Mod: Dominions 3000 v0.81 - lots of new indies, new map (using the brand new map commands)

[rdonj]

Hmm, is it just me or are the forums lagging horrifically right now. Anyway.

The unrest thing is slightly weird, I had unrest in my capital when all I was doing was producing ork prentices there, no heroes, and other than that just 80 odd orc troops sitting in the garrison. The orcs do kill things well enough in melee, I just find it's the getting there that's hard. Against someone with a lot of ranged weapons I have to send 3+ large groups of melee orcs or they never reach the shooters due to morale issues. Of course I'd probably have less of such if I used the standards on heroes but they're too fragile and too important to use aggressively without items.

If power blasters are getting such a boost, I would like to see other units have stronger blasters, like siege tanks (which use a standard issue space marine blaster)

A new map would take a lot of work, that's really more of a wishlist feature... would be nice but isn't necessary. Something else along those lines: I've noticed ulm's black knights seem to have a sort of black graphical bit that sort of floats behind the sprite. They lose it in their attacking form, but it makes them look a bit odd when they're at rest.

[rdonj]

Oh and as for R'lyeh. I don't really know, they're one of the races I've played the least. On the one hand the illithids can do a lot of damage to you at range. But on the other hand all their units are expensive and you pretty much are forced to use expensive chaff for your illithids to survive. I think when fighting a player the incredible expensiveness of their units will probably make them not overpowered, but the relatively low mr on almost all units will make it hard to use most thug/sc units in the game effectively against them.

[Aezeal]

most SC material has high MR I think. Which ones need higher MR.. this is the time to say it

Orc ragers have jumpsuits (flying) so cover the distance quicker. The tank does have a cannon next to his blaster I hope? (the orc tank or the Ulmish one?) --> orcs aren't easily checked but the siegetank says it has a cannon at least.

I'll fix that sprite (and a similar thingie for the elderbrains) --> both cleaned up

I've actually worked for about 2 hours on a map today.. it'll not be as nice as the one I got premade but it's getting somewhere. No usefull images on the net readymade.. if we want about 50% space/50-% planet.. well most galaxies are only very very very small bits of planets .

So I'm using a galaxy background with zoomed in boxes of planets which I copy paste in there from other pics. For the rest I'll try to put more provinces per planet and keep the total about 50-50 (if possible)

I think I'll make all startsite province be on a planet with 4 or 5 land provinces (non forest that is of course ) I'll maybe even put a single waterprovince back in somewhere even though basicly no troops can go in there atm just for fun

[rdonj]

Hmm, I was thinking the mr of the ulmish capital ships might be too low but it actually isn't too bad. Jomon's suit commanders maybe could use an extra point or two of mr. Insectoid females should probably have higher mr. The commonwealth's teachers of the law have surprisingly low mr... should probably be bumped up a little. Aside from that I don't know, I just went through the recruitables list for each nation, I don't know about summons. I suspect the dreadnaught if anything will have too low of mr, if it has 14 or less it needs more, otherwise it is probably okay.

The tank does have a cannon, yes. I've never gotten any orc summons, it is really hard building up a decent rate or rp.

Actually I counted and on the current map it's pretty even, I think it was 37 space and 33 land, or something along those lines. I was thinking maybe the space zones could be fairly large, so while they cover a lot of space they take up relatively less of the map. Again, because some nations are just terrible in space. Like the insectoids, I'm not sure if they could ever defeat a player because it would be very tough to ever land on a planet. Making planets relatively larger like the ones you're talking about would help with that though, and make it more possible to build extra forts.

I suppose water provinces could represent planets or areas of space that are too dangerous for most lifeforms to survive in....

[Aezeal]

Well if I make the insects only space troops stronger that will have significant impact on their abilities.. but I'll see after our game (or during)

Water can just be water too

[rdonj]

I think it would be almost more fun if the bugs got, say, a blood magic national astral travel sort of spell that the females could cast, or an insectoid remote province attack spell where you get to keep the army afterward. Somewhat akin to how the bugs in starship troopers transported themselves across space in meteors.... Then they could still be terrible in space but take over planets anway. If you can't defeat the bug army, well, run away... maybe you can find a new home, somewhere, before they can manage to kill you off in space.

[Aezeal]

Hmm new spell idea's are always good.

has anyone tried the remote summon for Ulm.. something along those lines maybe?

[rdonj]

You mean the black knight strike force? No, I haven't gotten to use it yet. I have some doubts about the sanity of its gem requirement though. I mean... ghost riders is a 5 gem spell, I don't think 15 black knights are going to be that much more relatively effective than the ghost riders spell. Unless it's some kind of special extra powerful black knight with an ethereal or air shielded leader.

But if you also get them afterward it is definitely worth more. Maybe 15-20 gems instead?

[rdonj]

Dreadnaughts for some reason have 3 less magic resistance than ulmish capitol ships (which, by the way, should be spelled capital). It should at least be equal. Also I get the impression a dreadnaught is supposed to be bigger than an ulmish cap ship, so I was thinking maybe they should have a little more hp? They also have twin ship heavy blasters (close) but no ship heavy blasters. I'm not sure if it's intentional for them to not have ranged blasters or not, as most things tend to have both. I guess you don't always do that with the ulmish fighters so it probably is intentional. In any case I would like it if they had another set of twin heavy ship blasters (close), or even just a single one, since they're most vulnerable in melee and you can't give them an aoe weapon with a hand slot or something. Their ranged weaponry is actually surprisingly weak but I think that pretty much doesn't matter since they should be using evocations most of the time anyway.

Also a bug report. I was able to cast the black knight strike force, and I stick by my earlier assessment of the spell. However, I also noticed that in the strike force I received four commanders, a medic, an ulmish general, and a black knight. I suspect this is a bug because there was a second medic and a second general in the army that were not commanders, and I'm guessing probably were supposed to be. As a note for just how weak the commonwealth is right now, I just beat a significant pd force (34 melee, 2 space mines and an ice shaper) losing only a single from that strike force. The knight was killed by one of the ice shaper's cold bolts. I only got one blaster shot to connect, then the black knights tore them apart in melee.

I also just now got a crash error about the game not being able to find lightspearspace1.tga? I was looking at a pirate scout army I think that I got from a random event this turn at the time, I think. That is probably unrelated though.

Hmm, doesn't appear I'm going to be able to continue that game until the lightspear thing gets fixed. Too bad, I was just about to crush the galaxy with my stealth fighter fleets, capitol ship SCs, and magma eruption spamming dreadnaughts

[rdonj]

You could also give the insectoids blood spells with requirements high enough only the queens could cast to produce specific units. As another alternative method to the idea of increasing the strength of their space units, which I don't really like.