New Mod Nations Game: Mods over Europe (finished)
 

Okay, let's have another game exclusively with mod nations!

Following the example of the first mod nations game, I will host a game which purely consists of modded nations. Because of limitations from Dominions 3, I think we'll only be able to squeeze 8 nations in total in, although I'll let more people play if we can fit in even more nations than that.

Sombre has announced that he'll prepare the following mod nations for CBM compability in case that they are chosen:

All of his nations that are finished, including

• Arga Dis, Blood and Bronze
• Skaven Nation
• Avernum, The Awakening

or others like

• Urdheim, The Infinite Horde
• Haida Gwaii, Reunified Tribes
• Hoburg Alliance, Beer and Apples

aswell as those that we already have ready

• The Hoburg Kingdom, Crossbows and Butter
• Teutanion, Age of Honor
• Kharam Dzu, Hoist the Black Flag
• Sanguinia, Vampire Counts
• Sylvania, The Last New Dawn
• Vaettihiem, Exiled Tribes
• New Ulm, Iron Faith Reborn
• New Jomon, Broken Swords

We will again create an "all in one" mod that contains the Conceptual Balance mod and the new nations for the game.

If you want to participate, then please name the nation that you want to play. This will again be a 48h quick hosting network game on a map featuring Europe, including the Mediterranean, with turn notification via email and a web status page. I'll start the game as soon as we're ready, and at the 9th of August at the latest in any case.

Please do playtest your nation on your own to find out its strength and weaknesses before we start the game.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Nations taken so far:

• Sombre wants to play Kharam Dzu
• Ferrosol wants to play Skaven
• Cor wants to play Hoburg Alliance
• Jazzepi wants to play Avernum
• Xox wants to play Ulm Reborn
• LoloMo wants to play Sanguinia
• coobe wants to play Sylvania
• DrPraetorius wants to play Haida Gwaii

Pretenders received: 7/8. Waiting for DrPraetorius.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I'd just like to add that if someone else specifically wants to try Kharam Dzu, they certainly can. I just took them because they didn't get a fair showing in the last mod game (I have tweaked them since then).

Also, feel free to suggest other mods which could be used for the game. If I can do a cbm version of them, I probably will.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I'll take avernum please.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

ooo can i take the
skaven?

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Hi can i have Hoburg alliance please, I love the little folk.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Urdheim, The Infinite Horde please!

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I would like a spot, have not decided which nation to take yet. I will decide in a day ot two , if not sooner.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

me me me me! I haven't decided which yet, gimme a bit of time

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Jazzepi, we meet again! You have chosen the foul enemy of the halflings!NOOOO!

But anyway, great choice, I just looked at them and they seem fun. Just beware of the other little people.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Skaven sounds cool, I'll try them =)

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I am leaning towards new Ulm, and would like to reserve it. But still checking all these wonderful mods out.

Lolomo, I think the Skaven are already chosen by Ferrosol as listed in the second post. But yes, they do sound pretty dang cool.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

oops skaven is taken, I would like to try Haida Gwaii. Super Javelins for the win! hehe

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

If you decide to play Ulm then I'm going to sandwich you between Sanguinia and Kharam Dzu, because those two have a score to settle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Just joking, pick whatever you like. This game filled up a lot faster than the first one! We'll take care to prepare the mod ASAP, so that we can start maybe middle of next week.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

when testing this should I be using the "cb mod" and also the "cb nation mod" at the same time? Or just the cb nation mode by itself? Also is cb 1.0 mod the one to use? It is the only one i see, no handy link like i see for all the nation mods at the top of this thread.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

You can use this mod from the first game to test the races that have been used there: http://www.mediafire.com/?11b0zcymhem

For the others, play them without any other mods. Sombre will take care to get them working with the CB mod later.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I have a request.

The last map we played on was... thematic, but not balanced at all. Jomon has mapmove 3 guys, and I was stuck in a literal forest. I might as well have been playing Ulm.

I'd much rather play a randomly generated map then another one like the one was just played.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I think your starting position was better than what some other people ended up with, Jomon. Like Sanguinia and their wasteland, me and my mountain+forest low pop provinces.

But yeah, seems a lot of maps have too few 'plain' provinces.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

It was just a bad map in general, I think. Instead of having some even bell curve distribution, it tried to be too much like Europe. People got stuck in huge swaths of particular types of land.

I don't think you understand how frustrating it is to have a mountain in the middle of your territory, and forests EVERYWHERE.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I had maybe one province that didn't have a forest or mountain on it. I had units with both forest and mountain survival, so movement wasn't an issue, but having no gold income and only 1 or 2 provinces over 5k pop was something of a drawback.

I agree that it didn't seem a very balanced map for MP and trust me I understand terrain and start position frustrations. But most nations had similar issues on that map.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Right so basically you gits have picked new nations and given me an assload of CBM balancing to do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

This is how I see it.

CBM Kharam Dzu: Just a tweaked version of the one from the previous game.
CBM Sanguinia: Same as Kharam Dzu. Just tweaks.
CBM Avernum: Shouldn't take long as they have no cav. No astral pearl spawning for you though Shovah.
CBM Skaven: Will be basically unchanged from the vanilla one I'll release today. So no prob there.
CBM Hoburg Alliance: Tricky. Like most first CBM versions I'll just take a stab at balancing it. I will not be following the vanilla hoburg stats though, they are mad.
CBM Haida Gwaii: Haven't played them much, but don't forsee them being that hard to balance.
CBM Urdheim: I haven't played them much and they're huge with tricky to balance units. This will take up the most time.

After I've got these together, then comes the inevitable sorting out of conflicts etc, checking out the map,...

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

It isn't less balanced than Parganos, for example. But particularly the big uniformly distributed wasteland in the south made me want to use another map, too. I have a map now which features Europe again, but is different in many aspects. In fact, I think there is way too much farmland in there... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif 134 provinces, about 100 land, 34 water. Does that sound okay for 8 people? Otherwise I could raise the province count by artificially adding some more provinces.

Take the time you need. We don't have to start by the 9th of August but as you know it would be desirable because then I'm leaving. I could start the game while I'm traveling, too, but I couldn't help as much with the mod stuff.

I'll take care about the map and I can do all the stuff regarding conflicts of ID numbers before I'm leaving.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

You sure you couldnt just give them a big price-hike instead? Without a way to generate ALOT of pearls S4, immobile, capitol only mages(who are currently one of avernums big strengths) arent much use.
Avernum has only a slightly above average military outside their capitol and lack any great non-capitol(particularly battle) mages - F2E1 being inferior to E2F1 for example.

With no completely dominant units, no national summons and their only high end units being capitol only, removing their pearl spawning - atleast to me as it is what I have used as them and why I picked them - seems to remove their main shot at late game viability.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

We talked about it in the IRC channel, Sombre wanted to keep the gem thing and make them a national summon instead... We convinced Sombre that the gem generating thing is too heavily unbalanced, but if he'd drop it they'll be fine. S4 still has many uses. Immobility is no problem considering Teleport and Gateway, and after all you can use them to Mind Hunt out of the box. Maybe the price could drop a bit, but gems for free is way too dangerous.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Could we ask you to pick some other nation? Sombre asked me to have a look at the Kobolds, and they do seem like a "cool" nation, but just too heavily unbalanced for MP. Sombre said that he'd make them balanced, but considering all their units and national spells it's probably going to take a long time.

I might prepare another mod nation game with all those overpowered nations like those Kobolds and Amos' creations, if you would be interested in that... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Sombre said that he has the Hoburg Kingdom balanced out, maybe you're interested in them? They have some similar concepts to the Kobolds, and we have them ready right now...

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I'm so sad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

I picked Urdheim just because they had a neat name. I would like to comment to Sombre that I think the dragon pretender is a little unbalanced. It's flying, immortal, has its own AoE attack through posion, fear, amphibian, and just absolutely ridiculousness written all over it. The first thing I did was try out this guy with dominion 9 + decent scales.

If sombre reads this I would suggest that he find a way to weaken the kobolds, boost their morale much higher so that they don't break when taking huge losses (or give them high levels of beserk), and then cut their food intake below 1 per unit if possible. Like if you could make them eat 1/4 a unit of supply or something so that you could move truly massive hordes across the board that would be very cool.

Otherwise it's impossible to do anything with all those guys considering they don't have any nature mages =\

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I'll look at the available nations listed below to pick one. Are there any others that I'm missing? I don't want to play Jomon again.

* Arga Dis, Blood and Bronze

* The Hoburg Kingdom, Crossbows and Butter
* Teutanion, Age of Honor
* Sylvania, The Last New Dawn
* Vaettihiem, Exiled Tribes

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Yeah, "a little" is a little understatement. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Even if he'd lose the immortality that thing is out of whack. The Scion of Sirrush would make a nice national summon, or unique hero, but as a recruitable he's too much, too, in my opinion. Have you noticed the friggen auto-summon that the Warchief has? The "Summon Allies" from the summoner alone would be enough to fuel an army if you get some 5-10 of them, but with warchiefs you wouldn't even have to pay gold to enlist recruits, just send them zerging at your enemies. Then I had a look at the spell list... I didn't try them out, but the names and descriptions alone suggested that they'd be no less ridiculously powerful.

As I said, I think that the nation is definitely "cool" and very beautiful, but for Dominions multiplayer it's just way too powerful. Do you think any of the standard nations would stand a chance against them? I'm sorry for suggesting them in the first place, but Sombre said he'd balance them out (and he'll do, but it would take an awful lot of time) and I didn't look at them before. Do you accept my apology? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

yup, those are available and already balanced out aswell.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Sure they can use mind hunt - but without a huge gem income it wont be used alot and the change will atleast put one of avernums staple units back from important to a minor support role.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Go ahead and sign me up for Hoburg, Crossbows and Butter.

If the mod makers are reading this, I really wish they'd use less random picks ;P

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

THanks Sombre for all this work.


Where you suggesting that Hoburg is over powered or under powered above?

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Uh. They have awful, awful, awful magic. I suspect they will suck.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Sorry guys but im going to have to drop out now, I just cant grasp how to play avernum in their current gem starved form - atleast not enough to put up any real fight. I would select another nation but the others than interest me are taken.

Apologies but I just dont feel that my prescence as avernum would help the game.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Thats why i chose them, the sucking. I like being the underdog, Think of all that extra glory if i can lead the little people to vicory! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

The kingdom's magic doesn't get any better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Don't drop out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif. Avernum is still cool. better than the halflings. those crystals can really do some damage even without the free gems. they might have a price reduction in the CB too.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I'll play Avernum if Shovan still doesn't want to play them.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

"Gem starved"? Because they don't get astral pearl spawn from a recruitable? That must mean all the vanilla nations are gem starved too.

I think you're overreacting Shovah. I've said that if you have suggestions on more changes to Avernum, to keep them relatively powerful and of course interesting, I'm happy to implement them. But I always suspected I'd have to remove the pearl spawning if I ever made a cbm version because astral pearls for gold like that basically throws the mechanics of MP out of whack.

If you're saying "Now they aren't overpowered and I won't be able to utterly stomp everyone, so I won't play" then yeah, you probably shouldn't be playing, since part of the reason for his game is to improve the balance of the mods and highlight how they can be part of regular MP. But I don't think that's what you're saying - you just want a fun nation that you can play well, fair enough. So tell me some changes other than having the pearlspawning back, that you'd like for Avernum.

One thing I could do which would greatly boost their battlemagic is simply let Vahnatai Mages be built outside the cap. With potential 3F or 3A they're pretty special. I can also reduce the cost of the Crystal Souls, if you think they're too pricey to actually use right now.

As for the rest of Avernum's military - they have resource sink troops, a nice sbow archer, useable sacreds, stealth troops+commander, amphibious infantry and very heavy infantry right out of the box. Varied and certainly above average.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

As for Hoburgs,.... you have to understand that when we looked at Hoburg Kingdom for the last mod game, the thing seemed overpowered as hell in the early game - it could simply crank out a wall of cheap crossbows with excellent stats that would shoot you to pieces, then when you got to meleee you couldn't even hurt the buggers, since they had solid protection plus abnormal defence values. They even had mr 14 on their troops, they had a commander who could summon allies and way too many of them,...

Basically they would be no fun to start next to, even if their late game was highly suspect.

So now I've nerfed them, but if I've done it right, they should still be pretty scary in the early game. If not, well I'll un-nerf them some. I didn't want to give more magic to a nation which we had decided was basically overpowered though.

Hoburg Alliance SE on the other hand, seemed ok/weakish in balance. They actually have pretty decent mages and research prospects, they can still mass crossbows, they still have fun and effective hog cavalry etc. Overall I just tweaked them, now I think they should be fairly balanced. I certainly wouldn't go thinking hoburgs are worse just becuase they're hoburgs - their crossbows are just as good as those of regular troops (even better with their prec) and the price is lower. They also get slightly discounted commanders, priests and mages.


I appreciate it when people make specific balance suggestions, or bring my attention to specific units that might be a problem, so please go ahead.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I looked at Avernum today. I think they're very neat. Both sacred troops are recruitable out of the box, and I love the "full hitpoint" regen that the one guys have. I was thinking of a high earth and water bless, maybe even air. I haven't had time to give them a chance.

They also have a huge variety of magic which excites me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I don't think the crystal people losing their astral pearl free spawn makes them terrible. I'm not sure exactly what I'd do with them, but making them mind hunting machine seems like a good idea. Maybe if their cost was lowered they could make good research machines with the low upkeep cost from the sacred status.

Jazzpei

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I was disappointed by the severe restriction in magic. I don't see how someone is suppose to fight with magic selection that includes E2 and F2 mages max (sure you can random higher, but it's extremely unlikely to get anything over F3 or E3, and even that doesn't happen terribly often).

I think it might help to take a page from Abysia. If you're going to give someone an extremely limit selection of magic, they should at least have access to high levels in those paths. For example, it's nearly impossible to get to a point where you can cast Fire Arrows with the current Horburg setup, but Abysia can do it out of the box.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I am not sure i understand the logic behind such high MR for hoburgs. The protection may be a little high as well, but i would not touch the Def at all. Maybe drop attack some, they are short, might be hard to hit above the waste.

The Alliance SE hog knights are not very good IMHO. They have trample, but good luck using it with their size 2, IMHO trample can go and they can get a gore attack if they don't have one already or maybe the hogs can fight on their own when the riders bite it. whatever. i would be perfectly happy with no changes to the alliance.


The kingdom is a little overpowered troop wise and under powered magic wise IMHO. 4 resources for a troop with armor, a sword and a crossbow? wow, seems unlikely. Plus a HOLY giant? eww.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Abysia doesn't have huge numbers of quality missile troops right out of the gate, however I think you make a fair point. Perhaps in order to fully change them from overpowered early game face hugger to balanced nation they should get some magic boost to help in the later game. I'll take another look at them today. Overall they aren't supposed to have good magic though - they are rather like Ulm in that respect.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I can understand that. Having limited magic selection is fine.

If you can come up with a good battle-mage us for F2 or E2 casters, please let me know. The only thing I can think of is building boots of earth, casting summon earth power, and spamming blade wind. Maybe the Magma spell (whose name I can not remember right now) if they get good randoms.

Or maybe casting phoenix fire and attempting to spam falling fires.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Maybe if the random picks where upped to 30-50% they would be better. You could have a 4 fire or 4 earth right out of the box as it is now, if your very lucky.

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

The MR on the hoburgs is from the vanilla stats. I did take away the high def from the vanilla stats though (ok you can say they're short and hard to hit, but 14 def? That's better than a ninja, I believe. Other small units don't seem to get this bonus and hoburgs are slow little fat guys. Also, why would they get that def bonus when on a hog? You just hit the hog instead).

I think the high mr is just a feature of dominions hoburgs - I toned it down a little, from 14 to 13 in many cases. It seemed less insane than the def.

Seems I forgot to give the Hoburg Alliance hog knight gore attack instead of trample. I'll fix that before the game starts.

Hoburg Kingdom soldiers, before they were nerfed, had better armour, a sword, a crossbow, a shield and better stats. They were just all purpose monsters without a real early game counter. Don't know if the giant is a problem though - he might be, but he didn't look that nuts to me.

Trust me if you think they're overpowered troopwise now you should have seen them before the nerf.

You are using CBM Hoburg Kingdom 2 right?

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Nope, I need to give that a look. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

I don't think the giant is a problem. I don't think he's particularly useful though. He's worse than the EA Neifheilm sacred giant (half the hitpoints), costs too many resources and at the same time to really be useful for a bless strat. To me, they don't fill a niche. They're not good enough to make for a bless start, and I don't think I'd field them otherwise.

Also, why do people care about the MR on non-commander units so much? I can't think of very many AoE spells that check individual units' MR besides Shadow Blast.

Jazzepi

Re: New Game: Mods over Europe (recruiting players
 

Regarding the pearl generating drama, I'd be fine if they'd generate pearls one out of five times, but unfortunately it is not possible to mod that. Your comments make it sound like you'd exploit the gem generation thing to the fullest, and as I said before, I think it's a very unfair advantage. Other nations have their gem income limited by the number of provinces in their control and the magic diversity of their mages, you wouldn't have any limitations. You would probably be able to crank one of those guys out per turn by turn 15 or 20, and then receive a pearl for each one of those... So we are talking some extra dozen gems by turn 30, and some extra two dozen gems by turn 40-45, regardless of provinces in your control. Compare that to the cost of gem generating globals... I don't think that this is justified, sorry.

Sombre asked me if we could have a "no indies" map for this game. This means that provinces would have indy defenders in them and would generate money and resources like usual, and you could recruit units from magic sites and your own nationals from forts, but not any other type of units. I have declined that request since I think that nations should be able to complement what they are missing through indies, missile troops or amphibious units for example, and in my games I rarely use indy units, but make heavy use of indy scouts for example. But I can understand that this might be interesting so that players really play their nations to the fullest. So if there are absolutely no doubts by the other players, I could certainly make the map indy-less. Opinions?