Dominion of Men 3.2 Patch General Feedback

[webba84]

All sorts of feedback, ideas, and opinions should go here. Bear in mind that the mod is considered complete at this stage so proposals for grand, sweeping changes are not likely to be met with any sort of enthusiasm. (Though by all means, sub-mod to your hearts content!)

[SwordAndSilver]

Well it would nice if you could make that when you bribe an army it would join you with its original troops and would not just disapear thought I don't know how ,,grand'' it is to do that becouse I am not much a coder I only know little python...

[CountMRVHS]

This can work, but you have to be bribing an army of troops that you yourself could train. For example, the other day I was playing as Dorwinion and bribed a rebel army that was too close to my capital. The 3 rebel units consisted of some Rhovanion Foresters and Spearmen - the same types I could train. So when I bribed them, they became mine.

It's probably pretty rare in this mod, though, because factions tend to have distinct units. The Beornings could probably bribe some rebel Woodmen, and Adunabar/Dunland might be able to bribe some rebel Orcs. But anyway it's really expensive - those 3 units cost me more than 12,000!

[webba84]

When a faction has a lot of levy units you can get those through bribery. They're cheap too, so a really good way to bolster your own numbers and frustrate your enemy at the same time. (This works both ways, your own levies are just as disloyal as everyone elses).

[SwordAndSilver]

Yea, thanks for the replies. You know I just thought it would be so fun if playing like say Dorwninion I could get some orcs from Adunabar (it just an example) by bribing them it would add even more variety I mean they could have bad morale towards the faction and I do pay them to join not to just run ��

[webba84]

Yeah, I know what you are asking for but its not really possible to mod in without a lot of unwanted side effects.

[SwordAndSilver]

Oh ok thanks for answering

[webba84]

no worries

[The Sloth]

Count and webba, thank you for your answers in the other thread, I realize I should have posted here from the start, so I'll do from now on.

As for count's question, Adunabar goes through the roof with every faction I play, even remote ones like Khand. It always happens right in the first few turns, where the graph shows their military ranking jumping from 15k to 30k - more than twice what the RK has, and far more than RK and Rohan combined. I don't mind them winning - I agree with them being a feature of the mod, and it just feels more "right" to clobber them, but their speed is rather frightening.

As for other feedback, see the elves thread.

[CountMRVHS]

I can't remember exactly how it's coded, but it would make sense for Adunabar to be strong while playing Khand, since Khand needs to conquer Lond Nurnen in order to win.

When the player is Rhun, though, Adunabar does seem perhaps a touch too strong. (It has been toned down from previous versions.) Rhun doesn't need to conquer any territory of Adunabar's, and ideally would spend the bulk of the game making war with the Northmen. But Adunabar is a problem that the Rhun player has to address at some point, preferably early on, and taking Nurn provinces is practically required if you want some respite. It would be great if the RK were strong enough (and motivated enough) to take out Adunabar, so that the Rhun player would eventually have to worry about the RK conquering Mordor and getting aggressive, but this seems not to happen in my Rhun campaigns.

This behavior, though, could just be part of how the RTW campaign AI is coded: factions that share borders with you tend to attack you, and Adunabar shares borders with a lot of factions very early on.

[Richard The Impaler]

I find that Adunabar does very well (almost conquer the world) when I turtle with the elves but they do not do as well when I play Dale. Sometimes they even start dying.

[The Sloth]

Are there any plans to give the smaller factions some limited options for specialization buildings?

[CountMRVHS]

Nope. Originally, there was envisioned a greater distinction between "major" factions like the RK and "minor" factions like Tharbad. The minor factions were, at one point, not intended to be playable, and they had no access to Assimilation Units. Over the course of development we decided they should be playable, and then gave them a bit of access to unique-ish units via the AUs.

(Actually, *originally* there wasn't a plan for so many factions in the first place, I think. The Beornings were going to be present not as a faction but only as ZoR units available to Dale; same for Rhovanion & Dorwinion.)

So, had we planned for all these factions to exist and be playable from the very beginning, there may have been some more talk about SBs for everybody. At this point, though, that would be more work & testing than we're looking to do.

[The Sloth]

I see. But still, those bonuses are rather considerable, and these factions are really missing out there. I'll try to do some tinkering on my own, then. I think I'll just give them access to existing specialization trees and some options from there. Something Like:

Harondor and Far-Harad getting Harad's Merchant Guild and Iron Foundry.

Tharbad getting RK's Royal Mint and King's Court (renamed into Chamber of Commerce).

Rhovanion getting Rohan's Horsemaster's Stables and Great Feasting Hall.

Dorwinion getting Dale's Trading Post and Emissary Headquarters.

North Rhun and Khand getting Rhun's Cattle Trader and Thrall Stockade.

Not sure about the Shire and the Beornings. Which is a pity, because I'd love to see a Beorning bakery. Gotta have them honey cakes!

[webba84]

You have to consider that in FATW it can actually be an economic and military advantage to having fewer buildings on the tech tree - high tier buildings, especially military themed specialisation ones, tend to be very expensive in cost and upkeep. Anyways, we did discuss giving them access to building SBs, and how it would work (note: it's harder than it looks, because we have used up all the available building slots), and the consensus was that it could not be done in a way that would consistently provide meaningful choices and useful bonuses, and also that it was a good way to maintain the distinction between major and minor factions. YMMV of course.

Something we are planning to do, when I get around to it, is add in bonuses for minor factions that conquer a major factions settlement with a SB present. We've discussed it and made up a list of which factions will get what effects from what SBs but I haven't put it into the edb just yet.

[athanaric]

Something we are planning to do, when I get around to it, is add in bonuses for minor factions that conquer a major factions settlement with a SB present. We've discussed it and made up a list of which factions will get what effects from what SBs but I haven't put it into the edb just yet.

Didn't we have the same discussion a year ago, including the same bonuses proposed by The Sloth? But I'm glad to hear you want to add them in.

[webba84]

Yes, that's the discussion I'm referring to.

[Wambat]

The Beorning bakery actually strikes me as quite a good idea. If you needed to sacrifice a building to make that happen I would nominate the Dwarven building required to build ships. It is a pretty useless, unused, and grief causing building in my opinion.


All the settlements that could build ships are not populated by Dwarves, and the men the Dwarves have conquered would be just as capable of building ships as they were before.


I would say, if you want to make things hard, tie ship building to the Vaults (top tier if you must). If you can hire men to risk their lives on the front line, you should be able to hire them to man ships.

[webba84]

Not a bad idea at all, but again, harder than it looks to implement.

[Annatar II]

I would first of like to congratulate the team on the mod, it's a fantastic mod which really captures the feeling of Middle Earth, even if it is set in a period for which there is scarce information from a lore perspective, I particularly like the building and unit descriptions, they really capture the essence of each faction's outlook. So far I have played two campaigns, a Dwarven one and an Adunabar one, they are both underway and I am enjoying them thoroughly, in terms of changes to the mod, in terms of battles, I would suggest that archer units have specified the number of missiles they possess and this should vary between different archer units depending upon their level of skill.


In terms of economic and provincial management, I would suggest that greater differences exist between different regions in terms of population potential. What I mean by this is that the level of population growth bonus provided in more fertile areas relative to less fertile areas should be larger then it is. Most regions in the game should have their population max out at a relatively low level, with them needing full agricultural development to even reach that low level of population, whereas some regions should reach a maximum at a vastly higher level of population. The difference for example in the population potential of north-west Mordor which is a rocky landscape compared to the south-east should be much more extreme then it currently is.