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

[Aezeal]

nice which ones do you think are stronger and which ones weaker and why... you are the one with most experience so it's probably good to know some of this stuff for others going to join us in the game.

Aka-Oni still too strong after halvinf damage.. hmmm they are sacred which makes it extra powerfull... do you play with a deathbless? or have you tried... I created these to be THE deathbless carriers, I wonder if you think that succeeded. Their damage might get lower or maybe be AP since it auto hits..

[rdonj]

Well, it's been hard to get a really good feel from fighting just the AI because it's not very good with several of the nations. But I will give my best assessment. I don't think I know enough to rate them from 1 to 7, but I will group them into close proximity.

Top tier nations: Orcs, Insects, Jomon.

Orcs - The orcs have a stronger start than the insects (I think, I haven't played a new orc game yet since the last update) and should expand faster, plus they don't need to worry about resources so they can build as many forts as they can afford to build from (advantage over normal nations). They can either build straight heroes for early power or build mages also to get access to their better units. They did lose some armor in the most recent update but that shouldn't make indies too much harder I think. They're still decent in melee so most races will have a fair fight trying to fight off their numbers. As long as they don't lose too many commanders early on they'll just get stronger and stronger as the game goes on. If the game lasts too long though I think nations with strong magic will probably have the advantage, I still have yet to summon anything with the orcs yet so I'm not sure how strong they'll be, but chances are anything that will kill a normal army of orcs will probably kill their summons too.

Insectoids - Don't expand as fast as the orcs, but don't have to. All they need is population. Since you can't make queens in space they only care about planet provinces. They start off fairly slowly, but they are *very* good fighters and if they aren't exterminated early will grow to have huge amounts of troops. Pretty much the only things that can melee them effectively are jomon's suits, but they can't make nearly as many. The insects really come into their own in about year 3, by that time they should be able to kill basically anyone 1 on 1, except MAYBE the orcs. The insects are also stronger late game than the orcs, because they take a lot less damage from aoe and they should be able to spare males for suicidal dashes into enemy ranged blocks. Followed by massed dreadnaughts. I'm not sure if anyone could really deal with that.

Jomon - Massable, high damage armor negating ranged weapons, some of the best melee units in the game, dai oni, and aka oni. The ice battle suit samurai are less massable than insectoid armies, BUT they are also very hard to hurt with ranged weapons, so they are very solid units. Plus paralyze damage on their staves means they are a good counter to thugs/scs. Their dai oni are fairly powerful as mages and scs, though you have to craft gear for them as they have only fist as a melee weapon right now. But properly equipped they should be able to kill most other things in melee, and solo armies. They don't quite have ulm's magic diversity and their recruit-everywhere mages aren't as good but jomon also doesn't need magic as much. Especially since aka oni will do a pretty good job of decimating human-sized units. Aka-oni are probably only too strong against ulm and the commonwealth, orcs might be able to deal with them but it would be hard if they were massed enough. Jomon's wraith suit shinobi are also some of the better assassins. And Jomon has some of the best units in space. They aren't as overwhelmingly powerful at any stage as the orcs or insectoids can be I don't think (except on commonwealth/ulm with aka-oni) but they're also less vulnerable to the above nations and should be strong the entire game.



Mid tier nations: Commonwealth, Ulm.

Commonwealth - The commonwealth doesn't have terribly effective ranged units for the most part, but they have the best shields in the game and are basically invulnerable to non-aoe ranged attacks. They also all have magical weapons. They're pretty strong in melee but not ridiculously so. They'll tend to win pound for pound against most melee units but they're fairly resource-intensive so they won't have huge numbers of troops. They also have to fight in cold provinces or they are much weaker. They have very powerful water magic but not a whole lot else, so they are somewhat magic-limited. The commonwealth seems to be a lot better defensively than offensively due to their turrets and cold weather abilities. I could see them being pretty tough to dislodge but they would conquer other players fairly slowly.

Ulm - Ulm has the most magic diversity, a good selection of troops, recruitable SCs, powerful summons and is terrible in space until late game. Ulm is another fairly defensive race in that they are just so much better on planets than in space. Their marines and black knights are capable but in space most things will beat them given similar resources. On land they can add artillery marines which are good if not as good as aka-oni, or tanks if they want something hardier. Before battlefield damaging spells come into play though the artillery marines are probably much more efficient as tanks are pretty expensive and relatively easy to kill in melee. Ulm though can get lots of artillery and buffing mages, and should have massive amounts of earth gems to use for crafting, globals and summons. Ulm has the ability to kill just about anything given the right troops at the right time, but will struggle against jomon, insectoids and orcs. Ulm is decent early, fair towards the middle game and really comes into its own in the end game. Ulm is a very good case for casting Riches from Beneath and Earthblood Deep Well.



Low tier nations: Dragons(?), R'lyeh.

Dragons - I'm not sure whether Dragons belong here or with mid-tier, as I have not played as the dragons since they were incorporated, only against them. But since they are so expensive and relatively vulnerable to ranged attacks, they will probably be fairly weak until they get some research done and can forge/summon. With the dragons that can take a long time due to how expensive research is for them. On the other hand massed bonebiters are still strong, and can reach the enemy in one round. This is still bad for pitched battles, but the dragons would make great raiders. They will probably have to raid with small groups of dragons while building up research to turn out thugs/scs. The dragons do have probably the best recruitable assassin in the game, especially early, which could help a lot. If the dragons can survive until they get their late game research they should be able to kill everyone, everywhere.

R'lyeh - R'lyeh is, in my mind, almost certainly the weakest nation (but then I'm not very good with MA R'lyeh either, which is what they remind me of). They do have some things going for them. They have lots of magic, which they can do the usual illithidy things with. Covering astral, water, earth and death fairly well. However they don't get nature, which combined with them not being secluded from most other races makes the R'lyeh clamming turtle strategy a lot harder than in vanilla. Also, most of their recruitable units are both expensive and not very good. R'lyeh can expand fairly quickly but once their slave troops don't fare very well against most national units and then they just have illithids, sitting there getting shot. Pirate raiders are probably their best bet for protecting the swarm of illithids that is actually going to kill the enemy. Unfortunately said swarm of illithids is pretty expensive and will make it very difficult for the player to do much in the way of research. R'lyeh could try to get around this by not building armies until they're being attacked but that's probably not the best idea. If they survive until mid game they will start becoming more viable but I think they would have a hard time killing anyone until then. If they survive until late game they'll be pretty dangerous, especially as they probably are one of the best sc killers, but their pretty bad early game would make things hard on them.

Whew, that was long! Anyway, those are just my observations from my own play style and understanding, and obviously the latest update changed things a bit so I don't know entirely that some of what I said is correct. Feel free to disagree where you will

[Aezeal]

THAT was a great post.. so R'lyeh would be weakest.. well which troops do you think are too expensive for their power, can easily be changed (though not befor we start a game)

Personally I think huge blocks of illithids and mutants would be pretty annoying for most opponents and I'd say insects with their low MR (I've raised it a bit too, 7 MR was very low.. but if they are too strong it might be a nice way to balance them back again.. it's 9 now, still vulnerable for (AoE) mindblasting I'd say. They are also very good against indies usually.

[rdonj]

Enslaved aliens and space trolls, and predator aliens. The pirate raiders are actually probably too cheap, they're much more durable than any of the other units and are ranged so they won't get butchered nearly as fast as your other units. Of course they do actually take resources so it would be tough to mass them, relatively, since you definitely want order and probably want to take sloth. I would suggest putting them somewhere between 30 and 35 gold (35 is probably overcosting for the unit itself, but they're really just screens for illithids), and basing everything else off assuming they're your best blockers.

Huge blocks of illithids and mutants ARE pretty strong. For some races they can be pretty painful to deal with. However r'lyeh can't build very many big blocks of illithids, they are just too expensive to support. I don't know about the magic resistance, it wouldn't hurt too much I think against mind blast but master enslave would just destroy them.

Just to give you an idea of scale, I invaded R'lyeh's homeworld with the insectoids in a game where rlyeh was the strongest other power. I sent probably about 550 bugs down to their planet and have over a thousand more land troops in space atm, with another 170 finishing off the dragons and have another 1,300 bugs on my production worlds. And that is just my ground troops, I also have probably 600+ males. It is late winter of year 4. Anyway, those 550 planetary assault bugs (just drones and soldiers) destroyed somewhere in the vicinity of 150 illithids and mutants, in several battles not involving armies of 100-150 bugs, losing only 1 female and no more than 100 insects.

[Aezeal]

you know what this sounds like.. a need for less bugs.. or maybe weaker bugs since bugs (as orcs) are meant to be massed.. 3 green waves of destruction... problem is they should be masses of weak troops.. and both races are not that weak on individual troops compared to others...
I can't change much in domsummoning though since I've only got domsummon, and 2 and 20.. and those are all taken.. makemonster isn't used that much and when it's used it's mostly for males to get into space (which you insisted they needed.) maybe to make it a bit harder I'll have to lower that by one though. I think R'lyeh needs very good battlefield placement to work.. I was thinking the troops wheren't that bad though.. aliens and predators are pretty solid troops.. spread them through the ranks of illithid (in several groups across the field and a screen of tough guys in front and you should be there.) I actually think the pirates are useless since you need melee power, ranged the illitid are better anyway, you just need more melee to finish the grey statues

[rdonj]

Yeah, I know. I was a bit insistent on the males, but then I started realizing what the end game would look like with all those males... I think either the makemonster for males needs to be removed, or the domsummon. And yeah, the bugs definitely are too strong. You just get too many if you're left alone long enough.

It may be you are right about the troops, but in my experience rlyeh's melee troops die very fast to ranged firepower, while the pirate raiders die a lot slower. So my entire thinking is that they dilute the amount of ranged damage the illithids take, and that's the entire pupose they're serving.

Loren - to clarify what aezeal said, space is represented by forest provinces. There were a lot of issues with using water as space that were hard to work around, so forest terrain was chosen instead.

[Darkwind]

I've finally gotten around to working on the Pirians. As a sort of teaser, here's the code for one of their heroes(the Trueblood Hero, heh). I still can't figure out how to apply a custom name, so no go there. It should be easy to follow even if you can't mod Dom3.

#newmonster 2235
#name "Firstblood Hero"
#spr1
#spr2
#descr "The Firstbloods were the first generation of Pirians, magically powerful, physically strong, and long-lived. Lahatiel was a great warrior among great warriors, known for his martial prowess. As Piria's strength grows, Lahatiel has awoken, ready to blaze a trail for the Pirian nation in the cold depths of space. His very presence inspires Pirians to greater deeds."
#holy
#ap 12
#mapmove 2
#size 4
#hp 25
#prot 13
#str 15
#enc 1
#att 16
#def 13
#prec 14
#mr 14
#mor 12
#gcost 10
#rcost 1
#maxage 75
#fireres 100
#coldres 25
#poisonres 75
#shockres 25
#maxage 1000
#older 200
#firepower 3
#fireshield 14
#heat 10
#standard 10
#goodleader
#researchbonus -3
#magicskill 0 2
#weapon "Greater Starburst"
#weapon "Starsword"
#armor "The Brightshield"
#end

And the weapon and shield:

#newweapon 665
#name "Starsword"
#att 4
#def 2
#armorpiercing
#dmg 10
#rcost 5
#sound 8
#len 3
#secondaryeffectalways 216
#magic
#end

#newarmor 668
#name "The Brightshield"
#type 4
#prot 10
#def 8
#enc 0
#rcost 0
#end

Well, there you have it, the first preview of the mod in action. This Pirian, at least, isn't going to be felled by merely shooting metal at him until he drops. And I expect the combination Heat Aura/Fireshield makes Pirians hard to fight in melee. And you can't effectively shoot spells at him, with his numerous resistances. I doubt if he's an SC, but definitely a higher-end thug. I hope

By the way, that 171 in the sword's code means small area fire. The defense value on the shield is actually the parry, and that magicskill means the hero has 2 Fire magic. The spr1/spr2 are the sprites. I still have none Puppies lament my poor spriting skills daily.

[Aezeal]

in dom 3K there is no water well there could be but there just isn't.. there is space and several landtypes.. using water next to that would make it a bit complicated (even MORE units needed, or amphibious indies (that would then also be able to go into space)

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

in dom 3K there is no water well there could be but there just isn't.. there is space and several landtypes.. using water next to that would make it a bit complicated (even MORE units needed, or amphibious indies (that would then also be able to go into space)

You can't get off your world without water breathing. Maybe space isn't the same thing (I didn't note any difference but I wasn't really looking for one, either) but there are no routes from land to space anyway, you have to go through your own seas and that takes water breathing.

Given how few provinces you will own at this point you simply don't have the gems to make very many items.

I just beat the AI at regular and it wasn't easy. I'm not even going to try the impossible AI's I beat the computer with a normal map.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Loren

You can't get off your world without water breathing. Maybe space isn't the same thing (I didn't note any difference but I wasn't really looking for one, either) but there are no routes from land to space anyway, you have to go through your own seas and that takes water breathing.

Given how few provinces you will own at this point you simply don't have the gems to make very many items.

I just beat the AI at regular and it wasn't easy. I'm not even going to try the impossible AI's I beat the computer with a normal map.

Loren I just started up a game with the dragons and I seem to have no problem leaving my planet on turn 1. I don't get what you mean there are no routes from land to space, with what seas? You're using the solar system map, right? There are no water provinces on the map at all. And all land provinces connect directly to at least one space province. You should not need water breathing to get anywhere.



Also, that banefireball looks evil.