What item did he remove to make Hero's Blade, and how did he give it it's property?FrankTrollman wrote:You can change the name of an item.Orion wrote:So I always thought that the modding tools didn't change the functionality of magic items. Many balance discussions around CBM or other mods hinged on the fact that you could change an item's path cost or research level but not its abilities.
How is it then that Quantum was able to introduce an all-new "Hero's Blade" Item. If he could do that, why couldn't he add a new earth booster?
You can change the cost of an item.
You can change the research requirements of an item.
If it is an item of armor or weaponry, you can change its statistics as a weapon or armor piece.
-Username17
Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions
Moderator: Moderators
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
The Hero's Blade is actually a unique artifact that shows up in the hands of a Hoburg Hero special character. CBM just made it forgeable for no adequately explained reason. QM probably fiddled with the stats too, I don't recall.
-Username17The legendary Oberführer is the leader of the best organized Hoburg. Armed to the teeth and courageous, he defends his home with unparalleled ferocity.
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Actions resolve in a dynamic order every turn. Spells resolve, then events, then movement, then castle sieges, if I recall correctly. So if you teleport into a province, and there's a barbarian uprising, and another of your units moves into the province, then there could be three battles one after another. There can be more than that even, as some spells create temporary rampaging neutral armies.Shiritai wrote:So, is turn priority a static thing in dom 3? If my commands are resolved after a particular side's, am I just stuck with that? If so, that makes me sad.
Actual actions are resolved in a commander by commander order that is somewhat fluid. When two armies move towards each other it is randomly determined where they will fight.
-Username17
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
They are ethereal versions of the onis that spawned them, but they have no armor and fewer hitpoints. They also might auto retreat, though I am not sure. It is flavorful, but not really all that useful.Orion wrote:What's the deal with yomi oni's "ghost forms"? I can't be bothered to test for myself.
If you hold the field after the battle and the oni's ghost form hasn't been killed also, you get the oni back (in whole, physical form).
Edit: also, onis tend to lose afflictions when they get converted to ghost form.
Edit: also, onis tend to lose afflictions when they get converted to ghost form.
Last edited by Orca on Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
You also do if the ghost form successfully retreats.Orca wrote:If you hold the field after the battle and the oni's ghost form hasn't been killed also, you get the oni back (in whole, physical form).
This is something that happens to most monsters that can be shapeshifted in battle.Edit: also, onis tend to lose afflictions when they get converted to ghost form.
I got this a week ago and have been working through it, slowly.
One simple question: Why is it when I have a PD of 25 on a fort and 10 mages there, when an enemy attacks, they slaughter the Province Defense and start to seige without my mages joining the fight? Can I get the mages to fight with the PD? (There was a game where I was holding a chokepoint with Marveni, 3 bladewind spamming druids and 20 PD...I put a fort there and next round the druids just stayed inside and got seiged).
Also: Patching to 3.26 causes my game to crash when it tries to adjucate turns/battles. Everything works fine up to there, and everything works fine unpatched. Being unpatched is going to prevent me from playing multiplayer, but by the time I'm ready for it (probably several months) I might have a different computer. Anyone have any other ideas?
My Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1501. I know it's tragic.
One simple question: Why is it when I have a PD of 25 on a fort and 10 mages there, when an enemy attacks, they slaughter the Province Defense and start to seige without my mages joining the fight? Can I get the mages to fight with the PD? (There was a game where I was holding a chokepoint with Marveni, 3 bladewind spamming druids and 20 PD...I put a fort there and next round the druids just stayed inside and got seiged).
Also: Patching to 3.26 causes my game to crash when it tries to adjucate turns/battles. Everything works fine up to there, and everything works fine unpatched. Being unpatched is going to prevent me from playing multiplayer, but by the time I'm ready for it (probably several months) I might have a different computer. Anyone have any other ideas?
My Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1501. I know it's tragic.
-
angelfromanotherpin
- Overlord
- Posts: 9745
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Awesome, thanks guys.
@K...Windows directory eh? I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the help.
Some longer, strategy questions: Feel free to ignore this post if you're disinterested.
I've been playing EA Marveni, on random small maps with 20 Impossible AI. I'm unpatched, unmodded. I use the default settings (1 province, resources 100%, special sites 45%, Indie strength 5, normal research).
(I played a game on a large map, 20 random AI on normal and I just slaughtered them using teleporting druids and gaining all the globals. It took forever, but wasn't a challenge).
My general set up is to get a dormant pheonix pretender with Fire 3/Air 3 for magic diversity, dominion 5, and good scales (magic +1, growth +3, luck +1, order +1 or +2, no heat/cold, and the other one +1 or +2).
I've read the wiki's two guides for playing Marveni.
Start reasearching on a path that more or less looks like Conjuration 1, Evocation 3, Thaumaturgy 1, Evocation 4 (Blade Wind), Conjuration 3 (Summon earth Power), and then a mix of the rest, with a focus on Thaumaturgy 3 for Teleportation.
My general strategy looks something like this:
Grab the scout and start scouting, prophet the starting commander. At the capital, recruit a mix of slingers and carnute nobles, and consistently recruit Gutuaters for reasearch. As the scout goes, the commander follows. At indie provinces, recruit extra leaders to send back to the capital to pick up troops so that the capital can continue to pump Gutuaters for research. Sometimes recruit some indie archers. Increase province defense to 1 in every province so I can see peoples armies while they attack me using the watch battle command.
After 6-7 turns, I've usually met an AI on one side, and have 5-6 provinces. I conquer another 2-3 before having my territory defined. By this time I've got ~100-200 troops on 3-5 commanders depending on causalties, mostly slingers and carnute nobles, with hold and attack closest commands, and 5-6 Gutuaters in my capital, researching.
Then an AI declares war on me. I fight a holding battle using PD 10 (55 gold gives me 30 troops, 20 barechests and 10 slingers, seems like a really good deal. In my capital, that would give me 5.5 slingers, 5.5 marveni barechests, or almost 3 Carnute Nobles) and my troops, usually making some gains and some losses, until I get bladewinding druids and start destroying.
Around turn 8 or 9 where this happens consistently, I abruptly realize that I have tonnes of gems stocked up. I look for things to forge, but with construction 0 and the following combos on Gutuaters (Nature 2, Nature 1/Spectral 1, Nature 1/Water 1, Nature 1/Earth 1) I can rarely find something I want to craft. If I've got a druid, it's occupied leading armies. Eventually I get desperate for troops and start using summons, but in terms of time/efficiency, Sea Dogs and Vine Men are very slow (I end up losing research time and still having too many gems), but then the 11 nature gem sea serpant comes up, which is okay, or the pride of lions which is great for getting rid of unused gems (25 gems and 17 lions). But while I'm working on this slow war, the NPC's doing best are making huge armies, taking out other NPC kingdoms. I've almost beat a NPC, when someone comes up from another angle with an army of 300-600, and I don't have the druids or army to stop it. (By now it's turn 15-25, and I've got 6-10 druids on the field with bladewind*5 (E3), Earthpower + Bladewind*4 (E2), Bladewind*4 + Eagle Eyes (E3+Nature 1), or Earth power + eagle eyes + 3* Blade wind (E2+Nature 1), plus maybe 150-300 troops, depending on how the war is going...except these troops are occupied securing a victory against the first guy, and then I get crushed.
In this time-frame, I've generally used the armed druids for a bit of searching, but also the Nature 2 Gutuaters for the nature search (Haruspex) and searched all the spectral sites (spectral 1, Arcane something). I've got pretty good nature/astral income, and a bit of earth, then maybe trivial amounts of the rest.
My pretender wakes, and I have little in terms of rituals/item forging to do with it. I sometimes send it site searching, or leading troops, but I've lost it a few times doing that. I think that I'm taking a long-term game pretender for magic diversity, but I'm not making it anywhere near the endgame where that would come in useful.
Once I've got bladewinding druids, I frequently get battles where I lose 10-30 troops and they lose 50-100, but that doesn't seem to be getting me going fast enough. Furthermore, using druids to attack seems to be harder, since they don't have PD to hide behind.
So:
1) Should I be able to beat AI's on these settings? (Small, 5 indies, standard everything, impossible AI's)
2) Is there a different troop set up that I should be using?
3) Is there a different pretender set up that I should be using?
4) Is there a different searching set up that I should be using?
5) Is there a different research set up that I should be using?
6) What sort of magic or summons should I be using?
7) What should I be using my gems for? Do I just let them stockpile?
@K...Windows directory eh? I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the help.
Some longer, strategy questions: Feel free to ignore this post if you're disinterested.
I've been playing EA Marveni, on random small maps with 20 Impossible AI. I'm unpatched, unmodded. I use the default settings (1 province, resources 100%, special sites 45%, Indie strength 5, normal research).
(I played a game on a large map, 20 random AI on normal and I just slaughtered them using teleporting druids and gaining all the globals. It took forever, but wasn't a challenge).
My general set up is to get a dormant pheonix pretender with Fire 3/Air 3 for magic diversity, dominion 5, and good scales (magic +1, growth +3, luck +1, order +1 or +2, no heat/cold, and the other one +1 or +2).
I've read the wiki's two guides for playing Marveni.
Start reasearching on a path that more or less looks like Conjuration 1, Evocation 3, Thaumaturgy 1, Evocation 4 (Blade Wind), Conjuration 3 (Summon earth Power), and then a mix of the rest, with a focus on Thaumaturgy 3 for Teleportation.
My general strategy looks something like this:
Grab the scout and start scouting, prophet the starting commander. At the capital, recruit a mix of slingers and carnute nobles, and consistently recruit Gutuaters for reasearch. As the scout goes, the commander follows. At indie provinces, recruit extra leaders to send back to the capital to pick up troops so that the capital can continue to pump Gutuaters for research. Sometimes recruit some indie archers. Increase province defense to 1 in every province so I can see peoples armies while they attack me using the watch battle command.
After 6-7 turns, I've usually met an AI on one side, and have 5-6 provinces. I conquer another 2-3 before having my territory defined. By this time I've got ~100-200 troops on 3-5 commanders depending on causalties, mostly slingers and carnute nobles, with hold and attack closest commands, and 5-6 Gutuaters in my capital, researching.
Then an AI declares war on me. I fight a holding battle using PD 10 (55 gold gives me 30 troops, 20 barechests and 10 slingers, seems like a really good deal. In my capital, that would give me 5.5 slingers, 5.5 marveni barechests, or almost 3 Carnute Nobles) and my troops, usually making some gains and some losses, until I get bladewinding druids and start destroying.
Around turn 8 or 9 where this happens consistently, I abruptly realize that I have tonnes of gems stocked up. I look for things to forge, but with construction 0 and the following combos on Gutuaters (Nature 2, Nature 1/Spectral 1, Nature 1/Water 1, Nature 1/Earth 1) I can rarely find something I want to craft. If I've got a druid, it's occupied leading armies. Eventually I get desperate for troops and start using summons, but in terms of time/efficiency, Sea Dogs and Vine Men are very slow (I end up losing research time and still having too many gems), but then the 11 nature gem sea serpant comes up, which is okay, or the pride of lions which is great for getting rid of unused gems (25 gems and 17 lions). But while I'm working on this slow war, the NPC's doing best are making huge armies, taking out other NPC kingdoms. I've almost beat a NPC, when someone comes up from another angle with an army of 300-600, and I don't have the druids or army to stop it. (By now it's turn 15-25, and I've got 6-10 druids on the field with bladewind*5 (E3), Earthpower + Bladewind*4 (E2), Bladewind*4 + Eagle Eyes (E3+Nature 1), or Earth power + eagle eyes + 3* Blade wind (E2+Nature 1), plus maybe 150-300 troops, depending on how the war is going...except these troops are occupied securing a victory against the first guy, and then I get crushed.
In this time-frame, I've generally used the armed druids for a bit of searching, but also the Nature 2 Gutuaters for the nature search (Haruspex) and searched all the spectral sites (spectral 1, Arcane something). I've got pretty good nature/astral income, and a bit of earth, then maybe trivial amounts of the rest.
My pretender wakes, and I have little in terms of rituals/item forging to do with it. I sometimes send it site searching, or leading troops, but I've lost it a few times doing that. I think that I'm taking a long-term game pretender for magic diversity, but I'm not making it anywhere near the endgame where that would come in useful.
Once I've got bladewinding druids, I frequently get battles where I lose 10-30 troops and they lose 50-100, but that doesn't seem to be getting me going fast enough. Furthermore, using druids to attack seems to be harder, since they don't have PD to hide behind.
So:
1) Should I be able to beat AI's on these settings? (Small, 5 indies, standard everything, impossible AI's)
2) Is there a different troop set up that I should be using?
3) Is there a different pretender set up that I should be using?
4) Is there a different searching set up that I should be using?
5) Is there a different research set up that I should be using?
6) What sort of magic or summons should I be using?
7) What should I be using my gems for? Do I just let them stockpile?
-
Judging__Eagle
- Prince
- Posts: 4671
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada
For smaller maps, and quicker games, you really need an SC that can just take out PDs on its own. The real advantage is that you have more provinces earlier.
If you're relying on druid casting, maybe getting hordes of weaker troops to hold the line in front of your slingers/druids might be an alternative. Even tough creatures like knights get eventually overwhelmed; and well positioned hordes (dividied up into smaller more flexible regiments) can lap around enemy forces allowing their advantage to be more readily felt.
How you program your armies, and how small you can make the 5 regiments led by a commander, are also pretty important. Telling half your forces to hold the line; while the other half are positioned at the extreme flanks with orders to charge the rear/archers can help bring the forces you want to bear down on the enemy.
Ideally, you will use your fastest/most damaging units against enemy units that can give them victory.
Giants and Tramplers are a problem for everyone in large numbers, but with size 2 units yourself, you should be able to mob up on them.
You want to look at army building that minimizes your own losses, and maximizes enemy losses. Honestly, lots of ranged, even slingers, can do that. Having forward positioned slinger regiments that have fire and flee; with more slingers behind either non-moving, or holding, melee screens can also help chew up enemy forces.
Heavy armour of any kind is going to be a really big pain though, since slingers can't really punch through that stuff.
A combination of general strategies, as well as specific tactics for dealing with enemy specialties/edges is what you're going to have to work towards.
If you're relying on druid casting, maybe getting hordes of weaker troops to hold the line in front of your slingers/druids might be an alternative. Even tough creatures like knights get eventually overwhelmed; and well positioned hordes (dividied up into smaller more flexible regiments) can lap around enemy forces allowing their advantage to be more readily felt.
How you program your armies, and how small you can make the 5 regiments led by a commander, are also pretty important. Telling half your forces to hold the line; while the other half are positioned at the extreme flanks with orders to charge the rear/archers can help bring the forces you want to bear down on the enemy.
Ideally, you will use your fastest/most damaging units against enemy units that can give them victory.
Giants and Tramplers are a problem for everyone in large numbers, but with size 2 units yourself, you should be able to mob up on them.
You want to look at army building that minimizes your own losses, and maximizes enemy losses. Honestly, lots of ranged, even slingers, can do that. Having forward positioned slinger regiments that have fire and flee; with more slingers behind either non-moving, or holding, melee screens can also help chew up enemy forces.
Heavy armour of any kind is going to be a really big pain though, since slingers can't really punch through that stuff.
A combination of general strategies, as well as specific tactics for dealing with enemy specialties/edges is what you're going to have to work towards.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.
While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
Ikeren, to answer your questions:
1) Yes, though small maps make things harder. You should consider an awake SC and more focused scale choices.
2) I like a small group of slingers forward and to the side, with a group of carnute nobles for the center of my line. I use barechests to flank, which they are actually quite good at.
3) You need to make an actual choice with your scales, either go for gold with maxed order and as much growth as you can afford, or do something else. With a) cheap forts, b) expensive recruit anywhere mages, and c) a very nice throwaway unit, I would pick more gold every time. Consider an awake SC with a small map. A3 is also kinda useless, get A4. F3 is also much better as F4 for a long term play. If you cannot do anything with your god when it wakes, site search with it, it can fly and that makes for very efficient searching.
4) Use remote searches more, you need a little bit of province by province to get the income needed.
5) Looks fine, but if you are getting thraum, get thraum 2 or 3.
6) This early? Maybe a cave drake to absorb arrows. Bladewind is pretty good against hordes of chaff, use destruction and barechests for harder targets.
7) Remote site searching. Also forging clams if you can. The best early use of gems is to get more gems later when you hopefully have better things to do with them. Sometimes you really want some gear for your dudes. Otherwise, you can pass them out in an emergency.
dude, these scripts need work:
1) Yes, though small maps make things harder. You should consider an awake SC and more focused scale choices.
2) I like a small group of slingers forward and to the side, with a group of carnute nobles for the center of my line. I use barechests to flank, which they are actually quite good at.
3) You need to make an actual choice with your scales, either go for gold with maxed order and as much growth as you can afford, or do something else. With a) cheap forts, b) expensive recruit anywhere mages, and c) a very nice throwaway unit, I would pick more gold every time. Consider an awake SC with a small map. A3 is also kinda useless, get A4. F3 is also much better as F4 for a long term play. If you cannot do anything with your god when it wakes, site search with it, it can fly and that makes for very efficient searching.
4) Use remote searches more, you need a little bit of province by province to get the income needed.
5) Looks fine, but if you are getting thraum, get thraum 2 or 3.
6) This early? Maybe a cave drake to absorb arrows. Bladewind is pretty good against hordes of chaff, use destruction and barechests for harder targets.
7) Remote site searching. Also forging clams if you can. The best early use of gems is to get more gems later when you hopefully have better things to do with them. Sometimes you really want some gear for your dudes. Otherwise, you can pass them out in an emergency.
dude, these scripts need work:
Always summon earthpower before bladewind, it gives reinvigoration and cuts fatigue. It is the difference between 3 bladewinds and 5 in the first 6 rounds. Use teleporting more and you should be able to get druids where you need it. Also, try and predict where an indy army will be starving and attack them there, use teleporting druids to take the surrounding provinces so the army goes poof.(By now it's turn 15-25, and I've got 6-10 druids on the field with bladewind*5 (E3), Earthpower + Bladewind*4 (E2), Bladewind*4 + Eagle Eyes (E3+Nature 1), or Earth power + eagle eyes + 3* Blade wind (E2+Nature 1), plus maybe 150-300 troops, depending on how the war is going...except these troops are occupied securing a victory against the first guy, and then I get crushed.
Last edited by Akula on Thu Feb 10, 2011 1:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
@Judging__Eagle, Akula, Orion, and K: Thanks for the advice. Hopefully this next game goes a little smoother.
Unfortunately, Marveni doesn't have easy access to W3 for clams. I'm not sure druids can get it without boosters, so that might be held out until summons.
Oh wait...druids get W3...25*25*2.5 = 0.15% of the time?...hmmm
Unfortunately, Marveni doesn't have easy access to W3 for clams. I'm not sure druids can get it without boosters, so that might be held out until summons.
Oh wait...druids get W3...25*25*2.5 = 0.15% of the time?...hmmm
Last edited by Ikeren on Thu Feb 10, 2011 5:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
So I tried out Late Ulm and it's rapidly becoming my favorite faction. I have some questions though:
--Do the thralls that my VampCounts spawn have upkeep?
--how am I supposed to deploy my awesome undead halberdiers? with fortune tellers who rolled death randoms?
--many guides suggest that my counts can somehow "summon thralls, based on blood path level" or "amass vampires." I can't figure out what they're talking about. The guides are also inconsitent about when thye are talking about vamp counts and when they are tlaking about vamp lords.
--Do the thralls that my VampCounts spawn have upkeep?
--how am I supposed to deploy my awesome undead halberdiers? with fortune tellers who rolled death randoms?
--many guides suggest that my counts can somehow "summon thralls, based on blood path level" or "amass vampires." I can't figure out what they're talking about. The guides are also inconsitent about when thye are talking about vamp counts and when they are tlaking about vamp lords.
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
I believe that the thralls and wolves that you get are upkeepless.
As LA Ulm you have a bunch of weird tricks, and they do not all come online at the same time. You are basically required by law to have an Awake or Dormant Blood/Death god, because otherwise you can't do the really nifty vampire count trick.
Ghoul Guardians can be led by anyone who has Death or Blood. Blood only lets them lead 5, so you'll end up mixing ghoul guardians in with tactically similar zweihanders.
The bottom line as Ulm is that you're like Pangaea or MA Ermor - you're constantly increasing the rate at which you freespawn. You're not very much like LA Ermor or Rlyeh, whose freespawn rates are pretty static relative to nation size. In a long enough game, you will b producing more waves of troops than anyone in the era. Yes, even Ermor and Pangaea. But it takes a while to get going. Until then you have stealthy archers armed with bows or crossbows, and heavy infantry available with big two handed weapons or shields.
-Username17
As LA Ulm you have a bunch of weird tricks, and they do not all come online at the same time. You are basically required by law to have an Awake or Dormant Blood/Death god, because otherwise you can't do the really nifty vampire count trick.
Ghoul Guardians can be led by anyone who has Death or Blood. Blood only lets them lead 5, so you'll end up mixing ghoul guardians in with tactically similar zweihanders.
The bottom line as Ulm is that you're like Pangaea or MA Ermor - you're constantly increasing the rate at which you freespawn. You're not very much like LA Ermor or Rlyeh, whose freespawn rates are pretty static relative to nation size. In a long enough game, you will b producing more waves of troops than anyone in the era. Yes, even Ermor and Pangaea. But it takes a while to get going. Until then you have stealthy archers armed with bows or crossbows, and heavy infantry available with big two handed weapons or shields.
-Username17
To make up for the undeniably awesome stuff that LA ulm gets, you get some significant drawbacks. Magic diversity is overwhelmingly poor. Pretty much only astral and earth are the only magics you really "do." Black priests look fantastic as longterm mages, with a forgebonus and bloodstones it isn't unreasonable that you will eventually have most of them be E4 in combat, which is pretty potent given that they have a highly scalable national spell, as well as access to magma eruption and rain of stones.
No cheap bloodhunters inside of the capital. Pretty much only the members of the second tier can reliably get blood at all, and they are pretty expensive and nonsacred. It is very easy to struggle to get a decent income pre construction 4.
Pretender much be awake or asleep in order to use the vampires at all. If you don't start in year two, it probably isn't going to happen at a reasonable time.
Takes a lot of research to get going compared to other nations of the same era. You need construction 4 and evocation 6 in the second year. For a faction that isn't named bogarus that is a ton of research, especially when you look at a nation that has 3 paths on its most powerful mage. And if you really want to leverage your freespawn, you also need alteration tossed in there and to use fort time to get non mages.
Overall I haven't really found a pretender that really helps them overcome the magic diversity problem while also allowing fast vamps and decent scales.
No cheap bloodhunters inside of the capital. Pretty much only the members of the second tier can reliably get blood at all, and they are pretty expensive and nonsacred. It is very easy to struggle to get a decent income pre construction 4.
Pretender much be awake or asleep in order to use the vampires at all. If you don't start in year two, it probably isn't going to happen at a reasonable time.
Takes a lot of research to get going compared to other nations of the same era. You need construction 4 and evocation 6 in the second year. For a faction that isn't named bogarus that is a ton of research, especially when you look at a nation that has 3 paths on its most powerful mage. And if you really want to leverage your freespawn, you also need alteration tossed in there and to use fort time to get non mages.
Overall I haven't really found a pretender that really helps them overcome the magic diversity problem while also allowing fast vamps and decent scales.