Suggestion for new Oceana units

[HoneyBadger]

Not a bad idea, I could probably knock out some weird fish art, even on my work computer.

[Tifone]

I would try to summarize what this "suggestions thread" has proposed at the present time.

Incipit:
MA Oceania would probably benefit thematically and in nation strenght from a slight improvement, hopefully towards an appealing "raging sea/storm" subtheme (tnx Baalz).

Valid proposals:

- More sea summons: giving the oceans a wider amount of natural, wild creatures to summons, like the land nations get. Just some things from a list including Orcas, jellyfishes, manta rays, a sea serpent, amphibious sea turtles (for an high protection longbows-crossbows counter to start conquering the land), swordfishes, narwales, barracudas, manatees (?)...
- 1/2 recruitable (coral?) chariot(s) lead by dolphins/ hyppocamps for an underwater shock force. (Spendios)
- Ichtycentaurs to become a good (possibly better on land than on sea) amphibious unit. (cleveland)
- Shell blower: this could be a national summon (as recruitables would be probably unbalanced) which acts as standard and can cast panic 1 or 2 times before going melee. (Wrana)
- Selkies. Those are the main piece of the raging sea/storm subtheme suggestions, as they would provide the "storm" (A/W strong mages) factor we're looking for (Baalz)

Somehow discarded suggestions + explanation:

- Scylla: it is already in game as the (lovely) Drakaina pretender
- Hyppos and crocodiles: Nice, but they live in swamps, so they better fit C'tis or the other "swamp-nations"
- Piranhas: nice suggestion but they live in rivers, not oceans
- Ammonites: I think everybody agreed they fit more as a death/water summon, nice but a little far from the air/water suggested subtheme.

General, IHMO quite nice, suggestion from different people:
- Thetis' Blessing working both ways: so strategically interesting i wouldn't bore anybody talking about it


Peace

[HoneyBadger]

That bit about sea turtles gives me an idea-how about a giant sea turtle with a ballista built onto/into it's back? Since ballistas would probably be pretty effective in the water.

[Tifone]

Mmh nice, but goes against the assumption that in Dominions 3 there aren't battlefield siege-weapons (I know ballista isn't exactly a siege weapon, but you know what I mean)... or there should be even the normal ballistas for land armies and so why not catapults throwing flying shards? And catapults throwing cows? And trebutchets? And trebutches throwing Greek fire? And trebutches throwing zombies for LA Ermor? And we don't finish anymore ^^

I was really gonna say this was nice and thematic, HoneyBadger, believe me, but this logical flaw came to my mind so... dunno

[Wrana]

A turtle with ballista I would also think more of LA unit. Just snapper or something like old AD&D Dragon Turtle which breathed heated steam may be more... eh, on equal footing with all else.
There was also a thought about some "storm-demons" (summons, units or commanders), but I'm not very sure where we should steal them from. :embarassed:

[Tifone]

Yeah there was that one but I thought it has not been developed. How should they be different from the /actually existing/ storm demons? And aren't demons mostly blood summons? Maybe some big Storm Triton or such would be more fitting, even if we've plenty of tritons...

[HoneyBadger]

Well, there is that, but the flaw in that line of logic for me, is that there really should be some more seige engines available, possibly as Construction summons. Especially since we already have the ever popular chariots for many different nations.

I can see where large seige engines might be out of bounds though, but not small mobile ones, that would have tactical advantages. These have already been added to mods (Rhinox in Sombre's excellent Warhammer Ogres), so it's certainly not unestablished as a practice.

Also, I'd be very doubtful of any seige engine in the Dom3 universe that would be capable of performing as well as magic. Atleast better than a very low power spell like Flying Shards. In which case, for balance purposes, it should really be there to fill a gap in that nation's power structure, and wouldn't be as versatile, and probably cost a lot more resources than, a mage, to be feasable.

But that really can be an issue for a separate thread, and doesn't necessarily need to be dealt with here.

[HoneyBadger]

Maybe icthys mounted on giant snapping turtles? Crocs could probably serve as pretty good mounts too.

[JimMorrison]

Tifone said:
Yeah there was that one but I thought it has not been developed. How should they be different from the /actually existing/ storm demons? And aren't demons mostly blood summons? Maybe some big Storm Triton or such would be more fitting, even if we've plenty of tritons...

Unfortunately, "Demon" is a very subjective and wide reaching concept, that has in terms of game mechanics, been narrowed to a specific meaning.

There are a couple of nations who have demons summonable outside of blood, but I would think that for Oceania, you aren't even looking for "demons", per se. Something like Storm Nymphs or something, playful chaotic spirits who inhabit large bodies of water - who have little concern for mortal life, and who delight in causing mayhem more than harm, but don't really see a moral dilemna in people dying because they've gone and sunk another ship - it was too much fun to care.

Obviously aside from just not being demons, they'd also be different from the actual demons in weapon selection. They should have a Water Strike ability probably, and perhaps have a single target Sailors' Death ability for out of water. I'm not married to those spells, just throwing them out there to get the ball rolling.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, the demon tag just means a non-undead unit that's adversely affected by holy spells. My Partha mod will include "demons" that are just humans of the "untouchable" class (and thanks to JimMorrison for that inspiration ).