Question about dragons

Noooooo, do not goad the followers of the dragon cult!!

umba gaya umba gaya .... hallowed brothers of the cult of the Dragons, heed my call to this thread for it is of the Way of the Draco.

Hallowed are the Dragons, deliverers of Origin. The holy flame of the Dragons shall be heard across all the galaxy.

In a more detailed response, I would appreciate a mini-sector of techs refered to as Animal Mastery/ Beast Mastery, which deals with such things as breeding dragons, recruiting dragons, and the possibility of a dragon mount. (although dragons are so rare that MAYBE a higher level unit, like a soveriegn or powerful hero, could use a dragon mount, but it would be rare and unlikely)

after all, a dragon-mount is not effective unless your an archer or magic-user, because these dragons are just so ... gigantic. However, I fully support and agree with small packs of Wyverns that you can capture, subjugate, and master as mounts for all manner of warrior. Afterall, a Wyvern is just a really big, scaly horse, that can fly, and breath fire. Maybe twice the size of a horse, counting the wings. Definitely the mount of the dragon world, if there are any.

Dude I just want some more information on Dragon's place in the game, if you want to make suggestions than go the elemental ideas board. Don't waste space on this thread.

Okay, duly noted.

:Ahem:

To properly, and directly respond to your question ... dragons will be EXTREMELY RARE and EXTREMELY POWERFUL ... talking about potentially wiping out thousands of your fodder soldiers before death or heartattack/whatever.

Now then ... A Dragon can be recruited, seemingly an endeavor of massive amounts of prestige (civilization) as well as dragon-speak knowhow (Adventure). It seems to be involved in a mid-game or end-game adventure tech, combined with mid->end game levels of prestige.

A nation (seemingly) can have only one dragon. And while there have been hints of fledgeling dragons, we only know for certain of the possibility of recruiting powerful, ancient, fully grown dragons.

thank you:)

Dragon mounts would be seriously awesome though. Especially since if they put them in by default I won't have to work as hard to Mod them into my Dragonlance Mod.

OR they could simply have Wyvern mounts .... would be easier to rezise the Wyvern and redistribute stats appropriately than to resize and restat a smaller version of "Super Dragon" and then adding the mount functionality.

I wholehearedly agree that there should be Wyvern Mounts and Bug Mounts (like a Wasp or Dragonfly)

am I the onlyone that imagines a certain type of swamp-dwelling Fallen (or a shorter, Marshveld Elven Race) which lives in swamps and whose major non-magical source of combat is Flying Bug Mounts?

but yea, the added possibility of your Sovereign riding a super-dragon has way too much awesome attached to it

(I would be for it)

i hope there will be dragon mounts akin to warhammer

You surely will only access to a dragon by Quest. A difficult and long chain of quests, actually.

They will surely provide some kind of boost to Prestige to all the cities ("Hey, we have an all mighty dragon in our side! Yay!") and/or bonus to diplomacy ("Sorry for being late to the negotiations table, I''s making aure that the accomodations for my dragon ally were good enough.")

It'd not be impossible to get more than one dragon. But there won't be easy mode for that, only Terminus Hardcore Mode.

There might be male and female dragons. And there might be some mating involved in the game. Dragons as mounts for your army won't be in the game. If you can have one for your Sovereign or one hero, you will feel happy. And we are supposing that the dragon is in a good mood and allows you to use him/her as mount.

For mods, anything goes. For campaign/pure-Elemental, I'd not hold my breath.

If by ability you mean quests, yeah. Skills per se, it seems doubtfull unless dragons become common like a Burger King. To purchase a skill just to increase slightly your chances to recruit a uber unit (a single one... maybe two... don't let your hopes to fly too high there; in huge maps could be some more, I suppose) doesn't seem a worthy invesment. Specially when that uber unit won't win the game by itself (hopefully).

Answered in "the official spirit" of past threads/posts about the same topic.

I think Dragons should have in-depth stats like Sovereigns do (only much higher values), and if you are able to speak to it (have discovered the ancient draconic language and learned it, or something), you would interact with Dragon like you would any other rival sovereign. Only this time, you can form a permanant alliance with the dragon, and he can fight for you.

I don't know how large stats can grow ... but from previous examples Im thinking at least double physical stats for dragons, and for things pertaining to magic and diplomacy (intelligence, wisdom, charisma) at least 50% greater.

In some games, Super-Weapons-of-Gods Dragons were immune to magic, or were at least 50% resistant to the arcane. I wonder ... can dragons use any spell within their element? or only Dragons breath? Can they Channel? (I think they have large amounts of essense). How resistant are they to magic? (I'd say 100% of there own sphere (fire, ice, or death) and 50% resistant to all other arcane wiles) .... if its an effect, I would say 50% chance of working, unless its something mind-affecting like sleep, confusion, domination, or charm, because I think Dragons would be immune to such things. (think anything a high level Final Fantasy boss would be immune to, dragons would be immune to as well ... this includes cheap one-shot spells and trample/freeze abilities, as well as backstabs probably, and any poisoning spells or abilities)

Very good book.

One of my favs

Part of why I would want for Dragons to be Channelers, with Channeler-like stats (other than it would seem fitting) is that I would like to easily mod it so that I, the Sovereign, am a Dragon.

Even if they weren't Channelers by themselves, you could imbue them with essence and make them Channelers.

Aaaaack creepy avatar!!

In any case, I actually don't want dragons to have the ability to channel essence in any way similar to a regular channeler: building stuff on magic shards and reviving massive blobs of land just doesn't seem......... dragony to me. I would prefer to aheva system where the dragon can do very little in terms of scope (say, resurrecting only one or two squares of land right where it's nest/lair/whatever is or casting only local buff and attack spells) but doing it very powerfully and at little cost to the dragon itself (no real mana limit for spells, maybe a recharge system to keep you from doing too much too fast, but reclaimable essence that doesn't regenerate on its own).

 Ok, as Private Harris from Laser Squad seems not to be... favored by you, maybe you prefer some Dragon Age?

On topic, that a Dragon could be a channeler by default, doesn't mean he would go healing the land. I don't think that imbued channelers will be able to do that neither. Or maybe I'm wrong.

Slightly better................... creepy, yes, but not creepy, if you get me..........

My impression was that if you gave a hero or imbued unit some of your essence, (s)he could spend it to revivify the land just like a channeler could......... but it could be anything and I don't think even the devs themselves know..

Well, I'm not going to use these no matter what you say:

On topic, I think that Dragons are elementally atuned to certain elements. And none of those elements (magics more precisely) is Life or Death. So they can be Channelers but won't have access to the magic that would allow the whole "bring life to the land". Or they could be just some all mighty powerfull beings with some "innate spells" as natural abilities.

But then we have heroes that can be imbued. So they might be able to get Life/Death magic if the Sovereign desires. They might then have that power (theoretically). I wonder if a channeler could be imbued again to get access to different elements? Being a channeler already supposes access to all of them?

The truth is that we know so little...

How on EARTH (or Tallon IV?!) did you know I was such a big Metroid fan?!

In any event, elemental dragons: agree. I would like to see some that look more Oriental for things like water and Earth that you usually don't assosciate dragons with in the West. Not reviving land....... sort of agree: I could see an area where a dragon spends a lot of time (a lair or nest, basically) slowly becoming more in tune with that element, but other than that no real revivification abilities. Innate spells, wholeheartedly agree: but they should also be able to learn them from channelers/find them in ruins.

Regarding heroes, my impression was that you essenially (if you will pardon the expression) make them into mini-channelers with all the abilities of the original, just not as strong.

Hopefully this won't sound too out of character for me, but I've so far been assuming that the defining distinction between sovereign-channelers and imbued champions is that only the sovereigns will have essence, even if some imbued champions are granted mana-channeling powers. The mechanics so far make it clear that essence spent to revitalize lands is a sunk cost. If it is possible to add essence to a champion, I'd expect there to be at least a 1:1 essence cost overhead, i.e. to add 1 essence to a champion, you'd need to spend at least two essence.

Whether or not dragons might have essence should be a back story parameter that depends on how essence works, where dragons fall on the sentience scale of the Beasts category, and how mature dragrons and mature sovereign-channelers 'rank' against one another. I hope to see at least the elder dragons have some similarities to the dragons of Chinese folklore; not necessarily the quasi-deity thing, but named entities capable of understanding and meddling in human (and Fallen) affairs.

It's not a secret in this forum. And I think you were doing a mod for Gal Civ II too?

GW Swicord, I think it was said somewhere in this forum that normal channelers (those imbued) would get essence and increse its quantity each level up (but lower than a sovereign). And they would also be capable of imbuing other creatures. I don't know if the idea is still considered but it was at least once considered.

OT, I actually like Swicord's idea a little better just becase it makes sense: maybe something where you can imbue essence to boost mana capacity, but you can also "invest" a percentage of your soverignness in multiple areas (so that not only does the hero get to use your essence, but also portions of damage, mana use, stat increases, and whatnot rub off on everybody in the "network".

Oo, way too many threads to dig through to find that old chat easily. My sloppy memory has that listed, but tagged as from the beta crowd, not the devs. Worse, you've made me notice that a minor thread-jacking is in progress...

Yeah, we want to see Fin Fang Foom!

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/08/09/365-reasons-to-love-comics-221/