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Dominions 4 modding

Johannes

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I'm getting back to Dominions 4 after a few months pause. None of the recent balancemods are very appealing to me, and vanilla ofc has its faults as well.

So I'm thinking if I should make a new version of Dominions Rebalanced (the original dom4 balancemod everything else is based on). Otoh it's some work when I could just be happy playing vanilla just as well, but otoh it's satisfying in its own way to fiddle with the numbers. But how others receive it matters a bit as well.


What is the kodexer's opinion - what makes or breaks a balance mod, what does it need for you to prefer it to vanilla, and should one absolutely not have - what are dealbreakers that turn you away with disgust?

Dayyālu KoolNoodles Harpsichord Maggot hoverdog mondblut raw sqeecoo Lizzurd Muty Joined on the 4th of July thesheeep Anhur coldcrow Grimwulf
 

Maggot

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I'm too inexperienced with Dominions 4 to really discuss any kind of balance but if a codex game uses it I'll download it.
 

thesheeep

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I didn't test too many mods yet.
The worthy heroes one is pretty much a standard. Never even participated in a game that didn't have it. So just incorporating that one would probably give any mod some community love.

Other than that, I've seen mods fixing UW nations (making them less shit) used quite often and also the MagicEnhanced mod (which adds some more national spells & items and overhauls others minimally).

I think to have a mod see actual usage in Dom4 community, it must not be too invasive (like, not change completely how something works), changes should be explained well and laid out, obviously not buggy, and the changes/additions that are done should have a reason.
So not just changing/adding things for shits and giggles, but because it was actually required - and I think lots of stuff needs some changing.

Me, personally, would like to see a mod giving some love to UW nations (as I mostly play them), not necessarily making them much stronger (maybe just a bit), but mostly focusing on other things like making many more spells castable UW (for example, makes 0 sense I cannot create/summon some amphibious creatures UW), adding some specific UW items (there is a ton of items giving UW breathing to loads of soldiers, but only one item that makes a single commander capable of walking on dry land), etc.

Animals are also pretty much useless right now due to their shitty MR and/or low morale.

I guess everyone who plays a few nations regularly knows some things that need improvement without making the nation too strong. So if you intend on changing something about a nation, ask people who played those nations more than once. They should know.

There are also spells that simply cost far too much (like Gift Of Reason) or are never used because they are never useful. Those should be changed as well.
 

coldcrow

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My opinion as intermediate player:
- should attempt to balance things which are far too cheap/easily attainable for their effect (RoS, Burden of Time)
- give weaker nations a bit more leeway
- manually price pretenders

and whatever you find personally important to change.
Also should be compatible to some of the major mods (Worthy Heroes, MagicExpanded).
 
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I've recently played both vanilla and summod games. Both are ok I guess. I feel Dominions is complex in a way that fiddling with its numbers doesn't much disturb its overall balance. (don't know if that makes sense...)

Maybe the real Dominions way of balancing is adding even more stuff into the game. Pick up some interesting mod nations that don't conflict with the existing lore, roughly balance them against each other and the existing vanilla nations, and pack em up.
+M
 

sqeecoo

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I'm a pretty new player still struggling with learning just the basic game, so I'd definitely prefer a mod that doesn't change a lot - i.e. the changes are easily trackable. I think vanilla is decent: while obviously not balanced, every nation has a shot if you play it well. RoS is perhaps the only thing I feel should be tweaked a bit. I don't consider it OP, but I think that the asymmetry between nations with easily recruitable RoS casters and everyone else is a bit too big. Compared with Fog Warriors which is stronger, most nations can drag themselves to being able to cast it one way or another - and you only really need one caster per big army. More or less doable for everyone, but covering the map in RoS traps is not.

Other than that, there are obviously tons of items and summons that could use a bit of tweaking to make them more viable. As I said, I'd go slow and minimalistic on this, so you can track the effect of the changes and not turn off players by making too many changes for them to keep track of. Of course, it's your decision on whether you aim for a balanced vanilla version or more radical changes.
 
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Well the only mod I like to use is Magic Enchanted, because it adds a lot of intresting (and unbalanced) things. It adds flavour instead of making everything more boring.

I wouldn't easily use any balance mod that aims to balance nations between each other. I like my shitnations as they are, a challenge to play. There's enough good nations for the very rare high level games.

A good balance mod would attempt to make useless stuff workable. The problem is that there's so much of it. Presenting the changes to the player would already be a problem.

Currently I don't think there's a popular mod that does a relatively small number of relatively low-impact improvements nobody disagrees with. Like making Imprint Souls better. Nobody in their right mind would ever cast that at 25 pearls, what the hell.
 

Johannes

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Maybe the real Dominions way of balancing is adding even more stuff into the game. Pick up some interesting mod nations that don't conflict with the existing lore, roughly balance them against each other and the existing vanilla nations, and pack em up.
+M
That's certainly one way to go about it but personally I hate it. At that point it's much more about who finds the best unbalanced combo to use (ofc it's a skill too to find and use them properly), than about normal play. Crazy mod games can be fun but I rather it be separate from the basic game (can play nationgens stuff for example, where everything's fresh - prefer that to halfway solutions).

Already the thing that turns me off Summod is the changes to LA Pythium for example. I don't know how it works exactly, but that's exactly the problem - a lot of new shit added replacing the old, kills the racial purity and is a hassle to learn not just for the guy playing the nation, but for people fighting against it. Or adding a new crazy good mage for MA Caelum who certainly don't need it.


I wouldn't easily use any balance mod that aims to balance nations between each other. I like my shitnations as they are, a challenge to play. There's enough good nations for the very rare high level games.

A good balance mod would attempt to make useless stuff workable. The problem is that there's so much of it. Presenting the changes to the player would already be a problem.
You mean useless stuff as in useless generic spells? But not touching the useless national stuff as much?

(Imo, it's more important to balance the nations internally that you have more ways to play a single nation. Balancing them against each other is less important outside the big outliers, since you can really never achieve that goal fully.

Currently I don't think there's a popular mod that does a relatively small number of relatively low-impact improvements nobody disagrees with. Like making Imprint Souls better. Nobody in their right mind would ever cast that at 25 pearls, what the hell.
The problem is, there's SO MUCH of this useless stuff. If you do a small number of low-impact improvements, why not do a big number of them? Already checking all the obviously shitty summons and remote-attack spells gives you a very long list.

I think if you wanted to keep the scope limited in order to keep the changelog concise, you wouldn't touch crappy tertiary spells like that at all. But make a few clear changes to critical stuff that you like (say, RoS), and buff some critical elements like Domes, or GoR, that are interesting and unique but simply overpriced in vanilla.
 

mondblut

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Balance is overrated (as long as I get to play something OP :lol:). I only play with content mods to exploit more OP shit.
 

Dayyālu

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I share most of thesheeep 's points.

I don't play with gameplay-changing mods, as I enjoy more the hands-off approach of the Dominions devs (we do the thing for fun and "flavour") plus I'm a terrible player that often enjoys more lore-compliant solutions than optimal play. The Heroes mods are fun even for a lorefag like me, though.

Gameplay wise, simple unit balance is hard. Bar very few nations after the midgame everything bar sacreds becomes chaff. Heavy gameplay changes to infantry units are mostly useless, as even in the earlygame the only gamechangers are crossbows and rarely heavy cav in incredibly specific situations.

If you want a random list of what I would like as limited gameplay changes:

+ RoS nerf, for obvious reasons. Also Earthquake nerf, for obvious reasons. Everything that hits all the battlefield without counters shold be a tad difficult to research, as it invalidates the basics of most lategame armies (mages phalanxes). Stuff like Firestorm that can easily be countered IF you prepare is kosher, though. The true problem are the optimal lulz options that have no direct counter.

+ Air needs a tad of rebalance. Air spam and Air buffs are simply too good. Air counters are too weak, even mass protection spells do not protect against massive Air spam. Maybe this is a pet problem of mine, though, as there are strategical solutions to that.

+ Domes and economical spells. Domes need to be more powerful and cheaper, if you want to change something. Eco spells are now limited to Blood and Air (and that just for coastal provinces) but a tad more flexibility on that side would be great. It would increase micro for obvious reasons though.

+ UW needs work. Combat spells are needed, something for W at least. As UW combat is mostly blocks of buffed infantry, some nations DO need some buffs (MA Atlantis) and maybe let people move more than MM1.

+ Adding more crap won't work, as there is already a ton of content and we don't want to go the CBM way (the Dom3 mod was called CBM, right? I'm old).

On single nation balance, Both EA and MA Atlantis need a research monkey (MA Atl has coastal recruits for that).

I know, not a lot of suggestions, but bloated mods with controversial decisions (SumMod) aren't my cup of tea.
 
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+ RoS nerf, for obvious reasons. Also Earthquake nerf, for obvious reasons. Everything that hits all the battlefield without counters shold be a tad difficult to research, as it invalidates the basics of most lategame armies (mages phalanxes). Stuff like Firestorm that can easily be countered IF you prepare is kosher, though. The true problem are the optimal lulz options that have no direct counter.

I'm sure there's a long thread about this on some forum, but battlefield clears are countered by not building a doomstack.
 
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That's certainly one way to go about it but personally I hate it. At that point it's much more about who finds the best unbalanced combo to use (ofc it's a skill too to find and use them properly), than about normal play. Crazy mod games can be fun but I rather it be separate from the basic game (can play nationgens stuff for example, where everything's fresh - prefer that to halfway solutions).

I was thinking of a mod that would allow non-crazy mod nation games. With nations that are well thought out and themed. Certainly not the sillyness of nation gen. Just taking out the most obvious overpowered bs would go a long way.

As for the balance mod you were thinking when you made this thread: Demnogonis' small number of low-impact changes is probably the best approach.
 

Dayyālu

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I'm sure there's a long thread about this on some forum, but battlefield clears are countered by not building a doomstack.

Desura before the nuking.

Strategical solutions exist also for RoS spam (gem limits, remote attack spells) but RoS and Earthquake are both too cheap and too easily spammed. An unsupported doomstack deserves to be nuked by Grip of Winter or anything: nuking a doomstack without effort with 500 G and four gems means something is wrong. In before "you should then go for SC" et cetera et cetera: everything has been discussed to death, and it's widely recognized that "no counters" is a problem.

I was thinking of a mod that would allow non-crazy mod nation games. With nations that are well thought out and themed. Certainly not the sillyness of nation gen. Just taking out the most obvious overpowered bs would go a long way.

Eh, most mod nations are crazy strong. Our Warhams game had so many broken combos, enough to make a grown man weep (Bretonnian berserk infantry for a start).
 
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I was thinking of a mod that would allow non-crazy mod nation games. With nations that are well thought out and themed. Certainly not the sillyness of nation gen. Just taking out the most obvious overpowered bs would go a long way.

Eh, most mod nations are crazy strong. Our Warhams game had so many broken combos, enough to make a grown man weep (Bretonnian berserk infantry for a start).
Right. That's why it would be great if someone collected a set of mod nations that are not crazy strong, but are still interesting. Or have the crazy strongs too, just nerf them all down to middle ground vanilla levels.
 
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Counterpoint to RoS OP is that it's fun trying to find out ways to beat it. I tried a Golem SC, flying attacks by Pegaus Amazons, teleporting Rishi to gemburn, Sword of Aurgelmer, Only Tough Mages, Rudra SC's (yes I knew they're not SC's or even thugs but they look so badass) and mind hunt. While I still lost quite a number of mages, I felt it was because Bandar is a piece of shit nation I was outplayed.

I'm on the camp that mage deathballs need a counter that is not another deathball.
 

Harpsichord

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(Imo, it's more important to balance the nations internally that you have more ways to play a single nation. Balancing them against each other is less important outside the big outliers, since you can really never achieve that goal fully.
This is pretty much what I was going to suggest. I don't have enough experience to really say what is and isn't a problem, and I also don't feel like it would improve the overall experience of the game if nations were balanced against one another.

While not as much the case as it was in Dominions 3, many factions still have a lot of units you pretty much never use. In some cases I don't know how you could fix this, like the Ri and Vanadrott are more or less pointless but at the same time the last thing they need is a buff because they belong to already strong factions.

It would also be interesting to see some changes that emphasized stuff like raider, philosopher, heretic, and cause unrest. You know, the stuff that can have a significant effect but it doesn't translate to quicker summons or direct combat skills.
 

Johannes

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I'm on the camp that mage deathballs need a counter that is not another deathball.
Counters as in winning the game, they absolutely have. To me it seems rather sensible that the most expensive and slow armies, beat smaller forces as a rule (not that yoou can't beat bigger armies with smaller forces / SCs if you plan it well). A deathball can still be just at 1 place at a time, which many times is a poor use of the resources involved. And you can attrition them burning their gems each turn etc., even without RoS. Or a RoS caster who's a tad more expensive is still insanely cost-effective if at the right place at the right time.

But big army vs army battles are among the best things the game offers, don't want to have them too rare. It's also very map dependant how useful bunching all your troops together into a single blob makes sense - how much chokepoints there is, etc.


(Imo, it's more important to balance the nations internally that you have more ways to play a single nation. Balancing them against each other is less important outside the big outliers, since you can really never achieve that goal fully.
This is pretty much what I was going to suggest. I don't have enough experience to really say what is and isn't a problem, and I also don't feel like it would improve the overall experience of the game if nations were balanced against one another.

While not as much the case as it was in Dominions 3, many factions still have a lot of units you pretty much never use. In some cases I don't know how you could fix this, like the Ri and Vanadrott are more or less pointless but at the same time the last thing they need is a buff because they belong to already strong factions.
The problem is, that when you do just a handful of minor low-key changes per nation, then for items, then for spells, you end up with a huge list for people to look through. Which can be daunting and offputting even if you don't disagree with any individual change per se, plus as the number of changes increases it gets ever more likelier that there are changes that are offputting to you for whatever reason, even if they might be small.

I do think nation vs. nation balance is relevant to enjoyment of the game, it's just such an imprecise art - bringing the obvious best and worst a bit closer to the middle is important but stressing about it too much is unproductive, you can't get rid of the RPS nature of national matchups either no matter what you do. You don't have to do too much to make it really muddy which nations are the strongest.


I share most of thesheeep 's points.

I don't play with gameplay-changing mods, as I enjoy more the hands-off approach of the Dominions devs (we do the thing for fun and "flavour") plus I'm a terrible player that often enjoys more lore-compliant solutions than optimal play. The Heroes mods are fun even for a lorefag like me, though.
I don't see how a non-balancemod preference stems from that? If you change the balance so that playing in a more thematic way results in better success, isn't that good?


Gameplay wise, simple unit balance is hard. Bar very few nations after the midgame everything bar sacreds becomes chaff. Heavy gameplay changes to infantry units are mostly useless, as even in the earlygame the only gamechangers are crossbows and rarely heavy cav in incredibly specific situations.
I don't think simple unit balance is hard. It's fairly straightforward to see which units clearly outshine another (inside a given national roster), then alter them to be such that almost every unit is legitimately useful at least in some (even if rare) scenario. What kind of chaff you wield may not be the most important thing, but still it does matter. And IMO it looks and feels much cooler when you have more different types of units on the battlefield.

Me, personally, would like to see a mod giving some love to UW nations (as I mostly play them), not necessarily making them much stronger (maybe just a bit), but mostly focusing on other things like making many more spells castable UW (for example, makes 0 sense I cannot create/summon some amphibious creatures UW), adding some specific UW items (there is a ton of items giving UW breathing to loads of soldiers, but only one item that makes a single commander capable of walking on dry land), etc.
There's 3 items that do the latter - Robe of the Sea, Shambler Skin, and Amulet of the Fish. Alas it's not possible to mod a troop air-breathing item...
 

thesheeep

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Me, personally, would like to see a mod giving some love to UW nations (as I mostly play them), not necessarily making them much stronger (maybe just a bit), but mostly focusing on other things like making many more spells castable UW (for example, makes 0 sense I cannot create/summon some amphibious creatures UW), adding some specific UW items (there is a ton of items giving UW breathing to loads of soldiers, but only one item that makes a single commander capable of walking on dry land), etc.
There's 3 items that do the latter - Robe of the Sea, Shambler Skin, and Amulet of the Fish. Alas it's not possible to mod a troop air-breathing item...
Didn't even know that about Robe of the Sea & Shambler Skin.
Weird. Did that change at some point?

But anyway, the worst part about that is that some good troops cannot be brought on land. I'd accept them being somewhat weaker on land (lower stats or whatever), but as it is now, you simply don't buy purely aquatic troops outside of UW wars. And even then, probably not...
Same for summoning krakens or animals UW outside of siege defending.
Shame that it is not possible to mod a troop air-breathing item. It would truly solve the problem, while being an appropriate additional cost to balance the advantages of being an UW nation.

Another possible solution would be to have special troops in coastal provinces that are actually worth recruiting.
Therodos actually does that somewhat right, being able to recruit at least mediocre troops on land. Which is funny, because you'd almost never buy those troops because your free chaff is extremely awesome and you will dump your scales to get even more of that chaff.
MA Oceania does complete nonsense by removing the only two troop types you'll ever buy from coastal forts (despite both being amphibious and one even stronger on land than underwater!).
I'm pretty sure every UW nation has some recruitment absurdity like that.

A more brute-force solution would be to let all recruitable aquatic troops (where it makes some sense lore-wise) be amphibious instead, albeit somewhat weaker on land to make up for it.

Though outside of the scale of modding (I guess?), I'd really like to see a third breathing type. Coastal-amphibious. Troops can be in coastal areas, but need to drop into water every once in a while so they cannot move to non-coastal land. Summon hippos. Heh :lol:
 
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mondblut

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But anyway, the worst part about that is that some good troops cannot be brought on land. I'd accept them being somewhat weaker on land (lower stats or whatever), but as it is now, you simply don't buy purely aquatic troops outside of UW wars. And even then, probably not...
Same for summoning krakens or animals UW outside of siege defending.
Shame that it is not possible to mod a troop air-breathing item. It would truly solve the problem, while being an appropriate additional cost to balance the advantages of being an UW nation.

I have a hard time imagining fishes walking on land, airbreathing or not.
 

thesheeep

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Use your imagination better, then.
Obviously, the magic item surrounds each fish with an aura of permanent water to swim in.
And of course, just as is the case the other way around, the stats would be lowered on the "wrong" terrain.

I can hardly see an elephant being more dangerous underwater than a shark would be on land. Both would be hampered.
 

mondblut

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I can hardly see an elephant being more dangerous underwater than a shark would be on land. Both would be hampered.

Water-breathing elephant will be hampered underwater. Air-breathing shark will be immobile out of the water, beyond randomly thrashing about on the spot.

There is a reason UW amphibs all have land shapes where they cast off their tails and get proper legs.
 

thesheeep

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I can hardly see an elephant being more dangerous underwater than a shark would be on land. Both would be hampered.

Water-breathing elephant will be hampered underwater. Air-breathing shark will be immobile out of the water, beyond randomly thrashing about on the spot.
Are you willingly ignoring what I write?

Obviously, the magic item surrounds each fish with an aura of permanent water to swim in.
Problem solved. They're swimming around in a water bubble around them.
In this setting, anything is possible and magic always has a solution.

But it's all moot, anyway, since you cannot create such an item.
 

Johannes

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Me, personally, would like to see a mod giving some love to UW nations (as I mostly play them), not necessarily making them much stronger (maybe just a bit), but mostly focusing on other things like making many more spells castable UW (for example, makes 0 sense I cannot create/summon some amphibious creatures UW), adding some specific UW items (there is a ton of items giving UW breathing to loads of soldiers, but only one item that makes a single commander capable of walking on dry land), etc.
There's 3 items that do the latter - Robe of the Sea, Shambler Skin, and Amulet of the Fish. Alas it's not possible to mod a troop air-breathing item...
Didn't even know that about Robe of the Sea & Shambler Skin.
Weird. Did that change at some point?
Yes, same patch that buffed other UW stuff a lot. But it's a long time ago patch.


But anyway, the worst part about that is that some good troops cannot be brought on land. I'd accept them being somewhat weaker on land (lower stats or whatever), but as it is now, you simply don't buy purely aquatic troops outside of UW wars. And even then, probably not...
Same for summoning krakens or animals UW outside of siege defending.
Shame that it is not possible to mod a troop air-breathing item. It would truly solve the problem, while being an appropriate additional cost to balance the advantages of being an UW nation.

Another possible solution would be to have special troops in coastal provinces that are actually worth recruiting.
Therodos actually does that somewhat right, being able to recruit at least mediocre troops on land. Which is funny, because you'd almost never buy those troops because your free chaff is extremely awesome and you will dump your scales to get even more of that chaff.
MA Oceania does complete nonsense by removing the only two troop types you'll ever buy from coastal forts (despite both being amphibious and one even stronger on land than underwater!).
I'm pretty sure every UW nation has some recruitment absurdity like that.

A more brute-force solution would be to let all recruitable aquatic troops (where it makes some sense lore-wise) be amphibious instead, albeit somewhat weaker on land to make up for it.

Though outside of the scale of modding (I guess?), I'd really like to see a third breathing type. Coastal-amphibious. Troops can be in coastal areas, but need to drop into water every once in a while so they cannot move to non-coastal land. Summon hippos. Heh :lol:
While it would be nice to have some way to go around the Aquatic restriction, I don't think it ever should be very easy - isn't the whole point of UW that it's different, and that there are these restrictions on what you can do? It's what keeps the game interesting, different nations have to do different things to get the most out of them. If you don't like a nation's gimmicks, play another, rather than redesigning it to be so different that people who liked the nation's original form no longer like it.
 

thesheeep

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While it would be nice to have some way to go around the Aquatic restriction, I don't think it ever should be very easy - isn't the whole point of UW that it's different, and that there are these restrictions on what you can do? It's what keeps the game interesting, different nations have to do different things to get the most out of them. If you don't like a nation's gimmicks, play another, rather than redesigning it to be so different that people who liked the nation's original form no longer like it.
Oh, it is not about gimmicks or differences. I wouldn't want it to be too easy for UW troops to go on land. Hence I think a magical item, not to be obtained before Constr. 4 or even 6, would be an ideal solution.
All the things I suggested would change nothing about how UW nations play in general, it would just open up more options than just one in some cases - except the brute force method of giving all amphibious.

But each nation I played so far has these weird shortcomings that simply should be ironed out. And since most of those nations are UW, that's what I can talk about. I could also tell you that Machaka spiders are utterly overpriced, but that's something probably everyone knows already.
A unit that is *never* used should simply not be in the game, or changed to be more useful.
An amphibious unit that can be recruited UW should be recruitable on land (at least in coastal regions) as well, no logical reason it shouldn't.
Therodos dancer units have become completely useless in one of the last patches (and they were already poor before).
...
Taking care of all those points I could bring up about single UW nations would make all of them a lot more playable without suddenly making them super strong in comparison.
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
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Location
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Are you willingly ignoring what I write?

Yup, on the grounds of silliness.

Problem solved. They're swimming around in a water bubble around them.
In this setting, anything is possible and magic always has a solution.

In this setting cold scales make water elementals turn to ice. Care to extend it to magic water bubbles? How about heat and firestorms, shouldn't they, uh, vaporize?

No, not everything is possible. There is a thing called "plausibility", and sharks hunting people on land from within their magical water bubbles that roll wherever they "swim" crashes through it with a roar.
 

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