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

[Aezeal]

Introduction:
I heard there have been dragon nations in the past and I'm willing to believe it but I've not seen one here recently and since I was working on it already I decided not to let that information stop me and finish the job.

And the job is finished.

Making a dragon nation wasn't as easy as it sounds, you can't just put all different sorts of overpowered dragons together and call it a nation, it would either be overpowered or unplayable but I tried to thing of a story behind the dragons that allowed me to start with weak recruitables and commanders of acceptable powers (acutally less powerfull than some in game I think) and then advance towards the powerfull dragons we'd usually think about and a bit beyond to the ancient worms of nearly unparalelled power.

This dragon nation was originally intended for dominions 3000 (and it will actually go in there) but I think it fits well (better) with dominions 3 vanilla game.

The nation:

History:

The ancient dragon god was most important rival of the Pantokrator in ancient times. The fight was bitter and in the end the Pantokrator prevailed and the dragon god was cast down and imprisoned in the centre of a distant and unnamed star. The dragon god was to powerfull to be destroyed but his prison has lasted even after the Pantokrator's demise. The Dragon race had suffered huge losses in the war with the Pantokrator and his minions and without their god "lesser" races have been able to hunt dragons throughout the world and the galaxy with help of their fledling gods and pretenders. The dragon however remained loyal to their god, knowing he was still alive, somewhere far far away. Now their god has regained more and more of his power and is able to contact some of his sensitive dragon followers. He is now also able to be in constant contact with his most sensitive follower, lending this dragon avatar some of his strength and wisdom to lead dragonkind to dominate over the other pretneder gods. The ultimate goal of his avatar is of course to unlock the hidden powers of the galaxy to shatter the chains fo their bound god.

Dragons:

This is a nation of dragons. These dragons are beings of magic that are able to evolve into different forms during their live. They start as young, mundane wyrmling and as they mature they are able to choose different shapes. A lot fo wyrmlings are born but a great part of them dies while they are young. With age comes growth, intelligence and power, both physical as magical. When dragons are adult the magic in their blood can be channeled into spells and young adult dragons are often learning to cast spells. When they age their magic power grows and they are sometimes able to cast spells in more than one path. Dragons greatly respect their elders and older dragons are considered holy. Adult, Elder and Ancient dragons are a rare sight, since most races consider slaying one of these by tricks or in huge numbers some sort of heroic task instead of the low deed it is.

Dragons are classed as followed:
Wyrmling

post wyrmling: Steel Dragon, Venomous Dragon, Shadow Dragon

young dragon: Bone Biter Dragon, Mist Dragon

young adult: Ghost Dragon, Adamantine Claw Dragon, Stone Scale Dragon, Fire Tongue Dragon, Ice Plated Dragon, Poison Ivy Dragon, Stargazer Dragon

Adult dragon: Magma Dragon, Plague Dragon, Thundercloud Dragon

Elder dragon: Vine Dragon, Golden Dragon, Wave Dragon, Death Wraith Dragon

Ancient wyrm: Light Dragon, Dragon of Fate, Soulfire Dragon

(please note that I tried to stay a bit away from the standard DnD names, eventhough DnD covers a lot of dragon idea's and so there certainly are similarities.)

In this doesn't mean dragons are shapeshifters, their development takes years while they mature and the span of these wars is to small to see any dragon change shape. The dragons shapes are often based on being a melee fighter or a certain magic path user. Aging dragons can change from melee to caster. A melee type dragon (steel dragon) will often but not neccesarily change into an elder melee type class (bone biter dragon). In fact throughout the millenia of their live few dragons remain totally committed to their childhood choices. Often preferring to try different sorts of lives.

Despite being a magical race the dragons are not very powerfull spellcasters. The older dragons do have lots of resistances and special abilities.

The Avatar of their god is a young adult dragon and is able to recruit his peers and younger dragons. The Avatar hasn't established enough power yet to order his holy elders but they can be summoned and convinced to serve their god.
Wyrmlings to young dragons are recruitable troops with not enough intelligence to function autonomously. Young adults are commanders and can lead their younger kin.

There are 4 different Avatars available in this nation: of the Adamantine Claw Dragon, Stone Scale Dragon, Fire Tongue Dragon and Poison Ivy Dragon variety. They are pretty good pretender choices (better than most unused pretenders, but certainly don't make better blessers than the best of the best that are in the game. The different chassis can used for different wishes. One as stronger melee awake SC, others with higher magic for better bless, and one better suited for rainbow pretender choices.

Here is a preview of the dragons in this mod:



Due to file size etc the quality of the preview is only 50% of the original, plz keep that in mind.

In game:
- relatively weak recruitable mage power.
- strong recruitable commander chassis with some mage power.
- all mages have a strong (dragon) chassis so you are not able to buy a cheap researcher/mage, you always pay for the chassis even if you don't need it.
- Huge sizes. wyrmlings are size 3, then it only goes up. As is known from giant nations this in not an advantage.
- PD is weak, also due to the size problem and because dragons are just not the race with the nature to stay put and defend a province.
- the recruitment bar looks like a carnival since the different shapes the dragons can take all have very specific colors.
- The young adult dragons (commanders)
- the nation has A LOT of nation specific summons (the adult, elder and ancient dragons) all of which have magic and an increasingly powerfull physique. The nation does NOT lack for SC's.
- The summons are not all castable out of the box, there will have to be investments in magic boosting equipment or powering up mages.
- To balance this the casting and research requirements for summons are relatively low and most in one research arm (conjuration)
- The lack of certain equipment slots does limit the SC options
- This lack is rebalanced again in the oldest dragons with special powers.
- The summons give acces to a wide range of magic power (large magic diversity which reflects the magic in their blood.
- for LA the nation has a high gem income. This reflects their magical nature thematically and I think the nation needs it.
- The nation has no recruitable sacred troops and only one (cap only and actually a relatively weak) sacred commander. This is because any sacred recruitable would probably make that troops the only recruited troop and the nation alway played as a bless nation. Now a bless will certainly help the sacred recruitables but then again those are powerfull already and early in game the scales might be needed, or a rainbow mage to sitesearch and more easily unlock the different summons might be a good idea for this nation. (my personal advice would be the latter.)
- I think the nation will have a hard time early on in a game but with their powerfull summons and decent magic diversity the end game might give a good end game.
- The nation has no regular heros but the 3 types of adult dragon (summons) can also appear as multihero's.
- I would prefer it (but do as you like) if the nation was played with one of the 4 different pretenders I'm providing. The regular dragon providers are not of this race and they don't deserve to be called dragon. (this nation is kind of racist and refuses to acknowledge hydra's, original dom3 dragons, drakes etc etc as part of the family.
- For reasons mentioned above I would prefer it if you'd not summon drakes.

Please try the nation and give me feedback. At first I thought the nation would be overpowered since it was created for the higher powered dominions 3000 mod. Due to this I decided to nto give them to much magicpower (thematically I couldn't drop their physical strenght or the magic diversity in the race). When I was playing it a bit it actually seemed early game was pretty hard. I'm certainly willing to adjust the nation according to the feedback I'm getting.

PS the graphics aren't my own but adjusting the existing images did take me A LOT of time. Some troops (mostly the recruitbles) do not have a seperate attack sprite. Most powerfull summons do have 2 sprites.