[Dominions 3] Granfalu v. 0.3

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Avoraciopoctules
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[Dominions 3] Granfalu v. 0.3

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Current build: 0.51
http://www.mediafire.com/?8y58f9c5uv28b12

Old post sblocked below
=================
This is the first public release of a nation mod for Late Age Dominions 3. It introduces a nation founded by High Seraphs who invaded Bogarus after learning glamour magic in the land of LA Atlantis.

http://www.mediafire.com/?gkz5zij7hdpp1ai

This is based on the mod Akula and I were working on together, but I've made some changes in the course of rebuilding it from broken Hesalt 2.0

This is in-progress, but I think it is basically functional right now.

---------------

Known issues:
Nation description is too long, gets cut off midway in-game
Shorter nation description entries currently blank
Lots of units haven't been added yet

EDIT:
you will need to copy the image folder and .dm file into your mods folder.
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Thu Jul 21, 2011 4:06 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Orion »

Is it intended that Granfalu prefers Cold 0? IIRC even Bogarus prefers Cold 1.

What's the deal with Frost Knights? A lot of nations have sacred heavy cavalry in 50g range, you're asking me to pay 60 gold for a non-sacred. Lightly-armored heavy cavalry that isn't faster than my infantry, and can't fight effectively outside dominion.

Leadership values are wacky. First off, nobody has better than leadership 40, and your mages have leadership 10. This is bad news for a faction with 11-resource archers and 9-resource linemen. Second, Seraphines have Leadership 40 now for no reason. Throw something in he fluff text justifying that. Third--it's totally nutso that the Paladin, an expensive military man who has the organizational skills to mount inquisitions and patrols, has leadership-40. Give him 80 or even 120.

EDIT: I have some concerns about how far their magic can get them. I'm a very novice player, but my understanding is that even in the Late Age, most factions have access to level-3 mages in at least one path. Granfalu has a 1/160 chance of A3 or W3, and then nothing. The only comparable faction that springs to mind is LA Ulm, another stealth communion nation. Ulm has freespawns, Blood, and greater path diversity. Meanwhile Late Caelum has easy A3s and D3s.

To look at it another way, apart from communions and clams, what can Granfalu do out of the box? They can't forge Air Boosters, can't forge Robes of the Sea until they get Water Bracelets, can't climb the Nature ladder faster than anyone with tribals, and don't have enough astral to forge any boosters either. There's no way for them to get to high-end forging or rituals apart from their pretender, in any path.
Last edited by Orion on Thu May 05, 2011 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

First off, thanks for the feedback. It's going to make a difference in the next build.
Orion wrote:Is it intended that Granfalu prefers Cold 0? IIRC even Bogarus prefers Cold 1.
No. I should definitely do something about that. Cold 2 feels appropriate.
Orion wrote:What's the deal with Frost Knights? A lot of nations have sacred heavy cavalry in 50g range, you're asking me to pay 60 gold for a non-sacred. Lightly-armored heavy cavalry that isn't faster than my infantry, and can't fight effectively outside dominion.
They are priced kinda arbitrarily right now. My intent is to make them something that can be recruited more than regular knights (I reduced the base resource cost, though the increased cost of ice armor may more than offset it) and/or something super tough. Last I checked, the HP for Frost Knights was 15, a bit above normal, but I welcome ideas for turning it into a better / more balanced unit. For now, I'll reduce the gcost.

There's currently a hero version of the Frost Knight, if you haven't seen it yet.
Orion wrote:Leadership values are wacky. First off, nobody has better than leadership 40, and your mages have leadership 10. This is bad news for a faction with 11-resource archers and 9-resource linemen. Second, Seraphines have Leadership 40 now for no reason. Throw something in he fluff text justifying that. Third--it's totally nutso that the Paladin, an expensive military man who has the organizational skills to mount inquisitions and patrols, has leadership-40. Give him 80 or even 120.
Good ideas, I hadn't really thought about leadership values till now.
Orion wrote:EDIT: I have some concerns about how far their magic can get them.
I'm a very novice player, but my understanding is that even in the Late Age, most factions have access to level-3 mages in at least one path. Granfalu has a 1/160 chance of A3 or W3, and then nothing. The only comparable faction that springs to mind is LA Ulm, another stealth communion nation. Ulm has freespawns, Blood, and greater path diversity. Meanwhile Late Caelum has easy A3s and D3s.

To look at it another way, apart from communions and clams, what can Granfalu do out of the box? They can't forge Air Boosters, can't forge Robes of the Sea until they get Water Bracelets, can't climb the Nature ladder faster than anyone with tribals, and don't have enough astral to forge any boosters either. There's no way for them to get to high-end forging or rituals apart from their pretender, in any path.
I intend to give Granfalu a higher-power mage, and also one with a Forge Bonus. The High Seraph is going to have 2 paths at level 2, some randoms, and maybe 1 more at level 1. Still thinking about the specifics. If I go with Akula's ideas for the Starlight Crafter, I think it'll have a Forge Bonus of 15 and 2 paths at 1.
----------------------------------------
The units currently slated for addition in v0.4:
- High Seraph
- Flying Light Infantry
- Flying Heavy Infantry, Glamoured, Sacred, Cap-only

Units planned for v0.5
- Starlight Crafter
- Sixfold Angel
- Great Seer (Hero)
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Version 0.4:
http://www.mediafire.com/?uyuugpi9rf35wlk

- Both added and edited some text in various descriptions.
- Three new units.
- Boosted magic on a bunch of stuff, made changes in response to Orion's post.
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Post by Orion »

Hmm. You may have gone overboard with the magic, actually. Give me some time to think about it.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I think the weirdest thing I tried in this version was the Seers:

They can Summon Allies 1 Phantasmal Knight per turn and slowly generate Phantasmal Warriors in strong friendly dominion.
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Post by Orion »

Okay, I'm not saying the magic units are too strong now. I'm still making up my mind. But I want to make clear that there's a difference between saying a faction doesn't have strong enough *magic* and saying it doesn't have strong enough *units*.

When I'm thinking "is this faction strong in magic" I'm running a checklist to see things like:

--Do they have a good blood hunter? (If so they can get into blood summoning eventually)

--Do they get an N2? (this lets you make Thistle Mace and bootstrap up Nature)

--Do they get a D2? (who can forge a Skull Staff and then summon a Mound Fiend)

--Do they get an A3? (who can make storms in battle) An A4? (air boosters)

--How much S do they have? (No real breakpoint. Base S2 means teleport squads, base S3 means cheap teleport squads, S3 ever means empowerment then magic rings, S4 ever means rings without empowerment, etc.)

-- Do they have E/S, W/F, or any other notable awesome path combos?

--Do they have enough of any path to race for elemental royalty, early globals (mother oak), etc.?

These are the kinds of things I was worried about when I said they might not have good enough magic. The original build didn't have any tools for getting into high-level blood, death, or nature. They had enough astral to be useful, but not enough to get to rings without a pretender. They couldn't forge air boosters. So they were pretty much stuck with Water as the only path they could use to its full extent.

The High Seraph goes a long way, though it's a little worrisome that he depends on randoms to do anything. ~1/32 high seraphs can make thistle mace, air boosters, or rings of sorcery with an empower. I'm not sure that's reliable enough for a 300g capitol only mage.

Anyway the key point to remember is that this is a totally separate issue from the other question, "How good are the mages" For mages, the key questions are

--Is there a cost-effective research mage? If so, is it also useful in combat?

--is their best build-anywhere mage good in combat?

--is there a cost-effective communion slave?

--How difficult are the mages to build? (Fort only, fort+library, or Fort+lib+temple?)

--Are their paths good for battle magic? Are their non-random paths good enough to spam something useful at "critical mass".

--What kind of fatigue, survival, and utility do their mages get?

By this rubric, their Seraph is an *amazing* unit. He's a pretty efficient researcher who stays effective at any drain or magic scale, and can quickly leave the lab, fight, and return to researching. 75% of them have either 2 picks in a blasting path or are communion capable. A lot of factions pay over a hundred gold for a mage with 3 picks and nothing else going for them. 150 for sacred flying stealth communicants is a damn good deal.

The old Seer was also already worth the price. I mean, you mostly built Seraphs. But he was a guaranteed communicant, a teleporter with a cap, a fortune teller, and he could spam huge banishments as a communion master. With the new buffs, I think he may actually be the primary mage you build, and he may be a little too good. I'm not certain though. Summoning knights is definitely not worth the magetime. The Phantasmal warriors probably build up too slowly to be overpowered. The real question is just whether the extra half-path pushes him too much.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I dropped the random from the seer, as the High Seraph is definitely intended to the most valuable mage of the faction. I'd like to keep the phantasmal warriors in some form, as could play into the flavor of Granfalu's currently envisioned lategame where increasingly powerful astral magic pulls eldritch monstrosities from the ice mirrors.

What sort of paths would you like to see on the High Seraph if it was to be less random-dependent?

Also, what do you think of the idea of making normal Seraphs non-sacred, then cutting the price a bit?

-----------------------

I'm looking at a flavor branchpoint here now that I am considering human mages. I could keep the fivefold angel cult from Bogarus, now led by Granfalu wingless and worshiping the Caelians, or I could have an order of glamoured human assassins who the Caelians used to completely root out the old dark magics of Bogarus.
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Post by Orion »

I have no strong opinion. If you look at LA Caelum, they pay 140 gold for either Harab Seraphs or Caelian seraphs, both of whom have 3 paths and are non-sacred and unglamored. Okay, the Harabs arguably have better paths, but still-- it's obvious that the basic Granfalu Seraphs are above the curve right now.

That might be okay though--they're the best thing Granfalu has going for it, right now. Compare the other way-- Calum's capitol-only mage is way better than the one Granfalu gets, coming in cheaper, with priest levels, and really solid paths. E2, A3, and D3 are all reliably buildable.

So the question becomes, which of your units you want to "push". In terms of concrete advice, all I can say is-- it's kinda weird that the regular Seraphs are currently sacred and the high seraphs aren't. I'd change one or the other.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I think that I'll drop the sacred status of the regular Seraphs for now at least. That's a code artifact left from Hesalt 2.0, and I'd like to emphasize a distinction between most of the Caelian mages and the Granfalu church. That also means dropping the sixfold angel cult in favor of glamoured human assassins, but that's fine, as the self-mutilating angel cultists were a bit grimdark for my tastes anyways.

What sort of human mages do we want to see? I'm thinking of 3 things right now:
- Crafting mage with S1, a chance of another path at 1. 15 Forge Bonus.
- Illusionist who can assassinate.
- Maybe some kind of nature mage, since that path already shows up in mages of this faction.
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Post by Orion »

So I've taken a closer look at other Late Age factions and... either I was overestimating the amount of magic you actually need, or there are a lot of bullshit factions in the late age.

I mean, Utgard has comparable magic to Granfalu, maybe a little weaker-- but they're giants. Midgard's mages are bullshit terrible, but at least they have vans. I have to admit, I can't really give good balancing advice until I have a sense of what the military is going to look like, and how good the sacred birds actually are.

On the other hand, Late Man has literally none of the things I said a faction needs, and yet... look at them in the Den game. Hmm.
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Post by name_here »

Late Man has crazy bullshit ranged attacks and castles, plus they get 120% taxes with no unrest simply by using one guy.

Plus, in the Den game they got a shitton of indies with badass magic, IIRC. I haven't really been following it.
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Post by Gnosticism Is A Hoot »

name_here wrote:Late Man has crazy bullshit ranged attacks and castles, plus they get 120% taxes with no unrest simply by using one guy.

Plus, in the Den game they got a shitton of indies with badass magic, IIRC. I haven't really been following it.
Also, Zine's been totally owning the diplomacy metagame in that game (up until the recent drama catastrofuck, at least).
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I discussed this mod with Akula, and he feels that all the Caelian units should be made sacred, with only humans recruitable in non-capital forts. The idea is to make the faction something that really benefits from a bless.

I don't think I agree, as I rather like the idea of a faction that can generate a Seraphine and some slightly upgraded light Caelian infantry out of every fort as stealthy flying raiders. That would strongly encourage enemies to buy enough PD to fend off lighter surprise attacks in all of their provinces.

Also, if there's a high seraph recruitable, people will almost never grab the regular Seraph.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Been a while since I released an update, and I was just reminded of that. Here's what should be a functional v0.5. Don't remember too much of what I was doing before, but I just added an override to the base appearance of phantasmal warriors that makes them look distinct from regular soldiers on the world map.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2hlm169lmty1du4
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

V. 0.51
http://www.mediafire.com/?8y58f9c5uv28b12

- Further blurred Phantasmal Warrior graphic
- Caelian Seraph and Seer no longer holy
- Caelian Seer costs 210 Gold, 4 Resources base
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