Ermor

[SurvivalistMerc]

Playing Ulm. Steel Faith. Against Ermor (those undead guys).

Some of the provinces I'm taking over have only a few hundred population. How do I get the population back up? Or can't I? I don't have growth domain, so....

[Nerfix]

Too bad for you.

[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

[ November 15, 2003, 21:42: Message edited by: HJ ]

[DominionsFan]

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.

[PvK]

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.

Actually, it seems to me that having everything have a way to undo it, is more like generic rock-paper-scissors than "key". I think it's actually more interesting when some situations can't be undone, or not easily.

I would enjoy having, say, an item and/or spell that protects against getting cursed, and a costly way to remove a curse, but I don't think curses are unbalanced, because they just make afflictions more likely. That is actually an interesting counter-balance to super-combattants. The reason I'd like protection or (especially) removal options is just for roleplaying and my preferred play style of trying to keep experienced fighters alive.

I also enjoy the lack of easy ways to repopulate provinces for similar reasons - it's an interesting effect that adds flavor, and part of the interest is that it is hard to undo. I suppose it would be interesting if there were some difficult/rare ways to do this, perhaps by relocating population rather than making people appear out of thin air, or slowly through high-level nature magic or something (there is already Wish, Growth Scale, and I thought some nature spells). If it becomes relatively easy or common, though, it would reduce the uniqueness of that element of play.

As for defending undead, I assume by "Turn Undead" you mean Banishment, which is resisted by magic resistance, which can be strengthened by Antimagic, or (I think) the dark blessings, no? Again, this too seems like one of the more interesting and colorful aspects of the game (that summoning and banishing are both relatively easy for certain units, rather than unbalanced.

Of course, I am still (after several SP games) much closer to the "wow, look at all these neat things" stage of analysis than the "competetive MP guru" stage.

PvK

[trebuchet]

You are using a somewhat different definition of "unbalanced". Consider the simple game of rock-paper-scissors. Would you say that the game is unbalanced? "Paper has no defense against scissors!"

Returning to the discussion at hand, each nation has strengths and weaknesses - there's nothing wrong with that, in fact that's what makes this game so interesting.

That said, there *are* balance issues in the game, but they are complex enough that most of them will take a while to be certain of. The two that seem obvious to me are that a) combat pretenders in general are probably underpriced for their relative benefits, and b) the blood economy is more boost-able than the magic/gold economies, which makes a bigger difference now that both of the latter have been scaled down.

Compared to those, other balance issues seem quite minor to me, but your mileage may vary.