New *Unique* Nations Brain storm thread

[WraithLord]

This thread is dedicated to brain storm ideas for new unique nations for dominions.

The nations uniqueness should manifest roughly in the following traits:
A. Non human nation.
B. Economy is not gold based. Gold is either not used, or population dies or upkeep costs are very high etc.
C. Apart from the above, an element that will make the mechanics of playing them different. Something equivalent to free spwaning, SC centric with no or little troops recruiting options, no/limited magic etc

Hopefully we will be able to agree on the outlines of one or more such nations. If so we will somehow need to solicite one of the master modders to take interest in it or even better one of the IW gods.

A sort of preliminarily discussion has already begun here

[Twan]

Long time ago I've started to make a nation named Tartaria with the following stats...

- very few troops (iirc it just had 2 human slaves units for PD and emergency recruitment, something like a militia and slingers, and sacred gold golems a mindless expensive holy unit)

- the commanders were a race of sacred titans last remnant of the tartarians, all were sacred and had blood and holy 1 magic (only, except for the best mages who had a FWE random)

- the concept was this race using its own sacred blood for magic, more often than using standard blood magic (hard to developp as all commanders cost was 400 or more gold) ; they had (or should had, I never finished this mod) national spells requiring blood & holy 1, using no blood slave and spread in all schools (not blood), with an unusual repartition : alteration school was used for battle summons (with descriptions saying things like "the titan cut himself and each drip of his sacred blood touching the floor takes the form of a monster" -out of sacreds and commanders used as thugs the main part of this nation forces would have been the battle summons-) ; conjuration for most battle enchantments (with description saying like "the titan uses his sacred blood to contact the spirits of his tartarians ancestors and ask them to call a storm on the battlefield"), etc...

... but the 30 or more national spells this nation should had was a long work and I have too many dominions projects so I stopped before finishing them.

Other unique nations I've not finished are the evil nations for the Greyhawk mod.

The nation for the temple of elemental evil use capitol ressources by hundreds for ceremonies to summon elemental lords costing no money. The choice is recruiting the good capitol only mages/priests and humanoids troops normally or spend about 4 turns producing nothing in the capitol and get an upkeep free quasi SC. Of course out of capitol mages and troops are very weak so the choice isn't too obvious.

The nation for Iuz has normal units but rather weak, the best units are special demons, not national units but produced by national pretender using summon allies. The nation has a blood version of gift of reason and must use it to have these demons become its best mages, and make them able to summon more and new types of demons.

As a less unique (human) nation but with an original concept is the Greyhawk nation : no gem income at start but a recruitable merchant producing gems instead (expensive, old, capitol only, with no magic and rather useless as commander, so the choice is "do I recruit my best mages or add 1 to my gem income for some years ?").

[Zeldor]

Conflux! With all elementals, maybe some really lesser elemental freespawns. Unit upkeep in research points.

[Sombre]

I've got a great one for you. An atheist nation. They have no sacreds, obviously, instead they have various weapons and spells that make sacreds largely useless against them by using the bane of heresy, halt sacred etc weapons and abilities. Rather than priests they have heretics, in fact most of their commanders are heretics, reducing dominion where they go. Of course they keep dominion in their cap - they just try to reduce it to 0 everywhere else.

And the big reason they want to reduce dominion to 0 or as low as possible everywhere else is partly because their commanders domspawn liability units - religious scroungers and conmen that can't do much of anything useful, but cost a whole lotta upkeep.

They have a special immobile pretender with a very high level of holy magic in order to preach at their home town and keep the dom up there.

They don't have to be human based at all - in fact they might be better off being very alien indeed, since they are so strange compared to other dom3 nations.

[Endoperez]

Perhaps the race itself starts underwater, but the conmen are mostly humans. That'd keep the capital from being filled with neverending horde of dangerously costly individuals.

I remember seeing some artist's renditions of a fish that wore priestly gown and carried a miniature gallows as a symbol of its status. In various pictures, these fish-priests wandered among humans, accepted children given as tribute for their might empire, etc etc. It had a staff that ended on a miniature gallows. I couldn't locate the site any more.

[Amos]

Maybe I should give some of my demons anti-sacred weapons. Then the Hellgate mod would be pretty close to what you are describing.

[Xavier]

I really got into the dragon idea I was daydreaming about in the other thread yesterday.

The mechanics would be similar to LA Ermor, but without the free chaff and death dominion (and so would be quite different). But basically you need an awake pretender with specific paths to get started, and you have no recruitable units. Instead, you can summon dragons and dragon-kin (humanoid dragon-like creatures). Young dragons are your standard mages, dragon-kin are commanders and priests. After some conjuration research you get access to the ancient dragons, at a very high gem cost, which are prebuilt SCs and powerful mages. Your troops would be groups of dragon-kin - flying, high attack skill, strength and MR, mid-range protection, low defense. These would also be a 0 conjuration national summon, and the gem cost would have to be carefully balanced to make early expansion possible without being overpowered later.

I'm also thinking the nation would have a few different paths along the lines of the existing dragon pretenders - fire, water, nature, and death, at least. Each of those paths would have national summons for troops, priests, mages, and SCs. Each one in each path would be similar, but somewhat different. High attack skill on fire, high def on water, death are undead and cause fear, maybe some regen on nature (or something else). And of course the summonable mages in each path have different paths themselves.

[mathusalem]

Post deleted by mathusalem

[WraithLord]

Twan, your ideas are very neat and it seems to me that you have a clear picture in your mind of how you want those nations to be, so I can only hope you will sometime be able to complete one or more of them.

Sombre, I like your idea of an atheist nation. Do you have plans of actually making such a mod?

Xavier, Do you think you can come up with an initial breakdown of commanders of troops for your draconian nations. If you like you can send it to me for a review or or something alike.

Please don't get the wrong idea here, Its not my intention to manage neither this thread nor any mod that may come out of it. Its just, since I know my modding capabilities are limited at best, I'm trying to contribute in whatever small manner I can.

[Xavier]

will do, thanks. probably gonna take a couple days though, I've got RL work to be doing here. should be fun though, when I get to it.