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[Frumple]

That seems nice - is MP still dominated by SC? Anything op? Might pay up just to be in another mp game with ya all.

SCs are still very prevalent in MP, from what I've seen, but there's been quite a few changes that seriously curtail their power. The luck change* alone was enough to do serious damage to SC staying power, heh. Number of other small changes like that make SC critters considerably easier to counter. Still quite powerful, as is appropriate for the resource investment involved, but now more a tool instead of the tool.

Honestly, balance in general... seems a bit better than in D3? I haven't really played either, especially in multiplayer, enough to say that with any degree of surety, but it feels that way.

Incidentally, you might want to chill and wait for another sale (and yes, there's been sales! It's amazing.) if the cost is worrisome.

Though re: temporary gems, I think those might have actually increased SC -- and almost definitely battlecaster -- power. Gemgens were sexy, but they were a logistic bottleneck and generally too expensive to have out in the field. Temp gem items in D4 are usually pretty cheap, and handing out a handful to make sure you have battlefield-wide spells going off in each and every battle is damned amazing.

*Is now a 75% chance to survive a killing blow, and doesn't work on undead or lifeless critters at all -- tartarians can get buggered

[USEC_OFFICER]

If temporary gems increased SC/battlemage power, it was at the expense of everything else. I'd have to reread the LPs, but I'm pretty sure that one player was getting ~80 earth gems per turn from his items alone. Which is absolutely ridiculous and insane. Of course a good chunk of those gems were spent forging more gem-generating items, but he still had plenty leftover to spend on mechanical dragons and similar things.

That being said, I do love the temporary gem creating items in Dom 4. For exactly the same reasons that you put out. Except for Bloodstones/Bags of Wind. Those things can just fuck right off with how expensive and hard to get they are.

[Mindmaker]

Reports suggest this event chain is broken in the current version, though they're not 100% consistent.

Well that sucks, I really could have used that N2 mage you get.
I'll see if I can somehow get around it by moving the magister in and out.

[Shadowlord]

The Disciples game type is, I believe, new in Dominions 4 too. That's basically a game with teams where one person on each team is the pretender and the rest are disciples. Each player has their own nation and avatar guy, but only the pretenders choose scales and when they awaken (disciples awaken one tick sooner than their pretender in the awaken-time-chooser).

[Delta Foxtrot]

There was this brief exchange back in Bay12's first dom4 MP:

I'm looking to buy Dom 4 if it's an overall improvement over Dom 3. What do you guys think?

It's not a revolutionary improvement. It's an evolutionary one. It's probably along the lines of Dom1->Dom2 in terms of scope. A lot of UI improvements, rule refinements and rebalancings, new mechanics (e.g. thrones, revamped fortresses, non-fortress recruitment for certain nations, poptype-based PD, etc. etc.), improved modding functionality, a number of new nations (EA Phoneticians and Babylonians, EA Machaka, MA Bogarus, Carrion Woods/Soulgate as freestanding nations, Oceania split in two), some new pretenders, a lot of enrichment to underground and underwater play (e.g., new native poptypes and summons, aquatic PD for non-aquatic nations), updated graphics for a lot of old units... It's mostly (mostly) small changes, but it's a lot of small changes. I'd say it's worth it.

[Edit: oh, and some under-the-hood changes too. I think it's able to host a bit fast, and the AI is more efficient. Not smarter, but more efficient - and an additional difficulty level was added. So while an experienced player will still feast on its bones, a novice-to-middling player will have a noticeably harder time winning.)

I remember, a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I've installed Dom 3 and have decided that it is one of the only games that will never, ever be wiped from my harddrive for any reason whatsoever.

That promise has been broken, because of Dom 4. Get it.

Can't say anything myself, while I did lurk a lot of Dom3 stuff in my day, it never amounted to actually playing the game.

____

The Disciples game type is, I believe, new in Dominions 4 too. That's basically a game with teams where one person on each team is the pretender and the rest are disciples. Each player has their own nation and avatar guy, but only the pretenders choose scales and when they awaken (disciples awaken one tick sooner than their pretender in the awaken-time-chooser).

That's actually been changed in a recent patch I think. Disciples wake up in half the time their pretender does. So a dormant pretender will have turn-6 disciples, instead of turn-1.

[E. Albright]

It's also worth adding that there were some more subtle - but still quite significant - balance changes as well. All normal weapons do either blunt, piercing, or slashing damage, and those can be resisted separately and do more damage under certain circumstances. Resistance has changed from percentages to numeric. Repel mechanics got revamped and are more significant now. Troop morale in general got a large overhaul with leadership proficiency providing a morale bonus/penalty and a limit on the number of squads you can effectively lead in addition to just giving more troops. Troops can now fight in formations besides "box". The strategic AI is now merely stupid instead of braindead, and that's getting progressive improvements over time - a changelog line item a patch or three ago sinisterly alluded to adding some thug-equpping code for the AI to use. The combat AI is beginning to approach cunning, albeit only a low cunning. Assassinations and seductions have been significantly revised. The Mindless tag has had a lot of changes. Tons of UI enhancements, including simple yet amazingly significant ones for blood micro. Multi-turn interactive event chains. An event modding framework is due out in the next patch. Etc etc. etc.

Unmodded balance is a lot better, to the point where there hasn't been a dominant "balance mod" in the community yet, and the once-ubiquitous "OMG we need a Dom4 CBM right miaow!" crowd has faded into obscurity. As that might also imply, since CBM was as much a diversity mod as a rebalancing mod, unmodded diversity is a lot better too.

It's not Dom2->Dom3 all over again. It's Dom1->Dom2*.

*Only unlike Dom1->Dom2, the UI got better-looking and less clunky and not worse.

[Frumple]

Heads up for the main D4 thread on something of possible interest to folks: I just posted a (mostly) complete archive of our team's PMs from the 4.04 disciple game, if anyone thinks it'd be neat to read through ~six months worth of inter-team Dom 4 chatter. It is precisely as lengthy and unorganized as that sounds, but I've never actually seen a full communications dump from a D4 game, so I figured someone out there might be interested in seeing one.

[Karlito]

Plus, it seems like we'll be getting a long development cycle for Dom4; there have been a lot of improvements to the game since it was released, and it seems like we can expect that to continue for quite a while.

[ThtblovesDF]

Thanks for the feedback guys ~

One of the few things that bugged me about dom3 is the power escalation and the attached massive micromanagement, especially if you did bloodslave hunting and all that.

I'll grab it when there's a sale or maybe next month.

[Frumple]

Oh, late game is still micromanagement hell, just... not as bad. Repeat recruitment alone does a lot to help out there, among other things, like monthly forging commands.

Is actually one of those points where disciple mode kinda' shines -- instead of one person controlling a massive, map wide empire, you've got that same space split up between multiple people. Means there's not quite as much micro on any one person playing, which is pretty darn nice.

[Mindmaker]

How would you use a LA Man Bean Sidhe? Or rather, how do you effectively use her as an assassin?

[Frumple]

Probably skelliespam, particularly with the D randoms. Stick a skellie amulet on them and have 'em go to town -- starting off with a longdead's going to help any assassin, and the ones that can't spam the 2D undead creators will benefit from using the item spell, iirc.

As C'tis (and EA, from the 4.04 game that just recently finished) can testify, an assassin with death is kinda' ridiculous. Skelliespam vs. off script anything has an entirely too good of a chance of wrecking face.

Gets even better if you can get some N casters and the handful of acorns. Any critter-producing item, really. Also probably couldn't hurt to stick a spirit helm on 'em, if you have some to spare.

[Mindmaker]

Well, I was thinking more about the traditional way, since they have acess to a lot of very good buffs, depending on their randoms, innitiate fear, glamour and etheral.
But on the other hand I'm not sure if they are worth it, considering they alone cost 25 gems.

[Il Palazzo]

As C'tis (and EA, from the 4.04 game that just recently finished) can testify, an assassin with death is kinda' ridiculous. Skelliespam vs. off script anything has an entirely too good of a chance of wrecking face.

Testify, yo.
The experience I had so far with assassins+skellie amulet is that giving bodyguards is nearly pointless, even if these are high quality units. They'll lose all the same, unless the target is a mage that can spam skellies of their own.
Get a bunch, wait for one of your forts to get sieged, and you can go all hitman on the besiegers with nigh impunity. Hell, even in open field catching scouts is hard, and it entails sacrificing movement for patrol duties.

In my opinion, this is way too overpowered for the meager price of setting it up. That is, if you've got cheap assassins. Bean Sidhes are a bit too much on the expensive side.

[E. Albright]

I'm going to weigh in on Il Palazzo's side here. I really don't like that you can infinitely summon units in an assassination. On the battlefield, okay, I guess I'm fine with an endless stream of dead bodies to reanimate, but for an assassination? I'd be perfectly happy if all summoning were disabled for assassinations, though that'd just swing the balance back to SC/thug assassins and most particularly, fliers.

Basically, assassination is a really hard-to-balance mechanic. Currently, though, as long as a nation has assassins, D1, 5 amethysts per assassin, and Cons-0, they can create generally-lethal assassins.

(Obviously, one of the worst items to see on assassins is Lifelong Protection. I never fielded any of those in 404, but I was preparing to start cranking them out at the end to try to crack some of the tougher, elemental-summoning Ulmish nuts. I was butchering pretty much everything with just Amulets of the Dead, though. I think the worst example I saw was one of Il Palazzo's Mystics with a couple of hoplites (possible elite ones) and an elephant that the Mystic managed to make ethereal. They still lost. In the majority of cases, if you can't counter-summon, it's a foregone conclusion before the assassination starts.)