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[Il Palazzo]

Round Seven-and-a-half begins in this thread on page 16

Round Seven kinda fizzled out after Deadmeatgate, so we're restarting the whole thing.

If somebody password-protects his/her pretender this time, I'll personally find out where you live and send you a whiny postcard that will make you feel really sorry! 

The current setup:
Number of players: 6
Turn time limit: 24h
Era: Late Age
Mod: CBM 1.92
Map: Realm of the Rampaging Roaches
Victory conditions: standard
Other options: hall of fame = 15; renaming allowed; independents' strength = 6;

Game page on llamaserver: http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12Round7andaHalf

Players:

Karlito - Mictlan, Blood and Rain
Robespierre - R'lyeh, Dreamlands
TempAcc - Ulm, Black Forest
Boksi - Patala, Reign of the Nagas
Lorak - Midgård, Age of Men
SimmuraMcCrea - Man, Towers of Chelms




The Independents issues:

Spoiler: Late Winter 01 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Late Spring 03 (click to show/hide)

edit: image lost

Previous rounds: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

(Info spoilered for length)

Spoiler: What is Dominions 3? (click to show/hide)

Dominions 3 is a (surprise!) third installment of a fantasy turn-based strategy games series.
It's main features are immense complexity, simultainous turn resolution, and myriads of customisation options.

The players assume roles of pretender gods, fighting to take up the throne of Pantokrator(or All-Ruler).

Each pretender god leads one of dozens different nation, based on various mythological concepts: there are Jotun giants and Vans from Norse myths, ape-like demons of Lanka, Hellenic Arcoscephale, merpeople of Atlantis, cthulhu myths-based Ry'leh, Hebrew Ashdod, and many more.

Pretenders are designed based on one of the preselected chassis, like the Manticore, a Dragon, lich, stone monolith, or titan. Their dominion's influence can be adjusted to create e.g.peaceful, warm and magical lands under their rule.

There is a very robust magic system, with literally hundreds of spells, ranging from in-battle lightening bolts to world altering doom bringers.

Every unit in the sometimes hundreds-strong armies has individual stats, including age, battle wounds and experience.

Commanders, mages, heroes, priests, magical beasts and pretender gods can be equipped with magical items and sent to battle personally, assasinate or seduce enemy commanders, spy and instigate unrest, cast supporting or combat spells, or left at home and work on improving magical knowledge, build fortifications, summon magic beings, raise undead, forge items, hunt for blood slaves, preach god's influence, patrol provinces, search for magic sites in the wild and more.

Battles are resolved automatically, according to the preselected orders for troop formations and commanders.
Here's a youtube video of a large-ish battle to pique your interest. Courtesy of Lorak.

All of you curious people can go and visit the website for more info. You'll notice that the price tag is seriously hefty, but as many of us players can attest, the game is well worth it.

Spoiler: How does MP work? (click to show/hide)

First of all, you need to download the map and the CBM 1.92 mod(links above), and put the files into the map and mod folders of your dom3 installation respectively. Then go to the options menu and enable the mod. Next use the pretender creation tool in the game tools menu to create a pretender and send the file(to be found in your /dominions3/savedgames/newlords; named <your_nation_era_number.2h>, where number is most likely "0" if it's the only pretender you've created so far for this nation.) to "pretenders [at ] llamaserver [dot ] net" with the game name as the subject.
Game name is "Bay12Round7andaHalf".

You'll be recieiving .trn files from llama server, which you shoud put into a {dom3dir}/savedgames/{whatevernameyouwant}/
After finishing your moves, a new .2h file will appear in that folder, which you should send to the same address from which you've recieved your .trn file.

Regarding the rules of conduct:
- no exploits please. Examples of exploits are siegeing a fort infinitely with a string of scouts; sending other players crap items to fill their magic item pool and make them waste gems; anything else you can think of that doesn't feel like it was meant to be a feature. If not sure, ask.
- trade agreements are sacred. Once you decided to exchange some gems/items/gold, you MUST fulfill your side of the agreement.
- no constrains on diplomacy. You can attack anyone you want, with or without warning. It would be, however, in good taste not to rush another player at the very begining of the game. We're all trying to have a good time playing this.
- use forum PMs for diplomacy. The in-game messaging system is seriously flawed(unacceptably slow, and parts of messages tend to dissapear)
- if you want to boast/moan about your progress(or lack thereof) in game, feel free to use this thread to post your screenshots, stories and whatnot.

Useful links:
The wiki, with loads of useful information, including strategy guides. Keep in mind that as a unit/spell/item reference it is in many ways not compatibile with the mod we're using.

Llama Server, which is the automatic hosting server for our game.
Llama Server's map and mod browser

[Karlito]

I've been itching to get some Dominions 3 multiplayer going, and there are never enough open games on the Shrapnel forums, especially for a MP n00b like me. So yeah, I'm down for this, and should be good for a turn/day at least until the end of May when the summer term starts (not too sure of my plans then).

My first preference would be Late Age Mictlan.

[Robespierre]

Hi.
Count me in. I prefer LA R'lyeh.

[Bluerobin]

Hooo... wow. That sounds like a good setup, I'm just not sure about my ability to do a turn a day. I'll think about it though and I'll look into the LA civs to get myself back in the Dom3 mindset. If you end up needing one more player and I'm not around, give me a PM.

[Bluerobin]

Would the game be vanilla or one of the CBMs?

[Il Palazzo]

Definitely CBM. The latest version is 1.92 available from here.
There's a lot of rebalancing in this one. Some new spells and related summons have been added, items have been tweaked(there's a new forging reference included in the files) and some nations play very differently now. I've only seen a bit of the changes, but I liked what I saw. If nothing else, it'll breathe some new life into the game.

ed:typo

[TempAcc]

I love dominions 3 but never really had many oportunies to play it with other people, which is sad since this game has tons of fun potential in multiplayer. Count me in if i can find my key again

[Deadmeat1471]

Def count me in!

Utgard for me!
LA is fine.

[Bluerobin]

Hahahahahahaha oh man... I wanted to look and see what the differences were between CBM 1.92 and vanilla were (expecting a very large list, but willing to at least skim through it) and got this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Changelog for Conceptual Balance Mod version 1.9.

Short version:

- Huge review of items, with the intention of making every item have at least a niche use. Quite a few items recosted (generally downwards in view of the hammer change), others given boosts or even new effects in a few cases. Two-handed weapons are much better. Item descriptions have been updated - there should be no non-obvious changes.
- A PDF Forging Reference is included with the mod - this was a bit of a monster to create, but hopefully will prove useful. This may be worth printing out - I have tried to choose colours so that it will be comprehensible even in black and white. The reference is based on a previous document by Cleveland - thanks Cleveland!
- Boosts to a number of weak nations. EA & MA Agartha, MA Ulm, MA Man, EA Vanheim and EA Helheim in particular benefitted. Other nations to receive some changes include Marverni, Tir na n'Og and Eriu. Great effort has been put in to make the changes interesting and thematic. For example with MA Agartha the challenge was to increase the power of the nation while maintaining the overall theme of sorrow and loss. Hopefully this has been successful.
- Full incorporation of Burnsaber's Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod. Hopefully interactions between land and water nations should be much more interesting. The water nations also receive some new content. Playing Oceania or MA Atlantis should no longer feel so frustrating.
- "Unfun" spells, e.g. Burden of Time and Arcane Nexus, made harder to cast or more expensive
- Small scales tweaks - Production a little better, Order a little less good
- A large number of miscellaneous changes - see the full changelog for details. For example Storm Demons can no longer throw lightning underwater, Tartarians can be Gift of Reasoned again (via a new spell, Restore Soul), Tarrasques and Treelords are better, and some of the most powerful EDM summons got slightly more expensive.
- A lot of bug hunting and miscellaneous fixes.
- Thanks to quantum_mechani for comments and of course having done the huge majority of this mod, Sombre and kianduatha for contributing some code, Larz for his dom3editor which helped with bug hunting, and above all lots of you for the huge number of helpful comments I went through in preparing this update.


Long version:

Miscellaneous changes:
- Fixed innumerable typos with the help of Larz's fantastic dom3editor - thanks Larz!
- Incorporated kianduatha's animals mod (thanks kianduatha!). Provides minor buffs to most animals.
- Asynja, Shishis, Grendelkin and Zmey all got a slight cost increase (actually 5 gems in each case).
- Tarrasques are commanders, with proper slots (head and two miscs).
- Treelords got better again. They now each have thematic domsummons, and 4 misc slots.
- Storm demons' lightning attack is can now be countered by air shield / arrow fend and doesn't work underwater (Storm Demons' massive dominance underwater seemed highly unthematic)
- Thrown boulders now do a small amount of strength-dependent AOE 1 damage from the earth thrown up on impact.
- Although Jotuns have special large weapons, some other giant nations didn't. Added "Giant Spear" weapon to address this (affects Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath, Agartha and some pretenders)
- Soulless priest fix: When priests are turned into Soulless by Life After Death they lose all priest levels, but keep all magic levels.
- Kithaironic Lions are no longer commanders but are somewhat buffed; they now cause fear
- Mummy max age greatly increased, so Ritual of Rebirth does not inflict old age on long-lived heroes
- Small elementals got old at lower ages, meaning that as elementals were damaged they often suffered severe old age. Fixed!
- C'tis sacred serpents got mapmove 2.

Magic sites:
- Using new site modding commands, the extreme cost-reduction sites have been toned down. Those previously removed (e.g. Summoning Circle) have been reintroduced, but greatly reduced in power (Summ
oning Circle gives 30% rather than 60% discount).
- Whispering Woods fixed.

Tartarians:
- New spell added, "Restore Soul". As the old Gift of Reason, but only works on undead. Thaumaturgy 5.
- All Tartarians' Shattered Soul reduced to 20%.

Scales:
- Order income bonus reduced to 6% (was 7%)
- Production income bonus increased to 4% (was 3%)
- Growth income bonus reduced to 2% (was 3%), but pop growth rate increased to 0.3% (was 0.2%)

Sprites:
- A few of the least controversial sprites from the Community Sprite Update mod incorporated.

Items:
- Stats of many weapons changed (almost always buffed) - please check them! Mostly the effect is to make useless weapons non-useless.
- Fire Sword has fire effect
- Ice Sword has freeze effect
- Shadow Brand's Leeching Darkness looks more darknessy
- Fire Bola binds people with AOE 1 (x2 for two bolas)
- Hunter's Knife got much improved attack - now a decent assassin weapon
- Smasher is E1 rather than E2
- Morning stars have less crazy stats (had anomalously high attack)
- Description changes to many items to reflect effects added in this and previous versions of CBM (who knew that Chi Shoes caused Curse Luck?)
- Vine Whip can now be avoided by high defense
- Two-handed weapons do MUCH more damage
- Lightning spear has a nice lightning effect with graphics
- Thunder Bow now fires something more like a Thunder Strike than a Lightning Bolt
- Evening Star's weakness effect tripled (-6 str per hit)
- Dusk Dagger restored to 5D5S, but now has a nasty "Bleeding" damage over time effect
- The Sharpest Tooth may now paralyze victims in addition to its vicious poison (doesn't work if poison immune)
- All 1-handed spears and lances get a charge bonus for first strike (so give that Knight a Lightning Spear!)
- Medallion of Vengeance now contains a vengeful fire spirit which will produce one large explosion per battle, in addition to the explosion on death.
- Ring of Warning whispers to the bearer about incoming arrows and blows, giving them a chance to dodge (acts as a parry 4 shield)
- Owl Quill gives -2 enc (though like other negative encumbrance items, doesn't help cavalry!)
- Bracers of Protection better (+3/+3 def/prot; was +2/+2)
- Astral Serpent is back to 5N5S, but has an unresistable brief paralyze effect on hit. Can be avoided by high def.
- A few cost increases compared to CB1.84; stone idol is 5E5S, pocket ship is 10N5A, unquenched sword is F4, and infernal sword is B3F1
- A number of artifacts made cheaper to forge, including the Flying Ship, Gate Stone, Nethgul, Horror Harmonica, Carcator, the Ankh, Amon Hotep, Tartarians Chains, Summit, Jade Mask and Horror Harmonica
- Boots of Long Strides give a def bonus and a single-use "Charge" attack, effective against smaller opponents
- Weightless shields reduced to 5A (were 10)
- Black Laurels reduced to 5D (were 10)
- Wraith Crown reduced to 15D (from 25)
- Miscellaneous changes to armor stats
- Silver Hauberk is const 4
- Robe of Shadows, Stymphalian Wings, Robe of Invulnerability, Jade Armor and Bone Armor all cheaper to forge
- Green Dragon Scale Mail offers slightly better protection than Red or Blue
- Weightless Scale Mail renamed to Feather Scale, given new description to explain negative encumbrance

Incorporated the remainder of Burnsaber's Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod (was already partially incorporated):
- MANY summon spells and combat spells now work underwater
- Many units gained Poor Amphibian; essentially anything that doesn't need to breathe
- Improved underwater pretenders
- EA and MA underwater nations have 300 gold temples to mitigate against common dominion problems
- Two new (W2/A2) spells that can partly negate UW breathing item penalties
- New summon "Awaken Kelp Ancient" that basically gives you "free" immobile "PD" commander underwater.
- "Living castle" now only reguires nature magic and is cheaper. It can now only be cast from land.
- Vine Men/Ogres & Kings transform into Kelp equivalents if they move underwater, making them amphibious.
- Some uncommon UW indy mage sites and other sites added to slightly balance gem income underwater.
- Some common coastal sites added that give access to good underwater units.
- "Summon Sea Dogs" now reguires W1
- Thetis' Blessing down to ench 7
- "Boil" now reguires just F2
- National changes, listed in their separate sections

Spell changes:
- Arcane Nexus costs more gems
- Burden of Time higher research, requires a more powerful Death mage
- Rain of Stones slightly higher research, gem cost increased to 2
- Astral Corruption slightly higher research, much higher cost (it's only slaves after all)
- Second Sun research level decreased to 6 (was
- Dispel slightly cheaper at 25 gems
- Shimmering Fields has lower path requirement, lower gem cost and longer range, but is research level 9 (was 7)
- Breath of the Dragon damage increased
- Awaken Vine Men gives more vine men to more powerful mages
- Bind Bone Fiends cost increased to 5 slaves (was 3!)
- Curse of Blood cost increased to 99 slaves (was 66)
- Summon Dakini cost increased to 100 slaves (was 75)
- Contact Tlahuelpuchi cost increased to 35 slaves (was 25)
- Sanguine Heritage cost increased to 66 slaves (was 44)
- My impression is that more Blood cost increases are needed - feedback gratefully received

Holy spells:
- Smite got a small range increase
- Smite Demon got a significant damage increase, and is even more effective for H3 priests
- Word of Power is now AOE 1 (rather than single target as before)

Pretenders:
- Most pretender effort being postponed till 1.91 or later
- Oracles and analogues (Sacred Statue, Monolith, Sphinx and Fountain of Blood) got cost increases
- Dragons of all kinds got 3 misc slots, and living dragons got enc reduced to 2 (from 3)
- Ageless Olm description altered to indicate Olm Spawn domsummon.
- Oddly, Forge Lord had no attack sprite. Made one.

MA Ulm:
- The main thrust has been to make their equipment and troops actually good
- All Ulmish troops and commanders got encumbrance 2 - this actually fits very nicely with their descriptions
- All Ulmish troops got att 11 and mor 11
- Black Plate troops are now explicitly elites - got gcost 11, att 12 and def 11
- Added Black Steel Chain Mail (alluded to in current descriptions) - lightness gives reduced defense penalty
- Lightness of Full Plate of Ulm gives reduced encumbrance
- Added Ulmish Tower Shields - lightness gives reduced encumbrance
- Black Knights got slightly higher resource cost
- "The Forges of Ulm" now gives 50 resources
- Smith air/fire/astral random increased to 20%
- The AI will no longer cast Tempering the Will
- Black Priests are now drain immune
- New battlefield spells for the priests of the Iron Cult

EA Ulm:
- Also got enc 2 (they are the same race after all)
- All troops got mapmove 2. These are ridiculously hardy Conan-like barbarians. They should be able to cover some ground, even in armour.

LA Ulm:
- Also got enc 2 (they are the same race after all)

MA Man:
- Removed militia and slingers from recruitables, since as far as I can tell they are left over from dom1.
- New sprite for light cavalry, so he fits in
- New unit: Woodsman
- New commander: Knight Commander of Avalon
- Replaced militia with woodsman in PD, tweaked numbers. Can't get rid of slingers.
- Knights, Knights of Avalon cheaper
- Bards slightly cheaper
- Daughters of Avalon are now healers - they have a niche!
- Witches all got animal awe, just for thematic fun
- New spell: Hex
- New spell: Wrath of Avalon
- New spell: Forest of the Ever Young

LA Man:
- PD oddly consisted of units not available to LA Man. Fixed - although *very* mysteriously they still get slingers which I can't get rid of.
- Gem income from Forest of Avalon reduced to 1N (the curse!). New start site added: The Towers of Chelms, which produces 2A and 1E gems. Net effect: lost 1 N gem, gained 1 E gem.

EA Tir na n'Og:
- Ri lost Awe, but traded one point of Nature magic for an Earth pick
- Ri also gained slight stat improvements, so that he is generally slightly better than the Sidhe Lord
- Bean Sidhe and Tuatha Sorceress gained forge bonus of 15%
- Cost reduction for Tuatha warrior (50 -> 40)

EA Vanheim:
- Moderate gold cost cuts across the board, including commanders
- Vanjarls and Vanadrotts got 50% blood random
- Dwarven smith got 25% forge bonus, cost increased to 220 (from 180)
- Fay Boars reduced upkeep

MA Vanheim:
- Share many benefits from EA Vanheim
- Gold cost cuts for Van and Valkyrie
- Van enc was accidentally 2; fixed (to 3)

EA Helheim:
- Moderate gold cost cuts across the board
- Vanjarls got 50% blood random
- Svartalf got 25% forge bonus, cost increased to 220 (from 180)

EA Marverni:
- Most bare-chested warriors cheaper
- Boar Warriors recruit-everywhere
- Horn Blower gained javelins, and new Carnute Horn Blower unit added (without javelins); should make it much easier to keep the horn blowers with their units
- Stampede spell now research level 0
- Strength of Boars H3 spell now affects all friendlies (not just sacreds)

MA Ashdod:
- Objective: No change to power level but make non-sacreds more viable
- All non-sacred giants got +1 att, +1 def and decreases to gold cost (typically ~10). Gileadite archers got -15 gcost and +1 precision.
- Anakite armor +1 enc.
- Banquet for the Dead now D3H1 (rather than D4H1), so castable by some Zamzummites

EA & MA Agartha:
- All pale ones have ~20% more hitpoints, ~15% more strength and slightly better protection.
- New ritual: Shape the Earth
- Benefit from new boulder splash damage
- Earth Readers given 5% chance to avoid bad events purely to go with their descriptions

EA Agartha:
- New unit: Pale One with trident and net
- New ritual: Earth Communion
- Barathrus Pact gives a larger elemental
- New battle spell: Fury of the Doomed
- New ritual: Open the Seal

MA Agartha:
- New unit: Pale One with trident and net
- New unit: Pale One with glaive
- Golem Crafters mapmove 2
- Earth Reader and Golem Crafters both slightly younger
- New mage priest: Keeper of Memories
- Oracle of the Ancients got slightly improved randoms
- Production bonus of 25% - this is the era when they still dwell in the deepest and richest parts of the earth, but have begun to become focussed on armour.
- No longer get Darkness via PD, but can summon a darkness-generating statue
- New ritual: Avatar of Darkness
- New ritual: Wisdom of the Ancients
- New ritual: Caveman Tribe
- New battle spell: Army of Statues (a buff, not a summon spell)
- New battle spell: Fury of Loss

MA Machaka:
- Province defense improved (now includes archers and warriors with shields)
- Descriptions improved for cheap troops. They are still short, but look a little less unfinished.
- Cost of archers reduced to 9 gold (was 10). They are inferior to indy archers, so it is nice to have some incentive to recruit them.

MA Eriu:
- Bean Sidhe are now recruit anywhere and got 15% forge bonus
- Tuatha lost awe, but gained E1 and minor stat bonuses (so as to be slightly better than the Sidhe Lord)

LA Patala:
- Nagas gained awe.

LA Agartha:
- Blindlords anomalously had worse stats than blindfighters; fixed.

Yomi/Shinuyama/Jomon:
- Removed national hp nerf (standard Jomonese had hp 9, which was widely disliked)
- Fixed inconsistency in kami encumbrance (all now have enc 0, by analogy to elementals)

Mictlan (all ages):
- Tribal King lost javelin - it tempted him too often into suicide. Javelin removed from sprite too.

EA Oceania:
- 5 new heroes
- Two new summons, Sirens and Selkies
- Sirens have more powerful magic
- Knights of the Deep got +1 enc, -1 def, +5 resource cost and are now cap only. 
- One high end national combat spell
- Description changes to add flavour
- Triton Kings got more diverse picks
- New pretender choice (Draikana)

EA R'lyeh:
- All Aboleths amphibious
- Mind Lords got more diverse picks
- Aboleths got a extra 10% random
- Mind Lords and Aboleths got a "tentacle" attack, to prevent unthematic "autoloss" to even weak undead units in melee
- Mind Lords got two "Enslave Mind" attacks
- 1 new multihero

EA Atlantis:
- New national spell to get incresed mr on some troops
- Reduced encumbrance on basalt armor and coral hauberk
- 1 new hero

MA OCEANIA:
- 3 new heroes
- Capricorns can now bring followers underwater, like in vanilla
- New national summon
- Sirens have more powerful magic
- Myrmidons cheaper (20 -> 15)

MA Atlantis
- Improved infantry
- Improved coral armour, in particular reducing encumbrance
- Kings got more diverse picks
- Initiates of the Deep no longer cap-only

MA R'lyeh
- Slighty improved coastal recruits

And... oh sh- it's actually readable! Ok, so the reason I laughed was because it looks like this in notepad:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm going to leave the readable version in the spoiler here because that way it's in a format I can read.

But yeah, I'm thinking I might be up for joining in. Going to make really sure before I commit because I don't want to be the one to leave, but I THINK I'll be able to join. (dibs on LA Atlantis)

Edit: Oh so, I realized I meant to ask if there was a comprehensive list of CBM changes anywhere. The list above is just the changes from 1.8x to 1.9 as far as I can tell, does anyone have a full list? I know there are big things like the dwarven hammer and gem gens being unique.

[Il Palazzo]

Oh so, I realized I meant to ask if there was a comprehensive list of CBM changes anywhere. The list above is just the changes from 1.8x to 1.9 as far as I can tell, does anyone have a full list? I know there are big things like the dwarven hammer and gem gens being unique.

Unfortunately, it appears that you'd have to find each of the previous mods and check their changelogs.
At least I couldn't find any comprehensive list out there.
Myself, I'm fine with getting somewhat surprised from time to time.

Also, @Bluerobin and @TempAcc: keep in mind that we only need 2 more players, and should anybody else show up before you make up your mind, I'll give the spots to them.

[Neonivek]

I'll be looking forward to this.

Everytime I watch a Letsplay of this game (I know this isn't a Letsplay, but I assume I'll see updates) it tends to fall appart in the end as people start leaving on mass.

Wish I could play too (I even know what faction I'd chose) even if I know I'll just be uttarly destroyed.

[Bluerobin]

Ok, I'm going to jump on this. Either Bogarus or Atlantis, depending on what we end up needing. Leaning more towards Bogarus at this point... Yup, choosing Bogarus!

[Delta Foxtrot]

Any plans for someone(s) making a sort of LP/AAR fare as the game progresses? Game itself seems interesting enough and the multiplayer aspect adds to that.

I don't own D3 so obviously not participating.

[Bluerobin]

I kind of want to, but I'm not really sure about the best way to go about it. There are a lot of things to consider, from what kind of delay to put on AAR updates to how unfair it is to only have one person's perspective shown. Ideally I think we'd have an LP god descend upon us, send them our turns, have them go through them and release a delayed AAR of the game as a whole with world map updates like that one thread on somethingawful that was great until I couldn't access it anymore.

[Deadmeat1471]

I'm thinking maybe we could include some sort of news reels.

Such as; BIG BATTLE IN SHTTURD PROVINCE, THE GOD BLUEROBIN GOT TOTALLY MASHED BY A MIDGET

At the very least.