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

[rdonj]

I think it would be almost more fun if the bugs got, say, a blood magic national astral travel sort of spell that the females could cast, or an insectoid remote province attack spell where you get to keep the army afterward. Somewhat akin to how the bugs in starship troopers transported themselves across space in meteors.... Then they could still be terrible in space but take over planets anway. If you can't defeat the bug army, well, run away... maybe you can find a new home, somewhere, before they can manage to kill you off in space.

[Aezeal]

Hmm new spell idea's are always good.

has anyone tried the remote summon for Ulm.. something along those lines maybe?

[rdonj]

You mean the black knight strike force? No, I haven't gotten to use it yet. I have some doubts about the sanity of its gem requirement though. I mean... ghost riders is a 5 gem spell, I don't think 15 black knights are going to be that much more relatively effective than the ghost riders spell. Unless it's some kind of special extra powerful black knight with an ethereal or air shielded leader.

But if you also get them afterward it is definitely worth more. Maybe 15-20 gems instead?

[rdonj]

Dreadnaughts for some reason have 3 less magic resistance than ulmish capitol ships (which, by the way, should be spelled capital). It should at least be equal. Also I get the impression a dreadnaught is supposed to be bigger than an ulmish cap ship, so I was thinking maybe they should have a little more hp? They also have twin ship heavy blasters (close) but no ship heavy blasters. I'm not sure if it's intentional for them to not have ranged blasters or not, as most things tend to have both. I guess you don't always do that with the ulmish fighters so it probably is intentional. In any case I would like it if they had another set of twin heavy ship blasters (close), or even just a single one, since they're most vulnerable in melee and you can't give them an aoe weapon with a hand slot or something. Their ranged weaponry is actually surprisingly weak but I think that pretty much doesn't matter since they should be using evocations most of the time anyway.

Also a bug report. I was able to cast the black knight strike force, and I stick by my earlier assessment of the spell. However, I also noticed that in the strike force I received four commanders, a medic, an ulmish general, and a black knight. I suspect this is a bug because there was a second medic and a second general in the army that were not commanders, and I'm guessing probably were supposed to be. As a note for just how weak the commonwealth is right now, I just beat a significant pd force (34 melee, 2 space mines and an ice shaper) losing only a single from that strike force. The knight was killed by one of the ice shaper's cold bolts. I only got one blaster shot to connect, then the black knights tore them apart in melee.

I also just now got a crash error about the game not being able to find lightspearspace1.tga? I was looking at a pirate scout army I think that I got from a random event this turn at the time, I think. That is probably unrelated though.

Hmm, doesn't appear I'm going to be able to continue that game until the lightspear thing gets fixed. Too bad, I was just about to crush the galaxy with my stealth fighter fleets, capitol ship SCs, and magma eruption spamming dreadnaughts

[rdonj]

You could also give the insectoids blood spells with requirements high enough only the queens could cast to produce specific units. As another alternative method to the idea of increasing the strength of their space units, which I don't really like.

[rdonj]

Yet another alternative - cause the nectid queens to generate space form insectoids. If you do that though you should definitely get rid of the summon allies button for males on normal queens, and possibly not give them males at all. That might be a bit much though unless the level of the nectid queen spell was dropped a bit.

And another bug: There's still a province on the bottom left planet that's considered a forest... province 28.

[Aezeal]

Wow lots of stuff for me to work on (not now though)
- THe strike force is permanent, the fact you get those troops (the commander black knight and the non commander medic and general) is something I can't change really and doesn't matter that much IMHO.. I thought the price was reasonably since it can be deployed all over the map and it's a force strong enough to take and hold provinces and then it's neighbours since it has a mage a commander and high protection

- Will need to fix that lightspearspace1 thingie.. must have suffered when I fixed the alpha channel thingie

- I don't get you post about insect blood spells and alternative methods.. and what don't you like

- THe morale thingie is a good point.

-I thaught the insects could get a decent number of males as they are now.. but it seems you have tested it and disagree.. so I'll need to fix that .. somehow. Why do you want to have the nectid queens to do that?

[rdonj]

The black knight strike force is pretty good... however it still imo is not worth 45 astral pearls. There are a lot of other things you could do with those pearls. My personal favorite at the moment is forging rings of wizardry to give to dreadnaughts and enhance the power of their magma eruptions. Sounds expensive but with the forge and the hammer of the forge lord, not that expensive.... It probably would not bother me that much if it was remotely possible to forge clams with ulm, or if it took fire gems instead. I'm swimming in fire gems right now in my game because I can't figure out anything really interesting to use them for. Maybe flames from the sky, once I reach 9 evocation.

With the insect blood spells I was just brainstorming different ways that the bugs could deal with space or avoid it altogether. The number of males is not too bad now in a way, but it does require building lots of the normal queens on your starting planet. Depending on the planet, it may require more than is ultimately healthy for you due to blood slave requirements. And in the game I was playing it took me quite a while to build up to the point where I could try to go and conquer other planets. I only really started having males in large quantity by year 3 or so. But when I finally had them I had them in pretty huge numbers because of all my queens summoning. So I don't know. Basically I think the summoning probably grows to be too strong, but it can take years for the bugs to get off the ground.

What I was saying I didn't like is the idea of making the males stronger to make the insects more competitive in space, they don't need to be stronger. And I suggested the nectid queens as a space creature generator because at the moment I don't think it does anything and because it would give the insectoid player a little more to consider strategically if, say, they could build those to improve their space forces but the units were absolutely terrible in atmosphere. So you'd choose between building balanced armies, land assault armies, or space conquering armies. Anyway I am just throwing out ideas atm.

[Aezeal]

hmm males probably shouldn't be much stronger, maybe only a little so most will have to cdome from numbers, I think the nectids are mostly water creatures that don't really have a special function in this game. They could have a better summons for the males. or a domesummon in addition to the regular summon.

You can't win the game very well without taking space too so just bypassing space isn't enough. Thanks for he brainstorm and the idea that the race needs this balancing in the first place

I''ll probably change something about the price of the strikeforce.. some pearls less or firegems indeed...

[rdonj]

It would also be kind of nice if coccooned bugs had the need not eat tag. You're going to have to slowly move your assault force through space while protecting it with males, and it is guaranteed to lead to starvation issues if both groups are decently sized. The morale penalty doesn't affect them but being forced to have diseased armies is a bit frustrating.