Two very good ideas!(i promise)

[Xietor]

I have 2 additional options that i would like to see made available for "point" cost when making a Pretender.

Option 1: Improved province defense. This option, if purchased, would allow a better grade of troops to defend provinces. Not sacred troops, but a definite upgrade.

Examples: Ulm, for every 2 points above 20 you get 1 black knight, and you get a 3rd commander at pd 30, a smith.

Giants-instead of militia, they would get 1/2 javenlist.

Pangaea- instead of sneaks, they get hoplites.

These may be a bit overpowered, depending on their point cost, but the general theme is to allow for improved PD at a cost.

Option 2-maybe this should be allowed for no points, or for about 20-25, If you capture another player's capital, you can make all of your troops at the capital. This would allow some races, that get crappy troops at every castle but their capital(like Man), to get good troops at enemies" capital.

Some races, like ulm, suffer no penalty at other castles, because all of its best troops are available at every castle. This upgrade would only apply at enemy capitals, not every castle.

[Sombre]

That would reduce the differences between the nations somewhat - right now having crappy PD or effective PD is a feature to be taken into account, as is capitol only troops.

[Xietor]

Which is why you would have to pay points for it. You may have to sacrifice something else to alter that weakness.

It would give more versatility to playing each race, and an opponent would not know if you could buy sacred troops at an enemies castle or not. Of course, he would know whether you paid for better pd pretty quick.

And it would not be limited to races with weak pd, races with strong pd, may want to make their pd even tougher.

[MaxWilson]

Capital-only troop production is actually limited by the fact that your special site is only at your capital. For instance, Boar Lords for Marverni can only be produced at a province with Carnutes, which happens to be your capital. Allowing your Pretender, for 20 points, to mutate Helheim's Helhalla into another Carnutes when you capture it strikes me as... weird. I don't see how to make this feature work thematically.

Pretender design is just that, pretender design. We don't actually get to do any nation design. Allowing the pretender to pay points to affect its nation mingles the two orthogonal dimensions. Perhaps you could do something more thematic, like paying 100 points at design-time to include 1 Mechanical Man per point of dominion in Province Defense, sort of like the Mechanical Militia and Fata Morgana spells.

-Max Wilson

[MaxWilson]

P.S. That isn't to say that you couldn't play a metagame with this anyway, though. The way it would work is that you decide to play Ulm, and you also decide (by bidding against your opponent, or just by yourself if you're in SP) that having 1 black knight per point of PD above 20 is worth 30 points, so you make a mod that says:

#selectnation 2
#defunit2 <whatever the black knight is>
#end

And then when you create your pretender, leave 30 points unspent. Just because nation design isn't built into the game doesn't mean you can't make it part of *your* game.

[Edit] You could do the same thing by making your capital-only troops recruitable anywhere, and simply abiding by the rule that you only recruit them at your capital or an enemy capital. This only works well if you and your opponent trust each other as human beings, though.

-Max

[Xietor]

Actually in dom II, you did affect castle design in start up.
So I see pd as a natural follow-up to the loss of the ability to design castles.

There are many cases now where you may be stuck with 20-30 unspent points. And it would be nice to have other options available.

I do think you should get some bonus(besides gems) for conquering an enemy castle. Maybe you can build one of their units.