nutranurse
Unlikeliest of Slash Fics
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 2,077
Quick question- how will you be handling empowering and prophets? Will we designate the prophets or will we gain them through random events (and are we still restricted to 1).
-
Civilization 7 has been announced. For more info please check the forum here .
Dominion NES
- Thread starter LDiCesare
- Start date
I won't be using prophets at all, just regular priests.
EDIT:
I decided to cut them because I try to simplify things a bit for both me and the players to be able to handle.
For those who don't know it, in Dominions 3, any commander can be turned into a prophet, and it's only possible to turn one commander into a prophet. Prophets have priestly powers, expand your dominion even when not preaching, and are physically stronger inside your dominion (but weaker outside). There are some ways of getting more than one prophet (like having mad commanders suddenly decide they want to become your second prophet).
The interesting points are mostly physical strength and the ability to cast 'Smite', a spell that the best priests can cast and which is quite efficient. They can also bless a lot of sacred units at once. I think prophets would be limited to "my prophet will spam smite" , mass bless or to make tough thugs/super combatants even stronger Mass bless and preaching will be available through all priest units, so there's only smite and buffing left, which I don't think are too important.
EDIT:
I decided to cut them because I try to simplify things a bit for both me and the players to be able to handle.
For those who don't know it, in Dominions 3, any commander can be turned into a prophet, and it's only possible to turn one commander into a prophet. Prophets have priestly powers, expand your dominion even when not preaching, and are physically stronger inside your dominion (but weaker outside). There are some ways of getting more than one prophet (like having mad commanders suddenly decide they want to become your second prophet).
The interesting points are mostly physical strength and the ability to cast 'Smite', a spell that the best priests can cast and which is quite efficient. They can also bless a lot of sacred units at once. I think prophets would be limited to "my prophet will spam smite" , mass bless or to make tough thugs/super combatants even stronger Mass bless and preaching will be available through all priest units, so there's only smite and buffing left, which I don't think are too important.
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
The Eastern Union of the Maguses. Meeting after the first update on the division of the land, unless you can agree with no body expand except for me deal.
Kyzarc Fotjage
Rise Up
How about no on that deal.
The EUM, I like the sound of that.
The EUM, I like the sound of that.
A note on economics: You will start with about 100 gold. Each province provides around 40 gold per turn with normal scales, and all provinces have resources which can give 0-10 gold in addition to gold obtained from population.
You'll get more detail in the first update.
I am likely to change a few costs before the first update as I check and test some, but expect them not to change afterwards. If something is ridiculously cheap or overpriced, I'll change that as the game progresses with refunds if needed but woulkd rather avoid them.
You'll get more detail in the first update.
I am likely to change a few costs before the first update as I check and test some, but expect them not to change afterwards. If something is ridiculously cheap or overpriced, I'll change that as the game progresses with refunds if needed but woulkd rather avoid them.
Another small change.
It is possible to pick an immobile pretender like a monolith, an oracle or a big statue.
The thing can't move, but if you don't pick more than 2 paths of magic, you'll get 1 more design point.
These things are usually rather hard to destroy but don't defend themselves.
It is possible to pick an immobile pretender like a monolith, an oracle or a big statue.
The thing can't move, but if you don't pick more than 2 paths of magic, you'll get 1 more design point.
These things are usually rather hard to destroy but don't defend themselves.
nutranurse
Unlikeliest of Slash Fics
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 2,077
<.< I know that in the game the immobile pretenders cannot move, per-say, but they can be summoned/teleported with the proper magic (after all, a monolith, be it divine or otherwise, is still just a large rock). Can they do that in the NES?
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
Open questions regarding 'dominion' to anyone who knows this system:
1) what is the point of 'dominion'? My understanding is that it affects the rate at which new provinces convert to your religion.
2) is dominion going to affect how many followers my pretender has in every province or only those i control (ie- invade, conquer)
3) does dominion affect my spells
4) does building temples affect my pretender's dominion attribute or my provincial dominion attribute
5) (related to question 4) my understanding is that each province has a dominion which reflects how strong worship of our pretender is in that province, is that different from our pretender's dominion attribute? if its related, how?
Open question regardings scales:
1) are scales in things like luck and magic worth it? what do they do exactly?
Open question regarding the pretender:
1) some pretenders rock in melee combat and can take on armies by themselves.... which ones and what is that based on? is that based on dominion? Or is it only that 1 extra point spent at creation?
1) what is the point of 'dominion'? My understanding is that it affects the rate at which new provinces convert to your religion.
2) is dominion going to affect how many followers my pretender has in every province or only those i control (ie- invade, conquer)
3) does dominion affect my spells
4) does building temples affect my pretender's dominion attribute or my provincial dominion attribute
5) (related to question 4) my understanding is that each province has a dominion which reflects how strong worship of our pretender is in that province, is that different from our pretender's dominion attribute? if its related, how?
Open question regardings scales:
1) are scales in things like luck and magic worth it? what do they do exactly?
Open question regarding the pretender:
1) some pretenders rock in melee combat and can take on armies by themselves.... which ones and what is that based on? is that based on dominion? Or is it only that 1 extra point spent at creation?
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
It is based on you having a really large form and having mastery of magic 
.
.
nutranurse
Unlikeliest of Slash Fics
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 2,077
1)Well dominion represents your pretenders control over the populous via religion. You can have an army in every province in the world, but it means squat if they all believe in other pretenders/Gods.
2)And yeah, dominion represents your following in a given province. Hell, sometimes you can even win a way without sending an army by just having a strong following in an enemy's province.
3)No idea how LDi is going to handle it, but I would figure that spells would be potent within areas closely affiliated to you
4)Temples only affect the provinces, and you have to build one per province
5)It is related in that your base dominion is the unmodified maximum domain you can have in any given province. Say for instance your pretender has a dominion of 6, then you can only go up to 6 dominion in a given province without using other methods to break the cap.
Scales:
Luck leads to more good events happening, it is iffy whether or not it is useful- leave it to your discression, really.
Magic, depends on the race. Some are more magically inclined than others and progress faster so it increasing the magic scale would just be throwing more wood into an inferno. Other civs no so much, but I can tell you that magic adds to the rate you acquire spells (research), though makes you somewhat more vulnerable to magic (as there are numerous faucets that enemies can exploit), but it also means that your own mages will become exhausted less frequently.
Pretender:
What you are looking for would be something formidable like a Titan. Just think huge monster thing and you got it, though their use is mostly for early-game when most armies you meet do not field proper destructive magicians. Seeing how this is an NES, and not the computer game, I figure you have a poop ton of leeway in making a 1-man army pretender. Just think of any really powerful creature and, well, there you have it!
Note: Most of what is said above is based off of the computer game, not the NES. LDi probably has his own rules in mind, but knowing the computer game gives you a grasp on the NES none the less.
EDIT:
>.> I do not know many pretenders that have both large forms and a wide breadth of magic, Seon. Magic tends to become more powerful as the game progresses to the point where armies are just cannon fodder between the enemy and your actual destructive forces, i.e. mages! Unless you are the Ulm.
On an added note, the way dominion works in-game is that every province has its own scales and the stronger your dominion is the more the province begins to represent your 'ideal' (i.e. your scales chosen at start).
Take my lavamen for instance. They love hot stuff, but if they move into a cold area they are penalised to the point of near-death. Should I have a high dominion there then the province will slowly come to look like what my scales were set to- in this case it would heat up. Note that this has more to do with than hot/cold, if you have an order of 3 on your scale and you take over a province with a turmoil of 1 (-4 Order) then each turn the province has a chance to become more ordered depending upon the strength of your dominion.
2)And yeah, dominion represents your following in a given province. Hell, sometimes you can even win a way without sending an army by just having a strong following in an enemy's province.
3)No idea how LDi is going to handle it, but I would figure that spells would be potent within areas closely affiliated to you
4)Temples only affect the provinces, and you have to build one per province
5)It is related in that your base dominion is the unmodified maximum domain you can have in any given province. Say for instance your pretender has a dominion of 6, then you can only go up to 6 dominion in a given province without using other methods to break the cap.
Scales:
Luck leads to more good events happening, it is iffy whether or not it is useful- leave it to your discression, really.
Magic, depends on the race. Some are more magically inclined than others and progress faster so it increasing the magic scale would just be throwing more wood into an inferno. Other civs no so much, but I can tell you that magic adds to the rate you acquire spells (research), though makes you somewhat more vulnerable to magic (as there are numerous faucets that enemies can exploit), but it also means that your own mages will become exhausted less frequently.
Pretender:
What you are looking for would be something formidable like a Titan. Just think huge monster thing and you got it, though their use is mostly for early-game when most armies you meet do not field proper destructive magicians. Seeing how this is an NES, and not the computer game, I figure you have a poop ton of leeway in making a 1-man army pretender. Just think of any really powerful creature and, well, there you have it!
Note: Most of what is said above is based off of the computer game, not the NES. LDi probably has his own rules in mind, but knowing the computer game gives you a grasp on the NES none the less.
EDIT:
>.> I do not know many pretenders that have both large forms and a wide breadth of magic, Seon. Magic tends to become more powerful as the game progresses to the point where armies are just cannon fodder between the enemy and your actual destructive forces, i.e. mages! Unless you are the Ulm.
On an added note, the way dominion works in-game is that every province has its own scales and the stronger your dominion is the more the province begins to represent your 'ideal' (i.e. your scales chosen at start).
Take my lavamen for instance. They love hot stuff, but if they move into a cold area they are penalised to the point of near-death. Should I have a high dominion there then the province will slowly come to look like what my scales were set to- in this case it would heat up. Note that this has more to do with than hot/cold, if you have an order of 3 on your scale and you take over a province with a turmoil of 1 (-4 Order) then each turn the province has a chance to become more ordered depending upon the strength of your dominion.
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
Question regarding provinces:
Is each country about one province or are there many provinces per country? feel free to answer based on what you know of the computer game- when Ldi comes on he can always correct anything he has changed.
Also, thanks nutranurse....
Is each country about one province or are there many provinces per country? feel free to answer based on what you know of the computer game- when Ldi comes on he can always correct anything he has changed.
Also, thanks nutranurse....
Yes they can but they can't bring troops with them (as in the game).
nutranurse
Unlikeliest of Slash Fics
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 2,077
Well the sense of 'country' is kind of weird and amorphous in dom3. Your focus is not to rule the world via controlling the land, but to rule it by captivating the hearts/minds of the world's populous with your awesome might and magic. Along the way you of course eliminate those who refuse to bow to your pretender's divine might.
So a country can be anything that you define it as, really. You can split up one province into 50 different countries for all intents and purposes, but it matters very little because you still have dominion over it through army and religion.
EDIT:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening
This wiki has quite a bit of information on dom3 (not everything, though. A lot of stuff is covered in the 300 page manual and still fails to get every aspect of the game :S) and given that we are not actually playing the game, but the game's concept as an NES it is easier to grasp the gist of what is said in the wiki and just adjust your perception of Dominions 3's many nuances to LDi's changes.
So a country can be anything that you define it as, really. You can split up one province into 50 different countries for all intents and purposes, but it matters very little because you still have dominion over it through army and religion.
EDIT:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening
This wiki has quite a bit of information on dom3 (not everything, though. A lot of stuff is covered in the 300 page manual and still fails to get every aspect of the game :S) and given that we are not actually playing the game, but the game's concept as an NES it is easier to grasp the gist of what is said in the wiki and just adjust your perception of Dominions 3's many nuances to LDi's changes.
That's right. The highest your dominion score, the more likely your faith is to spread, be it automatically through your pretender, your capital, your temples or your preachers. If your dominion is high in a province, it affects scales (heat, turmoil etc) in that province, gives your troops better morale there, gives your pretender god increased strength, physical and magical resistance, and also has several side effects.
These side effects include stronger bless effect (not in the computer game). For instance if you have sacred troops and your pretender has Water5, your troops, if blessed by priests, will be extremely fast. If you have Water4, they'll only get a nice defense bonus outside your dominion but will be extremely fast inside your dominion.
Other side effects depend on your nation and you can devise them. For instance, C'tis dominion has a side effect of causing diseases in warm-blooded creatures.
Your god has a dominion score which represents how easily his dominion spread. Each province then has dominion scores for each god, which give an idea of how reverred each god is in that province. The word dominion is used to describe both your god's innate characteristic and the strength of the faith in a given province.
Your god may very well be worshipped outside your borders. Or inside someone else's borders. In fact, if you manage to be more worshipped than another god in his own country, he's likely to die soon for lack of followers (unless he himself has lots of followers outside his lands).
If there's too much confusion between dominion of the god and dominion in the province, I'll try to rename one of these (faith?), but I'll probably let 'dominion' slip at some point due to habit.
It can, it depends on the spell.
Some spells are stronger in cold regions for instance. So if you have a cold dominion, your dominion will cause the cold scale to grow and thus your cold spells to be stronger. This is an indirect and not immediate effect.
Some spells, global enchantments, may be more effective in yoru dominion, or only effectibe inside your dominion. Details vary per spell, but for instance you may have some spell that bestows good health which only affects your troops inside your dominion. In many cases, a spell which works only in your dominion will be 1 level lower in terms of research and/or needed magic power (path level) than a spell that works everywhere. I'm talking global enchantment spells here, not battle magic.
Exactly.
The only relation in the NES will be that your province dominion is more likely to grow if your pretender dominion is high.
Another thing with very high dominion (9 or 10) is that it gives yoru pretender an awe aura that makes people afraid from striking him, and which may be handy in melee. That's usually not very useful unless you plan to use a mostly magic-less but very tough pretender (Wyrm) which will go trampling your neighbours single-handedly.
Luck tilts the likelihood of an event being good, and the strength of good/bad events. I'm going to tweak the exact figures to make it worth it. If a random event happens and you have luck 0, you have 50% chance of good and 50% chance of bad event.
If you have luck 1, you'll get 5 or 60% of a good event. Since the scale can be +/-3, at Luck 3, you'd get 65 or 80% of events that are good. As I said, I'm still tweaking the exact figures. More likely 80% than 65%.
Magic increases your research output.
A typical mage unit will grant you 4 research points per turn. Add 0.5 per magic scale point: A Magic 3 scale (max) can give you a big research boost. And drain can kill your research. But also your neighbour's research if you spread drain to his lands.
The other effect of Magic is to make spells more likely to succeed, so battle magi is more efficient in Magic lands and less in Drain lands.
Regarding research, mages have 3 to 5 research, depending on nation and type of mage - also magic items can boost research.
Titans, dragons rock in melee. They rock even more if they are in friendly dominion.
However, there is a cost to that. Dragons cost just 1 point but have access to only 1 magic path (or you need 1 more point), and can't equip many magic items. So they may rule the early game but they risk becoming obsolete when people start summoning tough humanoid monsters and equip them with magic swords and armors.
Titans cost 2 more points, but they are probably going to hurt badly if you send them conquering lands alone without some equipment or magic buffs. So these are very strong for mid and late game but not so much early. They also can't get more than 2 paths without paying for new paths so can't have diversified magic.
There will be 52 provinces in the NES which is about 5 provinces per human player. In the computer game, an average game is about 15 provinces per player. So you will be more crowded. For comparison I'm playing 2 slow PBEM games right now (about 1 update per week). One is at turn 26 and I haven't fought anybody yet (except an unfortunate accident with my stealthy trops squashing some province defense), and the other is at turn 52 where I think wars started early but like turn 10. But things are quite interesting at this stage (with one god casting Armageddon and other nasty overland rituals and major wars being fought by everybody). I want more pace for the NES so decided the number of provinces on what I think should be good based on my experience of the FfH NESes.
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
K,
More questions:
there seems to be a dichotomy between having one high ranking magic path and multiple smaller ranks in many magic paths.
From what i read in the link that nutranurse put up, one is called the 'bless' strategy and i sort of get it but why would i consider multiple low ranking paths (ie- the archmage)? Just to use them as a standard caster?
EDIT2: I think i understand that it doesn't matter how many ranks you have in a path, you will always get some effect from the bless, its just stronger if you have higher ranks in it.
Can priests, wizards and wizard-priests provide a bless? If so, is it based on their own paths or on that of the pretender?
EDIT: and thank Ldi- i bet others had similiar questions and i am sure they are as glad as i am for your response.
More questions:
there seems to be a dichotomy between having one high ranking magic path and multiple smaller ranks in many magic paths.
From what i read in the link that nutranurse put up, one is called the 'bless' strategy and i sort of get it but why would i consider multiple low ranking paths (ie- the archmage)? Just to use them as a standard caster?
EDIT2: I think i understand that it doesn't matter how many ranks you have in a path, you will always get some effect from the bless, its just stronger if you have higher ranks in it.
Can priests, wizards and wizard-priests provide a bless? If so, is it based on their own paths or on that of the pretender?
EDIT: and thank Ldi- i bet others had similiar questions and i am sure they are as glad as i am for your response.
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
Sorry- even more questions:
Luck/Misfortune and Order/Turmoil affect chances of random events in this NES like in the computer game or no?
I know that luck/misfortune affects the chances of a random event but do they affect the liklihood of an event occuring?
Luck/Misfortune and Order/Turmoil affect chances of random events in this NES like in the computer game or no?
I know that luck/misfortune affects the chances of a random event but do they affect the liklihood of an event occuring?
High rank in 1 (or 2) magic paths gives your blessed units lots of strength.
Lower ranks in many paths allow you to use your archmage as a caster and forger. A lot of cool items and some spells require different paths. For instance you'll get magic swords with earth but better swords with earth + fire. Fire will give you fireballs but Fire + Water will give you acid rains which are better.
There's also an advantage in having many paths, which is to discover more magic sites when you look for them. I'll be using somewhat different rules for magic sites, but having several paths will help you there too. Magic paths are the main provider of mana which is used to summon creatures, forge items and cast powerful spells (and mana is an abstraction for the gems of the game because I don't want everyone to track down how many gems of this or that kind they have - too much micromanagement).
Luck/Misfortune only affects the quality of events. Order/Turmoil affects the chance of getting random events. The exact % I'm still playing with and will probably not make public anyway. (Also note there are some random events linked to stability which are independant of these scales, but these should be very rare.) So with high order you're unlikely to get many events, which makes misfortuen more bearable. With high turmoil, you probbaly need luck because you'll get a lot of random events. However the main effect of Order/Turmoil is to provide more/less gold.
I expanded the rules section to describe pretender bless effects.
They are mostly useful for nations who have good sacred units or wizard-priests (e.g. Mictlan, Eriu, Ashdod) and mostly useless for those without (e.g. Shinuyama, Ermor). I'll tell you if your nation "needs" a bless or can benefit from a particular bless.
They are mostly useful for nations who have good sacred units or wizard-priests (e.g. Mictlan, Eriu, Ashdod) and mostly useless for those without (e.g. Shinuyama, Ermor). I'll tell you if your nation "needs" a bless or can benefit from a particular bless.
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
Yay. I am a wizard Priest country 
, more micromanaging for me -_-
, more micromanaging for me -_-
