Mod: New Nation: Dragons, Magic Incarnate V1.01

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

you should be able to kill a lot of those troops with a SC or a few thugs..

Yeah, with the leaders gone they wither very quickly. I haven't taken them on yet because of dominion. I'm holding him at chokepoints and I don't really want to break into the land beyond until I've cleared Ry'leh dominion from it. I'm stomping on Arco first.

if the game is finished.. just try to kill those large armies.

My problem is that I have a hard time declaring that I've won when I'm in next to last place on army size.

can you try mixed armies of some shooters, bonebiters and commanders with equipment? I'd guess those balanced armies should be able to take pretty strong forces.

I see no need at this point. Pure commander armies are doing quite well.

I'm not quite sure that the nation is underpowered though.. in SP you'll need to take advantage of tricks to beat 8 mighty opponents with any nation.. just recruiting you'll always loose since they have about double your income each (or something like that after upkeep at least)

Yeah, it wouldn't fare as well in MP.

Things I'll probably change:
- higher cost for ghostdragons
- maybe give the bonebiter a bit of a cost reduction (I guess loosing 2 AP attacks for 1 no AP attack is too much on top of the higher price)

Yeah, the units are over-nerfed by now. I'd *MUCH* prefer one fire-tongue to 3 bonebiters.

A few other things:

I seem to have fixed the Death Wraith assassination--see above.

The Dragon Raid spell needs to get rid of the poison units.

[Loren]

Observations against impossible AI's.

I'm at war with 3 neighbors. So far Ermor hasn't declared war, we have only one province of contact. Strangely, C'tis hasn't declared war, either. I'm not sure what's going on there, maybe he's at war with someone in the corner, he's not at war with the only neighbor of his I can see.

The other 3 nations I border I am at war with. Mictlan is now in pretty bad shape, I just took the last province around his capital and parked a group there. He's still got some provinces on the other side of the mountains, though. I've got Tien Chi stopped cold with assassins, Arco has managed to break through the assassins twice and somehow managed to kill his pretender against a PD 20 province. (He attacked with 200 units! I got the pretender and some magic units that were left leaderless, everyone else routed.)

As I said earlier, I'm going pure leaders, no troops at all. I've got a pile of Ghost dragons, a pile of Flame Tongue dragons, and only enough of the others for site searching. (I haven't started forging anything yet.)

I just finished taking the last indie province in my part of the world, this has freed up a bunch of Ghost dragons that could counter Ctis if he gets frisky.

I'm #1 in provinces and income, in next to last place on research (Ctis' has stailled, otherwise I would be in last place) and fairly low on dominion. It goes without saying I'm in last place on army size.

[Aezeal]

Sounds like the flametongue and ghostdragon are overpowered to me

[Loren]

This is the toughest one so far but I think I'm going to win it despite some miserable luck.

Mictlan is gone. I'm at war with Ermor. Assassins aren't holding the line very well, I'm having to keep a whole bunch of dragons on the battle line to hold them off.

I think I must have taken misfortune 3 instead of luck 3, though. Tien Chi is in the water and being a nusiance so I decide to sweep him out. 60 flame tongues go in--and Thestis' Blessing gets knocked out!

Idiots, it was dispelled during the magic phase, why did you go fly into the water and drown???

Then my guys discovered Phoenix Pyre: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=41737

[Aezeal]

Hey loren in your fix for deathwraiths.. are they still magical beings?

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

Hey loren in your fix for deathwraiths.. are they still magical beings?

Yes. I didn't actually change any properties, just messed with the text. Either there was a hidden typo or something about the order of the properties messed up the game.

I've got one on the screen, it shows:

Death-6
Holy-2
Research-8
Fear
Shock resist-50
Fire resist-25
Cold resist-100
Poison resist-100
Magic Being
Ethereal
Flying
Stealthy
Pillage Bonus
Recuperation
Darkvision-100
Assassin

[Aezeal]

ok I thought it might've been to much abilities on a creature and magic being was the last... so I guess that isn't it either
gotta love the dragons and all their abilities

[Loren]

At least for SP it's still got balance problems: A pure Ghost/Flame Tongue strategy won it without too much difficulty.

The only actual real use I made of the summons was to cast some globals.

I had enough summons at the end to use in battle but it all that did was speed things up by a couple of months.

At the point I declared it won I had all access to the enemy blocked off by a minimum of 50 flame tongues and I was pushing dominion out. Had I just kept hitting End Turn I probably would have won it eventually.

[rdonj]

I don't think it would be nearly so easy in mp, you'd make enemies very fast if you went around assassinating everyone's commanders, and a player at least will put guards on them. I actually lost a few early on in my game against ermor to ghost grips and or fear. Plus I imagine you must expand a lot more slowly than most nations.

That said an ethereal 35 hp assassin with 3 attacks (one of which is ap) and 14 attack skill is a bit much. They need to be either ridiculously expensive (upwards of 400 gold, non-sacred), lose most of their attacks, lose ethereality, be a summon, or get a massive attack skill nerf. Possibly a combination of several of the above. I really don't think they should have 3 attacks, especially.

[Aezeal]

I've started (for dom 3000 it's already uploaded) to just make them cost 300 gc.. 150% increase. For the future I'm thinking about lowering HP by 5, att by 1, str by 1 and loose one attack. But since the troops where not so strong I'll let them have this advantage for now. Especially in dom 3000 they might be just what the nation needs. And indeed with a few strong guards they might be defeated more easily.

PS Loren are you interested in playing a nation in our upcoming dom 3000 game (you could have dragons though with the serious playtesting you've already given them, thanks again btw, I suspect they will be one of the nations with fewer flaws left.)