Mod: Survival - Now 1.11

[hEad]

Survival is a mod designed to challenge the player to create an empire with nothing more than a Pretender, 3 provinces and 7 of each gem type per turn.

The player is not given access to any national recruitables – no mages, leaders or units. It therefore becomes important to create indi armies for bulk units and to recruit indi leaders and mages to empower as ones mages. Of course a large part of the fun is summoning. Any unit can be Sentienced (Gift of Reason, Ench 0, S1) and provided with a new item called a light of the blessed (Const 0, F1). This Misc item bestows upon the unit the same benefits as a Shroud of the Battle Saint but now doesn't require the all important armour spot.

This item opens up the bless possibilities for a player to consider as any unit is now potentially a sacred. Of course, this means that the player would have to take as usual, bad scales or an asleep pretender. However, given that one cannot recruit national mages, initial research will be non existent until empowerment of units slowly increases the players’ access to magic and research... decisions decisions.

I have found from a few games of testing that the best (my opinion) settings are as follows:

Provinces: 3 (access to initial leaders and Indi armies)

Indi Strength: 0 (Surprisingly, the rapid expansion this allows for opens up the map immediately, quickly setting borders and allowing for room to begin the process of creating mages, thugs and indi armies. It creates a different dynamic and sort of reminded me of the land grab stage in AH’s Civilization board game. Anyway, just because you get a lot of territory quickly, doesn’t mean you will be able to hold it.)

Magic Site Frequency: 75 ( The name of the game is gems and more gems)

Money: 50 (Keeps armies smaller and more reliant on Sentienced units. It also has the added benefit of making scale choice important – Can’t just have crappy scales as the penalty with be crippling.)

Resources: 50 (Same again)

Magic: Well this is up to you. It takes a while to get research up and running unless you take an awake pretender so I was testing on Easy to get things moving.

I hope to add in as I tinker with it, more summons. So far there are 13 previously national specific ones included to play with:

Spectral Infantry
Scorpion Men
Kinnaras
Siddhas
Devatas
Oni Generals
Dai Oni’
Harbingers
Angels of Fury
Tzitzinitl’
Vampire Counts
Umbrals
Marble Oracles

I hope to at some stage have an MP game with this so there are 3 nations included at present unimaginatively called Red Blue and Green. I hope to add in a few more but can’t seem to work out how to change the colors in the mod. (Hopefully some clever sort with give me a hand with this.)

Playing against the Dominions nations is quite a challenge especially if you take the settings I suggest and bump up the AI difficulty – great fun and hence I suppose the name Survival. The mod is set in the early era but easy to change,

No doubt things could be polished up a bit more and they will as I continue to work on it, but I though I would throw it out there and get some opinions.

As it stands now, it’s a great fun fantasy sandbox and very easy to role play with. Each empowered unit has a purpose and you remember their names, and cry (a lot) when they fall.

UPDATE------------

1.1

Fixed various typos.

Added a recruitable home province only S1 mage. This should help get magic moving along a tad sooner. Before if you took an asleep pretender, it wasn’t possible to alchemize gems and therefore the first empowerment was only possible around turn 8.

Monsters added – looking to get the balance on these costs so any suggestions welcome!

Fire

Smoulder ghost Conj2 F1, 5g
Fire Elemental Conj3, F3, 15g
Spenta of Fire conj8, F6, 40g

Air
Air Elemental Conj1, A1, 5g
Yazad Conj3, A3, 10g
Spenta of Sky and Metals Conj8, A6, 40g

Nature
Great Bearx2 Conj2 N2, 6g
Carrion Lord Conj4, N3D1, 20g
Spenta of Plants Conj8, N7, 25g

Earth
Earth Elemental Conj2, E2, 7g
Marble Oracle Conj6, E4, 30g
Spenta of Earth Conj8, E6, 40g

Water
Water Elemental Conj2, W2, 5g
Void Spectre Conj5, W4S2, 15g
Spenta of Waters, Conj8, W6, 35g

Astral
Kinnara Conj4, S4A1, 15g
Harbinger Conj6, S5, 30g

Blood
Vampire Count Conj2, B3, 35Slaves
Tzitzimitl Conj4, B4, 20Slaves

Death
Shaddow Vestal Conj1, D1, 5g
Wraith Centurion Conj4, D4, 20g
Umbral Conj6, D5, 30g

I want to look at adding the other pretender chassis in as unique summons – will get to this at some point.

1.11
Reconfigured the recruitable mage to have a 25% chance of 1 in any magic path. I wasn't comfortable about
having easy initial magic in the beginning - the point is survival after all.

Added in the following pretenders
Celestial General
Son of the Sun
Mother of Lions
Sacred Statue
Virtue
Female Titan
Lord of Fertility
Great White Bull
Forge Lord
Mother of Rivers
Lady of Love
Lord of Rebirth
Mother of Serpents
Molloch
Mother of Monsters
Divine Emperor
Great Black Bull
Nataraja
Jade Emperor
Lord of Plenty
Lady of Springs
Gorgon

These are sprinkled between nations Red Blue and Green. I’ll add in others as time permits.

[analytic_kernel]

That's some interesting outside-of-the-box thinking.

[hEad]

Originally Posted by analytic_kernel

That's some interesting outside-of-the-box thinking.

Thanks ak!

I just discovered that Smolder Ghost prophets can reanimate... An E9 bless with Black Plate and a Frost Brand and out the door he is a fearsome dude!

[Gandalf Parker]

Sounds like some games I played by turning on one of the modded nation slots and playing it with nothing else added. It definetly gives the AIs a big head start.

[hEad]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Sounds like some games I played by turning on one of the modded nation slots and playing it with nothing else added. It definetly gives the AIs a big head start.

Indeed! I really enjoy the free form aspect of it - the ability to play with all the toys so to speak.

[Frozen Lama]

Wow, this is one of the coolest mod ideas i've ever seen.

a couple things though- the starting scout should maybe be a mage of some sort, since you want you pretender researching as much as possible early on, and with indys 0, the scout or mage are equally effective, and the mage is very useful. better yet, make it a mage/priest so that everyone can get their research going as fast as possible since many indys need both i.e. liz shamens, lion/dear tribe shamens etc. without that, the games seem to start slow, since your pretender is the only one building a lab at first.

also, is it possible to unlock more pretender gods?

I hope you don't mind if i add more ideas later. and if you start an MP game with this (after the 25th) count me in in advance

[hEad]

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

Wow, this is one of the coolest mod ideas i've ever seen.

a couple things though- the starting scout should maybe be a mage of some sort, since you want you pretender researching as much as possible early on, and with indys 0, the scout or mage are equally effective, and the mage is very useful. better yet, make it a mage/priest so that everyone can get their research going as fast as possible since many indys need both i.e. liz shamens, lion/dear tribe shamens etc. without that, the games seem to start slow, since your pretender is the only one building a lab at first.

also, is it possible to unlock more pretender gods?

I hope you don't mind if i add more ideas later. and if you start an MP game with this (after the 25th) count me in in advance

Cheers mate!

I intended to not even have a Priest nor a spy to start with. It seems that if you don't specify a couple of starters in a mod you are automatically asigned these guys. I though they were quite cool - a spy to get up to stealthy mischief and a priest to get up some temples.

I suppose you could give the mage a try - set it up as an unrecruitable starting unit so you can begin alchemizing gems to empower the indi commanders/what have you, in magic.

I wanted there to be a little sting in not taking an awake pretender. Having an asleep one gives you a good bless and with the easy access to the blessed light - it is quite powerful.

If you take an asleep pretender it is 8 turns before you can start getting your magic industries moving. It seemed to me to heighten the viability of an awake pretender - therefore creating an important initial decision. Once your pretender wakes up though, with easy research, things begin to move along at a good clip.

It is my intention to add more summons. I would like to include national units like Burning ones and Van Jarls etc etc. What would you like in there? The trick is of course to get the costs right.

I also though the other pretender chassis would make good unique summons and was going to add them in this way.

It would be great to get any input FL, so fire away.

I’ll let you know when its MP time – not for a couple of weeks yet

[hEad]

1.1 Update

-Fixed various typos.

-Added a recruitable home province only S1 mage. This should help get magic moving along a tad sooner. Before if you took an asleep pretender, it wasn’t possible to alchemize gems and therefore the first empowerment was only possible around turn 8.

-Monsters added – looking to get the balance on these costs so any suggestions welcome!

Fire

Smoulder ghost Conj2 F1, 5g
Fire Elemental Conj3, F3, 15g
Spenta of Fire conj8, F6, 40g

Air
Air Elemental Conj1, A1, 5g
Yazad Conj3, A3, 10g
Spenta of Sky and Metals Conj8, A6, 40g

Nature
Great Bear x2 Conj2 N2, 6g
Carrion Lord Conj4, N3D1, 20g
Spenta of Plants Conj8, N7, 25g

Earth
Earth Elemental Conj2, E2, 7g
Marble Oracle Conj6, E4, 30g
Spenta of Earth Conj8, E6, 40g

Water
Water Elemental Conj2, W2, 5g
Void Spectre Conj5, W4S2, 15g
Spenta of Waters, Conj8, W6, 35g

Astral
Kinnara Conj4, S4A1, 15g
Harbinger Conj6, S5, 30g

Blood
Vampire Count Conj2, B3, 35Slaves
Tzitzimitl Conj4, B4, 20Slaves

Death
Shaddow Vestal Conj1, D1, 5g
Wraith Centurion Conj4, D4, 20g
Umbral Conj6, D5, 30g

I want to look at adding the other pretender chassis in as unique summons – will get to this at some point.

[analytic_kernel]

You might want to place the updated attachment in the first post (which you should still be able to edit). It's more likely to get downloaded there than from a post part of the way through the thread.

[hEad]

Originally Posted by analytic_kernel

You might want to place the updated attachment in the first post (which you should still be able to edit). It's more likely to get downloaded there than from a post part of the way through the thread.

I have no idea if you can edit the attachment in a previous post - If it is possible it sure as hell isn't obvious!