Faerun - started

[The Panther]

If you want to clam hoard as Ermor under Zen's mods, you can! If you want the extra income from a rich world as Ermor, you can!

No problem at all. Just pick the Broken Empire theme, and you can have both these things very easily.

In fact, I would NEVER consider taking anything but Broken Empire on a map as large as Faerun for the following reasons:

1. Because of the zillions of troops you will have if you are AE or SG and survive to the late game, the micromanagement of trying to shuffle those wimps to the front lines would be horrid. Your best bet would then be to try to get eliminated early to avoid this insane problem.
2. Your neighbors know where you start on Faerun. If you take a 10-dominion population-killing Ermor theme, they WILL gang up on you to try to get rid of the nastiness as soon as possible. At the very best, they will try to contain you from all sides. Especailly since you will be building temples much faster on a rich world than normal.
3. Your living neighbors will have lots more troops than normal, thus taking away a big advantage of AE or SG. Those Ermor themes will not be generating troops any faster on the rich world, but they will be.


If I were you Catquiet, I would take BE and announce that fact to the world. I did that in slugfest and my neighbors treated me as a normal nation. I even spread growth into Mictlan's territories and he was vey happy about it.

If you want some advice on BE, just ask as one cat to another. Broken Empire is not a bad theme at all. Probably less strong that the pop-killer themes, but it is FAR more enjoyable to play than those time-consuming themes...

[Catquiet]

The Panther said:
No problem at all. Just pick the Broken Empire theme, and you can have both these things very easily.

In fact, I would NEVER consider taking anything but Broken Empire on a map as large as Faerun for the following reasons:

Human nations don't hold much attraction for me. It's like playing D&D and rolling up an accountant as your character.

[Boron]

Panther is right.
AE/SG get more gems from their starting site but no other boni.

As Panther said your neighbors will realize soon that you are AE/SG Ermor. They will team up against you.
You might get killed until turn 30-40 probably because ppl exactly know what to do vs. AE/SG Ermor.
Should be very difficult to survive that.

And if you survive you might get affected by the Unitlimit against which AE/SG Ermor can do nothing.

So taking BE Ermor would probably be a good idea

[CUnknown]

Lifedrain weapons may still be useful in very unusual cases (your ice devil or tartarian with heroic ability: increased strength), but for the vast majority of cases, they are completely worthless. Hell swords especially: 40 blood slaves and 10 fire gems for a -10 damage weapons? What was Zen smoking?

And even in those unusual cases, I'd bet that a standard sword of sharpness might still be the better choice given the cost difference. Basically Zen made lifedraining weapons the absolute worst weapons in the game. If he hated them so much, why not just get rid of them completely?

I think a more reasonable change, such as increasing the cost to 20 death gems/blood slaves and/or reducing the damage to 4-5 instead of 9 would have been the way to go. Zen's choice was far too extreme, especially when combined with Cherry's mod--armies will own the map under these settings, and will be impossible to stop without an army of your own. Perhaps that's what people want, though.

[CyborgMoses]

Personally, I would get a kick out of playing D&D as an accountant. While everyone else is plotting and scheming to rob the dragon of his treasure hoard, I just audit him. What's that? You don't pay taxes!? CALL IN THE ARMY! Captured by bandits? A little creative bookkeeping, and I have a small fortune to bribe the guards with! There are so many more possibilities to work with than the "hit things with swords" guy.

[Dimaz]

CUnknown said:
armies will own the map under these settings, and will be impossible to stop without an army of your own.

I think this particular game (set of mods) is just about it.

[PashaDawg]

CyborgMoses said:
Personally, I would get a kick out of playing D&D as an accountant. While everyone else is plotting and scheming to rob the dragon of his treasure hoard, I just audit him. What's that? You don't pay taxes!? CALL IN THE ARMY! Captured by bandits? A little creative bookkeeping, and I have a small fortune to bribe the guards with! There are so many more possibilities to work with than the "hit things with swords" guy.

Hardy Har Har. I can't give you a gold star, so: [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon43.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon43.gif[/img]

[Manuk]

Bogus and his band will complain of this changes.

[The Panther]

On the subject of life drain weapons, they are MUCH too cheap in the base game. The reason is not so much the life stealing as the fatigue stealing! You never get fatigued when using life drain but the enemy trops get fatigued very quickly. That makes life drain far stronger than the mere damage it delivers. Dropping the strength of the weapon thus does not fix this mistake.

Zen nerfed them because all the top players built mostly life drain weapons for all their SCs and even mini-SCs. Making the weapons more expensive would open up a lot more options for other weapons, just as it should be.

Ever notice that Gaap is the best Ice Devil simply because he comes with a Hell Sword? And the guy with the no hand slots (can't remember his name) is not very good because you can't give him a Blood Thorn? I have...

I am pretty sure the devs will correct this problem in Dom 3.

[Soapyfrog]

Yeah if life drain weapons didnt steal fatigue, they'd be fine.