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

[Sammual]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by apoger:
It would be nice if IW could have an option to start with a "nation". Perhaps 7-10 provinces circling the capital. Force balance so all nations start will about the same gold/resources. Possibly have all starting provinces pre-searched as if the pretender had searched there.

What would be really cool is the traditional board game "province draft". I've thought about doing this by editing a map, and then having the players draft on IRC or something, and get a certain amount of resources, income, and gems to purchase a small amount of starting stuff.

There are a couple of downsides however to doing this manually via scenario creation: Capitol locations are public knowledge, and the super randomization of province income/resources means some of the players will almost certainly get screwed badly. Plus it's a pain in the *** to get everything setup and make sure you avoid typos.


It would be really cool if the game could handle this... The mechanics behind it is fairly simple, although the GUI would take some work.

I'm imagining something like this: Players log onto the game host, and then draft a given number of provinces in random order, with the order reversting each time through. Players then secretly select one of their provinces as their capitol, and spend a given amount of gold and resources on troops and leaders, with a settable max number of starting leaders. A settable amount of research points could then be distributed as desired, and a settable number of turns of gem income could be used for rituals and forging.

A game would then be created based upon all of these values, with the sum value of each players provinces roughly balanced within a settable range.

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This would not be all that hard to do in a map editor. All the needed commands are supported when creating a senerio.

Sammual

[Sammual]

Originally posted by Jasper:
[On the topic of varrying bless effects]

I suggest bonuses starting at +1 for level 3, and then increasing by one ever level after that. The special bonus effects would kick in at level 6.

This would be a more convincing incentive to have higher magic skill levels.

I agree. The bless effects are too expensive right now (Not worth the cost).

Sammual

[Saber Cherry]

I admit it, I'm still not certain that in an MP game I'd have any incentive to go over level 4 magic... and that, just for site-searching/construction. Bless effects are neat, but I hardly ever had any sacred troops in Doms 1, so...

Yeah. Starting at 3, incrementing every level, and getting a big bonus at 6 sounds pretty crazy to me, but starting at 3, incrementing every other level, and getting a big bonus at 8 still wouldn't convince me to buy a magic-rich god. So maybe somewhere in between... otherwise, making cheap sacred units more common might make taking magic a better bargain.

[licker]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I admit it, I'm still not certain that in an MP game I'd have any incentive to go over level 4 magic... and that, just for site-searching/construction. Bless effects are neat, but I hardly ever had any sacred troops in Doms 1, so...

Yeah. Starting at 3, incrementing every level, and getting a big bonus at 6 sounds pretty crazy to me, but starting at 3, incrementing every other level, and getting a big bonus at 8 still wouldn't convince me to buy a magic-rich god. So maybe somewhere in between... otherwise, making cheap sacred units more common might make taking magic a better bargain.

Hmmm... and what is between 6 and 8?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by licker:
Hmmm... and what is between 6 and 8?

It's more a matter of "What's between incrementing every level, and incrementing every other level, without being confusing."

[Psitticine]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
P.S. As it stands now, I doubt anyone would ever, under any circumstance, pick level 10 in anything, even though you get an increment there.

I've usually stopped with 9, but I took 10 with my most recent diety, a white bull who leads Man with Nature 10. The map was too small and the game too short to reach the high level spells, but the Bull's casting costs were so low that he ruled the battlefield. He could cast heavy-duty magic over and over because his fatigue cost had been so greatly lowered.

I think it is good the game has so many preferred ways to play. It actually strikes me as a good sign of balance that people feel so polarized on this issue, as odd as that might sound.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I admit it, I'm still not certain that in an MP game I'd have any incentive to go over level 4 magic... and that, just for site-searching/construction. Bless effects are neat, but I hardly ever had any sacred troops in Doms 1, so...

Yeah. Starting at 3, incrementing every level, and getting a big bonus at 6 sounds pretty crazy to me, but starting at 3, incrementing every other level, and getting a big bonus at 8 still wouldn't convince me to buy a magic-rich god. So maybe somewhere in between... otherwise, making cheap sacred units more common might make taking magic a better bargain.

Well, the other reason to take high magic skills is so that you can cast powerful magic. Did you notice that Dispel takes research now? Maybe global enchantments will be a bit more viable than in Dom I. A lot of global enchantments require 5+, and some take 8 or 9.

Also, as Psitticine mentioned, high magic levels can be very powerful on the battlefield. Most spells increase in effectiveness with higher power, and all battlefield spells decrease in fatigue cost. Even level 4 can have a dramatic impact on a battle - and that's without gems, communion or booster spells.

On larger maps, this effect is weakened, because your god in general is less important - you only have one of him, while scales affect all your provinces. This is the kind of scaling issue that can't really be fixed by tweaks to the game system - maps with more and/or richer provinces will always tend to favor positive scales more than smaller, poorer maps. In that respect, I like the nerfing of positive scales compared to Dom I - it may lead to an incentive to put more points into the pretender himself, which I think will make things more interesting.

Yes, there is certainly a possibility that in some cases it will lead to god vs. god battles that can decide the whole outcome of a war. But I prefer that to the case where gods rarely appear on the battlefield at all, or even play a significant role (except through their dominion).


I personally would favor changing the bless system so it was based on magic and dominion strength. Let's say bonuses would start at level 6, with big bonuses at level 11 or so - but the level in question is your magic level plus your dominion strength in the current province. So if you have more than 2 candles, it would be easier to get strong bless effects; but if you have weak dominion, no dominion or (worst of all) hostile dominion, your bless effects would be weaker than presently, possibly even suppressed entirely in a strong enough dominion of a hostile God.

It never made sense to me that blessing was independent of dominion; with the new bless effects it makes even less sense than it does for a "generic" blessing.

Of course, with big bonuses at level 11, an archmage's blessing would be really killer in a 9-candle dominion. But I think that would be appropriate - only a fool fights in a 9-candle hostile dominion anyway. Especially if their God, prophet or (with this system) sacred troops are on the battlefield.

For dominion levels that are more reasonable for a battlefield (I'd say no more than 4 - above that you really should be trying to preach around the area before pushing the border any further), you'd need at least 7 to get a big bonus. Even more importantly (IMO), every level of magic can improve your bless effects on at least some potential battlefields.

For example, the God I'm currently using in single player (titles in my sig) is a Lord of the Desert Sun with Fire 4, Earth 4, Nature 4. I remember that I had spent most of my points and had Fire 4, Earth 3, Nature 4 with a few points to spend, and it was just enough to get either Fire 5 or Earth 4. I took Earth 4 because of the bless effect - none at 3, a big jump at 4. Although I think it's cool to sometimes take a path for its bless effect, I don't think it should be that "chunky". I certainly would have taken Fire 5, Earth 3, Nature 4 if the bless system had been something like I am proposing (or anything else that rewards every level of magic, instead of only rewarding certain numbered levels).

[johan osterman]

If the blessings need to be improved to be desirable I think it is better to lower magic cost rather than starting off blessings at lower levels. The blessings start of 4 for a reason, to encourage players to give their pretenders a decent magic score.

[josh_f]

It may be too much work, but I would like to see the cost per level be relative to the intial cost to add the path. in pseudo code it would look like=

"cost per lvl"=(("cost of 1st level"/10)+4)+"cost of Last level"

Using the above formula a pretender with an initial magic level of 3 (the highest default level on any pretender) can reach level 10 for 112 points just short of what it would take to purchase a level 3 order scale. On the other hand it would take the same pretender over 360 points to reach level 10 in other magic paths. The nice thing is this makes the archmage classes a little more attractive, and keeps people from selecting a wyrm and loading it up with magic-- a strategy I expect will become popular if an across the board reduction in magic cost takes place.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by josh_f:
It may be too much work, but I would like to see the cost per level be relative to the intial cost to add the path. in pseudo code it would look like=

"cost per lvl"=(("cost of 1st level"/10)+4)+"cost of Last level"

Using the above formula a pretender with an initial magic level of 3 (the highest default level on any pretender) can reach level 10 for 112 points just short of what it would take to purchase a level 3 order scale. On the other hand it would take the same pretender over 360 points to reach level 10 in other magic paths. The nice thing is this makes the archmage classes a little more attractive, and keeps people from selecting a wyrm and loading it up with magic-- a strategy I expect will become popular if an across the board reduction in magic cost takes place.

Now this is a good idea.