea is nice. One fo the summons already kills pop because he's a plague dragon. I only fear that if I give one dragon anything like that (increase unrest for example) he'll not be used anymore.
PS all dragons already have a pillage bonus.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

So for recruitables the Bonebiter with his 3 attacks is a bit overpowered and the poisondragon needs a stronger ranged attack

Some dragons might need incraseunrest (kill pop is a bit strong, even increase unrest is pretty annoying I learned with my ork mod).

Are the commanders and summons in anyway clearly flawed?

I really wonder wether the research of this race is competative and if the end game summons aren't completely overpowered :D

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

I'm currently in four MP games so I have little time to actually test the mod, I will test it in SP when one of the MP slots clears (hopefully soon, four at a time is *way* too much).

Anyway, what I wanted to suggest is a mod only MP game with dual purpose, First to have fun :D and second to help balance the mods and iron out any glaring flows. So the players in this game should commit to also reporting their take on the latter. I'd happily partake in such a game, it will be a fun way to help balance the mods :)

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

The magically inclined dragons aren't actually that expensive to buy, they're just not the most efficient. And you don't have anything resembling a 400+ gold commander that you basically are required to buy like some nations do, so they're really not that big of a drain on the economy unless you build tons of crystal fortresses to buy them in.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

I'd love my mods to be tested in a MP game, I'd also prefer not to be part of it myself as to not be biased to much.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate
 

hey pplz 41 DL's a lot for a mod of mine I'll admit.. any more feedback from the other DLers??

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

The requested preview has been added

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Beautiful graphics... I'm jealous :D !

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

You're kidding.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Nope !

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Well I'm happy if you like them. No reason to get jealous though since as I've posted in the first post I've just taken existing art and taken the dragons out.. still a lot of work but no reason to be jealous of "my art"

But have you played the nation?

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Aezeal-a couple things you could do to make dragons less economically efficient:

1-the next update is going to include sites that raise/lower scales. You could include a starting site that increases sloth. The problem with that is, it won't take effect until the next update.

2-with the next update, you can raise/lower the price of temples, labs, for dragons. Since dragons are all so huge, it makes sense their temples, labs, would be huge too, and require a variety of unusual-thus expensive-equipment. Same problem as above, though.

3-You can also include "increases unrest" on your units. All my dragons increase unrest, naturally. And this is something you should be able to do, right away.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Not yet, too much work. I didn't even finished my own sprites for Cantabira... But I will soon unleash my dragons against other pretenders :p !!

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

3-You can also include "increases unrest" on your units. All my dragons increase unrest, naturally. And this is something you should be able to do, right away.

Hmm a good idea, I've used it on my orcs already but it's a VERY VERY strong effect and can quickly cripple your econ.

Thing is I'm waiting for a lil more feedback to see if all agree the nation is to strong now (I'd prefer to hear about a larger game played till the end).

Everyone playing the nation: tell me everything you encounter :D

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Messed around with these guys a little tonight.

First, a bug. The Stargazer dragon has a typo in the path for its attack/casting sprite, it is directing to "Stargazerblahblah.tga.tga". Worked fine when I fixed it.

Second, I changed the Poison Spit to have 3 attacks, and I think it's pretty well balanced like that. The 3 attacks hit 3 separate targets, but only individual units - it's weaker than AoE, and uses ammo up faster. I'm considering upping the ammo a little, since now they only fire for 13 rounds.

Third, I don't know what I am doing wrong, but wow these guys are hard to get off the ground. With Mighty AI, I can't seem to keep up. Maybe they could use a little stronger starting army? Especially if you add in anything to balance them in late game that slows them down even further at the start, they will need some kind of boost to even get them off the floor.

Oh one other thing, your "Claws" attack has 2 attacks, but the AP claws only have 1, which seems a little odd to me.

Oh yeah..... Also, perhaps add Holy 1 to the Stargazers? As it is, the only Holy you can get is on your Prophet, and it would be nifty if the Stargazers could Bless themselves, and possibly Communion up to get big Banishes for use against Ermor. As it is, the dragons have 0 chance against Ermor, at any stage of the game.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Hmm thanks for the feedback Jim
It's good to hear that they aren't as overpowered as some feared ( if others keep disagreeing there can of course be changes anyway so keep the feedback coming) so I'll wait with changing the econ a bit till I have more opinions (wisdom of the masses). If you still think changes are needed to make early game better if I don't touch the econ just now then met me know and I'll take your suggestion to increase starting army a bit to heart.
What do you think about what the others said that just with bonebiters he could easily kill 3 normal AI's?

further:
1: the AP claws certainly should have 2 attacks
2: I'll change the poison to what you suggest since it's been said before the ranged attack is too weak
3: It's not entirely true that you can't get holy since
- you get it 50% on the stargazers
- you get it 10% on each young adult (= commander)
- you get it on all dragons adult and up with increasing strenght.
(unless of course the code I used for the 10 adn 50 % holy magic is wrong, I can't check it now.)

On the to do list still is
- age 0 for dragons, should be easily changed
- weaken assasin (ghost dragon) (I plan on lowering hp to 35 and increase price a bit)
- attack sprites for recruitables

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

I believe holy doesn't work via custommagic chances.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

I remember reading that. It seems easily checked in-game - none of them show a 10% or 50% random pick.

It was an interesting idea, but wouldn't it work fine enough to just give the Stargazers H1?

I'll give it another try with just Bonebiters for expansion, but I don't know. I'll update my own .dm file to give the 2 attacks on the AP claws, I'm sure it'll make them a bit more shocking. (To be honest, I wasn't fighting AIs yet, but they were outgrowing me rapidly, I just couldn't keep these guys from taking a lot of losses to indies.)

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

if it doesn't work then I'll give the stargazers H1 yes.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Figure they're already your least cost effective mage,a nd capital only.

So far (after fixng their claw attacks), the Bonebiters are obliterating everything I toss them against. Most indies die with no losses to 10 of them, and tough indies + medium strength forces crumble to 20.

I'm under the distinct impression though, that the race as it is balanced, will never be competitive in MP. First, research is far far too slow. It forces you to take a Magic3 scale to even get anywhere. But this is a major problem. You recommend a rainbow mage for the summons who are all over all of the paths (except Blood), and then you request people do so with one of the dragon pretenders. Well, the only one that is even remotely viable as such is the Ivy Dragon.

Now, the problem here is that most of the summons are cross-path, which guarantees that without huge investments in Empowerment (did I mention site searching is expensive, with all of these non-sacred mages needed?), so you do need to cast them all with your pretender, except for the Wave Dragon, which can be summoned by an Ice Scale with a Water Bracelet. So, your paths needed for summons are: 5F/3A/4W/4E/6S/4N/4D. Taking into account the Wave Dragon, and assuming the use of RoW+RoS (and a Flaming Skull + Crystal Coin + Starshine Skullcap + Moonvine Bracelet swapped in for Nature summons), you are left needing 3F/2A/3E/3S/2N/2D. At a Dominion of 5, you are left with 218 points, enough for 5 scales. Putting 3 of those into Magic, leaves you with a pretty hampered economy. Misfortune is bad because of poor PD, and great national heroes.

Ultimately, just to get a slightly better setup, I felt forced to take the Enchantress (starts with A/E/S in CBM), which allowed me to push a couple of paths to 4 to at least get a little bonus to the Stargazers and give her more late game utility herself (other than summons botch), and ended up with 1Sloth/3Luck/3Magic. While I'm doing well enough against the AI (Ermor NOT included), the small number of real troops, the slow research, and the poor income would make the nation a sitting duck in any kind of MP setup.


I'd make 3 suggestions to rectify this. First, add 1 level to the leader/mages present in the game. This will boost research accordingly, as well as compensate for the fact that you lack the ability to use most boosters (and pay full price for everything, since no one can hold a hammer). The other option there that might help a little, would be to add a random path to each instead, so you can get a little bit of cross-path access. Second, reduce the cross-path requirements for the summons somewhat - so that you are not essentially forced to have 1 caster responsible for summoning all of them. And third, perhaps give them some sort of recruitable slave race that is a smaller size, to at least give them some sort of chaff that they can use in larger battles (no Wyrmlings don't count, they are as bad as Militia). Make it something that flies, of course, like Draconians or something - something that is size 3 or less.

Then perhaps balance this a bit with slight cost increases to their current units, or a small reduction in power of the "younger" dragons.


I haven't gotten to the actual late game yet, so those are my impressions so far. I'll probably do a little more tonight, it's fun taking over the world with dragons. :p

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

With JimMorrison's good advice in mind, I'd almost consider suggesting that you set this Nation up in such a way that a player has to focus on a specific "path", with it. I don't mean magic paths, but rather a path of progression, where you'd set up a Dragon Pretender with 1 or 2 magic paths, which would allow you to utilize *some* of the summons and abilities of the Nation, but not all of them.

You'd have to, with each game, pick and choose your goals, and ways to power. This would have the side benefits both of making them more MP viable, since it would make them immanently more unpredictable and flexible, and-by forcing the successful player to narrow his/her focus, increasing the replayability and fun of the mod Nation.

That, ofcourse, would require a huge amount of work, and major changes/extensions to the mod, which is why I'm not seriously suggesting such a thing, but it's a technique which would seem to fit well with such a powerful, diverse, and unpredictable Nation.

To give you an example, it's something I'm working on incorporating into my 'Dis' mod, which has a Nation capable of flourishing through either the Blood, Conjuration, or Construction summons, but which will grant power slowly in each particular path, so there's a lot of different ways you can play the Nation, but no great way to do every single thing the Nation can do, in each and every game.

"Dis" being the root of the word "discord", it seemed appropriate.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Jim & Honey
On your suggestion for another type of unit: there will be no draconians, there are just dragons in this dragon nation. It's either militia like wyrmlings or the steeldragons etc :D If needed I could weakend the bone biter dragon a bit but I'm not sure what would be the ebst way. If he's good then I might need to give him a higher resource cost though that seems the best way to limit his usefullness. I might give the wyrmling a lil better att and def value if they are that bad, that might be the best way to get some chaff that isn't too weak to be used :D

I agree with Honey that wanting to have all summons might be wanting a bit too much, some focus would indeed be better. I'm not about to change the mod that much but if you just focus on 3 paths and what your basic mages already have you can get pretty far. he idea was that you'd need to invest a lil to get mages to cast the summons. I'm pretty sure the summons will be worth it though. I also don't think you'll need use all summons since if you have acces to 1-2 of the elders and ancients that will be pretty much enough for a lot of purposes :D

I already had relatively low path needs and relatively low research levels for most of the summons since I knew research wasn't the strongest point of the nation. I was also under the impression that except for the elder wyrms the cross path requirements where not that high. I kinda aimed on it so that most summons should be cast with just 1-2 boosters or empowerments. (am I very much off the path here?) For the most powerfull summons I'd guess you'd either need your pretender or one of the lower level summons to cast it. PS it is such a problem to have one caster empowerd/boosted to cast a certain spell?

The cap only stargazer is sacred so he's a decent researcher IMHO but maybe I should give him a lil research bonus though that sort of makes it very obvious and pretty much the only choice. (but it would fit thematically so it's not that much of a problem, to be honest in my zeal not to overpower the nation (which seems to have worked I nearly gave all dragons a research malus :D, I guess I'll forget about that) I think the nation can do with less research than most since you have higher strenght and HP units and need buffs less, and can take the combats spells better when used against you, also they can deal damage pretty nicely so you'll need less combat spells your self. In just researching in conjuration and evocation gives you pretty good stuff to use I'd say.

There are a few dragon with a magicbonus (for example our stargazer) though so empowering them once would give a relatively high result (at least that is the intention I've not tested it yet.)
I was thinking about giving all commanders and higher magic boost 1 (the highest have magic boost 2)

If it still doesn't work out I might give a random path (a 25% chance I think) to the commanders but since there are a few levels of dragons above them and I want those to be clearly better I don't want to boost to much so the summons won't be worth it.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Hmmmm.....I enabled the mod, but when I go to choose the nation it doesn't show up????????

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

ehm I dunno it seems to work for the other and for me.
it's a LA nation and it's way down on the list, depending on other stuff you have going you might need to scroll down a bit (sometimes not all nations show directly) can't really think of more, you didn't play a turn in another game before starting this, that would disable the mod again

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

hmmm after those last changes we've been talkign about have been put in I still have a pretty hard time seeing this as a weak nation. I also gave ALL dragons a magic boost to show the magic in their blood (I did lower magic paths accordingly though so they don't start as more powerfull mages). That does mean the prophets are H4 now and the stargazers H2.

I didn't want that to happen, I specifically used boost 51 and 52 just to boost elemental and sorcery thinking holy magic wouldn't be in it.. I think I'll mod it out again before I release the update to yo all.

Some more last moment changes I need to put in
I've noticed and am changing:
the graph for the stargazer had a shadow that wasn't good

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

OK there are a decent number of downloads now so if those who've played could give more feedback then I'll change things a bit more.. can't believe the nation as is is balanced enough for SP and MP

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

This nation certainly does not resemble anything close to be balanced. And why should a dragon nation be balanced anyway? :)

One thing, in addition to raise recruit prices, is to have a gold cost on all summons. They will not cost gold to summon, but they will cost upkeep. So an ancient dragon can cost over 200 (3000 gold cost) to maintain. Another thing, more powerful dragon can devour gems. (I do not know how to do it though)

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

I do not understand the recruit mages "expensive" part. Compare to Kohen Gabol, which is 2B+2.1Random and cost 400 gold and capital only, these dragon mages are steals.

As for summons, Yakasha is widely considered one of the more worthwhile national summons, and cost 25 gems. Now most of the powerful dragon summons are also 25 gems? The most expensive one 45 gems?

If balance was thought about in this mod nation, it is certainly hard to observe. I doubt anything less than an overhaul will see it used in MP.:)

But it is a great SP Mod and I really like to stomp over all the poor AIs. And the graphics, esp. the pretender ones, are just fantastic, even better than the originals. ;)

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Hmmm I'll think about it I'm not sure I agree wit heverything you say though...

-I think all summons already have some gold cost (it's not that high since most regular summons already don't have upkeep so everything I added would already be a disadvantage and I didn't want to over do it.)
-I think the dragon are pretty decent summons and I think the ancient ones might be better than the yakasha, also there are a some high end summons that are more expensive than 25 and 45 gems so just comparing them to the most powerfull/ cost effienct one might not be the best way to look at balance.
- the same goes for the dragon mages. This nation can't recruit any cheap mage or leader so that has to be taken into the equation but for the rest I think that just comparing them to one mage isn't the best way to go about judging them. Niefel Jarls are 500 gc but are much better with full slots and cold aura, lots of HP too, much more magic and randoms and being sacred. Saying the dragon should be more than 400gc would IMHO be really overdoing it. THey might need a lil cost increase though.

Also other say the nation seems weakish and slow to start.. so I wonder what others think about it.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

First, I would like to clarify that I like the mod and especially those fantastic graphics.

Nonetheless, I find it almost futile to balance a dragon nation against others. Dragons are physically and magically powerful, how do you balance dragons with human?

And just like pretty much all mods, this mods, while great, went overboard with super powerful units and summons.

Case in point:

Vine dragon: conj 6, 25 nature gems. 2E5N?! How many mages, summoned and recruitable combined, have 5N? Now let's look at its other attributes. 125HP, 20 prot, 17 MR, 17 MRL, 15 atk/def, 13 prec, 3/20 move. Dark vision 50, heal, fly, regen, fear+2, and holy among other things.

Even without any magic, I would easily pay 25 gems for such an SC out of the box. Lack body and hand is hardly a problem as you have 20 nature protection and regen as well as fear.

Comparing to Yakasha, also at 25 nature gems, you get a puny mage 3E1N+110%WESN. And it has 28 HP, 4 prot and other uninspiring attributes.

Now tell me how this thing even remotely resemble balance?

And the most expensive summon is 45 gems, which single summon is above 45?

As for start, I have not fully tested it, but those admantine claw dragon surely can handle many indies. Worst case, you take an awake SC pretender. There should be no problem expanding.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

As for mage expense, you get a research 6 mage for 200 gold. Even not considering how powerful he is physically and all the added bonus abilities, this is a pretty decent price. Man has a research 6 mage for 250 gold. Arco's is 240 (sacred), Ulm does not have research 6 and has research 5 for 160. You get the picture.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Let me first clarify that all suggestions are very much apreciated and wanted.
I actually was thinking you meant the dragon summons where to expensive (when you where talking about the 45 gems ones in compared to the "best summon) :D I agree they are pretty powerfull and might need to be more expensive..
I can't really check the game so I don't know which recruitable dragon has which research score so I'll have to get back on that unless you can tell me more about it. I would also like to mention the fact someone else told me a page back that their research is slow to get of the ground and that it's also been said that the nation would be to weak for MP.

The idea IS to make a MP balanced nation though (I'd love them to be between the 3th strongest nation from the top and the bottom) yes they are dragon and should be very strong, but most of them die before they are old so you are using mostly younger and weaker ones (as in my explanation) the real powerhouses are the summons as you have seen.

The whole idea of dragon is to have a nation with lots of thuggish/sc chassis and all flying, older ones resistances and fear etc etc. If the vie dragon is too powerfull I might need to tone his magic down a bit (but 7 combined magic isn't that rare is it, no randoms to increase his usefull ness etc.. ps I also think you forgot his best attribute I think he also has a sort of vineshield effect at least that was the intention though I've not played with this one yet.) Also most of the summons are not summonable out of the box for the mages so that makes them harder to reach and thus an investment is needed to get them.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Look at the Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath national summon series for some expensive (but uber) summons.

Not sure what the angelic summons that Marignon gets cost.

Keep in mind, however, that straight gem cost alone isn't the only factor; the opportunity cost to acquire/hoard those gems and provide a suitable caster must be factored in as well.

Well, having some magical diversity might help in some regards, but low level diversity in nature is especially common (available via *tons* of independent shamans, enchantresses, witches, etc.) However, a high single path nature score (or any path, really) is extremely uncommon, and immediately opens up lots of rituals that normally require either the pretender, lots of bootstrapping, or empowerment.

I haven't really looked at your mod to see what the casting path requirements to get this summon are, however; for instance, if it already costs 5 nature to summon this guy, some of the above is kind of moot (just have the summoner cast the ritual, etc.)

WRT summonable dragon supercombatants, might want to compare costs vs. the Tarrasque and Iron Dragon (possibly w/GOR cost factored in) and then increase from there because of additional features.

BTW, cool sprites Aezeal :-)

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Hey Stavis, thansk for the comments, ifyou could play the mod and give more feedback that would be great.

Well I think the summon costs are not that high maybe but as you said the nation can't cast most of these summons without boosters etc and they have no handslots for those boosters so IMHO you'll often need to either invest in the pretender or in empowerment.

I think it's really hard to balance things like this just based on the numbers that are seen which is why I'd love to get more feedback of pplz who actually played it a bit in SP.. and of those who did I get mixed feedback: some say the nation is weak, others overpowered.... kind of hard to change much based on that :D. I guess I might lower the vinedragons nature with 1 and maybe increase summon cost a bit.

PS the sprites aren't mine... ... ... but they are in my mod and that is all that counts in the end :D

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

Quick bug report:

Summon Death Wraith Dragon is summoning unit 3022 (Wave Dragon) rather than unit 3027.

Nice mod, but I think that all these thug/battle mages summonable at 25 gems each might be a little high on the power scale.

As regards access to the summons: at Con 6, you can empower one of your S2 dragons once each in E and S, then you can build rings of sorc/wiz. They let you get Wave Dragons, and therefore Storm Dragons. The Ivy Dragon pretender (chassis of choice, surely), if you build him as N4D4 (cheap, and regen is a useful bless), lets you get Vine and Death Wraith summons. It seems you can get Magma Dragons as heroes if you take a luck scale, and they can summon more of the same.

The top end are definitely tougher to get, though.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate now with preview
 

hmm to be honest empowering isn't that hard since once you have the first summons they can get you the most powerfulls with about one empowerment I think.

I'm going to up the cost of all summons a bit in addition to all changes I wanted to do before and then I hope it's balanced..

I don't mind the higher summons to be a bit hard to reach since they are pretty powerfull anyway... for most situations they are probably a bit overkill anyway :D

you can get 3 of the first "level" of summons as multihero's

This nation can basicly use a good bless for the endgame summons but will have a harder early game then since they'll need good scales too (prod and order) and luck can be very usefull with these relatively powerfull hero's

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate UPDATE
 

new version is up

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate UPDATE
 

As far as empowering goes, the summons I don't think need any more empowerment than 1S and 1E for one of your Stargazer Dragons.

Rings of Sorc/Wiz do the rest. For Wave Dragons it's even cheaper - you just make a Water Bracelet and your Ice Dragons can summon it straight off. I think it's not unfair to assume that you'd normally have Con 6 by the time you start looking at mid-high level summons. For the top tier, I don't think you need any empowers - if I read things correctly and the Gold Dragon has F4S1, then a RoW does the read. The Astral Dragon is an easy summon for your empowered Stargazer - no further preparation needed there either.

I only see getting a Gold Dragon as a potential sticking point, as I think you'd need to spend another 30 gems empowering your Starshine Dragon to E2.

In race design I don't think you need too much production scale, really. With the cost of units, gold is a more limiting factor in the early game. Later on, you can always buy extra forts to increase unit output.

I'd rate order and luck highly, though, for the reasons you gave.

Looking at pretender design, the Ivy Dragon pretender seems a cut above the rest. New paths cost 20 points instead of 40-50, and it starts with Nature so you can easily get a cheap N4 bless your sacred summons will love.

Re: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate UPDATE
 

Greg, last update pretenders where worsened a bit too... and they summons got more expensive..

Could you maybe try the latest version (only 1 day old I'll admit) and see if you find it balanced?