Dud nations

[Endoperez]

Dedas said:
Well,
"Construction 3, Sparks. The master smith shatters an earth gem in his mailed fist, sending the fragments hurtling into..."

So I thought it should cost an earth gem.

Gem use is directly linked to fatigue. My comment was meant to DrPraetorius, who said the spell's fatigue would be 100, and thus it would take one gem. I'm just wondering why the spell doesn't either deal physical damage or have F1E1 requirement.

I am right about the pike aren't I? I think I got it from you somewhere.

Here it is:
"Pikes have base damage of 5, so they aren't that good at piercing heavy armor. Most cavalry units have rather high morale, so repel doesn't keep them from attacking, but as long as the pikeman can hit the knight he deals 1 point of repel damage. IIRC, shield parry doesn't affect repel, so it's usually attack 10+1(pike) against defense of 9 to 11 defense (heavy cavalry) or 11-13 (light/medium cavalry). Pikes can also parry lances and light lances."

Ok, I was kind of right, parry doesn't affect repel.

Repel is just 1 point of damage, even though it's armor-negating. If Pike had the actual #flail ability (which it doesn't, according to Edi's list), pikes would have surprising offensive uses against e.g. knights. It's the difference of (att 10 against parry 12 [prot 18+shield 18]) or (att 10 against defense 7 [prot 18]) or so. They'd be even better against infantry using heavy shields, like Ermorian/Pythian legionnaires and, to a lesser extent, the various Hoplites. It's an interesting idea.

[Meglobob]

Baalz said:Now, EA R'yleh I have to strongly disagree is a dud, but you do have to play them quite differently. They have very strong defensive capabilities (in the water) but their real offensive power is the sneak attack. Aboleths have strong astral and water plus good hp and life draining, that's all you need for a thug capable of teleporting and taking out most PD singlehandedly with no equipment other than possibly an amulet of the fish (body ethereal, personal luck, quicken self, astral shield, breath of winter, attack closest). The trick to EA R'yleh is knowing full well you can't carry on a head to head fight on the land with an evenly matched opponent...so don't. Use your natural water defenses and long border to watch for opportunities to sneak attack, and in MP leverage this to cultivate allies to help you carry the fight on land (ie need help with that war you're in against Pangea?). Don't attack until you can cause enough damage in your initial attack (swarming over your long border and teleporting in aboleths everywhere just when your target committed most of his troops elsewhere) that it cripples your enemies ability to counterattack. This can be amplified by a withering barrage of mind hunts- also best served as a surprise. You've got to think of EA R'yleh like a submarine- surface and fire at a battleship head on and you're gonna lose every time, but if you play to your strengths your opponents won't know you're there until it's too late.

So your a submarine and I am a battleship, in that case where are my destroyers with the depth charges?

[Endoperez]

DrPraetorious said:
As for Ulm not wanting spells - well, that's fine, but I don't think it'll fix the problem. With a minor improvement in Ulm's military, especially a toughness related improvement, you still do most of your killing with Magma Eruptions.

Ulm wants to use spells, of course. However, I'd rather like to see new spells that everyone can use, but which only Ulm can excel with. Your Sparks would be a spell that Earth/Fire mages could use with heavy troops, and the nation using it would also need some Earth income. MA Agartha has almost the same mages (W1 instead of 10%FAES random), but as the nations are similar and both've been called duds in this thread boosting it won't be a problem. To avoid E3F1 and better mages from abusing it, it'd have to scale much more slowly as a non-restricted spell. Otherwise it could probably stay as you wrote it. Apart from an occasional Abysian or perhaps EA/LA Agarthan mage casting it, it wouldn't see much use.

[Sombre]

Endoperez said:
Repel is just 1 point of damage, even though it's armor-negating. If Pike had the actual #flail ability (which it doesn't, according to Edi's list), pikes would have surprising offensive uses against e.g. knights. It's the difference of (att 10 against parry 12 [prot 18+shield 18]) or (att 10 against defense 7 [prot 18]) or so. They'd be even better against infantry using heavy shields, like Ermorian/Pythian legionnaires and, to a lesser extent, the various Hoplites. It's an interesting idea.

Yes it is. I think pikes are currently rather underpowered and their seemingly most natural use, versus cavalry, doesn't actually work out. I rarely build pike units when others are available for roughly the same cost, because repel never seems to do much for me. Now if pikes had some other hook, such as flail bonus,... well that would make them rather more interesting. Is there some other bonus that could be given to them to make them more effective against cavalry and other very offensive units? Perhaps a simple defence boost would make sense? I mean it would just be like improving the repel effect - keeping your pikey alive so other units can do more damage.

[Endoperez]

Sombre said:
Yes it is. I think pikes are currently rather underpowered and their seemingly most natural use, versus cavalry, doesn't actually work out. I rarely build pike units when others are available for roughly the same cost, because repel never seems to do much for me. Now if pikes had some other hook, such as flail bonus,... well that would make them rather more interesting. Is there some other bonus that could be given to them to make them more effective against cavalry and other very offensive units? Perhaps a simple defence boost would make sense? I mean it would just be like improving the repel effect - keeping your pikey alive so other units can do more damage.

Improving attack would improve repel, as would improving damage.

#charge would give the pikeneers one stronger attack (although it would be much weaker than a knight's charge).

Oh, and according to the mod manual:
4.24 #flail
The weapon has an attack bonus against shields.

I don't have my Dom3 manual with me, so I can't check if it has the details of the ability... Seeing as I'm misremembering lots of things recently, my earlier post about flail-pike vs knight is probably wrong. #flail doesn't negate the shield, just has a bonus (static? dependent on parry value?) against shielded troops.

Also, it seems repel doesn't AUTOMATICALLY deal that 1 point of damage, but the defender has to overcome the attacker's protection as well. From the Dom:PPP manual:

20.4.9 Repel
If an attacker strikes at an enemy with a longer
weapon he might be repelled and possibly lose
his attack. This is worked out as follows:
A: Attacking , D: Defending
A strikes but D has a longer weapon. D makes
an immediate attack vs A. If it is a miss A will
continue his attack on D. If D hit A with the repelling
attack A is forced to make a morale check
or lose his attack on D.
If A makes the morale check he strikes D even
thoughD has placed his weapon between him and
A. D generates a damage value and A generates
a protection value. If the damage value is greater
then the protection value A takes one hit point of
damage. A can now make his strike.
Repel is most effective against light and cowardly
units. Natural weapons such as claws and
bites have a length of 0 and are easy to repel.

[Baalz]

Meglobob said:
So your a submarine and I am a battleship, in that case where are my destroyers with the depth charges?

Naw Bob, you're Atlantis. You're not the battleship, you're the seal splashing around in great white waters. Don't worry, once you scamper out the water you should be safe enough for now. ;P

[Dedas]

What makes length 0 "weapons" easier to repel than a spear (length 4) when you have a pike (length 5)? I cannot see that in the description except that it states it to be so.

[Sombre]

I still don't 100% understand that. Is the most damage a repel can do 1 damage then? I mean if A attacks, D launches his repel attack and hits, then A fails his morale check, is that 1 damage max, or is it a standard hit from the weapon?

It doesn't make sense that he would take less damage purely because of his morale, so I'm guessing repel either does 1 damage and stops their attack, 1 damage and doesn't stop them, or fails completely.

If that's the case, increasing the damage dealt by long weapons wouldn't aid repel, but adding to attack would. One problem with the system seems to be that repelling a 0 length weapon is equally as easy with a 1 length weapon as a 6 length weapon,... and 1 length weapons are more likely to have an attack bonus.

[SelfishGene]

ME Ulm is pretty clearly themed around the Holy Roman Empire and the contributory German states out of which it was made.

But like the historical empire on which it is based, the Holy Roman Empire didn't really succeed in getting anywhere because it's armies while well equiped and very large were not invincible or even any more successful than it's neighbors.

What i'd like to see for ME Ulm, following it's Imperial theme, is an emphasis on Crusading and, perhaps, and a bit of spice in the Lombard/Italian flavor.

Condottiere mercenaries and sacred and/or morale boosting Crusading units would be very helpful.

[B0rsuk]

Pikes

Everybody look at me !

How about making ALL cavalry Animal ? Then you could have very interesting effects with Animal Awe ! As a quick, dirty hack you could give all pikineers Animal Awe.