MP Problems with Popkill

[Rovsea]

So I understand that this may be in some ways a controversial take, but I'm gonna list off the current problems I think popkill nations have in terms of viability in Multiplayer. First, I have no problem with the popkill nations existing in the game. Some of them are less good than others (Asphodel and LA Rlyeh), but overall their existence is just fine. I've enjoyed playing as them the few times that I have so far, and I enjoy that the offer an asymmetrical way to play the game. I also have no issue as far as fighting them goes, but there is a serious issue that comes along with popkill nations existing in the game: even if you beat them you lose.

Regardless of how hard a war with a normal nation is, once you beat them you generally get quite a bit out of it in terms of income, land, and gems. As they exist in the game, popkill nations will give on balance less of all of those things. One would think the higher gem income from the capital site would offset to some degree the lack of gold income, but in practice this isn't how it works. Popkill nations will usually face coalitions for one simple reason: the longer they exist, the less income exists on the map.

Because of this, in multiplayer, people will generally coalition popkill nations, which means that they will often face 2v1, 3v1, 4v1, and not uncommonly even 5v1 scenarios relatively early in the game. Usually, this means the popkill nation is quite unlikely to win as well, because they have to expend so many resources to survive early, and once they do they are out of gold and find it difficult to expand their infrastructure because they've been contained by other players and killed off all their own income. Assuming that there is a 3 or 4 nation coalition, there is on balance only a 1/3 or 1/4 chance to gain the cap site gem income from the popkill nation should they die, and the (dead) land will be split multiple ways as well, meaning that the site searched gem income is less than a normal war's outcome as well. A neighbor that has killed a non-popkill nation, even if they split it in half with another aggressor, will basically always get more out of their war than someone who fights a popkill nation, and this is the main issue I'd like to see resolved.

If someone declares war, fights, kills, and seizes the land of a popkill nation, they should be rewarded for it just like any other war would reward you. There is a fairly snowball-y pace of gameplay in multiplayer games, where someone who eats a nation becomes more powerful, making it easier to take over another weak neighbor. By taking over a popkill nation, you don't really become stronger, in fact, by expending resources for relatively little gain, you can actually fall behind a passive neighbor in terms of research and actual number of units/mages ready for war.

Nobody, then, is really incentivized to fight a popkill nation, and yet there is also a near requirement to do so because otherwise the popkill nation will kill more population, spreading more dead zones on the map, making the game harder for everyone else.

This whole process is the reason why popkill nations are often banned from multiplayer games, and while that is one "solution" to the problem, I'd much prefer that some game mechanic allow people to play, and play against, some honestly fun nations without ruining the course of a game.

[freek_o_nature]

I have to admit first that I can't speak to the MP experience, so my comments are likely to be more off-base than is probably hoped. But, since popkill is an asymmetrical thorn in my fantasy-immersion paw, I ask with sincere interest and honest ignorance: would a universal method of growing or restoring Population on a much larger scale than Scales (so to speak) likely be good or bad for the game overall? I'm aware that there's another option through Wish, but I don't consider that either growing or restoring, it's more like stealing or conquering by magic (someone somewhere has to lose). Growth Scales provide a small but otherwise wholly positive growth factor, and to my knowledge, there's no method of "restoration" whatsoever. Then again, these qualities are what make popkill nations dangerous in the first place: they can hit other players in a vulnerable spot against which there's no real defense but a good offense.

So, what do you think would happen if there was some high-level ritual, maybe even a new function of Wish, that provided such a defense by way of growth or restoration? Something like a huge, powerful spell that constructively accelerates time, not like Burden of Time where people age while time itself remains normal, but that allows an large area to develop much more rapidly—perhaps thirty years in thirty days, to maintain game mechanics—birthing and rearing a whole new generation virtually overnight (and woe betide any units in the province when the spell takes effect!). Or, maybe something like a Wish for Mass Resurrection, restoring a ravaged or extinguished population to its initially generated levels; there are even real religious precedents for such events in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, wherein the collective dead are resurrected collectively, usually right before divine judgement, which would fit perfectly with the theme of Dominions.

Of course, justifying it in story terms is the easy part. The hard part is being able to predict how such a change would affect the game's overall balance—even if balance isn't the core design philosophy, it's still an important factor in its own measure, as dramatic unbalance often reduces enjoyment—as well as whether or not it would be exploitable, and if so, how. If it were too easy to do, it would trivialize popkill and the nations associated with it; and, if too difficult, it would be ineffectual to MP performance, the game having been won by the time the option becomes available (which would relegate it mostly to immersive SP, as in, not the kind of SP where you care about popkill).

Nevertheless, the notion that a player or group might still potentially gain from popkill nations at length by way of repopulation, or that a popkill nation may be able to work together with normal nations by way of extra effort dedicated to repopulation, seems to me to address some of the issues you mention. However, that brings me back to my starting point, in that I don't have experience enough to predict the ripples in the MP pond. So, to briefly restate, do you think a viable method of repopulation would be able to address these issues without upsetting the rest of the game?

[Kamiyama]

A population restoring ritual would seem to fit nature magic. But I'm not sure how much pop or at what level magic.

We can conjure all sorts of monsters, why not humans?

Or thaumaturgy them from bones and dust? Maybe not the same humans, but close enough to learn, work, and procreate?

A summon that generates new pop in it's province every turn? An ability that is opposite to popkill?

As long as you exchange gems for it and it only works on one province at a time, it wouldn't be too OP. Popgen certainly shouldn't be spread by dominion or by a recruitable unit.

But how important is pop for income and resources? Let's say someone got a gem generator running and kept casting a popgen spell on their capital? Would they dominate the game or would it be a waste of gems?

[TheMeInTeam]

Popgen would run away if it were allowed widespread, but one could make a spell called "restoration" or something that pushes the province up to base value over time then stops. If the timeframe is long enough popkill would still be less attractive to conquer than alternatives, but provinces wouldn't be completely gutted forever just because you don't rush someone out in the first 10-20 turns. Or if the game doesn't store initial value you could set thresholds like 5k/7.5k/10k for EA/MA/LA after which the spell stops doing anything.

The precise numbers above are less important than the concept: you're paying some token amount of gems to get x amount of population, where x is unlikely to be valuable unless the province is gutted by popkill. Maybe adjust the threshold by terrain (no 10k pop in desert etc).

[Emphyrio]

The most annoying things about them is that the popkill is too fast. Thereodos , asphodel and ryleh are about ok, but Ermor and Lemuria really suck. Even if you rush them very quickly its too late, the land is worthless.

I would like to see the dominion popkill effect tuned down and maybe give their commanders and some units popkill abilities instead. That would give the players on both sides more control. And normal nations won't be double penalized for having weak national priests.

[freek_o_nature]

Controlling abuses may be easiest with a "restoration" approach rather than "growth," because a ritual that restores a province to its originally generated population (or at least that rerolls its population as though the map were newly generated) would be unable to inflate existing populations and would prevent terrain from receiving more than the standard population for its type. Once a population is restored to its first-turn level, then scales in the province could continue to work normally. It is, as has been mentioned, this trade-off between gems and population that's key: how many gems would an effect like this be worth? It may be that such a ritual could scale in gem cost, like Twiceborn currently does based on unit size, but that still leaves the question of what a baseline gem cost would look like.

[Dast]

I can see the complaint, conquering a popkill nation gives less pay-off.

I think the problem is often exaggerated, and is less severe in practice than it sounds in theory. Mainly because even when a normal nation is beaten the person who did the heavy lifting isn't always the main winner. In a war between A and B which A wins the biggest winner is often C, who joined in like a vulture to eat some of B's territory at the point they were already beaten. Often the vuture can do as well in terms of land as the person who actually lost troops fighting battles. You don't always get "paid" fairly for winning a war, even against normal nations.

I tent to play in smaller games, where the answer is: don't conquer the popkill nation (or the UW nation): just got for Thrones. The game is about thrones not conquest. In bigger games this doesn't work as much as you need to increase your territory for income so that you can possibly contest enough Thrones.

Where you say "Popkill nations will usually face coalitions for one simple reason: the longer they exist, the less income exists on the map. \ Because of this, in multiplayer, people will generally coalition popkill nations,"

I think this analysis is semi-flawed. Depending on who you are it can be nice to have a bit less income on the map. If you are Bandar Log your late game is all those awesome gem-summons with gear. Gold doesn't help those. So if you think Ermor is doomed anyway then them lasting longer can be good if it hurts other people more than it does you.

All that said I think a mechanic or spell that brought a zero-population province up to a few people would be fine. In another thread someone suggested a magic site in Ermor's capital that (when claimed by another player) gives that player a weaker version of Ermor's free-spawn in unpopulated provinces, which I thought was cool.

[onard2]

Originally posted by Dast:

I tent to play in smaller games, where the answer is: don't conquer the popkill nation (or the UW nation): just got for Thrones. The game is about thrones not conquest. In bigger games this doesn't work as much as you need to increase your territory for income so that you can possibly contest enough Thrones.

Where you say "Popkill nations will usually face coalitions for one simple reason: the longer they exist, the less income exists on the map. \ Because of this, in multiplayer, people will generally coalition popkill nations,"

I think this analysis is semi-flawed. Depending on who you are it can be nice to have a bit less income on the map. If you are Bandar Log your late game is all those awesome gem-summons with gear. Gold doesn't help those. So if you think Ermor is doomed anyway then them lasting longer can be good if it hurts other people more than it does you.

Yeah, you don't need to defeat the big bad popkill nation to win a match.

When I play MP games where there's a popkill nation, over half the time there's never any significant coalition and the winning player often just stays out of their way while going for the thrones indeed. I've seen plenty of Lemuria /MA Ermor with huge stacks of undead guarding their wastelands looking quite scary but trying to form a crusade to purge them doesn't win the game, taking thrones does. Let somebody else tackle the undead hordes, let them weaken each other, while you go for the real prize yourself. The power of death is nothing compared to the power of diplomacy.

Like when expanding against indies you should prioritize aiming first at big-pop farms and regular provinces over low-pop wastelands and swamps, when it comes to fighting other nations you should focus on conquering juicy living lands while evading any devastated dead deserts.

[disnegativ]

And isn't all that a nice conundrum to navigate on your route to victory?

Certain popkill nations tend to spam infrastructure. When you take them out (but not after letting them turtle for 30 turns and kill all the pop) you gain the infrastructure. While there won't be stellar recruiting on half dead lands, saving gold on forts is an added benefit. If you consider them as a lump sum payment you will feel more motivated. You won't lack commander points.

[CruelAsAnAngel]

if you got to pay, let say, nature gem to restore those killed province. say'd province would still cost more compared for the same ressource spended on a non-kill population nation.
what if you need to pay to restore them, but the pay-out is better after you spended it?
it could be either a direct payout in gold, a bigger population, a new magic site like a sanctuary or something that could give passive, like healing or whatever, or that zone could give free spawn....maybe even all these but randomly generated?

[mazirian72]

I was about to weigh in but Dast beat me to it. The trick is containment, which is actually an interesting problem in maintaining a balanced game state (or unbalancing it in your favor). It’s why I don’t mind playing with pop kill nations.

Parroting Dast further I don’t see a problem with the tweaks he mentioned either.

[Emphyrio]

Originally posted by onard2:

When I play MP games where there's a popkill nation, over half the time there's never any significant coalition and the winning player often just stays out of their way while going for the thrones indeed. I've seen plenty of Lemuria /MA Ermor with huge stacks of undead guarding their wastelands looking quite scary but trying to form a crusade to purge them doesn't win the game, taking thrones does. Let somebody else tackle the undead hordes, let them weaken each other, while you go for the real prize yourself. The power of death is nothing compared to the power of diplomacy.

Ermor/Lemuria attract a certain "type" and they're probably the biggest noob magnets, but in your games do they not even try to win in your games? They sit in their castles, content to leave everyone else alone?

I don't *want* to fight ermor/lemuria. They pick fights with *me*.

[onard2]

Originally posted by Emphyrio 👌:

Originally posted by onard2:

When I play MP games where there's a popkill nation, over half the time there's never any significant coalition and the winning player often just stays out of their way while going for the thrones indeed. I've seen plenty of Lemuria /MA Ermor with huge stacks of undead guarding their wastelands looking quite scary but trying to form a crusade to purge them doesn't win the game, taking thrones does. Let somebody else tackle the undead hordes, let them weaken each other, while you go for the real prize yourself. The power of death is nothing compared to the power of diplomacy.

Ermor/Lemuria attract a certain "type" and they're probably the biggest noob magnets, but in your games do they not even try to win in your games? They sit in their castles, content to leave everyone else alone?

I don't *want* to fight ermor/lemuria. They pick fights with *me*.

Well I've seen both types. Sometimes the Lemuria/Ermor indeed appear content with just building up hordes of undead, a problem that to be fair happens to other players with other nations, they hesitate too much to push outward.

But I've also seen skilled Lemuria/Ermor players carefully diplo their neighbours to avoid a coalition against them then pick them out one by one until they manage to grow into a truly unstoppable horde of undeath. Mind you that was signifcantly easier in dom4 when you could tank all your scales along taking an imprisoned pretender for a N9/D9/B9 bless which was hard to stop even with magic, but dominions 5 new bless system makes that significantly harder. Plus Ermor starting with Death 3 default scales means even less bless points.

Now to prevent Ermor/Lemuria pick a fight with you, then as mazirian72 said you need a strategy of containment. Build forts near your borders, set up temples to stop their dominion, show them that you don't want to fight them but won't be easy prey either. Also try to point them at somebody else, although that's standard dominions diplomacy in ffa. And sometimes the map positioning is just unfavorable and you're the easiest target for the undead hordes and they'll come for you, in which case by all means cry to rally a coalition against the big bad Ermor/Lemuria before they kill the world, then just try to expend the least amount of your personal resources on the following crusade so that you come up ahead of the deal.