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I don't have the patience to play a game which takes weeks, yet, I rarely have the time to do a sit down game with others.
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Jan 16, 2014 02:37
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Diogines posted:I don't have the patience to play a game which takes weeks, yet, I rarely have the time to do a sit down game with others. Weeks? Heh. Seriously, though, just join a couple of games, they're a lot of fun, and playing a long-form game doesn't really take patience, just a decent memory to recall what has been happening.
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Jan 16, 2014 03:00
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Superterranean posted:when the Silver Sarcophagus opened in my game, it gave 2 worldwide death scales and 2 worldwide misfortune scales. When the Silver Sarcophagus opens, bad poo poo happens. Death oriented nations like MA Ermor sometimes get a quest line to put a dude on the Sarcophagus and get something good instead, but if it opens on its own duck and cover because poo poo is about to go down.
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Jan 16, 2014 03:35
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Neruz posted:When the Silver Sarcophagus opens, bad poo poo happens. Death oriented nations like MA Ermor sometimes get a quest line to put a dude on the Sarcophagus and get something good instead, but if it opens on its own duck and cover because poo poo is about to go down. MA Ermor actually gets the divine mummy from ancient temples. Silver Sarcophagus's give them a hostile divine mummy just like everyone else. I think.
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Jan 16, 2014 09:54
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Diogines posted:I play single player because I suck and because I enjoy it. Might I suggest http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/oeridia-dom4-version-1225-prov ? You won't regret it/are certain to regret it!
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Jan 16, 2014 14:24
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Dinomod is available for Dom4 So I've been sitting on this version of the mod (more or less) for over a month now as I tried to get together a little play-testing game, but due to holidays and illnesses and home ownership troubles the players were never really able to contribute all at the same time and I grew impatient. Therefore I'm releasing this very early build of what is sometimes referred to as "dinomod". The whole Esubonten project is already more or less mapped out across all three eras, but the first and most complete is Early Era. EA Esubonten is playable, though currently it has only one hero (ultimately it will have 5 heroes and a multihero). I also need to convert some of the national spells over from the Dom3 version and I've not yet done that. The biggest bottleneck is of course sprite work. I drew all of the human sprites from scratch, added new hadrosaur sprite, and completely re-created the troodon sprites. Ultimately I will also re-do the triceratops and ankylosaur, and touch up the tyrannosaur, pyroraptor, and pteranodon. Besides that I have hero sprites to make. All of that being said, the core elements of the nation are in place and the whole thing hangs together well enough to be playable and get balance feedback. The nation is loosely inspired by the Akan cultures of western Africa, but of course it also has dinosaurs thanks to a magical river valley that is a sort of portal to another world and time. Those themes are consistent across all eras of the nation: MA will have a sort of ice age and megafauna like mastodons and smilodons and the like, while LA will see the supply great beasts dry up all together. Anyway I don't have a fancy roster image and I don't have time to put one together, so have a screenshot of the recruitment screen (it won't show everything but it's a start) and a link to the latest version of the mod.  Esubonten Mod 0.05 I am curious to know what folks think of the flavor, the balance, and of any bugs that may appear.
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Jan 16, 2014 17:00
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Ok, I really like that dinomod. That nation is better designed than most vanilla nations are. Literaly all the units have a readily defined useful purpose, with a lot of cool strengths and interesting drawbacks. I like the fact that it's a strong bless nation with several sacreds that all want slightly different blesses. I'm pretty sure the nation could work with literaly any bless combination. Hell, even A9/D9 works I think. The only thing I was a little unsure about are the stealth preacher raptor assassins, those things are terrifying. They're good enough that I think the main strat for the nation would be 1) spam 600 gold + temple forts 2) produce raptor assassins on repeat 3) murder all of the enemy's commanders faster than they can recruit them. Also, do any of the yet-to-be-implemented national spells include summonable H2 or H3 priests? Because they kind of desperately need those.
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Jan 16, 2014 19:52
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Unless it's changed the raptor assassin priests autocast divine blessing.
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Jan 16, 2014 19:57
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I don't think so. These ones are just holy 1 priests with innate spellcasting, so they bless on the move. They kind of work for the T-rex but if you want to mass the tiny sacreds a divine bless would make things a lot easier I think. Plus the raptors look like they're much more useful assassinating people. Edit: Oh wow, nevermind. See these guys spawn two sacred bodyguards every fight, that they immediately bless. Two or three raptor assassins can take out low province defense or militia indies with the right bless. Four can take out moderate province defense. So not only are they stealth preacher assassins, they're also stealth raiders and have full slots. All for 145 gold too. Pavlov fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 16, 2014 |
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Jan 16, 2014 20:05
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dis astranagant posted:Unless it's changed the raptor assassin priests autocast divine blessing. Yeah, that's changed per Pavlov's observations. Pavlov posted:Edit: Oh wow, nevermind. See these guys spawn two sacred bodyguards every fight, that they immediately bless. Two or three raptor assassins can take out low province defense or militia indies with the right bless. Four can take out moderate province defense. So not only are they stealth preacher assassins, they're also stealth raiders and have full slots. All for 145 gold too. Yes, they are pretty much the star of the nation. They may (or may not) need to have their costs tweaked, but their power represents a shift from the Dominions 3 version of this mod in which they were mostly bless-casters for the T-rex or pyroraptor units. Overall the national mages are not top-tier, and the fact that the strongest priest is a cap only H2 is a deliberate handicap. The national spells that exist in the old Dom 3 mod are only to summon more pyroraptors or T-rexes, and not to get better priests. That's an interesting idea, though. Thanks! In my limited testing the assassins can generally take most commanders up to "ponymans" at which point it becomes a toss-up. Mages are relatively easy targets early, but bodyguards will pose a problem. In that vein I may actually give the assassin a Patience penalty (to allow for more bodyguards) rather than fiddle with the gold cost. Such changes really depend on how the mod works in practice. I do appreciate the feedback, and the kind words. My intent with the mod is to make it feel like it could fit into a vanilla game (in terms of both flavor and mechanics). If you spot anything that you think needs improvement please let me know! In the meantime I will slowly plug away on sprite improvements until EA is fully fleshed out.
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Jan 16, 2014 20:58
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Yeah, I'd really like to see this tested in a real game. The raptor priests are amazing, but they're the only particularly amazing thing about the nation. The rest is in the OK to good range, so the great raptors probably wont unbalance them. The only problem I'd really see is the raptors being so awesome that they overshadow everything else. If I played them I would seriously just plop down a fort in every province I own to repeat recruit them. You might consider making them slightly worse and making some other aspect slightly better just to keep things varied. Your StR mages in particular seem kind of lacking, you could probably make them healers instead of disease healers to help with the afflictions on your big expensive units and it wouldn't unbalance anything.
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Jan 16, 2014 22:31
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I would gladly play a nation simply for the privilege of a Divine Blessing auto-cast unit. The fact that they're also dinosaurs and (apparently?) well-balanced is just icing on the cake.
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Jan 16, 2014 23:49
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Pavlov posted:Yeah, I'd really like to see this tested in a real game. The raptor priests are amazing, but they're the only particularly amazing thing about the nation. The rest is in the OK to good range, so the great raptors probably wont unbalance them. The only problem I'd really see is the raptors being so awesome that they overshadow everything else. If I played them I would seriously just plop down a fort in every province I own to repeat recruit them. You might consider making them slightly worse and making some other aspect slightly better just to keep things varied. Your StR mages in particular seem kind of lacking, you could probably make them healers instead of disease healers to help with the afflictions on your big expensive units and it wouldn't unbalance anything. You will have no mages and no money if you do this.  Might be worth it, but I would guess it's not quite that simple (or good). The big change from prior re: assassins is that they don't auto divine bless at the beginning of the round so a well placed thunder strike or similar will still kill them whereas in the prior version an s9 bless stopped that from happening.
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Jan 16, 2014 23:55
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In Dom3 did they also autospawn 2 sacred raptor units every fight? Because that's the thing that make them so powerful. I suppose there wouldn't be enough gold for a fort in every province, but they have the 600 gold palisades which makes it pretty effective. You could make one or two of those lab forts instead, and the nation has really cheap efficient research mages. They can also tank sloth scales because they have almost no need for resources, which gives them slightly better scales. You also save a lot of gold by having the bulk of your forces as sacreds. Maybe there's some counter to the raptors I didn't think of though, which is why I'd like to see them in a real game.
Pavlov fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 00:28
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Decoys & bodyguards are the best way to deal with assassins. Try not to have any specific commander whose absence (or whose troops' absence) will screw over your battle plans. Having an assassin sit in your research hub can suck a lot, but they'll eventually get a bad roll or you'll patrol them out. Assassins & killing spells are usually best fielded against armies to try to leave a stack of troops behind or kill a key caster. Mind Hunt can kill an assassin pretty easily, too - but you need to research and the S4s for that to work.
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Jan 17, 2014 01:04
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I've noticed that Esufo Chiefs/Leatherback cavalry's effective attack is few points lower than their attack skill. If I understand this right the reason for that is lack of #bonus command on their "Head Butt" weapon. Might be something that you want to change. Also green pants on green lizard make me see a dino centaur. Great work otherwise, I think this nation fits Dominions very well.
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Jan 17, 2014 16:32
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So how do you actually install dinomod? The modders manual says that quote:All modding commands must be saved in a text file with the .dm (dominions mod) extension. The dm file must be located in the directory called mods in the dominions4 data directory which appears to be rank lies. At present I've dumped the contents of the mod .zip in \Steam\SteamApps\common\Dominions4\data\mods, but it isn't showing on the list of mods upon loading Dominions. e: to be more specific, 
Inexplicable Humblebrag fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 18:53
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Penguingo posted:So how do you actually install dinomod? The modders manual says that Have you looked at [HDD where your OS is]\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Dominions4 instead? It's where I dumped my own little mod and it worked like a charm. Maybe your Steam-version just created a second folder, too. Took me a bit of searching to find this second folder.
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Jan 17, 2014 19:01
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Libluini posted:Have you looked at [HDD where your OS is]\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Dominions4 instead? It's where I dumped my own little mod and it worked like a charm. Maybe your Steam-version just created a second folder, too. Took me a bit of searching to find this second folder. that second folder is the folder you get to when you go into Game Tools and hit the 'open user data directory' button. that's the easy way to find it.
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Jan 17, 2014 19:13
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That's done it. Thanks!
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Jan 17, 2014 19:16
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Pavlov posted:I'm pretty sure the nation could work with literally any bless combination. Doesn't that mean they're too good? Versatility is a valuable commodity and worth paying a premium for. I remember these little devils costing something like 7g/1r which is just crazy (unless they're not recruit-anywhere any more...). Although in my limited experience I only fought them once, with an F9 bless they shredded through things outrageously quickly. With the N bless now giving hit points, that'd be even more beneficial to them, granting a proportionally higher amount of HP than to other sacreds. And they're size 1 too. Also getting them as freespawn means that trashing your scales doesn't hurt so much either.
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Jan 17, 2014 22:01
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FnF posted:Doesn't that mean they're too good? Versatility is a valuable commodity and worth paying a premium for. I remember these little devils costing something like 7g/1r which is just crazy (unless they're not recruit-anywhere any more...). Although in my limited experience I only fought them once, with an F9 bless they shredded through things outrageously quickly. With the N bless now giving hit points, that'd be even more beneficial to them, granting a proportionally higher amount of HP than to other sacreds. And they're size 1 too. The reason I say than any bless works for them is that they have 3 useful and very different sacreds that all benefit from different things. Almost any bless combo works because really every major bless will be good on at least one of them, but not ideal on all of them. It's a matter of picking which sacred you want to focus on. For instance the little guys want a fire bless, but that doesn't work with the T-Rex sacred, and only moderately helps the raptor assassins. Oh, and the assassins don't freespawn the little raptors, they battlesummon 2 better raptor sacreds. That's why a death bless also works, you don't care if those ones die. Of course I'm working under the assumption that they can only afford a double major bless. If their economy functions well under a triple major, that could be pretty scary.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:16
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Do multiplayer vets have a generally accepted set of house rules for SA games regarding things like whether diplomacy and item trades are considered binding? While I get that overwrought rules can lead to stupid drama it does seem like all LP games at least treat item trades as sacrosanct. I'm proceeding under the assumption that everything else (NAP, informal alliances, whatever) is purely a trust-based thing.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:26
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You should only break agreements while completely aware that everyone knows who you are, and will remember you as someone who breaks agreements when they see you in future games. So not reciprocating on that trade might get you free stuff now, but might make it near impossible to get anyone to trade you in the future. The community is not THAT large that things will quickly slip from memory.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:28
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I would say we all generally regard item trades as sacrosanct and frown on the abuse of really serious bugs but there have only ever been like two of those as long as we've been playing so it doesn't come up much. We've never really hashed out an official vet rules list because it's never seemed important. Just, you know, don't be a dick. Except for when it's time to be a dick. Uh. Have a well-tuned dickometer? Whatever.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:37
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So, uh, dinosaurs. 90 gold recruitable fear-8, compared to 200 gold slow-to-recruit fear-5 Sirrush from Ur. Is that not a little bit powerful? People were chastising the dwarfmod dude for having easy access to recruitable fear, after all.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:47
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The last time I played dinomod it had sacred, trampling, 18-move T-rexes with Devour skateboarding across almost everything in their path. I'm sure that got adjusted but it didn't leave me with a great impression. :\
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Jan 18, 2014 00:58
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Penguingo posted:So, uh, dinosaurs. 90 gold recruitable fear-8, compared to 200 gold slow-to-recruit fear-5 Sirrush from Ur. Is that not a little bit powerful? People were chastising the dwarfmod dude for having easy access to recruitable fear, after all. I haven't tried the Dom4 version of dinomod yet, so I can't speak to that, but the balance-problem with the dwarfmod Ursa Lord wasn't just fear - it was the the combination of all the different stats and abilities. That is, it was essentially a recruitable mini-SC, because it was almost impossible for normal humans to hit in melee (high awe), almost impossible to damage with normal weapons (prot in the high 20ies), with great melee attacks and very high HP. Adding high fear to that meant it could take on and defeat large numbers of less-than-elite troops, alone, without gear or support, because it was close to invincible in melee against them. Awe, incredible protection, high HP and fear is a lot more deadly than "just" high HP and fear.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:05
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TheresNoThyme posted:Do multiplayer vets have a generally accepted set of house rules for SA games regarding things like whether diplomacy and item trades are considered binding? While I get that overwrought rules can lead to stupid drama it does seem like all LP games at least treat item trades as sacrosanct. I'm proceeding under the assumption that everything else (NAP, informal alliances, whatever) is purely a trust-based thing. The trade system really should be better, but there's nothing tactically or strategically interesting about being a douche and not sending what you agreed to. That said, it's not uncommon to forget what you agreed to exactly, so if you or the other person forgets, it doesn't hurt to send a reminder/talk to them on IRC--this has happened to me a few times and I've never had a problem with it.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:16
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A good example of that is from Gabriel Pope's LP a few years back, where a player was reminded about a trade agreement when the relevant messages were posted in-thread, and immediately fulfilled his end of the bargain several in-game years later. And he was losing a war at the time, to boot!
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Jan 18, 2014 01:21
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Snollygoster posted:The last time I played dinomod it had sacred, trampling, 18-move T-rexes with Devour skateboarding across almost everything in their path. I'm sure that got adjusted but it didn't leave me with a great impression. :\ Yeah that changed well before Dom3 games stopped being played with Dinomod aka EA Machaka. Penguingo posted:So, uh, dinosaurs. 90 gold recruitable fear-8, compared to 200 gold slow-to-recruit fear-5 Sirrush from Ur. It's probably fair to compare Tyrant Kings to Elephants instead of Sirrush. Their major drawbacks are that they are Cap-Only and don't have trample or an AoE attack. They suffer from similar durability issues as elephants (Prot 11, Def 11, MR 8), but for only 10 gold less (and 14 fewer resource), they have far superior Morale (improved further by availability of a commander with Beastmastery), a fear effect, are sacred, and can be mixed into the relatively low-morale flame units to impart a morale bonus from their standard effect. So while they're fantastic for early expansion, I'm guessing they become too expensive to field in numbers once you make contact with human players and/or are difficult to field in numbers near the fontlines due to being Cap-Only. I think the hungry flames are much scarier due to them being available-everywhere and dirt cheap, but I'm guessing the lack of H3 Priests (and H2 Priests being expensive and cap only and slow to recruit) makes it very difficult to keep these guys rolling. Also, everything is gluttonous- those 2 Nature gems/turn are going to be turned into a lot 15 gem cauldrons early on, depending on the map/terrain. Victor Vermis fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 01:46
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The real drawback with the T-Rex is that it's Mres 8, which means that unless you go strong astral bless, they'll all get mage-murdured or charmed by your enemies if you fight a human with them. Even with the astral they'll still probably get taken. Actually, low Mres is a drawback in all of their dino troops (i.e. all of their good troops). That said, the T-Rex could probably get knocked down from fear 8 to 5 to be more in line with vanilla. I don't think a T-Rex is that much scarier than a hydra. The mini-raptor sacreds are pretty scary when blessed, but they're undisciplined which makes them a pain to bless without H3. They're also low morale and die in droves. That's why I think focusing on the assassin raptors is better, why have them blessing troops when they could be killing commanders and stealth raiding?
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Jan 18, 2014 02:20
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Pavlov posted:The real drawback with the T-Rex is that it's Mres 8, which means that unless you go strong astral bless, they'll all get mage-murdured or charmed by your enemies if you fight a human with them. Even with the astral they'll still probably get taken. Actually, low Mres is a drawback in all of their dino troops (i.e. all of their good troops). That said, the T-Rex could probably get knocked down from fear 8 to 5 to be more in line with vanilla. I don't think a T-Rex is that much scarier than a hydra. Victor Vermis posted:It's probably fair to compare Tyrant Kings to Elephants instead of Sirrush. Their major drawbacks are that they are Cap-Only and don't have trample or an AoE attack. They suffer from similar durability issues as elephants (Prot 11, Def 11, MR 8), but for only 10 gold less (and 14 fewer resource), they have far superior Morale (improved further by availability of a commander with Beastmastery), a fear effect, are sacred, and can be mixed into the relatively low-morale flame units to impart a morale bonus from their standard effect. I think comparing it to Hydra or Sirrush is fair as it stands right now--the fact that elephants have low morale+low MR+trample is why they're fairly well balanced. Because they rout easily and are likely to step on their own guys on the way out, they have to be used with a lot of caution, whereas the T-Rex doesn't have those problems. As it stands right now, I think the T-Rex should cost at least 150, or else it should be a limit of 1-2 per turn and be upped in price to about 120. The ability to demolish PD means that even if they're cap only, they can be spread far and wide. Another alternative would be to give them really high upkeep to discourage people from stockpiling hordes of them.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:42
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a terrible ivan posted:I've noticed that Esufo Chiefs/Leatherback cavalry's effective attack is few points lower than their attack skill. If I understand this right the reason for that is lack of #bonus command on their "Head Butt" weapon. Might be something that you want to change. Also green pants on green lizard make me see a dino centaur. Good catch! I assumed that the head butt weapon had #bonus on it, but I guess I'll have to make my own version that does. I wasn't sure about the green on green thing either, I could stand to palette swap that guy's clothes. FnF posted:Doesn't that mean they're too good? Versatility is a valuable commodity and worth paying a premium for. I remember these little devils costing something like 7g/1r which is just crazy (unless they're not recruit-anywhere any more...). Although in my limited experience I only fought them once, with an F9 bless they shredded through things outrageously quickly. With the N bless now giving hit points, that'd be even more beneficial to them, granting a proportionally higher amount of HP than to other sacreds. And they're size 1 too. The same bless doesn't work for each approach (a bless that is good for the T-rex is not great for the little raptors or the assassin, and so on) and the nation as a whole has fairly weak, nonsacred mages and weak priests. Those drawbacks are part of the cost of having other options. Also the little tiny raptors are not freespawn so that's not really a thing. I mean, I acknowledge that they were at one point in the Dominions 3 version but they are not now. Snollygoster posted:The last time I played dinomod it had sacred, trampling, 18-move T-rexes with Devour skateboarding across almost everything in their path. I'm sure that got adjusted but it didn't leave me with a great impression. :\ It would be really excellent if I could get the balance right the first time, but then as now I release what I've got in part to get feedback and to see what other people's thoughts and experiences are so that I can make the mod better. I'm sorry that you had to suffer through the SwallowTimes and I hope we can work through the pain I've caused you together, as professionals if not as friends. Pavlov posted:The real drawback with the T-Rex is that it's Mres 8, which means that unless you go strong astral bless, they'll all get mage-murdured or charmed by your enemies if you fight a human with them. Even with the astral they'll still probably get taken. Actually, low Mres is a drawback in all of their dino troops (i.e. all of their good troops). That said, the T-Rex could probably get knocked down from fear 8 to 5 to be more in line with vanilla. I don't think a T-Rex is that much scarier than a hydra. T-rex was fear-5 in an earlier build and I nudged it up based on a suggestion from early tests. I'm comfortable nudging it back down to 5.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:58
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Stacking fear is so good that I'd probably put any recruitable troop with it on slow to rec just on principle.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:10
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Is fear additive? Does every T-Rex subtract morale independently?
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Jan 18, 2014 05:38
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Pavlov posted:Is fear additive? Does every T-Rex subtract morale independently? Good question; I've heard several people state that fear doesn't stack in Dom4, instead every unit inside a fear aura makes a morale check once per turn regardless of how many auras there are on it. On the other hand multiple dudes with fear seem to rout enemies a lot faster than one dude with a really big fear so 
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Jan 18, 2014 09:27
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Doesn't fear only increment per 5? So fear 5 is the same as fear 6-9? So trex 8 is basically 5.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:04
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I thought it was that the radius of the fear aura only increased per increments of 5.Libluini posted:But I think at the moment we have size 6 giants mowing down the enemy with 63 foot long pikes we have left phantasy land and entered the city state of Ludicrous. That's not a a pike, that's a sharpened tree.
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Jan 18, 2014 13:28
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The Sharmat posted:That's not a a pike, that's a sharpened tree. Probably not a whole lot of point in sharpening it really; the physical mass of the tree is going to be a more effective weapon than giving it a point. Nuclearmonkee posted:Doesn't fear only increment per 5? So fear 5 is the same as fear 6-9? So trex 8 is basically 5. Fear starts at 5, fear of less than 5 can sort of work sometimes but is really wierd, but it can be any integer number greater than 5 without any problem and that refers to the radius of the fear in squares. I have no idea how the strength of the fear or if there even is a strength and it's not just a straight morale check is calculated.
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Jan 18, 2014 14:20
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