Commander Battles

[Knai]

That does give them a lot, but because you can't bring units on the offensive, you are suddenly in a lot of danger from some defensive measures. Ie Charm. Still, that does sound like they are top tier. Keeping them with EA Atlantis, Hinnom, Niefl and the like then.

[Tolkien]

Really if we're talking about EA, any nation with recruitable SCs will dominate in such a game. Fomoria (Air and Death and a bit of water makes for Bless/Mistform/MirrorImage/SoulVortex/Quickness, and Dance of the Morrigans), and Helheim (same with Fomoria, except with Svarts and Earth Buffs and Sabbaths) would both rank up there.

Generally speaking, it becomes a pain in the arse for pretty much everyone to expand, but nations like EA Ermor, Ulm, C'tis, and Maverni (and maybe Sauromatia) take it in the groin. EA Mictlan and Abysia can compensate with lesser horror spamming, but overall, the game goes to recruitable thug/SC nations.

[MaxWilson]

Variant on this game: a commander can only lead 60 HP worth of troops, including himself. Giant nations like Hinnom/Ashdod/Niefelheim could only solo, but Marverni could have small squads of elite troops. It *might* still have some of the feel you're going for without eliminating human nations from consideration completely.

I guess castle construction would be a priority in these games. And the micro will quickly get out of hand, because placing 50 commanders on the battlefield is SO much harder than placing 50 grunts. Have fun!

-Max

[Knai]

What about commanders with over 60 HP? Since that cap would completely bar Golems, Tartarians, Elemental Royalty, even the humble Sea King SC after a bit of experience.

[MaxWilson]

I thought about writing a footnote that said "Except that a commander >60 HP counts as only 60 HP, so you can still use SC pretenders etc." but I sort of figured that in practice it would up to the people actually playing the game and I didn't want to clutter my post with footnotes for corner cases. But good for you on spotting that.

-Max

[Knai]

Thing is, an HP limit could make sense, even for commanders. With Tartarians, Seraphs, Chayots, etc. cut, along with Niefleheims top commanders, it actually closes the gap. It could work either way, although I would probably bump it up to 70 HP. Maybe involve the square root of HP for the total and cap it at 10, rounding down.

[sansanjuan]

Originally Posted by Knai

In playing around with Dominions 3, I have discovered an odd format that I really like, nicknamed Commander Battles. Basically, you cannot ever assign troops to commanders, except for when killing off initial troops (Troops are still allowed to take advantage of Gift of Reason or similar), indies are set to 9, and everyone has at each other. However, I find myself wondering how to play the nations without strong death magic so that they can compete. Some are easy enough (Vanheim can basically butcher indies with about 10 mages once you get evocation 3, Arco has the Oreid, which is SC material), but others don't work as well. If anyone else has done this, what nations are more fun to do this with, and do you have any advice for nations that have more trouble (Oceania for instance.)

K,
I like your thinking out of the box on this. The thing is it *could* be made balanced with sufficient mods/rules/restrictions.
-ssj

[Tolkien]

Originally Posted by Knai

Thing is, an HP limit could make sense, even for commanders. With Tartarians, Seraphs, Chayots, etc. cut, along with Niefleheims top commanders, it actually closes the gap. It could work either way, although I would probably bump it up to 70 HP. Maybe involve the square root of HP for the total and cap it at 10, rounding down.

So you'll cap it at 121 HP?

[Knai]

120 is the last number allowed, yes. But 3 creatures with 15 HP each will eat up the entire thing, unless you have a 1-3 HP critter to throw in as well. Basically this encourages SCing. Squaring and then allowing a total would encourage the opposite. My point is that the exact statistic could be played around with.

[Foodstamp]

It sounds like it would be easier to enforce if you just make a mod where everyone is poor leaders except SCs who have 0 leadership. You could write a script fairly easy that would generate the code to set all the commanders to #poorleader and then manual change the SCs such as Niefel Giants etc.