[Renojustin]

Ok I finished my game. In the last post, Maiandros = Malk Content. He ended up with 987 kills and kept pretty much all of Mighty Mictlan at bay until he finally died. By then I had researched Darkness and had Vampire Lords flying around with Skeleton Staves casting it. The Lupin Mamas were much too powerful to stop with their ally summon. I didn't even really need the Darkness.

If I were to play again, I would definitely take a major drain scale, either 2 or 3 points, and try for Order. I would also go with Sloth 3. Then I would go straight for Lupin Mamas, via Waking Dreamers and use ONLY Mad Prophets for expansion. A big Earth Bless would more or less make this nation almost totally unstoppable.

UNITS:

Thralls are fine, and thematic with very high morale, and low stats otherwise. They autosummon which is ok, especially since I didn't seem to get them except when really needed. It was fun to watch them die in droves as they raced forward to PD against enemies.

Familiar Lanceriders are only using their Fist. I see they have a Glaive or something in the graphic... but still, ugh I hate overpriced cavalry. And that's being redundant: it seems to me that almost all cavalry is overpriced.

The Familiar Crossbowmen surely need balancing. At 15g/10r, they have 12 precision with a 15 AP attack once per round at 40 range. Come on. This is pretty much the only unit I ever bought.

Ghoul Assassins I would not purchase as I got 6 times the firepower with a like amount of Familiar Crossbowmen.

The Familiar Swordsmen are overpriced as well, even with a good Patrol bonus.

The fledgling Malkavians I would never buy for 80gp, they are much too fragile and this nation has so little gold up to midgame. Many times I would receive 5 random events, and all were bad: you cannot count on them for gold.

I only used about 4-5 of the pretty decent Neonate Malkavians throughout the game. Love the Finglonger.

Ghoul Guardians for PD are the MAN. At 55 gold I would not purchase them for my armies, they can easily come down in price to 30/40 but as PD they deflected most attacks leveled at my nation. No routing at 30 morale, 18 armor piercing attack (not magical? Hardly any of the weapons in this mod are, if any... I'm not sure if this was intended), with a 4 length weapon and 14 Attack. Always get 20 PD in any province you care at all about, because then the combination of these and Mad Prophets make that an extremely difficult province to take. Really the PD is extremely deadly for the price. Evocation mages did tend to make short work of it though and it would be slightly more balanced in MP.

HEROES:

The Malk Content is absolutely crazy. Probably the most powerful being I've ever seen in Dominions 3. Looked and acted like a Great Horror, with possibly stronger abilities.

I got Rasputin showing up at my capitol: he had 6 Death, 8 Blood. Dear lord. At 50 Shattered Soul he actually had a streak of about 10 rounds in a row rampaging through my capitol... so he may be somewhat balanced, weird to say. He did come in handy to summon Wraith Lords later on... I got him near endgame.

COMMANDERS:

One Mad Prophet is usually enough to destroy almost any province of independents or SP enemy nation, with their ridiculous Blood Vengeance +4. If you are looking into balancing, I would not give them more than +2, and probably lower their Holy to 3.

Mesmeric Manipulators are fun, I got one with Unequaled Obesity for much of the early game lol. Still, their 30 Shattered Soul means you have to use them extremely sparingly for their only unique function, which is Seduction/Assassination. Eventually she went haywire while in an enemy land and the PD killed her. Their 30 Magic Resistance comes in great handy for this job, they are awesome prophet killers. I can see myself using them in MP.

The Freaks I would only use later on for Blood Hunting, as their 20 Shattered Soul is less than any of the others, plus their relative cheapness of 200g is encouraging.

The other 3 commanders, The Awakend (is this meant to be spelled this way?), the Crazed Monster, and the Raving Lunatic are pretty much throwaways... I never hired one and there is no reason I can think of that I would want to. (Unless a Scythe has an area effect attack?) Still. Maybe some alternate magical paths would be nice here.

Vohzd and Broodmothers... seem pretty much in line. Though at 30 and 60 bloodslaves, I'd just rather have Vampire Lords for 77 slaves. They totally have their use as tramplers though. The Swallow Whole ability... how is that supposed to work for Tramplers? It deals 2x to units smaller than it, but don't they just Trample those?

SUMMONS:

Wraiths are very powerful. The Shivering Shiver gives you 4-5 of them for a mere 10 death gems, and they are Ethereal and Immortal with high Attack and 2x armor negating, paralyzing attacks. Still you have 0 commanders that can actually summon them without boosters. Kind of weird not having any vampires with over 2 Death. I did not find Cappadocians anywhere.

War Ghouls look great. Their powers seem about in line with other similar cost units. Throwing Body Ethereal on almost any mid-to-higher summon like this makes it a death machine.

Big Bad Lupins are sooo powerful, WAY too powerful. For 20 astral gems at Conjuration 7 they can Summon Allies to get a Lupin. Lupins are how I won the game... they are extraordinarily powerful. Huge amounts of hps, huge ATK value, 3 attacks, 20 strength. Great protection, especially when berserking, large amounts of regneration, and even indy commanders can use them. Recuperation and Dark Power are just icing on the cake. Either the Lupin Mamas or the Lupins themselves need definite balancing. Trick Lupines summon at 15 astral for 4 units seems balanced. Lupin Mamas for 20 astral gems is easily the biggest giveaway in the mod. They should cost at least double, and that is being pretty generous.

Vampire Elders at 4 astral/4 blood are almost laughable for 30 blood slaves. They cost 5 blood to get to, so good luck with that. Disappointing. They are totally useless as anything except Call Horror batteries, compared to the other commanders in this nation. That is to say, they are practically balanced.

Zombus are right in line with their cost and power level. The only thing useful about them is that they cause Fear which is kind of thematic with the rest of the nation and has good synergy. Though I didn't use them, I can see how they may occasionally be useful.

Fairy Beings at 6 astral and 6 flying movement are nice. But the fairies they autosummon do not seem to work... they always kill themselves with fairy dust and I don't think the Touch of Madness works. I set them to attack archers and they pretty much only ever killed themselves.

The Sczhlata were fine at about 1 blood slave each.

CONCLUSION:

This nation is much too powerful for MP. It was, however, extraordinarily fun to play in just about maxed out SP. The descriptions were stupendous, but I don't know if you took those out of the books or if you made them yourself. If you did write those just for this mod, my god. The various armors and weapons were often hilarious, and always cool.

This mod is HUGE. And the Malkavians play very differently than most any other mod nation I've tried. Sometimes the Shattered Soul gets in the way, but Immortal, Regenerating, Fearing, Life Draining, Multiple Attack units more than makes up for it. Very, very fun and extremely well done module, with glaring balance issues. Thank you for all the work that went in to this!!! Hope you find this useful and interesting.