Question about Ulm and iron faith

[Keir Maxwell]

Hiya'll,

There seem to be to parallel discussions going on in this thread. One in which people discuss in abstract the relative power (or lack of) of themes and express concern at on the weakness of IF and another in which people discuss the concrete nature of IF and how to make it work. Reading the Posts of those involved in the general discussion you could almost wonder if they have read the specifics provided by people - as these, to me, condradict the general statements being made yet have not been addressed in any detail.

Nahntanaj spells it out very nicely. High magic pretender does research, provides bless effects, extra long term power, and the abilty to find all sorts of wonderful indie mages if you do it right, Templers conquer indie's and bingo you are away. What comes next is really hard to say and in my MP experiance a big empire tends to find alot of alternate magical options along with some good alternate troop/summoning options. Sure the Templers are vunerable to enemy magic as the game goes on - thats why you rely on them early and just use them later if you get my point.

PDF how can you say no magic? The pretender provides a heap of magic from the get go due to bless effects, high research capability (friend uses the sage), high magic capability, ability to summon mages, and ability to find indie mages. I consider drain 3 to be a perfectly decent approach for many, many races. I have never failed to find sages for research in MP - most games I get two sites - and they research fine under drain. Sages are one of the most important randoms in the game - and quite commen.

The point about themes in the abstract is that there are certain approaches to playing a race which simply become stronger by using the theme. Niefelheim for Jotun is an obvious example of this and yet is still coping some criticism as being weak!? While Tomb's for Ctis may be weak in terms of general Ctis game play I have always found Ctis general gameplay to be weak so hardly worth pursing. So I consider the Tomb and Miasma options to be the ones worth exploring for Ctis. For how I have previously enjoyed playing Ctis I would be insane to choose the normal option instead of Tombs.

I do not have any capability of providing an accurate measure of how weak or strong a particular theme is in abstract from the details of how its is to be played. As people are only just begining to figure out a fraction of the possible approaches to playing Dom II I am unconvinced by most of the abstract discussion.

For each theme/bess option the question is how you can most consistently follow this approach in a whole game strategy. The most important thing is to have an explosive start (though you don't always have to explode province wise) as how you transition to the middle game is dependent on your start. After that it becomes more useful to look at abstracts as its hard to now how things will develop but that very uncertainty is what makes nailing the start so important.

Another important point is that the best race for any individual is not necessarily the best race in abstract. For multi-player I strongly recommmend people to take races which they enjoy the style of play of and feel comfortable with ahead of simply hunting for the most powerful. People play differing strategies with varying capability. Part of optimizing for MP is finding out how you play best. The main stream idea of what is best is important - but don't give it to much weight.

Often the difference between the more powerful and less powerful races are less than the luck of the start thus the importance of speed to counter a poor starting position is what shapes alot of mutli-player possiblities:

"I could take a slow race that will be amazing if things go right or I could take a fast race that can adapt? How many months am I hoping to be playing this game for . . . think I'll choose the fast one."

This sort of logic allows for many long term weaknesses such as those of Templers. I have won with Death 3 using Abysia in Dom I and my core was hammered by the end of the game due to blood hunting and the death dominion. My race had no long term survivability but won due to focus - themes provide possibilites for increasing focus.

Hope that this is of some use.

cheers

Keir

[PDF]

Originally posted by PvK:

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Originally posted by PDF:
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In the end IF Ulm looks unbalanced to me - or at least worse than standard Ulm, note also that you have to PAY for getting IF theme !

Iron Faith shows a zero point cost to me.

PvK

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You're right, mistake from my part Sorry !
But it doesn't still make IF much appealing

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Pocus:

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Originally posted by HJ:

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Originally posted by Pocus:
Having the themes balanced would not remove their 'fun' ie originality, but would open them to MP play where competitivness is always (well, often) a factor considered by players.

That remains to be seen, methinks. As they are now, I like the flavour that they add, which partly stems from their imperfection. Or rather, the tradeoffs on which they are based. I would like to see it stay that way.

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an example, as this is the theme I know the best : Blood of nation theme is weak compared to standard Abysia. A tweak, which would be rather in line (more humans, less Abysian) would be to add a site which give 2 slaves (human virgin) a turn in the capital. I dont see how it can be detrimental to the originality of the theme, and this could equilibrate it.

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I think what Blood of Humans needs is a Warlock Apprentice (wait, they already used that... make that Warlock Apprentice Apprentice ). A human (or at least a Humanbred) with Blood-1 for 60 or so. He's a researcher, he's a slave hunter, he can summon a few minor demons, he can forge SDR and some other items... but without the physical might and heat auras of true Abysians (perhaps even without heat resistance).

Abysia has always needed a cheap mage, even since Dom I. Apprentice Warlocks help, but the new Humanbred Apprentice would be even cheaper.

An interesting alternative would be Blood-1 Fire-1 for 90-100: Humanbred Diabolist or something like that. BoH loses the Demonbred which is normal Abysia's only mage to combine Blood with Fire (except for Fire-random Warlocks, Ba'al Chozron (if he's still around and BoH can get him) and possibly the pretender).

It seems clear that BoH needs something to offset its disadvantages. I think a cheap mage could be just the thing.


As for Iron Faith - if you aren't using Templars extensively, why are you playing IF at all? I don't think it's unreasonable for Black Priests to get drain immunity, though. (And the Master Alchemist, too - he's basically a pretender Master Smith, IIRC). Being too far behind in research will negate a lot of other advantages.

Themes in general: yes, they should have tradeoffs. But they shouldn't be obviously stronger or weaker - the point of tradeoffs is that all options should have some advantages and some disadvantages. High point costing themes that provide a wider array of units (Desert Tombs), cheap themes that add some units but delete others (Iron Faith, Miasma), or the generic themes that don't cost many points but generally have minor effects.

[Patrik]

Originally posted by Pocus:
A tweak, which would be rather in line (more humans, less Abysian) would be to add a site which give 2 slaves (human virgin) a turn in the capital. I dont see how it can be detrimental to the originality of the theme, and this could equilibrate it.

This is a good idea, one problem might be that it would very similar to Mictlan's High Temple of the Sun (3 slaves/turn in the capital). Still, other nations have similar sites so, why not??

[HJ]

Originally posted by Pocus:
an example, as this is the theme I know the best : Blood of nation theme is weak compared to standard Abysia. A tweak, which would be rather in line (more humans, less Abysian) would be to add a site which give 2 slaves (human virgin) a turn in the capital. I dont see how it can be detrimental to the originality of the theme, and this could equilibrate it.

So not only does blood of humans flow in veins of your soldiers, you get to spill more of it as well?

The only thing that I was saying was that I'd hate to the distinctive flavour of the theme lost in the process of balancing, and that if such risk exists I would prefer everything to stay the way it is.

[Pocus]

Chris : I thought of your suggestion too, but to me it seems that IW take great care in not giving Abysia a blood mage recruitable everywhere (even the warlock apprentice, which I thought was not restricted to capital is restricted). So I'm very dubious that, if they tweak BoH theme, they will add a human blood mage with no location restriction.

But I like the idea personally...

[iRichard]

It's funny to see that in one thread people says : "AI is to bad, the game is to easy".

And here : "we want powerful themes, bring us the mighty-magic back".

Ulm can be considered as an iron-only nation. If you care about background etc.. play it (in SP only if you want). If not, don't playt with the theme. Leave it untouched, forget about it.

I wonder if there is an opposite theme for another nation (understand : 90% magic 10% unit).

[Nagot Gick Fel]

One easy thing that could be done for Iron Faith is changing the pre-researched spell. Legions of Steel requires earth-3, so it's of limited use to Ulm/standard early - which is a bit irritating -, it's even worse when you pick Iron Faith: without items, 7 out of 8 black priests will never be able to cast it.

[iRichard]

With IF I was able to cast LoS without doing any research

pretender : 4Fire 6earth

[Pocus]

Originally posted by iRichard:
[QB] It's funny to see that in one thread people says : "AI is to bad, the game is to easy".

And here : "we want powerful themes, bring us the mighty-magic back".

actually nobody said that. People want theme to be balanced compared to the standard theme,thats it.

Ulm can be considered as an iron-only nation. If you care about background etc.. play it (in SP only if you want). If not, don't playt with the theme. Leave it untouched, forget about it.

with an attitude like this, hundreds of suggestions made by dozen of people goes to the trash. In essence you tell us to either play the game as it, or not play it. Very constructive.