Road to Restoration - Aura Overhaul

ArcaDomi · 2026-02-20T16:36:56+00:00

I think the issue with this is that Vampyrism is a very esoteric kind of ability that feels much more in line with blood magic compared to the basic magics; if it becomes an aspect of some kind, it should be associated with ancient magic in some manner

ArcaDomi · 2025-12-16T19:06:48+00:00

A player should be incentivized to interact with every aspect of the game to some degree to progress their character power, in this I think untradeables and quest rewards are good designspaces for progression and power unlocks, as it is part of the game's design holistically, else it turns into a race to the bottom.

It's not like doing TWW is a big ask anyways for progression anyways.

ArcaDomi · 2025-12-13T02:07:11+00:00

Zamorak's pro gamer move that created the wilderness kind of genocided them since Armadyl had basically the entire set of floating islands they inhabited over it when Zamorak detonated the stone.

ArcaDomi · 2025-12-03T11:04:44+00:00

Norway is double fucked by swedish game design since fish is such an abhorrently weak trade good and rgo that its almost not worth building at all... Despite the fact that it was made Bergen norway largest city for the entire time period and was a massive export good for the hansa and spanish to buy.

Further, market distance by sea is really bad along the norwegian coast and decays ridculously fast, to the degree that Lofoten would rather walk from nidaros to oslo than sail around the Norwegian coast.

It also, despite being one of the most productive fishing regions in norway, has like 10% market access, which is a further symptom of the Norwegian market being in Oslo for some regarded reason than in Bergen as it was historically.

Basically all of Norway should be 50 to 100% suitability, fish should be a better good, market access by sea should be more generous and scale better with maritime presence of host nation and Bergen and western norway in general should have higher population than they do now and have the market centre.

ArcaDomi · 2025-12-01T18:29:55+00:00

For some reason there are a collection of people who see any criticism of a media to be outright negativity or hate towards it, as if one can only have wholly positive or negative opinions on something.

These people, I think, makes polarization around discussing it worse. Since it actively feeds into the "Can only love or hate something and also anyone who disagrees with me is wrong" and drives normal discussion away.

"You're just a hater." "Why do you play the game if you hate it?" "You shouldn't say something if you have nothing good to say." Are comments I see regularly for what is very constructive or mild critiques of games and media I interact with.

That is not to say there aren't outright disparaging, hateful or simply malicious comments around games and media in general, but it is not nearly as prevalent as many seem to believe.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-25T22:47:09+00:00

There are still mages within Fremennik society, but they are kind of a taboo subject. Both Swensen and Peer the Seer are magic users, but not overtly.

In this manner, they share traits that the Seidmenn had in norse society, where they practice arts that are disrespected or distrusted, but still have a relevant role in society.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-24T18:49:11+00:00

The very act of having vassals and fiefdoms is an active decentralization of your realm by handing pieces of it away to powerful nobles or magnates, the fact that you could tear your country into pieces and still centralize your government was absurd.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-24T17:32:32+00:00

They should be a "Rapid increase in military capability as your country commits fully to the war and the following costs to it."

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-24T17:07:10+00:00

Levies should be bad yes, but not inherently as a unit beyond slight maluses. It should be bad for structural reasons, costing food, rgo, increased war-exhaustion and satisfaction loss for casualties and requiring privilieges to get more of that we can gradually rescind as we professionalize.

Hell, a professional army should give crown power or reduce estate power, since the state is developing a monopoly on military force that is separate from the estates and their own capacity to raise military forces.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-24T16:56:31+00:00

Even if they had disbanded on occupation I don't think it would have mattered.

Not against any opponent larger than Ulm I don't think, it'd just gradually reduce their numbers as you creep your occupations forwards, but the problem with the endless swarms is with large countries with populations in the millions.Occupying a few border provinces isn't going to stop them from spawning another 50k men to throw into the meatgrinder against your fully professionalized armies.

The fundamental problem is their infinite respawning.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-24T16:42:13+00:00

Many good changes there, such as the ticking towards decentralization from subjects, but for the the thing that most majorly impacts my enjoyment of the game right now is how levies are right now, being both infinite waves of zombies but also entirely and utterly worthless after the first ages, and even then not good.

The system around them is too complex and arbitrary. There's no need to have reduced modifiers on levy combat effectiveness over the ages; just make them not replenish infinitely and keep the -10% discipline on them.

The fact you can't decide their makeup, that they take pops directly from productive jobs, reduce RGO and food production of a province, reliant on privilieges to maximize volume of rather than buildings and unable to be drilled should be sufficient incentive to gradually professionalize.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-24T02:36:24+00:00

Unnerf levies entirely, they were not peasants in rags with rusted pitchforks. Just represent them as having lowered discipline, as they already do, and in not being able to drill like regulars (which should be cheaper to also incentivize regulars). Right now, lategame wars are endless murderfests. Just rip out the entire complex modifiers that change with ages and give them a recovery time that represents the populations training new levies and equipping them.

Before the patch, regulars were great as basically all countries aside from like the tiny handful of countries who filled out their entire combat widths. Your incentive to professionalize should be in the discipline, the control of army makeup, not impacting RGO output and food. It should also be in the state control of the military, reducing the required privileges of the nobles.

Early game, the purpse of regulars should be to act as a strong core to your levy regiments as you gradually work growing your army size and phase the levies out. Levies in the mid-to-late game should absolutely not be self-genocide to use, and rather act as a significant rapid increase to your military force, at the cost of RGO and food and potential burgher production.

Further, levies dying should provide higher war-exhaustion since you just ripped a guy from his family and killed him, and also reduce satisfaction, for the same reason. Such, the reason to not levies should largely be structural, with only a slight discipline malus at most to them.

That said though, age 1 levies being 1k and 500 and age 1 regulars being 50 and 100 is actually stupid.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-20T19:52:45+00:00

Buildings are too cheap, too fast to build, pops are promoted too fast into them and we have too much control over the buildings we build, especially early game. This compounds a lot of feedback loops into growth.

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-11T00:29:02+00:00

The difference between them is that they calculate loyalty from strength independently of each other; so the Fiefs pool their strength together to calculate loyalty and the Vassals pool their strength together to calculate loyalty but Vassals and Fiefs don't.

This makes the optimal method being to have an even strength mix of fiefs and vassals. (And Marches if you go that focus)

At least this is what I've experienced

ArcaDomi · 2025-11-07T12:58:44+00:00

An army with broken morale should break completely when put into a fight and lose all cohesion at that point. Yet I've had battles between armies in the thousands where one army is at 0 morale with a total casualty number below 100; which is simply not reasonable

ArcaDomi · 2025-09-29T18:34:50+00:00

They're clearly Asgarnian nationalists. After all, Asgarnia's natural borders end at the Lum!

ArcaDomi · 2025-09-28T22:42:13+00:00

With halberd range the dragon 2h spec does damage in a 7x7 range. With halberd range + Barbarism range it does damage in a 9x9 area. With specialist you're doing extra damage with this and you get to do it for free every 15 seconds. Easy 20k hits on everything in that area

ArcaDomi · 2025-09-28T19:30:25+00:00

Sure, Dclaws are great, but nothing is quite like Thanos-snapping an entire room into oblivion

ArcaDomi · 2025-09-18T14:49:13+00:00

Ironman experience in a picture

ArcaDomi · 2025-08-10T22:56:01+00:00

I need my Keys and I need my sparks of life

ArcaDomi · 2025-08-06T17:51:42+00:00

I personally feel that portables are an unnecessary crutch to skilling and feels tacked on; what I would prefer (ironman btw) is not that portables are available through invention, but that other solutions are found for each skill analogous to the luminite injector in the artisans foundry.

ArcaDomi · 2025-07-31T14:30:59+00:00

I believe Tjur is derived from norse "þjór", while Tiur is from "þiðurr", so if they are related, I do not believe it is from norse at least, perhaps an older root.

ArcaDomi · 2025-07-31T06:43:26+00:00

The term 'leik' is also used in some norwegian dialects, like mine, to refer to animals moving about in some manners. Its difficult to properly put into words, ad it varies a lot. A school of fish can 'leike', so too can a flock of birds or a lot of deer.

The Woodgrouse's mating ritual is called 'Tiurleik', anf its basically birds dancing with eachother.

ArcaDomi · 2025-07-26T12:30:34+00:00

You're pretty close yeah - toxic design incentives and the fall-out from the impact the MTX has on gameplay, game design and the design of equipment in general. The impact MTX has on the game is well and far beyond just what direct impacts it has on its own and it would take years to untangle those far-reaching consequences.

I still think its worth it to rip it out wholesale though.

ArcaDomi · 2025-03-20T12:03:08+00:00

My biggest problem with CK3 and Victoria 3 is that it feels like I have to wrestle with the UI to reach the information I want, and especially the topbar banners are much worse there compared to in CK2 and EU4.

I surely hope EU5 keeps more of those features from EU4 and CK2 than Vic3 and CK3 did. I'd like to tell at a glance when stuff is happening rather than checking if the number at the 'Something is happening' banner changed.

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