Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?

[Saber Cherry]

Over 500 points... hmm, that wouldn't change much, if points were still better spent on scales than magic. IMO.

I think making magic cheaper is the best solution. Though some of the other ones (like adding dominion strength to path strength, or starting bonuses at 3/8 rather than 4/9, or giving a bonus every level rather than every two levels, or putting in more low-level holy troops) are also good alone, or in additon to cheaper magic.

[licker]

Another side effect of increasing points is to devalue points as a whole. This hurts the nations that take more disadvantages. Though it is arguable that those nations need to lose some of their edge.

I'd rather see pretenders come with *minimun* levels of required magic that you pick. Its one way to force up the magic on some pretenders. That is a pretender may start with 2 in fire and 1 in astral, but have a requirement to have a total of 8 picks in magic. You can decide where to put the other 5 picks...

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Over 500 points... hmm, that wouldn't change much, if points were still better spent on scales than magic. IMO.

True, but that's variable depending on map size and nation.

It seems to me that most gods can't afford strong magic even if they don't care much about scales.

I think making magic cheaper is the best solution. Though some of the other ones (like adding dominion strength to path strength, or starting bonuses at 3/8 rather than 4/9, or giving a bonus every level rather than every two levels, or putting in more low-level holy troops) are also good alone, or in additon to cheaper magic.

I don't think all magic should be cheaper - I think high level magic should be cheaper. I'd just like to see magic costs rise less steeply with magic level.

I already posted the current curve. What if we instead made magic cost per level (4 + 4*(level above base))? Then for a god who starts with 2 power in a path we have:

power 2, cost 0
power 3, cost 8, total 8
power 4, cost 12, total 20
power 5, cost 16, total 36
power 6, cost 20, total 56
power 7, cost 24, total 80
power 8, cost 28, total 108
power 9, cost 32, total 140
power 10, cost 36, total 176

High levels of power in a path are still expensive, but not ludicrously expensive. In particular if your god starts out with 2 in a path (few start with more than 2), reaching 9 is about as expensive as taking one scale to +3. The relative importance of a level 9 blessing and a +3 scale is hard to quantify, but under the current system one level 9 (in a path that you start out fairly strong in) costs almost as much as two +3 scales. That's what makes it look like high magic levels aren't worth it.

Note that with this rewrite of the cost system, level 7 (from a base of 2) costs as much as level 6 under the old system. Level 9 under the new system costs about halfway between the old level 7 and 8.

If you started with one level 2 and one level 1, you could raise them to 9 and 9 for 316 - which is a lot of points, but you could do it if you weren't doing much of anything else (a lot of god forms cost a base of 100 or so, and you'd probably like to have a castle other than watchtower too.) There's no question that this would be powerful for a nation that had good sacred troops. Would it be more powerful than spending 300 points on scales (say, Order 3 Prod 2 Luck 2, or Order 2 Prod 2 Luck 1 Magic 2)? Depends on the nation, map, nearby opponents... without positive scales, will you even be able to afford a lot of priests and sacred troops? Or supply them once you have them? A strong bless won't help you much in early expansion; a strong mage God might; Order and Productivity are guaranteed to.


This is of course neglecting the nations that get free design points (Abysia, Caelum, Jotunheim, Ashen Empire/Soul Gates/Carrion Woods). But as I already posted, I want strong magic and blessings to be viable for nations that can't afford to take a lot of negative scales.

Some point-costing themes introduce a new sacred troop (Iron Faith and Desert Tombs come to mind). What's the point of getting those if you can't get a strong blessing to go with them?

[Keir Maxwell]

Hi all,

I play multi-player and I'm fairly excited about some of the bless potential. My understanding about mulit-player is that a quick start hides a multitude of sins and a berserk one is the greatest of blessings. If bless and high levels of magic can help you get you an insanely quick start most of the rest will flow from that. I have sacrificed long term power left, right, and center in a number of different mutli-player environments with great success and if taking nature 9 can turn my Niefel giants into early game supercombatents then yeehaaa! Did somone mention re-invigoration for blessed mages?!!!! Err, thats sounds pretty tempting to me.

The question really is how many races can make use of high magic/bless to good effect - I suspect many races will, like Chris's Machaka, take minor advantage of this feature and a few major. Looking forward to finding out.

I really appreciated Nyanarr's feedback and found the details and analysis thoughtful and useful - thanks. I also appreciate the value of not losing troops and find the thought of enhanced wardens well worth looking at.

So will I be playing with high magic to utilise bless in mutli-player - I imagine so. I played blood 9 Fountain of Blood in Dom I to get my first Ice Devil on turn 8 or 9 as Caelum so its not like there's no precedent. Sure I wouldn't try quite the same approach in Dom II but there should be others that are competitive. I wonder about water and increased defence for Van.

re starting with multipule provinces.

A poster said you can with the map editor - which I had assumed since you can do it in Dom I by editing the map at the start. I'm hoping people will setup balenced scenario's and then play them. All my Dom I game had preset starting positions as Stars taught me the importance of this. Hopefully this will be easier than in Dom I but even if its not its worth taking a bit of extra time at the start over a game which you will invest vast amounts of time in.

cheers

Keir

[Wendigo]

Hey George, good to see you back old bud!

I am not as sure as you are regarding the uberness of a Bless strategy for Ermor, for the following reasons:

-Unlike live nations Ermor cannot really concentrate its recruiting onto the sacred troops (I am assuming this part stays as in Dom I) as it stays fixed: Ermor gets 0-2 knights per turn in each fort with a temple in normal richness settings, which certainly limits the number of unholy knights it can field when coupled with its income troubles.

-Unholy knights do not heal now!, so their 6 HPs can only take them so far.

-Wither bones: Fielding units of undead elites is always a risky business, there's no spell of comparable power to threaten live sacred troops.

I do agree with you regarding the Shroud though, that thing is extremely cheap & potentially unballancing with the current blessings.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Hey George, good to see you back old bud!

I am not as sure as you are regarding the uberness of a Bless strategy for Ermor, for the following reasons:

-Unlike live nations Ermor cannot really concentrate its recruiting onto the sacred troops (I am assuming this part stays as in Dom I) as it stays fixed: Ermor gets 0-2 knights per turn in each fort with a temple in normal richness settings, which certainly limits the number of unholy knights it can field when coupled with its income troubles.

-Unholy knights do not heal now!, so their 6 HPs can only take them so far.

-Wither bones: Fielding units of undead elites is always a risky business, there's no spell of comparable power to threaten live sacred troops.

I do agree with you regarding the Shroud though, that thing is extremely cheap & potentially unballancing with the current blessings.

The Shroud replaces your standard armor and prevents you from wearing armor (AFAIK there is nothing with two body slots). It provides no protection (IIRC) unless you have Earth 9, and then it provides a measly 4.

If you can cast Invulnerability this is less of an issue, but many things can't cast Invulnerability (Ice Devils for example).

If you want to make a supercombatant, I think making it your prophet is probably a better option than the Shroud for getting bless effects.

Unless it's your god - but I've heard the Shroud doesn't work on gods. (Haven't tested it though.)


Also, the standard theme for Ermor is no longer Ashen Empire. Ashen Empire may well cost points, which will cut into Dom I Ermor's traditional ton of points. And undead are vulnerable to various countermeasures (even relatively tough ones like Tomb Wyrms - which are hard to get).

[Saber Cherry]

Was the shroud changed? It gave 5 prot in Dominions I.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Was the shroud changed? It gave 5 prot in Dominions I.

Oh, I didn't know that.

In any case, 5 is probably lower than your standard armor (except maybe for mages), and certainly lower than other armors you could probably forge.

I don't think the Shroud will be too good. Few gods are going to have a bless effect stronger than Dom I's.

[geo981010]

The Shroud no longer works on Pretenders! Used to in Dom1 - maybe the description should note that?

The shroud would still be great for some supercombatants though, especially for Ice Devils. Their base armor of 15, up to 20 in the cold, so the armor effect is icing. Getting regeneration, Beserk + 3, 50% poison res, and possibly other bonuses too (reinvig seems like a good choice and a Great Mother allows this) and you have a supercombatant that only takes 5 gems of equipment. I hacked a map and made an Ice Devils (I got Nycafor) with just the shroud, and he was really nasty even with the new tweaks to reduce supercombatants.

Ermor, well we'll have to see about. If Ashen Empire costs them enough so they have a slighly similar number of design points available, then they won't be too bad. If not, an Ermor Shrouded Ice Devil (or similar) would still be ridiculous. I forgot about the lack of healing for the undead Knights, though I wonder if undead creation rates were affected because of that (seem to get more with C'tis undead kings, not sure on dominion creation effects at all).I guess there is a lot of unknowns with Ermor right now...

But anyway, I still think that lowering the incremental costs of magic paths will be tricky (and may not be needed). You can't just blindly grab specials and expect them to pay off, but some of them may be powerful enough and will likely be abusable already. Two more weeks until the full Version!

I can't wait to play Pythium with an Earth +4 mage, too

[ November 01, 2003, 19:41: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

[Sammual]

After a lot of playtime with the demo I have had a change of mind. The Bless effects can be very powerfull as they are and changing the levels you get them at might make them too powerfull at the highest levels.

On the other hand has anyone EVER played with magic 10 in ANY skill? There is not enough incentive to do so. If the bless effects did not get verry cool powers at level 9 I would NEVER take higher than level 4 in any magic skill to start. I would like to see a formula for the cost of magic skills that was a bit less steep. The cost for levels 2 - 4 are fine but 5+ is a bit much, and adding the 9th and 10th level is just painfull.

Sammual