Why don't Priests wake Dormant Gods?

[timlagor]

Does it seem odd to anyone else that there's no Priestly mechanic to rouse your Pretender at the start of the game?

I imagine it would be a major project to balance such a thing so maybe it was considered and rejected.

[anaris]

Call god has a chance per Holy level to generate a point (I believe there is no level of holy that guarantees a point). There is probably no specific reason why Dormant or Imprisoned points would be the same number as is required to call a god back from the dead.

[TheMeInTeam]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

Issue I see with that is that you get a boatload of extra design points by taking a dormant pretender. You get the points and now you want to wake your pretender without “paying the iron price” for it?

Seems like cheating to me, and inherently unfair to all other players who may take awake pretenders and got a lot less design points for doing so.

Getting enough priests to call a god before dormants wake up anyway is basically impossible or at least close enough to not be worth it.

Even ramping them up enough to bring an imprisoned out very early would be a non trivial cost.

This is also why losing an awake expander early is so devastating. You're not getting it back for a long time, and now it's doing nothing for you. Someone dropping 2000-3000 gold into temples and holy path production (or sacrificing research) just to get their imprisoned pretender on turn 22-30 instead of 36 being called "cheating" is a bit of a reach. Investing that much into it could easily cause that guy to lose as a direct consequence of paying for stuff that isn't helping just yet.

[CHI LONG QUA]

This would be a cool feature allowing us to choose up to 350 points worth of "imprisonment depth".

[boozermonkey]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από TheMeInTeam:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

Issue I see with that is that you get a boatload of extra design points by taking a dormant pretender. You get the points and now you want to wake your pretender without “paying the iron price” for it?

Seems like cheating to me, and inherently unfair to all other players who may take awake pretenders and got a lot less design points for doing so.

Getting enough priests to call a god before dormants wake up anyway is basically impossible or at least close enough to not be worth it.

Even ramping them up enough to bring an imprisoned out very early would be a non trivial cost.

This is also why losing an awake expander early is so devastating. You're not getting it back for a long time, and now it's doing nothing for you. Someone dropping 2000-3000 gold into temples and holy path production (or sacrificing research) just to get their imprisoned pretender on turn 22-30 instead of 36 being called "cheating" is a bit of a reach. Investing that much into it could easily cause that guy to lose as a direct consequence of paying for stuff that isn't helping just yet.

Not really. Someone that takes an imprisoned pretender can easily afford to go full scales and still get a decent bless. With full scales you’re going to have a lot of extra cash on hand to ramp up priest production and still have enough gold to have an okay army in dom 6.

Flipping the coin though, other players who choose to take an awake pretender are generally not going to have good scales because they want that incarnate bless or they need an expander like drakon because their starting troops are bad.

So what your doing with this in dom 6 with gold in abundance already is for people, which basically means everyone, will abuse the $hit out of this by taking an imprisoned pretender with boss scales and then setup a side priest factory to jank your pretender like a year early. Why even entertain this idea? It will definitely break the game.

[timlagor]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

So what your doing with this in dom 6 with gold in abundance already is for people, which basically means everyone, will abuse the $hit out of this by taking an imprisoned pretender with boss scales and then setup a side priest factory to jank your pretender like a year early. Why even entertain this idea? It will definitely break the game.

Feel free to stop pretending that there's only one way this could be done and it would be abusable. Thanks.

[jotwebe]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

So what your doing with this in dom 6 with gold in abundance already is for people, which basically means everyone, will abuse the $hit out of this by taking an imprisoned pretender with boss scales and then setup a side priest factory to jank your pretender like a year early. Why even entertain this idea? It will definitely break the game.

A year early out of 4 doesn't necessarily break the game if the opportunity cost is a massive, early investment in priests that will nerf your expansion. The comparison is not only to someone taking an awake or dormant pretender instead of an imprisoned one, it is also someone taking an imprisoned pretender and focusing on expansion or instead of getting their god out early.

It's a very interesting idea; whether it is OP or a trap option would depend on the specific balance, and would be different depending on the nation - its priest costs, its holy troop lineup, its expansion capabilities. Exactly what makes it interesting.

[Draken]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από jotwebe:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

So what your doing with this in dom 6 with gold in abundance already is for people, which basically means everyone, will abuse the $hit out of this by taking an imprisoned pretender with boss scales and then setup a side priest factory to jank your pretender like a year early. Why even entertain this idea? It will definitely break the game.

A year early out of 4 doesn't necessarily break the game if the opportunity cost is a massive, early investment in priests that will nerf your expansion. The comparison is not only to someone taking an awake or dormant pretender instead of an imprisoned one, it is also someone taking an imprisoned pretender and focusing on expansion or instead of getting their god out early.

It's a very interesting idea; whether it is OP or a trap option would depend on the specific balance, and would be different depending on the nation - its priest costs, its holy troop lineup, its expansion capabilities. Exactly what makes it interesting.

Still, wouldn't that give a bigger advantage to nations with elegist or those that already are recruiting a lot of priests early as their normal game plan?

[TheMeInTeam]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από TheMeInTeam:

Getting enough priests to call a god before dormants wake up anyway is basically impossible or at least close enough to not be worth it.

Even ramping them up enough to bring an imprisoned out very early would be a non trivial cost.

This is also why losing an awake expander early is so devastating. You're not getting it back for a long time, and now it's doing nothing for you. Someone dropping 2000-3000 gold into temples and holy path production (or sacrificing research) just to get their imprisoned pretender on turn 22-30 instead of 36 being called "cheating" is a bit of a reach. Investing that much into it could easily cause that guy to lose as a direct consequence of paying for stuff that isn't helping just yet.

Not really. Someone that takes an imprisoned pretender can easily afford to go full scales and still get a decent bless. With full scales you’re going to have a lot of extra cash on hand to ramp up priest production and still have enough gold to have an okay army in dom 6.

Flipping the coin though, other players who choose to take an awake pretender are generally not going to have good scales because they want that incarnate bless or they need an expander like drakon because their starting troops are bad.

So what your doing with this in dom 6 with gold in abundance already is for people, which basically means everyone, will abuse the $hit out of this by taking an imprisoned pretender with boss scales and then setup a side priest factory to jank your pretender like a year early. Why even entertain this idea? It will definitely break the game.

Imprisoned scales + light bless + putting thousands of gold into temples + priests = rush bait. I would absolutely love my opponents to do that, but only if they're near me so I get the food and not someone else.

Drakon + other expander setups will have more money in the first year, not less. You can still put order/prod up with an awake, and it's getting more provinces earlier by combining own expansion with national troops (aka more money). Not much time for growth scales to manifest a significant income advantage in 10-20 turns, scales will still be behind even if they managed only 2-3 provinces less than the awake...BEFORE they build several temples and train enough priests quickly enough to get the imprisoned out in the turn 20s. Magic 2 will matter...but again, not yet, and you don't need your god out early for magic 2 to matter.

If someone goes awake researcher, they have a big tech lead until turn 20s. If they go hell bless, the imprisoned has to fight that off at a deficit relative to other builds (including sensible choices like just using the money from imprisoned scales to make more troops and mages).

Doing this seems like such obvious bad play to me that including the false choice option to go for it doesn't seem worth the developers' effort to me. It's kind of wild that others are arguing it would somehow be too strong!

[GodHead]

boozermonkey is just flat out wrong.

[Zonk]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

Seems like cheating to me, and inherently unfair to all other players who may take awake pretenders and got a lot less design points for doing so.

It could be reasonably balanced in various ways, including slightly reducing the bonus points from dormant/imprisoned.

According to the Illwiki (https://illwiki.com/dom5/user/loggy/callgod) each priest set to Call God contributes from (priest level - 1) to (priest level + 1) points, plus, presumably, the Elegist bonus, and your pretender is recalled at 50.

Maybe this mechanic could be reused, but without including Elegist and with every X "Call God levels" making the pretender awaken 1 month earlier.
I don't know what a reasonable value for X would be though.
Maybe make it relatively high, but your prophet counts double (so, most of the time, 6 instead of 3 levels).

[anaris]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Draken:

Still, wouldn't that give a bigger advantage to nations with elegist or those that already are recruiting a lot of priests early as their normal game plan?

Yes. Imprisoned gives a bigger advantage to nations who need good scales, a strong bless, or lots of paths they don't natively get to bootstrap late-game options. Awake gives a bigger advantage to nations who can't expand with regular troops than it does to those who can just crank out strong troops with a couple of points in order. This is just another dimension

[boozermonkey]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από GodHead:

boozermonkey is just flat out wrong.

How so?

This is not some kind of high school shouting contest. This thread is for honest debate and I and many others are doing exactly that with point and counter points. I am reading the counter arguments fairly and not just disregarding them because they don’t agree with me. That’s not how it works.

TBH, I do agree with some of the counter arguments, but this is something that needs further discussion.

[boozermonkey]

The core of any dominions MP game is fairness. If people even begin to believe that games are unfair because people are abusing poorly thought out mechanics, that will only serve to discourage people from playing at all.

The heart of the build system also contains fairness. Nobody gets an advantage over anyone else outside of what their nations bring to the table. Anyone can build a rainbow bless, but you have to pay for that. If you want a rainbow bless AND good scales, you pay more! That’s how it works. We are talking about changing that dynamic. Think hard about this one my friends.

[Andkat]

The same could be said of literally any balance change or mechanical feature. If implemented poorly it'll throw off balanced, and dominions isn't in general a particularly balanced game.

In any case, I'd imagine if using this system (which I would think would be an optional game setting rather than an irrevocable change) you might not have any natural awakening whatsoever- if you don't allocate the resources your god doesn't wake up, which means that you can't rely on a dormant/imprisoned pretender waking up to turn things around if you're already on the backfoot and don't have the room to just priest spam and you have to price in direct awakening (potentially with a pretty steep call god point cost) into your strategy if going dormant/imprisoned.

[anaris]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από boozermonkey:

The core of any dominions MP game is fairness. If people even begin to believe that games are unfair because people are abusing poorly thought out mechanics, that will only serve to discourage people from playing at all.

The heart of the build system also contains fairness. Nobody gets an advantage over anyone else outside of what their nations bring to the table. Anyone can build a rainbow bless, but you have to pay for that. If you want a rainbow bless AND good scales, you pay more! That’s how it works. We are talking about changing that dynamic. Think hard about this one my friends.

The reason nobody is posting long and detailed retorts is because there is nothing more to say than "this is just not true"?

Maybe try explaining what you're basing this on and how to reconcile it in a Dom5 context with the random maps, nations with very different power levels, the existence of Titans etc? Because I believe a lot of us would say that what you're imagining is *precisely the opposite* of what attracts people to Dominions.