Dominate as a 1-turn only spell

[PacoDeth]

how about restricting it to only be able to cast once every so many turns? If that's possible, I think that would limit the overpoweredness (yeah I made that word up) of the spell.

Say limit to only being able to cast it once every 3 turns, or once every 5 turns. This would keep archmages from stealing a unit once per turn.

And while the logic and math is quite.... odd from the OP, I can agree that it can be 3. Archmage steals uber-unit from enemy, then archmage uses that unit to kill and enemy unit in the same turn. That's +1 for gaining a free unit, +1 for taking a unit from the enemy, and +1 for killing another one of the enemies units.

Summons however give you a unit for the turn, and he might kill a unit in his wake. Often times I have found they are only good at weakening strong city defenders late in the game for your stack to go up against. Once those highly promoted archers are an effective strength of 20+, a summon isn't going to do much here. However, you dominate that unit, you get a decent archer unit for free and right up with your stack, usually ready to move or attack. And the enemy loses its best chance at stopping some of your units from taking his city.

So, is there any way to limit a spells frequency so it can only be cast once per so many turns?

 

[Ecofarm]

2) If you win, the unit is damaged already, about 50%, if you lose, your archmage is damaged the same.

Damaging the arch doesn't matter, unless a player is ready with a quick assassin or you can't heal and an AI has assassins around. Compared to needing another promotion, insignificant.

Also to note: domination is not doubled by twincast, not empowered by casters combat promotions and not enhanced by spell extension (at least not right now on the last one.

If if did, how would could you also afford to replace the spell 1-3 times unless hero?

Also it takes Metamagic 3 to be really reliable.

In the dozens of times I've cast, usually with 3 archs and never with meta1, I rarely fail. I fail so rarely, that over the course of the game I almost never get stuck with an archmage that has no chance of regaining the spell due to xp required.

So for example Water Elementals powered by the tower of the Elements now are the following on Twincast

It's not fair to compare domination to twincast. 1 civ gets many. If you are not that civ, there are only 3(?) national heroes, 2(?) religious heroes that can do it because it requires combat5 and mana (except malakim?). When I am not grigori, the other heroes who could twincast never make it. Multi-mana is too valuable when highly promoted units are rare.

Anyone can get domination, 4 + liches.

One possible drawback i could imagine without making the spell to bad to be used again (which it has been once) whould be to make the dominated unit unable to move for one turn. Makes a bit of sense imo if the unit has moved allready at least.

I agree.

Another indirect "fix" might be to lower the prerequisite for magic resistance promotion to combat 2 / drill 2.

If you get meta 3 with a non-hero archmage, I don't see how you get another mana type as well. Personally, I like shadow with my dominating svart archmages and chaos spellstaff with grigori (not domination).

When you Dominate a hero or a target over a certain level, the spell should kill the caster.

Neat, tidy, non-repeatable.

No unit is worth a dominating archmage (except a grigori twin-staff-chaos archmage). I would never cast it when the target causes that.

I would much rather see domination have a lower chance of success than have the ability stripped from my archmage.

Yes, the problem is replacing it. If you want a second mana type (besides meta), you can only replace it once or twice. Three times if you do not take another tier3 (you must take another tier 2 to make level 6, assuming no combat promos). If the fail rate is increased, it's gonna start obsoleting archmages or causing a dominator's life to be late (gotta get that second tier3 1st, to use when domination fails) and short (2 fails and the unit is a mage with a secondary tier3... your probably best off deleting it and upgrading a mage if you have something promoted appropriately).

I kinda liked when failing gave the archmage/druid to the opponent But that doesn't really make sense.

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1) Dominated unit unable to move 1 turn

To account for the extensive interaction required by the spell, or is it just a point and it happens instantly thing?

To account for the time/moves for the unit to walk over, or should it allow a unit to attack from within (thus same turn)?

2) Takes one turn to have affect.

I'm not sure about this. Against a player, spending an extra turn adjacent without dominated units protecting can be very bad.

3) Increase success rate and target weakest.

 

[Draconian]

Or just leave Domination alone, as it stands its high risk and high reward.

Where's the high risk? It once had a high risk (probably to high) when you lost the archmage after a failed domiantion attempt. Now you simply need to get the mind 3 promation again, which is absolutely no problem as archmages get XP for free.
Once your archmage got mind 3 he can simply save up any new promotion he gets from his free XP until he fails a domination. Once new promotions start to require to much XP you simply disband the archmage and upgrade one of your mages to an archmage with mind 3. Even if he only has the 26 XP required to become an archmage he will still be as effective as your old archmage was. After all you don't need combat 5 and spell extension for mind 3 archmages.

Domination really shouldn't work against heroes and make the dominated unit unable to move/attack for one turn.

 

[Magnifficus]

It could be a good solution, to restrict the locations where Domination is working?
For example, it may only be possible to cast it within your own cultural borders. (Where the Ether is fulfilled with your Mind-Nodes power.) But without losing the promotion if it fails.

Or to adjust the spells success probability, in a way it’s working better inside of your own territory, than outside

Not sure if it’s too difficult to mod this?

 

[Artan]

How about making the caster of dominate lose experience? For every two levels the dominated unit has the archmage loses 1 experience point - if experience would drop below zero, he cannot cast dominate. This way, dominate still would retain its power, but at the same time there is some (very soft) limit on how often you can cast it.

Also, the experience loss can be argued lore wise: it is one first sign of the caster becoming crazy because of mind magic.

 

[Bringa]

Have they changed anything about the chance to lose your archmage to the enemy if the spell misfires? Cause that balances it big time.

 

[Raize]

If the archmage fails to successfully Dominate, he/she/it simply loses the Mind III promotion. He/she/it no longer dies.

 

[MalkutX]

I don't think Domination is too powerful on an absolute scale; it is an archmage-level spell, after all.

For me, the trouble is that Domination is much more powerful than the other archmage-level spells.

The problem isn't that Domination is too different, it's that everything else is too same-y. Dominate is only unbalanced because everything else is too balanced (virtually identical things are balanced, after all). We lost too much variety when conjurers went away.

Imagine trying to do that with just 4 earth-3 archmages.

Done right, that would be just as easy, but not as rewarding, since you'd destroy units instead of dominate them.

Earth Elementals have Earth mana affinity, don't they? Earth mana makes them stronger. Play a race that starts with it, build Earth nodes, found Runes, find the standing stones. Make four mages with Spell Extension II,Combat V, and Shadowwalk. Watch as your four mages crush an entire empire with ridiculous ease, no matter how strong or advanced they are. I think something like that is in the manual in the Kazad section, for dwarven druids.

If there is a problem with Dominate, it's that nobody else understands how to do anything else but dominate.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

Earth Elementals have Earth mana affinity, don't they? Earth mana makes them stronger. Play a race that starts with it, build Earth nodes, found Runes, find the standing stones. Make four mages with Spell Extension II,Combat V, and Shadowwalk. Watch as your four mages crush an entire empire with ridiculous ease, no matter how strong or advanced they are. I think something like that is in the manual in the Kazad section, for dwarven druids.

Replace Earth with Sun, Runes with Empyrean, and Standing Stones with Mirror of Heaven. Watch as your four mages crush an entire empire with ridiculous ease. Granted, your mages are more vulnerable than the Earth mages would be, and FAR more vulnerable than Dwarven Druids, but still, +2 affinity = ridiculously strong... uh... Aureali? Aurealises? Whatever, you get the point. Oh and Empyrean is more powerful than Runes anyway.

The only beef I have with Domination is that Heroes are too easy to dominate. I could see how Rantine, Gilden Silveric, or Guybrush might be weak-minded enough to be Dominated easily, but it really doesn't seem right that you can dominate the likes of Chalid, Hemah, or Govannon. If anything, trying to dominate them would likely lead to the opposite result or a braindead archmage. Perhaps a Hero-only promotion that grants more spell resistance?

 

[xienwolf]

Or if simply having Loyalty on a unit would guarantee that they resist Dominate, and the AI would actually bother to apply loyalty, that would also work for a nice balancing of things (and fit what the spell claims it does anyway)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

... Aureali? Aurealises?

I'm pretty sure the plural of the Aurealis would be Aureales.

 

[Ecofarm]

Or if simply having Loyalty on a unit would guarantee that they resist Dominate, and the AI would actually bother to apply loyalty, that would also work for a nice balancing of things (and fit what the spell claims it does anyway)

Last I knew, it did not gaurentee a resist. It just gave a bonus resistence against charm and caused a dominated unit to die instead of being converted.

A nice spell, vs. players.

 

[Nor'easter]

I'm pretty sure the plural of the Aurealis would be Aureales.

Third Declension, right?

 

[rocklikeafool]

Last I knew, it did not gaurentee a resist. It just gave a bonus resistence against charm and caused a dominated unit to die instead of being converted.

A nice spell, vs. players.

And one the AI never seems to use.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I think the simplest balance would be to make the spells effect non bi-modal.

Instead of having two outcomes, you'd have three, or four:

1) Unit is dominated like normal. Yay!

2) Target resists. Mage keeps promotion.

3) Target resists. Mage loses promotion

Right now we only have 1) and 3). If we Decrease the likelyhood of 1), and fill in with 2), then we can get a spell which isn't nearly so effective, without changing greatly the way a play will use it during the game.

Work to do: When you do the resist check for the defender, have a cut off % that denotes when 2) happens, and when 3) happens. This will modify the exact effect of the spell. Should be easy.

 

[rocklikeafool]

How does that reduce the so-called "Problem"? (I don't think it's a problem, but watever. For the sake of the argument...) Wat exactly does that do to reduce the power of domination?

 

[xienwolf]

Just give it a miscast chance and you accomplish adding #2 to the list, effectively. You then also allow a skilled mage to reduce the chances of #2.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Last I knew, it did not gaurentee a resist. It just gave a bonus resistence against charm and caused a dominated unit to die instead of being converted.

A nice spell, vs. players.

I have converted units with loyalty through domination, though. I think the "death before desertion" aspect only applies to Command promotion conversion.

 

[Darksaber1]

Yeah, I see Domination as ripping a being's mind to peices, then reasembaling them in a way that serves you. Command is less direct.

 

[PacoDeth]

I still think limiting the concurrent casts of the spell will end "most" of the overpowered complaints here. As seen with other mods, this is totally possible. Leave the domination spell exactly as it is, only make it a One Cast per 3 to 5 turns spell. So a mage walks up and casts Dominate on a stack of your units, it won't be until 3 or so turns later till he can cast it again. The only thing about domination I prolly would change, is the ability to dominate Heroes. IMO, Heroes should either NEVER be dominated, or very very rarely, like a 5% chance regardless of what promotions either the mage or the hero has. Not to mention the waste of Dominating a rival hero, only to have him defect the next turn because you don't share his religion or race, etc. Causing the unit to kill itself and remove itself from the game effectively.

Command on the other hand I like as a way to gain hero's (even if for only one turn), as a unit is basically besting them in combat, and turning them over to their side. And let's face it, it's your own fault if you let a Command unit take out your hero.

If Dominate was set to a Once per ever 3 turns spell, would those of you who think it overpowered be happy with this result?