Mod: Banned Spells

[Zeldor]

I couldn't find it anywhere as a separate mod, so I extracted it from Kingmaker mod. Credit goes to Xietor for that It is quite common to get that spells banned in bigger MP games.

It is very simple mod that simply disables Utterdark, Arcan Nexus, Astral Corruption and Burden of Time.


bannedspells.dm and bannedspells.tga in .zip file, in attachment

[llamabeast]

Would you mind uploading this to the LlamaServer Zeldor? That'd be really handy.

[Zeldor]

Already did it Even before posting it here, so didn't give a link for download, ups.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thanks. I will add it to my server also.

[Singularity24601]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

I couldn't find it anywhere as a separate mod, so I extracted it from Kingmaker mod. Credit goes to Xietor for that It is quite common to get that spells banned in bigger MP games.

It is very simple mod that simply disables Utterdark, Arcan Nexus, Astral Corruption and Burden of Time.


bannedspells.dm and bannedspells.tga in .zip file, in attachment

I must confess lack of experience with these "bigger MP games", and am wondering why each of these spells are commonly banned? And I notice that Wish (commonly banned in Dominions 2?) isn't in this list?

On an unrelated note, I'll probably ban Wish in my mods when there's powerful summons that should cost more than 100 astral pearls... *sigh*... if only "Armageddon" and some other 'sub-spells' could still be preserved,

[Zeldor]

Arcane Nexus - if there are many players it can bring huge amount of S gems even on first turn, so even if it gets dispelled immediately, it's a great investment [hundreds of S gems a turn!]

Utterdark - killer of non-undead nations, unless someone has gold piled up for upkeep, he loses 90-100% of his normal armies [not commanders], also Darkness in every prov gives hude advantage to very few nations

Burden of Time - annihilates all human nations within few turns, they simply lose most [if not all] of their commanders due to old age

Astral Corruption - it costs just blood slaves, which are easy to get, and pretty much disables effective forging and spellcasting for non-blood nations

[Singularity24601]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Arcane Nexus - if there are many players it can bring huge amount of S gems even on first turn, so even if it gets dispelled immediately, it's a great investment [hundreds of S gems a turn!]

Utterdark - killer of non-undead nations, unless someone has gold piled up for upkeep, he loses 90-100% of his normal armies [not commanders], also Darkness in every prov gives hude advantage to very few nations

Burden of Time - annihilates all human nations within few turns, they simply lose most [if not all] of their commanders due to old age

Astral Corruption - it costs just blood slaves, which are easy to get, and pretty much disables effective forging and spellcasting for non-blood nations

I am familiar with these spells in a Single Player setting. I see why Arcane Nexus can be a profitable gamble even before it is dispelled, but are the others just so inherently broken? Can't their costs simply be modified? It is not feasible to dispel them like any other magic?

What about diplomatic effects? Could the non-undead nations reasonably gang up to attack the caster of Utterdark? Was it a lost cause before Utterdark was cast, simply hastening the way for fate?

And, are thse spells more of a problem than eg, "Wish"?

[Zeldor]

They do their harm before anyone can really react. And big games mean huge amounts of gems flying around, so you can put insane amounts into some game-ending globals. And games are meant to be won on battlefield, not by pouring all gems into one global [Astral Corruption is probably smallest problem here and Burden of Time bigest].

[Gandalf Parker]

Zeldor's mod is great and useful.

But Ive never been all that sure about "commonly banned" spells, equipment, nations, tactics, etc. Every so often I check and I cant really find any basis for such statements. The closest you can come to an agreement on what should not be in a game would be the CBM mod which changes many things (altho I dont think the spells Zeldor feels should be banned are in it).

The most used mod seems to be Worthy Heroes which I dont think changes any of those things.

There was a fairly commonly used mod called Kitchen Sink which did ban the 4 spells that Zeldor banned, and also made some changes to the Clams, Fever Fetish, and Bloodstone.

[Zeldor]

I think we may have some disagreement about word "commonly banned" here. I said that they are commonly banned in large games, and large games count for maybe 5% of total games. I am banning them in my game for 24 players, I agree that maybe fixing costs etc could be better, especially for Astral Corruption. Generally it is just instant fix to a bigger issue of some potencially game-breaking tactics [mostly ones that target part of nations, usually bigger one, and cannot be resisted by any means, while that nations don't have a similar way to retaliate].