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brainwrinkle
Oct 18, 2009

What's going on in here?
Buglord

TheDemon posted:

The preliminary draft of the modding manual has been released.

Hooray, nation number lists!

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AfroSquirrel
Sep 3, 2011

Is a global version of Dance of the Morrighans possible now?

Victor Vermis
Dec 21, 2004


WOKE UP IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Speleothing posted:

Somebody posted an image in the PGS thread that has all the nations.

EA Ermor's Flamen and Pontifices are only available without a fort. I'm sure there are plenty more.

THAT'S where they hid the Flamen? I fired up a game and thought maybe they'd just been removed.


That's awesome. They were barely worth recruiting before.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
Thematically, I like it. Old Roman Gods vs Christianity and all.

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.

Victor Vermis posted:

THAT'S where they hid the Flamen? I fired up a game and thought maybe they'd just been removed.


That's awesome. They were barely worth recruiting before.

Still not sure that they are. Best to have another good recruitable mage in the same province to make the lab & temple a good investment.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
If you're going the Evo route, Flamen are pretty decent.

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus
For those who may not be watching the PGS thread - I've put up a MP test game on http://brainwrinkle.net and will be adding another one shortly.

Azram Legion
Jan 23, 2005

Drunken Poet Glory
Does anyone know anything about how the reincarnation trait works? I've been throwing white ones into random fights for 20 minutes and I haven't noticed anything happening.

uPen
Jan 25, 2010

Zu Rodina!

Azram Legion posted:

Does anyone know anything about how the reincarnation trait works? I've been throwing white ones into random fights for 20 minutes and I haven't noticed anything happening.

It's really rare. I blew up a communion with over a hundred white ones and I got like 3-4 back.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
When a guru/yogi dies of old age it has a chance of +1 for your dominion. But most of the time, their death is violent so they become other units.

Azram Legion
Jan 23, 2005

Drunken Poet Glory

uPen posted:

It's really rare. I blew up a communion with over a hundred white ones and I got like 3-4 back.
Guess I wasn't throwing enough white ones around then - or throwing them hard enough. I suppose it has to be a low chance to activate, since its on some pretty good units.

amuayse posted:

When a guru/yogi dies of old age it has a chance of +1 for your dominion. But most of the time, their death is violent so they become other units.
What have they reincarnated as? I'm really curious about the trait, especially for the higher ranking monkeys.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
They mainly come back as lesser white ones.

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus
I now have both an EA and a MA game up on brainwrinkle. Sign up and we'll get testing. :v:

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

After all the entertainment the Dominions 3 LPs have provided me, I caved and bought a copy of D4.

So far, my experience has been magical and full of amazing deaths. :allears:

Diabl0658
Dec 10, 2008

These are the games we play.
I was messing around with Lemuria, which is basically ghost nation, and I got a random event that gave me a gift of reasoned vampire. He had invulnerable 25 and was actually able to beat up two indi provinces by himself. Eventually he managed to get his head cut off, making him blind, mute, and feebleminded. All of which eventually healed.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
I thought this event was kind of funny.

Somebody fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Sep 5, 2013

Incy
May 30, 2006
for other Out
I hope there's a mictlan specific version of that where instead of losing 1 gold you gain 1 slave.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Ehh, the Illwinter guys are amazing at making content but they couldn't balance their way out of a Pong clone. So ultimately whatever the game does to gemgens and boosters and spell paths doesn't matter that much as long as it's moddable, because that's where all the changes I'll actually be playing with come from anyways.

LordLeckie
Nov 14, 2009

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Ehh, the Illwinter guys are amazing at making content but they couldn't balance their way out of a Pong clone. So ultimately whatever the game does to gemgens and boosters and spell paths doesn't matter that much as long as it's moddable, because that's where all the changes I'll actually be playing with come from anyways.

My main hope is just that the games moddability expands out so that people arent hacking in new items with the exact same sprites as other ones and so on, i cant wait to see all the cool random events people mix in for various scales, nations and situations.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Ehh, the Illwinter guys are amazing at making content but they couldn't balance their way out of a Pong clone. So ultimately whatever the game does to gemgens and boosters and spell paths doesn't matter that much as long as it's moddable, because that's where all the changes I'll actually be playing with come from anyways.

Well it's no secret that they like some nations over others.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


amuayse posted:

Well it's no secret that they like some nations over others.

Yet somehow I have the most fun playing the lovely ones. MA Agartha forever!

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
CBM resolves lots of issues thankfully. On the plus side, early summon spam will now become a thing.

alansmithee
Jan 25, 2007

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!


CBM was a big portion of why I quit playing the game before. It went from something that attempted minor balance tweaks to something that seriously transformed the game and simply reinforced the playstyles favored by the dudes who wrote it and a few of the people they commonly played with. The dudes at Illwinter may not be the best at balancing stuff, but I still think they did a better job than some of the later versions of CBM I saw.

I'm tempted to, after it comes out, release CBBM (Conceptual Balance Balance Mod), which would simply be deleting all of their changes.

That being said, this summer is proving to be a major strain on my free time. First Civ 5 has a new expansion, Shadowrun Returns, then EUIV (which I've still not dove back into), then I find out a new Dominions is coming out, not sure if I'll be able handle all these games! Although I'd like to get in a early MP game after the official release, I'll try the beta some and see how long it takes to get re-acclimated to playing.

Lilli
Feb 21, 2011

Goodbye, my child.

alansmithee posted:

CBM was a big portion of why I quit playing the game before. It went from something that attempted minor balance tweaks to something that seriously transformed the game and simply reinforced the playstyles favored by the dudes who wrote it and a few of the people they commonly played with. The dudes at Illwinter may not be the best at balancing stuff, but I still think they did a better job than some of the later versions of CBM I saw.

Eh, other folks don't really like CBM either. Plenty of other folks worked on or released mod sets.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
I didn't mind the tweaks that got rid of awful gem-gen and hammer rushing. The boosts to the underpowered nations like Agartha and MA Ulm were nice too.

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus

Lilli posted:

Eh, other folks don't really like CBM either. Plenty of other folks worked on or released mod sets.

CBM was fine for a while, but it succumbed to the same thing that hits lots of other mods - uncontrolled feature creep with insufficient documentation. The Awesome series of mods worked much better because they were more focused and you could actually tell what they did.

builds character
Jan 16, 2008

Keep at it.

amuayse posted:

I didn't mind the tweaks that got rid of awful gem-gen and hammer rushing. The boosts to the underpowered nations like Agartha and MA Ulm were nice too.

You should try zauper's mod. It's the best. And awesome mods are, well, awesome.

TheDemon's DE mod is basically dom3 as seen by TheDemon. Incredibly brutal and fast and try not to cut yourself on his giant knife blade fingers.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
I like DE. It's sorta what Brutal Doom is to Vanilla Doom. Everything does more damage, especially you.

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus

builds character posted:

You should try zauper's mod. It's the best. And awesome mods are, well, awesome.

I think I had quit playing Dom3 before that one came out - what did he change?

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
I'm still getting used to the fact that TONS of indies now use items and gems.

builds character
Jan 16, 2008

Keep at it.

Kenlon posted:

I think I had quit playing Dom3 before that one came out - what did he change?

It's like the balance version of awesome. So, pretty much everything.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
The one issue I had with AwesomeMods is that it really homogenizes late game nations. You lose a lot of flavor when every competent player can reasonably attain access to any path. (Then again it was kinda possible before, Awesome just makes it viable.)

It's worth it just for how much more sense everything makes, though, and for the re-balanced Pretender chassis.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Playing Dom4 really reminds me that both CBM and AG/AE had MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE power creep. I think people do like higher power games though, but it's a matter of careful measured implementation for basic balance mods like what CBM ought to be. With AwesomeMods specifically the objective is at least partially explicitly power creep. Zauper's mod as it was in Dom3 was pretty schizo since it seemed unfinished, unfortunately, but it's basically the same as AwesomeMods in terms of creep.

A very low power creep balance mod is what we need, I think, to properly differentiate from AM or CBM.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
Did Awesome Sites ever get fixed up?

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

TheDemon posted:

Playing Dom4 really reminds me that both CBM and AG/AE had MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE power creep. I think people do like higher power games though, but it's a matter of careful measured implementation for basic balance mods like what CBM ought to be. With AwesomeMods specifically the objective is at least partially explicitly power creep. Zauper's mod as it was in Dom3 was pretty schizo since it seemed unfinished, unfortunately, but it's basically the same as AwesomeMods in terms of creep.

A very low power creep balance mod is what we need, I think, to properly differentiate from AM or CBM.

How hard is it to learn Dom3/4 modding? An idea I had for a mod was, well, basically something that tried to bring the bad nations up to the level of the good ones (and possibly bring the absurd ones down a peg or two) without going to AwesomeMod levels or drastically changing their feel. I like both yours and Ninja's ideas, but as you say, you guys put your own spins on them. I think it'd be kind of neat to be able to play all the nations the way they're "meant" to be (loosely speaking; I mean something close to their vanilla incarnations basically), minus the horrible sucking.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
It's not difficult, it's all text-editor work, but it's very time consuming. I posted the Dom4 mod manual earlier in the thread. Although, there's no documentation on things like Spell IDs yet, those were all fan-made in Dom3. More pertinent questions are how much free time do you have that you're willing to dedicate to very time-consuming and meticulous work, and how good are you at in-game assessment? One of the problems in recent CBM was the person administering it didn't play multiplayer much anymore and wasn't very good at assessing balance problems or assessing their solutions.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
I approve of 200 hp Paladins and explosive Priests in CBM 1.95.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Sep 5, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
More pertinent examples would be Awe-Tuatha or the original Black Hunter assassination spell.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
drat, the #bonusspells # is a good way to get killed through fatigue.

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Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

TheDemon posted:

It's not difficult, it's all text-editor work, but it's very time consuming. I posted the Dom4 mod manual earlier in the thread. Although, there's no documentation on things like Spell IDs yet, those were all fan-made in Dom3. More pertinent questions are how much free time do you have that you're willing to dedicate to very time-consuming and meticulous work, and how good are you at in-game assessment? One of the problems in recent CBM was the person administering it didn't play multiplayer much anymore and wasn't very good at assessing balance problems or assessing their solutions.

Got a fair amount of free time and such, so I'm okay on that front. In-game assessment... Going to need some work there, bit out of practice to say the least. Figured taking advice and suggestions would help though, as well as playing test games. And of course actually playing the game.

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